The Journey of Atlantis_Leaving Home

by jeff knoblauch

  The tunnel rat did not know intuitively what most human experience teaches; blueprints and schematics are sometimes inaccurate. The tunnel rat said nothing more and turned to disappear into the small tunnel that went some twenty feet underground to the myriad infrastructure of pipes, cables and ducts that serviced the ship and its occupants. Marion followed the rat on her tablet. After a few more minutes the rat was approaching the junction as displayed on the map overlay.

  Just as I thought, she said to herself, no valves. To the rat she said, “Confirm your location and take a full sensor sweep of the local area.” The rat did as it was told and its position changed color on her screen. She put in a work order to have the electronic valves put in along with one manual valve. Not all the wastewater was being diverted to the water recycler. It took a while to backtrack on this, but she finally narrowed it down. She thought that Sonny should have known that there were not any electronic valves at the designated area.

  “Sonny,” she said to her tablet.

  “Yes, Miss Alvarez,” Sonny acknowledged.

  “How did you not know that there were no valves located at a juncture clearly marked on the schematic as a wastewater juncture that had to have valves here to control the direction of the flow?”

  Sonny replied, “Many of these junctures have manual valves that I cannot access or detect. The schematics at your location, ring 44, grid 2710 tunnel entrance, show valves to be present. One moment please. The tunnel rat has just completed the full sweep, and I detect that one of the sensors in the adjacent juncture has malfunctioned giving a ghost image of the juncture in question. This is an anomaly that has happened only one other time. The sensors had given false data indicating the juncture was properly plumbed when in fact it was not. I have put in the work order to additionally fix the sensors in the next junction when your work order is executed.”

  “Thank you, Sonny,” she said wondering about the dangers of Sonny’s reliance on data and not having the capacity for intuition and curiosity. The tunnel rat poked its head out of the tunnel entrance. “Let’s go rat,” she said glad to scratch one more job off her very long list of problems to check out.

  ∆∆∆

  Consortium Meeting

  “I’m sorry ma’am, but you’ll have to remain where you are during the lockdown,” the nondescript security woman explained again. “A high altitude, unidentified ship is nearing our coordinates overhead. Until it is identified, shot down, or otherwise dealt with, the lockdown will continue.”

  “I understand sergeant,” Izzy said trying not to be irritated.

  The security woman continued, “We don’t know if there is someone on the island directing this possible attack remotely, or what the situation may turn out to be. Keeping everyone where they are makes our job easier to locate suspects and make arrests. This is also for your safety.”

  It looked like there was going to be a delay getting the meeting started today. She supposed that there could be worse places to get locked down at than her office, but she could think of better places to get stranded, like the commissary. Humans were funny that way. There were people that could find the silver lining to everything, and so, their outlook was drastically different than people that could pull out the bad apple to everything such that even a rainbow had nefarious intentions. Something caught the sergeant’s attention. She must have an implant and was in communications with Sonny, or her command center.

  “Copy that,” she said. “Ma’am, I have been informed that the suspicious ship had to be destroyed. We must wait just a little longer, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, while we’re making sure that the debris falling into the ocean doesn’t pose a danger.”

  “Thank you, sergeant,” she said. Well, Izzy thought, it looks like a little late rather than a lot late. That was good news. She was always a punctual person, and hated to be late.

  The fifteen to twenty minutes was closer to an hour, but the lockdown was lifted and the consortium members went straight away to the conference room to start their meeting. “After this morning’s thrilling delay, we will get started as soon as we get settled,” Izzy announced loudly to the small crowd making their way in, all a buzz with this morning’s excitement. The members took the hint and made their way quickly to their seats as the chatter died down. “Under the circumstances, I think that we would like to hear from Security first. Are you ready to speak about the recent events as well, general?”

  “Yes ma’am,” General Zhou replied as he stood up. He made his way to the dais as he continued. “Reports are still coming in, of course, but I can brief you all with most of the details. At 0702 this morning, a launch was detected from a non-Project launch field. It was a chemical launch from an area that had been abandoned from the early days of the spaceports. Both humans and Alice attempted to communicate with the vessel. No direct or indirect communications were ever received. Since almost all spacecraft are equipped with hardware encryption for communication and data of any kind, Alice was able to quickly hack into the ship’s video to get a look inside. Humans could have done it, but not as quickly as Alice. Alice immediately identified the two-man crew as Frank Able and his wife Darleen. They were known to have close ties to the Enders. By this time, a trajectory was determined. We assumed at first that it was headed to the ship, and Sonny was alerted. We then determined that the trajectory was too low and an Earth target was the goal. It was clear that their target was either Hawaii or one of the two spaceports on other islands in the pacific. We gave them every opportunity to give themselves up. We made it clear that they would never reach their intended target. After a few more minutes, it was then clear that Hawaii was the intended target. We didn’t shoot them down right away since we had control of the situation, and we were taking the opportunity to learn of their plans. The craft was shot down by one of Sonny’s laser cannons at 0736."

  "Shortly before that, we were tipped off by one of our local security teams that something suspicious was happening at a coffee shop one block from the Consortium building. In a few minutes, we quietly moved in and gassed the whole shop with EZ43. The gas is immediate leaving the people in the shop no chance to do anything. We moved in quickly in case they had planned for a gas attack. They did not. The launch was a ruse to get us to deal with them while the real operation was being executed. They most likely knew that they could not power up the nuclear weapon without Alice knowing, so the last piece was installed during the launched attack. Fortunately, we had eyes on the shop for some time since we had registered known Enders had visited the shop. The agent, who tipped us off, noticed unusual activity during the launched attack and called it in. We put two and two together and took no chances. Alice became aware of the nuke when it was powered up, and notified us in route to the shop. We found the bomb in a hidden room under the shop. We were very lucky on two counts. One, they used the same ventilation that the shop used. And two, our surveillance man did not delay in contacting us. As it was, when we got to the bomb, it was powered up and the gas dropped the switch man before he could get to the firing mechanism. It was very close. They must have been smuggling in the parts for a long time. They were taking their time to not attract suspicion. However, we are already suspicious when any two Enders get together in the same place. The conversations that were recorded were normal and so we could not take any action. Occasionally, one of them would head to the bathroom. The trap door was in the bathroom out of sight of surveillance.”

  “This is a clear example of what my original brief was about. Plain and simple; things are going to get unpleasant. From here on out we can expect that people are going to start to feel the doom of the planet weighing on them. Psychologically, this will most likely take the form of, but not limited to:

  A rise in suicides

  Mass defections in personnel

  More aggression toward the Project

  A reduction in productivity with those who stick with us due to despondency and depression

  All these factors will m
ake it increasingly harder to protect our assets. We can make up for lost personnel by increasing automation and production of more robots. Sonny and Alice have been helping in this department. Alice has been projecting these events for some years, but only now are we seeing the writing on the wall. Sometimes I think that Alice and Sonny are better judges of human affairs than we are, having studied us for some decades now. Alice has been installing intelligent security software at all our assets for some time now, giving facilities the ability to automate security in times of need. We’ve seen this in action on several occasions with good success. I had felt at the time that this was redundant, but, you can never have too much security. If we get more defections, this could be a saving grace, giving us more time for emergency operations to complete."

  "I have also come to realize that the policy of replacing non-selected personnel with selectees in the workforce will be a significant advantage at this time. At strategic times, we could reveal to individuals that they have been selected to engender loyalty and a stake in the Project. They will still be sworn to secrecy to keep a lid on things, but at some point, the rumors will become fact. Hopefully this doesn’t happen for at least another ten years. Currently the workforce is comprised of about eighty percent selected people.”

  “Thank you, General Zhou,” Izzy said like all the air went out of her sails. “I think I speak for the assembly here when I say that your section not only saved our lives but possibly the whole planet today. No telling what would happen to the Project if Hawaii was nuked. I suspect that it would go on, but would significantly delay us with the turmoil that would ensue. We would have to make harder decisions than we already must make from these events. I agree with you general, that we may be at a juncture that we have to take the fight to the attackers and deal with the repercussions of the backlash. I would like to hear your strategies on this subject later. And now, we’ll hear from the Selection section. Are you ready to give your brief Matt?”

  “Certainly, Madame Chairman,” he replied as he made his way to the dais. “Because we’ve had time to do this slowly, we have moved approximately eighty percent of the selected people to the Project. If the situation with the people of Earth deteriorates quicker than we anticipate, we may have a problem getting all the sleepers up to the ship. We’re also stepping up our human seed bank project, as we are getting nervous about completion. At some point, people are going to start putting two and two together and realize what we’re doing, and they are not going to like it. We know that we’re going to have to put the sleepers to bed early, but we are not sure how early that will be. Ideally, we wouldn’t want hibernation to go on any longer than necessary, but when the shit hits the fan, we may not be able to move people effectively off Earth. Our current best estimate is about T-minus eight years. Sonny agrees with this assessment. This should give us about three years to move fifteen million people. That’s approximately fifteen thousand people a day. The two scenarios that is presented at that time will either be a low-key migration to space stations and then to the ship, or an ongoing rescue mission getting those people up by any means possible.”

  “A third option, that we yet have time to do, is to take them slowly now, and ship them to the Mars mining colony. We could expand greatly the living habitats to accommodate them. It wouldn’t be paradise, but they would be alive. They would have to live there less than twenty years before being shipped to the sleepers. Given the current status, we may need to plan on this option. I have already started in motion the construction of more habitats on Mars. It’ll take us a few years to complete. We may know more about our situation then. The projections and schedules are in your data packets to review later.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Allen,” Izzy said. “I’ll need to meet with you later to talk about those projections.”

  “Of course, Chairman Rocha,” Matt acknowledged.

  “And now we will move on to the Logistics section I think, and then we will break for lunch,” the Chairman announced.

  Jeff nodded to the Chairman as he took his place at the dais. “Chairman Rocha,” he turned to the rest of the audience, “Hello everyone. As you know, last year two spaceports were shut down due to coordinated attacks on the tracks. Ten miles of track is pretty hard to guard even with monitoring equipment. Supplies are still getting through by just spreading the load to the remaining ports. This was anticipated and the emergency protocols are doing the job. However, we cannot afford to lose another port. I’ve been in close talks with the general here for over a year now about security for these ports. I believe as the general does that we’re forced to be less tolerant of intruders and attackers. Any detected intruders should be shot or stunned. Perhaps we could use lethal gas to deal with larger groups of attackers. We could use sonic weapons to deal with smaller groups and crowd control. Alice does a great job of monitoring and assisting security in repelling intruders, however, Alice could do more. I propose that we expand Alice’s capacity to immediately respond to intruders. This will give security time to arrive on the scene and assist Alice. The focus of this proposal would be for high valued targets like the spaceports. Our Achilles heel up until now has been the restrained use of force because we felt there would be backlash against us. We’re approaching the point that it is academic, and we will have to take our chances to protect our assets, and finish the Project. It will soon not matter how compassionate we are, people may start interfering in large numbers. They will consider themselves as the ‘walking dead’. Nothing is more dangerous in this solar system than a human with nothing to lose.”

  Jeff was looking a little distressed. He took a moment to compose himself and continued. “I’m sorry my friends, I didn’t mean to sound panicky or alarmist. It is just that humanity has invested its entire existence to this one endeavor, and it scares me sometimes that it all might be for naught. That it will be the end of us. No more humans. My own life does not matter much, but I cannot sleep sometimes with the thought that humanity might not go on.”

  “All of us here have to carry that demon around with us, just like everyone else on the planet,” Loke said sympathetically. “It’s important to focus on what is worthwhile. I get scared too, my friend, but I know that I cannot do what I need to do if I am paralyzed by fear. Humanity is depending on us to see a job get done. The good thing is that it’s a monumental task to complete, giving a lot of humanity, and us, something worthwhile to focus our energies on. We will get through this, you’ll see.”

  Izzy inquired, “Did you ever think of doing motivational speeches, Loke?”

  “Nope, I’m good with small groups only, I’m afraid,” he replied.

  “It’s a pity. You would be good at it,” she said, and meant it. “Let’s break for lunch and be back here about 1330 hours.

  “Oh, hi Stan,” Izzy greeted Dr. Stanislav Zubov, the new Resource Section director.

  “Chairman Rocha,” he started. “Do you have any special plans for lunch?”

  “You can call me Izzy and no I don’t have any plans,” she said. “Can I call you Stan? I am afraid that I’ve only spoken to you just a few times since Rajesh passed away.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you can call me Stan. My friends call me Stan.” He smiled warmly. “Dr. Mahmud was a great man. I admired him very much so. I think we should hurry to lunch if we are expected to get anything to eat before we need to get back.”

  “Don’t worry, they can’t start without the Chairman you know,” she kidded. They hailed a cab and went to an upscale bistro in the middle of Honolulu. Nearing the end of their lunch, Izzy asked, “So how are you settling in with your duties?”

  Stan made a face like he did not know how to answer and said, “It is going quite well, thank you.”

  “Well,” she said, “Just so you know, you’re a terrible liar. Secondly, people rarely sneak a lie past me. I get real cranky when someone tries to lie to me. It’s best that you don’t know how cranky. We are a close-knit family here. It’s mostly because we are livin
g our lives out through the Project. We really don’t get the chance to live a real life with families and children.”

  “Understood,” he said feeling chastised. “Actually, I don’t feel that it is going well.”

  “What part?” Izzy asked.

  “I’m very much like Dr. Mahmud in the respect that I was brought up in very humble beginnings. I have lived my entire life knowing that that damn star is going to snuff us out. I used to be terrified by it. As I gotten older, I came to realize just what Dr. Iversen was just talking to Dr. Daniels about. I became resolved, and excelled under pressure. I’m very skilled in what I do, and apparently, you saw this too and invited me to join your ‘close knit family’. I’m honored and I want to show you that I can get the job done. However, I had no idea that there were an endless number of things pulling me in endless number of directions. After the first two months, I had decided that I would quit and go home and wait for the star to snuff me out.”

  “Really,” Izzy exclaimed with false astonishment.

  “Not really. I am still working on getting used to the workload. I am tired all the time, and it’s a struggle just to keep my head above water.”

  “It’s a tradition with the seasoned folk to offer this tidbit of warning to the new people of the group upon their taking up the mantle of service to the Project. The workload that you are trying to get used to, you won't. It’s funny to us because it’s a unique environment not everyone is able to handle. Your predecessor Dr. Kyle Jakande only lasted five or six years before he stepped down. He was a very capable individual, but he didn’t have the constitution for the long haul. But do not despair, Stan, you can count on all of us to help you out. I think that’s what burned Dr. Jakande out. He tried to do it all himself. This task is too big for any one person to lift. We all must lift together to make this work. Do you understand?”