The Tellurian Threat: A Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Thriller (The Tellurian Archives Book 1)

by Debashish Das

  Kyle felt like he was falling down a bottomless pit. He couldn’t understand what was going on. Anger and helplessness and fear, all tried to claim a piece of him. Old memories started clouding his vision, finally breaking through the barrier he had built around them. No, I did not do anything wrong. I still have control over what happens. But I need to know what’s going on if I’m to get out of this, he thought to himself.

  “You don’t look too concerned right now,” he accused Rohan. “Considering you’re staring at a criminal who just hacked into the stuff you’ve slogged your whole life for.”

  Rohan laughed, but his heart was not in it. “If it is indeed you who hacked us, and you lied about meeting Damian, there’s nowhere you can go. OneTech has been locked down. But somehow, I don’t think it’s you. You’re the newest guy in the team, and we get hacked within a week of you joining us? That makes you the obvious fall guy.”

  “So what? We’re just going to sit and talk here? That makes me think you have something to do with this, too.” Kyle suddenly had a thought. “Wait! You are Damian’s oldest friend, you guys worked together on this project. And now you don’t want to go to the authorities with this hack because you’re helping Damian and setting me up to take the fall,” he said loudly.

  “Kyle, I’d tell you to relax, but you aren’t going to. I have access to everything here, what would I have to gain by helping Damian?”

  “How should I know,” Kyle shouted back. “You seem pretty fucking calm for someone who just found out that his missing friend is alive. You knew all along, didn’t you?”

  Rohan shook his head. “I suspected. Damian is not the running away type. He lived for what we were working on, and I didn’t believe he would simply abandon it. I was afraid it would eventually come to this, and now it has. This isn’t just a simple hack. You and me, we are caught up in something far more serious than stolen data.”

  “I don’t give a shit. I am going to the authorities; I am going to tell Patrick what has happened. You and your friend can go to hell,” Kyle said getting up violently from his seat.

  Rohan got up wearily. He looked at Kyle and said, “OneTech is under lock down, and your phone has been blocked.” Kyle stared back at him, seething with anger. “But you can have my phone, so you can call Patrick and the police anytime you want. Please, just listen to me for a few minutes, then you can do whatever you want,” he pleaded.

  Kyle hadn’t realized he still held Rohan’s phone. He looked from Rohan to the phone, trying to sort through the conflicting thoughts in his head. He didn’t know why, but he felt that Rohan wasn’t lying. That didn’t stop him from being angry, but it took the edge off of it. “Fine,” he said rapidly typing a message, “I’ll listen, but the moment I feel you’re not being honest, I’m sending this message to Patrick. All it’ll take is one tap.”

  “Thank you,” Rohan said, looking relieved. He sat back down and drank some water before speaking. “I would ask you how you met him, but I guess it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you did, and he somehow tricked you into giving him your mobile. Does he still have that ugly monstrous console of his?”

  Kyle nodded, remembering the odd device he had seen Damian use.

  Rohan smiled and said, “He always loved to set himself apart from the rest of us. He did things just because it was forbidden or people thought it was impossible to do. That might not seem significant enough, but that’s why he is… I hate to use this word, but… he’s dangerous.”

  “Okay,” Kyle said, also sitting down. “Let’s call the police then, I’ll tell them that I’ve seen Damian and they can go arrest him.”

  “On what charges? We can’t prove he hacked us. Even if we could, it won’t work. By now, he surely knows that we’ve discovered his hack. He will disappear, and the police will never be able to find him. That’s what happened last time. All the combined efforts by Patrick and the police failed. I did whatever I could long after they had stopped and never found a trace, either. No, going to the police is a really bad idea.”

  This just doesn’t make any sense, Kyle thought. If Damian can go to the ground any time he wants, what does Rohan think he can do? And what does that have to do with me? He looked Rohan in the eye. “What do you want to do then?”

  “Finding Damian is pointless if we cannot find what he has put in motion. He has a plan, that’s for sure. We need to find out what his plan is, and how he’s going to execute it. If he just meant to dump all our data in the public domain, he would have done it from the moment he got into our servers. But he hasn’t, which makes it even more important that we find out what he’s up to.”

  “First of all, I don’t have anything to do with it, there’s no ‘we.’ And what could be worse than making confidential data public?”

  “Look around you, Kyle. What do you see? Buildings? People? A thriving city?” Rohan shook his head gently. “That is not all there is to Waylain. What you don’t see are thousands of machines and computers and software systems talking, interacting with each other so that the city can exist. They are constantly monitoring and adjusting every tiny detail of the environment we live in so we can exist. Without them, we are dead. Power, money, politics, none of it matters. Anyone who controls the machines and the computers controls Waylain.”

  “I still don’t see the connection. You’re wasting time. If Damian is even behind any of this, the longer you delay, the easier it’ll be for him to escape. I’m even beginning to think that you want the hacker to get away with this. If you don’t tell me what’s really going on, the police, Patrick, even the media, everyone’s going to find out what’s happened. You’ve got five minutes before I send this message.”

  Rohan sighed tiredly. “Al is essentially a piece of software, which can be modified to control all other software. We don’t just want it to learn and analyze environmental data. We planned for it to eventually take control of all the myriad software systems across Waylain. It doesn’t matter if it’s a basic seismic sensor or an entire array of solar panels, if it’s on the network, Al can take control of it.

  “It is like the ultimate virus, you can’t stop it from spreading; you can’t get rid of it in any way. But it’s not malicious. It’s purpose is to monitor, regulate, and bring into balance the way we interact with the planet.

  “Even if the code were to be leaked to the public domain, there’s hardly any risk of anyone being able to deploy it because, without our servers, the program is useless. But the problem, right now, is that Damian helped create Al in the first place. It would be fairly easy for him to modify the code and use it to take over any control system he wanted. I’m not saying he would, but if he wants, he could even turn off the air circulation in Waylain.”

  No, no, this can’t be happening again, Kyle said to himself, trying to suppress the panic rising up within him. “But you said it isn’t fully developed yet. You said it would take a long time for it to even learn, let alone analyze the data.”

  Rohan grimaced. “There’s a back door, there’s always a back door. We built one into Al that would give us full manual control. So basically, any commands we issue will seem like they’re originating from Al, and consequently, any system that Al has control of will act like we want it to. We wanted to be able to prevent anything bad from happening, in case Al didn’t behave the way we had planned. That’s why we built the back door.”

  Fuck, it’s happening again. And this time I’m caught in the middle of it. He still didn’t know what he could do, though. “So you’re saying Damian could hijack any control system he wants? Turn off the air supply, disrupt the temperature regulation, and in effect threaten the lives of nearly a million people living in Waylain?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s not like flicking a switch. These are vital life support systems, redundancies go five levels deep. But given enough time and with a little help, it might just be possible.”

  “And you guys built this thing that could kill us all, just like that? What the fuc
k were you thinking? Why the fuck would Damian even consider doing it? What does he have to gain from this?”

  “That,” Rohan said looking Kyle in the eye, “is where the real problem lies. Do you believe in God?”

  “What the fuck?”

  “It’s okay if you don’t. Most people don’t take religion seriously anymore. They just acknowledge the existence of God when it suits them. But Damian is different, not because he’s religious, but because his belief in God is unshakable. He calls it the Singularity and believes that all life came into being from it. We can copy the process of creating life, but we don’t actually wield the power of giving life. To him, that’s confirmation of the existence of the Singularity. He thinks we are all the living embodiment of the Singularity, that we all have a little bit of God…”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Kyle said angrily, cutting Rohan off. “Everyone could be dying as we speak and you’re fucking talking about God? I’m going to the police and telling them that we’re dealing with a madman, and you’re fucking going down with him.”

  “You can either go to the police, or you can help me stop Damian. You can’t do both, your choice.”

  Kyle was already halfway up from the chair, but that made him pause. Don’t let your fear control you, he thought, recalling the promise he had made to himself long ago. He knew his anger was just a form of fear; he was lashing out because he felt powerless. But Rohan still looked calm, tired but calm. “If you’re right about this, and we can actually stop Damian, tell me exactly what you plan to do.”

  “We go meet Damian and find out what he’s up to.”

  That drew an involuntary laughter from him. “That’s it? That’s your plan? What makes you think we can even find him? Especially if he’s planning something like this?”

  “We’re not going to find him. We’re simply going to ask him to meet us.”

  “What? And you think he’ll come? How the fuck are you even going to contact him?”

  “I’ll contact him using whatever means you did and ask him to meet us.”

  Kyle hesitated for a moment. The last time he had handed over his mobile to someone hadn’t turned out very well. But he handed over his mobile to Rohan anyway. “Private message. His handle is dk712.”

  “Thank you,” Rohan said smiling gratefully, taking the mobile.

  “What makes you think he’ll come?”

  Rohan didn’t look up from the mobile, but he did reply. “Because he believes that life was created from the Singularity; there has to be a purpose behind it. It was always meant to endure. We, as a race, are destroying the planet, but we also have the power to change our ways, to ensure the survival of all life on earth. And because we have that power, that makes it our responsibility. I believe that, too; we must stop being selfish and save the planet. And he knows that. He won’t turn away an offer of help from me.”

  Rohan finally looked up from the mobile. “But that’s where the similarities in our beliefs stop. He believes that he is the instrument of the Singularity. Anything he does to ensure the survival of the human race is in service to that higher power, even if it comes at the cost of innocent lives. To him, death is part of life, life that came from the Singularity and returns to it when we die. He is not killing people for his own sake. He believes he’s saving the human race. I empathize with his motivations, but I am afraid of his actions.”

  “You knew this all along? And you even helped him build the thing that could now give him control over all our lives?” Kyle asked incredulously.

  Rohan closed his eyes and sighed. “We were doing good work, making progress toward a better future for all, it would have been impossible to build what we did without him. But without this project to work on, without me by his side, I fear he is solely driven by his beliefs now. And maybe a little paranoia too.

  “Damian doesn’t believe in any action being good or bad, he believes that a label can only be attached to the action once it reaches its conclusion. He will do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of the human race. Why do you think I kept searching for him long after he went missing?”

  Chapter 14

  “You want to grow trees? Underground? That’s your project?” they had asked mockingly. “Our most renowned botanists have been trying without success for years, what makes you think you can succeed?”

  Not a single teacher Damian went to would approve the project. When he had tried to point out that men had slowly adapted to living underground and trees may be able to do the same, they looked at him with patronizing smiles and told him trees were not men. He could almost hear them laughing, talking about the stupid little kid and his ridiculous ideas.

  So he did what he always had. He proved them wrong.

  He begged his father for access to a tiny piece of land outside the city. Then he bribed a few scavengers to smuggle in some soil, even though it was mostly dead and dry. He himself spent his evenings and weekends digging in the mud, forcing bacteria to grow in the dead soil, so he could plant the shrubs and cactus he was having smuggled in next. It used to drive his mother crazy when he came home muddy and smelling like manure. The last piece of the puzzle had been an expensive one, an array of halogen lamps designed to simulate the light spectrum of solar radiation. But it all paid off. A few months later he invited all his classmates and teachers to show off the thriving plants. He would have loved to see them eat humble pie, but no, that didn’t happen. He should have known better. They had all fawned over the plants, singing his praises to his father. To hear them speak, it appeared they had never doubted his genius even for a moment. His moment of victory had turned sour, and all he had wanted to do was run away.

  Damian was looking at the same patch of land right now. At least he thought it was the same. There was no trace of his experiment left anymore. Smooth, synthetic grass stretched out in unbroken swaths in front of him. He wondered if the bacteria still thrived beneath it all, but he knew they would have sanitized the whole area. It had been a long time ago. He still remembered that boy who had lingered behind while others were done fawning over it. When Damian had approached, the boy had looked at him and said, “Although, technically not plants, I’d have chosen mushrooms. Much more easier to grow.”

  Damian turned toward the city, an island of twinkling lights in the darkness that surrounded it. He used to come out here with his parents, to the slopes on the fringes of the city. They used to bring their own food and sit here for hours talking, looking at the city. He couldn’t even remember the specifics, just vague memories of being here.

  It wasn’t nostalgia that had brought him here today, it was the future. He nodded to himself as he saw the two men walking up the dimly lit path, silhouetted by the city lights. One of them was the boy who had wanted to grow mushrooms.

  Rohan looked him up and down when they were finally face to face, and a hesitant smile broke out on his face. He grabbed him in a hug. “Damn you, Damian, but it is good to see you.”

  Damian returned the embrace awkwardly and stepped away. “I see you are well.” He hadn’t expected Kyle to show up, too. He was an extra, an unknown variable. “I’m sorry for what I did,” he said to Kyle. “Since you’re here, I hope I can convince you that I meant no harm. But sometimes, doing the right thing isn’t always pleasant to everyone involved.”

  The smile on Rohan’s face withered and he regarded him carefully. “It certainly wasn’t pleasant knowing that we were hacked by our old friend. Why did you do it? Why not just come to me?”

  “You have not changed at all. Pragmatic as always, looking for the straightest path to get to the end. You never paid much attention to boundary variables anyway; the core of it was what was always important to you.”

  “I’m here looking for answers, Damian. Why did you disappear? Why did you not contact me? Why show up now, in this manner?”

  Damian smiled watching Rohan get riled up. Very rarely had he seen him lose control. “My reason is the same as it has always been. You
know that. It is the same dream we were trying to make a reality.”

  “And we could have kept on doing it together. Even now we can do exactly what we had set out to do. Help me understand why you hacked into OneTech? Why you took advantage of Kyle?”

  Damian had eroded the trust between them, he could see that. But he hoped he could still win Rohan over to his side. “You could not have helped me,” he said shaking his head. “Not at OneTech, not while he’s watching. What you’re working on now, it’s no longer what we had set out to create. You may not realize it, but his influence has corrupted our work.”

  Rohan stared back at him. “What are you talking about? What has Patrick got to do with this?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Kyle spoke up. “He’s just trying to distract you. He knows you’re upset and is trying to take advantage of it.”

  Damian turned toward him, still smiling. “Really? Why do you think you were shifted from Analytics to R&D? Who do you think was behind that?”

  “Oh, I know it was Patrick. Unlike you, though, he offered me a choice. And I accepted. But you pretended to help me, manipulated me, and made me a scapegoat in whatever game you’re playing.”

  “Do you honestly believe that Patrick made you an offer? That you could have refused him?” he asked, laughing.

  “I don’t care. You fucked us over, both of us. If it hadn’t been for Rohan, I would have gone straight to Patrick. Give me one reason I shouldn’t call him right now,” Kyle threatened, taking out his mobile.

  This is not good, Damian thought to himself. “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. Not that it’ll help you. You have wasted all this time getting here so we could talk. If you want to throw all that away and waste even more time, go right ahead.”

  Rohan stepped closer to Kyle but looked at Damian when he spoke. “Why Kyle? Why did you pick him?”