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

by Debashish Das

  “However, one day I found out that he was making modifications to the algorithm. I didn’t like what I saw and confronted him. He didn’t deny any of it and even tried to persuade me that it was for the greater good. We argued, we fought, threats and accusations were made, but eventually I won. He agreed to scrap the modifications and come clean about it with you. But the next day he disappeared.

  “I didn’t believe he would give up so easily and tried to find out where he was. But nearly a year of not even hearing a whisper about him made me think that he was gone for good. I believed that he had abandoned it all knowing he couldn’t win against us, against me. But it seems he was just waiting for the right opportunity.”

  Rohan had been listening intently; his face, a reflection of conflicting emotions. “You’re talking about the back door in the all-spark module.”

  Patrick gave him a meaningful look. “So I was the only one who didn’t know? Well done, you managed to keep it hidden from me.”

  “What else could I have done? You wouldn’t listen to anyone and were adamant about not having a fail-safe. I tried to convince you that Al would need to be controlled. AI programs aren’t perfect, and we needed some way to mitigate risks if things went bad, but you didn’t listen. So I gave in to Damian’s insistence of having a back door that only the two of us could use.”

  If Patrick’s face had been a thundercloud when he first walked in, it turned into a raging storm now. Kyle was afraid that Patrick might get violent, but to his surprise, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “That’s all in the past. The only thing that matters is what happens now. You went and met Damian, so I assume you have some idea of what his plan is.”

  Kyle marveled at the sheer effort it must have taken to master his anger. He had always had a hard time managing his own. But Rohan seemed to take the change in direction in his stride. He appeared calm and waited for Patrick to speak.

  Finally, Patrick opened his eyes and said, “You chose to come here, instead of going to the police. So, tell me what’s going on. How is he planning to take his revenge?”

  “He wants to make it rain inside Waylain,” Rohan replied quietly.

  A heavy silence followed the statement. Both Rohan and Patrick seemed to withdraw into their own heads. But it was hard for Kyle to wrap his head around the implications. Perhaps, it was because he was still new to Waylain, and had never paid much attention to the environment and how it affected their lives. He sat still waiting for either of them to speak, but unable to take the silence any longer he said, “I can tell it is not a good thing, but I’m not sure exactly what will happen. Or what we can do to stop it.”

  They both turned to look at him, but it was Patrick who replied. “People might call it an underground city, but Waylain is still a Subhab; an environmentally sealed habitat under the earth’s surface. There’s no way for water or moisture to enter from the outside. Making it rain inside he will have to use our stored water, without which we can’t survive. The good thing is that if it rains, we’ll still retain all the water since it can’t escape to the outside. However, between the time it takes for the stored water to evaporate and become dense enough to rain, it would get… uncomfortable for the people in Waylain.”

  Kyle couldn’t be sure if Patrick was being straight or sarcastic, so he turned to Rohan.

  “Waylain’s water is in the lower hemisphere. To make it rain, it will have to be turned into superheated steam. And while the steam is escaping from the storage to the upper hemisphere, it will be dangerous outseide. It would burn the skin off of anyone who came in contact with it. But if everyone stays in their apartments, it might limit the damage. The bigger danger is the destruction of the entire structure.”

  “Destruction? Of Waylain?” Kyle asked incredulously.

  Rohan nodded thoughtfully. “The pressure needs to build up before it can rain, so all that superheated steam will be looking to escape, except, it has nowhere to go. I hate to say this, but Waylain will be like a boiler that someone forgot to turn off and we’ll be inside that boiler.”

  Kyle didn’t know what to say. There is no way Damian would put so many lives in danger. What would he gain by ripping apart an entire Subhab? Just for revenge?

  Patrick’s bark of laughter interrupted his dark thoughts. “An exploding boiler. Nice metaphor. But it’s highly unlikely. There are so many things that could go wrong. Even Damian couldn’t pull it off. He’s playing you for a fool. He has other plans.”

  Rohan frowned. “You weren’t there when he said it. He believes that this is going to happen. His conviction was rock solid.”

  “Convictions and beliefs don’t make things happen. I don’t doubt he is crazy enough to believe that he can pull this off. But he needs access to resources and people to even attempt anything of this scale.”

  “True, but you’re forgetting he already has everything he needs. We know for sure he’s working with criminals. That’s how he had us kidnapped. More importantly, he now has all the data he needs to take control of Waylain’s environmental control system. He has the all-spark module to help him.”

  It was Patrick’s turn to frown. “Are you telling me that he can use the OneTech algorithm to hijack Waylain’s environmental control systems? Even if he succeeds, Al is supposed to be in its learning phase. How the hell is it going to help him?”

  “The back door,” Rohan said softly. “All he needs to do is to get Al to piggy-back on the control systems. Then he can use the back door to manually take control of them, the atmospheric cooling, the humidity regulation, the pressure balance system, everything. I think that’s what he has been up to in the time since he disappeared. He has probably been working on setting up the control system commands that will help him execute his plan. All he needed was the all-spark module to piggy-back onto the environmental control systems.”

  Patrick looked like he had swallowed something unpleasant. “No, it’s still a far stretch. We’ve got a whole team at OneTech, and even they would not be able to do anything like this. I won’t believe that one man is capable of doing this.”

  “This is Damian we’re talking about. You know him almost as well as I do. Do you think he will stop at anything if he has his mind set on making it rain? Are you willing to risk the fate of Waylain because you don’t believe he’s capable of it?” Rohan asked pointedly.

  Rohan held Patrick’s gaze as if daring him to disagree. Kyle could feel the tension between them. It suddenly dawned on him that they might not have been on the best of terms. It seemed as if disagreements and arguments were common between them, which would explain why Rohan seemed like a different person in his presence. But Damian had to be stopped at all costs. They couldn’t allow him to succeed. He couldn’t allow him to destroy the place he now called home. The only way was for them to work together.

  “Can we at least find out where he is?” Kyle asked. “Now that he has appeared again, his ID is bound to show up somewhere, right?”

  Patrick turned slowly to look at him. “The ID scanners won’t help. The scanners never picked up anything the last time he disappeared. He seems to have found a way of blocking himself from getting scanned.”

  “Or a way of impersonating IDs,” Rohan chimed in.

  That is a disturbing thought, Kyle thought to himself. He could be standing right outside the building, and they wouldn’t be able to tell. How do you find someone who can’t be traced?

  “We need a different approach,” Patrick said. “We need to figure out his next move and try to cut him off. Deny him what he wants, and he’ll get desperate. He’s bound to make a mistake then.”

  “That could work,” Rohan said. “He has to access the water reservoir and heat it up to vaporize it. We could manually block the water flow.”

  “I don’t think that will work. If he manages to get the vaporization process going, the fail-safes will override all the blocks to relieve the pressure. But if we disable the heating elements within the reservoir, he won’t be ab
le to vaporize the water. We’ll have to disable the heating elements, but it shouldn’t pose too much of hindrance to the functioning of Waylain. It would certainly be better than the alternative.”

  Kyle listened to them discussing ways to stop Damian, but he had a feeling that something was wrong. They might be smarter than him and certainly knew more about how the systems and the software worked, but they were forgetting one thing. Damian had predicted their moves with uncanny accuracy. In spite of being a fanatic, he seemed to have very good intuition for how people would behave, especially, Rohan and Patrick, with whom he had worked closely. Kyle was sure that Damian knew they would eventually escape and would have planned for it. If he was capable of disappearing without a trace, hacking into servers that had bulletproof security, and have two people kidnapped in the open without repercussions, Kyle was certain that Damian would pull off what he said. That meant they had to do one thing before anything else.

  “We have to evacuate Waylain,” he said loudly, drawing both Patrick and Rohan’s eyes to him. “We have to get the people out of the way of danger.” When no one said anything, he pressed on. “We are just sitting here talking about things we can only guess at, but Damian has had more than a year to plan all of this. He could be executing his plan at this very moment. For all we know, this superheated steam that you’re talking about could start gushing into the city in the next few minutes. We need to evacuate, now.”

  Rohan looked thoughtful and willing to agree, but not Patrick. “No, there will be no evacuation. There are nearly a million people in Waylain. If we start evacuation, there will be mass hysteria. That could end up causing more harm than good. And for what? Something that might not even happen? Damian could be sitting in some dark hole twiddling his thumbs and relishing the thought of us squirming. This is what he wants, to show that he is in control. No, I am not going to let him dictate our actions.”

  Unbelievable, Kyle thought, how can someone so brilliant and powerful be so blind?

  “Kyle is right,” Rohan added. “We can try and stop Damian, but even if there’s a very small chance of him succeeding… we have to evacuate.”

  “I don’t think either of you understands, nor do I expect you to. Waylain is a symbol, a beacon for the future. It represents mankind’s ability to survive against all odds. Evacuation would mean abandoning all of that, and I won’t let that happen. Waylain has endured worse, and it will survive this too. There will be no evacuation.”

  Chapter 17

  “People could die, and you want us to do nothing?” Kyle couldn’t keep the frustration from his voice.

  Patrick noticed and replied, “I know very well what the risks are. Waylain is my responsibility, but you should be concerned about Damian. If you want to help, go find him, stop him. Leave Waylain to me.”

  “I’ve got friends in the city, people I care about. So does Rohan, and so do you. You’re not even going to warn them of what’s coming?”

  “What is coming? Enlighten me.”

  Kyle opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He could feel the danger heading toward them but had no idea what shape it would take.

  “Exactly,” Patrick said. “This is what he wants; panic and fear running rampant within Waylain. If I issue a warning now, what do you imagine would happen? Just because someone shouts ‘wolf’ doesn’t mean there is one.

  “Even if I assume that the threat is real and Damian is going to do what you say he is, what am I going to tell the people? That they’ve made their homes on top of a bomb that any hacker could set off? How many people do you think would return to Waylain after that? No, evacuating, even issuing a warning would be accepting defeat.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Silva, this is not about who wins or who loses…”

  Kyle stopped when he felt a hand squeezing his shoulder gently. He had not realized that he had stood up. Rohan was standing beside him and was looking at Patrick too.

  “Correct me if I am wrong, but you created Waylain to protect people from external threats, natural disasters, inhospitable climate and the likes,” Rohan said. “You’ve succeeded in doing that. Waylain will endure against all the odds and is likely to become the standard for future Subterranean Habitats.

  “But this threat is from within. A threat imposed by a man who knows the inner workings and the weak points of Waylain, a threat designed to tear apart everything you have created.

  “I might have called Damian a friend, but I believe he is way past caring about the lives of the people living here. He has been consumed by his mission, which he believes is for the greater good, and poisoned by his desire for revenge, against you.”

  Kyle noticed something change in Patrick’s eyes, a glimpse of reason perhaps, and jumped on it. “Waylain is your creation, and you can build the city again, even if Damian manages to destroy it. But are you willing to sacrifice the lives of nearly a million people, just so you can save the city? Damian might not care about how many people die, but everyone believes that you are the hope of mankind’s future. Surely you won’t condemn people to their death. If even one person dies because of your decision, will you be able to live with that for the rest of your life?”

  Patrick got up from the couch without looking at either of them and walked over to the window looking down on the city. The silence hung heavy between them. Kyle looked at Rohan, but he shrugged. They didn’t know how Patrick would react and that scared him. Even to him, Damian’s plans sounded ludicrous. His and Rohan’s words were the only thing that Patrick had to go on. Can I blame him, if he decides not to take the ramblings of a madman seriously? But Patrick hadn’t been there when they had faced Damian, he hadn’t seen the manic gleam in his eyes when Damian had been talking about his plans. Even Rohan believed that Damian was capable of what he was planning.

  Kyle knew he was free to do what he wanted. He could go out and warn Becca, Andrew and the others. They could escape together, but where would they go? He couldn’t just abandon the other people in Waylain. If Patrick didn’t agree to evacuate, they were all doomed. He felt just as helpless as he had during the riots.

  “If I do initiate the evacuation, it will take hours, even a few days to mobilize everything. What do you think would happen if Damian strikes while the evacuation is going on? When everyone is out in the open and directly exposed to the superheated steam?”

  That was a scary thought. Kyle had not thought about that possibility. It would be a massacre if it came to pass. He couldn’t imagine Damian murdering people on purpose. No one was as demented as that.

  “Damian wouldn’t do that,” Rohan disagreed. “There’s a difference between not caring about people dying and murdering them. He wants to prove a point not kill…”

  “Let’s say he isn’t able to control it, and the people outside get caught in the middle. Not intentional, but just as deadly. There is no scenario where we come out on top. And if I tell people that they need to evacuate because they might have the skin boiled off their faces as they stand, it will lead to mass hysteria. Chaos! Then we’ll never be able to evacuate them.” Patrick turned around to look at them. “You don’t have to tell me what to do. I have been prepared for a disaster since the day construction on Waylain started. Although, this wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined it would end. But I need evidence of what’s going on, solid proof of what Damian is planning and what dangers we’re facing.”

  “But the evacuation…” Kyle began.

  “No, there will be no evacuation right now,” Patrick said, irritated. “I will do everything to protect the people, but I need to know what Damian is up to because what you say he’s going to do is almost impossible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Patrick looked pointedly at Rohan and said, “You say he plans to hijack Waylain’s control system and vaporize the water reservoir, fine. But even if he were able to turn up all the heater cores in the reservoir to their maximum and block the relief valves, it would take him several weeks to even get
the water to boil. There are 120 billion gallons of water in the reservoir. Short of a nuclear fusion experiment gone wrong, there’s nothing that can vaporize all that water in such a short period of time. So unless he has access to a heat source that can unleash as much energy as a fusion reaction, he won’t be able to do shit.”

  Rohan thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah, there’s no way he could vaporize all that water. But he seemed so sure of it when he told us. It was like he believed it was inevitable. He knows something we don’t.”

  “What if he doesn’t need all that water? How much do you think would be enough to make it rain?” Kyle knew it was a stupid question, but he had to ask. “Damian wants to make it rain, and it is impossible to use Waylain’s water to do that, so what if he just used a small part of it?”

  “I can see why you would think that,” Rohan replied. “It’s perfectly logical. But unless he can somehow transport a few thousand gallons to an isolated location and then vaporize that, it won’t work. Fortunately, for us, Waylain’s reservoir is one single unit. He won’t be able to isolate…”

  Patrick surprised both of them with his laughter. “Fuck! I’ve got to give this guy credit. He has this so well planned out. It’s a shame we have to work against him.” He turned to Kyle and said, “Well spotted. If you had not brought that up, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me.”

  Kyle looked nonplussed.

  “Rohan is right. There is no facility inside Waylain where you could isolate a few thousand gallons of water to vaporize, but it does exist outside Waylain, just a few miles north-east of the periphery.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rohan asked, sounding a little alarmed.

  “The geo-thermal thermal plant. It has been lying unused for decades.”