Falling Ark

by Leigh Snelson

  As she moved towards Hank, she kept talking to him, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then, a few moments later she turned around.

  “Tell Derek his days are numbered!” She shouted back to me, obviously the confusion had cleared up and she was now aware of Derek’s little joke.

  I was shocked at how quickly time was quickly flying by. I made my way up the stairs to the crew quarters. Waiting for me was Mitchell. Mitchel was roughly my size and height and I had been sharing his clothes due to a lack of foresight not bringing anything for myself.

  This wasn’t really a problem for myself, Sam, Tony or Derek because there were plenty of crew on board and the ship came with a laundry area to keep us dressed in clean clothes. I suspected Sam and Derek had recently stolen some of the machines to go into the Armillary but there were plenty of clothes to go around.

  Even Ava and Julie didn’t mind sharing clothes from the crew. There were some smaller male staff and their clothes nearly fit. Ava did have to turn up every pair of trousers she put on because of how small she was but other than that, nearly everyone was accounted for.

  Hank had the biggest issues.

  No one on board could match his size. There was a tall crew member called Noah, who nearly matched Hanks height, but Noah was a skinny guy and Hanks bulk meant that the clothes wouldn’t even come close to fitting.

  Hank, therefore, reverted to his military days, he washed in his clothes and then hung them up to dry while he was asleep, but it didn’t stop Derek from making his usual sarcastic comments.

  Mitchell handed me a newly pressed shirt and a tie to match. All crew were required to own at least one formal set of clothing. On occasion when they entered docks they would stand on the side of the ship and salute the bystanders. It was mostly for appearances, if there was a state visit from a diplomat or a particularly distinguished VisionTech guest they were required to dress up.

  I thanked him and made my way out and back towards the Armillary. This evening I was going to give the speech of my life and it was time to prepare.

  Chapter 33

  The time had arrived.

  The supercomputer, Lovelace, had finally decoded all the files and we were ready send them back to Earth, this way people could read through the information and hold VisionTech accountable.

  Sam thought it would be a good idea to wrap the files up with a message from all of us, stating who we are and why we were here. This could then be broadcast around the world so that people could hear our side of the story.

  It was a long shot but at least we got to speak for ourselves, after all, Lara was spinning all kinds of lies about us, so it was time that everyone knew our side of the story.

  Now it was time to film that message.

  We were all gathered in the control room wearing the best clothes we could find.

  “We will only get one shot at this, let’s make it count!” Sam said,

  He pointed at me, sitting behind the holotable on the main deck of the Armillary wearing my newly pressed, clean shirt and tie. I had Julie and Tony to my left, Ava and Derek to my right and Hank kneeling behind but still towering over us all.

  Sam checked the control panel one more time.

  “Hank, you’re going to have to get lower if you don’t want your head cut off!” Sam said before he ran around to us, taking his place next to Hank who had shuffled on to his knees.

  “Hello citizens of Earth.” I started, calmly, reading the words that appeared on Ava’s laptop screen that sat above the camera.

  “My name is Dom Spencer. I am sure you have heard of me by now. A few weeks ago the CEO of VisionTech tried to kill me after I created an Anti-Gravity device. My intentions with this invention are purely altruistic, I wish to make the plans open, for the good of humanity. Lara, however, does not want this. Lara has called upon your Governments to grant her unheard-of powers in order to stop us releasing the plans for this drive and many other VisionTech secrets. We offer no threat, only the truth.” I gave my little speech in the calmest voice I could generate, just like I had repeated a hundred times in the mirror.

  Tony stretched in his chair and started his little bit of the speech.

  “I am Tony Delaro. I owned a restaurant in England. I am also an ex-employee of VisionTech. A few days ago, Lara destroyed my restaurant, trying to kill Dom and myself. I was fired from VisionTech because I wanted to take the technology I had developed and help make the world better. Lara did not want this, so she ousted me from the company. Please do not give Lara what she wants. We are not the threat, she is.” He looked at Julie for the next part of the speech.

  “My name is Julie Watkins and I was a researcher at VisionTech until very recently when I found Lara torturing both Dom and Tony. She wanted to make sure that the technology that these two had invented did not get out into the public. We urge you to welcome us back to Earth where we can share the technology that has been kept hidden from the public for too long.”

  We all looked at Ava next.

  “My name is Ava Richley and William P. Jones is my father. I was there the night that his ranch was destroyed. I saw first-hand how VisionTech tried to kill Dom and Tony. This message contains details of all the projects VisionTech is currently working on, however the world deserves to know about all the technologies that Lara has horded away. Please, do the right thing.”

  Everyone then looked at Derek for his part in the speech.

  “My name is Derek Booth and I have two children with my darling wife, Emily. The things I have seen, the technology that has been hidden by VisionTech in the pursuit of profit is unacceptable and I refuse to allow my children to grow up in a world where life changing medicines, radical farming technologies and clean energy are held back to help make a few individuals richer. The world would be a much better place with this technology in the hands of the people instead of one greedy corporation.”

  The camera then panned up to Hank, rotating as far as the little gimble could.

  “My name is Hank Williams and I once led security at VisionTech many years ago. As Lara came to power, she tasked me with making sure people didn’t know about the fantastic technology that was being created inside those walls. This was not how technology is supposed to be used. Invite us back to Earth and we can all share in a technological revolution.”

  Finally, the camera moved down to Sam.

  “My name is Sam Clark and I am ashamed to say that I helped to secure many of the deals that have helped VisionTech control the most cutting-edge technology. The world deserves access to these inventions, and it deserves to know why Lara has kept them a secret. She will try to stop us by any means necessary, please remember this in the coming days.”

  The transmission ended and playback appeared on the screens. We all sat in silence and watched the video.

  “Is everyone happy?” Sam asked when the recording had finished.

  “No, I think I my eyes were closed.” Derek jested, breaking the formality of the event and putting everyone at ease again.

  Everyone laughed and nodded in agreement. The message was complete.

  “Great! I’ll put the file at the top of the folder and package it up.” Sam said, commentating his own actions as he tapped buttons and opened folders.

  “Over to you, Ava.” Sam said when he was done.

  Now that Lovelace was lying dormant, finally completing the task of decrypting the files a few hours ago, Ava had set the computer a new task, trying to break through firewall Lara had setup around Earth. This was no easy mission but the clever machine found a way.

  The problem was removing the jamming signals. Lara had taken over a few communications satellites and ordered them to send out white noise whenever we tried to send messages back to Earth.

  Every time we fired radio waves back, the satellites would send their own signals at the same time as ours. This meant that the radio waves we sent, were being jumbled up with the radio waves from the satellites.

  There was no way
to uncouple the messages, it rendered any message we sent, void. That was at least the theory, however, Lovelace had spotted a pattern with the jamming signal. It wasn’t completely random. If it had been then it would be impossible to separate our messages but finding a pattern meant that we could manipulate the signal and hopefully someone on Earth would hear it.

  “Lovelace is going to send a series of ships in orbit around the Earth. Each ship will contain the message and will transmit it. Hopefully the message will get through and someone will be listening.” Ava informed the group.

  “This is likely a onetime shot. Once we get away with this Lara will change the jamming sequences and possibly make it impossible to send another signal through.” Sam explained further. “So, we all have to be happy with this.”

  Once again everyone nodded.

  “Hold on,” Derek shouted, and he reached over to a screen and taped on the glass. “I thought I saw something.”

  The display was showing a live feed of a camera looking back at Earth.

  “I saw it too, there was certainly something there!” Hank confirmed what Derek was pointing at.

  The Earth was in the centre of the screen, but occasionally there were asteroids floating in front of it. Asteroids we had put there, floating around the moon.

  Worker robots could be seen floating up to them using the gravity drives to collect minerals for the replicator and they would appear as tiny dots on the screens.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a worker robot?” I suggested. “They are always buzzing around up there doing the automated tasks.”

  “No, it was something else.” Derek said again, he was adamant that there was something going on outside.

  Ava was busy uploading the files to the dozen planes that were preparing for take-off. On the screen in front of her were a series of loading bars that indicated how much of the file each craft had received.

  “Let’s take a closer look shall we.” She said as she swapped screens and ordered some of the worker robots to fly out to the point Derek was pointing at. Cameras ready to explore.

  “I don’t see anything.” Sam said as the robots hovered around the huge rock in the sky.

  “Wait, there, what was that?” Julie pointed to a dark, shadowy area underneath an overhanging rock.

  Ava tapped on the screen and the robot went in for a closer look.

  It was a large metal cylinder. It resembled a cigar and was sticking out of the rock. The asteroid in focus was about three hundred metres long and it looked like a metal cactus had grown out of the side of the rock. It was bulbous but also had little arms sticking out with aerials on the ends.

  This cigar shaped object must have been around ten metres tall, above the surface, who knew how far it had dug itself in, and it was perfectly smooth with no seams or welds, like it was a solid piece of metal.

  “It’s getting smaller.” Tony pointed out, “No, it’s burying itself.”

  We watched as the little metal cigar dug into the rock and out of sight.

  “It’s on the move!” Ava said aloud.

  “What is, the metal cactus?” I asked.

  “No, the whole asteroid.” Ava informed everyone. She tapped on the display and placed a graphical representation of the rock and the moon on the screens around the control room. A yellow shape indicated where the rock at started and a green outline of the rock showed where it was now.

  “It’s moving pretty fast.” Sam said in alarm. “Any idea where it’s heading?”

  “It’s heading away from the moon. It’s heading towards Earth.” Ava started to explain. “Hold on, I’m running some simulations on Lovelace. Here we go.”

  Ava put the suggested flight path on the screen.

  At first it showed the rock, leaving the moons orbit and an orange dotted line connected it with the Earth.

  A huge, orange circle appeared over most of Europe. Then it started to get smaller and smaller as the calculations refined themselves based on new data.

  “Paris?” I asked as the circle shrank down to highlight the area in France.

  “Now we know that Lara can get machines out of Earth’s atmosphere. She has just caught herself one of our asteroids!” Hank said.

  “But why is she dragging it to Paris? I didn’t know VisionTech had a facility in Paris?” I said in puzzlement.

  “They don’t.” Sam replied, “I think that is the point. I don’t think she intends to mine it. Look, it’s speeding up”.

  Lara had clearly got her team working on making the drives more efficient. The rock started to quickly cover the space between the Earth and the Moon.

  The next hour was agonising, watching the rock cover the vast distance.

  “Why can’t we blow it up?” Ava asked.

  “We don’t know what kind of tech Lara has put in there, instead of one big rock, it could rain huge fragments all over Europe.” Derek pointed out.

  “So why don’t we get the robots to drag it back?” Ava suggested again.

  “No good. That thing buried itself in the middle. The robots would only end up breaking off chunks as they tried to snag it.” Hank explained.

  “So why don’t we break as many chunks as possible off it, reduce its size.” Ava demanded.

  “There is no time. We could probably remove a fraction of a percent.” I said this time.

  I could tell that Ava was not happy watching this unfold naturally, and she wanted to do something about it. We all did, but there were no safe options available.

  “If we start interfering, we don’t know what Lara will do. We still don’t know why she is taking it to Paris.” Sam explained to Ava, trying to calm her.

  As the asteroid approached the airspace above France it started to slow down, not under pressure from the atmosphere, but through the little gravity drive that was in its core.

  “It’s slowing down!” Ava screamed, excitedly.

  “It’s not slowing down enough!” Tony exclaimed.

  “That’s not its purpose, it’s going to hit the city, with just enough force, limiting the damage to just the city centre.” Sam pointed out.

  We all watched in horror as the rock collided with the city.

  Our long-range cameras allowed us to see the whole thing in terrible, destructive detail.

  “Why would she do this?” Ava asked.

  “She is trying to set us up again!” Derek yelled!

  “I fear you are right.” Sam agreed. “Ava, have the files made it to Earth?”

  “Not yet,” she replied.

  “Well get them down there now!” We all yelled in unison.

  Ava tapped on the screen and out of the window a dozen aircraft took off and flew towards Earth to complete their mission.

  “I just hope this works!” Ava said.

  “It has to. Lara will blame us for that attack, and we need people to know we are innocent.”

  Chapter 34

  I was sitting in the replicator office, distancing myself from crew. One way or another I felt responsible for the destruction, if it wasn’t for me and my actions, a hundred thousand people would still be alive. After witnessing the large asteroid take out most of Paris no-one felt like working. We all dispersed around the base and waited for the inevitable press release from Lara to arrive.

  “You are a hard person to find!” Ava said as she popped her head around the door.

  “Thank you?” I replied.

  “I can’t believe we still haven’t built proper communications around here. It is so hard to find people.” Ava continued as she walked into the room, throwing a radio into my lap.

  “I know, I thought some tech genius would have created a tracking system using all these cameras we have, but obviously that person is too lazy!” I replied, gesturing to her.

  “Me! You’re running the show around here!” She argued. “I was wondering if you wanted anything to eat, you still owe me that meal. I am going up to the kitchen in the ship, I don’t think Sam has completely raided it yet.”


  “Possibly.” I answered. Now the roles had reverse, Ava was worried about my health and she was trying to get me to eat something.

  I thought about it and agreed, food would put me in a better mood and spending time with Ava always cheered me up. I tapped the screen which displayed a countdown timer. It read ten minutes and fifty-three seconds.

  “What you got cooking in here?” Ava asked, looking at the screen.

  “Just something I have been tinkering with for a while. I developed the schematic a long time ago and it was still in the computer’s memory from my VisionTech days. I have refined it a bit and it’s nearly done.” I said, looking at the screen and watching the numbers count down.

  “No problem, I’ll head up to the kitchen and get started, come and find me when you’re done. I am intrigued to know what you’ve made.” Ava said as she jumped out of the door and away down the steel corridor.

  The moment she left my screen flickered and a news report interrupted my countdown.

  Lara appeared on my screen, outside the facility once again. The wreckage of the tree and the large hole in the ground was obvious in the background.

  “Once again, these terrorists think that they can do what they want. This is a dark day and I urge people not to let the events in Paris go unpunished.” Lara was spinning her stories again, but we had video evidence that the device controlling the asteroid had come from Earth. Ava had worked her magic and traced the machine back to the facility in England. Now we had proof.

  I turned the broadcast off. I had heard it all before, she was going to blame us and ask for more powers to chase us down. We needed to wait and hope that the news companies did their jobs correctly, finding the files we sent them and give a balanced report.

  This was a long shot, as VisionTech had huge influence in the media, owning several of the biggest companies. My hopes were placed on someone, somewhere, with enough influence to fight for us.

  The clanking of large footsteps came from down the corridor. The sound of a heavy man walking towards me. It must be Hank.