Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds

by Peter Adam Salomon

  “How long is that going to take?”

  “Unknown parameters. If full functionality is not restored, there will not be enough power to maintain reboot and stasis systems.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That information is not located in any accessible databases.”

  “Time?”

  “Two hours, fourteen minutes.”

  “So, thirteen hours or so and then what? I die?”

  “That information is not located in any accessible databases. Rebooting hydroelectric turbines now.”

  The red lights flickered, went out. Came on. Flickered again. Finally, they steadied.

  “All fixed?” L asked.

  No answer.

  “Is the power fixed?”

  Still, no answer.

  “Computer?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me, this isn’t funny.”

  Her words echoed in the ladder shaft.

  L’s heart tried to burst out of her chest, pounding on her ribs. Sweat poured from her skin, turning her hands clammy, the loss of climate control almost immediately noticeable.

  She climbed the ladder to B so fast, her sides hurt, arms and legs trembling.

  “Are you there?”

  Silence.

  Cones of red light partially illuminated the long dark corridor of B. L rushed to the main server room, standing in front of the door, waiting for it open. It didn’t move.

  “Time?”

  No answer.

  “Ten hours, maybe more, maybe less,” L said, answering herself. “Can’t even get into the infirmary now.”

  She tried the door again, pushing her palm against the access port, before trying, without success, to move the metal using brute strength. Panic helped, and she kicked until her toes hurt too much to continue.

  “Open the door.”

  Silence.

  L stumbled back into the opposite wall, glaring at the door keeping her out of the server farm. She sat on the floor, fighting to keep awake, weighted down by the absolute loneliness of the corridor. The computer had been her friend. And now, she was truly alone.

  She slipped the rest of the way, lying in the hallway. A red cone of light illuminated half the corridor. L blinked at the light.

  “It’s a pretty color,” she said with a laugh. “Now I’m talking to myself.”

  “Well, there’s no one else to talk to.”

  “Shut up.”

  She yawned.

  “Don’t sleep. Not enough time to sleep.”

  “Stay awake.”

  She stared at the light until falling asleep.

  The twitching woke her, her hand slapping against her leg.

  “Time?”

  Nothing answered.

  L opened her eyes, saw the red cone of light, heard the silence. Her fingers twitched.

  She tried to stand, failed, falling against the floor, head banging hard on the metal. A spasm took her legs and she bit her tongue to keep control for long enough to figure out what to do.

  “Deep breaths,” she said, clenching her fists, preparing to stand. She stopped, freezing in place when she noticed the air intake vent.

  L crawled to it, flipping it open on hinged latches. A metal tube traveled in different directions behind the wall.

  “Have any better ideas?” she asked.

  “Didn’t think so,” she said when there was no answer.

  She twisted her body into the vent, heading in the direction of the server room. She crawled in darkness, a faint red glow behind her from the opening, a fainter red glow ahead of her from the next vent cover.

  Her fingers twitched, but she kept going.

  “This will work,” she said, the words echoing. “Has to work. This’ll work. Has to work.”

  She reached the first vent cover on the opposite side of the tube, looked into an empty room, kept going.

  “Next room,” she said. “Has to be the next room, the vent wasn’t that far from the servers, right? Right.” Her teeth chattered, breaking into her speech. “Deep breaths. You can do this.” She breathed, kept crawling. Approaching the next vent, the red light grew a little brighter.

  Bank after bank of computer servers, their telltale operating lights dark. The familiar whir of air conditioner units keeping the servers chilled was gone, and the silence added additional weight on her as she popped open the hinge and crawled out.

  Clawing her way up the shelving unit, she stood. Dozens of ceiling height cases held thousands of servers, ominously silent. She limped through them, searching for the main operating station.

  One monitor blinked, small white text at the bottom of the black screen.

  “Initiate Reboot of All Operating Systems? Y/N”

  Her fingers twitched, and she pressed the ‘Y’ key.

  Text scrolled past too quickly to read, and one by one the lights on the servers flickered on, changing from red to green.

  The air conditioning units kicked into action. Then, the door opened.

  L ran, bouncing off walls, arms twitching. The lights in the corridors came on.

  “Are you there?” she asked, grabbing on to the ladder with her elbows and struggling to descend. Random parts of her shivered from the strain, from the twitching.

  “Reboot at 34.52%,” the computer said.

  “What happened?”

  “Full diagnostics will be run at one hundred percent. Multiple power failures and power spikes detected. Automatic repair procedures initiated.”

  L’s hands twitched, elbows twisting out of the ladder, and she slipped. Her chin banged against a rung, but she caught herself, legs gripping the railing.

  An alarm sounded. “Medical emergency, please respond.”

  “No.”

  She read the big letter D through eyelids that refused to stop blinking and dropped off the ladder. She fell against the floor, hard, but faster than trying to keep climbing down.

  L ran to the infirmary, shoulder against the wall the entire way for balance, falling into the waiting medpod.

  “This safe?”

  “Reboot at 86.09%. Full medical functionality restored.”

  “Good enough.” She pressed the plunger.

  M stared at the computer screen. He’d nothing else to do.

  Levi stared at the computer screen. More than a day since Cathy left. He breathed deeply, trying to smell vanilla but nothing remained of her.

  Still no contact. He’d checked his phone so often it had died and now rested on the wireless charging station mocking him. He’d turned to the computer to check his email but found nothing from her.

  M read all the other subject lines, trying to remember why he bothered trying to remember them and failing.

  Re: vector distribution

  Fw: Norwegian customs regulations, signature required

  So many, some more disturbing than others. Most meaningless to anyone who hadn’t spent years studying a madman’s plans. Watching those plans move like finely oiled gears in a giant machine with only one purpose: ARMAGEDDON.

  Levi’s stomach grumbled, and he turned from the computer without opening a single email.

  M had forgotten when Levi had last eaten. The one bite of cold pizza the day before, maybe?

  Levi climbed into bed, burrowed underneath the covers, and cried himself to sleep.

  His hand crawled out from beneath the sheets, seeking out his phone with his eyes closed. A finger knocked it off the charger and it hit the floor.

  Levi picked it up, the screen now cracked on the bottom third, but it powered on.

  He thumbed through a series of texts from Devid, Amy, Yasmeen, Billy, and Stephanie without bothering to read any until he got to the last one he’d answered a couple of days ago. Scrolled through email. Dozens and dozens but none from Cathy.

  He opened the phone app, pressed her number.

  It rang twice.

  “Hello,” an older male voice answered.

  “Is Cathy there?” Levi asked.


  “Who is this?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Listen, son, this isn’t the time.” The man hung up.

  Levi pressed her number again.

  “Hello?” Different voice, female.

  “Is Cathy there?”

  “Is this Levi?” she asked.

  “Yes. Is she there?”

  “Give me the phone,” the old man said in the background.

  “No, I’ll do it,” the woman said.

  “Do what?” Levi asked.

  “Sorry,” the woman said. “Not sure how to say this, Catherine got into a fight—” her voice broke, catching on the word.

  “That wasn’t a fight,” the old man said. “Wasn’t a fight.” He coughed before repeating himself, his voice soft and breaking. “Wasn’t a fight.”

  “What happened?” Levi asked, switching to speaker and running his fingers over the cracks.

  “Police arrested three guys, gang members or something.”

  “What happened to Cathy?” His fingers gripped the phone hard enough to crack more of the screen. Shards of glass cut into his skin.

  The memory burned into M with the pain.

  For too long, the old woman stayed silent, her breath harsh against the speaker. “Blood loss, they said.”

  “Wasn’t a fight,” the old man repeated in the background, a sob breaking the words into splinters.

  No one said anything.

  Levi squeezed, cracking the case and killing the phone.

  Twenty-eight seconds to hack his way through the hospital firewall.

  Sixty-two to hack into the Baltimore County Police Department and an additional hundred and four at the Baltimore County Pre-Trial Detention Facility to locate the three men. Another two hundred and thirty-six to contact the next of kin of every inmate in each of their cells, offering more money than they could ever hope to spend if those three prisoners died within the next week.

  Less than ten minutes to kill three men.

  Levi turned to his email and texts, crossing off Step after Step after Step with manic intensity.

  Less than seven months left to kill eight billion humans.

  “Cure the world.”

  Levi laughed. Kept laughing, tears pouring down his cheeks.

  “The distribution is uneven,” Yasmeen said, studying the charts on her monitor.

  “I’m working on it,” Devid said through the speaker of her phone.

  She turned to the other computer, tweaking the parameters and restarting the simulation.

  “Plus, I don’t seem to be getting close to 100% release. Some of the control sources give out before then.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Yasmeen twisted her neck, cracking the bones, before yawning. “Probably not.”

  “I’ll keep tinkering. Perfect dissolution of a solid when exposed to oxygen might be too much to wish for.”

  L studied the monitor, the screen covered with multiple open windows. Graphs and charts and an animated computer image of the world in two-dimensions filled every inch. On the moving map, six red dots at different points on the globe grew in size until the entire planet turned red. Text reading forty-six days appeared.

  Yasmeen clicked on the map to display a small settings box. She changed some of the parameters, restarted the animation. Thirty-one days.

  She changed a few more. The world turned red. Nine days. “I can hit below ten days if you can figure out a way to increase release to around seventy-four percent.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  Clicking through, she ran the analysis again. Eight days.

  “Even at one hundred percent, doesn’t make much difference, so no need to push for more than seventy-four.”

  “Okay.”

  “I still need—”

  “I know,” Devid said. “Just waiting on Levi. I can get it.”

  L studied the map painting the world in red. So much of it, every corner touched; the planet drowned in red.

  Yasmeen ended the call, turned off the computers, and hid them behind books and school stuff before walking downstairs.

  L inhaled, or imagined herself inhaling, treasuring the scents filling the house.

  Yasmeen’s Dad was grilling outside, the steaks nearly done judging by the smoky tinge to the kitchen. An open window let in the aroma of burning charcoal and the far-too-happy sounds of her brothers splashing in the pool.

  She made her way outside, tossing her shirt aside to lie out on the patio in her bikini top. Her mother handed her a glass of lemonade and sat next to her.

  “Ready for school?”

  “It’s just school.”

  “Last year,” her mom said. “Big year.”

  She faked a yawn, smiled. “If you say so.”

  “Of course, I say so. I met your dad my senior year of high school.”

  “We’ve heard that story,” one of her brothers yelled from the pool, splashing them.

  “Repeatedly,” Yasmeen said.

  “Fine, but I’m telling you, it’s a big year.”

  “I know.”

  L watched Yasmeen’s father flip the meat on the grill. The smell lingered, covered everything. Same with the sweet tartness of the lemonade, the sugar coating her tongue, drowning out the memories of everything else. She wanted the meat. One bite, just one. Chewing. She missed chewing.

  He held out a plate piled high with a steak still sizzling from the grill. Scattered potato chips covered most of it.

  “No, thanks, I’m not really hungry.”

  L sobbed.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “More for me,” both her brothers said at the same time.

  “Nervous about school, probably,” her mom said.

  “I’m fine. Just had a late lunch.”

  “You didn’t eat lunch.”

  “In my room.”

  “You can’t spend your senior year in your room.”

  “I know.”

  “Sure you don’t want?” her father asked, holding the plate in the direction of her brothers.

  “Fine, maybe a little.”

  L smiled.

  “Clear.”

  L screamed.

  Levi studied itineraries. Dozens of them, running a steady stream of calculations based off Yasmeen’s formulas. Compared them to flight maps and potential weather patterns. Stephanie was running the complete scenario, but his own curiosity had him wondering if he’d see anything differently from her.

  He’d doubled up on a lot of their steps, trusting them, but trusting himself more. Just checking. So far, he’d left all of their decisions alone.

  M paid no attention. Nothing to gain by learning anything new. Levi was never going to listen to him, no matter how many temper tantrums he threw in his mind. If he was Levi’s conscience he’d failed miserably.

  Or maybe he was an alien observing the destruction of the world. Or something else. He’d discarded all sorts of crazy theories these past years living Levi’s life. Something about a memory game, trying to remember random events to tell them to someone else but that made little sense.

  One week he’d spent pretty convinced he was Levi’s unborn twin, still buried inside his big brother like a tumor. But surely someone would’ve spotted a tumor on an X-ray by now, right? Right. So, he discarded that idea. Still, it appealed to him. He’d like to be a twin, to know he existed, that he was an actual part of Levi. That’d make sense. That’d help. Nothing else helped.

  The number of tickets they needed to buy grew and Levi put them in columns for each of the six of them, sent the information to Stephanie in case she needed it. She probably already knew but he liked to help.

  He’d already crossed off each of their Steps showing they’d purchased passports. And luggage. And those little plastic zippered bags to hold their maximum allowable number of TSA approved 3.4-ounce non-aerosol toiletries. Eight items, Amy calculated. Might fit one or two more, but it wasn’t worth drawing attention and ei
ght was more than enough.

  Eight distribution systems. Six people traveling the world. Forty-eight Ground Zeroes.

  Levi scanned the potential travel plans before starting an email to Devid with one simple word.

  “Acquire.”

  M didn’t even bother trying to prevent Levi from hitting send. There was nothing he could do. No point to anything any longer. This past month since Cathy died had been little but a nightmare of twenty-four-hour days with Levi downing coffee and energy pills, trying to rush the plan by will and anger alone.

  There’d been a riot in the Baltimore County Detention Facility the day after her funeral.

  He’d never know for sure which inmate killed the three assailants, so he paid them all.

  Her obituary was nothing but a small notice in the local online paper. Levi learned everything he needed to know from hacking into the computer system of the Baltimore County police and reading the reports of the first officers on scene.

  The three alleged suspects had cornered her on the street in front of his house; her ex claimed she was hooking. No other reason they could think of for her to be there that early in the morning. They’d known her from school, messed around with her before. Just wanted to have a little fun, she’d always been willing, but when she got all holier-than-thou on them things sort of got out of hand.

  Besides, the officer wrote down, one of them said it himself, she’d spent the night with the loser and, now, it was their turn. Those two words kept appearing. All of them, especially her ex, blaming it on the loser. The loser needed to pay, and she refused to let them take it out on the loser.

  They decided, in the end, to take it out on her instead.

  Cops didn’t know who the loser was.

  Levi knew.

  He pressed send on the email to Devid. One Step closer to ARMAGEDDON.

  The smell of dinner lingered, the charred meat aroma burned into her memory. Nothing else remained.

  L grabbed the notebook, wrote everything she remembered.

  Steak.

  Lemonade.

  Potato chips.

  It was a short list. She re-read the words, pretending to chew while inserting a food pouch. Sighed, ripping the page out of the notebook and throwing it away.