by Sandi Gamble
Nothing seemed to work. The fundamentals of nature were out of balance. The constant manipulation and interference had taken its toll. Spraying crops. Antibiotics in livestock. Genetic manipulation of seeds. For a short time, the correctives brought results – and great wealth and power. But their successes diminished.
Pollution. Overcrowding. Climate change. It was only a matter of time before the breaking point was reached and a terrible implosion occurred.
There was only one hope – to purge the population.
The elite and the powerful had created the problem, and now they would have to address it. And, as always, if their “solution” were effective, they would have to shoulder the least consequence.
There was, by this time, no choice. The apocalypse was on their doorstep. They had to act, and it was only because the necessity could no longer be ignored, that action was finally taken.
The world governments met and, after a period of emotional hand-wringing and finger pointing, the ominous reality set it. They were well past the point of blame. They had to act if they were to salvage any shred of humanity.
With this certainty weighing on them, they began to plan. The strategy they hatched was beyond radical, but there could be no more self-delusion, only radical action had any hope of success. In collaboration with one another, the governments agreed to sterilize certain groups of men and women by administering powerful chemicals directly to the water system.
That decision was the difficult one. The easier decision was who would be sterilized. This decision did not require debate or vote. The elite and powerful in government and world economies knew who would carry the heavy weight of their centuries and centuries of arrogance – the same people who had always borne the weight of their crass desires. It was understood that the sterilization campaign would be directed at the middle and lower classes of each country and society.
Children were dosed with powerful chemicals designed to cause them to succumb to a “sleeping sickness” that brought about a relatively painless death in a short period of time. The governments prided themselves on this benign and considerate path. They even went so far as to make sure the medicines were delivered in a liquid dose that had a very attractive “cherry flavor”.
The strategy was to make these medicines available to every parent and to market it for low-grade fevers and any kind of cold symptom. Seeing as colds and other viruses were rampant at the time, parents readily dosed their children with the delightful new medicine. By the time the general population made the connection between the medicine and the deaths of children, it was too late.
Of course, the powerful and elite knew that they could not kill off all the middle and lower classes. Who would serve in their bureaucracies? Who would take care of their children? So, while it was clear to the governments who would be purged, there was a great deal of intercession for some people to be spared. Selected families who were able to support the government’s plan – based on their purchase of health insurance on the open market – were often allowed to pay their way and be spared. These people were put on notice not to drink or cook with untreated water supplies.
The world governments worked hard and fast to build sustainable environments underground where the elite and Government officials could remain safe, along with workers to ensure secrecy, until the earth could purge the population and right itself. They called these underground bunkers ARCs, Autonomous Rescue Caverns. Scientists and medical researchers were each given a device to carry, which effectively put them on 24 hours’ notice of the ARC’s closure.
Of course, the elite and powerful had no intention of taking in the workers, only those soldiers they could trust to guard them. They simply were operating with all practical contingencies. They knew that even though they were in lock down, they would still need to seek answers as to how to clean up the world when the locks opened allowing them access to the outside world.
They built bunkers, many stories deep. Each country was responsible for their own bunkers, their design and capacity. The only commonality was with technology that allowed them to communicate and, in the event of a global catastrophe, to conjoin. Not that any of the people involved in the design of the bunkers had any illusion about taking anyone else in. Even in these circumstances, even with the apocalypse upon them, they were plotting and strategizing for their “best interests” never understanding or appreciating still that the “best interest” of each was the best interest of all.
Even at the end of history as they knew it, they were still bowing at the altar of power and money.
In order to guarantee a pliant workforce, from the middle of 2020, the government and elite began to kidnap young children. After careful screening, they determined who would become part of the servitude caste in the bunkers. Although they anticipated this aspect of the plan to face the greatest resistance, it was actually one of the easiest to implement.
Their plan was ingenious in its simplicity and cruelty. Under the guise of an outbreak of a perilous worldwide pandemic, normal blood tests were conducted, and children with specific markers showing that they had a resistance to the vaccinated termination serum were kidnapped. But not “really” kidnapped. The governments drafted a contract and, by telling parents that their children were being taken to designated “sanitariums” to keep them safe from the pandemic, parents gladly “signed over” their children, convinced that the “good” government was acting in their and their children’s best interests.
In the ARCs, the children were educated in the tasks that would occupy their lives while they lived in the bunkers far below the surface of the world they had once known. They were taught to care for and nurture hydroponic plants and vegetables, essentially creating a new food source. They were taught to monitor and manage the engineering tasks associated with the complex nature of underground life, from the vast air devices and exhaust ductwork. They were taught how to maintain the underground water supply perfectly. Water was sterile so that it was safe for the elite to drink, cook with and bathe in.
Sanitation was an underappreciated but essential part of life under the ground. These children were responsible for the various tasks involved in keeping the bunkers safe and sanitary, safer and more sanitary than the gated communities that the elite had lived in above ground and certainly more safe and sanitary than anyplace they or their families had ever lived.
In addition to these essential tasks, the children were bred and trained for the more mundane tasks of life under the ground. Such as, cleaning the living spaces of the elite, caring for the children, cooking their meals and making their beds. Some of the brighter children were turned into a teaching force for the children of the elite.
In addition to the children, the ARCs were veritable arks for life as it once existed on the surface of the earth. The remaining species of animals, primarily those bred for food and work, were taken into the ARC. These continued to be bred as a necessary food source for the elite underground, providing protein and variation in their meals. Others were kept on specialized farms where they were allowed to reproduce to sustainable levels to ensure the continuation of the breed after the purge.
Those animals that either had been extinct on the surface or that took up too much space in the ARC “unnecessarily” were preserved in other ways. DNA samples of less valued animals and species were also stored for likely future use.
From my own perspective, it was sad that the domestic cat was not included in any of these salvation plans, but the common house dog was.
Plant species were preserved, and major hydroponic systems were operated by large solar farms on the surface which the government had built as a renewable energy source and a promise to the people that they would do their best to reverse the warming of the planet.
Of course, that “promise” like all the others made by the governments to the people was nothing more than a carefully crafted lie.
The truth was that the “promise” they made was really an excuse to cre
ate an underground food supply for themselves when they went underground. Even though their scientists – who still believed that they would be part of the underground society – did not think it was the most efficient or effective plan but they had to come up with some way to ensure a continuing food source in the bunker. It was the only idea that they could implement with the short notice they had.
Until underground cisterns could be created and safely fed, water was delivered to the ARC via underground reservoirs where the water was fresh and free from contamination. These water supplies were filtered naturally by nature. However, no chance was taken, so the ARC was fitted with massive reverse osmosis machinery to ensure that even the naturally filtered water was further filtered and safe.
They tried to think of everything, every possibility, every contingency, every threat and every benefit. When the call finally went out in 2025, only the chosen – the elite, the powerful, the connected and the necessary – knew to respond and arrived in time to be underground for the ARC’s lockdown. All superfluous workers were sent to the surface on errands that would see them return too late for inclusion in the project.
Each 25-tonne blast door was secured by twelve, eight-foot titanium metal rods which embedded themselves into the blast walls at least a foot on either side; each was secured on a timer for 500 years.
Once the timer had been set, it could not be stopped or reversed.
* * *
We are now generations removed from those who survived and thrived in these underground bunkers. While we are anything but proud of the behavior of our forebears, both in causing the damage to the earth and environment and in the way that they allowed millions upon millions of people to die so that they could carry on, we also understand that when the apocalypse arrived there really was no other choice.
Many generations of people had a hand in the destruction of the surface. Only a few would have a hand in the continuation of humanity. For that, we are all eternally grateful. Of the billions of human population, less than one billion humans were saved in the ARCs worldwide.
When the generations finally left the ARCs five hundred years later, five hundred years after their ancestors saved themselves from destruction, the world they encountered was far different from the one that their ancestors left.
When they walked out from the bunkers in 2525, much had changed but, miraculously, much was restored. The advances made in the sciences while they were in lockdown helped rectify and reverse a great deal of the pre-purge damage, certainly much more quickly and effectively than anyone would have ever dreamed possible when they entered the bunkers in 2025.
And here I am, in the year 3014. There is still a very long way to go to fully restore everything that was lost. In many ways, we have evolved as a race, but we still have work to do. While we are much more committed to the success of our communal well-being, the same DNA that dictated the greed and arrogance lies deep within our beings.
We are a very complicated and fragile race. We are capable of so many good things, but we must also remain fully aware that we are capable of destroying ourselves again if we ever stop working together.
Sometimes to build a better world, you have to tear the old one down.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ADVANCED COMBAT; OCCUPATIONAL TEST
In the relatively rigid castes and strata of our larger community, it was rare – no, nearly unheard of – for people to cross over from one area to another. Once a career and life path had been set, the roadmap of one’s life was certain. What was true for the individual was true of the entire family line. As the parents went, so too the children. People wed others in the same caste, raising their children with the same opportunities and expectations.
As much as what our aptitude tests showed, our histories defined how we would move forward toward the future.
Jace was one of the “one in a million” who crossed over. His future in science was a profound shift from his parents’ background and history. There is not, nor was not, a particular judgment placed on our castes. Every person had a role to play in the sustainability and betterment of our community. Every person knew that and embraced their role and contribution.
Jace’s parents were not scientists, as would be expected of a young man being trained and groomed for a future in science. They were firmly established in the manufacturing sector of our community. The skill set that had been honed and bred into his family over several generations was particular to manufacturing. Few of those skills were transferable. Little of the lore and knowledge was either. For Jace to become a scientist was tantamount to becoming a “blank slate” and rewriting not only his history but that of any children he may have in the future.
No, it was more elemental than becoming a blank slate. It was as if Jace recreated in the course of his few years the genetic and training profile that his family had passed along for generations. It was when I paused to give the accomplishment thought, I found it beyond astounding. I, of course, took who Jace was for granted. Why wouldn’t I? What was singular about him was singular about me as well. As a result, he was “normal”. But, of course, he was no more normal than I was.
Even so, my accomplishments did not call into question the fundamental, existential assumptions of our community. Jace, in effect, became a new person.
Despite the inherent pressure resulting from what he’d done, Jace was customarily nonplussed by what he did, what he was. After all, he reasoned, what else could he be? What else could he do?
“Things are what they need to be,” he sighed with a shrug the only time we touched on the subject. Then he looked me straight in the eye. “It’s not as if I made a decision to be who I am. I am, who I am. Just as you are, who you are.
“The only thing that gives me pause; the only thing for which I am consciously grateful for is that you and I are both on this adventure together. Everything else is… well, what it is.”
Again, even though there were clearly “elites” in our community, there was no value judgment placed on the various sectors of the community. Like a body, our community depended on every facet to function well. Each facet of the community displayed real genius and leadership. In this regard, manufacturing was not in any way “inferior” to science. In fact, many important discoveries were originated in the manufacturing sector. Many “theoretical” insights would have been meaningless if not for the manufacturing sector discovering how to turn the theoretical into the practical.
So, while it has always been possible to cross sectors – if one’s tests were compelling and the senior advisors felt strongly about it – it was exceedingly rare. No one was aware of anyone else doing so for two or three generations before Jace.
Possible. Not probable.
Of course, I grew up in the science sector. My genetic background and history was a powerful determinant as to the direction I’d follow. The greatest uncertainty had to do with where in the science sector? Wherever I was to end up, my parents had started early to maximize my gifts, placing me in a study center long before my peers engaged in formal study.
I was enrolled at the tender age of twelve. I was a gangling tomboy of a creature. Built like a boy and as fast and strong as any, I more than held my own during our first full year of “study”.
Despite the many things we were learning with Ann, that first year was dedicated less to study than it was to preparing us physically for a world none of us wanted, but all of us had to be prepared to confront – a world at war. If at any point that should happen.
“I would emphasize,” Mr. Frist, our instructor said, addressing us as we sat in a large amphitheater, awaiting the beginning of the next phase of our lives. Before the small, wiry man had taken his place before us, we were a curious gathering of nerves in our matching gym shorts and tee shirts. We glanced sidelong at one another. Some of us, of course, knew one another from our neighborhoods but most of us were strangers.
Who was that one over there? Was she stronger than I? Smarter? And hi
m, he looks so intense and determined!
There were many moments that I wanted nothing more than to be back at home, under my mother’s gentle tutelage. I tapped my foot nervously, awaiting the “beginning.”
“Don’t be nervous,” came a voice.
“I’m not nervous,” I whispered defensively, turning around to look directly at Jace’s smiling face. “I’m not,” I insisted. And I wasn’t. At least, not anymore. Seeing his smiling face calmed me quite a lot.
And then Mr. Frist took his place before us.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he greeted us in a strong but not unkind voice, “we will be spending a great deal of time together.”
There was a nervous buzz that seemed to go through all of us like an electric current. Mr. Frist allowed it to run its course. Unlike the military posture of the Headmaster, he was comfortable allowing young people to be young people… within reason.
“Okay… now our task is to prepare for the very unlikely and unthinkable,” he went on. “We are going to prepare ourselves physically for the possibility of war.”
Whatever electricity remained coursing through us died with those words.
“You two,” he said, pointing to two boys. “Come here.”
Nervously, two boys I didn’t know cautiously approached Mr. Frist. He handed each a firm, padded object.
“Now, I am going to step back, and you are going to defend yourselves against one another with these,” he said. Then he faced everyone else. “The object is to be the last one standing.” He turned back to the boys. “Ready? Okay, go!”
