Finding Their Path (Down The Path Book 3)

by Travis Mohrman

  “That’s for sure,” Kate said. “I think walking around a little sounds like a great idea. I still don’t understand what this place is exactly,” she said while looking around at all the exposed stone.

  Laurel shrugged and said, “Well, neither do I, really. I have been here for six months working on an emerging virus, and the best I can tell is that it’s just people working on their own research.”

  “What about the military?” Kate remembered when she took the job she was told that it was a military installation, although now that she was here, it really didn’t look like one.

  “They’re here, but not very many of them, maybe a dozen or so, and except for the director they cycle out every four months. Everyone else is either in research or support staff.” Laurel paused as she watched an eagle fly over the runway, “Do you like the ‘back porch’?”

  “What do you mean?” said Kate, looking towards the lone door for some sort of a porch.

  “This is the back of the facility; one of the mechanics started calling it the back porch and it kind of stuck. It’s pretty neat back here, really. They say this whole landing strip is modeled after an aircraft carrier. I’ve been below and seen all the vehicles and stuff, I’ll show you.”

  This piqued Kate’s interest even more. She had never been on an aircraft carrier, but looking out at it, the runway did look much shorter than the ones at the airport. “How long are you here for, Laurel?”

  “I work for the National Science Foundation, so I will be here until I get really sick of it. I like it much better than the busy city, and the accommodations inside the building are unbelievable. It’s nice because no one here rushes anyone else. We’re left to do our own work on our time. Sometimes I think they just want this place staffed more than anything. As long as people are here using this place it was wise to have built it, on paper anyway.”

  This was the same impression that Kate had gotten in her meetings about this facility. As she was learning about the history of this place during her interviews for the job, it seemed the seed vault was built to make the Americans feel good that they had one of their own since the rest of them were all in other countries. And since the government never passes up a chance to overbuild the hell out of something, they created much more than a seed vault. Now that it was built, they had to keep people here or it was all a waste.

  “Ready to go inside?” Laurel asked.

  Lost in her thoughts, Kate hadn’t noticed that they had wandered over towards the single lonely door. She looked down at the corner just above the soil level and saw, engraved into the cement, the numbers 2050. “I remember when they first opened this place. It was all over the news.” she said. “I never thought I would get a chance to walk inside it.”

  “Yeah, I thought the same thing. The facility turned ten years old a couple of months ago, and we had a little party out here on the strip. It was fun!” she smiled.

  Kate smiled as well, imagining the shenanigans that must have gone down when a bunch of scientists and military folks that are cooped up in the middle of nowhere decide to throw a party.

  Laurel turned back to Kate and said, “So, the whole building is automated, and it responds to voice commands. Just walk a little closer to the door…”

  Kate was very familiar with AI systems; they were in practically every house and apartment building. She took a step forward and the door snapped open to reveal a long gray hallway. “Yup, looks like a military installation to me,” thought Kate.

  In an incredibly human sounding voice, the computer’s words filled the air around them. “Hello Dr. Acer, and welcome. My name is Shunka, but you can also call me Computer.”

  “Wow,” said Kate. “The voice sounds just like a real woman.” Looking back to Laurel, she said, “Where did they come up with the name Shunka?”

  Laurel laughed to herself a little. “I asked the same question. Don’t ask me though, ask her. All the little black boxes you see around on the walls are tiny monitoring devices. Shunka can tell when you are asking her a question, or asking someone else. She can do a ton more than that too, but I’ll explain as we go.”

  “Okay then.” Looking straight into one of the boxes and speaking very slowly and deliberately, Kate said, “Shunka, can you explain your name?” She heard Laurel giggle a little behind her as she spoke.

  “Of course Doctor, but first you should know that I can follow your regular patterns of speech perfectly well, better than other humans, actually. There is no need to make accommodations on my behalf.”

  Kate blushed slightly as she instantly figured out what Laurel had been laughing at.

  Laurel placed her hand on Kate’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, I hear every single person who meets her does the exact same thing.”

  “Indeed they do.” the computer responded. “But as for the story of my name, it is a local myth that a monster wolf/hyena type creature roamed these hills over 250 years ago. Some of the early staff thought it was amusing to name me after this creature. I don’t think they trusted me very much.”

  Looking over to Laurel, Kate said with wide eyes, “The AI actually sounds a little upset about that. It’s amazing! An empathetic computer is pretty remarkable.”

  “That’s just the beginning, come on, let me show you some more cool stuff.” Laurel dashed inside the hallway with her long white lab coat fluttering behind her.

  Kate stepped inside the hallway as well, excited to see what this mysterious place might be hiding.

  3

  General Bahn headed for the video conference room while his assistant chirped away in his ear. He rarely listened to the other man, wasn’t even entirely certain why he was still around. All the general needed was a reminder of meeting times, a menial task that his phone could easily accomplish.

  He hated these weekly meetings with the other directors. They were always the same people, doing the same thing. Waiting. They were waiting for the shit to hit the fan, so to speak. Until that happened, all the different directors from all the different countries just talked about all the ways things might go down. No one had a clue what was really going to happen, and they were all fairly isolated in their vaults all over the world. The general had more access to information than most of the other directors, it seemed.

  Even though the conspiracy theorists, and most of his own staff, didn’t believe it, the seeds vaults really were important storage locations for much of the world’s genetic material, both plant and animal. History had shown that it was always a good idea to have backups, as well as backups of the backups. Hell, just a few decades ago they had nearly lost the standard banana because a soil fungus attacked it. “The banana, for Christ’s sake”, thought the general.

  With the unprecedented warming changing the entire face of the planet, the storage sites were more important than ever. Perhaps they could no longer grow spinach in California, but they had trillions of seeds, and were working to make the plant tolerant to hotter temperatures. They would succeed. The time for arguing over GMO crops was long past. It wasn’t a choice anymore; they needed them simply to survive. Some of them did seem to increase cancer risk, but starvation increased your probability of death even more.

  His assistant opened the doors to the video conference room for him, then shut and locked them, leaving him alone in the room. The general took a seat in the large comfy chair and waited.

  “Good afternoon, sir. The other directors are already in progress, would you like me to uplink you now?”

  “If not, why the hell would I have even come here?” the general scowled. Suddenly, the vid screen came alive with a picture of a large round table with nine other chairs. Each one was occupied by a virtual facsimile of a director of another facility halfway around the world.

  After the general said his generic hellos to the others, he settled comfortably in the chair to listen to Director Fallo speak. Ten facilities existed all around the world, but the main one was central Europe, and Fallo was in charge in of it. Wh
ile every facility was able to control the systems in every other facility, in case of emergency, the European location was still the seat of power. This didn’t bother the general very much. He knew as soon as trouble came around they would all be looking to the Americans to take command, and then blaming them when things didn’t go well. The whole seat of power issue was mostly total garbage. The Europeans had a nice submarine, though.

  Fallo droned on and on about the state of energy sources around the planet, expected insect pests of crops and livestock with the expanding heat and flooding predictions. He may as well have been pulling all this out of a hat and the general knew it. All the computer models up until this very instant had been drastically wrong. Turns out, global climate has a few more variables affecting it than had originally been taken into consideration.

  These meetings mostly just served as a means to get all the vaults on the same level, in terms of information. With the world in a now constant state of flux, the sharing of information had become vital to all the developed nations. Petty secrets had to be pushed aside in today’s world. Some secrets were more than petty, however.

  The general perked up as Fallo began speaking of nuclear threats. “What say the Americans regarding the nuclear threat, General?” Fallo asked.

  The general’s piercing black eyes never wavered from the camera as he responded. “We are confident that nuclear ordinance will be launched soon. The rebel states are in such disarray that the terrorists have effectively taken over numerous countries, and now control their ballistic capabilities.”

  It wasn’t something the general liked to admit, but it was true. Pakistan, India, Iraq, even Unified Korea; they were all controlled by terrorist states now. As the heat and droughts increased, the less developed and poor nations had quickly fallen to the rogue groups with their promises of more food and water for all the people. The superpowers all knew that these states now planned on taking advantage of the global chaos to ruin the governments that they felt had wronged them.

  The general continued his assessment. “We can’t bomb all of those nations’ nuclear sites; the collateral damage would be immense. Even if we did, they certainly have many we don’t know about, and many that are mobile.” The general paused, his steely gaze unflinching. “No, in this instance, we need to rely on our missile shields to do what they were designed to do.” He could have said more, much more, but some things were still secret. Ultra top secret level defense information was not considered petty, and therefore, not shared with the other directors.

  Fallo nodded, as did the other directors. The general still didn’t understand why they always wanted to talk about the nuclear threats. They couldn’t do anything about them from the seed vaults. Sometimes he wondered if some of the other facilities were getting all of their global information from him. He silently thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t in Europe, or any other country, while this situation was playing out. They had the best missile defense system in the world in America, and unlike every other country, theirs had been tested.

  He remembered the day well, 25 years ago, when the North Koreans had launched five nuclear tipped missiles at America’s largest cities. Those bombs were vaporized thousands of miles from the shores of their targets. It was an amazing success. Then the real work began. Within months, North Korea no longer existed. The United Nations had set up a Unified Korea that had been stable for nearly two decades. Once the droughts and subsequent famine came in, all of their hard work blew away in the dry and dusty wind. It was still the most peaceful twenty years in recent Korean history.

  Fallo wrapped up the meeting and informed everyone that another would take place in one week, on the usual schedule. The vid screen went blank for a split second and then brought up a pleasant image of a rolling grass covered plain. The computer had sensed the general’s unease by monitoring his heart rate and blood pressure, and using this information decided to show him some calming pictures of blowing tall grass that were supposed to remind him of his childhood in Nebraska.

  The general stood from his chair stiffly and exited the room, never even glancing up or acknowledging the pictures.

  4

  “This whole area is just an overflow zone.” said Laurel. “The big doors on the right are rooms all full of extra supplies, and the left is all bunk rooms, in case we have dozens more people show up. No one hangs out back here at all.”

  The pair walked leisurely down the long hallway, passing all the rooms labeled H1, H2, and so on. “So, what kind of virus are you studying?” asked Kate.

  “Oh, it’s pretty boring really,” she said with a shrug. “It’s a DNA virus that has popped up all over the place, but in very low numbers. It’s not very destructive, but it behaves really weird.”

  “And you have this virus here in the facility?” Kate was a little worried. She hadn’t known they were doing viral research on site.

  “We have a biohazard lab a level below that puts the CDC’s place in Atlanta to shame. It’s all very safe.” Laurel paused at a door and turned to Kate, “This is the doorway if you want to take the steps down the garage. It’s only two levels down, but some of the lazier people ride the elevator.”

  As they were walking down the steps, Kate asked, “So, what does a DNA virus do?”

  “Oh, well…they need the host cell’s DNA to replicate, the host being us. It sounds crazy, but it’s how most viruses work, either in the DNA or RNA. I specialize in the DNA type. Chickenpox is probably the most common one.”

  “Is that why they say once you have chickenpox, it never really goes away, just hides?”

  Laurel smiled as she answered, “Yeah, you could say that. It hides and then can come back out as shingles as you age. That’s the tricky thing about these viruses, sometimes they lie in wait…changing things.”

  Kate wanted to hear more about it, but at the same time, she didn’t want to. Thankfully, they were at the bottom of the steps already. Kate peered out into a massive room. It looked two to three times larger than a domed football stadium, but the ceiling wasn’t quite as high. “So this is all underneath the runway? I never imagined it was this large.”

  From several vehicles away, a voice rang out “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  Laurel started laughing and Kate’s face flushed slightly at the context her words were used in, but then she started laughing alongside her new friend.

  “That’s Jeep. He takes care of all these vehicles.” Laurel slid to the side, looking down a different row and finally yelled out, “Well are you going to come over here, or just continue hiding behind your widgets and yelling jokes?”

  Kate noticed that the words didn’t seem to echo inside this chamber. Especially with how loud Laurel had yelled, the echo should have been amazing. Glancing upward, she noticed the latticework of sound paneling way up on the ceiling; at least she thought that’s what it was. It resembled pictures she had seen in sound studios, made to deaden any echo. They looked like tightly spaced ridges of black foam almost completely covering the ceiling. As Kate was thinking about the sound panels, a man emerged from between the ATV’s. He had close cropped black hair and a thick, but well maintained jet black beard. He seemed heavy, but not fat. He looked more like he should be bailing hay instead of working in a giant underground garage. He reminded her of all the farmhands back in Arizona. He was built like a farmer.

  “Hi, ma’am.” He extended his hand to shake. “My name’s Josh, but everybody just calls me Jeep.”

  Kate didn’t bother to glance at his hand; she had no fear of grease. As she placed her hand into his, she noted a perfectly firm handshake. She was very pleased that the man knew how to shake hands properly. It drove her nuts when men would shake her hand like it was made of porcelain or something. That was even worse than the jerks that seemed to be trying to break her hand whenever they shook it, like they were testing her to see if she would flinch at the pain.

  “Good to meet you Jeep, I’m Kate. Laurel is showing me around because
I just got dropped off here.” Kate had to remember not to be too friendly with these people since she was also their therapist. Still, a pleasant work environment was mutually beneficial to everyone.

  “Yeah, I heard the helicopter touch down. If you have any questions while you’re looking around, just holler. I’ll be around here somewhere for another hour or so.” Jeep said as he walked slowly back in amongst the ATV’s.

  Kate noticed that unlike most of the other vehicles in here, some of the ATV’s were actually dirty. Looking at Laurel, Kate asked, “Do people go trail riding on those or something?”

  “I wish!” exclaimed the other woman. “No, those probably got muddy while some folks were clearing brush around the runway or something.” Looking down at her toes, she said in a much softer voice, “Apparently, a few years ago somebody got lost when they were out hiking, then got hurt…they found him, but he was pretty close to death. Another day and he would have been a goner.” Kate could see that Laurel didn’t like talking about this and made a mental note to explore it a little in a future session. “Anyway, that caused two things to happen. First, we have a perimeter to stick to outside, no straying farther than that because the land is just too wild. Second, we all go to a basic survival skills and first aid class immediately after arriving here. After that, they are scheduled for everyone as a group once a month.”

  “Wow, that seems a little drastic.” Kate was not too big on forcing people to learn things over and over again. She knew that once they knew it, hammering it home every month was more likely to have people pay less attention than if it was on a rational schedule. They would certainly remember things from the class they had the month previous. She wondered how in the world everyone managed to stay awake in that situation!

  Laurel perked up and responded, “It’s no big deal. The classes are fun actually. The first one is kind of boring, basic, everyday stuff…like how to make rope and how to put pressure on a wound. Plus, only the newbies are in that one so it’s usually only a few people. Everyone participates together once you have gone through the basic course. The next seminars all have themes. Some of them are really fun! Last one was a few weeks ago, it was all about making backcountry weapons. Then we went outside and got to practice what we learned. Turns out I’m pretty awesome with an atlatl!”