Seven was used to these impromptu lectures by Desmond who always seemed to have one or more in the queue. But his mind was preoccupied with other thoughts, none more urgent than the sudden reappearance of his theory of quantum storms that had caused him so much personal disaster. He wondered if one had been discovered in a nearby star system and why it involved him.
Returning his attention to the moment, Seven noticed that they had quickly lost sight of Stonebrooke proper as the density of the trees swallowed the structures. They crossed the stream by a fallen tree that lay over the banks, and then headed up the steep hillside. Desmond paused now and then to point out distinct geological and biological features, but for the most part they walked in near silence for 15 minutes. Eventually, they arrived at the face of a stone bluff that climbed over 600 vertical feet before them. The trees that stood atop the bluff rose over another 100 feet, so that the edifice appeared to tower up and away, lost in the brilliantly clear mountain sky.
“We have arrived,” Desmond said, finally turning to look at Seven, face to face. “And you will have all your questions answered shortly. I apologize for the mystery, but soon you will understand why it was necessary. This is my private entrance to R29,” he said, nodding at the rock face of the bluff. “R29 is another acronym that describes the 29th United States Quantum Storm Response Team – or QSRT - shelter.”
That comment represented the critical mass of information that allowed Seven to understand the nature of his visit to Stonebrooke.
“It’s the sun, isn’t it? Our sun! You’re talking about OUR sun, aren’t you?” Seven asked breathlessly, his features lined with absolute astonishment, as his eyes invariably drifted to the orange sphere rising just above the trees.
Desmond’s own expression fell. “Yes, I am afraid it is,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
Seven stood staring at Desmond for long seconds. “God help us,” he finally said in his own grave whisper.
3
Raylond Desmond walked up to the towering face of the rock bluff, stepped onto a flat rock and slid his toes along the face of the bluff. Then he reached up and grasped two rocky knobs at shoulder height.
"Come along," Desmond instructed Seven with a tinge of the patience of a schoolmaster. "Stand beside me on my left and grasp the two outcrops just above you, just as I am doing. Make sure your toes are touching the bluff face and you have a firm grip on the rock. Do not hold your face too close to the cliff."
Seven's alarm at the revelation of an impending quantum storm had seized his mind. He was at once terrified and overtaken by the thought and full implications. No one on earth knew better than he what a quantum storm would mean for the planet and each of her inhabitants, from every human being to each individual single cell organism.
But as he turned his eyes to Desmond, his terror was at least momentarily replaced with an unexpected silent, cheeky amusement at the image of his elderly mentor standing so rigidly facing the rock escarpment towering some sixty stories above them into the mist. His eyes strained to see if he could make out the route the professor had planned for them up the side of the cliff, but it was not obvious. If the professor was intent on scaling the near vertical rock face with only his hands and no rope or climbing equipment, then he was hiding an agility and a method Seven had yet to encounter in his significantly younger life.
But to humor Desmond, Seven walked up to the cliff-side, mounted the large, flat rock and placed his toes against the wall, grasping his own pair of equally spaced rocky knobs. He then looked at Desmond who was facing him, but tightly gripping the rock.
"Now what, Professor?" Seven asked with a miscreant smirk. "Are you going to lead up the face or shall I?"
"I can see that this is going to become a day of surprises for you, lad," Desmond replied. "Now grip the rock tightly."
Desmond released his grip on the rock outcropping with his right hand and pulled a device from his pocket which resembled the remote key control for an automobile. He pressed a bright yellow button on its black face and thrust it immediately back into his pocket, quickly returning his grip to the wall.
"We have three seconds, so hang on tightly," he said with all seriousness to Seven who just started back at him blankly. At the appointed moment, the large rock on which they had been standing literally dropped away from the rock face and plunged quickly underground. The face of the wall to which they clung traveled with them as they rapidly descended a dark shaft. About 20 feet below the ground, the platform abruptly stopped. Desmond stepped off of the rock shaped platform and into what appeared to be a dark tunnel.
"Hurry, Aaron, the platform will re-ascend momentarily."
Seven quickly stepped away from the rock as it shot back to the surface, enclosing them in complete darkness. A second later, a bank of brilliant wall panels sprang into light from out of the darkness.
Seven looked about him. What he had thought was a tunnel was, in fact, an underground room of no more than 12 by 12 feet, shaped like a cavern but its walls were coated with a rough, light grey concrete substance that appeared to have been sprayed on. One wall was covered with the brilliant light panels and the opposite wall held an oval opening that revealed a two-seater vehicle shaped like a torpedo on one end and blunted on the other.
"I sincerely apologize for the swiftness at which you will be exposed to rather shocking revelations today, lad," Desmond began, “but I have thought about this meeting with you again and again, and I believe that there is only one way to approach it. It is essential that we go through these steps as I am leading you before you ask any questions you may have about the quantum storms. I fully realize there will be many, but it is essential that we step though some crucial proofs before you make any decisions."
"Decisions?" Seven asked, now more alarmed than ever.
"Yes, Aaron. Life and death decisions for many."
"Professor, where exactly are we?" Seven asked, looking around with some amazement.
“You first, Aaron,” Desmond said, pointing to the odd vehicle before them. “Slide into the back seat.”
Seven looked momentarily indecisive, then sighed and stepped onto the torpedo shaped vehicle and slid through the tight opening in the top and into a cramped rear seat.
Desmond quickly followed and settled into the front of the pod-like vehicle, then fastened a seatbelt.
Without instruction, Seven fastened his lap belt and pulled it snugly.
Seven examined the vehicle pod closely. It looked exactly like a roller coaster ride at an Orlando attraction. But it was generously padded everywhere, had a clear retractable top-visor that doubled as a closable hatch which Desmond pulled shut with his left hand. As he did so, a panel of green and amber lights illuminated before him in the forward portion of the vehicle.
"Aaron, I want to warn you that this is going to be a very abrupt traverse with some sharp and unexpected gravitational excursions. It is also mostly in the dark. It will last eight minutes. Please keep your seatbelt tight. Once we are underway, there is no way to stop until we arrive at our destination. Are you ready?"
Seven's eyes widened slightly in anticipation and he sat back in the deeply padded seat, clinging to his tight lap belt. "Let's rock," he responded with confidence. He had never met an amusement park ride that he could not master.
"10 seconds," Desmond informed as Seven could see the amber display before him tick away. At minus three seconds, Desmond noted dryly, "It really isn't as severe as it may feel on the first ride down."
With those words, eight minutes of vestibular hell were unleashed as the bottom dropped out of the universe and the vehicle accelerated madly into the gaping darkness deep underground.
The first impression was a sharp acceleration, a distinct smell of ozone and a twisting in the darkness. Seven's body pressed back hard into his seat, his arms too heavy to lift. Then after eight to ten seconds of obvious acceleration, there followed at least 30 seconds of near zero gravity as the car felt as though i
t had been flung over into an infinitely deep crevasse. About the point he became completely convinced that they were ready to strike bottom somewhere and end the madness, Seven decided that this was no amusement park ride. In his analytical mind, he quickly evaluated eight seconds of acceleration and half a minute of freefall could only end in instant death or a round of impending, matched deceleration. This was, after all, the interior of a mountain, not the stratosphere.
Seven was entirely correct, but was unable to savor the glorious rightness of the moment when his brain was hit with another radical twist and deceleration in the wrong axis. While his mind had convinced his rational brain that he was in a vertical free-fall, the follow-on deceleration was in the opposite direction to what he believed was an up-and-forward direction. Instant and severe vertigo set in as he was pressed into his seat sideways, forward and up against the restraint of the belt. His eyes attempted to focus on the panel over the seat in front of him, but the yellow and green numbers and lights distorted themselves into a blur of sickening, vibrating color. He closed his eyes tightly to keep from blowing his coffee all over his ex-professor seated just before him - or wherever gravity decided it would go. In less than a minute of travel in this strange world of Raylond Desmond’s, Seven was reduced to praying fervently that the next seven minutes would pass quickly in this black underground amusement park from Dante's worst nightmare.
Eventually, the horrifying first four and a half minutes of the ride deep into the mountain were replaced by a relatively gentler end as the lurching and mad gravitational bashings transitioned to a single, stable gravity and a more secure universe as the vehicle finally slid to a hissing, abrupt stop.
Seven slowly opened his eyes in a conscious attempt to keep from becoming sick. He realized the car was in a room much like the one from which they had left, but considerably larger. Desmond had already slid the door open and was standing at a terminal at the end of the room keying information in a small kiosk outfitted with a keyboard and monitor.
"Stand up slowly, and you will be fine," Desmond said over his shoulder. "Welcome to R29."
Seven recovered immediately, and slid quickly out of the vehicle pod and stood up. "An E-ticket ride if I've ever seen one!" he said looking back at the empty pod, then asked, "Where are we?"
“Twenty eight miles north, northwest of Stonebrooke and 1255 feet beneath the Cumberland plateau.”
Seven's brow's furrowed after a moment's pause. "You mean this little vehicle covered that distance in eight minutes? That's averaging over 200 miles per hour, not accounting for deceleration and non-linear travel!"
"Correct. Average speed over distance is 348 miles per hour, counting the curves and dips," Desmond responded, still entering data on the keyboard.
"Then that means the average speed was…" Seven asked, attempting the calculus in his brain.
"Maximum velocity on the track was a momentary burst of 432 miles per hour," Desmond finished for him.
"Why use a mass driver?" Seven asked, unable to hide some natural level of cynicism. "No cars; no elevators?"
"For many reasons, actually. Speed is essential: we’re running out of time and every minute, every trip must count. Two: why would anyone waste time under any circumstance? Three: I needed private, quick access to the project I am directing and responsible for. And four: rank has its privileges.
"R29 is a large, hidden, underground chamber we discovered deep under the Cumberland Plateau, near Dunlap, Tennessee," Desmond continued. It is normally accessed through an abandoned coal mine on Fredonia Mountain . The pod we just traveled in is my own private traverse though a series of linked underground caverns. Had they not been fortuitously placed, we would have had to take a helicopter across the valley to the main mine entrance, or driven like everyone else."
"Does it return the same way?" Seven asked, glancing back at the pod.
"Yes, it does, actually," Desmond replied, toggling a switch which sent the pod in a circle on a track around the room, now pointed back in the direction from which it came.
"We must get along. I have assembled a meeting of my staff, and I want to introduce you to those who do not already know you," Desmond said, turning to face Seven. "They are waiting now."
"Sorry," Seven replied, arms folded, staring back at his professor.
Professor Desmond sighed deeply and closed his eyes. "I have struggled for weeks setting this day up on your behalf, Aaron. Please allow me the benefit of introducing this concept to you in an ordered way before you decide on your inevitable fate."
Seven clearly and immediately understood. The old professor was talking not only about his fate, but the fate of every living organism on earth.
"Sorry, professor," Seven answered. "If I’m correct, you’re about to engage me in a series of state-of-the-art, whiz-bang, wow-technology briefings and are going to offer me a place on your survival team if I stay and help you figure out what you haven't already figured out about quantum storms. Am I correct so far?"
Desmond just stared blankly back at his student, apparently unwilling to interrupt.
"Just to save all that valuable time, let me be brief: declined," Seven said bluntly.
"Why?" Desmond asked with undisguised incredulity.
"I believe there are fates worse than death, actually. And I believe you’re offering me one of those. Sorry... not interested"
"Why?" Desmond persisted in the most direct and expedient way possible.
"I don't believe in abandoning those whom I love and cherish the most to save my own ass," Seven responded.
"If you will permit me the opportunity to share my plan, we would have encountered that objection momentarily."
Seven stood his ground. "Then let us presume that moment has come," he said.
"Very well," Desmond responded. "The plan permits each participant to bring along four members of their immediate family, no more. You will be allowed the same privileges as everyone else."
"Fine. At least we know the rules. Now, if you don't mind, I'm getting back into your little cave rocket and leaving the way I came," Seven said, turning back to the pod.
"I am sorry, Aaron, but I don't understand," the professor replied, genuinely surprised. "You have no immediate family. You were raised in a children's home, as you have shared with me on many occasions. But, I can assure you, I will personally wave the immediate family requirement on your behalf, allowing you to bring along four of your closest friends."
"Here's the deal, Professor Desmond," Seven replied, turning back. "I’m not interested in your plan, your deals or your rules. I am, however, very interested in bringing along the 17 children and two guardians of the Florida Children's Home. You see, I was taught that your family is who you choose it to be, and every one of them is counted as my immediate family. We’ll all live together, or die together… a package deal only; sorry."
Desmond looked angry, his face flushed. "Listen carefully, Aaron," he began in a measured voice. "Every man and woman on this project have had to make that decision. And in no one's case was it easy. In some cases, they had to decide between children, parents and even wives and husbands. Do not come here and demand the impossible when everyone else had to choose!"
Seven's face froze in rage. "I never asked you for anything, Dr. Desmond," he responded. "You asked me to come here, remember? I fully appreciate this isn’t the village flea market where we bargain for the lives of our families. If you’ll remember, I only asked to leave, not for you to make an exception in my case. If you think the back of my head was a bargaining chip, you’re very mistaken! This does NOT look at all like a used car lot to me!"
Desmond sighed again. "Aaron, you have no idea how difficult this has become. But you have misjudged me. I am a man of integrity, just as your own life has clearly demonstrated. I never meant to bargain with you or trap you with a dog and pony show. I also never considered your family in Florida or your attachments, or I probably would not have contacted you at all. But I can truthfully t
ell you that you are so important to this project that all of mankind owes you nothing less than the inclusion of your entire family into the shelter. I would be an ungrateful fool if I said otherwise. Besides, to be very blunt with you, I have worried endlessly about the absence of children and the lack of a genetic diversity among the survivors. This will go a long way in solving both issues."
"Okay, you have a deal, professor," Seven replied. "But I must insist on one other thing."
"Go on," Desmond responded, his face rigidly prepared for the final condition.
"Don't ever tell me who gave up their wives, husbands and children to be here, ever. I don't want to have to toss their sorry butts out of this nice, safe little cave in the middle of a raging quantum storm."
Desmond merely sighed, apparently little affected, and not at all surprised, at the imperiousness of his apprentice. "Please follow," he said as he walked to a gray metal door. As Desmond opened it to reveal an altogether astonishing unseen world beneath the known world, Seven was totally unprepared for what he was about to experience.
4
The door opened onto a small balcony, attached to a sheer wall, well over 200 feet high, cut out of the side of one of the cavern's near vertical walls of rock. As Seven walked out to stand on the platform, he found himself overlooking a gaping cavern hewn into the deep earth by seven cascading waterfalls. Together they poured forth millions of gallons of waters per second that converged in seven gushing rivers, forming a huge lake in the center of the monstrously large cavern. Seven estimated the subterranean dome to be at least 400 feet high and, through the mist, it appeared to be at least three quarters of a mile from side to side. The sound of the water echoed thunderously in the space and he could feel the cool mist on his face.
The seven differently sized rivers poured from gaping holes in the walls and flowed down relatively short channels to the center lake which covered three quarters of the cavern's bottom. Incredibly, the rivers cut into the lakebed at angles, causing the lake to flow in a mighty, foaming vortex toward the center, where a swirling, yawning hole had formed as the water was sucked down its maw into unexplored regions of the subterranean earth beneath the cavern.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 3
