Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven

by Dennis Chamberland

  “It was, in fact, a plan of sheer, absolute genius. It’s the only way we’ve held together as a nation as long as we have. You see, it’s the production and efficient transmission of power that made us a world superpower; not necessarily nuclear bombs. And that, my friend, is why you look out there every night and still see lights.”

  “But you just said power was unstable, or going out, to a lot of the country,” Wattenbarger corrected.

  “Yeah, the conditions in the local power grid are still viable, for now. Unfortunately, the system as a national whole couldn’t foresee the trickle down effect of spare parts and fuel deliveries, a substantial portion of which comes in from overseas. From the word I hear, most of the power communities are still intact but, for many reasons, they can’t generate power. The only power plants that are still reliably generating right now are the nuclear plants, and from what I hear, not a single one of them has failed.

  “Regrettably, the culture in the nation’s communities – all those areas outside the power villages - hasn’t fared so well. The latest trend is roving gangs breaking into homes, stealing food and killing their neighbors over just about anything; firearms in particular. There’re also reports of roaming militant militias that have sprung up from just about everywhere and have seized whole areas of the country, or it’s perhaps more accurate to say that they control wide areas.

  “News from the rest of the world’s hard to come by; but it makes what’s happening here look like a kids Saturday afternoon friendly hockey match in comparison. Hell, by the time the storms actually start, a fair percentage of the population will have self destructed anyway!”

  “Well, at least we’re all at peace here - for now,” Wattenbarger observed looking over at the sleeping Charles and his new best friend, Marbles.

  Warren smiled and turned his head to look at Charles who was asleep and quietly snoring in a camp recliner on the far edge of the cave wall. Marbles had adopted Charles and lay curled up atop his stomach, also asleep and snoring more loudly than his human friend. “Now there’s an unlikely pair if I ever saw one,” Warren laughed. He continued, “You keep obsessing over batteries, Dale. It’s pointless. As long as the water runs below that shelf over there, and as log as the hydro-generators hold out, we’ll have power, batteries or not. I’ve thought about this plan long and hard – food, power, communications, you name it. But never, never in my wildest dreams, did I count on a fight over that dog.”

  Wattenbarger laughed openly. “Yeah, it was an unexpected surprise when Lance called that special meeting last night and demanded Marbles be voted in as an equal team member. I guess he thought we were gonna eat the dog if things got tough.”

  “Well, as I said last night, dividing up our food with a dog, and diminishing our own survival chances, doesn’t make much sense to me,” Warren said, continuing the discussion of the evening before.

  “Yeah, and you almost had us both believing you’d skewer and bake up that dog like a fat pig.”

  Warren just slyly smiled back and said nothing, still leaving the question to hang in the air, much like the image of poor Marbles skewered on a stick.

  “Well, you voted with the rest of us. It was unanimous. Marbles is a part of the team, right?” Wattenbarger asked.

  Warren nodded slowly, but not convincingly at all. “I still think if I vote no, then I don’t have to share my rations with the dog. If you guys want to keep him, then you divide your own rations with him.”

  “But you did - after all - vote to keep him, just like the rest of us,” Wattenbarger added with a slight trace of a stern smile. “So don’t tell me you want to dump your fuzzy little black pal.”

  “About those batteries,” Warren said after a pregnant pause. “We should have enough storage capacity for our refrigerator, lights, communication and entertainment center for four or five years, and that doesn’t count the added capacity of stand-alone generators. But, just in case you forgot, our food gives out long before that. That’s not being bleak, it’s just plain fact.”

  “After the local community dies away, we can go out and harvest batteries and food at night where we can find extras,” Wattenbarger offered.

  “It won’t work,” Warren responded flatly. “Batteries can’t just sit and wait to be used later. Unused batteries will self destruct more quickly than ones in constant use. And if you really believe that we’ll be the only desperate individuals comin’ out of deep holes at night lookin’ for food, then you aren’t as smart as we’d all like to believe,” he continued.

  “Do you think anyone will get wise over the RV?” Wattenbarger asked, referring to the previous day when they had stripped everything they could use from its frame and pushed it into the Arkansas river after a brief ceremony to release Friday the Beta fish to swim free.

  “I do believe that the law enforcement authorities have more to worry about these days than an abandoned RV in the river,” Warren replied. “Besides, even if they did actually make a positive ID and connect me with the vehicle, they still don’t have time to go lookin’ for a single bachelor with no ties to anyone, with or without a nearby stellar eruption in the works. And even if they did want to waste their time on me, they’d never, ever, find me, even if they mounted up a whole posse and tried. Remember the old country and western song, Miller’s Cave?” he asked of Wattenbarger.

  “Sorry, C and W was never my forte.”

  “Well, the song tells the story of a man who shot his wife and her boyfriend and drug their ‘stinkin’ skin and bones’ to Miller’s cave. The whole state of Georgia was lookin’ for ‘em, but he says at the end of the song, “But they’re never gonna find me, cause I’m lost in Miller’s cave!”

  “Fantastic!” Wattenbarger said, his eyes lighting up and a huge smile spreading across his face.

  “What?” Warren replied with a questioning smile in return. “The song wasn’t that good and I didn’t even sing it for you.”

  “Now we have a name for our little home: Miller’s Cave!” Wattenbarger responded with the far off look in his eyes he had always been well known for.

  “And they’re never gonna find us ‘cause we’re lost… in Miller’s Cave…” echoed the deep, resonant voice of Charles as he sang the last line of the CW classic in perfect form. He never even bothered to open his eyes as Marbles continued to snore.

  21

  The two NASA high speed Rotor Systems X-Wing VTOL helicopter jets had departed Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs after their first scheduled refueling stop. They were in the sky headed northwest to Seattle’s McChord Air Force Base then to Unalaska Island for the final refueling stop on their way to Pacifica. The great circle distance from Middlearth to Pacifica was some 4,653 nautical miles, requiring the helicopter jets to refuel three times en route. While the NASA jets represented the latest in long range helicopter technology, they were still far from being able to match the range of commercial or cargo jets.

  Aaron Seven and Serea sat huddled together in adjoining seats reviewing the Pacifica briefing given to them by Professor Desmond before their departure. The briefing was displayed in interactive form on their portable computers that lay open on small retractable trays in front of their seats.

  “This place must be spectacular,” Seven finally said after reviewing hundreds of pages.

  “It is indeed incredible,” Serea agreed. “Pacifica is a completely self sufficient city whose top is 150 feet beneath the surface of the North Pacific Ocean. It’s anchored to the top of an extinct undersea volcano that rises about 17,000 feet off the ocean floor. It’s just as awesome as Middlearth, in its own unique way, although I’ve never actually seen it yet.”

  “Did your father design Pacifica as well as Middlearth?” Seven asked, most impressed by what he saw. “It’s so magnificent it seems to have his signature all over it. Raylond Desmond seems to do everything in a very big way.”

  “You mean, OUR father,” Serea replied with a gentle correction.

  “Oh
yeah, I forgot. I knew him in a more, shall we say, academic sense in a previous incarnation,” Seven admitted. “I presume this undersea volcano has been monitored for activity?” he added.

  “Yes. It’s completely dormant. And if you’ll continue your research in greater depth, my dear, I’m sure you’ll also see my own signature all over Pacifica,” Serea added with a smirk. “As a matter of fact, it was one of my duties to check into the placement and to finalize it in the end.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” Seven replied. “You got to pick the neighborhood for Raylond’s undersea house. Location, location, location….”

  “Yes, you’re correct; location was vital. The first consideration was its absolute remoteness. The nearest land is Hawaii to the south or the Aleutian Islands to the north; both over 1,300 miles away.”

  “Why so remote?” Seven asked. “I have my best guesses, but let’s go ahead and hear it from the mouth of the realtor who actually sold the lot to your poor, unsuspecting father.”

  “He wanted the securest location possible to ensure absolutely that the human species would survive, no matter what. Although he felt Middlearth was equally secure, he chose a remote ocean location for Pacifica because it’s nearly impossible to reach except by extraordinary means. He felt that no matter what happened to the environment or the culture, that a deep, remote, ocean location was the most secure place on earth. In fact, in the history of life on earth, the deep ocean has proven itself time and time again to be the most stable, secure and friendly location for survival than any other place. And, of course, there were many other reasons as well.”

  “Okay, go on,” Seven responded with impatience.

  “The top of the volcano, called Hancock Seamount, is located 519 feet below the lowest Pacifica structure. The surface of the ocean is 150 feet above the uppermost structure, so Pacifica is suspended in the ocean by cables attached to anchors set into the seamount’s top. It’s shielded from 99.99 per cent of the predicted solar radiation flux. I selected Hancock Seamount specifically because of its incredible productivity. It’s been one of the most productive natural undersea fisheries on earth. It was so successful in the late 20th century that the Coast Guard had to literally guard it to prevent it from being over fished. Our studies show that the deeper pelagic species will be minimally affected by the radiation environment on the surface for longer than any other species on earth.”

  “So we can harvest them for food,” Seven said, concluding the logical point.

  “Yes, exactly. While it’s certain that the surface layer die-off will profoundly affect nearly all oceanic life, we’re hoping that we can continue to mine the incredible productivity of the Hancock Seamount for at least two to five years before we see a significant change in the populations that would begin to affect our needs. We’ll be steadily taking fish from the local seamount environment but even at the highest imaginable rate of harvesting, we’ll still remove less in a year than one industrial trawler harvested on a single day!”

  “Then what happens?” Seven asked. “Where will our food come from after the deeper species begin to die off and our harvests begin to diminish?”

  “Pacifica has its own advanced life support system, nearly identical to Middlearth, as you’ve been reviewing in your report. We have the capacity to produce all our own food internally if we have to. It won’t be as tasty as Hancock Armorhead or Butterfish, but it’ll keep us alive. We also selected the Hancock Seamount for its thermal environment,” Serea continued.

  “Oh, this must be exciting,” Seven responded cynically.

  “Actually, I think you’ll like this if you’d just listen for a moment,” Serea replied evenly. “Pacifica is powered by a closed Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion power plant, also known as OTEC. The very same reasons that make the seamount biologically productive also make it an ideal site for energy production. While there’s a permanent thermocline, or temperature layers, in the broad expanse of the open North Pacific, the seamount interacts with the perpetual currents and pulls cold water up its flanks from the deep. The Pacifica power plant captures the cold water from the lower levels and warm water from the upper levels above Pacifica and turns this temperature variation into power.”

  “I’m familiar with the OTEC principle, but can it really provide enough power for a community as advanced as Pacifica, and is it reliable?”

  “The Pacifica OTEC plant is the largest closed cycle plant ever built. It provides 100 net megawatts of power continuously from two OTEC turbines. There’s also a spare 50 megawatt turbine standing by. The Pacifica system has never failed. It seems to be too simple for much to go wrong, actually. But just in case everything goes south at once, we have a backup power system consisting of a pair of hydrogen fuel cells that supply stand-by power of five megawatts of continuous power, and, the community has a battery bay for emergencies.”

  Seven looked out his window at the Rocky Mountains as they passed beneath them. He could see the relatively small blotches and lines across the rugged landscape below him that marked the positions of cities and towns that were about to become desolate, empty and filled with the corpses of their citizens. He silently wondered about their individual fates and what each of them were doing and thinking at this moment.

  Serea touched his hand gently, following his eyes out the window. She could see the rugged mountains and the towns below and seemed to suspect his thoughts.

  “Those people down there,” she said in a near whisper. “We’ll see some of them again, after this is all over, I know that we will; I just know it. They may not have all the advantages we have at our fingertips, but some of them will survive. Those mountains are full of caves and hiding places. I just know they’ll make it through... some of them. But it’ll be terrible. I can’t imagine the suffering.”

  Seven squeezed her hand tightly and heard the quiet titter of the children seated in front of him. He suppressed a shiver. No one could know how long the storms would last: one week, one year or ten thousand years. His thoughts were not just clouded by the inevitability of the disaster, not just of its magnitude and its toll, but of its finality as well. In just a few days from its beginning, whether the storms lasted one day or an epoch, a vast majority of all life on earth would be dead. It would be terrible indeed.

  gh

  The refueling stop at Seattle ’s McChord Air Force Base had been exceptionally brief – a mere 18 minutes from touchdown to liftoff. The helicopter jets then streaked over Puget Sound into the open Pacific across 1,690 miles of ocean toward Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island.

  The children mostly slept during this leg as Seven voraciously reviewed the massive document that described the most detailed workings of Pacifica . The more he read the more he was astonished at the incredible complexity and redundancy of Pacifica . It was nothing short of a miracle that it could have been conceived, designed and actually built in such a brief period of time. He silently mused to himself that had extinction of the species not been on the line, such a feat would not even have been possible. Serea had turned her computer off and was sleeping as well; her head leaned lightly on Seven’s arm.

  After long hours of flight, the whine of the aircraft’s engines slowed indicating an approach to Unalaska Island. Seven strained to see the view outside his window. He could make out the edges of Dutch Harbor as they emerged from rows and layers of low-lying clouds and banks of fog hanging off the Pacific shoreline. In time, he also saw the linked runways of the Unalaska commercial airport emerge out of the low lying mists.

  Unlike conventional jets, the NASA helicopter jets simply and straightforwardly approached the landing zone, reverted to their vertical landing capability, then almost matter-of-factly settled straight down to a gentle touchdown. By this time it had been announced that there would be a one hour refueling and re-provisioning period before the last leg of the journey to Pacifica .

  “Nice nap?” Seven asked Serea who smiled back at him with sleepy eyes.

  “For an airp
lane nap, it wasn’t that bad. Of course, I’ll probably need extensive therapy for my neck,” she chided.

  “We get an hour on the ground,” Seven offered hopefully.

  “Good. We need to talk,” Serea replied mysteriously.

  They offloaded the plane last, behind the children who walked in a neat line toward a nearby terminal building. As they stepped away from the helicopter jets, Seven was astounded at the amount of activity taking place around the two aircraft. While the previous two stops had included the single activity of but two refueling trucks, this stop was quite different. Here on the runway at Dutch Harbor were six individual teams surrounding each aircraft. One was refueling and the other five were removing aircraft panels and replacing them with what appeared to be rounded cargo pods that fit perfectly and aerodynamically against the aircraft’s external skin.

  “We never miss a chance to deliver cargo to Pacifica . In a short time hence, of course, all deliveries will cease,” Serea offered, seeing Seven’s attention drawn to the ongoing activity. “We’re offloading some of our passengers and loading up a new set bound for permanent location at Pacifica . All who leave with us from here, including the aircraft crews, are going to become new permanent citizens of Pacifica before the end of this day.”

  They walked toward the terminal building without speaking. Seven was carefully observing the burst of activity around the sleek aircraft. Finally away from the din, Serea stopped short of the terminal entrance and turned to face Seven. At that moment, the sun broke from behind a cloud and bathed the island in brilliant sunlight.