The Footsteps of Cain

by Derek Kohlhagen

  “I can get to him and advise him. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m...not sure. I think I’m going to look around in the system; I don’t know...maybe there’s something in here that can help us.”

  “Alright...I’ll contact Gorman and start getting everyone moved. And, Sam....”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be safe.”

  “I will. You too.”

  With that, the radio crackled and went silent.

  Alone with his thoughts, his mind went into overdrive. He was a problem solver. That was his job. He was used to breaking down issues into their individual, moving parts, divining root causes, and employing solutions. In front of him was a problem. A big one. But he was a problem solver, and he was going to do his best to figure it out. If he didn’t...everything...everybody he knew would die.

  He couldn’t let the thing inside the facility. He needed to keep it at a distance, somehow.

  So what could he do? What were his capabilities?

  The spire didn’t have any sophisticated hand weaponry. There was a small armory of clubs (heavy sticks, really) and swords (shoddy pieces of scrap metal that had been sharpened in the machine shop). There were even a few guns, even though the people had lost the expertise to craft ammunition for them long before Samuel came to the Spire. (He’d been told that the last time anyone had tried, they’d produced bullets of such a low grade that any weapon that fired them was irreparably damaged, and whoever dared to wield them had suffered for it.)

  In any case, the Spire would need something bigger. Something that could do some real damage. The remaining explosives in the supply locker might—

  He slapped his head and cursed himself for an idiot.

  The cannons!

  They hadn’t so much as moved an inch since he’d found the Spire, and by all accounts of the elders they hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. But they were still standing, and now due to Kelly’s and George’s efforts he had full access to the computers, which controlled a myriad of external systems. If one of those systems happened to be the cannon array...who knew? Maybe they had a chance.

  It’s got to be here, somewhere. There’s got to be a way to turn them on.

  He took a closer look at the interface on the screen. It was the vision of a minimalist...there was nothing there except the three icons. The eye represented the cameras, that much he had figured out. Next to the camera view, which still covered most of the screen, there was a list of cryptic names, maybe thirty of them. One, MAIN SCFD CAM W, was highlighted.

  Okay...Main Scaffold Camera...West...got it.

  MAIN SCFD CAM E, MAIN SCFD CAM N, and MAIN SCFD CAM S were there as well. There was even one entitled, SRVR RM. He touched this one and was satisfied to see the perspective on the screen change. Suddenly he was staring at the back of his own head, from a perspective up near the ceiling. He turned, and sure enough, there was a black bulb protruding down from the heavy joists that supported the ceiling of the room.

  Okay, so the cameras are pretty intuitive. So what about the other icons?

  He touched MAIN SCFD CAM W again to return the view to the western cliffs and the darkness overhead. The view had returned to its default zoom.

  That left the first icon, the circle, and the star, the third. He figured there was only one way to know what they did. He reached out again and pecked at the circle.

  Instantly, the screen turned off.

  Shit. Shit shit.

  He squinted at the screen, and was relieved to see that the circle icon had not disappeared. It was no longer a solid white; it had gone hollow in the middle. He touched it again, and thankfully the screen flared back to life. He sighed and shook his head, berating himself.

  One more, then.

  He touched the star. The screen darkened and presented him with another menu, arranged in a grid.

  Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  There were many menu items...

  HYDROPONICS

  INVENTORY

  WATER PLANT

  DIAGNOSTICS

  SECURITY

  POWER GRID

  MINING OPERATIONS

  COMMUNICATIONS

  ...to name a few. Most of them didn’t seem particularly useful to him at the moment. But, there were a few that stood out and piqued his curiosity. He started with DIAGNOSTICS.

  Another menu. But now, there was a list of commands on the right. He touched the one at the top...the one that simply read, RUN FULL SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC.

  He was forced to endure a torturous wait while the system checked itself for problems. He could only imagine how many systems and sub-systems were faulty or just plain non-functional, after so many years of neglect. His team had only started to fix things; there was still a mountain of problems.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The screen began to populate with information, line after line with the names of systems and components, along with their corresponding statuses. He scrolled through the list and looked for anything useful. It was categorized by system name...the first group was MINING OPERATIONS.

  MAIN DRILL A – UNRESPONSIVE

  DRILL SUB-ARRAY B – OFFLINE

  DRILL SUB-ARRAY C – UNRESPONSIVE

  SUBTERRANEAN OXYGENATORS – UNRESPONSIVE

  ORE EXTRACTOR SCOOP ARRAY – OFFLINE

  It went on and on. It didn’t look like the Spire would be resuming its drilling operations any time soon. He skimmed down to the next category that caught his eye: POWER.

  MAIN GEN 1 – ONLINE

  MAIN GEN 2 – ONLINE

  MAIN GEN 3 – OFFLINE

  MAIN GEN 4 – UNRESPONSIVE

  MAIN GEN 5 – ONLINE

  MAIN GEN 6 – OFFLINE

  MAIN GEN 7 – OFFLINE

  MAIN GEN 8 – OFFLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 1 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 1 BATTERY – ONLINE, 78.5%

  SOLAR ARRAY 2 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 2 BATTERY – ONLINE, 0%

  SOLAR ARRAY 3 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 3 BATTERY – ONLINE, 52.8%

  SOLAR ARRAY 4 – UNRESPONSIVE

  SOLAR ARRAY 4 BATTERY – UNRESPONSIVE

  SOLAR ARRAY 5 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 5 BATTERY – ONLINE, 18.4%

  SOLAR ARRAY 6 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 6 BATTERY – ONLINE, 69.8%

  SOLAR ARRAY 7 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 7 BATTERY – ONLINE, 54.9%

  SOLAR ARRAY 8 – ONLINE

  SOLAR ARRAY 8 BATTERY – ONLINE, 66.0%

  He started to get excited. This was what they had been working toward for years! Now he had a list that told him which of the generators were still viable! It looked like most of the solar arrays on the Dome were supplying power, and of the dormant generators, most were only offline. He assumed that “unresponsive” was code for “screwed”. If he was lucky, “offline” systems could be turned back on.

  He read on. It didn’t take long for him to find it, under SECURITY.

  BALLISTICS UNIT 1 (MRK 22 HKBR1) – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 1 ACTUATOR ARRAY – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 2 (MRK 22 HKBR2) – UNRESPONSIVE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 2 ACTUATOR ARRAY – UNRESPONSIVE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 3 (MRK 22 HKBR3) – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 3 ACTUATOR ARRAY – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 4 (MRK 22 HKBR4) – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 4 ACTUATOR ARRAY – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 5 (MRK 22 HKBR5) – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 5 ACTUATOR ARRAY – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 6 (MRK 22 HKBR6) – OFFLINE

  BALLISTICS UNIT 6 ACTUATOR ARRAY – OFFLINE

  Whoa.

  There it was. There was hope. Five out of the six cannons (or MRK 22s, as it seemed they were called) were only offline...just waiting for power to eat. The only concern Samuel had was that, once power was restored, how reliable would they be? Assuming he could get them pointed in the right direction, how could he
be sure that the ancient ammunition wouldn’t malfunction? How could he be certain that he wouldn’t end up blowing the Spire itself into the sky?

  He felt like he should be running this through Gorman. Making the decision by himself, without wiser heads around, was probably a mistake.

  Oh...fuck it.

  The closer the monster came, the worse the outcome. If Samuel could employ the offensive capabilities of the cannons now...if the thing out on the cliffs was in range, then he decided he should start raining as much ordinance on it as he could, as soon as he could.

  But, first things first. The cannons would probably draw an enormous amount of power...probably more, Samuel guessed, than was currently available. If he tried to use them now, he might risk doing irreparable damage. To be safe, he decided to address the offline generators before he attempted anything else.

  It was the same old problem: Power was everything.

  He navigated back to the top menu, and chose POWER GRID.

  The screen responded. A three dimensional model of the Spire came into view. It was a dizzyingly detailed schematic; he could make out every floor and room in crystal clarity, as well as the internal electrical systems...inside the walls where they normally were hidden from human eyes. There was seemingly a spider’s web of cables that could be traced back to their source, the generator room, where almost all of the Spire’s power was created and distributed. The generators were located on sub-level one, just below the surface.

  On the right, there was a list of electrical systems, divided by floor, their current status, and then a set of controls for each. Many of the list items were flashing yellow, indicating a low power state of operation, or red, indicating a complete power failure. Only a dismal few were a steady green, indicating nominal operation.

  As Samuel looked at the struggling power grid, represented in its malnourished entirety, he let out a derisive snort and shook his head.

  Yeah. The system is screwed up, alright.

  The generator controls were at the top of the systems list. Just as the diagnostic report had suggested, generators one, two, and five were the only ones in operation—they were flashing green. Generator four wasn’t lit up at all; the report had listed it as unresponsive, so again, this was consistent. Samuel reasoned that it must have broken down at some point and either nobody had bothered, or knew how, to fix it. So, it had been left to rot.

  He turned his attention to the generators that were merely listed as “offline”...namely, generators three, six, seven, and eight.

  Okay, so I’ve got four dead generators. How do I get enough power to them to start them back up?

  His team had figured out the anatomy of the power system without too much effort, back in the early, hopeful days of trying to restore the Spire to its former glory. The solar arrays fed the batteries. The batteries, in addition to providing auxiliary power in the event of generator failure, were wired into the generators themselves. And so, the team had postulated that somehow the battery power was used to fire up the generators. They just never knew where or how to trigger that process.

  Next to each of the four dormant generators, there was a row of command buttons...PRIME, POWER CYCLE, AND ENGAGE. PRIME was flashing on each line. The POWER CYCLE and ENGAGE commands were grayed out. It seemed reasonable to Samuel to assume the process was a linear one, and that the later stages probably depended on the earlier ones.

  Okay then. Here goes nothing.

  He touched the PRIME command on generators three, six, seven, and eight. The text on the command buttons changed from “PRIME” to “PRIMING...”.

  ***

  Two levels above, lights flickered to life on the four generators. An audible whine began to emanate from the heart of the great machines, first low in pitch, and then rising until its frequency passed outside the realm of human hearing. A small, but not so insignificant spark flared to life in the core of the machines, their first sign of life in hundreds of years.

  ***

  Samuel stared at the screen, trying to will the priming sequence to complete. After fifteen seconds or so, he was elated to see the text on the buttons change again, from “PRIMING...” to “PRIMED”. As soon as this happened, the next button, POWER CYCLE, changed its color from gray to bright green. He immediately touched them to initiate the next step in the start-up process. “POWER CYCLE” became “CYCLING...”.

  ***

  Upstairs, the four generators began making a rhythmic, chunk chunk chunk-ing sound. If anyone had happened to place a hand on any of the outer casings, they would have been surprised to feel a portentous heat growing, emanating from the steel. The great hearts of the machines started to beat, now after so many years, pumping their electric lifeblood through them once again.

  ***

  After another grueling wait, almost a full minute this time, Samuel saw “CYCLING...” flicker over to “CYCLED”. The ENGAGE command button turned green.

  Samuel’s heart skipped a beat. He didn’t want to breathe wrong, lest he sabotage the chances of the start-up process completing successfully.

  Come on. Please...just work.

  He touched the four ENGAGE buttons, and prepared himself for anything.

  * * *

  Chapter 19 – Ejelano

  OH. WOW. THEY ACTUALLY FIGURED IT OUT.

  “I feel it, too,” Ejelano said. He stood atop the cliff, looking out toward the metal city. “That place...it seems more, now, than what it was. Like it’s coming alive.”

  MMM. YOU KNOW I HATE POETRY.

  “And, those weapons...on the battlements. They look formidable.”

  PSST. YOU’VE FACED THE BIGGEST, BADDEST ARMIES THIS WORLD HAS THROWN AT YOU, AND YOU’VE ALWAYS COME THROUGH. SO THEY’VE GOT SOME PEA SHOOTERS. IT’S NOTHING YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE. I MEAN, Y’KNOW...PROBABLY.

  Ejelano looked behind him. He’d put enough distance between himself and the White that he couldn’t see it anymore, but he could feel it in the distance, steadily and surely eating its way toward him.

  YEAH. I WAS ABOUT TO SAY...CAN WE MOVE THIS ALONG A LITTLE FASTER?

  Ejelano nodded. Facing forward again, he took a step off the cliff. The wind whistled in his hair on the way down, and the ground rushed up at him. Any but him would fear the plummet to the bottom. For any but him, it would be lethal.

  His feet hit the ground and his abnormally powerful legs retracted, absorbing the blasting impact easily. The ground shuddered and gave way, and he sank into it up to his hips. The earth cracked, and dust filled the air around him until he was obscured by the cloud.

  Without so much as a pause to recover, he stepped out of the small crater and emerged from the dirt and dust at a sprint, the wisps of it coiling in the vacuum of his passing. His eyes were on the open gate, his mind on the hunt waiting for him, inside the walls.

  * * *

  Chapter 20 – Samuel

  Two levels above him, the four sleeping generators woke from their cold, silent slumber not with a rumble, but with a steady hum. Electricity, constantly produced by highly efficient photovoltaic panels bolted to the exterior skin of the Dome, lanced through power cables and hit the heart of the generators like a defibrillator, shocking them fully to life. All at once a torrent of surplus power flooded into the automated electrical grid of the Spire, which immediately adjusted according to its programming and removed all restrictions on power flow, imposed for so long to ensure the survival of the essential systems. The floodgates opened, and power levels soared to near-one-hundred-percent levels. The Spire gulped at the surge thirstily, and the effect was immediate.

  The interior lights flared to more than twice their usual illumination. Gone was the flickering...the dimness. The denizens of the Dome and connecting habmods blinked in wonder and stared about as their world brightened.

  Automated diagnostics kicked in and “took the temperature” of the Spire, looking for infirmities in the system. It compiled a list of non-functional systems, including those damaged or des
troyed in the explosions—water plant, environmental, structural, and most importantly, the critical hydroponic farms—and immediately dispatched service drones...robotic handymen...to initiate repair by descending priority.

  Water heating units in the second sub-level sparked to life. Once they filled up with thousands of gallons of water and brought it up to an optimal temperature, it would be available to the people through the plumbing, and for the first time in forever they might put down the cold, wet rags they used to wash themselves and enjoy a warm bath.

  Refrigeration and freezer units turned on in the Dome, affording the people the ability to extend the preservation of their food supply from mere weeks, to months.

  And so on it went. System after system filled up with power, returning to the people the promise of a quality of life they had never before seen in their lifetimes, or in their most indulgent dreams.

  ***

  As the screen before him lit up green all throughout the facility, Samuel couldn’t help but feel an immense sense of accomplishment, both for himself and for the people on his team that had broken their backs to make the moment possible. He wished he could see their faces...wished they had the time to celebrate. He hoped that moment would come, but in the meantime, he had more to do.

  He navigated back to the root menu of the system, and chose SECURITY, the option that seemed to make the most sense.

  He was presented with yet another menu:

  GATE CONTROLS

  SECURITY LOCKS

  CANOPY SHIELD

  BALLISTICS

  Holy crap.

  He never would have dreamed that they would ever have access to the defensive abilities of the Spire, but now here they were, arranged in front of him, ready to be utilized at his convenience. The four extra generators had assured him of their use.

  He decided to start from the top.

  He touched GATE CONTROLS and was presented, as he’d hoped, with an option to close the main gates of the outer wall. He wasted no time in doing so.