“Who does the farming?” Stewart asked.
“I bet I can answer that one”—Ashlyn said—“I’ve seen rotations of marines and sailors leaving the barracks everyday to go somewhere.”
“There isn’t much else for them to do down here, beyond growing food”—Kathleen confirmed—“there are animal farms too.”
“It’s no wonder the admiral wants to take the whole place back in time with him no matter when we end up,” Stewart said somberly.
“Hey”—Mark tried to elevate the mood—“we might all get healthier if we hang around here long enough.”
“What about power generation”—Ashlyn wondered aloud—“and fresh water?”
“It’s all automatic.” Kathleen was a wellspring of information.
“How?” Stewart asked.
“Yet another gift from the Atlanteans that we don’t yet understand.”
“I’m sure the water comes from the sea and is processed somehow”—Mark suggested—“I bet the Atlanteans wouldn’t have left it intact if they had known that someday a tyrannical maniac would take it over.”
“You really should be quieter when you say things like that”—Ashlyn scowled at him—“we still don’t know if the admiral has any places monitored.”
“Oh, I don’t think I need to worry about it”—Mark stretched his back—“I think he would take it as a compliment.”
No one responded to that but their expressions showed that they all agreed.
“Mark”—Kathleen asked—“have you had any ideas about how to stop the admiral?”
“I have one”—he hesitated—“but it’s too difficult to explain; and, unfortunately, if I don’t come up with a better idea, I will have to wait to implement it until right before he flips the switch.”
Ashlyn gave him a meaningful look. I don’t want to miss a single moment with him. She didn’t know what he was planning, but she could tell from his expression, each time they talked that it wasn’t going to be very safe for him.
***
A couple of months had passed. Ashlyn sat quietly on the edge of the bed, staring blindly out the darkened window.
Thankfully, the admiral had seen fit to give her and Mark slightly larger accommodations, as a wedding gift. The admiral appeared to believe they were actually working with him. Asking him to marry them had only added to his delusions.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Mark said softly as he climbed on the bed behind her and wrapped her in his arms.
She didn’t respond for a moment, and then finally asked, “Do you believe in the Bible?”
He furrowed his brow in thought. “I’m not sure, why?”
“I read it once,” she answered softly.
“The whole thing?”
“Yeah, I was curious.”
He waited for her to say more, but when she didn’t he asked, “What did you decide?”
“I didn’t decide anything”—she leaned back more tightly into his arms—“I love you Mark.”
“I love you too Mrs. Turner.”
“I still can’t get used to that”—she laughed—“it sounds strange.”
He kissed the back of her neck suggestively. “I like it,” then he kissed her hair.
She wasn’t particularly responsive. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry”—she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding—“I’m still caught up in that thought about the Bible. The Book of Revelation is full of prophecies of doom and gloom about the end of the world. It talks about a star falling from heaven and burning a third part of the Earth, and hailstones mingled with fire, Earthquakes, plagues, pestilence, just about every kind of disaster.”
“Sounds scary.”
“What if it’s happening?”
“I don’t think it mentioned anything about a time machine or black holes.”
“No. That’s true. Still …a line in it keeps going through my head ever since we heard that report about that island moving. Remember?”
“Actually you heard it; it was in a foreign language.”
“Oh yeah, but the admiral repeated it.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Atlantis moved, so why not an island; besides who knows what to believe anymore?”
He had no answer for her.
“It says every mountain and every island were moved out of their places.”
He didn’t say anything, he just held her.
Chapter 18
Chance favors only the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur
~
A Japanese man stood patiently on his trawling boat just off the coast of Ishikawa, Japan. He and several of his workers were waiting for the winch to finish pulling in the day’s last net of fish. It was hard work, and now even harder because of the jellyfish problem. It was dark, but the sky lit up and he heard a sound like a rocket engine. He turned toward it and saw a large flaming fireball shooting through the evening sky.
The asteroid had been a small one on an astronomical scale, but large enough to cause wide-scale devastation as it plunged through the water and hit the ocean floor in the Sea of Japan. There was no tsunami warning, it all happened to fast, only the fire in the sky, followed shortly by a powerful sucking sound as the water pulled away from the coastlines.
The explosive impact of the asteroid into the water created a mega tsunami over two thousand feet high. It traveled out in every direction, hitting all the surrounding coastlines, including Japan, North and South Korea, Russia, and even some lower parts of China.
It traveled inland more than sixty miles in some places with explosive force, and then engulfed large parts of Japan while utterly swallowing North and South Korea before receding. It picked up the trawling boat and carried it on the wave over twenty miles inland where it deposited it in the mountains, just southeast of Tonami-Shi. Surprisingly the men in the trawling boat, though stranded on a mountain peak, all survived, unharmed.
When the asteroid hit the bottom of the sea, it flash-melted large quantities of methane hydrates trapped in the fast ice of the sea floor. It bubbled to the surface and into the atmosphere with eruptive force. The methane gas then mixed with the massive amounts of vaporized seawater, dramatically changing the atmospheric pressure and creating a hurricane-sized storm within hours.
Nebulous, methane clouds circulated among those, which were made of water vapor, and passed over parts of mainland China and Russia. Random bolts of lightning ignited blazing balls of flaming gas, sometimes high in the sky and some low enough to cause harm to the hapless crowds below. Acid rain poured down, mixed with methane hailstones, ice that burned in the air and on the ground.
In the United States and Canada, starvation and disease continued to worsen. Violence and chaos reigned; some people even turned to cannibalism. Flies fed on the bodies of the unburied dead. Everywhere was death, dying, and sorrow. Earthquakes shook the earth with an ever-increasing frequency across the entire continent, making most of the large cities unsafe for human habitation. Constant unseasonable storms of tremendous force plagued the homeless millions who had escaped. Ironically, it was now Mexico trying to keep the American citizens from crossing her borders illegally.
***
The sun had continued sending out gargantuan solar flares, and the solar winds continued pounding against the weakened magnetosphere of the Earth. The plasma burning from the intense radiation in the upper atmosphere caused brilliant light shows all over the planet. The storms continued to build as the heliosphere shockwave poured increasing levels of energy into the equation.
It was the winter solstice. The sun was at its greatest angular distance from the equatorial plane of the Northern Hemisphere, though the term northern had all but lost its meaning. The Earth, which had rested more than five thousand years, had been pulling out of its long, deep slumber. With the sunrise, she fully awakened.
The roiling, river of molten iron under the Earth’s crust was teaming with swirling eddies. Tremendous electrom
agnetic storms, which would have looked like inverted hurricanes had they been visible, exploded all over the planet. Random unseen landfalls left those unfortunate enough to be caught in the whirling squalls trapped in the fourth dimension. Sometimes swirling clouds and mists accompanied the storms, and other times they were invisible.
People randomly vanished, some moved in time, some moved in space, and some were lost entirely. Small islands moved from their long defended homes, unnoticed by the world. Deep underground below Switzerland and France, scientists at the Hadron Collider, undaunted by the protests of citizens, continued their experiments claiming that the knowledge that they might gain could help mitigate the disasters.
The test was today, the starting pistol had fired, and the race had begun. The accelerators pushed particles faster and faster. Now the victory would go to the electron, proton, or neutron that would be the first to reach the speed of light or more. Each lap they would travel was a seventeen mile-long loop. The second race began in the opposite direction. The winners of the first, colliding into the winners of the second, in an atomic conquest to determine what would remain.
***
The night before had been long, and Mark hadn’t slept, unaware that Ashlyn had also lain awake. Stewart and Kathleen had joined them just outside the gate of the Meliorator to wish Mark success on that sunless dawn.
“How will you stop the machine?” Stewart asked, not for the first time.
Mark’s response was the same as always, “It’s too complicated to explain, but it’s dangerous—I don’t think the admiral will let me live. If none of you know anything, he can’t hold you accountable.”
The admiral won’t be alive to hurt you anyway if I’m successful, Mark thought. Of course, I won’t be alive either.
Stewart and Kathleen walked away to give the others privacy.
“Mark”—Ashlyn pled—“tell me what you are going to do.”
They were standing outside the fence. Once he walked through the gate, she would not be allowed to pass. The fence enclosed the Meliorator and the underground cavern where the control room and the inner workings of the machine were housed.
He didn’t answer her as usual. Nevertheless, he could see in her face that she understood that he would not be coming back.
“You aren’t coming back”—her voice broke—“are you?”
He looked down into her beautiful green eyes, barely visible in the darkness of the morning, but didn’t say anything.
“I know the answer”—she begged—“please admit it so that we can at least say goodbye.”
He was shaking slightly from emotion. How can I leave her alone? “I love you Ashlyn”—his voice was hoarse—“how can I possibly say goodbye?”
***
Ashlyn was trying to hold it together for his sake. I can’t allow myself to break down completely. I must be strong for him.
Stewart and Kathleen were there, just out of earshot, waiting to comfort her. Ashlyn thought about how strange it was for the members of the funeral procession, to be standing there while she said good-bye to the one she would most likely never be able to bury.
Mark hid his face against her neck, his body convulsing involuntarily, but no sound came out. She held him, tears streamed down her face, but she was quiet and stood fiercely strong.
I have to let him go. He’s trying to save the world. If it had been anything less than the entirety of humanity at stake, she would not have allowed him to do it at all. Who knows how much damage that crazy lunatic will do if he succeeds—failure could result in a black hole that would swallow the earth.
Mark looked at her, this time not hiding his grief ravaged face. He ran his fingers through her hair, and then he wiped away some of her tears with his hands. His touch was so gentle that she could barely feel it. Then he pulled her to him and kissed her as if he were trying to fit a lifetime of love into the small moment.
When he finally stopped, he said, “You are my life—” his lips brushed hers again “—I’m doing this for you.”
“Mark”—she could barely speak his name—“I love you …I can’t …I mean …You’re doing the right thing.”
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes against the pain. When she opened them again, she took his hand and pressed it to her, guiding it downward.
“I’m having your baby.”
He made an agonized sound, but no words came out.
“I wasn’t going to tell you—” her eyes were still wet from the tears that would not entirely stop “—I thought it might make it harder for you, but I thought you would want to know.”
His heart was clearly breaking. Short sobbing motions throbbed through his body, but he made no sound. His eyes were still moist, but no more tears fell. Then he slid down her body until he was on his knees and kissed her belly. He put his arms around her so that he could pull the baby close—the child he would never know.
She broke down, and sobbed when she saw his anguish and forgot her vow not to cry openly. They grieved together for only a few moments, and then he said he had to go. He looked up at her, then stood back up and pulled her gently to him.
Shaking and broken, the words came out, “Tell him or her…,” he couldn’t finish.
“I’ll tell our child about you”—she said through her tears—“what you did for the world.”
“No—” he shook his head “—tell him …,” his words drifted off, and he had a strange expression on his face. Then he repeated, “Tell him that I loved him that his daddy would never have left if he had a choice. Tell him.”
“Him?”
“He’s a boy Ashlyn, I know he is.”
“How?—” She looked deeply into his eyes “—how do you know?”
He didn’t answer for a moment and then breathed deeply, suddenly seeming more peaceful. “I’m not sure. I really don’t know how I know, but I do. I feel it; I know it. It’s just there, undeniably.”
It sounded strange, coming from him, a scientist who had always had to know the why of everything and have proof.
“All right”—she whispered—“I’ll tell him.”
“One more thing.”
“What is it?”
“I know this will sound silly—” he paused “—take him deep-sea fishing for me.” His words, broken with pain, wouldn’t have made any sense if she hadn’t known his past.
She understood; it was what his dad had always promised him but never did. More importantly, it was what he had always promised his own boys before that fateful day on the ice.
“I will Mark”—she held him close—“I promise.”
“I have to go”—he pulled away gently—“I’m so in love with you.”
He turned and walked toward the entrance to the underground lab.
He had to act as if nothing was wrong, or the admiral would suspect. Mark walked as straight as he could through the darkened gate to what lay beyond.
“I love you,” she whispered again as he walked away, but he could no longer hear her.
Once he was completely out of sight, she sat down on the ground and sobbed. This time she held nothing back.
Stewart and Kathleen closed the distance. They both sat down on the ground with her. He put his arms around her. He had become like a brother to her. Kathleen put her arms around both of them, and though Stewart shed no tears, his pain was obvious. Kathleen hadn’t known them long, but tears ran down her face too.
***
The admiral’s plan required precise timing with the Hadron collider experiment. Meters, monitors, and devices covered with dials and buttons filled the observation room that was now teaming with scientists, workers, and guards. The machine, which was built to carry them all back in time, had been calibrated perfectly.
It was to be powered by a conduit from deep within the Earth. They had cut a downward tunnel that reached almost all the way through the crust of the Earth, just above the mantle several miles below. The energy pulse released by the eddy would be channeled
directly into the machine.
The descending shaft had been cut using a reverse-engineered nanotech drill. The cutting edge of the drill bit, itself made of a similar material to that of the dome, was harder than any material known to man and any break in the bit would simply repair itself. Attached to the boring machine above, the drill, built its own rod as it descended from the very materials through which it was cutting.
Once at the desired depth, the rod, and drill bit would disassemble themselves. Then they would merge with the surrounding indigenous rock, perpetuating a molecular change in the surrounding channel walls. The end-result was an opening one foot in diameter, wrapped in a dielectric or insulating fiber that was four feet in circumference.
At the bottom of the tunnel, was a device that would separate out the microwaves from the intense electromagnetic ejection. The microwaves would then traverse the void and be collected in the machine above. The shaft minimized the disbursement of the electromagnetic energy.
The core of the Meliorator stood at the center of the underground section, the size of a basketball stadium. It had an observation-control room from which they would operate the machine. There was a row of breakers, which all had to be pulled in unison. Several guards stood around watching for any sign of sabotage. The precise calculations had taken months. Once the machine started, there would be no way to stop it without creating a catastrophic chain of events; it was an all or nothing gamble with life.
Mark had considered simply killing the admiral, but ever since he had told them of his plan, he had been accompanied by a contingency of naval guards by day and he stayed inside a heavily guarded fortress by night. Even Ashlyn, with all her stealth and training, was powerless to get to him. The machine had also been under constant guard with a high security fence and alarms. The yard around it looked like a prison, complete with a man in a watchtower armed with a machine gun.
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