AL CLARK (A Sci-Fi Adventure)(Book One)

by Jonathan G. Meyer

  The robots, busy harvesting their crops, ignored the two humans slowly walking down the central aisle. The room, maybe fifty feet tall and two hundred feet long, was a cornucopia of produce.

  “This stuff has been growing for a while, what do you think activated it? Chris asked.

  Al was still taking it all in, his head following the long line of planting beds. Turning to Chris, he said, “I would think the growing of crops wouldn’t start until after we arrived at Avalon, but here it is going full blast. We really need to find out where we are, and exactly how much time has passed.”

  “Look—tomatoes!” Chris exclaimed. He ran the last couple steps and snatched a ripe tomato from the vine. His face lit up when he took a bite, and he said, “Best tomato ever! I’ve been living on packaged food so long; I almost forgot what a fresh tomato tastes like.”

  Towards the center of the farm, on the right side, was a chute labeled Incinerator. Three pinheads were continually loading fruits, vegetables, and plant matter into it; making them disappear somewhere into the belly of the ship.

  Chris asked Al, “Why do you think they are doing that?”

  “No one here to eat it I guess,” replied Al.

  They moved on. When they reached the door at the other end of the aisle, they found it labeled with a more stylistic sign declaring it to be, THE PARK. This sounded promising. Al opened the door, and they walked into a large space, similar to the farm, only here was a perfect replica of a full grown Earth park; at night.

  A park complete with trees, benches, winding paths, and grass. Above them, they saw simulated stars and a full moon. Light from the moon filtered through the entire park and there was a gentle breeze circulating from somewhere that brought with it the scents of Earth, at night—in a well-designed city park.

  The colonists had brought with them a piece of home. A place to come and think, to dream, and to recharge after a day of living on a spaceship. The only missing component were the people. Humans were all it needed to make it complete.

  Almost at the same time, they stepped over to the closest bench and sat down to marvel at their discovery. Chris told Al that this park had a blurb in the brochure. “I read it was here, but I had no idea it would be this nice. You see, the ship is designed using modules,” Chris informed Al, “And the modules could be reconfigured to make up the different sections. The park and the farm are parts of one module and were designed for the first ship. Over the years, the module was improved and refined until they created this state-of-the-art module. A little bit of home away from home. There are fruit trees here: peach, apple, orange, and even pear trees. This park is where they get the fresh fruit for the mess hall.”

  Al asked, “All this for three months? Weren’t they supposed to go down to the planet after they arrived?”

  “They were, but they would have to live on-board until they were able to get down to the planet and the ship would remain in orbit to assist the colonists for years afterward: medical facilities, seed storage, and building materials. All the supplies could remain aboard the ship until needed.”

  “How about shuttles?” inquired Al.

  “I think the brochure said five shuttles, capable of twenty-five passengers each.”

  “So somewhere on this ship is our ticket out of here?”

  Chris grimaced, “Yeah, if we knew how to fly it, and if we’re not a billion miles from nowhere.”

  They talked for a while longer and then got up to wander the park. Strolling down the moonlit path, they passed fruit trees and helped themselves to an apple. At the end of the footpath, they entered the airlock for the next module labeled MEDICAL BAY and HIBERNATION UNIT STORAGE.

  The door opened onto a long hallway, both sides of which made up the medical bay. The lights were on in the hall, but the rooms on both sides were dark and foreboding. There were foggy plastic panels on both sides of the hall, but they helped little in allowing them to see into the medical offices.

  Doors were located on both sides, each with lettering stating their use. They stepped through a door marked Recovery and the lighting quickly increased to expose the interior. Six hospital beds arranged around the room, with medical equipment surrounding each of them, waited for their first patients.

  “I wish I could have woke up here,” Al confided to Chris. “When I woke up, I thought I was having a nightmare.”

  “Me too,” Chris replied. “My mom is here somewhere; I hope she can wake up in one of these beds.”

  “You mother is here?”

  “She’s the one that helped me get aboard. They claimed that the lottery was totally fair, but it does help to know the right people,” Chris proudly informed Al, “She is the senior electrical engineer on this ship.”

  Al put his hand on Chris’s shoulder, smiled and said, “Lucky you. Not everyone has a mother like that. I think the hibernation units are in the next room, let’s see if we can find her.”

  The Hibernation Unit Storage (also known as Hiber-Pod Bay) was dark and quiet. Tiny lights outlined the walkways, with the rest of the room cloaked in shadow. Standing on end, tilted just a little, and resembling tombstones, was a room full of hiber-pods. Row after row of blinking lights indicating the status of each pod, reminding Al of colored fireflies on a summer night.

  They stepped up to the closest pod to get a better look. Instead of a name, there was only the number four. A small glowing window allowed them to see the face of a man, maybe thirty years old, with brown hair, and the slightest of smiles. A foggy mist of coolant flowed around his peaceful sleeping face.

  The pod indicator lights were blinking green, which was a good indication that he was still alive. There was some in this sleeping crowd that were not so lucky. An occasional blinking red light meant some of these people were not okay, and might never see the end of their trip.

  They moved to a pod that had the blinking red lights. Determining if it was a man or a woman was difficult, but whoever it was, they had died a long time ago.

  “We need to find my mother before it’s too late.” Chris was worried and with good reason.

  Al had come to a realization. “There are no names and a lot of pods. We need to know the number assigned each person to find your mother. With the fog in the windows, it might be hard to recognize her. Maybe, if we can find a working computer terminal, we should be able to look it up, or maybe there is a handwritten list stored somewhere for emergencies. Let’s look around and see what we can find.”

  Small offices lined the outer walls of the hiber-pod bay and they systematically searched them. The lights came on when they entered these rooms, and the search progressed quickly.

  In one office Al found a safe with a card reader and a key slot. He tried his card, but nothing happened, and he continued his search. All the computer terminals were off-line or without power; it was impossible to tell which. Working towards the end of the module, they searched all the offices and checked all the cabinets and drawers that were not locked. They found nothing useful and met at the far end at the door to the hangar bay.

  That’s when Al remembered the keys he found in Al Clark’s room.

  “I’ve got keys!” he said. He reached into his pocket, grabbed the keys, and held them up for Chris to see with a big smile on his face.

  “Yeah…so?”

  “Follow me,” Al said. He turned around and headed back to the office that held the safe.

  Chris had fallen a little behind, as Al rushed back, so when he entered the room, Al was trying one of the keys and sliding his card. At first nothing happened, but he tried different keys, and on his third attempt, the safe popped open.

  “I found these keys in the cabinet with my gun and my card.” Al pulled the door open.

  “I’ve never seen keys like that,” Chris said.

  “That might be because they are from way before your time. It makes sense they would use these old keys to add a second layer of security to the access of highly secure areas. They are almost impossible to fin
d and hard to reproduce. If these are Al Clark’s keys, he had a high-security clearance.”

  In the contents of the small safe was a single thin journal. On the cover, in faded lettering, were the words: Hibernation Unit Code List. The journal was old and dry, and they had to handle it with care, but the little book was precisely what they needed.

  ****

  The journal was a back-up for a back-up. A code book that referenced names to numbers was the last line of defense in case the records were lost. It was abbreviated and crude, but it told them what they needed to know. On the left side was a line of numbers starting with one and increasing on down the page. To the right of the numbers was a row of names with the top name being Tobias Effinger. Following the line to the right side of the page was a description; Captain, Commanding Officer, EC-Excaliber.

  Chris’s mother was number twenty-six. Her name was Elizabeth Morris, and she was in pod number twenty-six with her position listed as Chief Electrical Engineer.

  Chris was delighted, and wanted to go and wake her right away, but Al said, “I don’t think it’s that simple. Do you know how to work a hiber-pod?”

  “How hard can it be?” Chris asked.

  Al had doubts, but he told Chris, “All right, let’s go and see.”

  They returned to the hiber-pod bay, and it didn’t take long for Chris to locate his mother’s pod. She was one of the lucky ones. The indicator lights on the outside of the pod were all flashing green. She was a very attractive woman and Al thought her face, through the little window was serene and beautiful. The fog in the pod obscured the details, but he could tell she had long blonde hair like her son, only hers was a little longer. The resemblance to Chris was startling.

  Under the flashing lights on the control panel, was a panel that popped open when pushed on, and inside were gauges, buttons, dials and more lights. One troubling tiny light glowed a steady crimson. There was no button or knob labeled WAKE UP. The hiber-pod systems were complicated, and if done improperly, could kill the person inside. They looked at each other and said almost simultaneously, “We need a manual.”

  They left Chris’s mother to her dreams and headed back to their quarters. Along the way, they each grabbed another piece of fruit from the trees in the park; Al tried an orange, and Chris another apple. They ate them without speaking, each thinking thoughts of their own.

  In their quarters, Chris ate a package from the mess hall, but Al decided he wasn’t hungry. They each opened a bottle of water and sat down at the table to plan their next move.

  “Surely they have manuals somewhere for the hiber-pods—I can’t believe we didn’t find any.” Chris was depressed. His hopes had gone sky high when they found the journal. When they realized they didn’t know how to operate the unit, his hopes were dashed.

  “It seems like you and your mother are close?” asked Al.

  “Yeah, she’s great. She and my dad are both great. I was really lucky to have them for parents.”

  The look on his face turned sad as he told Al of his mother and father, and the decisions they had made regarding the trip to Avalon.

  Chris was the only child of Elizabeth and Thomas Morris. Both successful professionals with the income that accompanies it. He had gone to the best of schools and graduated as valedictorian of his senior class in high school, and with honors out of college. Since then he had started an apprenticeship in advanced ship propulsion and was ready to start his second year when he got the call for the trip to Avalon.

  His mother and father surprised him with a party the night before they left. A party they would never forget—a bittersweet celebration that would be the last occasion they celebrated together. Chris’s father was happy for his wife and son, but did not make the lottery, and had to be left behind.

  His father told him that night, “Sometimes, things don’t go they way you would prefer. I can’t go…but you and your mother must. I will be happy in the knowledge that you two will have a better life.”

  They called Chris to the ship the next day, the day before it left. Arriving early in the morning, he was ushered on-board, and taken directly to the room where his hibernation pod was. The man that helped him into the pod said this spot was supposed to be filled by an experienced propulsion engineer and that he was one, of only two, with spots located outside the hiber-pod bay. He was very fortunate.

  In their rush to get underway, he had missed orientation, and the walk-through that the other passengers received; but he had made it. He was going to Avalon, and his mother was going with him.

  “My mom will know a lot more about the ship…when we wake her.” Chris told Al in between yawns. “Where do you think we should look first for a manual?”

  Al’s answer was, “It just makes sense to me they would store the manuals somewhere in the medical or hiber-pod bays. We probably need to try the keys I have, and see if there are cabinets or drawers that we missed that can be unlocked.”

  They had devised a plan, and with the planning out of the way, they retired to their separate rooms and tried to get some sleep. Visions of what might be made them restless, and kept them from a good nights sleep.

  Chapter Five

  There were no clocks anywhere. Al assumed that the computer terminals were the means for telling time when they were functional, but it felt like it was early in the morning when they woke up and headed to the medical bay to start their search. They had no time for a shower or breakfast.

  There were only four keys, so it didn’t take long for them to try the keys in the locked storage spaces. They searched all the offices, all the cabinets, and all the drawers of the medical bay. In the few cases where the keys worked, they found medical books, hypodermic injectors, some complicated looking meters, and other sensitive medical equipment. The rest required keys they did not have, so they decided to go to the hiber-pod bay and try searching there.

  They found what they were looking for a couple of hours into their search. In a back office was a tall cabinet that the last key Al tried; opened. Isn’t it always the last one? Inside was a stack of thick Hibernation Unit Operational Manuals. Again, they were old and needed to be treated with care, but inside were the procedures they needed to wake Chris’s mother.

  Chris glanced through the manual and was discouraged. “This may take a little longer than I thought.”

  Al agreed and said, “We can do this Chris—but it’s not going to come easy.”

  “Why would they build a machine that is so complicated?” Chris asked.

  “These machines have to maintain a person, in all aspects, for possibly thirty years, with very little power. Actually, it’s a miracle they could build them at all.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Chris admitted.

  They each grabbed a manual and went back to the mess hall to get some lunch while digesting the information contained in the books.

  ****

  The manuals were very extensive and detailed. After they had finished eating a quick lunch, they went back to their quarters to dig in and process the information in the manuals.

  Chris said, “I miss my phone pad a lot. If I had my pad, we could listen to music. I always listened to music when I studied.” To that he added, “Not only that, but we could probably get a step-by-step procedure on how to wake someone from a hibernation pod off the net.”

  Al’s past may escape him, but he was aware of the portable electronic devices used for so many things. “When we wake your mother, I think she might be able to restore the computers. I’m sure they have a music database of some kind, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they had some portable data pads stashed around here somewhere.”

  “That would be great,” admitted Chris, “I’m not sure how much I can learn without music.”

  Reading through the different sections of the manual, a feeling of déjà vu struck Al as he looked through the book. He had heard or read this material before. Sometime in his life, he had been familiar with this book or one like it. T
he more he read, the stronger the feeling became, and in time, he was pretty sure he knew how to revive someone from hibernation. What he didn’t know, was the meaning of the steady red light on Elizabeth’s inner control panel.

  The books they had found were the basic operational manual, written so that any ship member could follow the procedures in all-green-light conditions. The manual stressed the all-green conditions, and emergency procedures were not included. There was nothing on what to do if something went wrong. Falling blood pressure, heart rate, brain function, resuscitation, and so on, could cripple or kill the occupant. There was nothing about the tiny red light in the manuals they had, and it concerned Al.

  “I think we might need a technician,” he told Chris. Your mom’s pod has that red light. Did you find any mention of it?”

  “No, and I’ve looked everywhere,” the young man admitted.

  “Let’s look in the code book,” Al suggested, “And see if we can find a hiber-pod technician that has all green lights on their pod controls. I think I can wake the technician if the lights are all green, and then the technician can wake your mother.”

  Chris did not answer but immediately got up and went to get the code book. He was gone only a minute and came back with a pen, a fresh pad of paper, and the code book.

  He held up the pen and pad, winked at Al and said, “Old tech.”

  Al laughed and shook his head, “I do remember those.”

  Before long, Chris had a list of twelve names; a few officers arranged at the top.

  “This is all there is. I only added the ones that said they were hibernation specialists.”

  Chris handed the list to Al, who took a quick look and said, “This will do nicely. Are you ready to go back?”

  “I can’t wait,” Chris replied with a grin.

  They did not run, but it wasn’t far from it. Arriving at the airlock door that led to the spoke lift, they were ready to open the hatch when Al heard a distant whine coming their way—and it was getting louder. He said, “Hear that?”