Home Planet: Arcadia (Part 3)

by Sedgwick, T. J.

  “It was the tragic mistake to end all tragic mistakes. The Near-Earth Space Object Network was operational years before and the diversion methods proven… provided they detected it early enough. If it was something big and coming right for us, then early meant years in advance. Not a problem—they could track objects a decade or more before impact. The 55-Vogel asteroid was both big and headed straight for Earth.”

  “So what happened?” I said, impatiently.

  “Okay, before we get to that there’s something else I must explain. The automated mining operations in the asteroid belt were bringing in billions for the companies operating there. Precious resources fetched high prices once they’d selected the right rocks and sent them to Earth. They fired them on intercept trajectories with the receiving stations at the L2 Lagrange point. There they were processed and the refined metals picked up by shuttle. Massive capital expense to set up, but virtually no staff. With free raw materials and a booming commodities market, the returns were huge. So were the risks. AI routines planned the intercept trajectories and scheduled asteroid arrivals to maximize processing capacity. Except something went wrong.”

  “Which was what exactly?”

  I knew something of this operation from before the Juno mission. I didn’t think they’d processed such large rocks—more like forty-feet across, not four miles.

  “Well, as you can imagine, there had to be some way for NESON to ignore all of these hundreds of commercial asteroids. And there was. The AI tagged them as harmless and so long as they looked like they were headed for a receiving station, NESON wouldn’t question it. And that’s what happened until it got eight-months out. That’s when someone checked the radar images manually and realized it wasn’t a harmless commercial payload.”

  So that was what killed my family and the vast majority of life on Earth? A big mistake. I couldn’t begin to describe how that made me feel. What must Mom and Nikki’s lives had been like in those last desperate months? Societal breakdown, riots, collapse of the economy and food production. Eight months as the space rock grew exponentially larger in the sky, like a constant reminder of their impending doom.

  “Didn’t they try to stop it?”

  “Sure, they threw everything they had at it, but it was too little, too late. The signal to recall the Juno Ark was sent at the end of 2074 in the knowledge it’d arrive back years after the asteroid hit in 2075. Your ship didn’t arrive back until 2083. It seemed there’d been some disagreement about whether to go back or not. Some wanted to, other didn’t.”

  “Wait, how do you know all this? And why aren’t you surprised to see us?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I am surprised to see you. What we’re not surprised about it the fact you and the Juno exist. You’re not the first to arrive from the ship, merely the most recent … by far the most recent.”

  “So you’re saying other survivors made it here?”

  “Oh yes. More than one hundred. But they arrived five centuries ago, Dan. Many of us are descendants of the Juno Ark survivors.”

  “So why’d you just leave us up there?” I said, incredulously. “Why didn’t you come to the Juno? The resources and tech on board alone would’ve made it worthwhile. People I cared about died up there because you just left us. If we’d been woken from stasis sooner people like Kate Alves would still be alive.”

  I’d gotten worked up and it showed.

  “I understand your point, Dan, but we have no means of getting into space. We can hardly fuel a couple of propeller planes, let alone a space rocket. Sure, we have technology, but not the industrial-scale infrastructure needed for a space program. All of our Juno descendants arrived by lifepod and as you probably know, that’s a one-way ticket to Earth.”

  “Right, sorry, it’s been an emotional time, Aulani.”

  “It’s okay, I understand.”

  “So did all of your history originate from survivor accounts?” said the precise voice of Laetitia.

  “I guess you could say that. Look, maybe it’s best if I show you around Koko Crater.”

  I didn’t know what she meant exactly and got the feeling I hadn’t yet heard the full story.

  “Well, I guess this is home for a while, so if you’ll be the tour guide we’ll be the tourists.”

  “Good, let’s go,” she said before Laetitia led the way to the shuttle door.

  3

  The throngs of locals had thinned by the time we left the shuttle. The ones that remained looked on as though we were celebrities, some trailing us to see where we were going. I nodded and smiled, saying hi to a few of them as we neared the giant dome’s entrance.

  “It’s okay,” said Aulani. “They’ll get bored after a while.”

  The sliding doors were glass and I could already see that inside the dome was very different to the world outside. The gravel trail continued to the threshold where it continued as a well-worn concrete path that wound its way into the dome complex. We entered the space between the outer and inner sets of sliding doors and then passed through to the dome-proper. The balmy temperature registered immediately, as did the profusion of subtropical trees, flowers and shrubs that seemed to nestle in all over. Straight ahead was a flat grassy lawn with kids playing in tee-shirts and shorts. Several trees and some wooden playground equipment furnished the green. Surrounding it on three sides were three-story apartment blocks. Their simple architecture—really just big cuboids—was enhanced by their rustic construction of exposed log frames and roughly-cut volcanic blocks. But they had small balconies and glass windows—no mean feat in a post-apocalyptic world, I guessed. White, diffuse light filled the cavernous space below the domes. Either side of the apartments ahead were more of the same right up to—and maybe into—the crater rim. I could see that the domes, deeper in the crater were not separate, but joined their counterparts in midair to form one large covered space. Further in, taller buildings crowded the city skyline.

  We followed Aulani to the grass-covered playground.

  “Why the domes, Aulani?” I said.

  “Oh we didn’t always have the domes, but don’t you think it’s a beautiful place to live?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure looks like it. Beats Valdus’s grubby little city any day.”

  “This is the closest we can get to an ideal environment. A place of community, low crime, low running costs with wonderful greenery all year around. And once you’ve seen outside in winter, you’ll know why. A long time ago, we used to live in standalone shacks and the like, but then a hundred years back they covered the crater with a flat, tarpaulin-like roof. It didn’t last a week under the weight of snow and it collapsed on the houses below killing quite a few people.”

  I looked up and marveled at the ingenuity of it. The high vaulted roof was held up by a spindly-looking network of arches and cross braces, most of it following the curve of the dome underside. The domes themselves were comprised of double-skinned hexagons and pentagons.

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Hundreds of thermal-plastic cells—keeps in the heat nicely.”

  “What is the source of that energy?” said Laetitia.

  Aulani smiled.

  “Did you see the steam rising from behind the ridge on your way in?”

  “Yes, we observed that,” said Laetitia.

  “Well, that was the geothermal power plant. And maybe you saw the rig too?”

  “Yeah, I wondered what that was,” I said.

  “That rig shoots and maintains the geothermal wells which power the plant.”

  “Wait a second, don’t you mean drills the wells?”

  “No, shoots. It uses geo-gun technology, firing a succession of heavy metal slugs into the ground. It vaporizes and melts the rock forming a solid borehole wall so the next slug can shoot deeper still until it reaches the right depth. Then we perforate the thermal reservoir and run our completion tubing before tying it in. We don’t need many wells nowadays, although every so often we shoot one when the rock c
ools. The plant provides all of our heating and electricity needs. The geo-gun was an old twenty-first century design—getting it working is one of our greatest technological achievements.”

  “I’d say,” I said, almost in disbelief. “But power plants and well construction equipment—that’s all pretty specialized stuff. I can’t imagine someone conveniently left a whole lot of that equipment here, safe from the apocalypse. Same with the dome structures. How did you guys make all this stuff?”

  She chuckled and turned to walk, beckoning us to follow.

  “Please, follow me and all will be revealed.”

  She led us through a small city’s worth of pedestrian walkways flanked by flowers and trees, grassy strips and apartment blocks. People in light clothing said hello and some waved from their balconies. We passed another quadrangle green with a large hot spring in the center, people relaxing and enjoying a drink there. The vibe was of a friendly place full of contented people. I was sure they had their problems too, but I’d never imagined a place like this existed. Hell, it was better than twenty-first century LA. At least there was no traffic.

  We entered a paved plaza complete with a central fountain surrounded by benches. It reminded me of the kind of square you’d have found in a Mediterranean town. Now those same places were probably beneath hundreds of feet of ice.

  “Ahead of us is the town hall and police station. That’s Valdus’s current abode—in the police cells. In fact, all of the central civic functions are here. To the right are the school and practical college. Over there, left is the medical center. Behind are some of the other council buildings. Come on, let me show you the good stuff.”

  “All of this is good stuff as far as I’m concerned,” I said shaking my head in admiration of what they’d achieved.

  I guessed they’d had five hundred years, but I still couldn’t help comparing it to Angels Station. Not much different from twenty-first century Earth—some countries seemed to get things mostly right, others mostly wrong.

  “You think Reichs’d like it here? Hey, maybe he’ll forget all about wanting to go to Aura,” I said as Aulani led the pair of us past the town hall and past more apartment blocks.

  “I will ask Arnie, but I do not think he will like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Koko Crater seems too egalitarian for him. He likes to achieve superiority over other humans.”

  “Does he now?” I said, slightly taken aback by her candidness, although unsurprised.

  “Yes, Mr. Luker, he does. That’s the way he is.”

  “Who’s Arnie? Is that Mr. Reichs,” Aulani asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He is in orbit on the Juno Ark.”

  “Is he coming down to join us?”

  “I do not know, Ms. Ito.”

  “Okay…”

  We walked in silence as a group of young boys came barreling past with a soccer ball.

  Glad to see the game’s still alive, I thought.

  We reached the southwest corner and I gazed up at the steep rim wall, which rose precipitously above the buildings at its base. Like a modern-day Petra, they seemed to extend back into the base of the rim. We stopped on the wide strip of lawn running between the plaza opposite a five-story block. It looked nothing like the log frame and basalt block construction of the other buildings. It may have been around a hundred feet high, but in breadth it was more like a hundred. And unlike the cruder, artisanal structures everywhere else, this one had a distinct twenty-first century look about it. The entire façade was glass, complete with exposed steel girders and a glass canopy above the entrance. And on the façade, above the entrance were three words I couldn’t take my eyes off of, three words I’d seen before: Silicon Life Works.

  I just stood and stared. For a few moments, the outside world receded and the vision of Juliet sitting by the pool in Hawaii came to my mind’s eye. From the distance came a voice.

  “Err, Dan? Earth to Dan, ” said Aulani, with a measure of mirth.

  “Oh… sorry, I was just…”

  “Daydreaming? So, as I was saying to your beautiful friend, this is our technology center and home to our two 3D fabricators.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah… fabricators.”

  Laetitia looked at me with mild concern while Aulani chuckled.

  “You asked how we made specialized gear for the power plant, wells and the domes. Well, that’s what’s in here—the 3D fabricators. Maybe you’ll be more impressed when I show you.”

  The glass doors to the Silicon Life Works lobby parted and out walked a familiar face. Kale Patton, Justice Councilor, wearing tan slacks and a shirt, beamed us a smile, joining us. The big guy offered his handshake again.

  “See Aulani’s still doing her tour guide thing,” he said, grinning.

  “Nearly done,” she said. “But Dan here looks like he’s seen a ghost.”

  “Yeah, that’d be somewhat accurate.”

  They waited, staring at me for further explanation.

  “This place,” I said, nodding toward the glass and steel facility, “What do you know about its history?”

  “It’s been here since before the apocalypse, Dan,” said Patton. “The crater shielded it from the worst of what happened—but not everything. It was only with the advent of the fabricators a century ago that it was completely repaired. What do you know of its history, Dan?”

  “This is gonna sound strange, but my fiancée was founder and CEO of Silicon Life Works.”

  A paused followed as Aulani and Patton looked at each other then back at me.

  “Wow,” said Aulani.

  Patton gazed at me searching for artifice or humor but found none.

  “I’ll have to second that, Aulani. Wow,” he whispered, breaking into a smile. “Our very own time travelers. I believed you when I saw the shuttle—about coming from the Juno. There’s no civilization on Earth that could put together a shuttle like that, even us. If there was we’d have heard from them. And now you say your fiancée set up this facility?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “What was her name?” said Aulani, perhaps as a test.

  “Juliet.”

  Aulani looked up at Patton and he returned her gaze before they both turned back to me.

  “Kale, I think you should show them the Hive,” said Aulani.

  “I would like to see the fabricators,” said Laetitia firmly.

  “Okay, no problem. I’ll take you. Dan can follow Kale. How about that?” suggested Aulani.

  “An excellent arrangement, Ms. Ito,” said Laetitia.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to the north entrance,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll catch up later, Dan.”

  I shook the tiny woman’s delicate hand and watched her lead the tall athletic form of Laetitia to see the fabricators. I knew exactly why. Reichs had sent her in search of anything that’d get the Juno Ark working. I had no idea whether the ship’s fabricators worked, but if they could make parts here and fly them up then that could be of interest. As for me, I couldn’t decide what I wanted until I’d seen this Hive. I’d never heard Juliet refer to such a place, so I didn’t know what to expect.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Patton, watching me watch Laetitia and Aulani. “Don’t worry, she’s in safe hands.”

  “Oh, Laetitia knows how to take care of herself,” I said.

  We started walking toward the front entrance.

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute.”

  We walked in silence before Patton said, “Looks like she can take a bullet too.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, judging from the holes in her catsuit. They’re three pretty perfect holes, just the right size. Unless you’re gonna tell me moths like eating synthetic fiber these days. What was it a vest?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So why doesn’t she breathe, Dan?”

  “You’re a sharp guy, Kale. You’d make a good cop.”

>   “I was a cop, then chief, now Justice Councilor and I know what an android looks like even if I’ve never seen one in the flesh, so to speak.”

  “Is it gonna be a problem?”

  “No, as long as she behaves herself. We can’t take any chances here—this place is one of a kind.”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said, vouching for her.

  Now Reichs is a different matter, I thought but didn’t say. I’ll let him decide for himself if they should ever meet.

  We reached the lobby where a reception desk stood to the left and a few potted plants and some contemporary landscape paintings made the otherwise plain white space more welcoming. Patton nodded to the young auburn-haired woman behind the desk who, of course, knew him. With ten thousand across the entire island chain, everyone knew everyone. She returned my smile as we made eye contact. Beautiful green eyes. Mid-twenties, I guessed.

  “Dan, if you can just wait here a minute,” said Patton. “I need to set something up. Won’t be long.”

  Fine by me, I thought.

  “Sure, I’ll just wait here,” I said happily.

  “Oh, and Dan,” he said while leaving. “This is Talia Zoska … one of our future leaders.”

  He disappeared around the corner and I turned to shake Talia’s soft, delicate hand. Not small, not a shovel, proportionate with her slim, athletic build and medium height.

  “Future leader huh?” I said, smiling.

  She blushed, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Very pretty woman.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. We’ll see. What about you, Dan? What brings you here today?”

  “Patton hasn’t said. Sounds like he has some sort of surprise for me. A good one I hope.”

  If Patton was gone more than a minute, I wouldn’t be complaining.

  “So what do you do, Talia? And why do they have you behind reception? Is that what they do with all their future leaders?”

  She maintained eye contact, smiled, pausing for a while before she spoke as if momentarily lost for words. I had the distinct impression she was flirting. Worse things had happened to me. I smiled back, said nothing.

  “Right … what do I do?” she said, looking up. “They call it The Leadership Talent Pipeline. Once you graduate from college—”