Chamberlain's Folly (The Terra Nova Chronicles)

by Robert Dean Hall

  “When you told me you would help me get the information I needed,” Gupta asked the feline. “Were you sincere? Is there something your people need from us you are willing to bargain for?”

  Calf Stealer laughed.

  “Do you think there are promises your government could make to us they haven’t already,” he asked. He stood up to stretch and looked around.

  “This place brings back quite a few memories,” he said. “I should tell you why some time, but not now. It’s a long story and we have to meet with Azir in a few hours.”

  The feline yawned and sat back down. He frowned when he saw Gupta was still awaiting an answer to his question.

  “What I said was I would help you find the truth,” Calf Stealer said. “You clearly have only a small part of it – if you actually have any at all.”

  “It would be helpful to me Colonel Calf Stealer, if you and Azir could both tell me everything you know of Chamberlain and those who came with him,” Gupta said, uncharacteristically humbly.

  “I can’t speak for Azir,” Calf Stealer replied. “But, I am sure if you tell him you want only the truth and you don’t care whether the truth furthers your cause or not, he will be glad to share everything he knows to be factual.”

  He reached out and grabbed Gupta by the shoulder with his left hand and extended his right hand in a gesture that meant he wanted to shake on it.

  Gupta offered his own hand.

  “And, I promise you, Vijay,” Calf Stealer said as he took the general’s hand. “If you are certain you are ready for the truth, I will tell you everything I know about what has gone on here since the Ark arrived.”

  Gupta’s reception of the handshake was tentative.

  Calf Stealer looked him in the eye and smiled to assure him he would keep his word.

  He then said, “And if you prefer, you may call me Alphie.”

  Chapter 10

  7-October-2409

  The Historian watched as Emily took the note written by Captain Mahzarhi and put it in the paper shredder.

  “Now,” he requested of her. “Please take all the shreds from the pail and throw them into the fireplace.”

  Emily did as she was asked.

  The added paper caused the small wood fire to flare.

  Emily grabbed a piece of wood from the crate sitting next to the hearth and threw it on top. Once she was done tending the fire, she walked back over to her grandfather and kissed him on the cheek. Then, she dismissed herself.

  “I’m going to the cafeteria for dinner,” she told him. “I’ll bring you something later, if you like.”

  “No thank you,” he said. “I’m not hungry at the moment.”

  As Emily walked to the door to let herself out, the Historian spoke softly.

  “Cadet Zheng,” he said. “I must ask you not to speak to anyone about what you’ve seen this evening.”

  “Understood, Colonel,” she replied

  “Emily,” Zheng continued, in a much more earnest tone. “I regret involving you and Zora in this. Mahzarhi and I debated the issue quite a bit and this was the only way. We won’t ask you to pass anything else through private parcel. You probably won’t understand just how important this truly is for quite some time and I cannot tell you everything I know. At least not yet.”

  “I understand, Grandpa,” Emily replied with a huge smile on her face. She opened the door to walk out, hesitated and turned around. “Good luck with this endeavor, Colonel Zheng,” she said, then lifted her right hand to her brow and saluted him.

  He smiled at her and joked, “You know you should never salute a superior officer in an unsecured area, don’t you?” He returned her salute.

  “Did you mean to say, ‘superior,’ instead of ‘higher ranking’,” she asked, not missing a beat.

  Zheng looked stern, but inside he fought the urge to laugh.

  “Love you, Grandpa,” Emily said as she closed the door.

  Once Emily was gone, Zheng got up from his chair.

  “Let’s see if anybody is tuned in,” he whispered to himself.

  There were listening devices planted around Zheng’s office he suspected were put there by the Bureau, but they were not always active. Most of the devices were found quite easily and Zheng decided it would be a mistake to disable them or even let on he knew they were there.

  Nobody from the Bureau or any other organization in the Central Government had approached Zheng about anything said in his office in the ten or more years since he’d discovered them. He also found they were inactive most of the time and the pattern of activity was so inconsistent he doubted he was under any real scrutiny.

  Since most of the devices were discovered with little effort, he made the assumption they had been installed with the intention of intimidating him into ending his public criticism of the Central Government’s policy of revising history to suit its political agenda.

  Zheng walked around the room for a minute or two, closing the blinds and inspecting the planted devices with a hyper-link detector of his own design. Once he was satisfied that none were active he sat down at his desk.

  The Bureau knew that Mahzarhi was removing items from the mothballed and derelict battleships being studied and sending them to Zheng. But, just how much was being removed was not known. They had allowed it to go on so far, because Zheng was able to come up with nuggets of information from abandoned pieces of technology the experts in the Bureau had given up on. Of course, Zheng always made sure the items found their way back into the archive inventories as soon as he was done, accompanied by a full report of what was found, in most cases.

  Zheng picked up the tablet and reached for a memory card. Captain Mahzarhi had painted a small dot on one of the cards, to draw Zheng’s attention to it. Zheng grabbed that one first. He placed it in the master slot of the tablet and pressed the mechanical on/off switch. The screen lit up and asked for a password.

  Zheng and Mahzarhi had devised a password algorithm that nobody at the Bureau had yet broken. It was based on the Zunnuki religious calendar dates closest to any correspondence that Mahzarhi and Zheng passed back and forth. He tapped in the password. A menu appeared on the tablet’s screen in 22nd century English.

  Zheng chose a menu item named Personal Files. He knew he should look there first from the greeting in the note that Mahzarhi included with the package. He tapped on the submenu item marked Security Camera Captures and waited for the screen to change to a video viewer.

  The video started with four views of an office from different angles. One from over the door, one from above and behind the main desk, a fish-eye view from the center of the office looking down that covered the whole room; and a final view that took in the main desk and the chairs in front of it.

  The name, Petrakis, Taliyah, appeared in a white box in the upper left corner of the screen. The time code at the bottom of the screen when the playback started was 21610105T065417+0100.

  “Hello? What’s this,” the Historian asked himself as he noticed the name in the box and took a closer look at the time code. He paused the playback and once again swept the room checking the supposedly hidden listening devices.

  When he was satisfied he wasn’t being listened in on or watched, the Historian restarted the playback of the security video on the tablet.

  The office door on the screen opened and in walked a young woman in a business suit. She carried a rather large briefcase. She walked behind the desk and set the case down next to her chair. She looked as if she were under a great amount of stress.

  She tapped the middle of the desk and a virtual keyboard appeared in the glass top along with a viewport. The viewport filled up with an official seal. The Historian recognized it as the seal of Earth’s short-lived first attempt at a strong world government.

  The viewport unexpectedly went blank for a second or two and when it lit back up, the seal was replaced with the logo of Chamberlain World-Wide Industries. An audio alert sounded from the speakers that were also built into t
he glass top of the desk.

  The alert startled the woman, who quickly sat straight up and looked at the viewport. She tapped the keyboard to halt the alarm and hit an intercom button.

  “Mills,” she yelled. “It’s happening again.”

  On August 17, 2160, when the Ark left orbit, the world government moved quickly to confiscate all the Chamberlain conglomerates’ holdings. International Police Force detectives forced their way into the corporate offices in Chicago and Atlanta. They removed every data card and memory core from every computer, tablet and server they could find.

  Before they could isolate the enterprise network from the Global Data Sharing cloud, a hidden server launched a ‘data storm’. It closed down just about all communication within the continental United States, Canada and Mexico for a period of three hours and fifteen minutes then just stopped.

  It wasn’t until a few days after the incident that people realized Chamberlain had used the data storm to disguise the release of malicious code into the wild. It didn’t make a lot of sense to the public at large, however, because the code caused no problems, other than minor nuisances. It didn’t resist any attempts to eradicate it from any computers it infected and, after a period of ten days, it all but disappeared.

  Along with the code, a mysterious message appeared in every email inbox in the world. The message had no originating address and could not be traced to any email server known to exist. The message was an apology to the world from Chamberlain and those who accompanied him. It also contained a promise that Chamberlain and his accomplices would make things up to the human race, soon.

  Then, on the first day of January, 2161, the computers of the Consolidated Earth Government’s Executive Council offices started to act strangely. Random desktop and tablet computing devices would display the Chamberlain logo for a few minutes during which the computer would be unusable. As soon as the computer was removed from the CEG network, the logo would be replaced by an apology for the inconvenience and no trace of malicious code would be found on the computer or within the confines of the network.

  “I will be right in, Madame Chairman,” boomed a reply from the intercom.

  “Thank you, Mills. And please don’t call me ‘Madame’,” the woman replied. “You’re old enough to be my father…”

  The door opened and a middle-aged man dressed in a dark business suit walked through with a frown on his face. He had the appearance and demeanor of a member of the secret service until the door closed and the practiced authoritarian glower on his face turned to one that was less severe, but more emotive.

  “Older brother, you mean,” he said. “And, I only look this old because I’ve aged forty years in the last twenty, watching over you, Madame.”

  “Mills,” she said again, looking impatient.

  “Okay,” he replied. “What should I call you that would satisfy your desire not to be made to feel old before your time but would still convey the respect due the position you hold?”

  An impish look came over her as she asked, “Would you be comfortable with Princess Tali?”

  Mills looked back at her. His unyielding scowl told her that he was not amused. “If I remember correctly,” he said. “On the occasion of your thirteenth birthday you asked me not to call you that ever again because it made you sound like a child. Is there no pleasing you?”

  “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” Petrakis finally said after thinking it over.

  She watched as Mills sat at her desk and made an attempt to isolate the malicious code infecting her computer. He tried to log on using administrative credentials and the screen abruptly changed.

  Instead of the apology that usually came up, a box appeared in the middle of the screen that said, “Please stand by. An important message is waiting.”

  A female voice eminated from the speakers built into the computer desktop.

  “Are you Chairwoman Taliyah Petrakis? Please respond by voice,” the computer asked. It paused for five seconds and asked again.

  Petrakis and Mills were shocked and confused by this request and Mills hurriedly plugged in a data card that contained a semi-intelligent anti-malware routine. Once the card hit the slot, the female voice changed to that of John Edward Chamberlain.

  “Madame Petrakis,” it said. “I have an important message for you. If that is truly you, please identify yourself.”

  Petrakis and Mills looked at one another, wondering what to do next when the voice spoke again.

  “If you like,” the voice said. “I will disconnect from your workstation and allow the anti-malware script to run. We can pick this conversation up afterward.”

  The two looked at each other once more with expressions of puzzled amusement.

  Mills shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s your call. What could it hurt?”

  “This is Taliyah Petrakis,” the chairwoman said.

  Another box appeared on the viewport. This one was a handprint scanner input. The computer prompted for her to place her hand in the box.

  She moved her hand to comply and Mills quickly grabbed it.

  “Wait,” he told her in a barely audible whisper.

  She nodded and then looked at him for instructions on what to do next.

  He pulled his personal tablet out of an inside jacket pocket. He tapped a few keys and opened up a text only communication channel to the building’s data security team and apprised them of what was happening. After a few seconds a message came back telling him they were ready and he motioned for Petrakis to comply with the request for hand printing.

  She placed her hand in the box and initiated the scan. The screen went blank and the data security team texted Mills to tell him the computer had just disappeared from the network. After a few seconds the viewport became active again. A computer-generated likeness of Chamberlain appeared and asked if Petrakis was alone.

  “Yes,” Petrakis answered. “I’m by myself.”

  In a split second, the desktop camera activated and a reply came from the speakers.

  “I have detected the presence of your bodyguard in the room, Madame Chairwoman,” it said. “If you are comfortable with him hearing information you and I discussed during the latest World Economic Summit in Geneva, he may stay.”

  Mills glanced at her and she started to look uncomfortable.

  Petrakis knew that Mills would not talk about anything he overheard with anyone, even under threat of death. But, everything that went on in her office was recorded for security reasons and he did not have the necessary clearances.

  He indicated again it was her call and she motioned him toward the door. He complied without hesitation.

  Once he was outside the door, she said with a shaky voice, “Okay. Mills is gone.”

  The computer generated image of Chamberlain disappeared and the viewport went dark. The computer shut down and went through a restart sequence and when the viewport brightened again there was another image of Chamberlain, only this one was not computer generated.

  “Madame Chairman, “Chamberlain said. “This is a pre-recorded message. If you are viewing this, my greenhouse has left orbit and if it worked according to specs, a crew of scientifically selected colonists and I are on our way to a new solar system to settle and live out our lives as we see fit. I hope the CEG hasn’t spoken too unkindly of us since our departure, but I am not counting on it.”

  Chamberlain’s countenance softened.

  “Tali,” he continued. “I’m happy you are viewing this, because it means you are still Chairwoman…”

  “No thanks to you, John,” Petrakis said with an uncomfortable laugh. “What is it you want, now? You got your way.”

  “…and I am sure you still hold the full confidence of the legislature,” Chamberlain continued.

  Petrakis started to feel warm and just a bit ill. Her position was tenuous at best since Chamberlain departed.

  She had dealt with Chamberlain quite often since entering politics at the age of twenty-o
ne to replace her father, who died suddenly, in the CEG senate. She had worked with Chamberlain closely on quite a few economic issues over the years and in all the time she had known him; he had never been one for theatrics.

  He had always been pragmatic in his work to gather the world’s industrialists into a cohesive trade federation and to support the movement of the CEG from its childhood as a treaty organization into a strong legislative and executive body. He never used drama to get his point across when going before the legislature or counseling with the officers in the executive branch.

  However, Chamberlain’s actions over the past half year had everyone, including his closest friends scratching their heads.

  Petrakis was certain that he was about to give her solid scientific evidence that the world was in even worse shape than suspected in the calm, precise manner that nobody else on Earth was capable of assuming when imparting such dire predictions.

  Chamberlain stood up from the desk where he sat when the video message started and walked to a screen on the wall behind him that displayed a plan view of the greenhouse. The title Ark I was visible in the information block at the lower right. He looked back at the camera and continued his talk.

  “I was forced to build the Ark in secret with technology that was almost twenty years old at the time I completed it,” he said. “During the time of its construction and fitting for our mission, my scientists and engineers continued to work on technologies that were kept black for obvious reasons. We worked not only for the CEG, but national governments.”

  “I’m not proud of the fact I profited from the research we did for these agencies, mostly because I knew they didn’t intend to share this valuable science openly with humanity. But, in order to get the funding, clearances and manpower I needed to finish the Ark, I had to do things I found distasteful.”

  “We were able to adapt some of that technology for the Ark, but we couldn’t use most of it, including newer propulsion systems, because we were committed to the original design and such changes were not practical or could not be easily hidden from prying eyes.”