“Right. Like the one we used to get to the Central dome.”
Jessica shook her head. “More efficient to connect outer domes using straight lines.”
“That’s true,” acknowledged Larry. “I chose arcs for aesthetic reasons, so that the arrangement would look like a wheel from the air.”
“Hexagons are more interesting,” Jessica said.
“I’m glad you think so, because that’s what we have on the lower level of this shelter—hexagonal chambers connected by straight-line tunnels.”
Jessica raced ahead to her next question: “Where do we get power and heat from?”
“From here.” Larry pointed to the Geo dome. “It sits right on top of a geothermal well.” He explained that the power plant in the dome generated about 2.5 kilowatts, just enough for their electricity needs, while the waste heat from it traveled via insulated ducts to the Central and other domes. “That’s what keeps us warm.”
“Why so many domes?” asked Jessica. “It’d be cheaper and more efficient to have just one.”
“Cheap and efficient, yes. But not fault tolerant. What if we had a fire in one of the domes? This way we could seal it off before it spreads.”
“Why not build the Central dome above the well?” Jessica insisted. “So much heat is wasted piping it to here!”
“True, but again it’s a question of safety versus efficiency. It’s risky living right above the heat source.”
Anna snorted. “Jessica, you’re welcome to live on top of a raging inferno, but I’ll remain here if you don’t mind.” Jessica flushed and seemed about to argue the point further but subsided when her grandmother gently squeezed her arm.
“Well, it’s nearly ten o’clock,” said Larry. “I’ll take you around the facility now. Our final stop will be the Food dome, where a home-cooked meal awaits you.”
“You miracle worker!” said Anna. “How on earth did you arrange that?”
“It’s one of the stupid things I lingered on while you were freezing to death in your basement. Feel free to kick me.”
“Kick you? Are you kidding?” said Anna, hugging him. “Let’s get this tour over with quickly. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into some hot food. I’m like drooling already.”
“Right, then,” said Larry. “Let’s start with this dome itself. It’s divided into living, sleep, and work spaces. The living space is where we are in now. Step over here, and we have the work space. It has everything we need to work or study—computers, projectors, and so on.”
Jessica pointed to a large bank of servers built into a notch in the wall. “What’s that, our database?”
“Correct. It holds about a hundred petabytes of data.”
“Cool, like our own mini-Google,” said Anna. “What does it contain?”
“History, science, engineering, medicine, home repair—the works.”
“Any movies?” said Anna.
“Practically every movie ever made,” Larry said.
“What’s this?” Jessica pointed to a large console that displayed a table of numbers that changed from time to time. Most entries had a green check mark next to them, while two or three had orange marks. Larry explained that the console allowed them to monitor the functions of every system in the facility. “Take any system parameter, say air quality or temperature. If it goes outside safe values, it will flash red.”
Jessica pointed to one of the parameters. “Heat balance is borderline.”
Larry glanced at the number and nodded. “True, that’s because we’ve used up some heat, air, and water in our entry. It should stabilize. Anyway, so much for the work space. Here,” he pointed to the tent, “is where we’ll sleep.”
“It seems awfully cramped,” said Nicole, following Larry into the tent. “And no beds?”
“No, we’ll all sleep on the floor,” said Larry.
“But why?”
“The heat turns down during the night to conserve energy, so it’ll get really cold.”
“It that really necessary?”
“Perhaps not now, but just anticipating future energy shortages.”
“Makes sense. So we’ll just huddle up to stay warm.”
“Nice, like winter camping,” said Anna. “I hope you don’t snore, Larry.”
“I’m not excited about being squished together like that,” said Jessica. “No privacy.”
“Fair point,” said Larry. “But privacy is something we can’t afford.”
“Where’s the washroom?” asked Elizabeth after they returned to the living space.
Larry pointed in the direction of the corridor leading to the Geo dome. “There’s one right outside that door.”
“Radio equipment?” Jessica asked.
“Over there, right next to the exterior temperature and light gauges.”
Jessica went to the radio unit and fiddled with its dials and switches. Nothing came through, not even any emergency broadcasts. Only the hiss of static. She turned it off.
“Okay, for the next leg of our tour,” Larry said. “The Eco dome.”
They crossed a twenty meter–long corridor and stepped into a comfortably warm chamber filled with a vast, diverse array of potted plants and trees. Most were just saplings, but a few were in bloom and a couple even bore fruit. The labels on the trees indicated that they were dwarf varieties specially bred to grow in pots. A humid odor of flowers and decaying vegetation pervaded the room.
Her botanical instincts aroused, Anna ran around delightedly, examining the vegetation.
“What an incredible assortment! A Duke of York peach tree from England, a Temple orange from Florida, high-iron bean plants from India, even a Duc de Guiche rose bush!”
Larry smiled, pleased at her enthusiasm. He had gone out of his way to procure plants he knew she liked. He could justify the food crops from a survival perspective, but the flower bushes were purely for Anna’s pleasure.
Jessica jumped on this. “We can’t live on roses, can we?”
“True, dear, but pure survival is such a grim business,” said Elizabeth. “It’s good to have a touch of beauty.”
“So we don’t allow privacy, but beauty’s fine?”
Anna seemed about to make a heated reply, but Nicole quickly interposed. “What are these?” she asked, indicating a set of large rectangular panels with textured surfaces stacked against a wall.
“Could you take a guess?” Larry asked Anna.
“Not sure … some kind of growing surface? For moss or lichen, perhaps?”
“You’re close. Here, feel the surface. See how corrugated it is? Each panel actually has about ten square meters of growing area. They are for chlorella. Can you guess its purpose?”
“That’s easy! To make oxygen from the carbon dioxide we exhale, right?”
“Exactly! We’ll activate the panels if we start having trouble with our air purifier.” He told them that the freezers contained several cultures of chlorella genetically modified to maximize their ability to fix carbon.
“But what is chlorella?” Elizabeth asked
“It’s a single-celled green alga, Grandma. It uses photosynthesis.”
“Oh, like plants?”
“Yes, just like plants, but, you know, much more efficient in its use of sunlight.”
“Sounds good, but I hope we never need it,” said Nicole.
“Amen to that,” said Larry. “Okay then, moving along. Next stop, the power plant.” He led them through an airlock door on their left and then counter-clockwise through an arc-shaped outer corridor to another door. Opening it and stepping inside, the visitors found themselves in a hot, steamy room with two large electrical generators in the middle connected to a vast array of pipes of various colors. A medley of gauges and other instruments lay scattered around the room.
“Welcome to the Geo dome,” said Larry, “the place that will keep us alive and warm.”
A dull roar came from underneath the floor, punctuated with frequent hissing sounds. The suffocating ai
r reeked of sulfur.
Jessica made a face. “God, it’s nasty! Not a bright idea of mine to live here.”
Larry chuckled. “Then let’s not linger. Next stop, clinic.”
They continued their counter-clockwise journey through another arc-shaped corridor to the adjacent dome. “Honey, this is your baby,” Larry told Nicole.
In contrast to the torrid Geo dome, the Health dome lay cold and silent. One part of it boasted a mini-gymnasium with weights, stationary bicycles, and other exercise equipment. The other part contained the medical facility. Everything in it looked shiny, new, and state-of-the-art. While the others stood and watched, Nicole moved around eagerly, checking out the instruments and supplies. She opened a refrigerator and inspected the array of vials and bottles inside. “This place is better stocked than my hospital!” she said.
Larry smiled. “It’s like the emergency clinics used by the military, only more advanced.”
Nicole walked around the room, handling the equipment and uttering cries of appreciation. “Looks like we can treat most common ailments, and a few uncommon ones too,” she said after completing her circuit. “We can do basic surgery as well—I see you’ve got the best instruments money can buy, for anesthesia, surgery—everything!”
“It looks wonderful, dear,” said Elizabeth, “but as with the algae, let’s pray we’ll never need any of it.”
The next dome on the tour, cold and bare, looked oddly familiar, and then Anna noticed their discarded clothes lying on the floor. “So this is how we entered!” she said. “It feels like that happened ages ago.”
“Yes, Entry dome. Nothing much to see here. Let’s move along.”
The dome that followed bristled with machinery and resembled the engine room of a ship. Most of the space was taken up by a system of pumps and gauges hooked up with colored tubing. The humming of motors and the opening and closing of valves combined to produce a subdued metallic din.
“This is the Air dome,” said Larry.
“It cleans the air?”
“Yes, and keeps it from getting too dry or too humid.”
They exited the Air dome and walked through to the next chamber.
“Welcome to the Food dome,” Larry said. “Lunch is served!”
As his companions trooped into the dome, Larry’s thoughts flashed back to his first meeting with them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Simpsonville
It was the sun that brought them together, in more ways than one.
On the winding road to Simpsonville one cloudy autumn morning in 2020, Larry noticed a very pretty woman driving the sedan coming the other way. Dark haired, light-skinned, about forty years old. I hope our eyes meet when we pass, he said to himself. At that instant, the sun broke through the clouds and shone into the woman’s face, causing her to swerve into his path. A collision seemed imminent. Larry frantically wrenched his steering wheel and somehow moved his SUV away from the sedan’s direct path. Tires screeched and metal panels sheared as the two vehicles scraped each other and came to a jarring halt. Though the sideswipe had barely dented the SUV, it had nearly wrecked the sedan. The woman who had caught Larry’s eye and three other women stumbled out of the wrecked car, uninjured but badly shaken. They numbly accepted Larry’s offer to drive them home. Once they reached home, numbness gave way to euphoria as the women hugged each other and thanked Larry over and over.
During a much-needed cup of tea they introduced themselves.
“Ladies first,” Larry said.
The women looked at each other, and a girl of about eighteen took the lead. She had the same slim figure, dark hair, and attractive features as the woman who had driven the sedan. Sporting an impish smile, she showed no signs of the recent ordeal. “I’m Anna. I’m in the ecology program at the university. And this is my mother Nicole, who usually drives much better.”
“But for your quick reflexes …” Nicole smiled at Larry, and their eyes finally met. He found her even more charming at close quarters.
“She’s a surgeon,” added Anna. “The male staff at the hospital would’ve been heartbroken if you hadn’t saved us with that lightning-fast swerve.”
“Anna, please.” Nicole directed the attention toward the older woman next to her. “This is my mother, Elizabeth.”
“I don’t know how to thank you …” the woman began, speaking in a soft, deep voice. She held both Larry’s hands and smiled at him, her brown, lustrous eyes calm despite her close brush with death. Her rich dark hair was lightly streaked with gray, but otherwise she showed no sign of age.
“She’s half Maori,” Anna cut in. “That’s how she gets her lovely complexion.”
Having elicited blushes from both the older women, Anna continued, “And this is my sister, Jessica.” She indicated the other girl, a rather gawky teenager of about sixteen who had her grandmother’s full figure, skin tone, and pleasant facial features, but hadn’t yet developed her soft voice or graceful movements. “She’s like the smartest person in Australia. A walking encyclopedia of science. And what she doesn’t know about computers you can write on the back of a silicon chip.”
Larry smiled at each of the women being introduced and expressed his delight at knowing them.
“Okay, now it’s your turn,” said Anna.
“I’m Larry Brandon, age thirty-seven, and I’m an engineer,” he said. “Not much else to say.”
“Nice try,” said Anna. “Now give us the full scoop. Your parents, education, work, love life—everything.”
Under Anna’s relentless grilling, Larry spoke about himself. An English citizen who moved to California for undergraduate studies, he was one-quarter Indian. While he attributed his athletic physique to his English ancestors, he credited his wheatish complexion, dark eyes, and wide nose to his Tamil grandmother. In classic entrepreneurial style, he found university study boring and dropped out of his Master’s program at Stanford to found the first of his many companies in the USA. His initial ventures foundered. He first tried to market a mini-desalination plant that ran on solar energy but could find no buyers. Some Gulf countries expressed interest, but eventually rejected the plant as too expensive and small-scale for their needs. His hopes ran high when a Chinese company bought a few of his units on a trial basis, promising to buy hundreds or even thousands of them if they worked as specified. He never heard back from the company but later learned that a cheap Chinese-made knock-off of his desalinator was selling by the thousand in the very countries that had rejected his prototype.
“The bastards!” said Nicole. “Did you sue them?”
“I just moved on.”
“What did you try next?”
Larry told them that he went on to make a tabletop reactor that turned used cooking oil into biofuel, hoping to capitalize on new automobile standards in the US mandating a 50-50 gasoline-biofuel mix. The device won the Consumer Electronic Show’s design award for the best household appliance. Before it could achieve any commercial success in the US, however, a newly-elected Republican President and GOP-majority Congress reversed the fuel legislation. Overnight, biofuel became a worthless commodity. Brandon’s investors pulled out and the company went bankrupt.
“What terrible luck!” said Anna. “You should’ve set up your company here. Our government isn’t so stupid.”
“Yes, I should have. But with my next venture, I finally got lucky.”
Larry told them about a satellite he developed for injecting sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere. By reflecting some sunlight back into space, the sulfate aerosol proved to be a safe and effective method to combat climate change. When his company went public, it was one of the most sought-after stocks of the decade.
Anna stared at him with wide eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re Larry Brandon, of Brandon Satellite fame!”
“Guilty as charged.”
Anna turned to the others. “Do you know who we have here? The guy who not only saved our lives today, but the one who rescued the entire plan
et!”
So that was how Larry met the Millers and became a regular visitor to their household. Over the next several weeks, he got to know them much better, except perhaps for Jessica, who had a way of going against the grain that seemed intentionally provocative. Direct praise, he found, embarrassed her, though she resented being denied credit. Likewise, although apparently too honest to deny her errors or faults, she seemed offended by direct criticism, however diplomatically worded. Larry, with his direct mind, was unable to connect with her despite his best efforts.
Unlike her sister, Anna put Larry at ease very early in their acquaintance. She was always in high spirits, and her sprightly, playful manner, the polar opposite of his own, tickled him enormously. Although initially tongue-tied in her presence, Larry learned to enjoy her banter and occasionally respond with a quip of his own.
He found Elizabeth warm and hospitable, and developed a deep respect for her serene wisdom. As for him and Nicole, their instant mutual attraction didn’t take long to deepen into love.
And so Larry, who had been looking for a suitable location for his shelter, decided to build it in the Strzelecki desert, 80 kilometers west of Simpsonville.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lunch
And now, a year and eight months later, we are about to eat our first meal in the Shell, Larry thought, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time.
The Food dome boasted a superbly furnished kitchen, a fully-stocked pantry, and a tastefully appointed dining area. It was pleasantly warm and subtly redolent of spices. On a dining table stood bowls of fruit, a loaf of bread, bottles of red wine, and a large jug of water. Larry switched on an oven, and within seconds baking aromas filled the room.
Anna broke a long, stunned silence. “A dead planet outside and a gourmet feast here? I can’t believe it.”
“Surreal,” said Jessica.
“It feels heartless to feast at a time like this,” Nicole said. Seeing Larry’s expression, she added: “But you know what? Screw that. I’m starving.”
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