The Dead Room Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

  Mason opened his mouth to respond, but there were no words. It was so perfect that nothing he could think of would match that.

  He cleared his throat. “So, when do we talk to the islanders?”

  16

  Approximate year, 2346

  A few weeks later, Mason was up and walking short distances. He decided he didn’t want to wait any longer. The three of them started passing a message, telephone-game style, around the island for everyone to meet at the pyre in the morning for an announcement. All duties would be excused that day.

  They walked slowly to the pyre, setting out early to make sure they had enough time to get there. One of the islanders had constructed him a wheelchair, but he found bouncing on the rough roads and paths was more uncomfortable than just walking and stopping every few blocks.

  The doctor urged him not to overdo it. To let things heal. But Mason was antsy. So much happened in that first week, but the last eight had been a whole lot of nonsense. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed action. So they walked, if slowly.

  Finally, they made it to the pyre. Most of the island was already there. Even the dethroned elders, who, in spite of themselves, seemed quite happy in their new assignments. Even Mueller was enjoying himself helping to tally, predict, and control the rations.

  Once everyone was settled, the three elders sat rather informally at the edge of the pyre. Mason remembered building the structure. He hoped he would be that useful again one day soon.

  Mattli started things off by standing. Mason knew the informality wouldn’t last. “Thank you all for coming. We weren’t sure our message would still ring true by the time it got around to everyone.”

  “It didn’t,” someone in the far corner called out. “I was told to meet here in the morning ‘cause orange hippopotamus guts smell like tulips.”

  Everyone laughed, including Mattli. “Right. Well, glad the core of the message got around then.”

  He cleared his throat and wrapped his robe around him. He was the only one still wearing it. Mason thought he took comfort in it. Plus, it was getting pretty cold. “I promised you a few weeks ago that we would end all the secrets.”

  “A few weeks ago, Mattli?” a man in the front row needled him with a huge grin on his face. It was good for Mason to see everyone so happy. Ashley would have loved it.

  “Right. Well, someone was taking their time getting around.” He glanced over his shoulder at Mason, who shrugged.

  “At any rate, there are many things to discuss. And they all revolve around one central theme—leaving the island.”

  A collective gasp rang through the islanders.

  “I know. It’s a shocking prospect. And I don’t expect all of you will want to go. I can’t stress enough that go or not, it’s your decision. If you don’t want to join us, I do hope you’ll help with the preparations. There’s a lot to do.”

  At once, people started shouting out their questions, but there were so many that Mason couldn’t make out any singular inquiry.

  “Let me get through the information first. Then if you still have questions, and I’m sure you will, we will do our best to answer them,” Mattli said. Reluctantly, the islanders settled down.

  First, he told them about the journal, and he gave a brief synopsis of how Mason found it on the mainland, what the mainland was like, and what to expect upon their return.

  “The plan is to use the journal, and the blueprints therein, to make an electromagnetic pulse device that will disable any and all bots that try to attack,” Mattli explained.

  Mason couldn’t stand it anymore, so he interjected. “But it’s not quite that simple.”

  “Simple? What is an electromagnetic pulse device, and how are we supposed to build something like that?”

  “Trial and error mostly,” Mason admitted. “And it doesn’t end there. We will need teams. Teams to build some kind of power source to run the EMP device, to build boats to get us and our supplies to the mainland, and to divvy out rations to keep us alive once we’re there.”

  “It’s a complex endeavor to be sure,” Mattli added.

  Mason wasn’t sure how to read the silence that descended upon the crowd.

  “Why would we leave? We’re safe here,” a woman asked. She had a child who couldn’t have been more than two in her arms.

  “We’d like to recolonize, to make things better for future generations. And maybe go back to the way things were before, eventually,” Mason said.

  “Is that our responsibility?” she asked.

  “If not us, then who?” Lehman said, sitting casually next to Mason. The woman nodded and sat back down.

  “I’d like to reiterate that not all of you have to go. In fact, no one has to go. But we will need a tremendous amount of help preparing. So, if you’re willing, we’ll take all the help we can get,” Mason said.

  No one moved.

  “Well, don’t everyone jump at once,” Mason said, a little in jest, but also frustrated.

  He was starting to despair until an old acquaintance of his stepped out into the aisle in front of him.

  “Mason Hawkins, I know you’re a hard worker, honest to a fault, and always have the best interest of those around you at heart. I’ll follow you anywhere.” The tall man held out his hand.

  With some effort, he hoisted himself off the pyre and shook it. “Gabe Merrik, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He and Gabe had worked together welding pipes and engineering new, more-efficient systems. He’d even asked him to help with the pyre. The man was gruff, but he had a good heart. Mason was glad to see him on the team.

  “And you’re getting punier by the minute. Can’t even stand up straight. Don’t expect you to be much help building things, huh?”

  “Don’t count your chickens, Gabe. Ashby knows I won’t let you take all the credit.”

  His laugh was loud and boisterous, and Mason could see it setting the other islanders at ease.

  “Wonderful,” he said, clasping Mason’s hand in both of his. “When do we begin?”

  17

  Approximate year, 2346

  Once Gabe broke the ice, almost every islander volunteered to help with something. Mueller was in charge of counting rations and figuring out what they could take with them. Some of the fishermen had volunteered to build boats. Knowing the sea in the immediate area well, they thought they might be able to construct some flotillas that would handle the water.

  Charlotte Evie volunteered to head the power team. She was a well-known handyman on the island, someone people called on any time of day for any problem, knowing she could fix it.

  Each team head had their own friends willing to help out, and the groups sort of naturally fell into place on their own from there.

  Mattli, Lehman, and Mason were left to float between the teams, making sure they had what they needed, and to try to troubleshoot issues as they arose. And did they ever arise.

  First was inside the dead room. It was a small space, and the EMP team was rather impressive. More people than Mason had anticipated were curious about the technology and wanted to be a part of it.

  While the other two teams managed to be above ground, out in the open, the EMP team was confined to the dead room. And Mason wasn’t making things easy for them.

  “Before we begin, I need to have two things kept intact inside the dead room, if at all possible. The timer and the release signal on the box. That way we can test the device later,” he explained. “And obviously, leave the bots alone.”

  “How are we supposed to use anything from here without destroying the two main elements of the room?” Gabe asked.

  “There’s the rub,” Mason said.

  Gabe scrutinized the panel and shrugged. “Well, no sense in guessing. Let’s pull this panel off and see what we’re really dealing with. If Ashby did us some favors, maybe there’s some redundancy back here, and it won’t even be an issue. Or if we need to take some things apart, maybe we can bypass others to keep the main components operat
ional.”

  “I like how you think,” Mason said.

  “That’s because I’m smarter than you.”

  It took weeks just to get the panel apart and analyzed, assigning jobs to each wire so they knew what everything did, before they could start taking it apart. While they were doing that, the other half of the team sat topside, trying to design possible options for an EMP. They’d all read the journal, taking care to focus on any discussions about the device. Mason stressed that it couldn’t just be a pulse. It had to be a constant stream of energy, or else they’d be dead between the beats. Or at least maimed.

  “I’m not such a fan of being maimed,” Mason said, wrinkling his nose.

  The volunteers, mostly young men, nodded seriously at him, and he chuckled. “So, see what you can come up with.”

  Most of their designs involved creating a closed circuit.

  “This looks great, fellas,” Mason said a few weeks after they’d started working. “Only problem is we don’t have an energy source to run this.”

  “That’s the power team’s problem,” someone answered without missing a beat.

  “This will work. We just need the supplies,” another of the young volunteers said.

  Mason had no idea how they could be so certain. And his perplexed expression must have shown.

  “The mathematics of it work, Mason,” one young man said as he approached him with a piece of paper. It had drawings of the device along with a lot of numbers and letters, like it was supposed to mean something to him.

  “All of these components are inside the dead room, but they shouldn’t be essential to its function. Gabe was telling me about the triple redundancies inside the room. He thinks Ashby did it on purpose so we could go home.”

  “Mmhmm,” Mason said, eyeing the paper and not understanding it one bit. “One thing’s for sure. Gabe is right. You are all smarter than me.”

  Mattli spent his time helping the team building the power source. They’d settled on a windmill, since they already had one on the island powering the dead room.

  Only some of it was total gibberish to him. He’d spent a fair amount of time reading about electricity in the time before, however none of the books actually told how to build a windmill. But the science was there, and with a working model to go off, he thought they’d have it done pretty quickly.

  Boy was he wrong. They struggled with it and failed, repeatedly. When Mason approached Mattli with a design for the EMP that relied heavily on their windmill for energy, Mattli wasn’t sure what to say.

  “This looks great.”

  “They’d like to test it soon.”

  “Of course they would,” he said, deliberately being evasive.

  “When do you think they might be able to do that?” Mason pushed.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, a breakthrough could come today. Or it could be a month from now. We’re sort of grappling around in the dark here. Literally,” Mattli said, studying the design closely. It was brilliant and complex. He didn’t understand a few of the components, but he got the basic gist of it.

  “This will work. It will emit a constant signal instead of a pulse like Ashby’s devices,” he said, getting excited.

  “Only if we have an energy source to run it.”

  “Indeed,” Mattli said, focused on the EMP and not his own problem.

  “What seems to be the problem here, Mattli?”

  “The problem is wind. What if we don’t have it all the time? I mean, we can build a turbine easily enough, but if the wind dies down, we can’t test it, and storing energy is another challenge. We need to make sure you get a steady flow of energy, right?”

  “That’s ideal, yes.”

  “Wind isn’t steady. Sometimes, it really blows. Others, it’s deadly still,” Mattli said, reluctantly bringing his thoughts back to his own problems.

  “Plus, it has to be small enough to be portable, but big enough to catch the wind,” Mattli pointed out.

  “One problem at a time. What if you hooked it up to some bikes or something that could be man powered to keep the turbine going, just until the wind kicked back up?”

  “That’s a great idea, Mason. I mean, whoever has to pedal it won’t love it, but it’ll keep people alive. Thank you.”

  “Always happy to turn the lights on for you,” he said, smiling as he left Mattli to his work.

  Lehman was having a rough go of it. And she thought she had the easy group. All they had to do was build some boats to get all their crap from point A to point B. But it was easier said than done apparently. Their concepts were unbalanced, or they couldn’t withstand any kind of rough water.

  Both Mason and Mattli tried to help, proposing their own ideas, but each one took time and resources to build.

  Tristan Wharwood had taken control of the group of fishermen trying to help with the project. He’d said Ashley had saved his foot once, and he knew she was passionate about getting off the island. So it felt right to help her cause.

  A few weeks into their toils, he came up with a rather complicated design that basically looked like a giant canoe. One they could all sit inside, and then have rowers on either side.

  “It looks like a Viking ship,” Lehman noted.

  “Right. That’s the idea. Something big that they can haul a lot of stuff on, but stable enough to withstand any rough waters,” Tristan said, chewing his bottom lip.

  “Do they need something this big? It will use a tremendous amount of trees. If it sinks, we might not have enough left to try something else,” Lehman replied, looking down at the schematic he’d handed her.

  When she looked back up, his face had fallen completely. “Not that your design is guaranteed to fail. I didn’t mean that at all. I just…after all this time, we need an out. They’re counting on us to come through. If we can’t get them over to the mainland, this is all for nothing.”

  “I know that,” Tristan said, more than a little defensive. His posture straightened, and he folded his arms over his chest as he watched her.

  “Perhaps consider making something smaller, and doing more than one of them if it works. We can split the rations and things up between the ships, then attack the problem that way.” She nodded to him, trying to be encouraging.

  “That will require some recalculations.”

  “Then you have some work to do. Try to understand that I’m trying to conserve our supplies while not totally razing the island in the process. The people who live here will want trees when we’re gone.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t say anything when he left.

  A few days later, he came back with a small boat. One carved from a single piece of wood. A prototype.

  “Look,” he said as he pumped water into the sink.

  The boat was long and very pointed at the bottom, while being wide at the top. “To cut through the water,” he explained as he put it in the sink once it was about half full.

  He used a bowl on the counter to create small waves in the sink, and the boat remained upright somehow. It seemed to defy the laws of physics.

  “See?” he said.

  “I do see. But this is carved from a single piece of wood. It can’t spring a leak. You will need to replicate this on a much-larger scale, unless you want to send mice to the mainland,” she said, watching the boat rock in the sink.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said as he smiled and ran out of her house. She splashed the boat, and it tipped, quickly sinking to the bottom.

  Retrieving the soggy boat, she frowned. “Indeed.”

  It took a few weeks, well, several weeks if Lehman was honest. But luckily, the others were struggling too. The windmill was slow going—seemed they had it working, but it was huge, way too big to transport to the mainland—and the EMP was at a bit of a standstill without it, so she felt better knowing they weren’t waiting solely on her and her crew.

  Finally, Tristan had a vessel ready to go.

  Lehman assessed the boat. It was big, but not ove
rwhelming, and deep.

  “How in the world did you get it in the water?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “A lot of men.”

  What else did she expect him to say? That they’d used their minds?

  “Well, are you ready to launch it?” she asked, more than a little anxious. The stakes were higher now. Although they’d loaded sand bags on board to simulate the weight of supplies, the wood and materials used to build the boat couldn’t be replaced.

  “Whenever you are.”

  She nodded, staring at the boat, willing it to reveal any weaknesses to her so she could feel comfortable saying no, hold everything. But she saw nothing. It seemed like a solid piece of craftsmanship. It barely bobbed with the waves as it stayed tied to the dock, making it appear very stable indeed.

  “Well, Godspeed to you then.” She nodded, and he threw his arms around her, startling her for a bit.

  “See you in an hour or so.”

  “I hope you’re dry at the end of that hour.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith!” he called over his shoulder.

  That phrase seemed to be catching on for her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

  She stood on the dock while she watched Tristan untie the boat and shove off, with the help of a few other men. They all held their breaths as they watched it go out into deeper waters. Rowers maneuvered it expertly, as if they’d been doing it their whole lives. But before long, the boat began to list inexplicably. She could hear shouts coming from the ship, orders probably, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  She walked to the end of the dock, as if the extra ten feet would give her a better perspective of what was going on. The boat tipped further and further. The waves were not even a factor. It was tipping on its own accord.

  “Abandon ship!” she heard someone yell, clear as a bell. Soon, people were jumping overboard and into the sea less than fifty yards out from the island.