by Rian Davis
She took us to a local bar where a lot of the farmers and day laborers were drinking and horsing around. Most of them seemed rather somber, sipping their drinks like it was medicine, making every swig count. It was a depressing place, so we took our leave pretty quickly.
“Say what boys, let’s head to a little place down near the lake where we can have a bite and drink someplace nice?”
We all agreed. We wanted something more uplifting than the last place, not least since it would be probably our last warm American bar for a while. We were soon at the Sandy Beach Bar which looked like it was built a hundred years earlier. There was fish tackle everywhere and newspaper covers and various clippings from the past century. Newspapers from various human triumphs had been posted. The manned mission to Mars, the cure for cancer, the first driverless car, and of course the greatest scientific discovery of the century: the discovery of quantum gravity by Dr. Alan Aspect. He had disappeared shortly after his great breakthrough. In the newspaper headline, he looked young and triumphant with the evidence he had used to help prove his theory. It was a masterful triumph—the last piece supposedly that completed the Standard Model of physics. They say that when he passes, Dr. Aspect will be buried next to Ludwig Boltzmann, and like his predecessor, have his famous quantum gravity equation as his epitaph. I looked at that grinning proud face and wondered, where are you now Professor? Why haven’t you brought your talents to this trouble-stricken world?
“First rounds on me, “said Janine. We all protested strongly, but her will proved stronger than ours.
We got on the topic of the future of civilization for some reason. We were of course very intoxicated at that point. Bret asked me what I thought the future of humanity would look like, and I told him that I thought civilization would end in the next decade or so. He simply nodded and didn’t ask why, but I told him anyway: war, the endless water and heat sweeping away the governments like they did recently in Egypt and Brazil, or the running out of energy. All would feed off each other and mark the end of the human race. Hell, humanity nearly bought it at the Mischief Reef incident, but somehow the crisis got averted—at least for a little while. The next world war would start in the South China Sea just like the last one had over a hundred years earlier, and it would happen any day now.
Alex talked about his time in Afghanistan and how all of his myths about goodness and humanity being shattered within about the first week of his time there. I listened carefully as he recounted stories of bodies and blood. Soldiers often do this with their buddies—especially while drinking.
Bret told about his experiences in Nigeria. There the farmers and herders were fighting over an ever-shrinking area of land that would eventually disappear altogether. There were brutal, inhuman acts of viciousness on both sides. No one was a hero. He found his weapons and training useless. When two groups of people want to kill each other, they’ll find a way to do so. His commanding officer had issued Malthus’s famous essay—supposedly to explain to them the situation they were facing. Bret had read it and felt haunted by the connection.
“What did they do to each other?” Alex asked.
“Who?” Bret said.
“The herders and the farmers,” replied Alex who seemed more interested than anyone else. We had all heard similar tales throughout the world and to keep one’s sanity required not thinking about it too much.
“They just killed each other in the cruelest way possible, man. You just wouldn’t believe it. The world is going to hell. It never reached ten billion. Now everything is shrinking. We’re all going to be killing each other like they were for a smaller piece of shit land. Maybe Malthus was right. Maybe his time is finally coming.”
“Fuck Malthus,” someone said.
Alex laughed and Bret frowned, looking down at his alcohol as a means of escape. He appeared to be measuring the exact circumference of the bottom of his glass.
“Well, didn’t they have the government to intervene? I’m sure you were able to break up the fighting somewhat?” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Janine watched him in silence, her lined face full of worry. Her glasses were misty from the emotion she had experienced while hearing his story, but she said nothing after he was finished.
At that moment, someone shouted, “Help! there’s a fire.”
I looked at Bret and then Janine. We all had training for rescue operations. Should we go?
“There have been major cuts in the fire department. None of their equipment works anymore. They’ll need your help,” Janine said in a determined voice.
We didn’t wait to hear it again. We ran outside looking for the fire. It was easy to spot. Not fifty meters from the Sandy Beach Bar, we saw a four-story building on fire. The blaze was on the second floor. There was heavy smoke coming from all around.
“Someone needs to call the fire department, goddammit,” Bret said.
“They’re on their way!”
We ran towards the building. Against the moonless sky, the burning building looked like an angry god. I was almost consumed by the spectacle. There were about ten people at the very top of the building who were looking down on their doom.
“Where the hell is the fire truck, goddammit?” Bret said.
We ran to the building. We checked the first and second floors. There were hardly any more people, but it was hard to tell because of the smoke. Some bodies were collapsed in the smoke, and we hauled those people out. I hauled one larger man myself who had to have weighed nearly one hundred kilograms.
We found ourselves on the stairs leading up to the third floor. There was still some space between the flames, and Bret ran through it. I did not follow him, nor did Alex.
Thirty seconds passed. The gap in fire hanging over the stairs—if there ever truly was one—was closing.
“Bret, it’s getting pretty bad down here,” I yelled as much as my smoke-filled lungs could manage. “You’d better come out.”
One minute passed. I was about to move up there and risk it when Bret emerged from the fire holding something that looked like a small bundle in his arms.
We ran for the door and made it outside, coughing hysterically.
“That’s Moira Jenkins,” Janine said. “She’s a good kid.” She gently stroked her dark braided hair and placed her hands on top of her tie-dye shirt.
“She was high on something,” said Bret.
“What?”
“They don’t care. None of them care. They were high on drugs. Those kids inside, they just looked at me like I was an intruder. I’m not sure the fire was an accident. What the hell is going on? Why has society gone this crazy. Look at her. How did she get this way? Where the hell were the parents?”
Janine looked back at her late friend’s nephew with wide eyes. She then tried to comfort the girl by murmuring something in her ear. “She used to work part-time on my farm. She was always the sweetest little thing.” Her feet looked like small tubes inside her jeans. The girl was way too skinny to be considered healthy. The ambulance came and took her and the others that were able to make it out.
I noticed the fire truck. It was pitifully decrepit. I didn’t say anything because I knew it was all they had. I knew that everyone knew they were shortchanged. The real money was in the big city.
We said our goodbyes to Janine. Making our way home in silence, the others slept for what would be a brief time on some very uncomfortable cots before getting ready for the journey the next day. There were a few inquisitive glances when the others learned I would not be going immediately to sleep, but I waved them off by stating the desire to be alone for a while.
I said goodbye to the others and headed to a small room at the base where I knew no one would bother me. I signed into the Future Family Network using my neuro implants, and after checking on the monthly billing payment, was able to finally bring up the image of a woman who was in her thirties who looked remarkably like me. I knew that if someone were to suddenly come in the room they w
ould not be able to guess what I had been up to. I wanted things to stay that way.
Although my mother had officially died long ago, I had enrolled into an account with FFN shortly before she died. Throughout the years she had been stored on the company’s servers and the image appeared before me thanks to my optic implants, which had activated not long ago due to me coming back into Eagle Zone.
“Mother, how have you been?” I asked immediately seeing the familiar face. It had been frozen at the age of thirty-three, the day before she had fallen ill and died. Except for a strange green glow throughout the image, the resemblance was uncanny, but there was something off about it.
“Oh well I’ve been doing pretty well. I played tennis today.” She smiled at me just like she had done all those years previously. The company’s algorithms were quite efficient I had to admit.
“Did you really? With whom?” I asked, following the familiar script.
I was done perhaps thirty minutes later. I was misty-eyed despite not being able to touch her in any way. The illusion was optical. I didn’t have enough for the premium version that would let me hug her. I knew that this could be the last time I saw her, so I had said goodbye to her in an unusual way than I usually did. She had noticed something was odd, so she had begged me not to leave. I didn’t have a choice, so I issued the command to end the program. I made my way back to the quarters and fell asleep.
Chapter 4
Early the next morning, we found out that our flight would be diverted away from Argentina due to the unrest there. The people had stormed the Casa Rosada, demanding food, water and electricity, just like at many cities across the world. The reports indicated that the protestors had even used boats to breach the water wall that had kept out the creeping water from the Rio de La Plata. Instead we landed on an aircraft carrier, refueled and made our way to the Falklands, our last stop before McMurdo. We had to divert our flight to avoid the super typhoon, which was rapidly approaching our direction. I thought of Janine and how she would fare during the storm.
After touching down in the Falklands, we were given four hours before our plane would head out to McMurdo. It was my first time there, and I took a chance to see the lovely city of Stanley. I thought that I wouldn’t mind staying for the rest of my days here. I went to one of the fish and chips restaurants to ponder the contents of the Tethys Report, which I had read several times while on the plane. There were two contents in the envelope: one was a view panel that had information about the terrorist group Gaia, sometimes known as Children of Gaia or COG. The group was just becoming to be known on the news as having blown up soft targets throughout the world, including London and Paris. Their aims were still murky. There were several pictures of low-level operatives in the file as well some goals that the intel operatives put together based on the available evidence: they wanted to sow division amongst mutually hostile nations in order to fracture alliances and carve out a niche in the world. They believed that the Earth was shedding its dead skin, and they would be the ones to inherit the new skin. They were transnational in nature. Unlike the past mass murder, theirs would not be directed against a particular group. There was a possible link with COG and the Mischief Reef Incident, but it was still unclear. That was dangerous, I thought. It had nearly led to a catastrophic confrontation that could have led to global annihilation. I wondered what on Earth would a terrorist group be doing in Antarctica?
I thought about the other contents, which were even more interesting. There was a picture of ancient humanoid-like remains. The image was grainy, but there were some very striking differences with anatomically modern humans. First, the body of whatever species it was had only two fingers. Second, the skull was perhaps a third larger than a human skull. This was all I could make out of the picture, but it was quite fascinating. Nothing in the scientific literature had anything remotely like this. I nearly dismissed it as a cheap fake, but I doubted that the intel would have been easily fooled. Nonetheless, I would withhold judgement until I saw the specimen for myself. I was a trained scientist after all. Doubt was my creed.
Taken together, the contents were quite puzzling and unexpected. I didn’t know what to make of them, nor could I trust anyone else with the information. The report was for my eyes only, which made me frustrated because I really wanted a second scientific opinion.
Tethys of course was the Titan goddess of Greek mythology and sister-wife to Oceanus. Interestingly, she was the daughter of Gaia. I wrote a note to myself to ponder that connection. There might be something important there. Recent geological discoveries pointed to heavy mineral deposits in the long since scattered Tethys ocean—hence why many nations were very eager to look for any signs of where the remains might be found. Everyone needed resources these days. There were too few to go around, and the belief was that war was inevitable and the competing nations would need all the resources they could get.
The waters off the Falklands were turbulent. The oceanic conveyer belt had made it tough for hot and cold water to be shifted as it had once done, and they frequently clashed in the area not too far off the Falklands. One obvious casualty had been the magnificent blue whales who depended on the krill living near Antarctica. Even the orcas had made a retreat. As such, the whalers had long since left, leaving the Falklands empty of all but the aged. The waters had swallowed up much of the coast already, and Stanley was being threatened.
I really wanted to see Port Meredith where the oldest rocks were located. They were Precambrian aged over a billion years. They were like a book to me, their words like poetry smashed into the hardest, thickest paper. It would have taken too long to see it though. I did manage to make it to Darwin’s House, where Darwin looked out and pondered the plan of all living things. Looking at the rough waters from the second story bedroom, I pondered humanity’s own fate. When Darwin had looked out upon the waters, he had seen a very different sight. Now, the ocean was creeping up to the very door of his house. The average temperature was perhaps an average of three degrees higher than in Darwin’s time. What would he have said were he alive today? There was an old-fashioned clock ticking, which the curator said had been around when Darwin was there.
I was startled by an incoming transmission from the view screen that Kraftberger had given me—ultra secret. It shook silently but in a way that was quite noticeable to me and no one else. It must have come from somewhere in command. Of course sending the message to the Shadow Zone meant that it could be hacked or at least traced—and probably was.
Danger. At least one member of the team compromised. Use utmost caution. Tell no one.
There was nothing more. I didn’t know what to make of it. The warning was so vague that I could only keep my eyes peeled. Of course it was vague because others had likely intercepted it, but it was almost useless since I had no more information. I had personally talked to everyone in my crew. No one seemed suspicious—at least not yet. Sending an encrypted message back to Command was out of the question of course. I quickly made my way back to the airstrip.
We arrived at McMurdo. Some of the final shipments of the year were coming in. After a week or so, no ships would be coming in or out as the impossible Antarctic winter would set in and freeze access to all ports. We would have to make it in and out in the span of about a week or else we would be stranded for the season.
The people there were mostly scientists, logistics workers and mechanics—most of them lonely. They gave perfunctory greetings to us and carried on their tasks. Some of them eyed us warily as we were heavily armed. We each had M21 automatic rifles, MP7 submachine guns, and Glock pistols as well as knives and ammunition—the standard fare. Some of the scientists smiled at what I had written on my helmet, specially fitted with winter gear: Geologist, Hard as a Rock. They gave me second looks as they probably wondered what a geologist would be doing with so many weapons. If only they knew.
After leaving McMurdo base with three modified snowcats—huge snow vehicles designed to house our gear, we headed f
or a remote American outpost just about a hundred miles south of the Russian research facility over Lake Victor. The vehicles had just been delivered a week before so that no one would complain about losing the use of such critical vehicles. The sky was already turning gray as we left. We knew we were only afforded about six hours in the sun. After that the night dropped to a harsh minus fifty including wind factor.
There were ice cliffs all over the terrain. Many of them had been recent developments. Due to the extreme cold meeting the intensifying heat, the ice melted and froze with great rapidity. Combined with the intense wind, they formed strange ice walls that caused movement through the terrain to be very difficult.
That’s when things started going south. At first, Lance said he heard some loud buzzing noise that sounded like a drone. But none of the detection instruments could find them if they existed. Radar was silent. We couldn’t call in to Command due to the order of strict silence.
Later, one of the snowcats had trouble with the engine. I got out to see what I could do as I was pretty good with machinery—especially engines. It had been making strange sounds before, but the mechanics said there should have been no problems, not least of which being that the vehicles were new.
That’s when I noticed that the engine had been shot by some bullets—probably from above. I called for Hal and the others came as well.
“See here?” I said. “This is a large caliber bullet. Probably not as big as a fifty but it’s big enough that a direct hit could take out the engine. A few lucky ones got through. It’s not meant to take this kind of punishment.”