by In Churl Yo
“Zoah’s safe, and she’ll remain that way until we see her again. Whether we like it or not, this is bigger than any of us.”
Madeline took a deep breath, accepted what fate had seen fit to give them, and waited for the two words she knew were coming.
“We’ll all be together soon,” he said. “I promise.”
# # #
The clock revealed an ugly truth—he had been up and working for 20 hours straight without a break, with hardly any food, and Dr. Lightsea supposed a mirror would no doubt reaffirm that ugly truth. He was damn tired and justifiably so. If he’d had a choice he would have joined his wife in bed, but sleep wasn’t an option now.
Madeline was right to worry, but there was no point to it. Things were out of their hands now and had been for some time. If Zoah was going to grow up, now was the absolute time. Besides, you can’t put the genie back into the bottle, can you?
Dr. Lightsea sat behind his desk and accessed the global network to check the latest status reports. Most of what he saw was expected except a series of late shipments that was backlogging in Asia.
He swiped at the map to get a better look as what was going on, then decided to have a live chat instead.
“I know why you’re calling,” Kim said when he came onscreen.
“Six late departures. Status reports show you haven’t even started assembling the units for the next three!” Dr. Lightsea said, raising his voice.
“We can’t work any faster! I’m sorry. It’s impossible. You ask the impossible!”
“What do you think, Kim? Maybe we need to send more security officers to your facility to increase efficiency? Would that help?”
The shift manager cursed under his breath. Gae-se…
“You want to repeat that, Kim?”
“No, not really,” he sighed.
Dr. Lightsea glared at his screen for several seconds before releasing a long, guttural laugh that his friend Kim responded with in kind.
“I apologize,” Dr. Lightsea offered, “for all of that.”
“You look like crap.”
“I know. I feel it, too. Kim, I recognize how hard you’ve been working for the last three months, but on the bright side, we’re almost done.”
“Don’t tease me, doc.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I need these remaining few shipments to deliver on time. Then the real work can begin.”
The foreman rubbed his temples. “The third shift is off now. I can pull them in, but there’ll be hell to pay. We’ll get it done. Just remember the next time you see me, you owe me a drink. Or three.”
“Kahm-sa-ham-nee-da,” Dr. Lightsea said.
“Show off,” Kim replied. “And you’re welcome.”
The image faded, falling into a backdrop of scrolling data, and Dr. Lightsea closed his eyes to clear his mind. There was no more time for plans or alternatives, no time for regret. There was only his life’s work—all of it on the line and now at the veritable point of no return.
When Kim finds out what he helped build…
He pushed the thought away. A lot had to happen still before he had that little encounter to worry about—that and a hundred others he wasn’t looking forward to having, but Dr. Lightsea knew it had all been very necessary. These were desperate times, and while he wasn’t so much concerned with the what’s or why’s, he was often uneasy about the how. The how kept him up nights, fed his worry—and while history may yet very well side with him in the end, he had his assigned role to play in these unfortunate events now, doing his part to make sure it all proceeded to a meaningful though bittersweet end. At least, that’s how he felt about it at this moment. Perhaps tomorrow it would all be better.
Dr. Lightsea pulled at a floating window in his visor’s periphery and its contents grew to fill his field of vision. He’d hoped to find a small comfort there—instead he was alarmed to see a flashing red dot crossing the final eastern spurs of the Rocky Mountains, headed at high speed toward the great plains and for parts beyond. He scratched at the stubble on his chin and expanded the map with a pinch of his fingertips.
“Damn it, Z,” he whispered. “Where are you off to now?”
CHAPTER 19
37 Years After the Pandemic
The landing, a good 10 maybe 15 meters down, would kill her, and the fall would be so embarrassing and her own stupid fault that she might welcome it. But she couldn’t turn back now after months where her every waking moment was consumed in planning, training and cajoling just so she could place herself here in this exact life-threatening position at this very moment in time. Besides, there was nothing to turn back to except a life of apathy and quiet submission, and for her that was no choice at all. No, she was right where she wanted to be—and the odds were almost even that she was about to die.
“Is this thing on? Please tell me it’s working,” she whispered.
A small drone buzzed around her head, and she resisted the urge to swat at it. A camera lens at its base swiveled to keep the young woman in view as it traveled, and she forced a smile for those she hoped were watching.
“It’s on. You’re live,” a voice said in her visor’s earpiece.
“Right,” she said and took a deep breath. “Let’s get on with it then. Hello, everyone! What you’re seeing is the central shaft for my building’s recirculating air environmental system, and we’re about 10 very tall stories up. I’ve already hacked into the system’s control directory, and everything’s at standby. But watch what happens when I do this.”
She tapped her cufflink, swiped two fingers across a virtual toggle in her field of vision, then held on for dear life as two large turbines engaged from the darkness below, sending gale-force winds whipping up all around and almost pushing the woman up from her perch into the air.
A few seconds later the giant fans reset, and everything was quiet again.
“Whoa, are you okay?” the voice asked her. She looked at her periphery to see that the external mute light was on, so their conversation was now private.
“Fine. I’m fine, Arsenal. Got tossed around a little. Put me back on.” The mute switch flickered off as she reset her footing on the ledge. “Intense, right?” she asked her audience. “Wait until you check this out.”
Again, she tapped her cufflink and swiped, activating the turbines, only this time when the roar of the wind was at its peak the woman jumped out into the shaft, riding the current upward in a manageable tumble toward the far side of the opening. Her body hit the wall in an awkward way, and she reached out for a handhold. When the engines ceased their rotation and the winds died, it was all she could do to secure her grip to a small ledge as gravity reasserted itself and her body fell, testing the strength in her arms as she fought to hold on. After a moment, she swung her leg up and pulled herself over the edge to safety.
The woman offered a thumbs-up to the drone, then sat up and checked a timer counting down on her wrist.
“Hey, you’re not dead,” said Arsenal.
She grunted and stood up, then sprinted down the ledge toward an access panel set in a corner recess of the shaft. A small push released the panel door, revealing a collection of displays and controls, and she pulled a retractable cable from her cufflink and plugged it into a port. A window in her visor revealed that the system was ready to take commands. Her fingers danced across a virtual keyboard as she began the process of breaking in.
“So, if you thought that was the hard part, think again. Right now, I’m attempting to access the emergency containment system that runs perpendicular to the shaft across a side tunnel. Inside, compartments are sealed off by their assigned living quarters with air-tight doors, and I’ll have to go through each one before I’m done,” she said, then stopped typing and considered the camera.
“It’s like this—if someone in my building gets exposed to the Zombie Flu and trips the alarm, their apartment gets sealed off to prevent the virus from spreading to everyone else. Vacuum pumps work in tandem with hydraulic system
s to ensure containment—and this tunnel is where the air escapes to form that vacuum. It also just happens to be the best, most direct way to get to where I’m going.
“The problem is these systems are independent and hardwired, so for every apartment that sits between me and my goal, I must bypass control manually, which means accessing each panel as I go, and the only way to do that is to trick the system into thinking the entire floor’s been exposed to the virus.”
She tapped the mute button. “Too much?” she asked.
“No complaints so far,” Arsenal responded.
“Didn’t you say we shouldn’t expect to hear from anyone anyway? That we wouldn’t know if anyone was even watching?”
“I did, and we won’t. Hence the no complaining.”
“So, I could be risking my life for your sole amusement.”
Arsenal laughed. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Awesome.”
She had met Arsenal online several months ago when attempting to acquire a login to a retail site—he tried a brute force attack that royally overwhelmed a keystroke Trojan she had set up, foiling her designs for worldwide corporate domination. Suffice it to say they’ve been cautious allies ever since. He helped her set up today’s live feed, which was tremendous, even if it may be a live feed to nowhere and no one. Still it was an integral part of the plan that had taken months for her to realize—a puzzle she felt compelled to solve. It was complex, risky and was all that the young woman had thought about. The hardest part was executing it, finding the inner strength needed to make it happen—taking that leap of faith. But the prize waiting for her at the end was all the motivation she had ever needed: freedom.
Her parents had been gathered not a year earlier, murdered by that damn flu. She was old enough to have known them as real people and not as the idealized archetypes we tended to create for our parents when we’re young. Perhaps it was the way they’d raised her or the circumstances of the world she grew up in, but she’d always been a bit odd and mature for her age. And her relationship with her parents was different than most as she was always, for as far back as she could remember, treated as their equal in every way, but it was no less loving, no less real to her. She still missed them to this day.
But their death was the catalyst. It started a chain of events that took her from her home into foster care and when she turned 18 to her own flat that she had to share with five strangers. Despite rumors to the contrary there were no cast-offs in the Ceres system, but nonetheless it felt to her about as close as one could get. While the situation was far from dire, she couldn’t help feeling abandoned, but her alternatives were zero and would remain that way unless she changed them—hence the plan.
The idea grew from something her father had instilled in her. As scientists, her parents often challenged conventional thinking, and when as a small child she would ask, “Why can’t I go outside?” they would explain the facts, as they knew them, and have her come to her own conclusions. “Take nothing for granted. Seek out your own truth,” her father would say. As she grew older and the tenor of her questions shifted, his words would continue to guide and challenge her. Mere days before their death, she had asked them, “Doesn’t this all feel wrong living this way? Shouldn’t we be doing something to change this?” Her parents nodded and encouraged her again to find the answers she always seemed to be looking for.
Seek out your own truth.
Now alone in a house of strangers with a sudden fire burning in her belly, she had known that the time had come and so went deep into her studies. Her fascination with coding began when she was young and had blossomed into obsession. She had to know how things worked—no small feat when everything around her was automated. Every free moment was spent spoofing, exploiting or phishing systems; first in her home and soon to every connected computer she could find. It wasn’t long before she graduated to complex, even protected servers. The more she had learned, the closer she felt to her objective.
It had been during this time of development when she gained a greater understanding of how the world worked. While her university classes provided breadth of knowledge, her personal studies offered her a depth of understanding in what was real and what was hidden. There was a lot of information gleaned, most of it encrypted and restricted for a reason. She was fortunate to find others online who shared her dedication and concern, and soon they formed a loose circle working together to uncover a truth they were only beginning to suspect existed.
She had to leave. There was no doubt in her mind. The others, including Arsenal, all agreed in principle, but would they disconnect themselves from Ceres and continue their work from outside the system? It was easier said than done. So, how to do it and convince the others to follow? How to break out of a sealed, monitored environment and exchange it for a world they knew nothing about except that it held an apocalyptic virus?
And then there were the rumors—the Zombie Flu was just an elaborate hoax, the anecdotal accounts and murmurs of people living in the outside world. When she first heard them, she felt that some part of it had to be true, even if most of it wasn’t, but nothing was certain.
Still, it had been daunting, this prospect of risking everything, including her life, for her beliefs with no margin for error. The group was supportive and talked a lot of talk, but if they were ever going to take the next step, it looked like she would have to take charge, assume the initial part of the journey on her own and win them over. Although she had to admit she could use a little bit of their help right now. Even Arsenal sat on the sidelines, only offering his usual useless bits of colorful commentary and support. Her visor’s chat window remained open yet inactive, but she held hope that the others were with her now, watching and biding.
She toggled the mute button off. “Got it,” she announced. “I’ve accessed the containment system. In we go.”
A small hiss indicated the door into the side tunnel released its lock, and she stepped into the first compartment. When the door closed behind her and the seal engaged, she went to work hacking the next panel, setting herself up for the process she’d have to repeat several more times before it was over.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, “you guys all know about the design vulnerability I’m exploiting to get through here. I’m just the only one crazy enough to try it. Yes, this plan is reckless, bat-shit crazy, and there’s a good chance that in four minutes I’m going to be dead. Don’t let the cause die with me. You guys know how important this is. It’s bigger than any of one of us.”
“Stop. You got this,” assured Arsenal. “Just keep moving.”
“Right. Keep moving.”
“And don’t pass out,” he added, “or die.”
She shot an annoyed look at the drone, then collected herself and smiled. “Ready to make a little history? Let’s do this.”
A full seven seconds after she tripped the containment alarm, the first generator fired up, engaging the vacuum pump that began syphoning the atmosphere and all the breathable air from the section she was in. The pressure differential changed faster than she anticipated, the force on her temples feeling like a dull migraine had somehow piggybacked a sudden four-glass box-wine hangover. Still, the young woman focused her mind on the task at hand—accessing a dormant testing program to generate an administrative user profile that she’d use to infiltrate the system’s command tree. Once there, she released a bot that created a simple computer network with her cufflink, giving her control.
With a few keystrokes on her virtual keyboard, she triggered the next chamber’s alarm, and an entire wall then slid open sideways—doubling the volume of space she had to work with but also adding an additional vacuum pump to draw off the remaining atmosphere. The immediate effect was a few more precious seconds of air for her to breathe, but now she had less time to hack into the next system.
Only something was wrong. The floor was uneven now, covered in glue. No, that’s not right. She shook her head and tried to clear it. “Arsenal?�
� she called out.
“I’m here.”
“What just happened? The floor…”
“It’s not the floor. You’re not getting enough oxygen. Keep going.” The young woman heard his words, but they sounded muffled, far away.
“Keep going!”
She tried running to the access panel, but her steps were chaotic and labored. After stumbling forward for a moment, her shoulder found the wall, sending sparks along the nerves in her arm from the impact. She slid the rest of the way, leaning against the smooth metalwork until she found herself at the panel. “My fingers,” she said trying to attach the cable to the port. “Not cooperating.”
A satisfying click told her the connectors were together. The woman typed with purpose, feeling the minutes slipping away. It was a challenge getting the right commands sent in the proper sequence. For a second, she forgot what she was doing and had to start a line of code over again.
The far wall slid open. It took a moment for her to recognize that she’d set off the next alarm. This time when she started walking into the new compartment it spun around her, and she fell. The floor was comfortable—for a moment she considered staying down, taking a little “me” time, getting some rest…
What are you doing?!
Her eyes fluttered awake, and the corners of her vision darkened—images came unfocused and fleeting. Rolling over, she got up on her hands and knees, outright regretted that decision, then stood and shuffled forward.
Now she couldn’t find her breath, and panic settled into her thoughts.
The panel loomed before her, a million kilometers away. She reached out and touched it, startled by its actual proximity, and looked inside as the door swung open—lost in the myriad blinking lights and switches. The woman observed, a movie scene unfolding before her of hands setting cables and typing. It was funny. The hands looked like hers. She had seen this part somewhere before only couldn’t remember how the picture ended. Was it a happy ending?