Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller

by Jasper T. Scott

  The clerk smiled tightly at me. “The network is the only one around, and the password is Stokes88, like the musician.”

  I nodded my thanks, and went to look for an outlet. I found one by the windows facing the street. The chairs around the outlet were filled with snoring people, so I sat on the floor with my back to the wall. I watched the people in those chairs as I waited for my computer to start up, wondering how much the Peabody charged per night for a spot in the heated lobby.

  My laptop’s welcome screen appeared, along with a cheerful tone, and I typed in my password. Logging into the hotel’s WiFi with the password the clerk had given me, I opened a browser window and typed dictionary of pictures into Google to see what would come up.

  The first result was “Visual Dictionary Online.” I clicked through to that site and scanned the page. Seeing a downloads tab, I tried that, and found that they had an offline version. I started the download. This was going to be easier than I’d thought.

  While I waited for the download to finish, I thought about what else I could accomplish now that I finally had an Internet connection. I went straight to CNN and began scanning the headlines.

  Screechers Building Border Wall

  Refugee Crisis Worsens as Screechers Drive Millions North

  The Fight Continues in Africa

  New Estimates Put Death Toll Over One Billion Worldwide

  Coastal Cities Turn Into Ghost Towns Anticipating Tidal Waves

  Rogue Star Arriving Early - April 28th at 5:30 PM

  Mars Colony Mission Leaving Early, Initial Launch Set for April 28th

  The wording of that final headline hit me—initial launch—and I thought back to what I’d witnessed from the roof. We’d seen three rockets taking off, but I’d counted nine on the ground. That meant there were still six more waiting to launch.

  My heart began beating double time in my chest. There was a good chance Akron Massey was still at the launch facility. We might not be too late to ask him where Haven was, after all.

  Chapter 52

  I clicked the headline and hurriedly scanned through the article. It talked about three separate launches, each one separated by twelve hours. The first one had been at 6:00 AM local time. The second would be at 6:00 PM tonight, and the final one would take off at 6:00 AM tomorrow.

  Wondering about the timing, I remembered another headline—the one that said the rogue star was arriving early, and I clicked back in the browser window to check that headline.

  Rogue Star Arriving Early - April 28th at 5:30 PM

  What day was it today? Checking the date and time in the corner of my screen, I blinked in shock. The rogue was arriving tonight, just before the second rocket launch.

  I took a moment to stop and think about that. What did that mean for us?

  My mind drew a blank. Memphis was so far from the coast that it didn’t really matter. The rogue would pass us by and we probably wouldn’t even notice. The long-term effects of its approach and departure were what concerned us—the disruption of Earth’s orbit and the dropping of temperatures around the world. And we’d already begun to feel those effects: snow in Memphis in the middle of Spring. It was absurd, and things were only going to get worse. What would we do when the warmest place we could go was well below freezing? Where would we go when we ran out of money for hotels? Would we end up camping on the streets like those people outside? How long before hunger drove people insane and drove them to cannibalism?

  Darkness and despair gathered, dragging me down and threatening to snuff out the fragile hope that I was still clinging to—Haven. We had to find Haven.

  I shook myself out of my dark musings and forced myself to focus. We still had time to catch Akron Massey. The second group of rockets wasn’t launching until 6:00 PM. My gaze returned to the date and time in the corner of the screen. It was 7:38 AM right now. We had just over ten hours to reach Massey and convince him to tell us where Haven was.

  “There you are!” I looked up to see Kate and the kids approaching at a hurried pace. “There’s a complimentary breakfast in the hotel restaurant,” Kate added as they stopped in front of me.

  I jumped up off the floor with my laptop in my hands. “You have to see this!”

  Kate’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  I clicked the headline that read Mars Colony Mission Leaving Early, Initial Launch Set for April 28th and turned the screen around for my family to see. Kate peered at it, slowly shaking her head.

  “We already know about the launch. We just watched it with you, remember?”

  “Yes, but that was only one of the launches.” I showed her the headline and explained my deduction; then I pointed to the part where the article described three separate launches. “What are the odds that Massey would go in the first wave? Think about it. The Screechers could still decide to shoot those rockets down. He’ll want to hang back and wait until he’s sure it’s safe.”

  “So we might still catch him,” Kate said, her eyes widening.

  I nodded. “Yes, if we can find some way through the soldiers guarding the facility.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to try. Maybe they’ll give us security clearance because you’re Richard’s sister, or else they might give us some way to contact Mr. Massey.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Alex asked.

  I checked the status of my dictionary download. It was done. “Nothing,” I said. “Where are the Hartfords?”

  “Harry is up on the roof guarding all of our stuff,” Kate said. “Debbie and Celine are getting breakfast.”

  “Go round them up and meet me on the roof. We need to leave right away.”

  Rachel’s eyes flashed and her bottom lip popped out. She stomped her foot and crossed her arms. “No,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

  “We should eat first,” Kate said.

  My stomach growled, and the possibility of hot coffee sealed it. “All right, but let’s be quick.”

  * * *

  After breakfast and three cups of coffee, I went to the front desk with Harry to get his keys so that we could retrieve our own vehicles. We got his keys, despite the desk clerk’s protests that we’d already paid for the valet service and might as well use it. Harry walked grudgingly beside me as we walked down the snowy sidewalk to the garage.

  “I don’t see why you couldn’t just use the valet. Are you afraid they’ll scratch the paint?”

  “No, I’m afraid that they’ll spot OneZero in the back.”

  Harry looked at me with sudden interest. “I thought those soldiers confiscated him?”

  I explained what I’d found last night and how OneZero could apparently cloak himself in plain sight.

  “That’s unbelievable!” Harry said, shaking his head. “Why do you think he came back? He could have just run away and hid somewhere on his own.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

  We showed our keys and valet parking stubs to the soldiers guarding the garage. They let us through, and I led Harry up to the top floor. Stopping at the back of my truck, I opened the tarp and waved. “I’m back, OneZero.”

  But OneZero gave no reply and made no attempt to de-cloak.

  Harry peered in beside me. “Are you sure you didn’t just imagine the whole thing? You’ve been running on little to no sleep for days.”

  I gave him a sharp look. “He was here. In fact...” I stared into the back of the truck again. “He’s probably still here. Maybe he’s scared of you.”

  “Me? Why would he be scared of me? He’s the killing machine who invaded my planet and kicked me out of my home, not the other way around.”

  “Maybe because you shot it?” I suggested. “OneZero, it’s okay. Harry knows about you. You can reveal yourself.”

  The air shimmered and that transparent silhouette appeared once more.

  “Holy shit,” Harry breathed.

  The silhouette became fully opaque, and gle
aming black eyes stared back at us.

  “Harry’s a friend, remember?”

  “Friend,” OneZero said in that feminine register again.

  “He can talk? He’s a she?” Harry asked.

  “Seems like it,” I said, and hopped into the back of the truck with my laptop. I pulled the computer out and showed her how to work it, and also how to navigate the dictionary I’d downloaded. She caught on quickly, and seemed to understand the purpose of the application. I searched the word dictionary, and a picture of a physical dictionary appeared. I grimaced, thinking that wouldn’t be very helpful, but OneZero grew animated and pointed excitedly to the book.

  “That’s what this is—a dictionary,” I said, pointing to the application window.

  OneZero nodded slowly, and I left her to it. Meanwhile I withdrew a car charger for the laptop and strung it through the rear window to reach one of the truck’s electrical sockets. When I finished, OneZero caught my eye and shook her head.

  “Logan,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” I went to look at the screen. She’d typed some gibberish into the search box. Of course she couldn’t search for words like I’d done.

  I showed her how to click on categories and sub categories instead. She tried it, and randomly came up with the image for a stove—a device that she would never recognize because robots had no need for food or cooking. I sighed. This was never going to work.

  If only I had Rosetta Stone in English on my laptop. I’d downloaded the Spanish version last year to help Alex with his Spanish homework. He’d gone from C’s and B’s to A’s by the time the school year ended, so I knew first-hand how effective it could be. Plus, it did exactly what I was trying to do with the visual dictionary by associating pictures with words. The difference was that it also taught sentence structure, grammar, and pronunciation—not just vocabulary.

  “You ready to go?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied in a dull voice.

  “Something wrong?”

  I explained the problem.

  “So why don’t you use the Spanish version?” he asked.

  “Because I don’t know Spanish, for one. We’d just be transitioning from one unknown language to another.”

  “But not an unknowable language. I know a little bit of Spanish,” Harry said. “Maybe I can translate.”

  I blinked, and the penny dropped. “So does Alex.”

  “So he can translate. What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. I wasn’t thinking.” All those A’s were about to pay off. I loaded the program and showed OneZero how to work it. She got excited when she saw the images and written words to accompany them. She pointed to a picture of a boy drinking a glass of water and repeated after the program’s audible description.

  “El niño está bebiendo!” OneZero said in a perfect Spanish accent.

  “Exactly,” I replied.

  “La niña está bebiendo!” OneZero went on, repeating after the program again.

  “You just keep that up,” I said, already wondering how fast she would learn. Unlike us, she probably had perfect recall, so once would be enough to burn everything into her mind. I remembered that Alex had spent at least a hundred hours using Rosetta Stone before he started getting A’s in class. Of course, later I’d found out that he was only interested in learning because of a Colombian exchange student at his school. Regardless, if we were lucky, the one hundred hours that it had taken him to learn would end up being more like twenty for OneZero.

  “La niña está saltando!” OneZero declared.

  “Sounds like it’s working,” Harry said.

  “Yeah,” I said, as I crawled out over the fuel containers and then the tailgate. “It would be nice if I knew what she was saying, though.”

  “That’s what Alex is for.”

  “Right.” I just hoped he would remember enough of what he’d learned to be able to communicate with the robot. He’d dropped out of Spanish right after the Colombian girl had left.

  * * *

  It took us two hours to pack up our things, check out, and return to the bridge we’d crossed last night. Now we were sitting in traffic on our way back across the Mississippi. I told Alex to open the back window and tell OneZero to hide.

  “I don’t know how to say hide in Spanish,” Alex objected.

  “Then rephrase it! She can’t let them see her this time.”

  “Okay, okay—let me see.” He slid the window open. “OneZero?”

  “Sí, Señor Alex?”

  “She knows my name?” Alex asked.

  “Just tell her.”

  “Ahh... t-tenes que...”

  “Tengo que...?”

  “Hide,” Alex said.

  “Hide,” came OneZero’s polly-parrot reply.

  “No, I mean. Tenes que no...”

  “I thought you knew Spanish?” I demanded, glancing in the rear-view mirror. OneZero’s head appeared between my kids. Rachel peered up at him and waved.

  “I do know Spanish!” Alex objected. “Kind of. Tienes que no dejar tu ver. Entiendes?”

  “Tengo que no dejarme ver?” OneZero replied.

  “Si, exacto.”

  She covered her eyes with her hands. “No dejarme ver.”

  “Ahhh...” Alex trailed off.

  Something had definitely gotten lost in the translation.

  Alex was still trying to get her to hide herself by the time the army roadblock appeared. There were just two cars left between those soldiers and us.

  “OneZero,” I said and jabbed a finger at those soldiers. “You remember the men from last night? The soldiers?”

  “Soldiers,” she replied.

  “They’re looking for you,” I pointed at her, then at my eyes, and then back to the soldiers. “They’re going to take you away and hurt you if they find you. Do you understand me?”

  She stared at me for a moment longer, then looked to Alex. “No dejarles verme,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I think she just corrected my Spanish,” Alex said.

  And with that, OneZero vanished into thin air. “Perfect, OneZero! Just like that. Hide.”

  “Hide,” she replied.

  I shook my head wonderingly. “You spent a hundred hours learning, and she’s spent two. How the hell does she know more Spanish than you?”

  Alex shrugged. “She’s an alien robot, I’m not. Maybe she hacked into the computer and memorized the whole thing already.”

  I frowned, wondering if that was what she’d actually done. A cold draft brushed my neck, and I nodded to Alex. “Close that window. You’re letting out all the heat.”

  “Sure.” He slid it shut.

  The car ahead of us moved to the front of the line, and I rolled into position behind it. As soldiers searched the vehicle, my thoughts went to what I was going to say to get past the next road block—the one around Starcast’s launch facility. I remembered the field of tents I’d seen around the facility. There had to be thousands of soldiers camped there. I doubted they were going to let us through.

  Kate’s voice interrupted my thoughts: “Logan, if they search the truck like they did last time, won’t they find OneZero anyway? That’s how you found her, right?”

  I chewed my lower lip, thinking hard about that. Hiding in plain sight might not be good enough.

  Chapter 53

  I stood at the back of my truck, peering in with the pair of soldiers who’d come to search it.

  “What is all of this?” the corporal asked, rapping on one of my improvised water-tank fuel containers and nodding to our stack of luggage behind that.

  “Supplies for our trip,” I said, trying not to look as nervous as I felt.

  The corporal gave me a hard stare. “Where did you say you were headed?”

  I hesitated, wondering briefly if I should tell him the truth. Best case, he’d point us in the right direction, but more likely he’d interrogate us and perform an even more thorough
search before ultimately telling us that the launch facility was a restricted area. I’d have better luck showing up there in person and looking for a ranking officer to speak with.

  “Do you have a destination in mind?” the corporal asked.

  “A family farm in Idaho,” I said, coming up with that on the spot. Idaho? I wondered.

  The corporal frowned. “That’s a long way from here, and it’s going to be a lot colder come winter time. You should stick to the South if you can.”

  I nodded along with that. “Maybe we will.”

  The corporal nodded back. “Good luck,” he said.

  “You’re not going to search my vehicle?”

  “Should I?” the corporal challenged.

  “Well, no,” I said, mentally kicking myself for suggesting it.

  He nodded and smiled reassuringly. Pointing to the license plate on my bumper, he said, “According to our records you came through here last night.”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Then you’ve already been searched. Carry on.”

  I couldn’t believe our luck. Hurrying back to the driver’s seat, I hopped in and started the engine.

  “That’s it?” Kate asked.

  “That’s it,” I confirmed as we rolled through the road block. I went slowly to wait for Harry, but his vehicle wasn’t searched either, and we were on our way again just a few minutes later.

  * * *

  Even though I knew roughly what direction to head in, it took an hour to find the launch facility. We ended up going in circles for a while before I decided to follow a pair of army trucks. They led us straight to the camp around the facility, but the road leading in was barred by a boom and a guard house. The trucks in front of me cruised right through, but when the soldiers standing guard saw me and Harry waiting in line, they dropped the boom and came rushing out with their rifles aimed.

  I lowered my window as they arrived.

  “This is a restricted area,” one of them said. “Turn around immediately.”