The Tellurian Threat: A Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Thriller (The Tellurian Archives Book 1)

by Debashish Das

  “Are you saying Al can replace the entire Analytics department? And you want me to help you do it?”

  Chapter 10

  The elevator came to a stop, and the doors slid open, but Damian didn’t step out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on the surface. Not the ground level, the actual surface. There was no danger, of course. But just the knowledge that he was on the surface made him nervous. This better be fucking worth it.

  It was pleasantly cool and dark in the garage. Not much different than the underground corridors, except for the size of the garage. It was taller and wider than any building he’d ever seen. He slowly started walking toward the man he saw standing in the distance. The parking lots were mostly empty. It gave the place a strange, deserted feel; made him feel like he didn’t belong here. That’s when he noticed the smell. Dust! It wasn’t coming from any particular place, it was everywhere. Clinging to the darkness like a shadow, it stirred some long forgotten memories, but he suppressed them for now. He couldn’t afford to lose focus here.

  As he got closer, he saw Kyle standing in front of a car, busy with his mobile. The car gleamed white beneath the sparse, tungsten lighting; the sleek, curved lines of the low-slung hood running along the profile and merging gracefully near the tail lights. The front end flowing into the sharp headlights made it look fast even while standing still. He had to admit, it was a good looking machine, designed to stir the emotions of those who saw it, designed to appeal to a more primal side of the human psyche.

  “Oh, hi,” Kyle said turning around. “No trouble finding the place, I hope?”

  Damian shook his head, smiling wanly.

  “So,” Kyle asked, pointing with a flourish toward his car, “what do you think?”

  He looked from Kyle to the car. “It looks fast.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kyle said grinning. “It is fast, really fast. You have to experience it for yourself to believe it.”

  Damian took out his console from the bag along with a transmitter to plug into the controller port. “Fire it up, and let’s get to work.”

  It looked as if Kyle was about to say something, but instead, he took out his mobile and tapped a few times. The car’s headlights blazed bright, and with a low-pitched whine, the car gently lifted up a few inches off the ground. The whine died down, and the car floated in the air with barely a tremble.

  Impressive tech, Damian admitted to himself. “Silent and stable. The cycling frequency on these pulse generators must be off the charts.”

  Kyle’s grin widened. He tapped on his mobile screen, and the doors swung open. “Let’s take a ride, shall we?” he said climbing into the driver’s seat.

  Damian walked around to the other side and cringed on seeing the small, low-slung seat. It didn’t look very comfortable.

  “Here, let me get that,” Kyle said reaching out.

  He handed over his console and bag to Kyle, placed his hands on the frame, and slid awkwardly into the seat. Damn it, he thought, it’s even more uncomfortable than it looks. He didn’t know how long he could sit in this contorted position. “I just want to see how it behaves on the roads. So five minutes should be enough.”

  “Relax, it gets better once we get moving,” Kyle said, handing him back the console and the bag.

  “Wait, I’ve got to plug this transmitter in before we go.” He started to search for the port on the central console, but it was a painful struggle to move his body in the position he was in.

  Kyle took the transmitter out of his hands and said, “I think I know what you’re looking for.” He leaned forward until his head was between his knees and came up after a few moments. “Can you tell if it worked?”

  Damian detected a signal from the transmitter and ran a diagnostic test on his console. “Yes, it’s working. We can go now.”

  “Not so fast. You’ll have to buckle yourself in, otherwise the doors won’t close.”

  Damian grunted as he hunted around for the buckle. All this bullshit just for few moments of sensory pleasure? How much more delusional can people get?

  Kyle saw him struggling and reached over from his seat to help him get buckled in. “Yeah, it takes some time getting used to, but trust me, it’ll be worth it. Are you ready?”

  Damian nodded, not sure what to expect. He had never done anything like this. It’s all for a greater cause, he reassured himself.

  The car doors swung shut, and a hissing noise indicated the hermetic seal was in place. Kyle docked his mobile into the central console and smiled at Damian. And just like that, they were moving forward.

  The smoothness of the motion surprised Damian. He couldn’t even feel the pulse cycles from the generators, let alone the movement of the car. He thought of checking the cycling frequency on his console, but before he could, an intense beam of light forced him to shut his eyes.

  Sunlight, the word popped into his head of its own accord. What did you expect, you fucking idiot? You’re going out onto the real surface. He cringed as he felt the heat on his skin. He knew he was safe inside the car, but that didn’t make his anxiety go away. As he was trying to slowly open his eyes, he felt the sudden acceleration pin him in his seat, and a sharp spasm passed through his body.

  Damian sat at the table, nursing an iced juice and a bruised knee. The pain was still there, duller than before. Nothing he couldn’t bear with for a few hours. He rubbed his knee where he had banged it on the frame as he had stumbled out of the car.

  “Everything okay?” Kyle asked again. “You don’t look too good.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m still trying to process it all,” he replied, examining the data on his console screen.

  “I told you it was going to be great, didn’t I? The sun was unusually bright today, though. I’ve rarely seen the dome shining so brightly.”

  Damian looked up from the console. “I was talking about the data.”

  “Oh, that. Well, that’s your domain. I was just enjoying the drive and the view. So what have you got so far?”

  “It’s way more complicated than I had imagined it would be,” he acknowledged. “I can see why they would go with an integrated approach, instead of the modular style that’s popular now. There’s just too much going on, so they would have been able to cut down the development time by using it.”

  “Okay, but where are we on enabling the driverless mode? Can you do it?”

  Damian sipped on his drink before shaking his head. “If I had not gone for a ride in it, I would have said yes. Now, I’m not too sure.”

  “Why? You said that it was only a matter of getting the software to take navigation instructions from the NAV system instead of my hands,” Kyle said waving his hands in front of him.

  “That’s the approach I would have gone for if the controller software had distinct modules. It would have been a simple matter of patching in the NAV data and overriding the native instructions. I had not realized there would be a third axis to modulate too.”

  “Third axis?”

  “The vertical axis of motion, here,” he said tilting the screen toward Kyle. “See these lines of code here? These are from the last curve we went into. I had guessed that the cycling frequency would be constant, but as the car goes into a curve, it starts varying across each generator.” Kyle was staring at the screen, but Damian could tell that he was not getting through to him. “What that means is the car tilts while going into a turn. A similar thing happens when it accelerates or brakes. But you can’t feel it when you’re inside the car. You only feel like the car is hovering at the same height at all times. Now that I’ve seen the code, it all makes sense. It’s just basic physics.”

  “Well, when you explain it that way, it does make sense,” Kyle said sarcastically. “But you can still do it, right?”

  Damian smiled in spite of himself. Most people would see it as stubbornness, but it was the same single-minded focus he had noticed before. The same focus that had helped Kyle reach where he was now. “Yes, it’s difficult, but not
impossible. I can see why the company would have given you such a long timeline for upgrading your software. It’s their own damn fault, they dug this pit themselves.”

  “And I’m stuck here suffering for their mistake,” Kyle said, shaking his head.

  Well, that’s intriguing, Damian thought. “You do realize that the driverless car is a very old concept, right? When there were hundreds of millions of people living in the mega-cities and driving on the streets at the same time, it led to what were called gridlocks. That’s why the whole concept was implemented, in the hope that removing humans from the equation would solve the problem. It didn’t, of course. But here, in Waylain, people don’t need cars. The population and the transportation system are very well optimized.

  “Now that I have taken a ride in your car, I can see why you might find it attractive enough to drive every day. But what difference does it make if it’s driverless or not? You’d barely be saving any time; it would be much faster to just use the regular walkways.”

  Kyle stared at him for a few moments. “We didn’t need Waylain either. I mean, the old SubHab models were working fine. The time and effort it took to build Waylain could easily have been used to build five other SubHab structures. But Patrick didn’t let that stop him. He reached out and went beyond what was necessary. Look where he is now.

  “And look at yourself. You had a good job at Exel; most people would give anything to work at Exel’s R&D. But that wasn’t enough for you either. You wanted to accomplish something, and you went out and did it. You could have accepted what was handed to you, but you didn’t. I respect that.

  “This whole thing with the car and the driverless mode… I don’t know. It just feels like if I could do this, I will start feeling in control again. It may not be a grand accomplishment or even lead to anything meaningful, but it will be something.”

  Damian didn’t know how to react. He had never been good at reading people, and this outburst had taken him by surprise. Why is he telling me all this? What does he want me to do? He knew he had to say something, though. “You’re right about Waylain, about me, about wanting to be in control. I can understand that.”

  “Thanks,” Kyle said nodding his head. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

  Damian leaned back in his chair and drew his console back toward him, placing it between them. This was not going according to plan at all, but he still needed him, so he nodded.

  “What was it like working at R&D? Did you feel like you were working on something groundbreaking, something that would lead to a better… future?”

  Damian folded his arms and squinted at Kyle as if trying to see through him. No one was there on the day it happened, there’s no way he knows about it. A better future, indeed. We both wanted that, but he wasn’t thinking big enough. In spite of all his success, he had flaws, too…

  “It was a serious question. I didn’t mean it as a joke.”

  Kyle’s voice cut into his train of thought, and he realized that he had been smiling. “Old memories. It was a long time ago. I was just trying to remember what it had been like.”

  “It seems like they’re good memories.”

  Damian shrugged. “It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. We were out to change the world. And for some time, it actually felt like I was doing something worthwhile, something worth dedicating my life to. But no good thing lasts forever, right?”

  “No good thing lasts forever, indeed,” Kyle said, raising his glass in a mock toast. “So what happened?”

  “They wanted things done in a certain way, I didn’t agree. They saw a gray area; I saw a line that shouldn’t be crossed. So I left.”

  “So you left? Just like that? You didn’t care if they would go ahead without you?”

  “They did go ahead without me.”

  “And you’re okay with that? I mean, what difference did your leaving make?”

  Damian shrugged his shoulders. “No one can do what I do. I don’t think they would have found the going easy without me. But I could act independently, without them telling me what to do.”

  “So, you’re still working on the same thing you were back then, without the support & resources of R&D?”

  “Yes,” he said sighing, “but it has not been easy. When you believe in something, you never abandon it.”

  Kyle had a distant look in his eyes and sat in silence for a while. “You almost make it sound like they’re bad guys.”

  “What?” That surprised Damian. “No, there is no good or bad, it’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “What about ethics, then? You said there was a line you weren’t willing to cross.”

  “Would you cut off a friend’s leg?”

  “What the hell…”

  “The medical professionals used to do it in the past to save lives. They called it surgical amputation. And because they did it, medical technology has evolved to a point where we no longer need crude surgical techniques.”

  Kyle frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Imagine you were living in that era, and you walked into a room and saw someone cutting off your friend’s leg. You would rush to put a stop to it, even physically hurt the person that was doing it. There would be no doubt in your mind that you were doing the right thing.

  “But what if you knew the moment you saw it that the person cutting off your friend’s leg was doing so to save his life? Would you have stopped that person then?”

  Kyle stared at him with a weird look on his face.

  “Ethical dilemma, isn’t it?” he said with both his hands on the table, gazing intently into Kyle’s eyes. He saw shock and confusion. “That’s the problem when your work pushes the boundaries of what exists in the present. Making the world a better place, bringing about a better future is hard work. Most of all, what may seem unethical, even wrong, may turn out to be the right thing in the future.”

  “That’s a very disturbing point of view. How do you decide then what to do in the present? How did you decide that leaving R&D was the right thing for you?”

  Damian smiled, consciously this time. “I knew it was right because I was uncomfortable and afraid of leaving. I knew it was going to be hard and that I could fail miserably.”

  “And you still did it?” Kyle asked incredulously.

  “Yes. The lingering sense of doubt and fear is a constant companion when you’re doing things that are worth doing.”

  Suddenly Damian’s mobile buzzed, interrupting the silence between them. He picked it up, and his expression changed to one of discomfort. He got up and declared, “I have to leave.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I’ve kept you here long enough,” Kyle said getting up as well. “So, are we still working on enabling the driverless mode in my car?”

  Damian was busy closing his console and putting it in his bag. “I think I have everything and will run a few simulations. I’ll let you know how it goes,” he said without looking up.

  “Great. Thanks, for all your help, Dan. I really appreciate it. Let me know if you need anything, or any way I can help.”

  Damian slung the bag over his shoulder, looked up and smiled. “I will.” He left the restaurant without another word and hobbled as fast as he could, trying to ignore the pain in his knee.

  Chapter 11

  Damian panted as he hobbled down the corridor. His knee was hurting badly, and his sweat soaked shirt made it seem colder than it was. He shuddered thinking about how much colder it was going to be inside, with the air-conditioning running at full blast. The message had been disturbing, but Yuri had told him in unequivocal terms that he needed to see him immediately.

  But why would Yuri…? He was about to knock when he realized that he could be walking into a trap. Before he could make up his mind about turning away, the door slid open, and a big, hulking giant of a man stepped out. Damian reached for the stun gun, but the man simply stepped aside and gestured for him to go in. He knew that the man had seen him reach for a weapon, and he c
ould have stopped him in the blink of an eye, but he hadn’t. The trap had been sprung, and he was caught in it.

  He walked in with trepidation, not knowing what he was walking into. The place was deserted; even Yuri was missing from behind the bar. The fact that he was shivering registered vaguely in the back of his mind as he warily scanned the dimly lit room. He suddenly became aware of someone’s gaze on him and snapped his head to the left.

  He was sitting at the corner table, the dim light reflecting off the man’s bald pate. He could feel anxiety clawing its way up inside him.

  Is this about the last job? Did I make a mistake? No, I never make mistakes. But… no, not now. Focus, you can’t afford to be lax here.

  He slowly walked up to the table and almost stumbled trying to step over the bench. The bald man didn’t react. Damian could feel the threat in the air now, like a coldness that had found its way under his skin. Clenching his teeth, he finally looked up at the face across the table.

  The man just stared at him in silence. He turned his head slightly to the side to drink from the dark bottle without breaking the stare. Suddenly Damian realized he was thirsty too, but didn’t dare reach for the glass of water on the table.

  “Drink,” the bald man said, “looks like you need it.” He smiled, but that only seemed to intensify the threat. “Don’t worry, it’s just water.”

  Damian reached for the glass and carefully took a sip. It didn’t taste any different. He wouldn’t be sitting across from me if he wanted me dead…

  “You did well, I found the man I was looking for.”

  He nodded. “Good.” So this isn’t about the job, but then… “What happened to him?”