by J. M. Preiss
"Well, according to the documentation that I was able to look over, primary power failure would have them fallback on reserves until main power could be restored. Reserves would put them in full suspension, no outward contact, but they would be able to survive indefinitely."
"And what would happen if those reserves were taken out like we were instructed?"
"The chambers would have to switch to their internal supply. I estimate that would give them probably twelve hours of suspended animation time before they would cycle and be forced to release their occupants," Sara explained.
"So if we had cut the power, they wouldn't be dead now," Jacob mused.
"It would seem that way, yes," Sara said quietly, her avatar looking meek.
Blinking a few times, Jacob let out a slow breath.
"I won't say that this is something that has happened to me before, who can, but I can't say that this is the oddest thing I've been a part of."
"How so?" Sara asked as she turned her small head towards him.
"I guess that's perhaps a bit of a misrepresentation on my part," Jacob said. "This whole ordeal has been quite, not meaning to be rhythmic or anything, surreal."
"Then aside from this, what did you mean?"
Jacob cycled through a few readouts from the transport as he collected his thoughts.
"There were things that we had to do that went above and beyond what people would deem reasonable limits. I've never had to kill civilians before, that would be truly evil, but we have had to make choices that ended up harming them in the short go."
"Explain further," Sara said. She constructed a virtual chair to sit in.
"You know how it is," Jacob said dismissively. "The advent of the replicator technologies, the limitless free energy, the dissolution of most old world nationalities; it has caused more than its fair share of strife."
"Go on."
"The complexes weren't always there, and it took a fair amount of time to build them. Many people went homeless so that they could be built. Numerous more chose to be homeless so they could benefit from the splendor of the replicator technology," Jacob explained. "So many people ended up losing their lives because of the turmoil that caused. I'm foggy on the specifics in most countries, but the money just wasn't there to expand infrastructure out into the rural areas initially. They didn't have a choice but to either commute into the cities or go without. Plenty of people chose to do the daily commute, but so many more of them; they made the choice to give it all up and created shanty towns in most if not all of the major urban centers."
"By the time the initial smoke had cleared," Jacob continued, "the industrial gurus left in charge saw no reason to expand out beyond the major cities. The vast majority of people now lived in them, and they could easily be funneled into doing whatever work showed up to earn their living. Money really did lose value in general, but the energy credit system was being developed. Nobody went hungry because of this, but they still lived in squalor."
"How does this specifically relate to you," Sara asked, a hint of impatience creeping into her tone.
"I guess I am drifting," Jacob nodded. "From all of the stuff that happened during that transition period, new threats showed up in less developed parts of the world. Local warlords made a grab for power. They consolidated their holdings and attacked their neighbors. In general, the rest of the world turned a blind eye to it. There was no more need to fight over the limited resources of the planet that we had before. Oil was next to useless. Food was no longer an issue. So much land fell below the radar of the major governments. That was the chance these people were waiting for."
"So you're saying that wars broke out," Sara offered.
"Local wars, certainly," Jacob confirmed. "Countries that couldn't afford to install a reactor and replicator facility had to live off of their own natural resources. With the rest of the developed world making a move away from them, that put a lot of people in a hard position. A lot of wars started for all the wrong reasons."
"Is there ever a right one?" Sara asked.
"I'm sure there has been plenty of debate over that, but in my opinion, yes," Jacob said. "That's why I do what I do."
He stretched his fingers.
"After the turmoil had died down for the developed world, the world leaders saw what was going on in the less developed parts. It was more of the same, I guess, if you look at the history books, but it was starting to really ramp up in how intense the hotspots were getting."
"What did they do?"
"You should have all of this information," Jacob said.
"I should," Sara responded with an annoyed tone. "But I don't. My knowledge is sporadic at best, and it seems to be coming and going. I can't explain it."
"Odd." Jacob made a mental note to think about that some more later.
"Well, either way," he said, "I can finish the story. Local warlords consolidated their power, took over their neighbors, and started eyeing the land of even more of those around them. Some people managed to amass quite the force before the world's leaders took notice of them. It was a threat that had to be dealt with."
"And let me guess, "Sara said. "This is where you come in."
"Essentially," Jacob responded. "At least, this is where my specific unit comes in. I didn't get involved until a number of years after things were being pacified, but I did see my fair share of engagements and actions. Pacification is what we called it. Execution would be a more apt term."
"Execution?"
"Certainly," Jacob said with a sigh. "It was all a mission to me. If I could care, it wouldn't even have mattered what I was doing. We would be sent in to a particularly dangerous location, find all of the enemy leaders, and remove them from power. Permanently."
"You'd assassinate them," Sara said.
"Assassination would be one way to put it, but that is a lot more focused than what we did. We would cripple their country," Jacob explained. "We were so thorough; the country wouldn't survive the next few months as a viable entity."
"How did you even manage to do that?"
"Simple. Eliminate all of the people that are in charge or could be in charge. We'd also target centers of infrastructure. We would cripple the country and make it where it could no longer make war on its neighbors or even take care of itself."
"But, why?" Sara asked. She had a very puzzled look on her avatar.
"We were chasing the people into major urban centers. People couldn't cause problem if you were able to keep an eye on them. Where better to keep an eye on them than with the rest of the population of the world?"
"I suppose."
"This had its drawbacks," Jacob continued. "People grew to not like us, and they would fight us more fervently whenever they got wind that we were coming, but it was effective. The only issue we ever had was when nations would revert to a more nomadic lifestyle."
"You couldn't nail them down to one spot and flush them to a complex," Sara said.
"Exactly. In the end, they would all make a move to one of the major facilities and integrate into modern life, but there were those that stayed out there. They got good at the nomadic life. We were eventually told not to concern ourselves with them as long as they didn't cause any trouble."
"How many people died because of you?" Sara asked quietly.
"Directly or indirectly?"
"Indirectly. I don't want to know how many you have personally killed."
Jacob took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Too many people," he said quietly. "In order to save the most people, there had to be those that perished for them to get the idea. We didn't execute civilians, far from it. We wanted to help them, but sometimes, people don't understand how to help themselves until things get really bad and they no longer have a choice. The death toll because of my actions probably numbers in the thousands."
"Thousands," Sara echoed. "How do you live with it?"
"I am confident in the knowledge that there was no other choice," Jacob said. "Th
ey could have avoided perishing if they had gone to a complex sooner, but they were too stubborn to listen. Their deaths are on my hands, but they do not weigh on my conscience."
"And what of the people that we just got killed?" Sara asked.
"Unavoidable. Maybe they died because we didn't complete the mission properly, but I'm not so sure. That was a high-yield device that had to be launched the instant the hangar door opened. If we hadn't been able to get into a working transport when we did, we would've died with them. The odds are also good that if we had completed the mission, the missile would've still launched when the hangar doors opened to let us out."
Jacob was silent for a moment.
"Whoever sent us there, they wanted those people dead," he said with conviction. "Einstein should be able to enlighten us more on what is going on, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to get a leg up on what is going on here."
Sara remained silent. She no longer seemed interested in talking.
"I don't know if you sleep or shut down or whatever, but I'm going to catch a nap before we get near Einstein. It never hurts to get sleep when you can," Jacob said.
He scooted back into the pilot's chair some more and shifted around until he felt comfortable. This wasn't the first time he had slept in armor, and he was going to make certain it wasn't his last.
Chapter XVIII
Mason was jostled awake as the transport was going through its reentry procedure. He could see on the dimmed instrument panel that everything was performing as it needed to, so he really had nothing to do.
"You're awake," Chelsea said to him.
He simply grunted.
She formed an avatar of a petite redhead on his HUD.
"I'm sorry about what happened," Chelsea said with faint voice. Her demeanor was meek and downtrodden.
"No need to be," Mason sighed. "It's in the past now, right?"
Looking down at his hands, he closed his eyes.
"Hands stained with the blood of innocents. To think, I held my daughter with these hands."
He flexed his hands and sighed.
"It wasn't your fault," Chelsea said. "I'm confident that it would've happened anyways after thinking about it. They had the device in the vicinity for it to be able to launch and be on target so quickly. It was not an orbital launch, so it was somewhere in the mountain range for sure. That was part of the plan."
"Do you think that our escaping was part of the plan?"
Chelsea shook her head.
"I don't know. It's hard to say, I guess."
There was silence for a few minutes as Mason just looked down at his hands and slowly shook his head every so often.
"I probably am not meant to survive," a quiet voice spoke.
"What's that?" Mason asked as he was drawn out of his reverie.
"I'm expendable," Chelsea explained. "Think about it. I was given limited information when I was programmed. I had no prior knowledge about you, no inkling of what is going on, and I was lied to about the mission that we just completed."
"I don't follow how that makes you expendable. I had plenty of times that I never explained things to the people under my command," Mason chided. "They didn't need to know the full picture, or even a small piece of it, so I didn't tell them. It made things easier because they were able to focus on the task at hand."
"What about when things got complicated?" she asked.
"That's what I was there for. If I wasn't there, I had my officers there," he explained. "If I didn't have one of my officers there, I can assure you that the NCOs were able to improvise."
Mason closed his eyes.
"Lot of good that did us in New York."
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Mason sat up.
"What have you been doing while I was passed out? I don't even remember passing out."
"Mainly monitoring communications," Chelsea said with a shrug. "There's not a whole lot being talked about. You would expect a lot of information being thrown around, but it's either very narrow beam transmissions, or people just aren't talking."
"Explain."
"For as heavily populated as the Earth is, there should be a cacophony of radio transmissions filling the local region. Personal calls traveling between satellites and their targets, military traffic that is encrypted, and simply news and television broadcasts; it just isn't there."
"Well," Mason said as he sat up, "just what is out there? What are you hearing?"
He didn't want to mention how awkward it felt that she was doing all that in his mind while he was asleep.
"Seems like mostly automated transmissions," Chelsea responded. "Facilities are talking to each other by sending daily reports and status updates. It's all very machine-like in nature. For instance, every hour on the hour, there is a burst of data traffic going through the satellites I'm in range of. From what I have been able to intercept, it looks like a check to see what is still connected to the network. A kind of ping, for lack of a better term."
"Like sonar," Mason said.
"Essentially. It sends out a message asking for a burst response, and all of the facilities capable of transmission respond with a positive signal. Shortly thereafter, the first signal is repeated, but now it has a timing signal appended to it, like something working to synchronize the facilities. A few minutes after the timing check, it sends out a synchronization signal. The traffic goes dark after that."
"This is all over my head," Mason mumbled. "What does this mean? You're going to have to use simple words."
"I would do nothing else," Chelsea replied. "It all seems like this is some kind of network for a major computing system. The status and timing checks are what give me that thought. Why else would they need to do that? Maybe the facilities are each working on a puzzle, and they will send a different signal when they've solved their part of it."
She shrugged and lowered her head.
"This is all strictly conjecture however."
"That's about all that we have to go on at this point in time," Mason said. "It seems sound to me, but then again, I don't know all that much about those kinds of things."
Mason blinked his eyes a few times to help himself wake up.
"There's no way to tell what these facilities are," he said more than asked.
"None," Chelsea agreed.
"Well, let's hope that Einstein has the answers that we are looking for," Mason yawned. All of this adventuring and stress was taking its toll on him.
"My bet is that it will have more questions than anything else," she said.
"Now you're starting to sound like me. Spending too much time up there?"
"Perhaps. I am privy to all but your deepest secrets that you hide from yourself," Chelsea said absent-mindedly.
"That's not creepy," Mason responded.
Jacob stirred awake when the proximity alert that he had set up beeped calmly.
"Looks like we're almost there," Mason said to him over the local channel.
"Good," Jacob said. "Taking any bets on what's different about the place?"
"Uh, I don't know if I want to take any bets on anything at this point," Mason replied. "Nothing could have changed, or maybe everything changed. There's too much in-between that is possible, and well, I'm not a betting man."
Mason held up his left arm slightly in front of himself.
"I can't argue with you," Jacob said. "Too many variables in gambling that are out of your control, best to ignore them and just go with what you do know."
The transport was angling down slowly towards their landing zone across the horizon. Since they had been coming from North America, they were over ocean, so there wasn't all that much to look at. Sometime during their flight, it had passed into nighttime, and the moon and stars glittered off of the water below them.
"About another fifteen minutes," Jacob said as he looked at the flight information. "Though this is odd."
"I don't like odd," Mason said.
"The message that we received from the ATC
over Einstein was automated. There wasn't a controller on-hand."
"So? Maybe they are running on low manpower and have switched over to the automated systems on a lot of procedural stuff. There's no reason to have a person running ATC anymore."
"I guess," Jacob said quietly. Something was off.
"It's late at night, and there is a kind of scientific crisis going on. The people that aren't asleep are going to be busy crunching numbers," Mason explained, but it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself instead of Jacob.
"That would stand to reason," Jacob agreed. "We'll know more once we're on the ground and can talk to somebody. We should be able to get some real answers here."
"I hope so, Jacob," Mason said. "I really hope so."
Chapter XIX
The transport gently settled onto the landing pad, its landing gear absorbing the shock and expelling compressed air slowly to cushion the impact further.
The landing field at Einstein was deserted. The automated lights came on when the transport had entered range, but there was nobody to be seen manning the ground stations. The control tower was empty. Where the carts were normally lined up uniformly, they were a strewn mess. The fueling stations had cables still attached and snaking off this way and that. Crates were busted open, and their contents were scattered across the field.
"Somebody sure left in a hurry," Mason muttered.
He got up out of his chair and went back into the cargo compartment. Grabbing his rifle from where he had left it, he checked its power supply while absent-mindedly activating the switch that would lower the rear ramp.
The view from outside of the transport didn't look any better than it had from the cockpit. Mason walked out with his rifle in a relaxed position and looked around.
The contents of the crates looked to be mostly rations, but some held reams of paper that had mostly blown out or were soggy from condensation. Any information that had been on the paper, if there was any to begin with, was now long gone.
Mason walked over to the control tower for the field and opened the door. It was unlocked as he expected, but it was also unlatched. It easily swung open on its hinges. There was a light flickering in the stairwell that lead up to the monitors.