Either the tone of Elias' voice or the change in his face signaled to Barton that he had touched a nerve with his innocuous question. He stuck out his hand and said, "I'll take that handshake now, sir."
Elias gripped the baggageman's hand. The handshake was firm as Barton looked into Elias' eyes and cautioned, "You be safe, okay?"
There was something in the delivery that gave Elias pause. He returned the stare, replying quietly, "I will."
Elias navigated the narrow, twisting staircase and turned left, spotting the sliding door for Cabin E. He had to turn sideways to go in while carrying the suitcase. With his one piece of luggage safely stowed on the overhead rack, Elias dropped down into the seat by the window.
Within minutes, Barton's brother arrived, standing in the narrow doorway and leaning his head into the compartment. "You must be Mister Charon."
Elias confirmed that he was and handed the attendant his ticket.
"Can I get you anything, sir?"
"No, thanks. But I would like to go ahead and give you my order for lunch. I'd prefer to eat in here."
"No problem at all, sir. Do you need a menu?"
"No. I'll have the cheeseburger and fries, with a couple of Diet Cokes. And make that cheeseburger well-done."
"You got it, sir. One well-done cheeseburger, fries, and two Diet Cokes. Now you know we won't be serving until after we leave the station, don't you?"
"I know. That'll be fine, Napoleon."
The attendant smiled. "Napoleon is what my kid brother calls me. On the train I go by Barton."
"Barton, it is."
Barton backed out into the passageway and left, returning a moment later with two small bottles of water and a cup of ice. "Here you go, sir, in case you get thirsty before we start rolling."
Elias thanked him, and the attendant left.
Within minutes, Elias fell back into the imaginary world his mind had constructed of the interior of Aegis. He realized that he had never entered a situation where he knew so little going in. Buried in his thoughts, he was unaware of the passage of time until he noticed that the train was beginning to pull out of the station, providing the brief illusion, as he watched from his cabin window, that the station platform was moving and he was immobile. The New Orleans cityscape quickly gave way to a dense, green vista just as Barton arrived with his lunch.
The afternoon passed unnoticed as Elias continued his pondering of the unknown that awaited him. At some point, he had retrieved from his suitcase the file given to him by Faulk. There were several papers clipped together, revealing all the government knew about Kreitzmann. He placed them on top and began to read. The facts and opinions assembled by the analysts painted a picture of a completely amoral researcher who fully embraced the concept that the ends justified the means.
Elias set aside the stack detailing the scientist's offenses and re-reviewed his early history, focusing on the academic career. Kreitzmann had obtained his Bachelor's and Master's at Stanford before transferring to Johns Hopkins for his PhD. Top of his class in each arena, he had published several papers in peer-reviewed journals prior to obtaining his doctorate in biomedical research. Apparently, he had exhibited no signs of his later proclivities at either of these universities, garnering nothing but positive, if not effusive, comments from his fellow post-doctoral students and professors. There was even a paper written by the distinguished geneticist Doctor Logan Reed, which had appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, lauding Kreitzmann for his dissertation and predicting that his young protégé would, one day, have a profound effect on the field.
Elias chuckled at the irony of the comment. "Little did you know what kind of an effect he would have."
Elias finished reading the last page of Kreitzmann's curriculum vitae and placed it facedown on the adjacent pile, when he noticed that next on the stack of papers was a printed screen shot of the anonymous plea for help affixed in front of the supposedly hidden camera. Marilyn had obviously decided to include this disturbing picture in the file, but Elias was not sure if it had been included merely for completeness, or to elicit an emotional response from him. Regardless of her intent, Elias, upon once again seeing the hand-scrawled letters, felt the muscles in his back tighten.
He filled the remainder of the thirty-six-hour trip with studying the file, wandering to the club car for a few breaks, and crawling into the lower bunk for some sleep. He awoke briefly in San Antonio as they appended the cars from the Texas Eagle, which had arrived from Chicago many hours earlier, to the rear of the train.
Elias arrived in Tucson late in the evening. He tipped Barton and stepped onto the low asphalt platform, carrying his own suitcase. Within minutes, his rental car procured, he drove the few blocks to his hotel. Following a fitful night's sleep, he skipped breakfast and began the three-hour drive west to Aegis.
Erin Stephenson sighed with frustration. She was now saddled with the third intern this year, Amber, and rather than providing any real help, these earnest college students tended to be time wasters. She now had less than an hour to prepare for the ten o'clock broadcast, and instead of sitting at her desk working, she was following the twenty-year-old to the intern's cubicle to answer a question.
Trying hard to disguise the irritation in her voice as they arrived, Erin asked, "Tell me again what it is."
Nervously, Amber answered, in a rush of words, "Check out this surface ob," referring to the surface observation map on the screen.
Erin's eyes hastily glanced over the barbs, as she noted, "Okay, it's windy."
"I know," Amber replied, succumbing to her hallmark giggle, which Erin found extremely unpleasant. "At first I thought it was just variable wind, but look at all the wind barbs around this area…look at the direction…or I should say directions."
Drawing a deep, calming breath, Erin examined the screen more closely, this time paying attention to the little flag on each barb in the region where Amber had pointed.
"This doesn't make any sense at all," Erin muttered under her breath. Without tearing her eyes from the screen, her right hand reached out and snatched up the telephone. After punching in a number she knew by heart, she heard a voice answer on the other end.
"National Weather Service. Rusty."
Thankful that the meteorologist-on-duty was someone she knew, she blurted, "Rusty, Erin Stephenson. I think you're having a problem with your wind anemometers."
Elias parked the rental car and stared through the windshield at the entrance to Aegis. The contractor working on the addition, which would create the "cooling off" residence outside the point of no return, had built a temporary safety tunnel that, Elias knew, would lead him to the turnstile. The slab-on-grade foundation was already in place and a few of the tilt-up concrete panels were standing, braced by steel struts installed diagonally and bolted to the new walls and the floor. Elias hoped the braces were up to the task of withstanding the current winds.
When it was finished, new arrivals would be required to register within the receiving facility where they would each obtain an RFID card. As a part of the project, the outermost turnstile was to be modified so that it would only move if an authorized card was carried by the person entering the cage. The card would not allow the bearer access before thirty days, giving the new arrivals an opportunity to change their minds. To prevent the buying, selling, stealing, or swapping of cards among those in waiting, a biometric scan would be recorded at the time the new arrival received the card. The biometrics had to match the cardholder at the end of the thirty days or the card would be voided.
But, Elias knew, none of that was yet in place. At the end of the 2x4 and plywood tunnel was the turnstile, and that was it.
A gust of wind violently rocked the car, and Elias' view of Aegis was briefly obscured by dust. He decided there was no point in delaying any further, and he grabbed his suitcase with his right hand while firmly gripping the door handle with his left. As Elias tripped the door release, the wind instantly
pulled the handle from his grasp and slammed the door all the way open, wrenching the hinges in the process. The interior was instantaneously filled with tan-colored powder even though he quickly climbed out and fought the force of the wind to slam the door of the car. Due to the now sprung hinges, the car door did not fully close, making it impossible for him to lock it.
Hunched forward, Elias walked/trotted to the mouth of the safety tunnel and gratefully took a few steps in, glad for the modest respite from the gale. Although he was tempted to again pause, the severe shuddering and creaking from the wooden tunnel prompted him to proceed through the wobbly, makeshift structure before it collapsed on top of him. The turnstile, lighted from behind, loomed ominously at the end. As he neared it, his familiar goulash of emotions returned. Dread, fear, anger, and frustration were but a few of the feelings elicited by the sight of the steel entrance.
Though it was a chilly day, as his fingers touched the bars, he involuntarily jerked them back; the horizontal metal rods of the turnstile felt substantially, almost irrationally, colder than the ambient temperature. Indicating impatience with himself by a shake of his head, Elias firmly grasped the bars and pushed forward. The loud clack-clack-clack of the ratchet mechanism reinforced his already present feeling of foreboding.
All of his speculating, all of his contemplating, wondering, and even dreaming as to what he would find inside was about to be answered. In his mind, he pulled up the floor plan of the entry. After navigating the entrance turnstile, which was actually a series of three turnstiles, each positioned around a corner from the previous, the first area he would see would be a wide corridor, which, he recalled, was one of many spokes on a wheel. He remembered thinking, as he had studied the layout, that Aegis reminded him of a science fiction space station. It was designed with concentric rings, served by arcing passageways, each of those accessed by wider corridors radiating straight outward from the center common area.
This entire thought process transpired in the few paces it took him to pass through the final turnstile. He reached the interior opening where the horizontal bars of the turnstile passed through the fixed set of bars, which precluded the entrant from simply staying inside the revolving door and proceeding back out again. This prevented the turnstile from being used as an exit, since the bars would only travel in one direction.
Unbeckoned, the melody and lyrics of the Eagles song "Hotel California" filled his mind as he stepped from the turnstile and surveyed the room. The entire facility was designed to minimize electrical and water usage and, in fact, was completely off the grid. Daytime lighting was accomplished utilizing integrated solar collectors, reflective tubes, and diffuser lenses to capture the maximum amount of sunlight on the exterior and carry it inside to the corridors and rooms of the complex. Most of the roof surface was covered with solar panels, to convert sunlight into electricity. Water came from a primary well and a secondary, or backup, well. The pumps on both of these wells ran only during the day, when the solar panels were generating electricity, each of them maintaining the water level of two elevated tanks, which provided adequate water pressure due to simple gravity. Hot water was also created during the day, again by use of the sun and a crisscrossing web of insulated black pipes leading from the roof areas. These pipes were fed by the water tanks. The sun heated the water within them during the meandering journey through the latticework, until the water was diverted down into the building where the pipes were chambered in another insulated raceway and tied into the plumbing system for general use. Sewage was handled by an extensive septic system installed in the desert adjacent to the facility. All garbage was to be dumped in a massive, lined excavation with a powerful ram assembly at the top. The debris was first compacted and then dropped into the pit.
Other than the water from the aquifer and the limitless sunlight, Aegis took nothing from society and gave nothing back. Zero impact was the goal of its state-of-the-art design.
As Elias stepped into the entry corridor, the first image which greeted his eyes was also the first answer to his volume of questions. All of the visible walls were covered with graffiti. None of the so-called urban art had been visible on the video he had seen in Faulk's office because the camera was tightly focused on the exit from the turnstile and did not show the adjacent walls. To his uninitiated eye, it was unreadable, communicating contempt rather than any specific message. In one sense, he was not surprised by the vandalism, since Aegis was anarchy in its purest form with no pre-existing governance or law enforcement. One of the many problems Elias had with the establishment from its inception was the concept of creating an environment where people, who were already at the end of their ropes, would wander in and then be expected to create a viable society from scratch.
The entry corridor, lined with several doors, was easily spacious enough to accommodate hundreds of people, yet it was empty. Despite the lack of an audience, Elias resisted the urge to wave at the camera, knowing that Faulk was watching and had been impatiently waiting for his arrival. He did make a point of ensuring that the lens received a full-frontal view of his countenance.
"I wasn't expecting a welcoming committee anyway," Elias said aloud, his voice echoing back to him from the various hard surfaces.
On the train ride, he had found the tally in the files: more than eleven thousand people had entered Aegis since it opened. There was, of course, no way for him to know the current population.
Elias shifted his suitcase to his left hand and reached into the pocket of his windbreaker with his right, gripping the butt of the 9mm Beretta but leaving it concealed. With his feeling of self-confidence bolstered, he walked forward into the corridor.
Knowing from his memorization of the plans that he had a nearly one-half-mile walk to the center of the complex, he paced himself at a steady but not quite brisk stride. He did veer to the side so that he walked near the right-hand wall, rather than down the center. The silence and emptiness was unsettling, creating the illusion that Aegis was completely unoccupied and abandoned.
Elias had traveled approximately one hundred yards, he guessed from counting his paces, when he approached the first of the intersecting hallways. This would be the outermost ring of residential units. The graffiti was as dense on the walls as it had been at the entrance. Just as he entered the intersection, two young men stepped into his path from the right side, coming to a halt directly in front of him. Before he could react, he noticed two more emerge from the hallway to his left, supplementing the impromptu blockade. Elias stopped and said nothing, wanting them to make the first move.
The tallest of the four, the top of his head covered with a black stocking, declared, "This is where you stop."
Elias took a brief moment to size up the stranger and his three accomplices before speaking. "Why is that?"
The young man shook his head as if Elias had asked him a foolish question. "Cuz this is where you decide."
"Decide? What?"
The leader had obviously expected the newcomer to be frightened. Since he did not hear a satisfactory level of fear in Elias' voice, he took a step forward, clearly intended to intimidate, and menaced, "Whether you belong to us or die."
As the man spoke, Elias heard a shuffling from behind and glanced over his shoulder to see that two more punks had approached. They had, no doubt, been hiding behind one of the closed doors he had passed. He was now surrounded.
Turning his head back to the front, Elias also took a step forward, bringing himself within inches of the apparent leader, and while staring directly into those dull eyes, in a low and steady voice answered, "I don't think so."
Angered by the response, the leader bit his lower lip for a moment before barking out, "What you mean, you don't think so? You don't have a choice!"
Elias grinned at him, his expression anything but mirthful. "But you said it was my decision. I've decided to keep walking."
He took a quick side step, and the leader moved to block him. Expecting this, in a series of movements which
were almost a blur, Elias dropped his suitcase and reached up to grip the front of the stranger's shirt while pulling the 9mm from his pocket. He jammed the barrel of the pistol into the neck of the leader and ordered, "Tell your other punks to walk away."
The tall one's eyes showed white all the way around the irises as the reality of his predicament sunk in. But before he could speak, a gunshot rang out in the corridor, and Elias felt the body of the one he had thought was the leader go limp. Almost instantly, the thug's shirt blossomed with blood. Elias released his grip, allowing the stranger to drop limply to the floor, and looked around to see that all of the others had pistols drawn, all aiming at him.
From his detached perspective, Elias pondered the foolishness of their positioning as the five remaining young men stood in a circle, guns drawn; their clear intent was to aim at him, but their unacknowledged result was to have drawn a bead on each other, with only the bullet-stopping ability of his body as the buffer.
Elias was not sure if he was witnessing the field promotion of the former second-in-command or if the youth now dead at his feet had ever been the leader, but another member of this small gang stepped forward, his only true distinguishing characteristic being that he was the widest among them. From his position and the direction of the shot which had taken out the tall one, Elias realized that this was the thug who had fired. Taking care to not place himself within Elias' reach, he halted and threatened, "Drop the gun or die."
Elias slowly bent forward, and gently placed the Beretta on the concrete. He then straightened, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
"Kick it away."
Placing the side of his right foot against the pistol, Elias slid it to his side, toward the wall on his right.
His eyes never leaving those of the gang leader, Elias asked, "What's this about?"
The slightest smile curled one corner of the thug's mouth as he said, "I got no problem explainin'. Every place needs jack…money…even this place."
"I didn't bring any," Elias answered, his tone conversational, as if he were oblivious to the fact that he had five guns, in the hands of obvious amateurs, aimed directly at him.
The Aegis Solution Page 5