The Aegis Solution

by John David Krygelski

  Oh! I can't believe I didn't mention this first. Those poor people outside…I guess they didn't make it. Nobody ever came out of the cars and trucks. Since we're so high up, when we look down from the roof, we can't really tell if any people are in the vehicles, but where else would they be? Elias, Leah, Sam, and Lisa took it real hard. I think Wilson did, too. But it's not easy to tell with him.

  Gotta go. Need to take a couple of aspirins and hit the sack. Sweezea has a run planned for tomorrow where we have to carry about a thousand pounds on our backs, so I need some rest.

  Day 11

  Milton Pierce finally had an opportunity to talk to all of the last-day newbies who flooded into Aegis right before the entrance collapsed. I think he was expecting all of them to tell him they had a visitation or a dream or something that told them to come to Aegis. It was weird. From what he told me, each of them had a different reason for coming. One guy said he was watching the news and just became disgusted with the politics. He couldn't stand it anymore, so he came here. Another one said that his business was failing and he was way deep in debt. So, instead of putting his family through losing everything and filing bankruptcy, he brought his wife and kids here. In other words, if two hundred newbies came – there were two hundred different reasons. As Wilson would say, another coincidence?

  Matthias organized a painting party. Everyone in Aegis was invited. We painted over all the graffiti.

  Day 15

  Hello, future folks! I hope that the other people who are keeping journals are more conscientious about it than I am. I'm sure that Wilson's journal goes on for pages about each day. Well, what he has to say is a lot more important than my twitterings.

  Anyway…you aren't going to believe this. Pierce, well, both Pierces actually, along with Wilson and Elias, decided that we needed to have a governing body. A group of Aegisites. Oh, by the way, there isn't a Madison anymore. And you probably know from reading your history books and other people's journals before mine, there already wasn't a Walden, even before the event. Everyone here is part of one group. There really wasn't a formal meeting or anything on this. One by one people started using the new name, coined by – guess who? You got it, me! I was calling us Aegisites on my own, and it just got picked up by everyone else.

  As I was saying, the Pierces, Wilson, and Elias thought we should have a governing body. I screwed up and called it a committee and got one of those twenty-minute droning lectures from Pierce about how ineffective committees are. He calls it a board of governors. Every person in Aegis voted. It was all by write-in votes. There weren't any nominees or candidates and there wasn't any campaigning. We were called in, had it explained to us, and we voted, right then.

  Guess who one of the new governors is? Me! The people here picked me! Is that cool, or what? They picked Wilson, of course, and Elias and Leah, Matthias, Sweezea, and Hutson. Crabill came close, but didn't quite make it. I don't think he wanted it, anyway.

  We had our first meeting today. Appointed Pierce, Milton of course, as Chief of Staff. He likes that title.

  I haven't mentioned Kreitzmann yet in this journal. He recovered just fine from his concussion and has been working with the rest of his old staff, and the Aegisites, putting together educational and training programs. I think the event changed him. We haven't had a chance to talk much, but he has told anyone who will listen to him how sorry he is for the way that he did his research and experiments in the past. Especially the "using babies" part. I suppose he is trying to take the best of what he learned before and apply it to this brave new world we're going to be starting. Some of it makes a lot of sense. The mind readers are a little spooky but sure come in handy sometimes. Not much use for the fast-talkers, but they are fitting in with our little society nicely. Seems they can slow it down if they want to. Not as slow as we talk, but we can understand them. All the adult Zippers, or Accelerants, as Kreitzmann calls them, died during the time leading up to the event. The younger ones are cool and also really come in handy. It's strange that Kreitzmann and his people and his subjects were picked to be a part of the surviving party. Maybe it's up to us to figure out why and how they all fit in if we leave here. I mean, when we leave here.

  Oh, one more cool deal before I sign off for today. One of the Aegisites is a guy who studies the history and meaning of names. I met him today at lunch. He told me I had an interesting name, considering what had happened and where I was. I think it's embarrassing, so I'm not going to include it in this journal. He brought up the significance of Elias' first and last names, but I already knew that. Then he told me something I didn't know, and it blew me away. I am assuming that all of you future "history buffs" will be aware of the pre-event history of America. Otherwise, this won't make any sense to you. Wilson's name, John Chapman, was the name of a famous guy in the past. And with what's happening now, I think it's pretty profound. John Chapman was the real name of Johnny Appleseed.

  Day 19

  Had lunch with Kreitzmann. It wasn't my idea. I was sitting by myself and eating my rations when he plopped down in the chair next to me. He obviously wanted to talk because all it took from me was asking how he was, and, boy, off he went. At times he was almost like a born-again, explaining how much he now understands that he didn't before. Carrying on about the event out there making him see the one thing that he had forgotten, in his zeal to do his research – the value of a single human life. The rest of the talk was about how he was going to spend every waking minute trying to make things right. Whatever that means. We'll see, I guess. But, man, has he changed. It's kinda cool, actually. It made me think about what Leah said about how we were all picked because we've learned from our mistakes.

  Day 31

  I'm going to stop apologizing to you for the long gaps in my journal. You're probably getting tired of reading them, anyway. I write when I can and if I feel I have something to say. I'm sure you understand.

  The winds are unchanged. We have enough solar panels working now to keep the batteries charged, the pumps running, and everything else working. We have all fallen into routines. Other than maintenance, there isn't much work to do here. To keep everyone occupied, Wilson and Mildred Pierce – by the way, I've gotten to like her quite a bit – have put together a formal program they call cross-training. They went through the entire population and found out what skills, training, and even hobbies people had before coming here, and put together a list. Now we attend classes taught by the other Aegisites so that we all learn about each other's knowledge and skills.

  I'm enjoying it. One day it's woodworking, and the next it's psychology. Wilson thinks it's important that all of us know as much as possible before we leave here. Makes sense to me. If there is only one person on Earth who knows how to make a beautiful rabbeted-joint and something happens to him, that would be horrible.

  Wilson, by the way, was carrying on today, as he so likes to do, about the coincidences in the list of knowledge and skills we have here. He was amazed at how many of the essential ones made it into Aegis before the event. I wonder when he's going to quit being so amazed and just accept what happened.

  I moved out of the ductwork yesterday, and moved into one of the apartments. I thought it was about time I joined the human race. Elias and Leah are my neighbors. I'm glad I did it.

  Day 35

  We ran out of coffee today. There are a lot of grumpy people in Aegis.

  Day 40

  It's morning. I'm staring at the calendar I started marking on Day 1. I just put the fortieth "X" on it. I am so excited. Today will be the day. I'm sure of it. After all, Aegis is the Ark, and Noah and his group were able to leave after forty days. So should we.

  You're probably wondering why we are waiting for the winds to stop. Well, if you are reading this, that means we were right and survived. If you're not, oh well. The board has had several meetings on this. We've also had open discussions with the Aegisites. Wilson has spent what seems like a thousand hours meeting with the meteorologists, the doctors, t
he biologists, and anyone else inside here who might have a fact he can use to fit into one of his mental jigsaw puzzles. We have all been trying to decide how we will know when it is safe to leave. Since there isn't anybody out there we can ask, we don't know.

  Wilson has created several scenarios – making assumptions on what kind of pathogen they used, or how the monsters who created the bug would have made certain the world was safe for them to re-enter and resume their lives. The list seems endless. At times he has become something of a recluse, trying to crunch the numbers…trying to find the pattern which will give him the answer. I think the only thing all of his work has given him is a headache.

  So, we decided that whoever or whatever saved us in the first place would let us know when it was safe to leave. And the way we would be notified was when the winds stopped. And, as I said earlier, I know for a fact that they will stop today. So there!

  This experience inside Aegis for the last forty days has been awesome. I know that it has changed me. I think, for the better. But I'm ready to get out of here now. That's odd, isn't it? For almost the whole time I was in Aegis before the event, I knew how to get out through the overflow tunnel and I never wanted to leave. Not for a moment. But now…I am itching to get out there. I'm so glad that today is going to be it.

  Day 41

  It's still windy.

  Day 50

  The mood has really changed in Aegis. I think that most of the people, whether they admitted it or not, believed that we were going to be able to leave after forty days. At least it was a goal, a target. Now we have no idea how long we need to wait. And that is quite a bit more difficult.

  Not that there are any problems with the Aegisites. That hasn't been the case. There haven't been any issues, any fights, not even any serious arguments. It feels, to everyone, as though we are all in this together, which we obviously are, and we need to make the best of it.

  I've made some new friends in the past month, like Keith, the man who studies people's names. He enjoys playing chess, which I've never learned. He is teaching me, and so far, I like it. I've also become friends with Erin, the meteorologist from TV. She just knocked on my door one night because she wanted to talk. I guess we clicked, since she didn't go back to her apartment until after midnight.

  Ever since the fortieth day came and went, I'm guessing that Wilson has become even more obsessed with figuring out the pattern of the bug. Other than the board meetings, I never see him. I miss the talks we used to have on the porch of his shack.

  Day 63

  Leah invited me to their apartment for dinner last night. Since we are all on rationing, I was a little surprised as I walked in – they had a big spread of food on the table. I know that neither one of them would ever steal from the stockpile, so I asked where they got it all. Elias told me that he and she had been planning to have me over for quite a while, and they had been cutting back on how much of their rations they were eating, saving some up for the feast. Okay, I'll admit to you future folks, it made me cry.

  I have to tell you…we stuffed ourselves. It reminded me of how I used to feel as a kid after Thanksgiving dinner.

  Afterward, the three of us sat around and talked. It was nice. The more I get to know Leah, the more I can see why Elias loves her so much. It's almost as if they are connected. They even finish each other's sentences. I keep trying to see the wispy little filament in the air between them, the line that ties them together. Last night, I think I caught a glimpse of it.

  Even though most of the evening was just talk about pleasant things and fun things and silly things, at one point we talked about getting out and how long it would be. With the solar panels working, we are pumping all of the groundwater we need. The reservoirs are full. The rationing has been working about as well as Milton expected. We are around half of the way through the supply of food, although the items like fresh fruit and vegetables are long gone. We ate them first because, even with refrigerators, they would spoil pretty fast. So now we're down to the canned and frozen types. Elias told me they had to do that during World War II on the submarines. They would eat like kings right after they left port for a patrol, fresh fruits and vegetables with every meal, before that stuff went bad.

  We figured out last night that we have enough food for about two more months. Wilson, according to Elias, who checked in on him recently, has no idea or theory or even a guess as to when we'll be able to leave. Elias said that our pal looked a little haggard. We think he needs a break. At this point I suppose it's anybody's guess when we can leave.

  But what we talked about next made me feel a little uneasy. Leah asked Elias how we could know for sure that it would be safe to go out, even if the wind just stopped all of a sudden. There isn't anyone broadcasting over the satellite stations anymore. Hasn't been for a long time. I had wondered if the satellites were still working, but one of the techie guys we have here told me that they were self-sufficient up there in space, and unless something happened to take them out, they would keep orbiting, waiting for someone to bounce a signal off them. I guess nobody is.

  The techie also said that, as long as some of the servers on the Internet were still running, there would be an Internet, even if no one was on it. The problem is that we never did have access to the Internet at Aegis. The phones that Faulk and his men brought in had access to the Web for a little while. We were able to get some news that way, but only for a few days. They think that the power to the cell tower closest to Aegis probably went out, because on about the third or fourth day, we couldn't get a signal. And then the batteries went dead on the phones and Faulk's team hadn't thought to bring their chargers in here with them. We could probably rig up a charger, but what's the point with no signal?

  We went through all of this again last night and still didn't have an answer to Leah's question. Guess we'll just have to trust in the fact that the wind wouldn't be switched off unless it was safe to leave. And, of course, the next question was, what if the wind doesn't switch off and we run out of food? That was when the evening ended.

  Day 75

  Hello, future folks. I really wish I could be with you and know how this all turns out. It's about eleven o'clock at night. We just finished having an open board meeting, and people are getting a little edgy. I suppose that I can't blame them. I got up and spoke to the crowd – funny, I never would have been caught dead doing something like that a few months ago – and I talked about how it was before the event. Most of the people here now have been here for some time, but more than two hundred of our residents are last-day newbies. That's why I thought I should talk, since I was a first-dayer.

  I tried to explain that everything is still the way it was, that we had been able to get along for years without any real problems, except for the riot and ZooCity, of course. So there wasn't any reason to start getting all itchy now. Someone stood up and said it was different, because we all had known there was a civilization out there. I didn't know what to say to that.

  One man, one of the newbies, I think his name is Trent, wanted us to open the back door. He said he was convinced, I don't know how, that the bug was dead and that it would be okay to leave. I started to argue with him and then I stopped. His question made me ask myself a different one. Is Aegis a refuge or a prison? One of the things Milton Pierce talks about all the time is personal responsibility. Wouldn't that apply to this situation? Wouldn't Trent have a right to leave if he wants to go? He knows the facts. He knows that there's plenty of room here, and still plenty of food.

  Those were all only my thoughts. Then I said them out loud. I asked the board and the people in the audience what they thought. Man, did we have a discussion! There were some in the group who believed that we had to stick together, that we had to make sure everybody stayed inside until we all left together, when we were certain it was safe to go. I didn't ask them how they would make sure nobody left. Did they want to lock people up? I also didn't bring up my discussion with Elias and Leah about exactly how we would be c
ertain, even after the wind stopped. I thought that would be too much for one night.

  There were others who believed that it was Trent's choice. We never did take a vote. I'm beginning to understand much of what Milton carries on about. After all the folks had a chance to state their opinions on the subject, he got up and said the board would discuss the matter further and we would reconvene to share our consensus with the residents. I expected the people in the audience to get ticked off when he said it, but they didn't! I was watching their faces and they were glad. I don't know if it was because they all had a chance to be heard. I don't know if it was because they were glad not to be the ones making the decision. I don't know if it was because they wanted to be led, and trusted us to come to the right decision. If that's the case, then this whole governing thing just got a lot heavier on my shoulders.

  Anyway, the meeting finally broke up and the board is meeting tomorrow to talk about it. I already know which way it's going to go. The board is going to decide to open the back door. That decision is the only one we can come to and remain consistent with everything else we've said and done so far.

  I'm exhausted. Good night, future folks.

  Day 76

  We met. We voted. We open the back door in three days. We want to give Trent a chance to change his mind.

  Day 79

  Four people left today – Trent, his girlfriend, and another couple I don't really know all that well. They promised that they would come back in a few days and let us know it was all clear to leave. This probably isn't consistent with being a good governor, but I couldn't make myself see them off at the back door.