Citadel 32: A Tale of the Aggregate

by Tom Merritt

  “Thank you so much, Corge. You’ve been a tremendous help,” and that was the end of that. Wenner’s face resumed its mask of concentration and Wenner turned to LeAnn.

  “Resume your work in Vent Shaft 5 but com me if you see anything out of the ordinary, anything at all. Even if everything seems normal, have Corge file a deep report at the end of the project. Wait. Strike that. Have—what was your Apprentice’s name?”

  “Tracy,” snapped LeAnn efficiently. She had a lot of Wenner in her.

  “Right. Suresh’s girl. Have Tracy do a data record on everything and then do a standard questionnaire routine on record afterward.”

  LeAnn nodded and they left. Vent shaft duty had gone from bad to worse. The duty itself bored Corge to tears. The prospect of filing a deep report would have been enough to ruin his night. But having to work with a full data record going and then having to answer a stupid autoquestionnaire might ruin his week depending on who decided to poke their noses into it.

  As focused as she was, LeAnn felt the same way. She didn’t say so outright, but her tone as she told Tracy to go collect the data record gear spoke volumes.

  After Tracy ran off, LeAnn turned to Corge. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the data record?”

  LeAnn smirked. “What Wenner doesn’t know, he can surmise. That’s why he gets a high-quality food stipend.”

  CHAPTER 3

  That night Corge didn’t get back to his bunk until late. A big chunk of his wall had been removed, but the place was mostly clean. Thank goodness Wenner reminded the workers that Corge had to live there. In an odd way, Corge missed the sugar rock.

  As he lay down on his bunk, he noticed that it wasn’t entirely gone. Traces of it must have reached back into the wall, because he saw veins of the filmy substance deep in the hole they carved out.

  He dragged his weary body up on his elbows, too interested not to investigate. Deep strands of the stuff traced along the edges of the hollow and looked like they met up and turned into big ropes that burrowed into the wall. If it was sugar rock, it must have grown through the rock.

  Did they miss this, or was it something that formed since they left? He thought about waiting to report it in the morning, but a piece of him worried that if it was growing, it might hurt the integrity of his bunk. Granted, he was deep in the center of Armstrong, so the only thing on the other side should be more rock and then eventually a passageway corridor. But he certainly didn’t want to lose air in his bunk to some oddball underground vacuum pocket.

  A loss of air in his sleep could kill him, but more importantly, air was irreplaceable. In some future scenario, the dome might collapse and their society end just short of Earth’s return because they were one bunkroom’s worth of air short of what they needed.

  Nobody wanted to be a “Schmitz Tripathi.” The legendary System Ops Coordinator had left a valve unchecked on an exterior airlock. Nobody was killed, but it was estimated the failure leaked out enough air to lose the dome 10 years of operation considering the amount of time its recycling would compound usage. The dome was still estimated to be sustainable for 712 more years, but “pulling a Schmitz,” or “Tripathi checking” had become serious insults. You always checked everything.

  Corge dragged himself to the com and sent a message to Wenner. Surprisingly, Wenner was online and paying attention to incoming. He immediately shot back a note telling Corge he would be there with a team in 10 minutes.

  Corge sighed. He knew his sleep clock would show a deficit and he’d be credited extra sleep time in the morning, but he wanted it now. He wanted it now so badly.

  He had almost drifted off when Wenner and his three-member investigation team arrived. One of them was on Corge’s competitive Go team. Though Corge had missed the last couple of matches, his teammate still gave him a cordial smile. The others apologized for interrupting his sleep. Wenner said, “When did you notice it?”

  “As soon as I laid down,” Corge sighed.

  “Has it changed since you first saw it?”

  Corge shook his head.

  “Good. If you want, I can reassign you a bunk so you can get some sleep.”

  Corge was shocked at this. “Really?” he asked.

  Wenner paused, which was very out of character. “I know I don’t know the right things to say to make people feel at ease, but I do know what can be done. That’s a thing that can be done and I can do it. Do you want me to do it?” He looked up at Corge with a hint of vulnerability.

  Corge smiled. So Wenner was human. “Yeah, thanks Wenner. I’d love that. You’re a friend.”

  Wenner stopped short at that. “Thanks, Corge. I’ll order it now.”

  Corge found the temporary bunk and slept hard. His wake alarm went off at the normal time, meaning his profile had found the temp bunk too. It also meant he had to go to work. Which meant he had to find out where he was needed.

  He had a message to report to Central, which made some sense given all the reports he had made. Probably some kind of debriefing. He pulled a breakfast tube out of the bunk’s dispenser. He swore it tasted different, though theoretically all bunks dispensed the same protein mixture that simulated what eggs allegedly tasted like.

  As Corge dragged himself out of the bunkroom, he found the corridor jumping with activity. People rushed by, which was somewhat unusual in Armstrong. The job of survival was mundane and boring. People knew pretty much what was expected of them at every moment. Rushing meant something was wrong.

  He took off toward Central and experienced the odd sensation of jostling through a crowd. As he got near Central Control, the crowd thickened. Docking Bay was almost as full as a Disconnection Day ceremony. He actually had to squeeze his way to the stairs. He ran into LeAnn on the way. She looked annoyed by the crowd.

  “You had no idea this was going on, did you? I tried to message you but the bunk said you were asleep.”

  “What is all this?” Corge asked.

  “I’ll tell you on the way. We’re late.”

  As they fought through the crowd, LeAnn told Corge the situation in small bursts whenever they found some clear space. Ibrahima, the Communications Specialist, had called a closed session. Word got around that it was a direct result of a discovery made after finding out about Corge’s sugar rock. Among other things, Ibrahima was charged with monitoring Earth. Any news involving her always set off a little extra interest.

  “Also, you’ve been promoted,” added LeAnn. “We have to check you in at the Generalists office on the way in. That’s why I said we’re running late.”

  Corge was speechless as LeAnn led him to the wing behind Central Control.

  “Congratulations Corge,” said Marina, head of Generalists assignments, herself a Generalist. She was also the mother of one of Corge’s best friends as a student. It made him blush a little. “You’re temporarily assigned to observation, off-world com and vent maintenance. These are acknowledged nonoptimals, Corge, so don’t fret too much about the vent shaft one. I know you hate it,” she smiled conspiratorially and touched his arm. “And I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it’s marked for reassignment after whatever this current whosywhatzit is is over.”

  Corge just nodded, barely able to take it all in.

  “Are we done?” LeAnn asked, barely restraining her impatience.

  “Pretty much,” answered Marina. “Just give me your Utility wrist and take this Generalist wrist and you’re good to go. Everything else will update on its own— Oh! One more thing. Your bunk was declared a research site. Do you want a new one or are you fine in the temp for now?”

  Corge said he was fine for now as he took off his old wrist module and put on the new Generalist one. He knew they wouldn’t let him stay in the temp bunk for long, but he liked being close to Central.

  LeAnn pulled him away but he stopped and turned back.

  “Thanks Marina. I’m glad—I’m glad to see you today.”

  Marina smiled and said, “M
y pleasure, Corge. Now get along and do great things.”

  “What was that about?” LeAnn asked Corge as they raced upstairs to the Assembly Room.

  “My mom and dad died in a redrill when I was 16. Marina sort of filled in as my mom for a few years.”

  That shut LeAnn up, which was why Corge rarely talked about it. He had come to terms with it and he didn’t like making people feel bad about it.

  Corge felt weird entering the Assembly Room after the meeting had already started, although he hadn’t missed much. Ibrahima was on stage but the audience was still going through the “Iams,” a rare formality.

  To save long-term data storage capacity, not every meeting was recorded in full. When a meeting was important enough to record, it followed the formal rules. That meant starting with the Iams. In the early days, before Disconnection, each member of a meeting rose and stated, “I am from,” and then named wherever they came from on Earth. It was a way of reaffirming their roots. Several generations later, every member was born in Armstrong. So as a reminder of their connection to the home planet, and to their hope of returning one day, members picked a place on pre-Disconnection Earth that one of their ancestors came from.

  It quickly got around to LeAnn.

  “I am from Pittsburgh.”

  That threw Corge off. He’d never heard LeAnn’s Iam before. What was Pittsburgh? It wasn’t one of the 31 Citadels of Earth. He wasn’t even sure if it had been a museum city. He noticed LeAnn was staring at him and realized he was holding up the meeting.

  “I am from Lagos.”

  LeAnn leaned over and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

  The Iams finished and Ibrahima stood. She was tall for someone raised on Armstrong’s diet and imposing with her bony brow and shining dark skin and hair. She seemed somehow to meet the gaze of everyone in the Assembly at once with her intense brown eyes.

  “All of you know our history. But I want it fresh in our minds when I explain to you what we think happened with the tremor yesterday evening.”

  So it was a tremor, thought Corge. Not a disturbance or an explosion. A tremor.

  “Right downstairs in the Control Center, we received our last transmission from Mexico City Citadel. That conversation is famous. It is re-enacted and reanalyzed every year on Disconnection Day.

  “We all know how brave Colonel Jaime Ruiz informed the Armstrong Mission Control staff that Heretic crowds had torn down the infrastructure of the last Citadel. How Mexicontrol battled to stay in contact long after it fell.

  “We know and mourn how, for more than a dozen orbits, Control Center staff tried to raise every one of the 31 Citadels and even some museum cities, with no success. And we know how the commanders of civilian and scientific missions called a joint address in Docking Bay, telling all the residents of the Armstrong Base that they would not be going home. That until Earth had worked out its troubles, everyone would need to pull together as one society and learn how to make Armstrong self-sufficient.

  “What we’d like to forget and never should,” Ibrahima intoned in the rhythm of a Disconnection Day speech, “what is important, especially on days like today, is to remember what happened next. I speak today not of the heroism that saved Armstrong. I speak of the chaos, of the suicides, of the abandonments. Because as shameful as we may feel they are, they were honest human responses, and they had consequences. We felt one of those consequences yesterday in the tremor.”

  Corge turned to LeAnn and raised an eyebrow. She raised one back.

  “Yesterday we discovered the solution to two mysteries. The cause of both the tremor and the longstanding enigma of sugar rock were discovered in a long-abandoned and forgotten machine left on the plains south of Armstrong. But they raise another and deeper mystery, which will explain why I’m giving this address and not someone from History or Mechanics.

  “Large traces of sugar rock were found in the bunkroom of Utility Worker Corge last night. Executive Wenner had been hoping to find a fresh report of sugar rock for some time. An excavation and examination of Corge’s bunk walls showed ropes of white sugar-rock tendrils leading out of the station. That led to other and larger bundles of these ropes emanating from a point to the south.

  “At that southern point, we found an egg-like device, about the size of a crate. Inside was a machine, the purpose of which is recorded in our database. But it had supposedly never been built. Apparently, it had been built, but whomever was working on it left us before it could be properly logged. Or possibly they deleted the record. Whatever the reason, it was not destroyed but abandoned on the Lunar plain where it sat, preserved for decades in a vacuum.

  “Before Disconnection, as the Heretic threat rose, the Citadels created a plan to preserve all human knowledge against destruction, thus hoping to prevent another Dark Age. Two Citadel Preservation Modules were to be located on Earth and another one sent here. The amount of data was too great to transport wirelessly, so a system was built to receive it by rocket.

  “The machine out there was constructed to receive and house the module. Its construction was kept secret due to concern that Heretical agents in Armstrong might try to prevent it from being installed. In any case, the data module never arrived. While we store and preserve much of the knowledge of pre-Disconnection Earth, the module would have been much more comprehensive and complete if it had.

  “Now to the tremor. The machine out there was meant to preserve the data module against attack. Once the module was installed, a program was meant to go into action and re-form rock near the module into a long chain polymer that would be impenetrable without a key.

  “That polymer is what we have been calling sugar rock. Somehow, within the past year or so, something activated the machine. It is either faulty or broken, and instead of creating the protective cocoon it was meant to, it has been sending malformed commands. As it used up rock nearby, it began to form the polymer in long strands that have shown up in Armstrong as sugar rock. The tremor itself was caused by falling rock in the crater walls, made unstable by the frequent attempts to form the polymer. The polymer itself is not dangerous and its creation poses no near-term threat to the dome’s integrity. Nevertheless, long term, it could cause problems. A team is trying to shut it down or at least bring it under control.

  “And now, the reason for this assembly. The Executives have decided to order a temporary team formed to investigate why the machine was reactivated. This might seem a frivolous exercise not related to the direct running and survival of Armstrong. In fact, those who favor the Passive approach to Reconnection believe that to be so. But the majority opinion is that even a moderate active Reconnection effort requires us to pursue this in case it leads to some kind of Earth communication.”

  The audience began to grumble. You rarely heard the word “Reconnection” spoken because so much rode on it. You didn’t dangle that hope out there except as a distant aspiration. Ibrahima was treading dangerously close to the only thing that passed as heresy in Armstrong.

  “I don’t mean to be indelicate,” she continued. “It is an infinitesimal chance. But think of the sugar rock. We deemed it irrelevant to investigate except as a hobby. However, when we were forced to look, it had deeper threads than we imagined, and that led us to a momentous discovery. For the record, I do not think that will happen in the case of the machine’s reactivation. In fact, I’m almost certain we’ll find it to be a bug or some errant transmission from Armstrong.

  “But I am willing to countenance the idea that I might be wrong. And we have to remember that Reconnection is our prime objective. That is our ultimate survival goal. And we must prioritize its investigation appropriately.

  LeAnn turned to Corge and whispered, “She must have barely won that decision or she wouldn’t be spending so much time justifying it now.”

  Corge nodded.

  Ibrahima spent the rest of the Assembly laying out the responsibilities of the team. Corge understood now why he received the Generalist assignments and w
hy they were temporary. He was assigned to off-world com because they needed him on this new team. They probably wanted to boot him off as soon as it was done. On the other hand, Observation was a team he loved and excelled at and was part of this investigative team’s core needs. He’d probably have the best chance of keeping that. He could stare at stars or rocks all day and find endless fascination there. People poked fun at the Observation team as the folks who “liked to watch paint dry.” Corge sometimes felt himself wanting to argue that watching paint dry could be fascinating. He usually had the good sense to shut his mouth, though.

  Finally, being put on the Vent Shaft team meant they wanted him to stay with LeAnn. It was why he got dragged into the whole mess in the first place. But he wasn’t sure what more they could need from that part of the team. As the Assembly wound down, Ibrahima solved that mystery for Corge.

  “LeAnn will lead the Vent Shaft teams in exploring and shoring up some older tunnels that lead out near the machine. If we’re lucky, we may be able to move there and back almost entirely in pressure. There are reports of tunnels out there that aren’t on the schematics. We’ll have to see what shape they’re in. It’s a long shot but worth investigating.”

  As they adjourned, Corge felt lots of eyes on him. In a society as small and closed as Armstrong, that wasn’t unusual. Everybody knew everyone else. But these weren’t the normal looks and smiles. In an odd way, he was famous, or maybe notorious was a better word.

  The feeling continued when he and LeAnn passed into the corridors. People looked at him with knowing expressions. People who usually ignored him made a point of nodding or saying hi.

  “Get used to it,” LeAnn said. “You’re our latest star. Don’t let it go to your head. Take 30 and meet me at Port 20. That’s where we found the entry to the machine’s secret passage. We’re going to take a short investigative walk through it today.”