Citadel 32: A Tale of the Aggregate

by Tom Merritt

  Corge had to admit this sounded pretty exciting. If vent shaft work had always been like this, he might have been more enthusiastic. He smiled and nodded, “I’ll try not to let the autographs take up all my break rest.”

  LeAnn snorted and moved off toward her own bunkroom.

  CHAPTER 4

  Chi-lin stood alone on the surface of the Moon, contemplating the machine that had scared the crap out of her when it shook the ground. She wanted revenge for that scare. Her boss laughed when she screeched during the tremor. Now, she was its master. Despite it being about three times her height, she had spent the last few hours repeatedly exploring every centimeter of its surface. She decided to examine the machine once more while she waited for the Vent Shaft team to arrive. She was the third Surface team member to go over the machine and so far found nothing new. She desperately wanted to find something new.

  Chi-lin was an oddity in Armstrong. She hadn’t been able to keep a job. Thankfully, there was no such thing as unemployment, but she kept being shuttled from assignment to assignment. Her Placement Executive found it puzzling and wasn’t embarrassed to tell her so.

  She had flown through the Student levels, whipped through Apprentice and Utility and seemed destined for stardom. Then she became a Generalist and everything fell apart. She always got commendations for some part of her job, even compliments on her brilliance. But then, somehow, she always let another part slip. In the Scheduling department, she received a commendation for her remastering of the main selection algorithm but eventually was reassigned because she kept forgetting to file her daily scheduling output.

  “You can’t be good at scheduling if you can’t actually schedule people,” her boss told her.

  In Bio Development, she’d shown a particular talent for getting ferns to double biomass. Her supervisors had called it nothing short of magical. Everything else in her care died.

  “If we could eat ferns exclusively, you’d never have to worry again,” she’d been told. And then reassigned. All her assignments followed similar patterns.

  So Chi-lin decided that she would break the pattern as a member of the Surface and Observation teams. So far she had been on time to all assignments, made no safety errors and, as far as she knew, had not missed any crucial observations.

  These teams didn’t require her to file weird reports, and she was in no danger of killing plants, so she figured the only thing that could torpedo her career here was missing an important observation. If she messed this up, she worried they might just give up on her and bust her down to Tender, and she’d spend the rest of her life emptying bins.

  Despite her desire to collapse in a heap and sleep until the Tunnel team arrived, she went back over every inch of the machine. It was in shutdown mode, as far as they knew. The controls had been difficult to decipher. They were in an outdated pre-Disconnection dialect that used numbers as vowels, used names like “p0rt4lz” when it meant hatches and other such nonsense.

  The Sociology department guessed it was a subculture language, most likely old when it was used and designed to confuse the Heretics. The Heretics weren’t much on researching technology history since they hated technology. The Armstrong teams had some difficulty figuring it out themselves. The only way they found the power indicator was because one of the Surface team members was a science fiction fan. He guessed that the setting labeled “Roy” was a reference to a classic called Blade Runner. In that story, an artificial intelligence named Roy apparently had a famous line where he said, “Time to die.” Didn’t sound like that memorable of a line to Chi-lin but it turned out to be right. The “Roy” setting indicated how much time until the battery died.

  Not that much, as it turned out. The machine still had power, likely collected from what stray photons hit it, but it was no longer humming like it had been when they found it.

  Chi-lin felt her concentration drifting about halfway through the examination. She forced herself to refocus and noticed something she missed before. A small piece of material was wedged in one of the seams on the underside of the machine’s main housing.

  It looked like something got caught and torn off, so it likely wasn’t hidden on purpose. She got out a flat tool and worked the thing out slowly and carefully. The seam was nonfunctional, but she wanted to make extra sure she didn’t damage the machine or set off an alarm.

  Nothing happened as she finally freed the wad of what looked like paper from inside the seam. Once she had it out, she wasn’t sure how it had ever gotten in there. She began to think it had been stuck there on purpose. It looked like a piece of paper had been ripped off a larger sheet, folded up into a triangle and shoved into the seam. Perhaps whoever worked on the machine was approached by someone unexpected and didn’t want it to be found.

  She turned on her headcam recorder and noted the nature and placement of the find, then described the page as she unfolded it.

  “Definitely paper. Looks like a printed page. There’s a page number and some faded graphs. The consistency seems to be Disconnection Era printer book paper. One side is faded and damaged and doesn’t seem to have much content. But look at the other side. Mama! That’s, well you can read it, but that’s a goddamned description of the whole project. They were in Salt Lake City! This was a coordinated effort.”

  She realized she was talking too much for documentation and wasting data space, so she stopped talking and made sure the paper was viewable in full from both sides for the recording.

  Project Alexandria – Stage 3 – Lunar Receival

  Polymer protection cocoons are capable, at both the Citadels and the remote launch station, of providing triple redundancy.

  After copies are made at the SLC Museum Annex, one copy will be entangled to the New York Citadel and a physical copy will be launched to Citadel 32 at Armstrong.

  While this attempt provides for local remote physical and remote virtual copies, it is quite possible that not all copies will be successful. In view of this risk, all Archive houses will be constructed to act as a final and sole repository, if necessary.

  Unlock keys are detailed on page 34 but will exist in series with a private destructible key on site and a public remote key in series. Thus, the SLC key will also be stored in New York, the New York key in Citadel 32 and the Citadel 32 key in the SLC Museum Annex.

  These keys are considered uncrackable and the polymer protection is considered unbreakable. While advances may supersede these statements, the current state of the Heretical Uprising indicates advancements are unlikely, should conditions prevail that require protections.

  Thus the system is evaluated as 98.7% secure. While not normally within this Construction‘s tolerances, given conditions on the ground, it will serve.

  All stations must be kept entirely clandestine. While Citadel 32 is remote, it is highly probable that Heresy Agents are embedded in Armstrong Staff. Therefore, Citadel 32 is no exception to strict confidentiality rules.

  It is entirely preferable for the Archive mechanism to become permanently locked than for the key to fall into the wrong hands. If hostile agents do attain the private key, they will attempt to activate and destroy the Archive.

  CHAPTER 5

  An alert told Chi-lin that the team had arrived at the tunnel hatch. She went over and began system checks to help them out of the hatch and onto the surface. Amid the routine safety communications, they all squawked about the paper Chi-lin had found.

  “Does it look weathered, or is it fresh?” one of the team asked.

  “Faded on one side, but on the other, so fresh, it could have just been printed. No sun damage or weathering, just the fold marks and of course the tear where it was ripped,” Chi-lin answered.

  “Any smudges or fingerprints or notations or anything?”

  Chi-lin realized she hadn’t actually looked, so she stopped when she got a chance and examined the paper again. She had carefully set it on the ground away from where she was working. No air meant no wind, meaning it was the safest place s
he could think of to keep it while she worked on the hatch.

  “There’s one small smudge. Can’t tell what it might be. Otherwise, no other markings,” she finally reported then set the page back down.

  They speculated excitedly about what it could mean, particularly the references to SLC and New York, then settled down as they got close to opening the hatch.

  The Surface teams had explored the tunnel from both ends, but this would be the first time anyone had actually used it to come out to the surface. The airlock that existed in the tunnel had needed a lot of work. It was operable but not at the tolerances Armstrong had developed over the years of its survival. Back when the lock had been built, it was fine to let some gas vent into the atmosphere. These days, Armstrong attempted to save every molecule.

  Everything looked right and all the gas had been vented back into the interior tunnel. Chi-lin gave the team the green signal to open the hatch from their side. The airlock worked well, but even so, a small puff of gentle wind came along when the hatch opened.

  “We’ll definitely have to fix that,” one of the team said.

  With horror, Chi-lin turned and saw the gentle puff of wind had blown the piece of paper what seemed like several kilometers. With no air resistance to slow it, it was still going.

  “Shit!” she yelled and took off after it.

  It kept moving in a straight line, and worse, slowly rising. Chi-lin wasn’t sure what the escape velocity of a piece of paper was, but she didn’t want to find out.

  As she got close, she could see it was just starting to get out of her reach. She had to be careful. If she jumped too hard, she might shoot right past it and end up landing far away. But she was going to have to jump. She let instinct take over and executed an elegant pirouette, snagged the piece of paper gently, careful not crumple it, and landed only a few feet away.

  While she couldn’t hear it, she could see the Tunnel team was giving her a round of applause. She took a bow and began jumping back toward them, tripping on a dark rock she thought had been a shadow and almost launching herself back at high velocity.

  When she got back to the group, one of the Archivists said, “You know, you already scanned the info from that. My guess is they’ll probably recycle it. We could use the carbon.”

  Chi-lin just stared through her visor while another teammate said, “Oh, leave her alone, Ahira. She deserves to keep the page for finding it as well as for that graceful retrieval.”

  Her earpiece became a riot of static as everyone laughed at once, stepping on one another.

  As the laughter died down, a man asked, “May I see it?”

  It was Corge. Chi-lin definitely recognized Armstrong’s poster boy from the recordings that had been made available of his sugar rock discovery and his appearance at the Assembly.

  He held his hand out but slowly lowered it and looked rejected as if she might refuse.

  “Oh, sorry,” she recovered. “Here.”

  Corge stared at the page, front and back, for a few minutes before Specialist LeAnn interrupted.

  “He may be like that for a while. It’s part of his job as an Observation team member. He’s just getting used to being allowed to stare at things. Show us the machine. He’ll catch up.”

  Chi-lin showed the Tunnel team over to the white egg-shaped machine. They would take measurements and observations of their own, but she delivered a good overview to limit the duplication of work.

  The structure had been designed to look like a flower with a wide opening at the top, accessed by several panels that folded out. The lower part was made of similar curved panels fitted together with minimal seams, one of which was where Chi-lin found the wad of paper.

  The most interesting observations would likely be made from the top. A series of transmission boxes and antennas were attached to the inside of the curved metal panels. They looked as if they would have collapsed against each other to make a powerful internal broadcast system untouchable from the outside.

  A ring of machines set around the inside of the egg just under the panel hinges had hummed when the machine was first found. Tubes ran up from this ring in several places. At the ends of the tubes, hundreds of tiny filaments spread out. The best guess was that these created the polymer generation field. The surface around the machine was covered with examples of sugar rock, some of which had built up along the base of the egg and towered up along its side. One of these towers had grown hundreds of meters high with a base approximately 10 meters thick. This one had partially collapsed, causing the tremors. The system had been meant only to create a coating of polymer several centimeters thick on the outside of the egg to protect it from unauthorized use. It had gone seriously wrong.

  “The antenna system is also meant to be the key lock,” said Corge who had quietly rejoined the group. Everyone stopped looking at the giant tower of sugar rock and back at the top of the egg. “I’m pretty sure that’s what the diagram on the back is showing. See?”

  He pointed back and forth between the hinged opening at the top of the egg and the drawing. Suddenly, everyone could see that the random-looking drawing actually depicted a series of flaps and antennas with dotted lines indicating movement paths and a final state.

  “This is the unified antenna that would allow it limited communication from inside the metal plates and the sealing polymer, our sugar rock. But you see this one filament. We’ll have to investigate it, but from the diagram it looks like it is a dedicated line connecting directly to the locking mechanism of the plates and the ring system for generating the polymer.”

  “But how does the rock get unlocked once it’s sealed?” asked LeAnn.

  “The same way sugar rock disappears, I guess?” Corge answered. “I’m only guessing now, but I assume the reason sugar rock appears and disappears is because it’s signal dependent somehow. The faulty machine was sending creation and dissolution signals intermittently.”

  Nobody said anything. Corge realized it must be a ridiculous idea. “I mean that’s pretty far-fetched, I admit. It’s probably something else, but—”

  “No,” said Ahira, the woman who had been teasing Chi-lin earlier. “That makes sense. We’ve been trying to replicate that. We have some records of Earth tech that could wirelessly convert rock to other materials with targeted resonance waves. I’m guessing that’s what this was, tuned specifically to Lunar materials. Once you can convert it one way, it seems like it’s dead simple to turn it the other. We just were too stupid to do it ourselves.”

  Chi-lin finished the machine demo by showing off the inside, but the fun part was over. All the gear was in the top. When you climbed inside, all you found were support struts and ports meant to accommodate other parts.

  “I wish we had a diagram of the Archive box that was supposed to fit in here,” sighed Sharif, a Generalist on the History and Earth Com teams. “We can derive a lot from the shape of the space here, but I’d love to see how it was supposed to interact with the capsule.”

  “We’re certain the box never arrived?” asked Corge, staring out across the landscape.

  “Well, it’s not here,” pointed out LeAnn.

  “What’s that?” he pointed out in the direction Chi-lin had come from after chasing down the paper.

  “What?” Everyone looked. “There’s nothing there,” said LeAnn.

  “No, there is,” said Chi-lin, catching eyes with Corge. “You mean the thing I tripped on.”

  “The what?” asked Corge. “I don’t know, but I see a low, black box out there. Did you trip on it?”

  “I thought it was a shadow at first. But then I tripped on it and was too worried about the paper at the time to pay any attention to it.

  Within a few minutes, everyone was trudging out toward the low, flat shadow Corge had pointed out. Most of them still couldn’t really make it out.

  It turned out to be a flat metal box covered with solar panels and was very definitely receiving a signal of some sort.

  “It looks like a repe
ater,” said Sharif.

  “What’s a repeater?” asked LeAnn.

  Chi-lin piped up a little too eagerly. “It’s old Earth tech for signal boosting. They used it a lot in the last days before Disconnection to communicate with Armstrong. It takes a weak signal and reamplifies it to pass it along. There are three of them in Central Control still. They’re always left on in low power mode to—”

  “All right, Chi-lin. We can see how smart you are,” snapped Ahira. “What’s it doing out here? This one ours? Another lost one?”

  “I doubt it,” said Sharif. “Chi-lin’s right though,” he gave her a sympathetic look. “This is a repeater and there’s really only one reason to have one. It must have been placed out here a long time ago to amplify signals to the machine. And it looks like it’s getting a signal.”

  “From where?” asked LeAnn.

  “Earth,” said Corge.

  CAPITULUM 1

  Michael always worried that his candle would sputter out before he got to the Reliquary. He couldn’t check out a volt-light like most visitors. He had to use a candle or Superior Dabashi would know about the trips and would ask questions, and then Michael wouldn’t be able to carry out his secret project.

  But the candle never actually went out. His walking was the only thing that caused a breeze in the dark halls. The ruined tower that housed the Reliquary was a silent and lonely place, which was why he liked it. In fact, that was why he first began coming to the Reliquary. He wanted to be alone in a place of great sacredness in case anyone found him. He could say he was meditating. It just happened to also be a place deep within the lonely remains of the Citadel, which was rumored to be occupied by ghosts or Heretics, or both. So it was sparsely populated, to say the least. Superior Guteerez was the only official assigned to the place.