by Nick Cook
‘Now be prepared to have your minds well and truly blown,’ Tom said with a grin.
Chapter Two
After a good five minutes of walking, our boots squeaking over the polished white stone floor, we reached a door – though not your common office variety, more like the sort pressurised door that you would find on a submarine.
‘Is this some sort of bunker complex, Tom?’ Jack asked, voicing what the three of us were no doubt thinking.
‘If by bunker you mean somewhere that could resist a direct nuclear strike overhead, an earthquake or any other sort of natural disaster, then yes, that’s a pretty accurate description.’
‘And what’s so important down here it needs this level of protection?’ I asked.
‘For now all I’ll say is that the work going on here will one day hopefully save humanity from its own destructive tendencies.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’ Mike asked.
‘I promise you will have all the answers you will need and more soon enough – just have a bit more patience. And I really don’t want to spoil the big reveal.’ Tom waved his hand over a metal pad mounted to one side of the door. With a series of clanks, locking bolts disengaged from the frame and the door swung outwards with a hiss of air.
I gestured to the pad he hadn’t actually touched. ‘How did you just unlock this door?’
‘The doors in Eden use a number of biometric measures, and this one can only be opened if triggered by a special ID chip – placed beneath the skin of my palm.’
‘Bloody hell, that’s all very cyborg,’ Mike said.
‘Maybe. However, it’s a secure and convenient form of security, which is the key thing,’ Tom replied. ‘Anyway…’ He gestured for us to step through into the circular room beyond the doorway.
As soon as we’d passed into the next room, the door closed behind us with a clunk. The sound reminded me of those prison movies where the new guy enters and hears the iconic slamming of a door, signalling their loss of freedom. I prayed that this wouldn’t turn out to be that in any way, shape or form.
Built into the walls of the circular room ahead of us were three metallic tubes, each a metre wide, intersecting the room’s walls floor to ceiling.
‘Now to begin this tour properly,’ Tom said.
‘It’s already been pretty damned impressive,’ Jack said.
‘Not compared to what’s beyond these doors.’
He approached the middle tube and, as it began to rotate automatically, I heard the thunder of rushing water. The tube slid into position and an archway cutting through the middle of it was revealed.
‘If you follow me you’ll see how we generate all the power that we need for this facility,’ Tom said, again answering the question in all our eyes.
It was becoming more and more obvious with every passing moment that some seriously big money had been thrown at this place. I’d once caught a YouTube video on luxury bunkers, but this underground complex seemed to be on a whole other scale.
We followed Tom through the doorway into an enormous underground cavern and the source of the thundering water was revealed. At the far end, a waterfall from a wide cave mouth poured into a boiling river that flowed across the bottom of chamber. Mist floated up and filled the room with a fine haze, causing the large lights on the ceiling to cast multiple rainbows through the spray.
Tom handed us each a waterproof poncho from a locker next to the door. ‘You’re definitely going to want to wear these.’
As Mike slipped his on, he pointed at the ceiling and the large hanging columns of tapering rock. ‘Will you look at the size of those limestone stalactites? They must each be twenty metres long at least.’
‘Actually, we’ve measured them, and they’re more like twenty-five,’ Tom said.
‘You could charge good money for people to see a cave like this,’ I said.
‘Yes, we probably could, but making money isn’t what Eden is about.’
‘What is it about then?’ Jack asked.
‘About ensuring the long-term survival of our species – hence the name Eden.’
Tom headed out over the gantry crossing high above the river. Within moments our ponchos and faces were glistening with moisture thanks to the huge cloud of spray rising up from the river. It was deafening, reminding me of a visit to Niagara Falls with Aunt Lucy, but even louder because this was contained in chamber that echoed and seemed to amplify the sound. And like Niagara Falls, this was just as exhilarating, maybe even more so since the experience was intensified by being underground.
We reached the middle of the gantry and Tom turned to face us. He pointed towards the opposite end of the cavern, indicating the churning river. It disappeared through a huge round grate over which the letters ‘H1’ had been stencilled on to the rock face. Beyond the grill, the tops of large rotors spun at high speed.
‘That’s one of the ten hydrological generators that power this complex,’ Tom shouted over the roar of the water. ‘Between them they supply over three hundred gigawatts of power.’
‘That’s a hell of a lot,’ I said. ‘Are you running some sort of heavy industry down here?’
‘That and all sorts of everything,’ Tom replied. ‘Sky Dreamer lives up its name down here, building the visions of this planet’s brightest minds. It takes a lot of power. Let me show you some of that now.’
We headed to the far side of the gantry and placed our ponchos in another locker. We stepped through another door tube and entered a cavern that made the last one seem tiny. In this vast space, with a roof so large it needed huge metal pillars to support it, the roar of water was replaced by the hissing of pneumatic machines. Hundreds of robotic arms swung and danced their way through their work across the production floor in an automated industrial dance of creation.
In one corner I recognised the stubby profile of an X101 wing being worked on by three articulating robotic arms equipped with different tools. Then I spotted the people. There were hundreds throughout the factory wearing either blue coveralls or lab coats. Some hurried across walkways raised on metal stilts crisscrossing the production floor, vaguely of reminding me of a scene from Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. The scale of what was going on down here was breathtaking.
‘Impressive,’ Jack said. It had to be the understatement of the century.
‘I hope so. This room alone cost ten billion to construct,’ Tom said. ‘As you may have guessed, this is our main production facility and where we assemble our prototypes, many of which are at the bleeding edge of science.’
Mike blinked, his eyes wide like a kid at a funfair. ‘I can’t believe all this is down here.’
‘There’s plenty more to see yet,’ Tom replied.
We followed him along one of the walkways and passed over a giant cube device. Inside, a section of a X101 cockpit was being built, layer by layer, using a black viscous substance flowing from fine metal nozzles moving on motorised gantries.
Tom pointed to it. ‘That’s a giant-scale 3D printer that uses carbon fibre for its construction material.’
‘You really do have the best toys down here,’ I said.
‘The best that money can buy. Those it can’t, Sky Dreamer manufactures.’
We followed Tom to the far end of the factory and exited through another silver tube door. As the tube rotated closed behind us, the sounds of factory were shut away and I took in this new smaller room.
Men and women dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts were operating control consoles lining one wall. But it was the huge ten-metre-wide monitor on the wall that grabbed my attention. It showed a video feed of what appeared to be a rocket engine with a spiderweb of pipes mounted in the middle of another large rocky chamber.
Tom crossed to one of the women working at a console and they had a whispered conversation. Then he turned back to us with a wide smile. ‘We’re in luck. Julie here, the head of the test control team, has just told me that they are about to begin a test run of our latest orbital-
lift Starbright KL303 rocket engine.’
Julie beamed at us. ‘You couldn’t have timed it better,’ she said in an Australian accent. ‘But please wear some ear protection. The rocket engine on that screen is in a chamber five hundred metres of solid rock below us, but, trust me, you’ll need it.’
Tom crossed to a locker and took out four pairs of ear protectors, sliding the first pair over his ears and then handing the rest out to us.
The hum of the equipment around us was suddenly muted to a background whisper.
Julie pressed a button on her computer and a large numeric display on the wall above the large screen started to count down from ten.
The men and women remained relaxed as if this happened every day – for them it probably did. But Jack, Mike and I all stared at the screen, our expressions expectant as if we were at Cape Canaveral for lift-off.
My heart thumped in my chest as the countdown flashed. Three, two, one…
With a distant rumble audible even through the ear protectors, the rocket engine blossomed into life with a lance of burning jet fire. I quickly realised there was something very different about this design compared to others. To start with, rather than a round flame shooting out of the back, this was producing a ribbon-shaped one from a thin rectangular aperture.
‘As you can probably see for yourselves, Starbright doesn’t use the standard bell-shaped engine nozzle that’s been used for years in rocket design,’ Tom shouted over the roaring noise filling the control room. ‘This is actually a vectoring design that NASA experimented with but decided was too expensive. The design is much more efficient than a bell engine, particularly in the upper atmosphere. And it’s also great for doing this…’
Tom nodded to Julie. She placed her hand on the lever and pushed it all the way forward. The rocket plume tripled in size, its flames now playing across the surface of the chamber wall opposite.
The ground began to shake beneath my feet and the deep rumbling bass note became so intense that my abdomen seemed to vibrate in time to it.
‘Maximum thrust achieved,’ a male technician called out.
‘Commence vectoring tests,’ Julie replied. She spun a calibrated knob in her console to the right.
At once the engine nozzle pivoted upwards, directing the jet flame towards the ceiling, already scorched black. Then she turned the knob in the opposite direction and the jet nozzle rotated towards the floor.
‘That’s just all a bit amazing then,’ I said.
‘It most certainly is,’ Tom replied with a smile.
‘Attitude test successful; shutting engine down now,’ Julie called out. She slammed her hand down on a red button and the rocket spluttered into silence, followed by billowing smoke rapidly filling the chamber. Everyone took their ear protectors off.
‘Start the extractors,’ Julie said.
One of the men near her flicked a switch and large fans set into the ceiling whirred into action. Within moments they’d sucked the smoke out of the chamber, leaving it clear.
Julie spun in her chair to face us. ‘What you’ve just witnessed is an early test of our vectoring system for Starbright. With this technology, not only will we have a more efficient way of getting our probes into orbit, it is also a huge step towards changing the economics of mining asteroids for ever.’
‘No wonder you’re keeping this under wraps from your competition,’ Mike said.
‘Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg,’ Julie replied.
‘Our founder is a truly remarkable visionary,’ Tom said.
‘I’m really looking forward to meeting this Jefferson guy,’ Jack said.
Tom traded a smile with Julie. ‘And you will very shortly.’
He led the way to another door tube at the far end of the room and we entered a small amphitheatre. Tom crossed to a lectern. He pressed a button on the back and a large panel slid down to reveal what I thought was another large screen. Then I noticed the rivets round the edge – this was actually a huge window. But it was what was through it that stole the air from my lungs.
It seemed to be a small base complete with faceted geodesic habitation modules built on a red rocky landscape. In the centre was a far bigger glass dome with large shrubs visible through its glass walls. Around the complex were a collection of extensive solar arrays and people in environment suits taking soil samples from the ground. But it was the outer surroundings that were mind-blowing. The base appeared to be sitting under a pale orange Martian sky.
‘No fucking way,’ Mike said as he stared through the giant window.
Tom smiled. ‘Yes, it’s very disorientating when you see Eden for the first time.’
‘Isn’t Eden the name of this whole facility?’ I asked.
‘Yes, it is, but it also takes its name from the science research project you’re looking at,’ Tom replied.
‘And what are we looking at exactly?’ Jack asked.
‘All our work here comes down to one thing – ensuring the survival of the human species. This long-term simulation is a key part of that. The atmosphere within that chamber is as close to the one found on Mars as our terraformation scientists can achieve. The trainee astronauts have been locked in there for over three hundred days, doing a test run of our planned first expedition to Mars. We have already learnt so much, all of which will be applied to the real mission we’re planning to launch in five years’ time. We have even built a seed vault that will be transferred once a sustainable colony has been established. We have also been actively researching technologies to reverse global warming.’
‘Bloody hell, seriously impressive,’ I said.
‘Oh, even this isn’t everything.’
I exchanged how can he top that? stares with Jack and Mike as we followed Tom out through yet another door tube into every fantasy of a pimped-out science lab I’d ever had.
We found ourselves in another large cavern. Running along each of the four walls had to be at least a hundred labs that had been dug out of the rock face, with glass at the front of the chambers and a door in each. The scene reminded me of leafcutter ants scurrying between different tanks carrying their foliage loads. Here, rather than ants, people in white coats worked at benches with every piece of complex-looking lab equipment imaginable, every room with its own three 3D printer. In one lab towards the corner lasers bounced around a series of mirrors. I had no idea what any of it did, but it was science geek heaven to me.
Much to my disappointment, I realised we weren’t making for any of the labs but headed towards a featureless cylindrical room in the middle of the chamber.
Tom gestured towards it. ‘That’s Jefferson’s private office, the Citadel.’
So here came the big moment – we were about to meet a living legend. We hadn’t stopped since fleeing Orkney and I hoped I looked halfway decent. I certainly hadn’t had a shower in a very long time. I had to strongly fight the urge to breathe into my palm for a fresh breath test.
Tom approached a cylinder door and stood before a domed lens sticking out of the wall. A beam of light danced over his face before fading away.
Tom turned to us and once again caught the question in our eyes. ‘It’s a full-facial 3D scanner with retina identification built in.’
‘Your bio chip isn’t good enough security by itself?’ Jack asked.
‘Not when it comes to direct access to Citadel and Jefferson it’s not.’
Jack crinkled his brow at us as the door tube rotated.
The contrast of this room to the utilitarian labs outside couldn’t have been starker. We appeared to have entered a library with walnut bookshelves built to the curve of the walls. Beneath a rectangular window with a view of the chamber outside sat a brunette woman in a wheelchair working at a computer, maybe in her late thirties or early forties. In the middle of the room a man in an expensive-looking grey suit sat at a large desk. An old-fashioned anglepoise lamp with a green glass shade illuminated a stack of papers in front of him. The guy was using a fountain pen to
write numbers down in a blue A4 leather-bound notebook.
I headed towards the desk, my hand outstretched to avoid any body or breath odour embarrassment, my gaze taking in this mysterious Jefferson guy. For a living legend he looked quite ordinary. Probably in his fifties, with a thin face, grey hair, hawkish nose and brown eyes. Not that his appearance mattered – here was someone who could make a vast difference to our mission of saving our world.
‘Mr Jefferson, it is a real honour to finally get to meet you,’ I said.
The guy gave me a slightly bemused look.
Tom coughed and jutted his chin towards the woman who had angled her wheelchair towards us.
‘Lauren Stelleck, I presume,’ she said in a drawling American accent.
The woman’s blue eyes seemed to probe straight to the centre of my being.
‘You’re Jefferson?’ I blurted out.
She sighed. ‘It’s a sad reflection of our time that people still naturally assume that someone very successful in this field has to be a man. So very perplexing.’
I mentally cringed. ‘I’m so sorry, Ms Jefferson. I’m a paid-up feminist too.’
She laughed and raised her hands. ‘Lauren, please relax, and do call me Alice. If I’d been behind that desk when you came in, maybe you would have put two and two together sooner. Casper,’ she said to the man at the desk, ‘you’d better introduce yourself.’
‘Hi, everyone, I’m head of the legal team, hence the uniform. I was just running through some of the supplier contracts with Alice.’
‘Casper is rather old school, as you can see. I wouldn’t mind if he turned up in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, but some things can’t be changed.’
‘Old habits, Alice,’ Casper said with a smile. ‘Anyway, I must be going. I need to chase through these contracts.’ With a wave to us he disappeared from the room.
Mike stepped towards Alice and pointed at the window to the labs. ‘What you’ve done down here is utterly incredible.’