by Andrew Dorn
Doomsday Minus One
Andrew Dorn
Contents
1. Anomaly
2. Rutledge
3. Morning Meeting
4. Curve Ball
5. First Steps
6. Smell of Trouble
7. Trapped
8. Vision
9. Level Sixteen
10. Elijah33
11. Sign of the Times
12. Extraño
13. Hazmat
14. Subsurface
15. Tremors
16. Opportunity
17. Interrogations
18. Hypothesis
19. The Pod
20. Directives
21. Sinkhole
22. Army's Advance
23. The Encounter
24. Into Darkness
25. Graveyard
26. Emmeline
27. Voice in the Dark
28. Agent of Change
29. Implications
30. Blink of an Eye
31. Measured Recklessness
32. Out of Phase
33. Dilemma
34. Survival
35. The Weapon
36. The Cavern
37. Ground Zero
38. Iceberg
39. The Find
40. Over Gunmetal Land
41. Decisions
42. Yawning Maw
43. Anna and Declan
44. Reprogramming
45. Conflict
46. Beast's Breast
47. Thin Layer
48. Limbo
49. Anna's Path
50. The Construct
51. Curiosity
52. Contact
53. Rescue
54. New Dawn
55. Epilogue
Afterword
DOOMSDAY MINUS ONE
by Andrew Dorn
[email protected]
http://www.andrewdornauthor.com
Copyright © 2017 by Studios Atoz Inc.
All rights reserved.
I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help me spread the word. Thank you.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
1 Anomaly
Wachibou Mine, outside Deerbrook, 548 kilometers north of Portland, Maine.
“READY FOR A busy day Virgil?” Simon Macomber mumbled as he watched the machine burp the last droplets of coffee all over the counter.
Two almonds-shaped eyes tracked him as he shuffled to the sink to fetch a rag. “Cat got your tongue?”
Simon’s feline, a large-eared Singapura with elaborate whiskers, saw no reason to participate in the conversation and instead bounced atop the refrigerator for yet another grooming session. The coffee had an aftertaste of petroleum, but Simon didn’t mind. He stared out from the kitchen’s small dirt-caked window. In the faint light of daybreak, a steady downpour obscured his view of the rest of the camp. It was a day where good would not come out of its own free will; a day where you had to coax it from underneath the covers like one did a recalcitrant child.
Nevertheless, there was work to be done, rain or not. He slipped his bright yellow coveralls on, the slick material sparkling in the low light of his habitat. He checked the schedule on his phone. Today he was going underground. Down to level 16. Just part of his job, but a task he needed to prepare for since it had been more than a month since his last visit.
His phone chimed. A reminder materialized over the display, a spiral of green-tinged letters hovering in the air.
DON’T FORGET YOUR TOOLS!
The words hung in the open for a few moments then dissolved into nothingness. Simon nodded to himself and grabbed a belt laden with hammers and other assorted tools. He had a nasty habit of forgetting stuff and it got even worse when he had to work underground for continued periods of time. He made sure his tools were secure and with a longing glance to Virgil, he opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
The prefab habitats lining up on both sides of the road were all the same in the morning light. 3D-printed from ecological ‘rain-forest free’ resin and plastics, the modules were utilitarian affairs. Intended to provide shelter for the workers and not comfort, they had a lifespan of 15 years. Afterwards, the resin would break down on its own and the habitats would decompose into the soil in a matter of months. It was a solution decried by environmentalists as wasteful but Lithium Tech Industries, LTI for short, had the best team of lawyers in Maine and couldn’t care less. Most of the habitats were empty. The initial construction push having long since passed, it was the autonomous machines who now reigned supreme in the depths of the mine.
Simon flipped up his collar against the chill and strode down the hill towards the mine’s main gate. He fished out his LTI ID badge from his arm pocket and turned it towards the portal’s scanner. A hologram of his upper-body shimmered in the air. He glanced at it with derision. Victoria would have said that he looked like someone even Virgil wouldn’t drag in. The pic displayed a man in his mid-thirties, with dark hair cropped short, a square jaw, brown eyes mixed with green and a tight smile, which seemed to scream ‘get me out of here’.
The banged-up display screen turned green. “Good day, chief Geologist Simon Macomber,” announced a tinny robotic voice.
“Yeah, thanks,” Simon replied under his breath.
He pushed the unlocked gate and made his way towards the adit, the entrance to the underground mine. The adit was a nondescript, practical building, which served as the hub for the various mechanical systems required to support the miners. Simon walked down the neon lit tunnel, lined with shelves of safety gear, to the oversized elevator waiting at the far end. The articulated meshed door sensed his approach and slid over with a metallic whirr. He entered the rugged no-frills cab.
“Penthouse please,” he said out loud, chuckling to himself.
The audit staff back in HQ would have a good laugh from that one.
The gate swung shut with a solid clang and the elevator began its descent. “Sub-Level 16,” intoned the elevator. “ETA: 20 minutes.”
Twenty minutes is a long time when you are alone in an elevator dropping into the bowels of the Earth, but Simon didn’t mind it one bit. It had been a long time since he had been subsurface, working chiefly with the rest of the small team in the Admin building. He was overdue for a change of scenery and going back to 16 was a welcomed break.
The elevator reached bottom and Simon put his helmet on. He stooped to avoid bumping his skull on the low overhang and made his way up the cramped passageway. The concave ceiling of rough stone was slick with water and the air temperature was high enough to qualify as stifling hot.
He followed the lights strung along the tunnel and a moment later picked out voices in the semi-darkness.
“We need to make sure,” a voice said with emphasis.
“Yes, Mr. Curtis,” said two voices in unison.
Simon walked into the level’s main work area. He acknowledged Gerry Patterson and Arturo Vazquez who were heading to the drilling equipment they had set up the previous day. Gerry motioned towards a long table lit up by a cluster of sodium lamps.
“Boss wants to see you.”
Simon replied with a thumbs up.
He knocked twice on the glass partition delimiting the work area from the office itself. A man, about 55 years of age, with a bald head and thick glasses was studying a blueprint. “Yes?” he said without looking up from the table.
“You wante
d to see me Frank?”
Frank Curtis, Operations Manager, picked up a fat binder and lobbed it at Simon.
“We have a problem, mister geologist, and I need you to solve it.”
Simon opened up the binder and saw that it contained a report, with rows of numbers neatly highlighted with different colors. He scanned the listing, going down the list. One particular line, circled in red ink, caught his eye.
“This can’t be right,” he said, staring at Curtis then to the report and back again. “These numbers must be wrong, they have to be.”
Curtis made a gesture of smoothing his hair back even though he had been without hair most of his adult life. It was a nervous tick and Simon noted the man looked even more frazzled than usual.
“We checked and double-checked and they add up,” Curtis said, pushing his glasses up. “I know exactly what you are thinking but the penetrometer isn’t the culprit. Gerry did another analysis with the spare and the results are the same.”
Simon scanned the numbers again. They were impossible, and both men knew it. There must have been an issue with the sampling.
“I’ll do a check on my own equipment. It’s not as fancy as the Company’s, but it should be able to dispel our doubts,” he said.
“Good. How soon can you proceed?”
“I can get on it right away.”
Curtis acknowledged with a tired smile and was about to add something when his phone buzzed. He picked it up and Simon took his leave. As he withdrew, Simon overheard Curtis trying to legitimate the setbacks, but by his subdued tone, it was obvious Management wasn’t pleased with the situation.
He walked to his locker at the far side of the repair shop and picked up his sampler. Taking a fresh battery pack from a wall-mounted charger, he slapped it in with a sharp clack. The indicator flashed green, confirming a full charge. The Dynsam sampler had been a gift from his tenure days at Binghamton University, it was ancient in comparison with today’s technology but it would do the job.
Simon strolled out into the service tunnel, saluted Gerry and Arturo doing work on the driller, and made his way to another section of the dig. He halted a moment, his head spinning. The ventilation in this part of the excavation wasn’t as efficient as in the rest of the mine. They had yet to put in the main fans needed for proper air replenishment. With a hand to the wall to steady himself, he waited for the vertigo to cease. For a fleeting moment he dreaded his former nemesis, claustrophobia, had returned to plague him.
He removed his helmet, mopped his brow drenched in perspiration, readjusted the hat on his head and continued walking. The passage was only 1.5 meters wide by 2 meters tall. Simon had to stoop over to avoid hitting his head on the rough hewn ceiling carved from the rock. He negotiated his way to the end of the section then reached the zone where Gerry had taken the readings.
In the profound silence of the mine, Simon was in harmony with himself. He loved his job and this out-of-ordinary anomaly made it even more interesting. Geology had been a long time passion for the Macombers. His dad, Colm, had introduced him to the wondrous universe of rocks, gems, stones and quartzes. He had fond memories of exploring the countryside at the family cottage in the Laurentian Mountains. Sunny days filled with exploration, contemplation and learning. He had known from the start Geology would be his passion. There was always something new and interesting to uncover and to Simon that was just the way it should be.
He flicked on the sampler and checked the calibration. Everything was as it should be. He slid his hand across the rock and found the hole bored by Gerry. He inserted the probe, a slim 30 centimeters long aluminum rod, into the narrow orifice. A display screen popped to life and numbers appeared. He looked at the screen with growing interest. As he thought, the readings were normal. The rock density had a specific gravity of 2.48 which was nominal. He fiddled with a dial and the probe’s laser changed to a new setting. Again, the numbers were just as expected. He continued for a few minutes with different combinations of parameters and became convinced that Curtis’ numbers were a result of an erroneous calibration.
He was prepared to retrieve the probe when a warning beep stopped him in his tracks. Something was amiss. There should only be solid rock at this level. He was 180 meters underground yet the sampler had recorded movement inside the stratum.
“What the hell is this?” He muttered out loud.
2 Rutledge
GWEN RUTLEDGE’S UTILITY vehicle, a battered Polaris Ranger, skidded to a halt in a shower of pine cones and loose gravel. The thirty-one-year-old woman, skinny with a hawkish face framed by unkempt hair, hopped out and kicked dirt towards the high chain-link fence facing her.
How dare they do this? She raged between clenched teeth.
The outer perimeter was the perfect place to blow off steam, something Rutledge did with increasing frequency. This time, however, was worse than the others. It was ridiculous. The a-holes. They were replacing her with a robot.
The week had been one bad news after another for the Chief of Security of the Wachibou Mine. There had been the mishap to the new guy, Gabriel Bowman. He had been nailed by a dumpster and, of course, it had taken place right before the end of her shift. There had been a mountain of papers to fill, which she had to redo twice because of idiotic regulations. Bowman had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, stupid as that. Too bad for his leg, perhaps the company would offer up a prosthesis. What ruffled her feathers was the dumpster. It was an advanced one, automated to the nth degree... a robot.
Another win for the robots, Rutledge sneered.
Then there had been the email.
She had read the damn thing twice. The official confirmation from Upper Management, those pricks in Chicago, that she was to be replaced.
By a robot.
Pacing back and forth, she snagged a handful of rocks.
She was going the way of the dodo. Up the evolutionary creek.
Channeling her indignation into each pitch, she hurled rocks at the fence, a steady barrage of spite aimed at the unfairness of it all. The posts clanged with a metallic bouncing noise when she nailed them; the sound reverberating along the length of the enclosure.
She should have known this was coming and prepared for it, the way Elijah33 did. She should have paid better attention when she overheard the exchange between Frank Curtis, the Chief Manager, and some high-level executive, maybe even big boss Gould herself. Curtis had complained about unnecessary risks to his workers and equipment trouble, upset by an unpredictable issue.
The wimp, Rutledge thought. She had a poor view of Curtis, in his fake positive attitude, of his so-called indefectible defense of work protocols and safety rules. He, and the other big shots were alike, living in a rainbow-colored world, insulated from the real world, from mistreatment, from psychological abuse. They had no clue what it was like having to fight to survive, to claw one’s way out of a dysfunctional household and to have to inflict pain to last another day.
They had no clue.
Worn out from the incessant lobbing, Rutledge climbed back into the Polaris and pressed the accelerator.
Her thoughts veered to the email again.
The message had stated that an Automated Security System, an ASS for Chrissake, would take over the duties of maintaining watch on the premises. In the upcoming days, some hot shot from Chicago would set up the ASS, terminating her employment at the same time. It was so unfair. She had worked her butt off to get the job, to be in a place where she belonged.
Nine years ago, she was just a kid, working the dead shift, under old man Willie Neptune. She had endured his inept advice on work ethics, his dull lectures on responsibility and the rest of his nonsense. The geezer was 63 years old, and his good days were behind him yet he was the one with all the codes, the one with the keys and the authority to use them. It had taken a lot of time, and cunning, but she had got her way. It was easy to plant false issues and cripple a man’s authority when he had his back turned. Oh, he had cried wolf about
her, but she had played innocent and, in the end, had prevailed.
And then she wielded the power.
Her first steps as Chief of Security had been to elbow Neptune out of a job. She had caught the man sleeping on the job, asleep at his station. She had video proof and all the arguments required to build a convincing case, but Management decided otherwise. They had retained the old guy. Something about giving the native community worthwhile jobs, of being humane, of not making waves. It was bullshit of the highest degree. Except, she figured it out only afterward; they believed Neptune’s side of the story, that he drank bad coffee... seasoned with sedatives. And that she ought to be under scrutiny.
LTI’s heads were not the moronic fools she had made them to be. That had been her first serious mistake. Her entrapment of Neptune had made her a blip on their radar, a complication she longed to avoid. Being flagged in a multinational corporation’s spreadsheet was always the kiss of death.
The proof was in her inbox.
She swerved the UV around a hefty, ugly, boulder which she had nicknamed the Gould in honor of the CEO and continued her patrol of the perimeter.
She had given little thought to what she would do after LTI. Though she was 33 years old now, and still single, she had no true friends to speak of, no valuable contacts whatsoever... unless she counted her virtual ones. They gravitated around online cliques like SComm, the Survival Community, whose abbreviated name sounded like the word scum, a delightful play on words.
The clan loved discussing the fools who lived their lives unprepared for the bad stuff that could, would, happen at any moment. Threats existed capable of wiping out civilization in the blink of an eye but most people remained oblivious to them. Be it rogue groups of terrorists, solar flares, or even black holes careening through the solar system; massive civilization-ending disruptions were out there, waiting to strike.
Rutledge had always believed in preparedness. She admired a SComm user that went by the name Elijah33. She has found out interesting facts about him. First and foremost, he was an ‘him’. Not that it worried her, the gender factor. Sex, for her, was more of an arrangement, something you had to bear, to get through. She had been told time and again how butt-ugly she was, how plain-jane she looked. It hurt the few hundred times you heard it, even more when your own mother agreed, but her heart was a hardened bunker now, and it didn’t sting as much anymore.