The face on the screen froze to an inanimate mask for many seconds before Eliza reanimated and responded, “Certainly colony leader Paul Hydro. Reactor restart in process.” A moment later the lights in the room returned to normal brilliance. “Reactor number three startup successful. Please initiate research into a course of action to repair the primary cooling pump.”
Paul let out a deep sigh, turned to Max and said, “I bought you some time, Max. Please dedicate all of your future efforts to resolving our power issues.”
Max, his face ashen, looked at Paul and said simply, “I will, certainly Leader.”
Chapter 3
A small crowd had gathered and had watched Max and Paul work on the computer in hushed silence. Only just noticing them, Paul whispered to Max, “Well, now our secret is out.” He pointed to a large rectangular table in the center of the room. Made from ancient wood, it dominated the room. Around the perimeter sat a mixture of chairs in various states of disrepair. “Good. Good,” he said, “All councilors please sit. I am calling an emergency meeting. Anyone not on the council please exit the room. Anybody who knows the location of any council member who is not present, please go find them and tell them to report immediately as per direct orders of the colony leader.”
A chorus of protests and grumbles came from the non-councilors as they exited the room. Those councilors already present quickly found their designated seats. Several seats remained empty. Paul took a seat at the head of the table and surveyed the members present. He nodded to a short, blond woman whose skin was pale as snow and said, “Glad to see environmental is here, Sheila. We are going to need your expertise.” Nodding to a squat, balding man he said, “Hello Roger. Glad to see medical is here too.” A rotund woman with freckles and pale red hair and a pleasant round face bustled into the room. Paul smiled at her and pointed to her seat. “Please sit, Cindy. Food production discussions will be on the table.” Cindy tried to question him however he cut her off. “Not yet Cindy. We’ll begin as soon as Fredrick arrives.” Several minutes passed and Paul asked in annoyance, “Does anyone know where Fred is?” No sooner were the words out of his mouth, a rail-thin man with an equally narrow face and a salt-and-pepper goatee ran breathlessly through the doorway with Mary following closely on his heels.
Mary said, “I went and got him, father. He was all the way down by the waste piles rummaging for more old and discarded LED lamps.”
Paul smiled at his daughter and said, “Thank you for fetching him, dear.” Mary beamed at the praise however her smile turned to a frown when her father said, “Please close the door on your way out, Mary. What we have to say today will be sensitive and I do not want to cause further panic in the colony.”
Mary stood defiantly with her hands upon her hips. “Why can’t I stay, Daddy? I already KNOW about the problem!” Her father opened his mouth to again order her from the room, however Max interrupted him and said, “Oh, let her stay, Paul. She’s fantastic at fixing things. Maybe she can come up with an idea which will help us.” Mary blushed and hid her face in her hands at the unexpected support and praise. Paul however, was not easily swayed. “No Max, this is a top-secret meeting. Besides, I cannot appear to be showing favoritism towards my own daughter!” Normally Max would back down and bow to Paul’s authority, however this time he stood his ground and said, “No Paul. Let her stay!” Paul frowned at his long-time friend, however his frown relaxed when Max said, “I’m been mentoring her in technical chores and repairs.” Motioning Mary to come over to stand beside him he continued, “She is the best fixer I have ever seen. I am sure that her skill will exceed mine, given time.” Paul looked at his friend in surprise and asked, “Mentoring her, you say? She’s good?” Max squeezed Mary’s shoulder and said, “Absolutely.” Paul laughed and said, “Who am I to argue with the famous Maximus Power. If he says Mary has tech in her blood, who am I to disagree?” With a smile, he pointed to a chair next to Max and said, “Sit, Mary.” Mary, whose face was beet-red in embarrassment, shakily fell into an empty chair beside her friend and mentor, Max.
Paul suppressed a smile and put on his business face. Clearing his throat, he began. “Eliza, please record this meeting and archive it with the rest of the council logs.” The computer image smiled and said, “Certainly Leader Paul Hydro. Recording colony council meeting number thirty-six hundred and thirty-one. Date of meeting is June seventeenth in the year thirty-four hundred. Time of meeting is fourteen hundred hours and eleven minutes. Recording commencing.”
Paul looked around the room to make sure he had everybody’s attention and then he began. “This is an emergency meeting of the council for continuation of humanity, colony number seventy-six.” Paul took a deep breath. His shoulders slumped and he said, “As many of you have likely figured out, the colony is in dire straits. Our only remaining functional nuclear power reactor is on the verge of total failure. Once it fails the only power keeping the colony alive will come from the auxiliary power supply. When it was new, it was designed to keep the colony going for up to ninety days before needing a recharge, but like everything else here underground, the long years have taken their toll. The current estimate is that without a reactor to recharge the storage cells, we will have only fifty-seven days before total loss of power.” Paul looked at all of the stricken faces around the council table and drove in the final coffin nail. “After fifty-seven days, we will all begin to die.”
Bedlam erupted around the table. Everybody tried to speak at once. Paul shouted at the top of his lungs, “EVERYBODY BE QUIET! Let us keep order here!” He gave the people at the table a well-practiced glare and waited for silence. “Very good,” he said, “Max, will you please fill everybody in on the situation. Don’t hold anything back. The time for secrecy has passed. By now I am sure that everyone in the colony knows about the reactor.”
Max looked towards his friend and said, “Truly? Everything?” When Paul nodded, Max took a moment to calm himself, cleared his throat and said, “As you know, our last reactor is on the verge of failure. We only got it running again by raising the temperature safety cutoff threshold on the reactor’s main cooling pump. While this got the reactor back online, it has also doomed it to eventual failure as the excess heat puts stress upon the rest of its components. These reactors were designed to last only one hundred years. One by one all of the other four reactors have suffered irreparable failures over the long years. Reactor number three is the only one remaining. If we had an army of repair and maintenance bots, as we were supposed to have, the repair would be trivial. The problem is we do not have any functional bots. Many of the bots were lost to us when the nuclear blasts caused the tunnels to cave in three-hundred years ago. The few original bots that were on our side of the cave-ins failed many years ago. Without repair bots, we cannot repair the reactor.” Max sighed and continued, “We are all farmers. Our job was to keep the hydroponic farms running. We did not have a large pool of technical people when we were cut off from the rest of the complex.” Max’s face took on a haunted look as a man who has seen his death and has resigned himself to oblivion. “I may be The Technical Councilor however, to be perfectly honest, my level of knowledge is only the little bit that got passed down from person to person from long ago. To be blunt, I would be considered an ignorant fool by the technicians of the past… and I know more than most of us.” Max slumped down and put his face into his hands and proclaimed, “I do not see any solution to our problem. We are all doomed.”
Stunned silence greeted Max’s pronouncement. Paul gave them all a moment to ponder the news before continuing. “Well Max, let’s not give up all hope just yet. Turning to Fredrick he asked, “Fred, do you have any parts squirreled away that might help us affect repairs?”
Fred nervously swallowed several times before he was able to breathlessly speak. “Well, you know I have been salvaging… you know… so there isn’t much left to salvage… so you know... I could look again in the recycling piles… Well I could look again but… you know?”
Paul squeezed his hand into a fist under the table to help him control his frustration. “Fred,” he said, controlling himself with difficulty, “No, I DON’T know. You keep interrupting yourself and have not finished one single damned sentence yet. Calm down and SLOW DOWN and please answer the question!”
Fred bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, of course Leader… Well, I could, you know?”
Paul took a deep breath and bellowed, “Fred!” More softly he said, “Fred, you are not on trial or something. I realize that you are not called upon to speak at council meetings very often but this is of the utmost importance. We NEED your input now Fred. Please help us.”
Fred puffed up his chest and said, “Well, in that case, let me think.” He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths and said, “No, I am sorry. I am certain I do not have any spare parts salvaged from nuclear reactors in my recycled parts storage shelves.” Seeing the looks he was getting, he nervously continued, “Well, it’s not like nuclear reactors are common salvage items or something!” He raised his hands in the air and said, “The truth is, there really isn’t much left to salvage. Everything has been picked clean over the years. It has gotten so bad that I have taken to sifting through the garbage dump for cast off functional LED light bulbs just to help keep us illuminated.”
Paul scrutinized him for several seconds and then said, “Thank you for your honesty Fred.” He sat with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands for a moment and then asked, “What about repair bot parts? I realize that you still have the skeletons of seven dead repair bots in storage. Do you think that there are enough parts left over in the carcasses to build one working bot?”
Fred glanced nervously from person to person. “No, no, no! I can’t fix them. I just recycle reusable parts and clean up the colony’s garbage. I can’t do that!”
Paul smiled at Fred and said, “I know this, Fred. I’m sorry. I should have directed the question to Max. What do you think Max? Please check out what Fred has in storage and see if you can get one working.”
Max sighed and said, “I’ll TRY, Paul. I do not hold much hope, however. I tried to fix one of them in the past, however I was not successful.” Max closed his eyes, deep in thought before saying, “I am afraid that this too is hopeless. A lot of parts have been cannibalized from those old bots.” Before Paul could interrupt he hurriedly said, “Given the circumstances, I’ll try again.” Glancing to his side he said, “If it is okay with you, I’ll take my new apprentice Mary with me. Perhaps some young blood will have fresh insight.”
Paul did a poor job of hiding his pride in his daughter and said, “What about it Mary? Do you want to help Max with the bots?” Mary blushed a deep red. She made no attempt to contain her excitement as she enthusiastically nodded affirmative, sending her long braid flying. Paul smiled and said, “That’s settled then.” Paul turned to Sheila, the colony’s environmental councilor and said, “Okay, let’s assume the worst for the moment and that we cannot repair our reactor. Have the radiation levels outside dropped below lethal levels? Can we open the seal on the blast door and go live outside?”
Sheila sat frozen like a deer in the headlights of a rapidly approaching car. “I… um… Leader, I…!” Unable to speak due to her nervousness, her eyes darted from face to face around the table, looking for salvation.
Paul smiled and with his long-practiced skill, calmed the nervous woman with a single glance. “It’s okay Sheila. Relax. Remember, this is not an inquisition.” Louder, he addressed the entire table. “Everybody, remember this is not going to be the usual meeting where we go back and forth trying to protect against reallocation of our own precious limited resources. This meeting is about the survival of the entire colony. If we do not work together to resolve this, we will ALL die.” Paul looked from face to face around the table and softly said, “We need to be at our best today.” He smiled and nodded towards Sheila and said, “What is your best estimate of the current conditions outside?”
Sheila swallowed hard and said, “Leader, I do not have any readings at all because all of our outdoor sensors were vaporized by the initial attack…” Seeing the frown on Paul’s face she hastily continued, “Wait! I didn’t say I had no idea! The half-life of the most dangerous fallout isotopes is short enough that the worst of the radiation will have dissipated by now. However,” She emphasized, “Some isotopes such as plutonium-239 have a half-life of over 24,000 years.”
Paul, looking crestfallen said, “So you don’t know for sure?”
Sheila shook her head, “No, I DO have a pretty good idea. While radiation levels will still be above pre-collapse readings, it should be safe to go outside… for the most part. As long as we stay out of any craters left by direct hits, we should be okay. The levels in the craters may still make you sick, if they don’t kill you outright.” Sheila took a deep breath and said, “It is not so much the radiation I am worried about, it is the state of the environment. Even before the nuclear exchanges, 95% of all animal species were already extinct. Plants had faired almost as badly.” She threw her hands in the air and said, “Who knows? Perhaps without billions of humans polluting the air and environment… and if any plants and animals survived the initial radiation that is, they may have rebounded over the past three hundred years.” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Truth is, we just don’t know. Anything I say will at this point be just an educated guess.”
Paul sat in silence for a few seconds and then said, “Thank you, Sheila.” After another brief pause he asked, “What we need is more data. What about sending out an expedition?”
Sheila violently shook her head, “No! Do you remember the history of what happened the last time the colony tried this? I don’t remember the exact date, but it was sometime over two hundred years ago after one of the other reactors failed. The leader back then sent out an expedition of ten of our best people to investigate whether living outdoors was possible.” With a deep shudder she continued, “Nobody ever returned. To this day, we have no idea what happened to them.” Taking a deep breath, she concluded, “SOMETHING out there must have killed them. Something we know nothing about. There are so few of us left! Do you want to risk any of us? Besides, the blast door hasn’t been opened since then. It probably doesn’t even work anymore, anyhow!”
Paul put his head in his hand and said in a low voice, “I know Sheila. I have to consider all of our options. Things are that serious. We can’t stay under ground without power.” Paul turned to a squat, balding man and said, “Roger, if we are forced aboveground, will our medical expertise be able to handle any possible radiation exposure?”
Roger wrung his pudgy hands together on the table in front of him. Without hesitation he said, “I’m sorry Paul. I am as much in the dark as Sheila is. Without more data, I cannot say for certain, however it probably is safe to go outside. Enough time has passed since the collapse of society.” He looked from face to face and then added, “Since we are being completely honest today and are not holding anything back, I have to say that I am very much like Max. My knowledge falls far short of optimal. I am an ignorant hack compared to the doctors of the past. We had grown so dependent upon the medical bots in the past that when the last one failed, shortly after the last repair bot died, we were left at a severe disadvantage.” Roger took a deep breath and sighed. “I am good at stitching up cuts and tending minor wounds however if anything major afflicts our people if we are forced to go live out of doors I am afraid that I will not be of much help.”
Paul nodded to Roger and said, “Thank you for your honesty Roger. I appreciate your candor.” Turning to face a rotund woman with red hair and a pleasant face, Paul asked, “What about food Cindy? Will we be able to move our hydroponic gardens outside? Will the plants survive?”
Cindy sadly shook her head no. “I doubt it. The plants have become so specialized that I have strong doubts that they will grow in soil. They have been genetically engineered to grow in the nutrient bath of the hydroponic tanks.”
Her eyes turned inward in contemplation and said, “Perhaps the tanks themselves could be moved outside but without power to run the pumps, it would take a lot of manual labor to keep the plants alive.” She turned to Roger and said, “There are only 138 of us left now, am I correct?” When Roger nodded affirmative she continued, “It will take a lot of effort and it might have been doable except for one major problem. Our colony site is under the state of Montana in the former United States of America.” With a resigned look on her face she said, “I remember from science class in school that the Earth is tilted on its axis. This causes seasonal changes in the outdoor ambient temperatures. During the cold season…” at a loss for the word, she turned to Sheila who nodded and said, “Winter. It’s called winter.” Cindy smiled in appreciation and said, “Thanks Sheila. In the winter, it will be too cold and all of our plants will freeze. We will have to build some sort of shelter and find some way to heat it if there is to be any chance of success.”
When Cindy fell silent, Paul stood up and said, “Well, now we know the seriousness of the situation we now find ourselves in. We must all work together for the good of the colony. Max and Mary, concentrate your efforts on resurrecting one of the repair bots. If that is not possible, see what you can come up with to fix the reactor cooling pump. Fredrick, work with Max and Mary and help them in any way you can. Sheila, Roger and Cindy, please work together and find out what you can about the conditions outside. Perhaps you can open the blast door a crack and sample the outdoor environment. Collaborate on finding a way to help our crops survive.” Paul extended his hands towards the council members. “We must all work together or we shall die. You may recruit anyone you need. The time for secrecy has passed.”
Those Left Behind Page 2