Max and Sally sat down beside him. Paul smiled, just a little, when he saw them holding hands. “It’s about time you two got together.” He passed Max the bottle and Max took a long drink. Max passed it to Sally and she did the same. “Let me guess. You failed to open the door.” It was a statement, not a question. However, Max still answered him with a little shake of his head. Max passed the bottle back to Paul and said, “Drink up.”
They sat there passing the bottle, slowly getting drunk. They were about to take another slug of the fine old liquor when a terrified woman burst into the chamber and screamed, “EARTHQUAKE!”
Paul, Max and Sally looked at one another and Paul said, “What the blazes are you talking about woman? We felt no tremor!”
The frantic woman yelled, “Well, down by the old cave-in it sure as darkness shook. I thought the ceiling was goanna come down on me!”
Max looked at Paul and said, “Probably another cave-in.”
Paul, who usually kept his darker thoughts from his constituents, didn’t bother to this time. “Just fucking great. As if dying in the dark wasn’t bad enough. Now the roofs are falling in on us as well. Our time is up for certain. The damn colony is trying to kill us all.”
James was becoming restive. He turned to Ryan and said, “Are you sure that you took the right bloody tunnel mate? We should have been there by now!”
Annoyed, Ryan stopped the cart, turned to James and said, “There’s only one bloody tunnel, you fool. How could I have gotten lost?”
1105 rolled to a stop behind them and said, “The tunnel to the train station at colony number seventy-six is listed as four-point-eight kilometers from the train station to the council chambers. We have only traveled four-point-one kilometers.”
James turned his head to face the robot. “Why did they make it so bloody far?”
1105 shook his cameras and said, “That is unknown James Zeus.”
James shrugged and said, “Oh well, we are almost there then.” He tapped Ryan on the shoulder and said, “Drive on.”
Ryan nodded and resumed driving, almost immediately an overhead light clicked on and he rolled to a stop again. “Something is wrong here,” he said. He pointed up at the light and said, “See how dim that light is? Looks like the voltage is way too low.”
James shuddered and said, “It is as if ALL FIVE of their reactors were out of service.”
Lucy nodded and said, “That would explain why they explored the train station.”
Ryan nodded and said, “Well, maybe we can help. We are, after all, reactor techs.” He resumed driving towards the council chamber at a high rate of speed.
They did not make it more than one hundred yards when Ryan screeched to a halt again. “Would you look at THAT!” he said, pointing to a huge cavern filled to capacity with hydroponic vats.
An old woman, who was working on the vats walked up to them and said, “Hello dears. This is quite peculiar. I don’t believe I have ever seen you young people before.”
They all stared at her with their mouths hanging open. Ryan recovered first and he said, “Hello madam. I am Ryan, these are my friends James and Lucy. We are from colony number eleven in Australia. We only just arrived.”
The woman smiled at them and said, “Welcome. I don’t believe I have ever met anybody from a different colony before although I admit that I am getting up there in years and my memory isn’t that good any longer.” She sighed and said, “I imagine you will want to go to the council chamber. It’s just up ahead there.” She pointed to the gardens and sobbed, “You best hurry. The power is almost gone.” Half to herself she said, “All my beautiful plants are going to die here when the lights go.”
James said, “Thank you madam,” and tapped Ryan on the shoulder. Ryan waved goodbye to the old woman and he resumed driving towards the council chamber.
Inside the council chamber, Paul beckoned to the woman who raised the alarm and said, “Come and drink with us. You may as well get drunk with us too.”
The woman came into the room and sat down. Paul handed her the bottle and without hesitation she took a deep drink. Just then the lights from the travel cart illuminated the room. “Now what?” Paul asked with a deep sigh.
Ryan, James and Lucy stepped into the room. Paul looked at them in surprise and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Ryan gulped and said, “Um. Hello. I am Ryan Grey. This is my friend James Zeus and Lucy…” He blushed and said, “Um, Lucy I don’t know your last name.”
Lucy laughed and said, “Wu, Lucy Wu.”
Ryan smiled at her. He turned back to face Paul and said, “Lucy Wu. We are from colony number eleven in Alice Springs, Australia. We have only just arrived.”
Paul’s face lost some of its hopeless, lost expression. “From Australia, you say?”
Ryan nodded and repeated, “Yes. We have only just arrived.”
Paul’s demeanor returned to normal. “Well, in that case, Welcome. We did not know that there were any other surviving colonies. I am Paul Hydro. I am the colony leader here. This here is Max Power, our reactor tech, Sally Jones is one of Max’s apprentices.” He nodded to the woman who gave the alarm and said, “I am sorry dear. I do not know your name.”
“Linda,” she said shyly, “Linda Thompson.”
Paul nodded and continued, “Anyway. What brings you here?”
Ryan, their unofficial spokesperson said, “Well James and I were monitoring our reactors when we saw a power drain from the old transport system. We tracked a call for a train to your colony and we came to investigate.”
Max’s face lit up and he said, “Do you think that is where Mary went?”
Paul stood up and excitedly said, “You didn’t get a visit from a young blond girl, did you?” He took a deep breath and said, “She is my daughter. She went missing a few days ago with her friend and our only working repair bot.”
Ryan shook his head sadly and said, “I am sorry sir. We saw the power drain and came to investigate. Nobody came to visit us.”
James inclined his head towards the ceiling and said, “Speaking of power. What’s going on here?”
Paul’s shoulders slumped and he said, “Our last working reactor died a short while ago. The cooling system failed. We do not have the capability to fix it. We are all waiting to die when the auxiliary power runs out. The door is jammed. We can’t get outside. We are just farmers here. We have no access to the technical wing. That was obliterated three-hundred years ago when civilization fell and the nukes hit.”
The Australian trio all looked at one another in alarm. James spoke first. “Well, perhaps we can help. Ryan and I are reactor techs.”
Paul smiled and said, “Thank you for your kind offer. You are welcome to try.” He threw his hands in the air and said, “The trouble is, we have no damn spare parts. Without the manufacturing division of the technical wing we cannot produce any replacements. Hell, we are even out of light bulbs.”
Ryan stood up and shook Paul’s hand. “We’ll give it our best shot.” He smiled at his friend and added, “James here is a miracle worker.”
As if to make Ryan’s point, James waved his hands in the air as if he was casting a magic spell and said, “Abracadabra!” Nobody was more surprised than James was when the lights in the room flickered and then returned to their pre-reactor failure brightness level.
“Bloody hell James! What did you do?” Ryan asked in amazement.
“Me?” he replied. “I didn’t do a bloody thing. That wasn’t me!”
Lucy, ever the calm and collected one said, “Of course James didn’t do it.”
Paul felt the weight of the world fall from his shoulders. “Well, SOMEBODY did. The question is, who?”
Max stood up and looked directly at his friend and said, “Mary?”
“Yes,” Paul shouted. “Who else could it be? It MUST be her!”
Mary looked expectantly at 41. “Is the power holding?” she asked hopefully.
41 nodded at her and said,
“Everything seems to be okay for the moment. We still have to finish making the barrel of acid and clean out reactor number five’s cooling system. The reactor the techs made for themselves was not designed for this high of a load for any great length of time.”
Mary turned to him and said, “Go help 12 with that. I am going to go tell dad. Please go ask Tiny and 303 to come too.” She took off running towards the council chambers.
Max turned to Paul and said, “What I want to know is how she did it. I always knew that Mary was a genius but really. There is no way that she fixed one of our reactors all by herself with just one repair bot.”
Just then Mary ran into the chamber, all out of breath. “Dad!” she was able to gasp out and then ran into his arms.
Paul picked her up and swung her round and round. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “My dear sweet Mary. I am so pleased to see you again!” With tears streaming down his face he pointed up at the lights and said, “How did you do this?”
She broke his embrace, put her hands on his shoulders and said, “11 did it. He found a way around the cave-in into the old technical wing. The techs over there had built a small reactor.” With a note of pride in her voice she added, “We found an old tunneling machine. 11 repaired it and we used it to rebuild the tunnel to the technical wing. Then we ran power cables from there to here.”
Max looked at her in surprise. “Really? A digger?” he asked. “I never saw one of those before. I heard that they were enormous! Did 11 drive it too?”
Mary blushed and pointed to her dirt-covered coveralls, hard hat and steel toed boots. “Well, actually Max, I drove the digger.”
Max looked at her as if he had never seen her before. “No way!” he said and then went and embraced his young apprentice. “Good job, Mary!”
Paul watched them, his heart filled with pride for his daughter. With a ‘It’s time to get back to business.’ sigh he said, “You said that there are techs? How many of them are there?”
Mary’s face fell. “None dad. They all are dead.” She shuddered at the thought of them depending on MREs to eat and said, “They ran out of food seventy-five years or so after the initial attack. There was a repair bot over there. He kept their reactor functioning.”
Ryan spoke up, “Speaking of food…”
Mary spun around and said, “Whoa! Who are you?”
Ryan bowed and said, “I am Ryan Grey. My Mates here are James Zeus and Lucy Wu.”
1105 rolled into the room and said, “And I am 1105. We offer greetings from colony number eleven from Alice Springs, Australia.”
Mary stood with her jaw hanging open. Paul laughed at her and said, “Close your mouth Mary. You will catch flies.” Paul looked over at Ryan. “So, are you having a food problem at your colony, Ryan?” he correctly deduced.
Ryan, all serious now nodded and said, “Our farmers had a fungus attack the hydroponic tanks. They managed to eradicate the blight however we lost an entire crop. We are in a bit of a dire straits at the moment back home.”
Paul walked up to Ryan, shook his hand and said, “Well, we can certainly help you there. We have been preserving and storing our surplus crops for a very long time.”
James, ignoring protocol, grabbed Paul’s hand, pointed to the LCD monitor on the wall and said, “Can we call my leader and tell her the good news from this computer?”
Paul shook his head and said, “Our computer network has been down since before I was born.”
Lucy piped up and said, “The console at the train station is functioning.”
Paul smiled at her and said, “Well then. Let’s go for a ride in that cart of yours and share the good news.”
As they turned to exit the room, Tiny and 303 burst in. “Hello friend Mary,” Tiny bellowed and grabbed her in one of his bear hugs. When Tiny noticed Ryan, James and Lucy he released Mary and said, “Hello. Who you?” He smiled, pointed to himself and said, “Tiny. Tiny is Tiny!”
Lucy stared at him with her eyes open wide and muttered, “I’ll bet you are not tiny.” Mary gave her a look that only one girl can give another when she looks at her boyfriend. Lucy held up her hands and said, “Understood. Taken.”
303 rolled into the room and said, “I am medical bot designation three oh three. If I may be of assistance, please let me know.”
Paul looked at him in surprise. The corners of his mouth curled up into a smile. “Medical bot you say? I have never seen a working medical bot before. I’ll bet that our medical councilor Roger will be glad to meet you.” He pointed to the door and said, “Please go to chamber number thirty-four. We reassigned that room as our medical bay. Go introduce yourself.”
Max laughed and said, “I wish I could see the look on Roger’s face when that robot rolls into the room.”
Paul chuckled and said with a sly little grin, “Why do you think I sent 303 to him like that.”
Max clapped Paul on the shoulder and said, “Evil Paul strikes again.”
Paul chuckled, pointed to the Australian visitors and said, “Well, let’s go use the coms in the station to chat with your leader.”
Chapter 23
Martha Turner sat and watched as her councilors all vied for her attention at the top of their lungs. Normally she looked upon the chaos as a challenge. Today, it just sickened her. “Where ARE Ryan, James and Lucy?” she thought in despair. Finally, she had enough. “Will everybody just shut the bloody hell up!” she screamed at them.
Councilor Robert frowned at her and said, “I say madam. That is an inappropriate way to address...”
Martha interrupted him and yelled, “I don’t have any bloody news.” With a voice dripping with disdain she added, “Do you all seriously think that I have news and that I am keeping it from you?”
Robert shook his head and said, “Well I expect that you might…”
Martha threw her hands up in the air and then pounded them down onto the table. “Just shut up, you bloody fool.” She glanced at the monitor and said, “Truth is, I am wondering what is going on as much as you are.” She sighed and said, “We should have heard back from them by now.”
Ryan, James, Lucy and Paul rolled to a stop on the train platform. Paul got out first. He hurried over to the nearest train and said with wonder in his voice, “I’ve never seen one of these before.” He turned to face the young people and admitted, “There never has been a reason for anybody to come down here. We all thought that we were all alone in the world.”
Ryan nodded and said, “So did we. There had been another surviving colony in Iceland but it went dark around fifty years ago. Nobody knows what happened to them. We suspect a volcanic eruption but nobody knows for sure. Ever since then we just assumed that we were alone too.”
Paul nodded and said, “How is your colony doing, aside from the current food crisis that is.”
James piped up. “Well, we were doing quite well until that blight blindsided us. We never took a hit by a nuke. Many of our historians believe that the nuke meant for us malfunctioned. Others believe that because we were so isolated at the center of the Australian continent that perhaps we were not even targeted. Nobody knows for sure.”
Lucy nodded and said, “We were doing so well that we actually used the old tunneling machines to expand the complex. We have over one thousand people now.”
Paul nodded himself and said, “We believe that the nuke meant for us was off-target. That is why we only suffered cave-ins rather than being outright obliterated. Still, it did enough damage that we lost all contact with the outside world.”
Ryan said, “Once we get your reactor repaired we’ll have 1105 start work on rebuilding your network infrastructure.”
Paul smiled and said, “That would be nice. As it stands we have to go hunt somebody down when we need to talk to them. A working communications system will be a godsend.” He looked at the touch screen and said, “Speaking of communications, can we use this console to set up a video feed to your council chambers?”
James
nodded and said, “We can, but the quality will be atrocious. The old com lines are a bit noisy.”
“I don’t care how bad it looks. I want to see your leader’s face when I talk to them.”
James walked up to the console and said, “Computer. Please establish a video conference link to the council chambers of colony number eleven. Please limit the video data rate to seven hundred-fifty kilobits per second and use MP4 video compression.”
The computer emitted a chime and then the screen revealed the far-away council chamber.
Robert opened his mouth to voice another of his unintelligent, unwanted opinions when suddenly his mouth snapped shut. He pointed at the screen behind Martha and said, “Madam! Look!”
Martha spun around and she stared in wonder at the low-resolution image on the monitor. Despite the poor quality, Paul’s unshaven face was clearly visible. Paul scratched his chin and said, “This is Paul Hydro, leader of the colony for the continuation of humanity number seventy-six calling colony number eleven. To whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
Martha trembled at the thrill of excitement that ran up her spine. “Hello, my name is Martha Turner. I am the leader here.” She bowed to the camera and said, “The pleasure is all mine. We believed that we were the only surviving colony.”
Paul nodded and said, “As did we.” Paul became conscious of his appearance and said, “You will have to forgive my appearance. Our last working reactor had failed and we could not fix it.” He took a deep breath and admitted, “We were all sitting around waiting to die.”
Martha looked at him and shrewdly said, “Were? I take it that you have had a reprieve?”
Paul said, “Yes, we managed to reopen up a collapsed tunnel to the lost technical wing. Before they died out, the techs over there had managed to build a small reactor. One of our two working maintenance bots hooked that in and it is currently supplying power to the colony.” He sighed and added, “We still need to fix one our main reactors though. Work is in progress to bring the least damaged one back online.”
Those Left Behind Page 13