“Do you want to get your toy or not?”
“How does sitting in the front help that?”
“Simple. A good impression always leads to favorable treatment. You need to do everything they ask, do it while smiling, and do it well. Then you can have whatever crew you want and whatever location you want.” Wilk took a seat directly in the center of the first row.
Gerald reluctantly sat down beside him with a sigh. “How long do you think this is going to take?”
“Today they won’t keep us too long. But our training? That could take up to a few weeks.”
Gerald shook his head. “That’ll be fine. I was more worried about today because I kind of just left my parents hanging.”
“We were running late, you didn’t have time to say anything anyway.” Wilk activated his desk. “You should start reading the material. It can’t hurt to be ahead of the rest.”
Gerald activated his desk and then looked around the room. Every person in there had done as Wilk had done and was fervently reading through the material. It was a waste of time. So, he instead stared at the front of the room until at last two people walked down the stairs to stand before them. One, a tall man with gray hair and tiny round glasses, stood in the center of the room with his hands down in front and his eyes trained on, from what Gerald could tell, the back wall. Behind him was Jessica, holding a tablet and two electronic papers.
Gerald nudged Wilk. “Look.”
Wilk looked up. “When did they come in,” he whispered.
“Just a couple seconds ago.” Gerald looked around. Very few other people had even noticed. Then he looked at the studious stranger who hadn’t moved. “What do you think he’s waiting on?”
Wilk shrugged.
The room was dead silent, just the occasional ping. Then, as though he had waited long enough, the man in front lowered his head and his eyes locked with Gerald’s. “You were the first,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Gerald.”
“Ah, yes. The man from Earth. Welcome to the research team.” Then the man looked away from Gerald. “I am Wallis Laloli. My research projects have led to some of the biggest discoveries on this planet. This one will prove to be highly significant if results come out as we foresee them to. And each of you have been hand chosen to represent this project. How many of you have begun to read the materials?”
Every hand in the room shot up. Gerald sat back in his seat.
“Well that, my fellow researchers, was a complete waste of time. Those materials were written months ago in anticipation of such a project. Today is not yesterday and science is never the same. Today is about a brief overview of the project. We will do short training sessions for a week and then we will depart one week from tomorrow.”
Gerald glanced at Wilk. That was far faster than he had expected.
“The teams will be assigned just before we embark.”
Wilk raised his hand. Gerald tried to lean away from him, sure of what he was going to ask.
Wallis smiled as he gave a short curt nod to Wilk.
“How will the teams be assigned?”
“I will assign each of you to a team based on skills presented during our training sessions. If for some reason, you appear to be not as highly skilled as we originally anticipated, you will be immediately ejected from this program. I have no patience for individuals who do not take the time to understand every aspect of their jobs. For the remainder of the day, we will be doing individual interviews with each of you to better understand where to place you and what assignment to give you.” Wallis then waved one hand lackadaisically as he left the room through the door at the top of the stairs.
Jessica, however, remained at the bottom. “We will begin with Anderson, Emit. Please make your way to the Technical Training Facility.” The door opened and shut. “The rest of you are free to enjoy your day. Stay close and keep your communication watches turned up. An alert will be sent to you when it is your turn.”
There was a great deal of shuffling and conversation as they began to make their way out of the room. Gerald, however, remained seated a moment. “That was interesting.”
“I’ll give them credit. I feel motivated at least,” Wilk said. “Maybe we should be in the library.”
“And study what? Recreations of worlds that have been destroyed? Earth? I came from there. How much more could I possibly learn about the planet?”
“You’ll be the first to get kicked out.”
Gerald sighed. “Fine. If you think it’ll help.” He stood up.
“Wait a minute,” Jessica said. “Could I have a word, please?”
Gerald was certain that no wasn’t an answer she would accept. “Wilk, why don’t you go ahead to the library? I’ll catch up.” Gerald waited until he was gone. “Is there something wrong?”
“You didn’t mention that you applied for this position.” Jessica didn’t sound happy. Her voice was strained slightly, but her lips were in a smile.
“Is that a problem?”
“And you got chosen, out of all the qualified individuals who applied.”
“You sound surprised,” Gerald said. “I take it you were not involved in the decision.”
“I was not among the selection committee. I’m curious why you would not have brought up this situation, this morning when we were discussing your assignment within Second Earth.”
“Because I didn’t know then. And know I never wanted that position.”
“Your father needs your help.”
“My father will be just fine. I never wanted to do that. There are plenty of others who are far more capable of helping him than I ever would have been.”
“But you’re the face of that settlement.”
Gerald laughed. “No, I’m not. I’m not a leader, I’m not a helper. For the first time in my life, I want to be selfish. I want to do what I want.”
“How did you get chosen? What do you have to offer this program?”
“Obviously more than my good looks.” Gerald smirked. “If you don’t mind I have some place I need to be.” He then walked out of the room, resisting the urge to turn around. Once out in the late morning sun, Gerald took a moment to get his bearings. He hadn’t spent enough time in Capena to know where everything was, but for the most part, it was easily navigated.
The library was only a couple blocks away. The building was made to stand above most of the others with a staggered appearance. He stepped through the dissolving doors. It amazed him how different it was from what he would have found on Earth. The books lined the shelves, the real ones. Then there were desks everywhere that contained thousands of different books on file. Several Capenians were there, each at their own desk. It also appeared that many from the meeting had had the same idea as Gerald and Wilk.
It took a minute, but Gerald spotted Wilk in the far corner. “How’s it going?”
Wilk smiled. “Glad to see you’re still here. I thought maybe they were going to kick you out of the program before you even had a chance to prove yourself.”
“Not me. Though if I don’t watch it, he’ll find a way to kick me out.” Gerald looked down at the desk. There was a picture of Earth on the screen with different areas enhanced. From the look of it, the pictures were older, before the war. “What are you looking at?”
“The last satellite images of the planet before the war. I was trying to find where our target area will be.”
“Well you’re looking in the wrong place.” Gerald swiped the globe so that it spun to show the North American continent. He clicked in the relative area along the gulf where he’d lived. “Pretty close.” He swiped through the landscape until at last the neighborhood came up. The grass still yellow green, not quite dead yet. There were a couple trees left and the homes were still intact. “It looks way different. So what do you think the odds are that they’ll use this site as one of the study sites?”
“Probably not likely. They’ll want to do major coastlines.”
“
So we’re looking at sneaking out in the middle of the night then.” Gerald looked at the neighborhood remembering how old he was when it last looked like that. “We’ll need to steal a craft to get by with it.”
“I can fly it. Do you think you can get that thing back on board?”
“You sound a bit skeptical. I will take care of it. You just get me there.” Gerald clicked the screen causing the neighborhood to disappear. “Are you sure there’s nothing more current?”
“Yes. It looks as though the satellites were put out of commission just before the war began. There are no images from Earth in our records during the war or after.”
Gerald grimaced. “That’s odd. Satellite images were of the utmost importance in the early stages of the war. I know they even worked well enough for about a year after for us to receive information from other countries. Eventually things went silent, but those satellites were there and functional.” He clicked the screen a few times and typed in the years of interest. A banner popped up: no images found. “I don’t get that at all.”
“Maybe we should study some of the other materials we’ll need to know. What were the four sample types? Do you remember?”
Gerald took a moment to think, scrunching up his face as he did so. “I think vegetation, water levels, gas levels and…there was one more…soil composition. That’s it.”
“Okay, well let’s start with soil composition because I think it might be the only one we can really learn about beforehand.”
“It’s not going to help,” Gerald said.
“And why do you say that?”
“Because that soil was so brittle and dry and dead that even after my father dumped the thousands of gallons of water back into the ocean basins, it would take a hundred more years to make one inkling of difference in the composition of soil. What do we need to study? What dead looks like?” He rolled his eyes with a sigh when his wrist communicator began to sound. “It’s my turn. Look, we’ll need to come up with a believable lie to tell when we need to sneak away. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Gerald left the library and immediately headed for the Technical Training Facility. The building was small, only two rooms. In one, the door was closed and the light on. It was in use, but the other had the door wide open. He walked inside and found himself face to face with Wallis.
“Welcome, Gerald,” Wallis said with a smile. “Please, close the door and take a seat.”
Gerald activated the door to close and moved to the only chair; the control chair.
“I’m sure, you, above all others who were asked to join this auspicious journey, are extremely curious as to why I chose you. Gerald, your father did something great.”
Gerald tried to resist the temptation to roll his eyes. Of course it was about his father.
“He embarked on a journey with a man he barely knew and defied science and fact to bring water from a moon of Jupiter to Earth. It is quite an impressive feat.”
“I think you might not have all the facts.”
“I see. What am I missing?”
“For starters, he didn’t go along for the ride or to help. He didn’t volunteer. He was on that ship by mistake and once they started, there was no stopping. Most of that journey, from what he’s told me, was pure dumb luck. They got lucky. They should have died out there.” Gerald took a few steady breaths.
Wallis smirked. “I thought you might feel that way. Do you know anything about me?”
“No.”
“Had you heard of me before today?”
Gerald shook his head no.
“Then you have a bit of research to do. Gerald, this position is open to you. You were the only one from Earth to be chosen to go back. One of only a handful to even apply. You’re unique, your story even more so. When we take off, you shall be one of the faces of this mission.”
Gerald shook his head vigorously. “No. No, I won’t do that. I don’t want to be the face of this. I’m just going because I want to be a part of this scientific experiment. That’s all.”
Wallis laughed raucously. “I suppose I didn’t make that clear, none of us will have a choice in the matter. You’ll attract attention given who your father is. And I have allowed you to be on this team anyway. Just take that into consideration before you have another outburst. So, I just have a few questions for you. How much experience with the technology from Capena have you had?”
“With what? All of it? I’m still learning quite a bit, but I’ve caught on to a great deal.”
“Interesting answer. I have asked every recruit why they want to be on this scientific team, but it seems that we have already covered that. So I think it is safe to assume that we need to move on. It was stated previously that we will be sending two teams of twelve.” Wallis waved his hand through the air and the planet Earth appeared as a three dimensional hologram between the two men. “We have discussed setting up camps here and here.” A red dot appeared on the eastern coast of North America and the eastern coast of southern Asia. “This will be for the first set of experiments. In years to come, we would like to send out bots to retrieve more data from as many coastlines as possible.”
“Did you show the others this map?”
He widened his hands to make the globe larger. “Where are you from?”
Gerald stayed in his seat. “Why do you want to know?”
“I understand your distrust, but this is not the time. I just need to know where you are most comfortable.”
“Will this have to do with which team I will be assigned?”
“Gerald, if you become the face of this experiment as I assume you will, you’ll be a face to unite the people of Earth with the people of Mars. You will be allowed to choose whichever assignment you want.”
He hesitated. It could have just been a line, but he had no true proof. So Gerald stood up and pointed to the Gulf of Mexico and moved his finger inland slightly. “About there.”
“How hot did it get there?”
“Hot enough.”
“If I were to allow you to go with the North American team, would you feel a temptation to return to your home?”
Gerald made sure he looked Wallis in the eye. He kept his hands at his side and didn’t blink. “I am going to see how the water that my father brought back will affect the future of the dying planet. If we can solve how to prevent the extinction of a planet then maybe we’ll be able to secure our future permanently here in the universe and not just rely on a ship full of people who we are never going to see again. I will not, for one second, even think of going back to the place that proved only to be a living hell.”
Wallis said nothing for several minutes. He just stared at Gerald. “Good. Sit back down Gerald.”
“We’re not done?”
“Not even close. You are going to do training.”
“I thought this was just an interview.”
“For the rest of them, yes, this was just an interview. You, however, have far more work to do than just an interview on this day. Sit back down.”
Gerald hesitantly took a seat. “What type of work?”
“I am going to run some simulations. It is your job to react.” Wallis waved a hand and the globe disappeared. Then he moved toward the door.
Gerald spun in his seat. “You’re not staying.”
“I have other interviews to conduct. Keep working on your own. I will monitor your results later.”
“What if I can’t figure it out?”
“Then you’re not right for this mission.” Wallis opened the door. “Good luck.”
Gerald turned back around with an uneasiness. The room brightened up as holograms popped up everywhere. It appeared he was in space. There were planets and stars and black holes. Something was moving through. Something small, just barely visible because of how zoomed out the image was. Gerald stood up and moved closer. He touched the moving object with both hands and widened the image. It was a rock. An asteroid, he supposed. What was the purpose though? What was he suppo
sed to do? He spun the map to get a better view of where the asteroid was headed. Straight for a planet. He moved toward the planet and tapped it. A box appeared above it with a description of the planet.
Gerald read it out loud. “Terra 3453, home to three million beings. Primitive.” He tapped the planet again and the box disappeared. What was that supposed to mean? He walked around to check out the other planets. There were a couple gas giants further away, closer to where the asteroid was still located. But one planet not too far from Terra appeared to have a rocky surface. It was small. He approached it and clicked. “Galactic Defense Station. Are they making this crap up?”
He widened the view of the planet to see a weapon of some sort. He clicked on it and a new dialogue box appeared. “To activate click again.” That seemed promising. Gerald clicked the weapon again and the view changed. Everything zoomed in further. The weapon became a part of the chair. He quickly sat down and turned to face the asteroid. He followed the movement steadily until he was sure he would be able to hit it. Taking a moment to look at the arm of the chair, Gerald clicked the largest button. A boom echoed around the room. Something high powered and bright shot out of the end of the weapon and hit the asteroid square in the center. It fractured into several pieces and missed the planet.
The room went dark. A calm voice spoke to Gerald, seemingly coming from every corner. “Level complete. Time recorded. Level two begin now.” The room sprang back to life. Gerald sighed, feeling the day getting longer by the second.
6
Discoveries
With a stretch to the sky, Gerald sat up in the cot and looked around. The rest of his crew were all up already. Probably all at their stations. He didn’t really have a job until they landed, but it would have been nice if at least Wilk had woken him up so he didn’t seem like the lazy one of the group.
Making his way out of the sleep chamber into the main pod of the ship, Gerald took a seat at the open chair beside Wilk.
“How’d you sleep?” Wilk asked as he continued to work with the computer in front of him.
The Oceans of Emptiness Page 8