Tomorrow We Rise

by Daniel P. Wilde

  “Well, that’s my favorite question of all of them I’ve heard over the past couple of hours,” Jonas said. “So, let me tell you.”

  “Before you do, Jonas,” Hasani interrupted, “maybe everybody should get more comfortable.” Jonas looked at Hasani quizzically. Others followed suit.

  “You see, I’ve known Jonas for several months now,” Hasani continued. “He can really talk. Sometimes, he won’t shut up.” Several people laughed quietly. Only Tom, Misty and Jerad laughed out loud. Jonas reached over and punched Hasani in the arm. Then they both laughed.

  “I’ll be right back,” Hasani said as he stood and left the conference room. He returned a few moments later pushing a cart full of food and drinks, which he distributed to the group. Once everyone that wasn’t nursing an upset stomach had something in their hands, Jonas continued.

  “As I was saying, the moon is amazing!”

  August 16, 2093—International Lunar Space Station—Shift

  We’ve been here for almost five days. It is as amazing as Jonas said it would be.

  Our flight from Earth was without incident. Our landing was as smooth as a baby’s backside. But the smell that accosted us as we left the main landing bay was worse than Jonas had prepared us for.

  Back in the bunker in Mexico, the dead had only been there for a couple of weeks before Steve and Jon had most of them cleared out. Plus, the salt in the air from the sea probably acted as a sort of cleansing agent. But here, the bodies have been lying in rot for months. Many of them are just skin and bones now, but the moon’s atmosphere and landscape doesn’t contain all the microorganisms required for decomposition. Thus, many of the bodies are still decomposing.

  We spent the first few days cleaning the dorms and living quarters in the space station. Anything that couldn’t be decontaminated, was removed and burned in some very sophisticated furnaces. We also had to remove rubble from portions of the international station that Jonas and Hasani believe were intentionally destroyed in the early days of AE. But today, we went exploring, as a group.

  Nobody is quite prepared to be alone, not even those who have been here for so long. It is interesting to see the impact that the death of the entire human race is having on those of us left. From the moment we arrived, we have eaten, worked, and relaxed together. Nobody has even gone to bed at night without another person by their side, except Jonas and Jerad. Those that don’t have a close friend or family member among the group sleep in a small dorm containing several bunks. Of everybody here, only Jonas and Jerad seem to be able to cope with being alone. Jerad is somewhat stand-offish anyway—not a real people-person. And Jonas had been on the moon for a couple of years already by the time the plague hit, and then he was alone for a long time. He seems pretty comfortable.

  Anyway, we went exploring, with Jonas in the lead, and Hasani not far behind. We saw amazing things.

  The Shell of each colony is immense and, before AE, each housed thousands of people and their living quarters, along with businesses, laboratories, government buildings, and amusement. There are parks and wildlife, although some of the animals are dying now. And there are trees, ponds, and grass.

  One large park in the United States Shell has a skate park, a fishing pond, a playground and a soccer pitch. The pond is even blue in color. Jonas explained that lights below the surface give it its blue color, since there is no blue hue to the atmosphere surrounding the moon. It is quite amazing how Earth-like the place is! The buildings are all gray, but the surrounding landscape makes up for the lack of color in the sky and the infrastructure.

  According to Jonas, life in a Lunar Encapsulation Shell was, in realty, not much different than life on Earth, except that travel outside a Shell was largely restricted to the Portal System.

  “All this wildlife is pretty unexpected,” I said as we walked across a large patch of grass near the skate park.

  “Yeah, nobody expects it when they first get here,” Jonas replied, “especially since there are no natural or artificial weather systems within the Shells, so it never rains or snows. Plants receive their nourishment through fertilization and sprinkler systems not much more advanced than those on Earth.”

  “Where does the water come from?” Marilyn asked.

  “Water was originally shipped to the Moon on massive transport ships. The water is used and reused via complex treatment plants. Additional water was shipped to the Moon, until recent events, every six months.”

  We learned that the temperature within the Shells is regulated to maintain a constant 77 degrees, and it’s never dark. Through the use of luminescent energy cores, built right into the Shells, light is regulated and maintained around the clock. Sleeping patterns are facilitated through plain, old-fashioned curtains on windows.

  Then we arrived at the tubes.

  “The Lunar Portal System is a series of interconnected glass-like tubes connecting the various States, colonies and outposts within the inhabited sector of the Moon,” Jonas explained. “These ‘tubes’ are—well, they were—regulated, controlled and maintained by the IIA, the International Interagency Assembly, an arm of the IWO or International World Order. The IIA’s purpose was to facilitate the productive, cooperative and safe flow of people, information, laws and orders in the lunar colonies. Part of the IIA’s task was the facilitation of the flow of people and data throughout the inhabited sector of the Moon through the Lunar Portal System.”

  “Dude, can you dumb it down for us?” Street asked. “I mean, not for me, but for some of these other guys.” I laughed as Street flicked his eyes and bobbed his head toward me a couple of times. Then others laughed too. Everyone knows that Street and I are as close as brothers, or closer.

  “Sorry, I’ll try. I did a lot of reading up here, and not much socializing. The tubes were, more or less, like border checkpoints. In addition to actually helping people move around, the computers that operated the tubes monitored and tracked the flow of people. Each individual intending to the use any portion of a tube had his or her hand scanned prior to disembarking. Once arrival at a destination occurred, the pods, which I’ll show you in a minute, wouldn’t open without the same handprint. It was just a way to track where people were, and helped facilitate criminal investigations, on the rare occasion those occurred.

  “The Portal System is composed of more than 750 miles of cylindrical ‘tubes’ floating several feet off the surface of the moon through the use of reverse polaric modulators at intervals of .77 miles.

  “The tubes are 24 feet in diameter and completely transparent, including underfoot, as you can see.”

  The group had just walked into the first tube and were admiring it from the inside.

  “At each of the .77-mile intervals along the Portal System, there are little rooms housing ventilation equipment which ensures adequate oxygen flow throughout the tubes. The Portal is designed so that, at each .77-mile interval, along with the reverse polaric modulators, there’s a vapor-lock system used to close off any section from the remainder of the tubes. These have been used infrequently to repair portions of the tubes that have come into contact with floating debris from outside the tubes.

  “You mean like meteors?” young Jon Porter asked. There was general chuckling and head nods from the group.

  “Exactly!” Jonas replied with a chuckle. “Except that more often the debris is something inadvertently left outside by one of the residents, like a wrench gone missing from a maintenance crew.

  “Each of the little rooms also has a small energy storage core. The tubes were originally designed so that the flow of the pods through the tubes would actually create energy. But we’ve had a big problem up here storing the energy created. Most of it is lost. It’s been pretty frustrating. Sometimes the tubes or lights in one of the pods will just shut off, temporarily. Then energy is re-routed and things are back to normal, usually. But sometimes, the energy loss actually causes permanent damage that has to be repaired. That’s where the maintenance crews come in handy.”r />
  A pause to smile at Jon, then, “Storing the energy created by the motion of pods through the tubes would have made things smoother.”

  “That’s what Dr. Ghannam was sent here to figure out,” Anta said.

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten about that,” Shift replied.

  “Who’s Dr. Ghannam?” Jonas asked.

  “He’s the guy, well, he and his daughter, who first contracted AE in Egypt,” Shift said.

  “They were in the desert outside El-Alamein when sand-storms uncovered the sandy cave that AE had been hiding in for so many years,” Anta added. “They were first on the scene. Then, a couple days later, Dr. Ghannam and his family left Egypt for the moon, bringing AE with them.”

  “Well, I certainly know the story,” Jonas said. “And now I know the name. How interesting.”

  “Anyway, the Lunar Portal System ties into the main body of the Lunar Encapsulation Shell of each outpost along its various tracks. Through seamless migration of the tubes with the Encapsulation Shells, a person can travel through the tubes to nearly any destination without having to don any specialized apparatus—that means a space suit, for our younger friends here,” Jonas said with a smile and a look at Jon and Suvan, and Street, who was standing behind them. “So, a person can move between destinations without ever leaving the regulated atmosphere of the Encapsulation Shells.”

  “Pretty cool,” Mike said. “But I’m a little surprised by how nice they look. Who was the IIA trying to impress with these things? I mean, look at these little egg-shaped things. The interiors are nicer than the ones in the hovers we were flying in down on Earth.”

  “The design concept, although purely aesthetic, was intended to give a person traveling through the Portal the sense of space travel without space suits or apparatus of any kind. Much of the Portal is accessed via travel pods, like this ‘little egg-shaped thing’ as you called it. The rider sits in chairs incorporated into a reverse polaric conveyor system, free-floating within the tube. The pods can travel six abreast and, although not physically attached to any permanent apparatus, avoid collisions through the use of that same reverse polaric modulator. I’m told that the shape of the pods helps control how each pod interacts with others along the route. Who wants to give it a try?”

  “You mean they still work?” John asked. “I thought you had some kind of travel ban or something and these things were shut down.”

  “Yes, they were shut down,” Hasani replied, “but Jerad got them running again not long before we left to pick you guys up. Of course, since the handprint recognition system became a hindrance once we were all alone up here, Jerad figured out how to disable the system. Now, we just get in and go.”

  “I want to go for a ride,” Suvan told her mom. “Can we?”

  “Absolutely,” Hasani replied before Neirioui could even open her mouth. “Don’t worry Mrs. Safar, they are perfectly safe, and a lot of fun!”

  “Not one accident has occurred since its inception,” Jerad added.

  Hasani looked at Neirioui, waiting for her reply. Finally, she smiled and nodded.

  “Ms. Safar,” she corrected him.

  “Hold on,” Anta said. “Can I ask you a couple more questions before we leave?”

  “Sure,” Jonas replied amicably as Jon and Suvan both frowned.

  “You said that data is also shared through these portals. If that’s right, then how did the shells communicate with each other after they were shut down? I mean, how did each of the shells know what was going on with AE after that? And, how did the five of you find each other?”

  “Well, data is shared between the various posts connected to the Portal System through transparent cyberoptic communication cables imbedded into the walls of the tubes. You can see a group of them right here, if you look closely,” Jonas said, pointing toward the side of the tube on his left, near the bottom.

  “Even after the shutdown, data and communications still moved freely between the colonies, although there were certain ‘restricted’ data ports, including the “International Interagency Assembly port” to which Dr. Shevchuk’s database was connected. These data ports, although running through the tubes, operated independently from the pod system. So they were never shut down.”

  “And you said that shells cover all of the outposts?”

  “No, not all of them. Lunar Encapsulation Shells cover nearly all outposts in the inhabited sector of the Moon.”

  “I assume that, if there’s a shell, there’s regulated atmosphere?” I asked, filling in for Anta.

  “Yes, with a few exceptions. The Shells act to maintain atmospheric pressure within a defined space. Until recently, there were six main Shells, one each for the United States, England, Portuguese-Brazil, Poland, Mexico and Burmo-Thailand, with another under construction by the Egyptian government. Now, both the Burmo-Thailand and the German shells are in ruins. There are also 46 other Shells covering various outposts used for science, exploration, vacation, etc. All five of us were in one of those smaller shells when the plague broke out and then we lived together in a big one until we were able to duplicate Dr. Shevchuk’s research and vaccinate ourselves.

  “Any other questions? Okay, let’s go.”

  As the group began to file into the various pods, Hasani pulled me aside and whispered, “She’s hot man.”

  “Who?” I asked, feigning innocence.

  “Neirioui.”

  “Yeah, she’s not bad. Go get her spaceboy.”

  “Yes!” Hasani hissed as he smiled and subtly pumped his fist.

  “What was that all about?” Anta asked me as we climbed into a pod together.

  “Your brother has the hots for Neirioui.”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  Then we took off. Several minutes later, we entered the Portuguese-Brazil shell—the shell closest to the United States shell.

  The Portuguese-Brazil shell was just like the United States shell, so we didn’t stay long. The journey was the destination. The travel back through the tubes was just as exciting as the travel there. Once we arrived back at the United States shell, it was business as usual.

  “Business” from here on out will include very little for most of us. We will continue to clean out the United States shell. We’ll explore the other shells to locate anything of use. We’ll mourn those that we’ve lost. But ultimately, we’ll just try to live our lives, hoping for, and preparing for a chance to go home.

  August 29—Miami, Florida, Earth

  Communications were down, and any perversions still alive on Earth would have a hard time communicating with each other. That should give his army the advantage. But Cain didn’t know whether any perversions were even alive on Earth any more. That should have meant that Earth was his to control.

  But Cain had lost control. His ability to organize his army, or former army, had dwindled significantly over the past few days. He could no longer transport anywhere he wished. Others, stronger that he, were controlling the small groups on the other side of the world. They were younger, newer.

  In Florida, his former comrades had left him alone. They were devouring the dead at such an incredible rate as to leave whole towns and cities virtually empty of the dead. And they hadn’t found any surviving perversions in many days. His people wanted fresh blood. So, they had moved on, to the north. Only Cain remained in southern Florida, hoping that the shuttle would return and bring Anta with it.

  He felt weak. He had noticed the same growing weakness in his oldest companions. The younger ones were still strong, but he could tell their days were numbered too. It was clear that the strength they had possessed was only temporary. It was unsettling.

  And it wasn’t just the physical strength that was leaving. He could see wrinkles where none had been before. His skin had begun to lose its luster. His eyes had begun to lose their focus. He was aging, quickly.

  Time was not on his side.

  September 16, 2093—The Moon

  “What the hell do you think
you’re doing?” Carón asked Dr. Nelise Fabrisio through the mic on his suit.

  “Replacing the opto-isolator,” Nelise replied.

  “You’re putting it in backward,” Carón said.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Carón.”

  “I’m not. I’m telling you how to do my job. You shouldn’t be here anyway. Let me do it.”

  Carón reached out and grabbed the opto-isolator Nelise was holding, yanking it out of his gloved hand.

  They had been together for three straight days, working both inside and outside the Portuguese-Brazil shell and the tube connecting the shell with the United States shell. They were working on the electrical grid of the Portal System. It had gone dark four days earlier. Without constant use of the tubes, and the inability to store energy created through the tubes when they were in use, they’d been having outages for days in that area. Then, the electrical grid crashed. No light, no air flow, nothing.

  As a result, the tube between the Portuguese-Brazil shell and the United States shell had stopped operating. Even its artificial gravity was off. It had been a massive hindrance to their work. Luckily, the tube leaving the United States Shell on the other side was fully operational and continuing to provide for the energy needs of the group.

  But the failure of the electric grid in the Portuguese-Brazil shell and its adjoining tube was a big deal. The group only needed access to the Portuguese-Brazil shell for one purpose—but it was an important one. It was there that they were burying the dead.

  Now, standing inside the Portal System, or the “tube”, Carón could see that their time together was wearing them down. He didn’t like Nelise and the feeling was mutual. Nelise was too hard-headed—too proud—and subject to violent anger and tantrums. He thought he was always right, just like now. And this time, as usual, Nelise was wrong. His near-mistake would have cost them days in repairs. If he had put the part in backward and turned on the system, it would have been shot. Carón did not feel like wasting any more time alone with Nelise, especially since they were stuck wearing the restrictive oxygenation suits, just in case the air got too thin in the tube while the grid was down.