Apocalypse Machine

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Scarlato scratches his gray beard with both hands, adjusts his glasses and takes a deep breath. “I’m afraid we don’t know much more than we did an hour ago. A massive Icelandic eruption involving a chain of volcanoes has sent a plume of ash over most of Europe, grounding flights. It also unleashed an invisible cloud of chlorine and CO2, which made landfall in the UK shortly before Iceland experienced a series of earthquakes, resulting in a tsunami.”

  “We’ve heard all this,” McKnight says, sounding weary. “Is there anything new? Anything at all? Is this done? Are we out of the woods?”

  “When Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010 it lasted four months.” All eyes in the room, including mine, turn to Holly. She purses her lips for a moment, caught off guard by the shifting attention, or perhaps her own blurted words. She straightens herself, and continues. “That was a relatively small eruption from a single volcano. What we have here is a major eruption from more than thirty volcanoes, all buried beneath a massive glacier. There’s no way to know how long the eruption will persist, but even if it stopped now—and it’s not about to—the effects will be felt around the world.”

  “And you are?” McKnight asks.

  “Uh,” Scarlato says. “This is Dr. Holly Interlandi, a volcanologist, and Mr. Abraham Wright.”

  I lift a few fingers in greeting. “I know a lot, about a lot, I’m told.”

  Scarlato’s smile makes him look like he just crapped his pants. “They were studying Bardarbunga when the eruption began.”

  “The survivors I’ve heard about,” McKnight says.

  Scarlato nods. “I asked for them to join us. I thought they might have insight about—”

  “Understood,” McKnight says, and then he motions to Holly. “How did we not see this coming?”

  “There were no warning tremors. Bardarbunga was quiet.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” McKnight asks.

  “Unheard of,” Holly says, “but no longer important. The poison gas cloud and tsunami, not to mention the glacial flooding scouring Iceland clean, are tragic. The loss of life is astronomical. But I’m afraid it’s just the beginning. The ash cloud covering Northern Europe is going to spread. When Eyjafjallajökull erupted, the ash cloud reached Siberia, rising 30,000 feet and blocking the sun for a week. Twenty countries closed their airspace. Eyjafjallajökull ejected 9.5 billion cubic feet of ash. Yesterday’s eruption has likely already eclipsed that number, and over the coming months we’re likely to see upwards of eight hundred billion cubic feet of ash, reaching far higher into the atmosphere. It will cover the entire northern hemisphere, including Canada and the United States. It’ll take years to settle.”

  “What exactly are you saying?” McKnight asks.

  Holly squirms in her seat. She doesn’t want to say. Who would? So I decide to bail her out. I raise my hand, “An ice age, sir.”

  “You’re shitting me.” McKnight turns to Scarlato, but the science advisor looks like a wide-eyed ghost. The physicist hadn’t figured this out yet.

  “Without sunlight,” I continue, “temperatures will drop. Fast. Crops are going to fail. This year. Famine will follow, affecting the entire northern hemisphere. This coming winter will be the worst in recorded history, and probably won’t end. Not until the ash settles and temperatures rise. Glaciers will return. Landscapes will be remade. Some of the southern states might be sustainable, but the North is going to ice up. Anyone who doesn’t migrate south risks starvation and freezing. If I were you, Mr. President, I would hold off on sending aid to other nations. There’s a good chance you’ll need it here in the next few months, if not sooner. And you can bet that once the Aid Coalition members south of the equator realize they’re about to receive billions of refugees, they’ll be putting their time and money into sealing up borders.”

  That’s dire enough, I decide, and I leave out what will likely follow all of this. When the planet’s most powerful nation, with a military capable of taking on the world, no longer has a place to call home, you better believe we’ll take a new one. Central and South America won’t stand a chance. Europe will colonize Africa once more. Russia will invade Asia. While half the world freezes, the other half will be consumed by the fires of self-destruction.

  “Does anyone disagree with this?” McKnight asks, searching the faces around the table. Some shake their heads. Some stare down at the table, no doubt thinking about what my news means for them and their loved ones. “Robert?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Scarlato says. “I should have—”

  “Save your apology,” McKnight says. “Is he wrong?”

  “No,” Scarlato says. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s meet again in an hour. I want ideas. Contingency plans. Get me more people like them.” He points at Holly and me. “We need to get ahead of this. Today. You’re dismissed.”

  People burst into action, filing out of the room, talking on phones or to each other. McKnight turns to Sonja Clark. “I’m going to talk with Ted and John.” The generals. The military. I hate to think that what I’ve just said will hurt people in Europe, but there’s little chance that aid would do any good. And my family’s here. It’s selfish, but I’d do just about anything to keep them safe. “Take them to my office.”

  I nearly fall out of my chair when I see McKnight looking at me. Then his now cold eyes are blocked by Clark’s power suit. She’s tall, a little plump and staring down at me through thick rimmed glasses. “You made an impression.”

  “I just told it like it is,” I say.

  “My advice...” She motions for us to follow her. “...keep doing that. Because if you’re right, about even a fraction of what you said, what you say next could alter the human race’s future.”

  10

  The maze of elevators and hallways combined with a flurry of activity has me confused. Other than the occasional flash of recognition—a bust of a long dead president; a painting seen in a photo, printed in a magazine—I couldn’t tell you if this was the White House or some other gaudy government building. But then we’re whisked through an open door, into a room that is easily recognizable because of its oval shape and layout. While the Oval Office’s decor might change from president to president, the Resolute desk has been in place since Jackie Kennedy had it put here for JFK, in 1961. The two couches facing each other at the center of the room, resting atop a navy blue rug bearing the presidential seal, also seem to be a mainstay. Though I’m sure they’re replaced every few years. They sure as hell look comfortable.

  Clark leads us into the room, strutting her stuff like a supermodel, despite her size—good for her—and despite the fact that the world is falling apart, which isn’t such a great reflection on her character.

  Having little pride and less energy, I take a seat on one of the couches before being offered, and I find myself tilting to the side. A Secret Service agent closes the door behind us, silencing the voices and the footsteps from the hallway and rooms outside. My head hits the cushion just as the world goes quiet. I exhale slowly. My body relaxes.

  “I am with you,” a booming voice says.

  I flinch up in my seat, blinking my eyes. McKnight has just entered the room, allowing a momentary burst of voices back in. Then the door is shut and the aged president walks around the room, heading for his desk.

  Holly is seated across from me, looking a little overwhelmed. She leans over the coffee table between us. “I think you fell asleep.”

  “I just closed my eyes.”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  While McKnight riffles through some pages on his desktop, I motion to Clark with my hand. “Any chance we could get some coffee?”

  Holly opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the side door opening. A woman in a pantsuit rolls in a tray with a coffee pot and an assortment of china cups. I apparently slept through Clark requesting the brew’s delivery. The woman picks up a china cup and turns to me, but is cut short by Clark. “You can go.”

  Without a word, the woma
n exits the way she came, and without waiting to be offered, I stand and help myself. The first cup is medicinal. I pour the coffee close to the top, take a sip to test the temperature and then chug it down black. By the time I’m done refilling the cup, I can already feel the caffeine hitting my system. Two sugars later, the President clears his throat and steps in front of the Resolute desk.

  I hand the next prepared coffee to Holly, and then I go to work on another for me, four sugars and cream. My small spoon clinks out a musical ditty as I swirl it round.

  The music ends when McKnight says, “What you’re about to see is classified. Only a handful of people have seen it: the satellite analyst who found it, his supervisor and the general he forwarded it to, Ms. Clark and myself. Everyone in that chain has been previously vetted and approved to view and protect the contents of top secret materials. You two have not. So I’m going to ask you a question, and please understand that our conversation is being recorded and any agreement you offer will be considered legal and binding.”

  My coffee cup hovers halfway to my lips. What the hell?

  “You will not, under any circumstances, reveal the subject matter or content of what you see, hear and discuss here today to anyone outside of this room. Doing so will be considered an act of treason, and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If you agree, stay where you are. If you don’t, you may leave now.”

  Holly and I make eye contact. She looks unsure, but remains seated. The stakes are high, but with a setup like that, who wouldn’t stay? I turn back to McKnight and shrug. “We’re good.”

  The President stands and heads to the couch opposite me. He sits at the center of the couch, beside Holly, and then pats the empty seat to his left. When I join him on the couch, sipping my coffee, savoring the flavor and sugar-zing, a flat screen TV mounted where I’m pretty sure a bookcase used to be, turns on.

  Clark steps up next to the couch, pointing a remote at the TV. “These satellite images were taken during the initial eruption. Each image is a second apart. The aberration appears in the fifteenth second.”

  Aberration?

  A rapid-fire slide show plays on the screen, two grayscale images per second. It looks like a high res animated gif of a volcano, as seen from space. The rising smoke of several volcanoes billows high into the sky, moving west to east, filling the right half of the screen.

  “That’s Bardarbunga,” Holly says, pointing to the center of the screen, where a white glacier, not yet melted, meets gray earth.

  We’re down there, I think. Somewhere in that image, there are five tiny people speeding away in a superjeep.

  Then the monotonous rise of smoke and ash shifts, spinning to the side, as though something has moved through it.

  If I were standing, I would sit. The best I can do is to shrink back into my seat.

  “What the hell was that?” Holly asks.

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us,” McKnight says. “You were there.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t see anything like this.” Holly sounds indignant, like a joke is being played on us.

  I for one, am not laughing.

  “Can we zoom in?” Holly asks.

  “That’s coming,” Clark says, and the stitched together video goes black. It’s then replaced by a zoomed-in version that slowly replays what they’ve dubbed, ‘the aberration’ frame-by-frame, for five frames, revealing five seconds of my life that I thought were delusions. Another vision. An illusion created by shifting clouds, static lightning and fear-fueled adrenaline. None of which, by the way, can be captured on video, by a satellite.

  The images scroll by, two frames a second. The object slips in and out of sight pretty quickly.

  The video replays, this time one frame per second.

  Then again at one frame per ten seconds.

  And then once more, one frame per ten seconds, but each frame has been sharpened. A curved shape, clearly not a cloud, emerges from the smoke, but still partly concealed by it. The next frame shows it breaking through, into the open air. The edge looks serrated, like a curved Ginsu knife slicing through the ash plume. The next image makes Holly gasp, and shrinks me back into the couch. The shape struck by the setting sun, now has depth and a stone-like texture, like a shell of some kind. If I didn’t know this was a satellite image of something huge, I would have guessed that it was some kind of ancient sea creature, like a horseshoe crab, crawling through a geothermal vent on the sea floor. The next frame shows a lightning strike, sparking against the surface, confirming that it is a physical object within the smoke column.

  “What the hell?” Holly says. “Seriously, what the hell?”

  The final image shows the shape concealed by smoke again.

  “What are the dimensions of this thing?” Holly asks.

  Clark moves back two frames, freezing it on the clearest shot. “There’s no way to confirm the overall size, though we’re pretty sure what we saw was just a small part of the whole. But the portion that emerged from the smoke...” Clark’s calm and professional demeanor falters for a moment, but she sucks it up, raises her chin in defiance to some unseen force, and says, “A mile, from one side to the other, give or take five hundred feet. We’re still trying to figure out how high off the ground it was.”

  “Well, I...” Holly takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I definitely did not see that.”

  “You may not have,” McKnight says. “But I think one of you did.”

  I shrink back a little bit more. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want this to be real. I just want my family back.

  McKnight turns to me.

  Holly leans forward, peering around the President at me.

  “Miles,” I say, leaning forward to place the now shaking china cup in my hand upon the coffee table. “It was miles high. Two. Maybe three. But I didn’t have time to really calculate it. I barely had time to register what I was seeing.”

  “What?” Holly says. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I had already had one...delusion,” I say. “I thought I was seeing things.”

  “What kind of a delusion?” Clark looks down at me, suspicious.

  “It was more like a vision,” I say. “When I touched a...holy shit.” I motion to the TV. “Are there any color images of this?”

  McKnight shakes his head. “Just black and white.”

  I stand and walk closer to the screen, eyeing the strange shape cutting through the smoke. “It was black, but streaked with luminous red. Deep red. Almost like blood...” I turn to Holly. “...and exactly like what we found in the glacier.”

  “You think that small spike was a part of this?” Holly asks.

  “Hold on,” McKnight says. “What spike?”

  Holly quickly breaks down our find, how Kiljan discovered it, and my contact with it. “I thought it was stone,” she says. “The end of a lava tube.”

  “But it wasn’t,” I say, making my own conclusion. “And the eruption...it didn’t start until after I touched it.”

  “You touched that thing?” McKnight asks.

  I hold up my bandaged hand. “When I snapped out of my vision, or whatever, my hand was burned and the water beneath us was boiling. Holly...I think...what if we triggered it?”

  “Triggered it?” She sounds doubtful.

  “Woke it up. I don’t know.”

  “You think that thing is...alive? Is it a creature?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. When I saw it, it was rising into the sky above us. Its body, or part of it, was tilted toward us. There was a black circle, like an eye.” My voice fades to a whisper. “I thought it was an eye.”

  Silence as three sets of eyes stare at me, weighing my sanity. They flinch when I blurt out. “Do you have the seismographic data?”

  Clark heads for a laptop sitting atop the Resolute desk. “The magnitude of the eruption was—”

  “Not for the eruption,” I say. “For the earthquakes that preceded the tsunami.”<
br />
  After a few clicks of the laptop’s track pad, she picks up the thin laptop and brings it to me. I slump back down on the couch beside McKnight, my legs feeling numb. Laptop delivered, I scroll through the time stamped seismograph data, stopping when I reach the first earthquake represented by a series of tall, jagged lines. The quake registered a 6.2 on the Richter scale. Powerful, but not uncommon. I scroll some more and find the second quake. A 6.1. Then the third quake. A 6.3.

  Not aftershocks. Each quake was an individual event taking place at slightly different locations. Knowing the first quake happened at the eruption’s epicenter, I use the coordinates on the readout to plot a path. Each quake, separated by a mile or two, moved from Bardarbunga to the coast. I zoom out, looking at the series of quakes in sequence, and at the timestamp. “Holy shit.”

  “What is it?” McKnight asks, though I can tell he’s not really sure he wants to know.

  “These aren’t earthquakes,” I say, looking from one person to the next, seeing my fear reflected in their eyes. “They’re footsteps.”

  11

  Margret

  Margret Dieter couldn’t sleep. She was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, numb. She thought about the millions of people who had died, some not far from her home in Büchen, Germany, located twenty-four miles southwest of Hamburg, which had been flooded by the tsunami as it surged down the Elbe river. The small town of just over 5000 people sat at the fringe of the giant wave’s reach. Water had roared down the river, eight miles south of the town, scouring less fortunate towns from the map. But Büchen had survived unscathed. From the water, at least. Shifting winds had brought the ash cloud south from Iceland, flowing down through Europe and swooping around toward Russia like a great, murky sickle.