Three Times Chosen

by Alan J. Garner

  In his declining years Norton purposely distanced himself from his employees, cultivating an aloofness many misinterpreted as snobbery born out of a combination of excessive power and scientific eccentricity. Nothing could be further from the truth. His objectivity came from the realisation that those frail humans aboard the station would not evade the smothering reach of extinction. Detachment was preferable to grieving over dead friends and colleagues. And so, in his mind, Abe Norton walled away those around him and sat alone in his proverbial ivory tower, a computerised consciousness his only company.

  The lift doors opening signalled his arrival at the section of the station informally termed “Meltwater Hotel.” Shuffling across the ubiquitous metal grates flooring the utilitarian walkways throughout the complex, he hastened down the deserted corridor with faltering steps, wishing his jerky movements would smoothen and along the way improve his foul mood.

  Training his ceiling sensor on his tottering master, the pervasive mainframe kept intentionally silent, knowing he was in the dog-box and would not be let out until Norton voiced his forgiveness. For an intellectual being that consigned religiousness to the label of leftover shamanism mumbo-jumbo from our caveman days, at times the manbot expressed, on impulse, undeveloped spirituality. A conservative thinking machine, Dog lacked the imagination and inclination to philosophise, otherwise he might ponder the question: did the human spirit retain an inborn sense of God, even when the brain failed to acknowledge what the soul felt?

  Finding his feet, Norton steadied and lengthened his stride but could not outpace his resurging memories. Flashbacks buzzed around like angry wasps as Dog watched him slow and begin swatting bizarrely at the empty air about his head. Norton's widening camera aperture viewed a jumble of ghostly visages waylaying him; swirling, distorted faces at once indefinable and familiar, taunting him with their hinted memorability. Melding into a blurred, composite countenance, an amalgam of individual identities fused into a single expression of silent anguish at losing their corporeal selves to Death's indiscriminating scythe, the exaggerated face rushed at the deluding manbot, mouthing a mute scream. Banging his metal skull against the wall banished the nightmarish manifestation back to the dusty recesses of his unreceptive mind.

  Voicing what could be perceived as concern, but was in fact merely a caregiver's alertness, Dog asked, “Are you experiencing technical difficulties?"

  With one hand atop his domed skull and the other gripping his pointy chin, Norton clicked his misaligned head back into place. “Just clearing the air,” he answered.

  Briskly walking down the vacant hallway, he turned right at the first intersection then left at the next, coming to an unsealed hatchway leading out on to a catwalk. His metallic footsteps resonating jarringly on the grille floor plating, the manbot advanced across the skywalk, stopping in the middle to lean nonchalantly on the spindly handrail. Staring imperiously down at the roomiest of the station's many holding tanks, he waited for the caged Aquapeople to notice his entry. One by one they turned to float on their backs, gazes drawn irresistibly to the robotistic human poised statuesquely on the footbridge.

  "Glad to see you all awake,” greeted Norton. “Give me your undivided attention. I have an announcement, or more accurately a confession to make,” his no-nonsense tone icier than their Arctic surrounds the thickness of a wall away.

  "You have been intentionally misled. The reasons for doing so are unimportant and, at any rate, incomprehensible to the likes of you. But the time for pretence is at an end.” Making no attempt at padding the hurtful truth, the manbot plunged ahead.

  "Dog never was Nupterus. Neither am I. Your Sea God exists only in the bounds of your religious zeal. This place is no heavenly haven, but it can be sanctuary.” Tapping his chest with the tinny fingers of one hand, he revealed, “Beneath this metal breast beats a mechanical heart no less human for it than yours. This will come as a great shock, but you will accept it as truth because your acuity cannot refute it. As a father welcomes home his estranged children, so I receive you. Whether by accident or design, you ventured into these waters seeking god. You may search high and low the rest of your lifetimes, only you'll not find Him outside your hearts. What you have found in the flesh, metaphorically speaking, is the maker that all sentient beings crave to behold. For I am your creator."

  Spreading his arms wide, inflating his presence, Abe Norton proudly declaimed, “Everything around you is of my making. That includes your bodies. I made you from the cellular level up. You belong to me!"

  Without tearing his eyes away from the overhead revelation, Durgay felt he had just swum blindly into the lionfish's den and muttered to Najoli, “I get the bad feeling we've just been hooked by a predator crueller than a megashark."

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Darkness adhered to Lasbow like a jellyfish's stinger, its clammy touch tingling his skin and irritating his senses. Thrusting his lantern forward assertively, lifeline to a sunnier sea of colour he worried that the oppressive blackness might forever crush his memory of, the tenacious Merking soberly understood that this solitary light-fish could soon prove to be the beacon for the nomadic Cetari to home in on.

  Swimming warily, he glided through a lobby at one time impressively four stories in height, shrunken and warped by the restive earth into a squashed parody of its past art deco grandeur. Costly European marble joined imported granite wretchedly littering the warped floor in jagged chunks of masonry, which had split away from the ceiling-high slabs of sliced rock walling the atrium. His constantly scanning sonar picked out rubble strewn over all flat surfaces, enhancing the desolate feel of the place.

  "Could sure do with a merwoman's touch,” Lasbow remarked between bouts of clicking, immediately shamed by his stereotypical thinking.

  Not normally a chauvinist, that attitude was ingrained into the mermale psyche to the extent that it popped out of him unwanted on occasion. Glad Ahlegra was not around to hear him talk so degradingly, he pondered if it was within his power as Merking to abolish bigotry amongst his male brethren. If this site proved conducive to Cetari resettlement, radical changes to their approach to life would have to be implemented. There might be no better time to promote sexual equality.

  Lasbow caught himself. Introducing parity would have to fall on Ahlegra's slim shoulders. He forgot for a sweet, blissful moment that today he was swimming to his watery grave.

  Shouldering his glumness, he cautiously worked his way deeper into the building's foyer, passing by walls that had once garishly depicted the Seven Wonders of the ancient world in canvases of brash brushstrokes delineating form over function, long since destroyed by the planet's enduring marvel, the sea herself. Perhaps a fitting demise to Man's artwork in light of his audacity at hanging an eighth painting alongside the others, a portrayal of this very building boasting that modern human architectural genius outdid ancestral efforts. Maybe Mankind's boast was not so irredeemable, considering this hardy shell of a building stood the test of time when a great many others of its ilk disintegrated.

  Without understanding what would make him think so, Lasbow began looking for a way up into the higher reaches of the monolith from the inside. It was an absurd notion, taking into consideration that using the outwards facing cave mouths was the only way Castle Rock's myriad grottos could be accessed. There existed no internal passageways, natural or otherwise. But the Merking had a deep-rooted inkling that handy tunnels might be found here and did not flinch from seeking them out.

  He cruised along the perimeter of the compressed foyer, increasingly reliant on his echolocation ability for finding his way than the feeble halo provided by the flitting light-fish. The lantern had value more for comfort than usefulness. Reaching one of several staircases leading upwards for the fitter, more intrepid of the vanished dwellers, the exploring Merking ducked his head into the doorway. At four feet the stairwell was sufficiently wide enough to accommodate Lasbow's bulk, but he shied away from fully entering its confines.

 
; Spoilt by the roomy freedom ocean living conferred, a number of merfolk exhibited claustrophobic behaviour even in the homely setting to be had within a sea cave lodging. Lasbow was not such a merperson. The flight of steps strangely bothered him for an entirely different reason. Unable to imagine what purpose the indentations carved in the base rock might have served, he might have easily backed away to look for a freer feeling route to the higher levels. If all else failed he could always resort to returning to the outside sea and ascend that way, but Lasbow wanted to see how his hunch played out.

  "Fools rush in where angelfish fear to swim,” he muttered, taking care not to let his tail-flukes brush against the alien steps on his way up. His climb proved short-lived as he rounded the corner of the first landing and was halted by a solid wall of compacted debris, where the collapse of the ceiling formed by the underside of the next flight of stairs choked the stairway, blocking further passage upwards.

  Hardly dismayed by the obstruction, Lasbow performed a graceless half back flip and retreated to the ground floor. Pausing in the doorway to take a bracing gulp of the salty water, he pushed away and continued to calmly survey the lobby, his stealthy glide marred by the staccato clicks of his biosonar at work. Luck was with him and he quickly came upon a bank of doorless elevators, their metal sliders rusted away ages ago by the corrosive seawater.

  Caution turned to reserved elation after Lasbow poked his head into the nearest lift shaft and discovered it uncluttered by tons of piled high rubble. Still, he hesitated diving in. Foreboding blackness fell away beneath and opened up above, making him feel vulnerable and insecure. Like a persistent doubt the kraken lurked in the back if his mind, gnawing at his resolve and eroding his confidence. What if the monster of infamy was using one of these shafts as its lair and Lasbow unseeingly trespassed?

  Before he could think better of it, he rashly cast his lantern away into the void and watched closely its slow, erratic descent. Lasbow was gambling that the glow would illuminate a predator lying in wait at the bottom of the shaft and trigger it into attacking, thereby fully revealing itself. The sinking lamplight shrunk into a pinprick of struggling radiance then faded completely from sight, smothered by the darkness enfolding the five stories deep basement levels of the skeletal skyscraper.

  Staring after the vanquished brightness, the Merking was not encouraged by the uneventful result. The upshot of his ploy was either this shaft was not the kraken's den or the beast simply was not at home. Neither prospect held much appeal, as both pointed to the monster swimming loose in the seas outside the stack, probably on the hunt.

  Telling himself it was as safe as it could be to proceed, he went to enter the duct, only to somersault backwards when a flurry of movement erupted from the yawning innards of the shaft. Two-foot long Crevalle Jacks shot upwards in a gusher of dimly flashing fins and scales, startling the Merking into dropping his sword. By the time he scrabbled to retrieve his prime weapon from the uneven floor and raise the blade in his defence, the swarming fish were gone.

  Waiting to see if the spurting school had taken fright because of a pursuing predator or tentacle, Lasbow made his move only when he felt sure the coast was clear. Throwing caution to the current, he dashed madly into the shaft and corkscrewed speedily upwards, deciding at this stage of his exploration action made more sense than prudence. Fast swimmers, Lasbow had no hope of catching the jacks and so chose his own course rather than give chase to see where they might lead him. Sensing the fishes were already exiting the shaft somewhere far above him, he ceased spiralling and shot straight up. Coming close to matching the creaky speed of the upgraded elevators during the days of the building's occupancy, the machinery now crumpled in unusable heaps at the bottom of the numerous shafts, Lasbow rose forty odd floors in a shade under half a minute.

  Swimming at speed in pitch-blackness, even with sonar to guide your way, is generally not recommended, and for good reason. Hemmed in on all four sides, the walled dark disoriented the Merking enough that he unsuspectingly started to drift. His unobvious slide was exacerbated when, encountering the frayed steel wires of the lift cables hanging limply down from the defunct rooftop motor room, he slewed wildly to his left to avoid getting entangled. Needles of pain creased Lasbow's side as he overbalanced and scraped his shoulder, then hip, against the buckled remnants of a metal runner. He braked using the flat of his tail and, righting himself, patted a hand over his wounds. His fortune at suffering nothing severer than a couple of good-sized grazes which had barely broken the skin did not lessen the pain. The irregular edges of the heavy gauge steel composing the upright lift rail, rusting still after centuries of immersion, had dulled from razor-sharp spikes into the blunt knobs that luckily bruised, not gashed, the clumsy Merking.

  Taking stock of his situation, Lasbow thought it wise to take a breather. His choice was a smart one. In total, the building's hollowed core housed seven miles of elevator shafts best explored by many pairs of divers employing the buddy system. Locating with his sound-sight the lift opening closest at hand, he sank that few feet and emerged on to a grandly columned floor.

  Sludge formed a gooey carpet he gladly glided over as the evenly spaced ninety-foot tall columns, stripped of their facades by natural forces down to the bare metal bones, awed him. Glimpsing only a fraction of the 60,000 tons of steel framing in the shape of load bearing beams as well as support pillars, Lasbow gleaned from the building's exposed framework an impression of stalwart immensity. Whoever the builders were of this arresting edifice mimicked the timeless rock formations found in the natural world and, while the ingenuity behind this construction had passed from this plane, their achievements lingered on.

  Passing over and by malformed dividing walls bent and crooked from age, he eased through the blackish water, halting to float before the crumbly remnants of a windowsill. His view from the glassless space was spectacular. From his seabird's eye perspective Lasbow observed how the coral mounds were posed in an abnormal grid pattern, albeit distorted, and only from up high, looking down, could he truly appreciate the standout artificiality of the surrounds.

  For all his perception, the Merking had no possible way of comprehending he gazed upon the twisted remnants of Midtown Manhattan. To understand how the affluent district of New York City had come to end up permanently drowned along with most of Long Island, plus eastern parts of New Jersey, one must delve back in time to when the Atlantic seaboard of the United States was subjected to the opener in a double feature of unprecedented tectonic cataclysms.

  The year 2195 was not a good one for USAmerica, as the world's sole superpower was commonly referred to late in the twenty second century. Shortly before ten o'clock on the morning of Tuesday May 27th a magnitude eight earthquake rocked the New York area. Generated by the grumbling Ramapo Fault west of Jersey City, the epicentre itself was sited in lower Brooklyn, a few miles north of Coney Island. Seismic waves wrinkled the urbanised landscape like fluid rock. Mimicking the rippling splash from a stone thrown into a pond, the radiating shockwaves shook Staten Island, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx in turn. The stricken city sustained three quarters of a billion dollars in damage as a smidgen under two million New Yorkers lost their lives and places of work when a number of their dangerously weakened skyscrapers, a great many dating from the 1930's, collapsed like packs of cards in clouds of noxious dust from the first of the tremendous aftershocks which followed the main quake.

  Resilience is an inviolable component of the residents of the Big Apple and the shaken New Yorkers set to rebuilding their shattered city, joined in their efforts by rallying countrymen pouring aid, support, and labour into the monumental project. Residual tremors in the hectic days afterwards hampered rescuers, but did not dampen spirits.

  Not yet done with the industrious human ants, Mother Nature let loose the second of her levellers later that same year around the middle of a November night in the terrifying form of an unpredicted mega-tsunami. More of an afterthought than a perceived seismic event,
a section of the Hudson Canyon, an incision in the Atlantic continental shelf radiating 400 nautical miles seawards from its namesake river valley, caved in and slumped. The unbelievably huge submarine slide, displacing hundreds of millions of cubic feet of undersea rock and debris in a single calamitous instant, in turn released a twenty story high seawave in a staggering rush the speed a biplane flew at, which slammed punishingly into the east coast, unmercifully swamping everything between Rhode Island and Maryland. New York expectedly bore the brunt of the breaking “tsunami train,” though population centres as far north as Providence and as southerly as Virginia Beach copped their share of death and destruction.

  Rolling over Long Bay and through Jamaica Bay, the titanic wave obliterated all New Yorkers in its path, crushing people and buildings with equal ferocity. Manhattan's vaunted skyline, testament to human pioneering, was virtually flattened, its surviving towers mostly falling like dominoes before the ocean's onslaught. Surging unchecked, the deluging waves penetrated thirty miles inland, immersing Newark and Yonkers before petering out far up the Hudson River, flooding everywhere it coursed with anarchy and mayhem.