Ark-13: An Odyssey

by B. B. Gallagher

  He crawled through the narrow passage against the current of recycled air conditioning. He reached a second vent, which showed that he was halfway to the Vault.

  And then he heard it.

  A door opened below him and footsteps paced through the Archives.

  “Someone is here!” he whispered into his comm.

  Jake’s heart pounded through his chest.

  He held his breath as footsteps approached underneath him.

  Chapter 19

  Day 21

  Coop tumbled over Jim as the two continued their fight on the floor of the night club. Coop seized the opportunity while fighting with Jim to extract through a sleight of hand Jim’s keycard from his pocket. He tucked the keycard in his back pocket and continued to grapple with him. Just then, two enforcers burst through the door with electrostaffs. They activated them, causing sparks to sizzle at their ends.

  The crowd parted for the enforcers.

  “Arrest this man!” Jim yelled still wrapped in a headlock, bleeding from the nose.

  The enforcers stepped forward and pressed the electrical end into Coop’s back. He shook uncontrollably as the shock seized through his body. His body convulsed on the ground as the electricity surged from his head to his toe. The crowd watched in horror as Jim Booker gathered his feet and wiped his bloody nose. Combing his hair back out of his eyes, he beamed down at Coop in disgust.

  “This behavior is unacceptable here on the Ark. Take this man to the Pen!” Jim ordered, enraged and wild with fury.

  Finally, Coop’s body sputtered to a stop, like a car whose engine was cut. Jim’s eyes darted about the crowd as he met expressions of disgust. The looks of contempt around him engendered the feeling of being ostracized.

  “What?! He attacked me!” No one said anything in response, but no one had to. There was an unspoken dissent among the crowd as Coop moaned in agony on the floor. Lucy broke through the crowd as the scene settled and knelt next to Coop, checking his pulse.

  “You are not taking him to the Pen right now! This man needs medical treatment. What did you do to him?!” Lucy barked at Jim, only further damaging his public image. Her hands rummaged over him, checking his vitals and swiping Jim’s stolen keycard from him.

  “Somebody help me get him to Sick Bay…” A few men stepped forward and together they lifted him and began carrying him toward Sick Bay. Jim was left to the judgmental eyes of the crowd as Coop’s limp body was carried out of the night club.

  In the corner far removed from the action, Zoe watched the scene before her unfold. She then tapped her comm unit and updated the team.

  “Keycard is on its way, prepare for interception.”

  ⊶<>⊷

  Out in the Loop, Lucy escorted the body of Coop down the corridor and towards the Sick Bay. Twenty feet ahead was Danny walking her way. Lucy in one quick motion brandished the keycard and held it by her side.

  Danny bumped into her shoulder slightly as they passed and then issued his apologies.

  “Oh, it’s okay!” Lucy assured him for appearances.

  Danny walked at a brisk pace the other way – keycard in hand.

  ⊶<>⊷

  Jake laid above the Archives in the air conditioning duct frozen and alert. He peeked through the A/C vent in an effort to make out the unexpected visitor. And then he saw a large man with long hair walking by in Converse All-Stars.

  It was Justin Cusick the custodian of the Archives, walking the aisles as if looking for something.

  “Please leave… Justin… you are going to foil everything,” Jake whispered to himself. Justin stopped in his tracks and consulted the ceiling. His eyes passed right over the air conditioning vent, unaware that Jake was hiding behind it. After a moment of silence Justin shook it off and continued to a particular server cabinet. He then inserted his holographic into the server drive. After browsing for a few minutes, Justin downloaded a data file from the J drive and pulled his holographic from the jack.

  Trailing footsteps and the sound of the door closing gave Jake the all clear to continue to the last vent. After crawling his way to the end of the duct, he peered through the vent to ensure that it dropped into the Vault. He dug his hand into his pocket, turning on his side to free up some room for his arm. He pulled out a paperclip, which he pulled apart from its looping shape. He angled the paperclip into an L-shape and fed it through the grate. With careful movements he was able to push in the two closing slides of the vent.

  The grate swung open immediately and Jake’s head popped through the aperture, surveying the Archives for any signs of life.

  Jake dropped down into the Vault and landed on his feet. He quickly pulled out his holographic and inserted it into the server port. Jake started the download of the X drive with two direct punches of his holographic.

  He exhaled a pent up breath and leaned up against the server cabinet with his face up in the air. He tapped his earpiece.

  “Download has begun. What’s your status, Danny?”

  ⊶<>⊷

  “En route to the Lookout now,” Danny walked as quickly as possible without raising suspicion.

  Danny climbed a flight of stairs to the Observation Deck. The largest window on the Ark was atop the staircase where colonists often stargazed across the far reaches of outer space. Danny stopped for a moment and couldn’t help but look out the window. It was where many had gathered and witnessed the destruction of Earth. The mission at hand nagged at him until he shook the somber memory from his focus.

  He turned and approached a door with a sign labeled, “The Lookout”. He swiped Jim Booker’s keycard and walked into the room. The room had one central chair that faced a curved wall with a full display covering it. Hundreds of different camera feeds shined on the wall and a series of holographic consoles lined the central chair.

  “Well, hello there!” Danny remarked to the computer monitors before him, as he sat in the central chair before the command consoles.

  He feverishly began typing as he retrieved the feed of the Archives. There he located Jake downloading from the server and started overwriting the feed with normal footage without Jake. He performed the same procedure to the feed of the observation deck, showing him walking into the Lookout.

  He covered his tracks and after the feeds were clear, stood up from the console and left the Lookout. Danny tapped his ear and gave the update as he walked down the stairs and back onto the Loop.

  “You’re all clear. You’ve got fifteen minutes of feed in front of you.”

  Danny smiled as he palmed Jim Booker’s keycard in his hand. He flipped his hood up and over his head and spotted his target.

  Jim was speaking aggressively with the enforcers, recounting the fight at the Eclipse and defending his actions. Danny saw that he was bothered by the fight and still nursing a bloody lip.

  As Danny passed, he bumped into him, apologizing immediately for his misstep.

  “I’m sorry Mr. Booker…” The respectful address seemed to play well to Jim’s recent found insecurity and inflate his ego back to normal levels.

  “Oh… it’s okay, kid.” Booker turned back to his conversation with the enforcers as Danny walked on, having left behind the keycard in its owners back pocket. Danny smiled and updated the team.

  “Drop complete. How’s the download?”

  ⊶<>⊷

  “Complete,” Jake reported as he yanked his holographic from the server.

  He positioned himself underneath the open vent and jumped up, grabbing the inside of the duct. His muscles bulged as he pulled himself up and through. Lying within the duct, he huffed and puffed in an effort to catch his breath and calm his pulse. He pulled the grate up and snapped the latches into place. He crawled back to the entrance and descended the ladder to the main air conditioning vent.

  He checked his surroundings and could see no one.

  “Elijah, all clear?”

  “All clear!” Jake opened the vent and stepped out of it, quickly closing it behind him. He c
asually started walking the Loop, blending in to the scene nonconspicuously.

  “Alright… let’s find out who our mole is…”

  Chapter 20

  Requiem for Earth

  Log Entry # 7

  The ticket in my file didn’t have a destination on it –only a time and a place. The accompanying badge gained me access to the tarmac, where I boarded a GENESIS corporate jet. It was kind of eerie having a private plane to myself. I figured they didn’t want me flying commercial because they thought I might have an emotional breakdown in public.

  It was strange. Everything I touched and saw would be reduced to ash in a matter of 48 hours. I remember looking out the window and imagining the people below, going about their lives and trying to be good people. It would all end so abruptly. We lived life as if we could write our own fate, but we were wrong and all our attempts were futile. Even GENESIS continued to change humanity’s fate by building the Arks and prolonging our species in the face of the Apocalypse. But isn’t that what makes us human? The desperate fight to write our own fate?

  I remember looking in the personal parcel I had packed, per the instructions in the file. Although it was the only thing I would be taking with me, it was the only thing I wanted to look at. I cycled through the 4 x 6s of my family over and over, remembering better times.

  In some ways, the truth of the matter became harder to cope with, but in the others it became easier. As relationships became harder to let go of, everything else became easier. I knew that I had downplayed my relationships in my life – I knew I had wronged my family time and time again, whether it be something that I said or didn’t say or something that I did or didn’t do.

  People who are dying and say they have no regrets are either incredibly prideful or full of it. I regret the way I lost contact with my father, no matter whose fault it was. I regret the way I shied away from commitment, even when the girl of my dreams was right in front of me. I regret how I spent my life buying useless things I didn’t need instead of giving something useful to people who needed it. We weren’t perfect on earth and I think that if people regretted things more, it would have been a better place at its end.

  I remember this was the point in my flight that the tears came. They came silently and slowly, yet warm. Call it my perfect contrition. But somehow I felt relieved and born anew. A calm came over me, one that I can’t explain. It was like a weight came off my chest that had been pressing down for decades.

  And then the trees came into view out the window as the plane lowered from its flight.

  And then the water – the sea glistened in the distance, as the sun continued its descent.

  Wherever we landed, it was far away from civilization. I couldn’t see anything but nature stretching as far as the eye could see. Mountains towered in the distance and cottonwood trees speckled their slopes. It’s hard to believe there is no such thing as a cottonwood tree anymore. Or any tree for that matter.

  The airplane door opened and I descended the staircase onto the tarmac. I looked around me until something caught my eye. The sun illuminated a massive structure standing next to the bay. There was a large building with the words “Kodiak Launch Complex” on it. Then my eyes scanned the valley and found a large structure three hundred yards away.

  It was the Ark.

  Standing at 600 feet tall and 400 feet wide, the Ark consisted of two primary parts, the internal structure and the Loop. The Loop enclosed the internal structure as if it were a wide ring and the internal structure stood tall like a finger through it. There were many windows to the outside world on the Ark but one large one running up the majority of the Loop. It was what we called the Observation Deck. There are no levels assigned to it because as it is a circle that would be floating in outer space there would be no up or down, east or west. Deck names had been assigned to each area of the Loop and would serve as our only compass.

  The internal structure that stood inside the Loop had three consecutive levels. The first level was the Stacks where our sleeping pods were, the second level was the Resource deck. Colonists did not have access to this level or the top level of the ship – the Bridge.

  My eyes settled on three letters, painted on the ship’s exterior. A.R.K.

  Cyrus Holder drove up in a hovercart. I always thought they looked like golf carts, without the wheels. He approached with a wide smile and open arms as if we were about to play eighteen holes.

  “You made it! How was your flight?”

  That’s right, he was smiling. He was either excited for the world to end, knowing that as soon as we launch, he would be the king and everyone’s savior. Or he was smiling because he was wrapped in the Science of it all, resigned to the fact that he had no control over the asteroid. Either way it was out of touch. The Ark and all of its passengers remained his project and he was excited for us to begin.

  “Isn’t she a beauty,” he gestured behind him to the Ark.

  “I can’t believe it’s real…”

  “Still pinching yourself to see if you wake up? Unfortunately all of this is very real.” After a moment of silence, he gestured for me to board the hovercart. I sat in the front seat next to him and we started gliding toward the large office building.

  “Where are we?

  “We are at the Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska. GENESIS bought the 3,700 acre complex from the Alaskan government. We needed privacy and we needed a launch site. We were able to get both here. It was this or New Mexico and I hate the heat. We have been working on her for the last three years.”

  “What now?” I asked, holding the handle of my personal parcel – my only luggage.

  “Today is arrival, tomorrow is orientation and training and we launch on Friday morning.”

  “I have to ask, why only one day of training? I mean, we are starting a new world. One day of training?”

  “We want to give you the freedom to have the society that you want. In fact, you have been selected as one of the five councilmen.”

  “What?!”

  “I said you have been chosen along with four others to make up the Council – you will help govern the Ark.”

  “What about you? What about GENESIS?”

  “GENESIS is concerned with flying the ARK and ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before,’” he quoted Star Trek. When Cyrus told me this, I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know that they would close us off like some kind of infected people quarantined from all contact.

  We arrived at the nearby office building and walked down a small hallway, until we emerged into a large room with massive screens covering one wall.

  “So here is the nickel tour,” he began. “Welcome to Mission Control.”

  Ten to fifteen men and women were working the room. There was a buzz of urgency in the air as they rushed to complete whatever tasks they were assigned.

  “I can assure you that the mission is in the best of hands. GENESIS has recruited the brightest engineers across the globe for this mission.”

  “But… but what happens to them…” Cyrus stopped in the center of the bullpen and turned to me with intensity.

  “Jake, these men and women are sacrificing their lives to ensure the launch goes according to plan. They know what their fate has in store for them but they continue to make the sacrifice for the sake of the human race.” I gulped down the guilt and nodded. After staring me down a moment, Cyrus snapped from it and continued into a hallway on the other side of Mission Control.

  “Where are the others?”

  “We have set up some cots for you all for the next two nights. There is a lot to do.” With a smacking of the door, another large room opened up before him. Before him was an airplane hangar with rows and rows of cots set up. Hundreds of somber people were scattered throughout the hangar – some crying, some rocking back and forth.

  I remember one girl in particular. She had blonde hair and running mascara. H
er face was long with despair. She had a hopelessness written on her face that spelled out all the turmoil in my soul.

  “Jake, I’d like you to meet your fellow colonists…”

  Chapter 21

  Requiem for Earth

  Log Entry # 8

  If you chose 500 people to survive the human race, who would they be?

  Would it be the most brilliant minds? Scientists and Historians and Artists?

  Well, that was not who GENESIS chose. They chose seemingly random Joe’s and Jane’s – myself included. If they spent billions of dollars and three years to construct the Ark, why would they put a bunch of scrubs onboard? I was expecting to see the next Einstein or the politicians of the day, but no. Maybe they were on an earlier flight but not one person in the hangar was famous, recognizable or noteworthy. The majority of them were young teenagers. I guess if you are trying to propagate the human race, how better can you do it than getting a bunch of teenagers on a ship together? I guess our Ark is the ‘Love Boat’ of the fleet.

  So there we were – aimless, hovering around our cots, all lined up in rows. It wasn’t long after I arrived that a half-robotic voice came over the PA.

  “Sigh Pritcher, Jim Booker, Sophia Chen, Jake Hansen and Andrew Langford, please report to Conference Room 1 for the first Assembly.” I sat up on my cot, surprised to hear my name. Everyone was looking around confused until I stood up. I could feel the eyes appraising me from all sides. I walked the length of the hangar until I found a door against the wall with large letters labeling it as Conference Room 1.

  I met the door with four others. None of us seemed to know why our names were called or what an Assembly was.