Strange Temple

by John Lilley

  Chaos prevailed over the Dory-Manxman-Darwin. Fires had broken out everywhere, the biggest of which was a floating fire from the drones’ unspent fuel. It had engulfed the bows of the Dory and fed by the floating garbage islands was threatening the Charles Darwin. The crews were all active with the ships’ hoses as they struggled to contain the fires. The main spars had held but were severely twisted. It would be unlikely that the ships could now separate without some major surgery to their lifting structures. The Dory’s control system was down, probably for good.

  Philippe was in the diving bay taking off the rebreather when the calamity struck. He thought the ship was going down and ran for the upper decks in his underwear, clutching the grey tube to his chest. After quickly reassessing the scene on deck he returned to his cabin to hide the container and change into some work-wear. Then he returned topside to see what he could do to help. The next few hours took on a dream-like quality for him. After the calm tranquillity of the submerged Paris streets, this was just too unreal for him. It was a long night, but his main thought throughout the nightmare was I’ve done it.

  30 JAKE

  Jake Eastman, at 130 was the youngest of the remaining four, but at their ages, the difference was now inconsequential. They had known each other for as long as they could remember and longer than any human being ever had. His parents had both been chemists at the base where he’d spent the first few years of his life. While the Four were growing up, Jake was always the most mature, the tough-guy and since Bruce and Neil were killed he had been their leader.

  Starting with his early years of maturity in the domes, the focus of Jake’s immense intellect had been the study of social history. He also found science, nature and engineering interesting and liked to understand and solve problems, but always reckoned that social issues were by far the most difficult. The way he saw it then was that the biggest problem on the planet was the impending climate disaster, brought on by Man’s inability to control his numbers and levels of consumption. The tipping point would see the climate move towards a much hotter stable state, with few remaining niches for life and especially not one for Man. In his mind, this was still primarily a social problem and had preoccupied him ever since.

  He’d learnt very early on that Central seemed completely uninterested in the problem, he was still in denial to a limited extent and only came up with short-term fixes which involved the creation of further entirely artificial environments for the few survivors, while larger scale efforts to repair the planet were not even on his radar. In his own lifetime, Jake had seen Central retract further and further until his area of interest seemed to just encompass their domes. It was as if Central considered his job done: all the enemies had been neutralised, and the situation was stable with no further threats to his little world. Jake had been immensely sceptical when Central brought the Kids over: what had he been doing over in Britain, and why did he no longer have any contacts over there? Jake reckoned that bringing the Kids over had in some way thrown Central even deeper into his spiral of self-doubt and depression. All of Jake’s enquiries about the rest of the world were stonewalled with unverifiable tales warning of radiation and plague.

  Jake was the only one of the boys to force himself through a formal education, all be it when he was in his late fifties. At that time Central had seemed keen to help him in this exercise and had awarded him several Degrees and a PhD for his efforts. Unfortunately, the more knowledge that Jake absorbed the more he began to wonder how much more was still out there. Things that a military-intelligence obsessed with the traditions of the “need to know” protocol was not prepared to tell him. Secrecy and subterfuge were second nature to Central, something which Bruce and Neil had briefly discussed with Jake before their “accidental” deaths. Based on what their parents and grandparents had told them, there was a lot more to the whole Native-American-British thing than Central was telling them. Knowing more about the socio-political situation had led Jake to conclude that the Kids’ rescue from Britain on the grounds of plague seemed too farfetched and it was more likely to have been a kidnapping. So if that were the case then surely Britain still had a viable human population?

  In turn Central found Jake to be somewhat “difficult” since he often objected to changes, even when all that Central was trying to do was to make life easy for him. For example, although his dome started off as a typical boys’ adventure playground, mainly under the design guidance of the older boys, it rapidly changed with Jakes evolving consciousness, and from his early twenties, he'd insisted in growing his own food, shunning the produce that Central grew hydroponically deep underground. He would spend most days toiling in his fields while the other boys were lounging about. His farm thrived until he calculated that in terms of energy, Central was producing the food more efficiently with better nutritional content than his amateur efforts on the poor desert soil.

  He resented the massive amount of energy that Central expended in just keeping them alive in such a hostile environment and long argued that they should all move further north into the remaining annexed Canadian forests. Central’s explanation was that if the viruses, radiation or wildlife in the forests didn’t get them, then the frequent reoccurrences of the CO2 “burps” would. No mention at all of the Natives.

  Jake continually probed the nature of Central and the artificial environment in which he found himself. While he saw no need for his dome to support anything but himself he figured that the illusion of “normality” of a few fellow creatures around would be a good thing to throw Central off his case. So he kept the birds, badgers and all their other forest friends. Although he had them there as a kind of cover story, he often had to admit that for some strange reason he did find them a welcome distraction to his studies.

  He personally designed everything about his life that he could; from his diet and daily schedule to his fitness regime. As expected, he was very close to the other three and was always there for them, but deep down he knew that he was very different from them.

  The use of the hovercars was initially restricted to flights between the domes and the limited surrounding areas, and the boys were not allowed to fly them. Jake had, therefore, become used to long and arduous treks into the surrounding desert by ground car with Colin his simulant dome-master. On these trips, he always pushed the envelope each time. The 2090 Toyota Landcruiser he had selected as his car of choice was just not up to the job and frequently broke down. Even after its latest rebuild to almost full military spec’, Jake managed to destroy it after nose-diving into a gully at high speed. It was after this latest incident, while Jake’s ribs were mending and Colin was getting a new left leg fitted, that Central announced that all the boys would receive hovercar training.

  About Krelling time, thought Jake.

  The hovercar training was laborious in the extreme. It was a long time before the Four were allowed to fly the cars solo. Jake remembered well their first boys-only trip out to the Black River Oasis with a great sense of achievement.

  Full access to the hovercar extended Jake’s range tremendously. One thing he did notice straight away was that the range of the cars was not that great: 1,700 miles maximum. From the domes, which were near to the old city of Dallas, this did put the northern forests in range but only for a one-way trip. However, in reality, this was not possible since the automatic safeguards prevented the cars from being flown too far away from a fuel stop as Jake once discovered on one trip, when the car took over control and automatically returned to the domes. The West coast was available but only because the old base near San Diego still had refuelling available, but none of the Four ever felt like visiting that old graveyard. The East coast near Columbia where the USA invasion armada had set sail, was also just too far for a round trip because it had no refuelling facilities. Central had always warned them about the radiation around the Great Lakes salt pan and to the south on what was left of the Panama land bridge. Jake often wondered just how much truth was in these assertions.

&n
bsp; As the Kids began to reach their early 20s, they grew tired of the featureless landscapes around the domes. Although their memories of Britain seemed to be mysteriously absent, they all had a strange hankering for a greener and cooler environment. They made various expeditions looking for a new site for their dome, and after three years of searching, almost at the limit of the hovercars’ range, they found a site near the old city of Asheville up in the Appalachians. It was several hundred feet higher than their current home and had plenty of greenery, even some trees had survived. Central’s main concern was that it was too close to the coast and further possible CO2 incidents, however, the altitude ensured they would be safe provided they stayed near the dome. Construction of the new Asheville dome took two years because Central needed to install a whole new set of underground support facilities and beef up his network over the 830 miles between their old and new homes. To Jake’s delight, the new dome included a full refuelling facility, so he would, at last, be in reach of Columbia, he could even get there in his 4x4.

  Jake had been the Kids’ principal tutor since they had arrived, so it was no surprise to the other three when he moved out to Ashville with the Kids.

  ‘Just until they get settled in,’ he’d said.

  The distance did keep the three away. Gene had developed a deep aversion to hovercars and Asheville was well beyond the range of his Cadillac, although the remaining roads were not up to it in any case. However, the Kids made regular visits back to their old home and were in communication on a daily basis, so Gene, Carlos and Bill didn’t feel too left out.

  Jake knew that Columbia would be a prime location for finding what he wanted: a source of pre-Central unmodified historical data. He tried not to make it so obvious but spent many months working his way through various inland sites before venturing to the old port. The city was radically different from the others nearby; it was a no-compromise military fortress of massive proportions. Outside of the harbour area, all of the original buildings had been turned into rubble. This new 20-mile wide concrete wilderness was completely devoid of all cover or vegetation. The first of five rings of sixty feet high walls began at five miles from the harbour. The walls were topped with smooth concrete overhangs, just like at maximum security penitentiaries, except here they were to keep the rogues out. Every hundred feet along the walls were automated gun turrets, many of which now seemed to be in a bad state of repair, having been taken over as nesting sites by the local bird population. Between the walls were sloping ramparts that dropped into deep canals, but at least the crocodiles had all moved out long ago. Columbia was the place where the US had done its last-ditch experiments with climate control and where the ill-fated last US Armada had sailed from. It had also been one of Central’s last major strongholds against the flood of migrants coming from the south. Its final stand was against the combined forces of the many outlaw gangs, whose bleached bones now littered the approaches to the outer walls. According to Central, the CO2 event killed all the base’s personnel shortly after that last battle. It had been derelict for over 100 years before Jake had spotted its potential.

  It took Jake several days to find his way through the fortifications in his 4x4. His main surprise when he first got there was just how derelict the whole place was. It looked like it had been completely abandoned after the tsunami had hit. There was little evidence of any kind of occupation after that point in time. From his campsite in the central zone, he made extensive searches over many weeks and confirmed that the survivors of the tsunami had carefully packed their bags with what they could carry and simply left. Their most valuable personal possessions and clothing had gone with them, along with most of the vehicles. Many of the hardware stores were still well stocked, including the arsenals. For Jake, the primary evidence to support his theory was that there were no human remains strewn around like he would have expected if they had been caught by the CO2 events. He reckoned that the automated systems must have been what kept the gangs out after that. On almost his last planned day on the site, he felt he had further confirmation of his theory when he came across the remains of over a hundred military combat robots. They were just standing to attention in one of the old hangars, quite a shock for him when he entered the building. Closer inspection showed that the service panel on the side of all of the robots had been removed and some components from inside had been extracted and then smashed on the hangar floor. He could not imagine what could have done this or why and when, but the net result was that the nine feet tall killing machines were all inert and rusting.

  Four months later on his second visit, in one of the buildings used as a school for the children of senior military personnel, he found a locked storeroom, and in that room, he found several ancient laptops and a catalogue of teaching media and news articles dating back to 2080. The batteries in the laptops had long since died and taken the laptops with them as they corroded, except for one, where someone had taken the battery out. Jake managed to find the appropriate mains adapter for the laptop on another of the shelves in the storeroom.

  Back at the 4x4 he already had a power supply running from the car to his nearby tent. The old laptop seemed to take an age to boot up but happily accepted the ancient headphones and old media sticks he’d found. He had no choice about the headphones because the laptop’s speakers had failed and his headphones from the truck had an entirely different jack plug. He was glad in a way because he felt it would reduce the chance that Central could hear what he was listening to. His first session on the old machine lasted all night, he just could not tear himself away from it. As the sun came up, he realised he had overdone it and snatched a few hours of sleep. Although he had only delved into a tiny fraction of the media, he now appreciated the extent to which Central had been deceiving them and the dangerous consequences for them all if Central discovered what he had found.

  He had a leisurely breakfast and set off across the base as usual, taking his new prize possessions with him. Back in the store cupboard, he dismantled the remaining laptops and removed their hard-disks. Another search of the shelves revealed an external hard-drive case, which he cannibalised to allow the other hard-drives to be plugged into the working laptop. Back at his camp he scanned through the additional drives and found that two of them contained more extensive historical archives. He spent another week sifting through the information before hiding the ancient hardware back in one of the nearest storerooms and driving back to Asheville for more food supplies.

  Over the next six months, Jake spent most of his time in Columbia. He felt that he had to be sure before letting the Kids in on his secret, with absolutely no peers to guide him, just 100 years of doubt, he was naturally cautious. Eventually, he felt the time was right and decided to spill the beans at his next Ashville visit.

  Two weeks later Jake was enjoying a picnic out in the mountains with three of his favourite Kids: Harry Hardman, Jane Fatania and Dennis Leopold. They’d hiked out 15 miles from the dome, well away from Central’s eyes and ears.

  ‘So what you’re telling us is that we can’t trust anything that Central tells us and that includes anything about the Natives, Britain and the details of our rescue from the plague,’ said Dennis.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jake.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this a long time ago?’ said Jane.

  ‘Sorry, just my own indecisiveness, I had to be sure. The illusion has been so complete, don't forget what Central is. He picked us up when we were not much older than you guys were when you left Britain. None of us had a clue what was happening. Bruce and Neil were the ones that tipped me off that things were maybe not as they seemed, but that was over 100 years ago, just before they were killed. We’ve all been trapped in a giant goldfish bowl for so long now, a very beautiful bowl, where we want for nothing,’ said Jake.

  ‘So what do you think are Central’s plans for the future?’ said Harry.

  ‘Who knows, he seems to become more withdrawn as time goes by especially since you guys arriv
ed. It’s as if he’s suffering from some form of depression or dementia. There used to be mention of sensors and drones he had many miles away, and the fact that he rescued you from Britain proves that he had been venturing quite far afield until recently. Before you came along, his main obsessions seemed to be with the outlaws and the Natives. Two months ago, the latest thing he told me was that as far as he could determine, we are the only survivors on the planet,’ said Jake.

  ‘We all know that the plague was very real in Britain and that we were so lucky that Central managed to rescue us. Why should we believe what you are now telling us,’ said Jane.

  Jake hunched his shoulders and wrung his hands: ‘I have a theory that you all went through some sort of conditioning therapy before you got here. You were all very young and open to suggestion. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I think that you may have been kidnapped, just to provide the four of us with some company or perhaps even worse as our replacements in some bizarre experiment.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Dennis.

  ‘OK then, what can you remember about your rescue?’ said Jake.

  ‘Well, nothing because we had all been sedated for the journey on the dropship,’ said Jane.

  ‘But what about before you were sedated, and anyway, why did you have to be sedated? What can you actually remember about the plague in Britain? How long had it been going on? Where were you when you were “rescued” and why did he just pick you guys? For me, the biggest hole in the whole story is that none of you remembers anything about your families or lives in Britain before you came here. The whole thing just seems so implausible: Central’s agents just happened to be passing Britain and noticed that there was a massive plague going on, so they “rescued” you guys, picking you out from everyone else, without knowing if you had the plague! To know that much about Britain, they would have had to have had extensive contact, and if that were true then why does Central seem to have virtually no details of contemporary Britain in his archives and wants nothing to do with it?’ said Jake.