Escaping the Sun

by Rhett Goreman

  We were beginning to sort the blind out now, re-threading the strings through the slats and tying knots as we spoke.

  I asked Tom, ‘But how come you are here? You didn’t mention the Academy when you popped round to see me at my old apartment.’

  ‘I didn’t know I would be asked to live here then,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t until the following afternoon that my mother said she had received a circular inviting every scientist, working at Atlanton, to bring their civilian families into purpose built accommodation inside the base. With nothing better to do within this fortress, I thought I would join the Academy. I was just beginning to think that may have been a bad decision.’

  ‘Well, you have a friend now,’ I offered, ‘And that will make all the difference, I am sure.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tom and he shook my hand.

  He glanced at the clock above the door. ‘Look at the time,’ he said, ‘We have to be up very early tomorrow morning for our first practice drill.’

  ‘What marching and stuff?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Perkems believes any unit that can follow orders flawlessly will not freeze or hide under the pressure of real battle conditions.’

  He went on, ‘We might be getting our uniforms tomorrow, so in future we will have to have our boots shined and our clothes all spick and span before we start.’

  We finished mending the blind and turned to leave the class room. I went to pick up my holdall which still contained, amongst other things, copies of the forms I had signed at reception.

  The bag seemed incredibly heavy. Then I realised it wouldn’t move at all. Someone, and I can probably guess who, had glued my holdall to the floor!

  Chapter 5 - The Prophecy

  After several weeks of marching, circuit training and cross-country running around the camp perimeter, I was getting much fitter and developing sculptured muscles. However, the idea I might see more of my father was not exactly working out. The only evidence we both lived in our flat was occasional rearrangement of the layers of dirty dishes, pots and pans in the kitchen.

  Perkems always left the cross-country running to the end of each day. He would yell at us, ‘The sooner you finish the distance, the sooner you can go home.’ I usually ran alongside Tom, and we generally finished together somewhere in the middle of the pack, but there was more to do before we could actually go home. After crossing the finish line, we headed for the showers and a change of clothes. Our uniforms would be sweaty and covered in dust. I would have to join the queue at the only laundrette, polish my boots during the washing cycle, and iron my shirt and trousers afterwards. Perkems would be examining every crease the next morning. He also wanted to see his face reflected on the front of the boots.

  At least we did not have to get our beds ready for morning inspection like the regular soldiers.

  We were never given our own guns. However, twice a week the whole class had to attend a gun club. I turned out to be quite a good shot and I enjoyed learning about all the different types of gun used by the army. Of course, we were not allowed to simply turn up and fire the weapons. Perkems had arranged with the gun club that we could disassemble, clean and reassemble each gun, in a quiet room. The guns would then have to pass his detailed scrutiny before we could take them over to the firing range.

  We did have Sundays to ourselves and occasionally there would be a conventional rocket launch from a pad within the perimeter of the base, about ten miles east of the school. I would get a group of friends together to go and watch the launch.

  I remember the particularly spectacular launch of a rocket called ‘Quatinus 1’, which must have been carrying a very heavy payload. We were told it was heading out on a long voyage of discovery. It was the first attempt to send a robotic probe to actually land on a planet orbiting another star. There was great hope it would confirm, and report back, genuine Earth like conditions when it arrived there. Astronomers were so confident the planet had exactly the same type of atmosphere, gravity, oceans and temperature as our own Earth used to have, it had already been renamed New Earth; with one particularly major snag being that the planet was orbiting a star in another galaxy: the Andromeda galaxy to be precise. The journey there and waiting for the radio signals to come back to us, would take hundreds of millions of years! It was not all bad news, however. Andromeda continues to hurtle towards our own Milky Way galaxy at 75 miles per second. Therefore, any follow up voyage would be somewhat shorter!

  One bright Sunday morning, I was surprised to be woken up by my father. Yes, I was surprised he had woken me, but I was even more surprised our time-lines had actually crossed. He brought me some orange juice and breakfast cereal. He said he had something important to tell me.

  ‘Firstly, you need to know the Top Brass at the Military have asked me why Vitcha is so fixated on committing our world government to taking the human race to Andromeda: as opposed to one of the many habitable exo-planets that have been discovered in our own Milky Way galaxy. I reminded them of the official answer; “Vitcha’s team has discovered several white dwarf stars heading our way: each of which could soon become Type 1a supernovae and flood our neighbourhood with lethal doses of gamma rays.”’

  ‘At which point, they told me to “cut the crap”, and tell them what I really thought. In hindsight, I wish I had not replied.’

  I said, ‘It might have more to do with him feeling responsible for his young wife’s death in a tragic accident, many years ago, when there was a massive explosion in his laboratory. You see, he used to spend hours with his wife, Paricianne, gazing up at Andromeda through his own backyard telescope. He told me how they would dream of what it might be like to raise a family there. I believe he still clings on to that dream. I have even seen him kiss a test tube containing a tiny sample of Paricianne’s skin that he hopes to clone her from when he gets there.’

  My father reflected on what he had just said, ‘I can see now, what I told the Military may have sown serious seeds of doubt regarding Vitcha’s work and his mental health.’

  ‘Then Yesterday, I demonstrated my latest idea to the Top Brass,’ he continued. ‘The problem is they liked it. They liked it rather more than I was expecting.’

  He had a worried expression on his face.

  ‘In coming up with ways to benefit the human race, I think I may have unwittingly facilitated our total destruction.’

  With deepening furrows in his brow he went on, ‘My work is being hyped up and hijacked by my superiors; as a result, all the other human migration projects are to be axed!’

  ‘It seems to me the upper echelons of the military and our senior politicians are only interested in saving themselves. It could be decades more before my work is ready to move millions of people to another world. Meanwhile, they will be closing down projects such as the lifeboat spaceships being developed by my friend Vitcha Kesinko. The solar orbital space-trials of his starship are also to be cancelled.’

  ‘Shutting down all those other projects doesn’t make any sense to me. It might save some money in the short term, but we are continuing to expose ourselves to the risk of a global extinction event.’

  ‘The Commander-in-Chief’s answer to minimising that risk is to deploy yet another robotic meteor deflection system. It will be carried on the very last rocket to be launched from this base and it is scheduled to blast off later today. I believe this type of risk mitigation may be too little, too late, and too blinkered when we know of so many possible disaster scenarios.’

  With that, my father begged me to be among the first to volunteer to be put in stasis, or more precisely into suspended animation, should that become necessary.

  ‘How will I know when it’s necessary?’ I asked.

  ‘You will know,’ he said.

  My father gave me a handful of gold cards and explained they would enable myself, and a few of my classmates if they wanted to take the opportunity, to be put into stasis along with other military personnel, when the time came.

  He pleaded
with me not to mention the cards to anyone until I actually needed to use them. There would not be enough for everyone. He didn’t want to cause a riot.

  He could see I was taking him seriously now, and he was beginning to calm down. ‘Just report to Bunker 7 and present this gold card.’

  ‘Will I get to see where you work?’ I asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I work deep beneath the ground, several levels down from where you’ll be going, in a curved man-made chamber known as a geodesic dome. It is designed to withstand the blast of an atom bomb exploding directly over this site. In the event of a major disaster, this is where you’ll either find me, or your salvation.’

  My father could not tell me what the disaster he had foreseen might be. He hoped and prayed it would never happen.

  Chapter 6 - Trying Times

  The pranks and practical jokes continued, and I felt certain Gerland had something to do with most of them. That said, I had also come to realise many of the regular recruits resented the fact that the Academy students were considered ‘special’. They begrudged us having been granted certain ‘privileges’, such as our private living quarters, just because we had gifted parents.

  For example, everyone on our course was issued with a tent and once per week we were required to practice unpacking them, erecting them and then packing them again. As you might expect, Perkems would be there with his stopwatch, and each week we had to beat our previous timings. One particularly wet and windy afternoon, when we were all zipped up and resting inside our tents, somebody raced about swiftly and deftly pulling most of the tent pegs out of the ground. A flurry of moans ran around our campsite as the soppy wet canvas flopped on top of us all.

  More seriously, the camp mascot, a black and white cat called Kaku, turned up at another army base more than three hundred miles away. That didn’t make sense to anyone, let alone the cat.

  On another occasion, Gerland himself was caught by the military police stealing a daffodil from the Colonel’s window box. He said he wanted to give it to his invalid mother but the police either didn’t care about or believe his story and promptly locked him up overnight in the base jail house. Colonel Myers, who was in overall charge of Atlanton base, could deal with minor cases such as these himself; but he let Gerland think he would have to be tried by four judges in a full military tribunal. The following day, the Colonel organised what looked like a formal hearing. Perkems was asked to bring a few of us into the room to act as character witnesses. Tom and I went along to offer some support for our fellow classmate. We had to struggle not to laugh when a plastic bag, containing Exhibit A - The Daffodil, was held aloft by the policemen who had caught Gerland red handed. Nevertheless, Gerland was let off after being given only a stern warning. From that moment on, his bullying somewhat mellowed and he became more of a team player. Perhaps he was grateful for us helping him to get off being court-marshalled, or perhaps this was a story he didn’t wish to be brought out and used to embarrass him at the next opportune moment.

  However, the most amazing stunt was pulled off shortly after Colonel Myers had brought his small private yacht onto the site for safe keeping. It was mounted on a trailer and left in a corner of the main car park. One day, when he was looking out of his office window across the car park, he suddenly realised his yacht had disappeared. He quickly organised a search party and it didn’t take long for them to find it. While they were running around the base, one of the lads happened to look upwards and there it was, still nestled on its trailer, perched high up on the flat roof of the Academy building!

  All the students were made to do a hundred additional press-ups every day until someone owned up to doing the deed. Yet, after a week of extra press-ups, still nobody knew how the stunt had been achieved or had any idea who had pulled it off.

  It was Perkem’s opinion that regular Army or Navy trainees had perpetrated the prank to get us, the Academy students, into trouble. He argued that only regular recruits would have had access to the necessary ropes and lifting tackle. The Colonel had to call in a helicopter to take his pride and joy back to the car park.

  *

  Ellie Kesinko missed out on all those additional press-ups the rest of us had to do. In fact, she was nowhere to be seen for that whole week. It wasn’t until the following Monday morning that we saw her coming around the corner of the Academy building, to arrive onto our makeshift parade ground. She did not look at all well. Her hair was tied back in a bun and she was ashen-faced.

  To everyone’s surprise it was Gerland who first asked her what the matter was. Her eyes watered. She was trying her utmost not to cry. Tom and I came over and made an attempt to comfort her. Fighting the tears, and with some anger in her voice, she opened up to the three of us saying, ‘My father has been killed in an “accident”. For some inexplicable reason he just happened to be standing in the middle of the concrete ducting, that channels hot gasses away from the launch pad, just when that rocket took off last Sunday afternoon.’

  Gerland held her hand and she seemed thankful for it.

  ‘I didn’t see anything of the accident myself,’ she said, ‘but I was there watching the launch. I remember the huge plume of smoke billowing away from the pad. I am told he was burned to a crisp. There was very little left of him to identify.’

  She went on, ‘After that I had to report to the Colonel who very kindly said I could stay on at the Academy, at least to the end of the course. He assured me it would provide occupational therapy. I am to expend as much energy as possible during our physical training, go to bed exhausted, and get a good sleep every night.’

  ‘And I know I do need a good sleep; I have started hearing voices in my head. “You need to sleep,” they say; and I look around but there is no-one there.’

  I was about to encourage Ellie to tell us more about the voices when Perkems arrived to start the morning drill. He lined us all up for inspection as normal and started shouting the usual commands, ‘ATTENTION. Move to the right. RIGHT TURN. By the left QUICK MARCH...’

  Ellie stiffened up. She came to attention and marched professionally, hiding her sorrow. She neither mentioned the accident, nor the voices in her head, ever again during our time at the Academy.

  Later that day we were all back in our classroom when Perkems walked in. He stood at his desk and stared intently at every one of us in turn, until the whole class was staring back at him. After a short pause for thought, he announced with some authority, ‘I have arranged with our Colonel Myers and a Major Horton for you to be seconded onto a field training course along with the Regular Army lads this week. I want you to report to the medical centre A.S.A.P.’ The room filled with the sound of chairs scraping along the floor and the class started to move out. Perkems raised his voice above the noise, ‘WAIT FOR IT, WAIT FOR IT, WAIT FOR IT.’ He motioned everyone to sit down again. Then when everybody was back in their seats, sitting quietly and with their eyes to the front, he formally issued the command, ‘CLASS DISMISSED.’

  At the medical centre, we were met by a queue of about a hundred students. At least sixty trainee soldiers and cadet officers were stood in the queue, along with our class of thirty.

  After waiting in line for an hour or so, I finally got to the front of the queue. The door to the only consulting room opened, and a cadet came rushing out. As I brushed past him, I noticed his left hand was firmly tucked under his right arm.

  The consulting room was clearly of the same era as the Academy building. The manilla coloured walls had seen better days although the medical equipment and moveable screens seemed clean enough. A young nurse was sat at her desk by the light from a frosted glass window.

  Closing the door behind me, I walked over to the desk. The nurse looked up from her notes and called out, ‘Name?’

  ‘Rhett Goreman,’ I replied.

  She said, ‘One of the Academy boys, I see.’

  I nodded in confirmation; she was wielding a large hypodermic syringe and the sight of it had temporarily take
n my breath away.

  I had to ask what all this was about. She told me to take off my shirt and then she said, ‘You are having a silicon chip put just under your skin so you can be traced during manoeuvres. The data gathered will be used to assess your performance under mock battle conditions.’

  On a metal trolley, next to the desk, there were neat rows of miniature glass vials. They presumably contained the chips she was talking about - no-doubt suspended in a saline solution. Yet despite her meticulous preparation, after checking with some paperwork, she removed a key from her desk and used it to unlock a small unmarked wall cabinet. She then took out what looked like an identical vile from the cabinet and locked it up again.

  ‘I don’t get one of those then,’ I observed, pointing at the trolley full of vials.

  The nurse smirked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been saving this one specially for you.’

  ‘So I am special am I? Why is that?’

  She gave me a wry smile and whispered, ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in the army: it is probably better not to know the answer to such questions. I just follow my orders.’

  She fixed the biggest needle, I had ever seen, onto the syringe. Then holding the vial upside down, she stabbed the needle into the rubber cap and pulled on the plunger.

  After carefully squirting some of the liquid back into the vial to remove any air, she tapped the syringe to check the chip was ready for despatch.

  With her free hand, she wiped a cotton swab soaked in alcohol across the right side of my chest, and said, ‘Little scratch.’

  I looked the other way as the chip was injected deep between two of my ribs.

  ‘Ouch, that hurt. I thought you said it was just going under my skin,’ I complained.

  She answered saying, ‘It is under your skin. It’s just under your ribs as well. It’s better there. It can’t easily be found or removed by an enemy and you can’t accidentally damage it either. There will be some bruising but that will calm down in a few days time.’