by Kurt Petrey
Cade nodded, but he knew enough about what was going on to know that it wouldn’t be that simple. The systems across the facility kept showing error warnings and insufficient responders, indicating that very little was working properly.
He was staring at the locked door when the entrance door slid open behind him. Cade held in a groan, hearing Richard walk in. He didn’t need this right now. Richard was a kind of self proclaimed spokesperson for the group, trying to convince everyone that things were just fine. Every day Richard came by, bothering him for information Cade didn't have. It didn't seem to matter to Richard that he constantly interrupted whatever was going on at the time.
“You know,” Richard started, “I tell them that things are going to work out, and I try to give them hope, but they will not listen to reason. I could really use some good news right now. They are getting restless and harder to handle.”
Cade didn’t respond at first. Instead, he took the display and slid it gently back into his pocket while he stood and gathered his thoughts. He wanted to be careful about the words he was about to say. He'd already made a mistake once. Richard had twisted what he said, telling everyone Cade was close to finding answers—which was a lie. Because of that lie, they now thought he knew something but wasn't saying anything. Fortunately, Cade learned from his past mistake and had already prepared his thoughts and words.
“I realize you are in a tough situation,” he said, “but I am afraid I can’t offer any help. I can say that I have learned more, but I do not know if they will contribute to any real answers or a way out of this place.”
Richard was clearly disappointed. He lowered his head and shook it, then lifted it again with a smile. “I am confident you have the situation handled. I have come to realize that you are the perfect man for the job. Will you let me know once you figure anything out?”
Cade knew what that meant. Richard wanted to know now, because he was headed to the meeting. He would go out there and tell the rest of the people that Cade was on the verge of having all the answers—again. Anything to try to settle the momentary anger and emotions. He was setting everyone up for disappointment. Cade made a mental note to attend the meeting today. He would have to watch Richard closely then make sure people clearly understood the state of emergency in which they were living.
The truth was that if everything stayed the same as it was right now, they didn't have long to live. Something needed to be done.
“You will be the first to know when I figure anything out,” Cade lied, giving what he hoped was a genuine smile.
Richard nodded then glanced around the room. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you,” he said, then he pressed his hand against the sphere and walked out the open door.
Cade had no intention of telling Richard anything. For example, he had decided not to tell him about the stash he had found, which could only be a weapons arsenal. There was no reason to tell anyone, he figured, let alone Richard. He didn’t trust the way Richard misled everyone. If someone like Michael ever found out, well, it just wouldn’t be good. Until he knew who he could trust, Cade wasn’t going to tell anyone.
He pulled the display back out of his pocket and sat down. The top right corner of the screen read, Username: Cade 147 – Age: 25. Everyone here was twenty-five years old—in fact, all of them had been born on the same day. Under his age it read, Access level: 1 - Administration Division. He wasn’t sure how much access everyone else had, but for some reason he had some access. After a few taps he brought up a screen indicating the time left until the facility ran out of breathable oxygen. If nothing is done in the next eight hours they will all die. Below the error indicated to seek system maintenance to perform repairs on robot 236.
He'd looked at these things repeatedly since all this had started, but he still had no answers. He stared into his reflection on the screen, his bright blue—almost white—eyes staring back at him. Why was the number 147 attached to his name, and why was his number different from most of the others? He had no idea. Ryan had 148, as did everyone else that he pulled up—except Chloe. Chloe was the only other person who had the number 147 attached to her name.
With a few taps on the display, Cade brought up a map of the surrounding area. He faced the locked door and spotted a dot, which indicated himself. Ryan didn't appear on the screen, which was just another question he needed answered. For now he had to stop getting distracted and focus on what mattered. After all, they were trapped here. They needed to either find a way out or get this place functioning so they could survive. Preferably both, he thought.
Spreading his fingers on the screen, Cade zoomed in to get a closer look at the room in front of him. When he tapped on the room to the left, it was labeled Room 113. Curious, he approached one of the room’s larger displays and slid the smaller handheld display inside a slot on the right side. The image from the smaller display immediately appeared on the larger one.
“Ryan, what is in this room?”
Ryan frowned at the image, thinking for a moment. “It’s a storage room. I found some tubes and crates filled with parts in there. Looks like the same parts used in the pod beds.”
“The pod beds?”
“Yeah, you know. Where we sleep? I call them pod beds.”
Nodding, Cade tapped on the label marked Room 113. An option asking him to relabel it appeared, along with a keyboard of letters below. He typed the word “Storage.” When he clicked on the room they were in, it appeared as Room 110. Since he wasn’t sure the purpose of this room yet, he left it as it was.
“Why don’t we remember who we are?” Ryan asked quietly.
“What?” Cade replied, pulled out of his thoughts.
“We woke up with the ability to talk,” Ryan said, “and we have knowledge of how some of this stuff works, but the first thing I remember is waking up. I don’t understand how we got into this building or why someone would do this to us.”
It was the same question everyone asked, hundreds of times every day. Cade didn’t want to share his thoughts about that subject matter. He had no desire to speculate, since that had only been the catalyst for more questions and fewer real answers up to this point. He did have ideas of his own, but none of them made him feel any better about the situation. He figured that at this point, his thoughts were better left unsaid.
“Why didn’t we wake up with our hair grown out long?” Ryan mused. “It doesn’t make sense. Even our hair seems to have been maintained. Who would do that? And why?”
“I don’t know.”
Cade had an idea about that, too. He just didn't think he could share it. The concept that someone or something was keeping them alive and healthy was more unsettling than comforting. To Cade's way of thinking, the only reason someone would take that much care of them was if they had a future planned out. If he was right about that, whoever it was must have had important plans, but based on what Cade could see, something obviously had gone wrong.
Again, Cade looked at his display, and this time he tapped on the room they were trying to get into. It came up with a label of Room 111.
“I don't know what to label you yet,” he muttered, “but I intend to find out.”
Ryan peered over Cade's shoulder at the display then nodded at Room 111. “Let’s give it a try. It should have power now.”
At the feel of Cade's hand, the half sphere lit up then turned red. The display flashed, Access Denied.
“We need security access to get in.” Cade muttered.
Ryan agreed. “We need to find out how to assign roles to people.”
“I don’t think we can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it seems like the system is designed to rely on itself. It allows humans to assist, but it wasn't designed to require human interaction.” Cade brought up Ryan on the system, showing him that Ryan was marked Access Level 1 under the Technical Support role. “Who assigned you that role?”
Ryan paused for a moment in thought.
; Cade continued. “No one, right? The system gave that to you, and I think it is because when you first woke up, you started troubleshooting problems.”
“You mean …” Ryan hesitated, frowning. “Are you suggesting the system is watching us?”
It was difficult to know for sure how the system was built, but massive pathways of cabling wound through the structure, dipping under floors and running through walls. That told Cade they were trapped in an extremely complex facility. The idea that certain people gained access while others were denied indicated that it could possibly be a very intelligent system, and that it was observing them to some degree.
Cade nodded. “How are the communications coming along?”
“Chloe got pulled off that when Ian found a system that she felt could help them out with,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “No one is working on that right now. I’ll see if I can figure it out.”
“Keep an eye on the roles, would you?” Cade said, walking to the door. “Let me know if anyone gets assigned to the security role.”
“Sure.”
“I’m going to check out the main hall. Come and get me if anything changes.”
Chapter 3
Chloe
Chloe stared at the tool in her hand, deep in thought. She was stuck. Not only could she not finish grounding out the station with this tool, she couldn’t let go of it. If she did, the wire would fall back down, and it would take her forever to thread it back through the tiny hole again.
“Grab me the extender bar from over there,” she said. A moment later she glanced up, surprised when the bar didn’t instantly appear in her outstretched hand. “Hey, John. Can you grab me that? Over there?” She pointed at a bar with an adapter at the end of it. “I can’t reach the bolt at the base, and I have to attach the ground so I don’t fry it to bits.”
David walked over and picked up the bar. As he handed it to her he said, “My name is David.”
She didn’t look up when she replied. “Oh. Sorry.” Biting her bottom lip with effort, Chloe reached deep into the guts of the device then grunted. “Okay. That should just about do it.”
She pulled herself up with a hop, raised a finger, and pointed towards David. “Tell me something. Why do you think we didn’t know our names when we woke up, but we knew how to talk? Wouldn’t you think that since we don’t have memories, we wouldn’t be able to string two words together?” She didn’t give David the time to respond before she continued. “I don’t know who I am, but I know how to fix this observation station. I don’t even know why this is called an observation station, but I know how it works. We have knowledge but no experience. Why do you think that is?”
David opened his mouth to reply, but she spoke again before he could. “David, I can use your help one more time.”
*****
This station sat in the middle of the circular room, looking like a cylinder that had lost its middle. Or perhaps it was two cylinders, where one came out from the floor and another dropped down from the ceiling. There was an entrance on the side of the bottom cylinder, where it turned into a partial circle or a “U”.
Chloe frowned. “What light is showing on the display … David?”
She glanced up, wanting to make sure he'd heard her purposefully saying his name, but he didn’t look up. He was bending over, studying the different displays on the other side of the station.
“It’s yellow,” he replied. “Do you know what that means?”
Chloe didn’t, but she also didn’t want him to know that she didn’t, so she ignored the question.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see what happens now that this guy is powered up and ready for action.”
Grinning, she stepped through the mouth of the U shaped entrance and placed her hands on the two spheres near the front. She'd hoped the system would come to life with a celebration of flashing lights and wonderful mechanical sounds, but nothing happened. Not a single thing. No lights, no sounds, and definitely no movement. Just some letters on the overhead display stating, Access Level Error. You do not have access. Chloe’s shoulders slumped slightly.
David huffed with disappointment. “Now what?”
Chloe liked to be in charge. She liked to come up with new ideas and watch them bloom into successes. She did not like to be expected to have all the answers. She pointed an accusatory finger at David. “You tell me. Do you have any ideas?”
“No, I do not,” he said, his tone obviously sarcastic as he pointed a finger back at her.
Chloe frowned.
“But I was thinking,” he tried, “that maybe those devices hanging in that room might have something to do with it.” He walked over and grabbed what looked like a kind of harness, then brought it to Chloe. “There seem to be three different kinds, but there are a lot of them here. They have to be important, right? Here. Try this on, then walk in. It looks like it goes on your shoulder like this.” He placed it on her right shoulder. “Maybe you need to have it on to activate the station.”
Chloe slid it off her shoulder and examined it. “Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to be powered up.”
She took it back to the room and studied the two long rows of shoulder harnesses taking up either side of the narrow room. Most were of the type that David had picked up, but two more different harnesses hung in their own section, clearly made for different purposes. Near the door she spotted a series of connections, and when she pulled at one it drew out like one of the tubes from the beds. She looked over the device and her heart raced when she discovered an opening for the connector. With a flourish, she plugged the two together.
“There we go!” she exclaimed, hanging it on a hook to charge. “Now we wait and see how long it’s going to take to power this little guy.”
David scowled at her. “How can you be so …” He scrunched up his face, trying to come up with the appropriate word. His brow cleared as it came to him. “… happy? You act like everything is great, like we aren’t all about to die. We have no idea why or how we got here, there's no way out and nothing works. How can you not be angry and miserable like everyone else?”
Chloe’s face flattened of all emotion. “You said it yourself. We have no control over anything here. The only thing I have control over is how I view the situation. I see it this way: something bad happened, and all we have to do in order to have our questions answered is fix the problems that are before us. Every time we resolve one more thing or turn one more device on, we get a little more information.”
The device was already glowing with a solid green light, so she picked it up and unplugged it. She snapped it onto her shoulder then looked at David. “We get a little further from dying with every device we learn about, and that gets us one step closer to understanding why and how we got here.” She took a deep breath. “Ready?”
When he nodded, she stepped through the small opening of the station and placed her hands on the spheres. The display said exactly the same thing: Access Level Error. You do not have access. She turned from it and stepped away, a little defeated.
David placed his hand on her shoulder then unsnapped the harness. He gave her a wry smile. “It’s okay. According to you, we just learned that this device doesn’t turn the station on. One step closer, right?”
The entrance swooshed open, and Ian entered. As usual, he was there to see if they'd made any progress. He wasn’t convinced that this room—which he had dubbed the “observation station” even though Chloe preferred to think of it as the “super station”—was important. Chloe was just as convinced that he was wrong.
“Have you figured out what this thing can do yet?” Looking impressed, Ian stepped closer and placed both hands on the station coming out of the floor. “I see you have power running through it now, as well as through all the other displays. Good job! What does it do?”
Chloe moved to the display on the front of the station and tapped it a few times. “Right now it isn’t doing anything,” she admitted, “but it has connections and coding in its s
oftware designed to connect to millions of what it calls end points or nodes. This is obviously a very powerful tool, but I haven’t been able to get it to turn on yet. It’s powered, and it should work, but I can’t do it. I'm pretty sure it requires someone with security access.”
David took the shoulder device from Chloe. “We think this might have something to do with turning it on, but we haven't figured out how just yet.”
Ian reached out and caressed Chloe’s shoulder. She flinched at his touch, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Well, it sounds like you’ve done all that you can do here for now. I would appreciate it if you looked at the problem from our end and see if we can make progress in the control center.” He gave David a bland smile. “David, you can handle it here on your own, right?”
Whenever she was around Ian, Chloe felt small. She didn’t want to go with him to the control center, but he was right; she might be able to help. She was determined to keep her distance from him, though. She got an odd, uncomfortable feeling when she was around him.
The control center was a few rooms down the hallway from the observation station. Ian had given that space the name “control center” when he'd decided it was a major connection point for the facility, but Ian didn't know what Chloe did. She'd already figured out that the room to which they were headed was just another monitoring center, like the many other monitoring centers spread out in the facility.
The super station, however, was unique.
Chloe walked into the control center and covered her ears against the blaring alarm. She hated it in here, hated the way the noise hurt her ears and gave her headaches. She couldn’t hear herself think.
Ian leaned in to yell over the sound, and his closeness made her skin crawl. She could smell the sweat from his neck, and she fought the urge to tell him he was in a desperate need of a shower. If only the showers worked. She sniffed under her arms, checking, but she couldn't smell anything rank on her.