The leaders of the lunar and Martian settlements assured officials they expected the supply missions to continue on schedule, especially once government officials take over the launch complex. The Martian colonists have announced the launch facility in Australia and the advanced technology the MFY team developed had been left intact for the benefit of all mankind and to assist in future space exploration.
Representatives from all the major global space agencies are now converging on the Woomera site.
An Australian official who has visited the site and who was speaking anonymously because he was not authorised to discuss matters relating to the Woomera site, and because he didn’t want to be branded an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, said the facility reminded him of the Mary Celeste.
“The power is on, there’s food in the kitchen, and the beds have been slept in. A lot of personal effects have been left behind. It’s like someone or something beamed up all the inhabitants without warning.”
Concerned relatives who have lost contact with family members who joined the MFY program, have been contacting authorities. The Australian government has come under pressure to provide answers.
A representative of the Australian government said the Prime Minister will be making a statement later today Australian time.
We will continue to provide regular updates when information comes to hand. There will be a re-cap on today’s big story following the weather forecast.
A small convoy of vehicles made its way to the emergence point. Wisneski could hear an unusual noise as they got closer, which eventually drowned out the chatter in the cab of the truck.
After rolling over the top of a small rise, they were confronted by a huge crowd. People were pouring out of the invisible end of a wormhole stretching halfway across the galaxy, all the way back to Automedon.
It was a stupendous sight: thousands of people were milling around trying to make some sense of what was happening to them.
Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, out of disorder came order. Android marshals began to herd the newSkidians towards escalators appearing at their feet, leading underground to the Skidian Rapid Transit System. In less than ten minutes the crowd had dispersed. None of the newSkidians had attempted to break away through the cordon of androids.
The escalators retracted, and a grassy lid slid back, covering the entrance to the tunnels. Apart from trampled grass where the newSkidians had landed, there was nothing to suggest they had ever been there.
Trev was the first one to speak. “Bloody hell! I never even knew those tunnels existed. I’ve lived here for months and I've never seen them before. They look like a shitload of fun.”
So much for Trev having any concern for the welfare of the newSkidians, Wisneski thought.
Thirty-One
“What just happened?” Stig asked. “Where are we?” This wasn’t the MFY campus in Australia. He imagined he had been part of a shared awakening from a dream-like state after he and the thousands of other people in his immediate vicinity found themselves in this vast empty space. A huge area, an underground railway station or an airline terminal.
He glanced over his shoulder at the press of people pushing him forward, and saw they were disembarking from a train. He must have just stepped off it too, but he had no clear recollection of getting on or off the carriage. The last thing he remembered was going about his business at the MFY campus in Australia, just moments ago.
He let a tide of equally baffled people push him gently forward while more of them, all wearing MFY uniforms, emptied out of crammed carriages which rolled up to the platform as soon as the empty ones whisked silently away.
As his mind slowly cleared, he could remember getting on a train at the MFY centre. This was baffling, since there were no railway tracks leading into or out of the site, and the train didn’t seem to have an engine. He couldn’t remember why he had boarded the train in the first place or where it was supposed to take him.
He looked around for anyone he knew. He recognised a few people, all of whom wore the same dumbfounded expression.
“Hey Stig, any idea what’s going on here?” Stig turned to see who was calling him.
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me, boss,” he responded to the man standing beside him. Bill Frisk was his team leader.
“Sorry, that would be a no. Any idea where we are? I’ve just tried to call out on my mobile, but while I seem to have a connection, my calls aren’t going anywhere. I seem to be receiving messages and what not, but I can’t respond to them. They’re just queued up in my outbox.”
All around him people were frantically trying to call, without any obvious success. Stig checked his own mobile. Not because he thought he was any more likely to get a connection, it was simply a reflex action for someone for whom a smart phone was an essential part of everyday life.
“There must be someone around here who can tell us what is going on.” It was then he realised everybody had their MFY branded courier satchels with them. The MFYers had been told to keep these grab bags with them at all times, with their essential personal possessions inside. They had the capacity for an astronaut’s personal weight allowance, enough room for a tablet, a laptop, a few books and not much else.
Stig always carried his passport, a laptop, a heavily encrypted hard drive, and a few other pieces of electronic paraphernalia he might need in an emergency. Years ago, he had had a work laptop locked away in an office building for weeks following an earthquake, so now he took one everywhere with him. He knew most people at the MFY compound, including his boss, flouted the rules, and were likely to be toting around an empty bag, behaviour they now possibly regretted.
“Let’s see if we can find out what is going on,” Bill suggested and the two of them started to push their way to the edge of the crowd who were still milling about the crowded platform. The press of people was growing rapidly, and the crowd expanded outwards like ripples from a stone thrown into a pool. Emerging into a clear space, they discovered a line had started to form, as people headed for a set of doors at the far end of the vast space. They looked like security gates of some kind, but there were no security guards in evidence.
“This way I reckon.” Stig pointed to where people were disappearing through the exit, maybe to another section of the building.
“What’s on the other side?”
“I have no idea, but it beats milling around here like a bunch of lost sheep with the rest of these losers.”
Soon after he had arrived at the MFY base in Australia, Stig had discovered most people in the program were dreamers; waifs and strays with no useful skills to offer a space program. He could never work out why they were there. They were just making up the numbers. He didn't think any of them had what it took be a candidate for the crews heading towards the moon and Mars. If they had one thing in common, it was they were all relatively young and fit. The only older people in evidence were those who had a defined technical role related to the rocket launches or training the astronauts and ground teams.
This observation unsettled Stig a little. He considered himself to be a different beast: he was a contractor, not an MFY true believer. He was only here for the money, which he felt set him apart from almost everyone. But did it really?
He did understand the way the community within the program had organized itself, reflecting the structure of the hierarchical organisations, military or civilian, he had been associated with. At the top were the elite astronauts, and those who had been shoulder-tapped for settlement missions. The last manned mission had blasted off just after he had joined the program, so he had had limited interaction with any of the astronauts involved.
Just below the astronauts were the key technical personnel, like Bill and himself, who supported the missions directly and kept the technical infrastructure going. Next were the support and logistics teams, the people who kept things ticking over. Then came the majority of the MFY population.
Stig was a contract so
ftware architect and had come to the program after his last assignment ended, and a relationship collapsed at the same time. He discovered during water cooler discussions with fellow contractors that many of them had a similar recent history and had recently begun short-term assignments with the MFY project. This set them apart from most of the true believers who had gravitated to the MFY banner because they supported the Mars missions.
The more he learnt about the organisation Stig sensed the MFY program operated a little like a sect. It offered a point of difference, an expectation of a better future, an escape from the mundane nature of most people’s lives, with some basic rules to adhere to, and a mysterious leader who would soon lead them all to a better place.
He hadn’t ever really worked out exactly what he was supposed to do. His brief had been vague, but the gig paid well so he wasn’t complaining. Unlike most of the other MFYers, he prided himself on making a positive difference to any organisation he worked for and had busied himself getting to grips with all the systems he could access. He felt he had a handle on most of these now, but he was still waiting for access to some areas. Help desks were the same the world over: they were too slow to organise basic access permissions. It should have been as simple as one, two, three to deliver, but was always delayed by layers of red tape.
Stig studied the crowd and decided a full cross section of the MFY community was represented.
“Do you think all these people read their contracts? All the fine print, I mean?” Bill asked.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” Stig began to get a horrible feeling in his gut he might have missed something important. His contract had contained standard terms and conditions, so he had mostly skimmed through his own agreement and hadn’t read the entire document before signing it.
“There’s a clause describing the right to deploy to any MFY site during the term of the contract. Comes right after the term clause offering an initial six-month contract with an open-ended guarantee of work.”
“I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Well,” Bill began, weighing his words carefully, “It's possible we’re not on Earth any more.”
“What gives you that idea?” Stig asked incredulously. He was still trying to process what Bill was suggesting.
Even though Bill believed he knew more than most people on the program, he didn’t know as much as he would like to think he did. All he knew was all the MFYers could be deployed away from the South Australian site, and he wasn’t above embellishing a good story.
Stig wasn’t sure he trusted Bill’s reasoning. He was a convincing conspiracy theorist to the point he was the only person Stig knew who stuck tape over the cameras on his laptop and phone, so that spy agencies, search engines, and social media companies couldn’t see what he was doing. Bill would know Stig wasn’t convinced this made any difference. They’d previously had similar conversations.
“Have you ever been on a roller coaster, or better still, one of those simulators that allows you to experience low gravity or freefall?” Bill continued without waiting for an answer. “You know the feeling just before the rollercoaster carriage gets to the top of its climb after rolling down a steep drop, the weightless feeling you get when you go over the top and down the other side?”
Stig nodded. “What’s your point?”.
“Well I can’t prove it easily, but I reckon the gravity here is less than standard. Difficult to prove without the right equipment. I’m sure I feel lighter than normal, like we are almost at the crest of a roller coaster ride. Someone with all the right tools and a calculator could prove me right.”
This sounded plausible to Stig. However, Bill had the MO of a good conspiracy peddler. The story had to sound right in the first place and appeal to the belief systems of the audience.
The two of them continued to press forward, hoping to find some answers. They passed the security gates and scanners and found themselves at the entrance to a large open dormitory area, filled with bunk beds as far as the eye could see.
“What the fuck? What the hell’s going on here?” Bill might have thought he had the inside track on where the program was taking them all, but he hadn’t imagined anything like this. It was an enormous bunkhouse. “I can’t see anybody who looks like they know what’s going on. Can you?”
“Is that someone down there?” Stig pointed to indistinct figures moving around in the distance. “Looks like the cleaners if you ask me. I don’t think we’re the first people to come through here,” he added, which was a reassuring thought in its own way.
Both men looked closer at the debris left behind by the last residents. The previous occupants had been a messy bunch. This section of the dormitory was strewn with bits of clothing and paper. Food scraps were all over the floor, and most of the bunks looked like they had been slept in recently.
The cleaners slowly and methodically approached them. Stig was going to call out to them but Bill caught his hand and said “Wait.” Stig saw their motions were too rapid and mechanical to be human.
The two men had kept walking once they had emerged through the last doorway. However, everyone else still milled around the entrance, so Stig felt a little exposed. When he glanced over at his companion, Bill was unconcerned.
“I’ve never seen anything as sophisticated as this before, outside of a documentary on automation,” Bill said as the figures, resolved into several kinds of spider-like robots. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“It's like a science fiction film,” Stig replied, astonished by the sight he was witnessing.
The robots were methodically stripping the sheets off the bunks and tossing them into large laundry hampers they towed, their actions seeming to underline Bill’s observation they were no longer on Earth.
As they got nearer, they realised there was a complex supply chain operating. One set of robots was engaged in stripping the beds and tossing the sheets aside, and in the same motion re-making the bunks with sheets from a pile on a trailer behind the hamper. Another less sophisticated set of robots unhitched and towed full hampers away, disappearing into service tunnels through seamless flaps in the walls, returning with empty hampers and piles of sheets, in an endless loop. Others were rolling around vacuuming the floor and sweeping up the debris.
“I don’t know what to think. I’ve never seen anything like it. Why don’t we see what’s over there?” Stig pointed to the nearest wall where he had spied a kind of dining area, with chairs and tables. “With a bit of luck, we’ll find something to eat and drink while we work out what to do next.” Despite all the excitement Stig was feeling quite peckish. A good stiff drink wouldn’t go amiss either.
“This is all a bit creepy. I’m going to see if I can find a way out...” Bill’s voice trailed away.
“OK,” Stig said, checking his mobile again, only half listening to Bill. If the icons could be believed, he still had excellent mobile and wireless coverage, he was still receiving messages, and his Facebook feed was updating. However, he still couldn’t dial out or post any messages.
“Can you check the local news sites?” Bill asked. He didn’t subscribe to any services on his phone because he always worried about who might be watching what he was doing.
Stig checked and found he could access the Australian newspapers he’d subscribed to. To his surprise, all his news feeds were up to date.
“Hey look, televisions!” Bill pointed as they entered the dining area. “I wonder what we can tune in to.”
“I don’t think anything would surprise me right now,” Stig muttered. His news feed was clogged with endless comments, most of them angry and resentful, relating to American politics, and opinion pieces and analysis related to President Ronald Chump’s latest back-flip and the impact his campaign promise reversals were having on US and global markets.
Stig had never understood how the American voting public could elect men and women like Chump, who championed a class-driven, obsolete, f
ailed ideology. He wondered how Bill felt about Chump and his cronies, especially now Chump had failed to deliver on any of his campaign policies. Bill was typical of the isolationist, libertarian-leaning rednecks who would have voted for Chump, whose world had turned upside down now Chump, without a hint of embarrassment, followed a pathway opposite to the one he had promised his supporters.
Bill jabbed him in the ribs. “Hey, stop day dreaming and have a look at this.” he said, pointing at the television he had turned on.
… Australian Federal representatives have entered the MFY facility in South Australia. Initial reports appear to confirm there is no sign of the former inhabitants, thought to have numbered in the tens of thousands, who were believed to have been living and working...
“What the...?”
“Proves one thing,” Bill reckoned, enigmatically.
“And what might that be?” Stig asked. He was distracted by a series of notification pings and whistles coming from his mobile, as friends and family tried to contact him to make sure he was OK. Bill’s mobile remained silent.
“We’re not where people expect us to be. Nobody on Earth knows how or when we left.”
“So where do you think we are then?” Stig decided he’d better sit on one of the couches facing the television before he fell. Bill slumped down beside him.
“I’m not sure,” Bill replied thoughtfully. “I reckon this is a transit facility. I can’t believe we are supposed to stay here. I wonder if we are inside Automedon, you know, the asteroid?” He paused as if he seriously considered this was a likely option. “If it is the asteroid, this could be a human lifeboat or colony star ship, and we are off to colonise the stars.” Bill was just getting himself warmed up. “Maybe the settlements on the moon and Mars are just a diversion, or a prototype for the main event. Maybe the whole MFY program is operated by a secret government organisation...” Bill was about to continue, but for once he stopped before he hit full conspiracy mode. He knew he was letting his imagination get the better of him. He didn't realise close to the truth he was.
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