“No—” the admiral said flatly “—the Atlantians already built it. I simply need help making the calculations, and turning it on at the right time.”
***
Ashlyn and Mark were sitting on his bed, talking about the admiral’s plans.
She stretched and arched her back. “We need some chairs in here.”
He nodded. “Listen, I think the best way for us to stop him is to let him think that I am going along with it. I need to see that machine. I need to understand how it works—” he stood up “—I can’t think of any other way.”
“What if we can’t stop him?”
“Some very bad things could happen—” Mark shook his head “—the Atlanteans built this thing. We don’t know how to run it.”
“Define bad things”—she began pacing—“obviously changing the time line, or taking over the world would be bad. Does it get worse?”
“Maybe he will open up a black hole”—he clinched his jaw—“maybe the end of the world.”
“But—” she said hesitantly “—we moved in time. Maybe he was testing the machine. I know we didn’t go backwards, but wouldn’t that mean that it worked? It can’t just be a coincidence can it?”
He considered that. “It doesn’t seem possible”—he motioned with his hands—“we were right over the entrance, and Dierdra said we were getting too close. I don’t know. There are simply too many variables.”
“If the Atlanteans built it, why do you think they never used it?”
“Maybe they did, how would we know?”
She was silent for a moment, and then she walked over to him, smiled, and slid her hands up his chest and around his neck. “At least we’re together. This probably sounds stupid, but I’ve never been as happy as I am now.”
He leaned down and kissed her, and then asked, “Why now?”
“I’m not alone—” she answered his unspoken question “—I love you Mark.”
He was quiet for so long after what she said that she started to feel a tinge of insecurity. Finally, he spoke, “Ashlyn?”
“What?” she asked hesitantly.
“Will you marry me?”
She wasn’t expecting that. We’ve only known each other a little over a month. Of course, time is relative—no pun intended, she thought but didn’t say it aloud. She was certain of her feelings.
“Mark?” she asked softly.
“Yes, my love.”
The way he said it and the tone of his voice sent a thrill through her. She blushed and looked away. Funny, I’ve never been shy before.
When she didn’t say anything, he just waited quietly.
Finally she said, “I love you very much, and I do want to be your wife …but—” she eyed him strangely “—isn’t your timing a little off?”
“I’m sorry”—he shook his head—“I know this isn’t a very romantic setting. I should have flowers, a ring, be down on my knee, but the fact is we may not have time to wait until we have those things. I’m not even sure that the world will live to see the New Year. Everything is falling apart. No matter what happens I want to be married to you while I’m sure we still have time.”
“Mark—” she spoke softly “—that’s what I want too, but …How? …Where can we even do it? It’s not as if we can go down to the courthouse in the morning, and I haven’t seen any churches.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she could tell that he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. “I know where we can get married.”
She lifted an eyebrow and cocked her head, “Where?”
“Right here.”
She looked around the room. “What do you mean by …here?”
“Not in this room”—he gave her a crooked smile—“maritime law.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ship captains can marry people at sea.”
“But—” she spoke hesitantly “—we aren’t at sea.”
“Yes we are. The law doesn’t say anything about being above or below the water.”
Now she laughed. “You’re cute when you’re crazy.”
He didn’t say anything, just shrugged, and smiled hopefully.
“We have no ship”—she countered—“so how do we qualify?”
“Well, technically—” he hesitated and then said cautiously “—we are at sea because we are under the Tongue of the Ocean. Clearly, we aren’t on any mainland, or even an island.”
Apparently, he has really thought this through. “Go on,” she said.
“The only point in having a ship is to keep you from drowning, right?”
“Sort of—” she grinned “—I guess.”
“So the dome is …our ship.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, fully smiling. “Now that’s a stretch if I’ve ever heard one.”
“I could build you a raft to stand on if it makes you feel better.”
“I don’t think the raft is necessary—” she couldn’t stop grinning “—I suppose it makes some sense …in a twisted, crazy sort of way.”
“I hoped you might see it that way,” he said mischievously.
“I guess you’re right. The law doesn’t say you can’t be under the water rather than over it.”
“So you’ll do it?” he questioned her, like a little boy asking for a new toy.
She reached up and rumpled his hair. “There’s still one tiny problem.”
“What’s that?” he asked, slightly deflated.
“Following your train of thought, on its wild tangent …only leaves room for one conclusion”—she stuck her finger partway down her throat and pretended to gag—“the admiral must be the captain who marries us.”
“I was hoping—” he cringed “—that you could overlook that nasty little part. We could make him wear a sack over his head while he does the ceremony.”
“You’re a nut—” she opened her mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say “—you’re crazy enough to be locked up.”
She was laughing hard, and hadn’t officially answered, when Stewart knocked and didn’t wait before opening the door. He furrowed his brow and stared at her.
“Okay—” he said slowly “—you guys aren’t talking about the time machine, are you? Do you want me to leave?”
“No”—she touched his shoulder—“come on in and join the party.” She hadn’t noticed Mark’s worried expression.
“I thought you guys would be working on a solution.” Stewart said, perplexed.
“We have been—” she sat down “—but it was too heavy a subject. Sometimes, especially with all that’s going on, we have to think about more positive things.”
“So what”—he asked—“you were telling each other funny jokes.”
Mark didn’t say anything.
“Where have you been?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I went to the library to talk to Kathleen.”
Ashlyn shot Mark a knowing look, and finally noticed his expression.
“I think you should go to your room, and rest”—she said to Stewart—“you’re still banged up, and this is all too much right now. We can talk after we have had a chance for our heads to catch up.”
He scowled slightly but agreed, and after a couple minutes, he left.
Once they were alone again, she asked Mark, “What’s wrong?”
“You never really answered me”—he furrowed his brow—“I’m not trying to pressure you in any way. I just need to know where you stand.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
We will at least have to pretend to be cordial with the admiral if we are going to stay alive long enough to stop his evil plan, but this would be my wedding.
It’s what every little girl dreamed of; at least that’s what people said. It wasn’t what she had dreamed. She had only imagined having a family, or anyone with whom she belonged, on all those cold, long nights, alone in a laboratory.
How can I even think about letting that dreadful man perform the ceremony? She as
ked herself. Then an ironic thought hit her. Maybe I could think of it as the admiral releasing me from that life by affirming that she didn’t belong to him. The fact is that it isn’t about the admiral, it’s about me and Mark.
She looked into his worried eyes. “Yes my love”—she finally whispered—“I will marry you, here under the sea.”
Chapter 17
You have rights antecedent to all Earthly governments: rights that
cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe. — John Adams
~
Meteors, comets, and rocky masses regularly pass the Earth. Some are orbiting the sun while others seem to be just passing through the neighborhood. NASA refers to them collectively as Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, and studies them both for research purposes and for protecting the Earth.
Solar winds press against the Earth’s magnetosphere. The harder they push against it, the more misshapen it becomes, and the magnetic field bends inward toward the Earth. This, in turn, forces the field on the far side of the planet outward, forming a tail. It’s aptly named the magnetotail. It’s invisible to the eye, but it trails out in space like the end of a comet.
The coronal mass, which had slammed the earth, caused the magnetotail to be much longer than expected. Blinded by the disaster, NASA was unable to watch the sky for NEOs. The few astronomers left studying the sky were unable to process the large amounts of raw data without NASA’s advanced supercomputer, Pleiades—the EMPs had destroyed it.
The incredibly strong magnetic field of the magnetotail was pulling on some of the metallic asteroids and causing them to pound others like billiard balls. One of the smaller ones was hurling directly towards the Earth.
***
When Mark and Ashlyn told Stewart about their plan to get married, he flat out told them that they were insane. However, he had Kathleen on the brain, so insane was making some strange kind of sense to him these days. Besides, it wasn’t his wedding.
The admiral had been surprisingly agreeable to the idea and consented to perform the ceremony if Mark would stay and work on calibrating the machine. Of course, he had other plans, but he would let the admiral think he was. Admiral Preston was probably the highest-ranking American leader, military or other, left alive, which made him the legal authority to marry them regardless of maritime law.
They were married in the library, in front of the fountain, with the cathedral ceiling and the four colossal statues standing as silent witnesses. Stewart acted as best man and Kathleen as maid of honor. She let Ashlyn wear one of her dresses, and one of the officers had a suit, which Mark wore. The ceremony had been nice in spite of the person officiating and the contingency of guards who accompanied him. Everyone had to admit the wedding was one of a kind.
Three weeks passed. Stewart spent most of his time with Kathleen helping with the translation. He didn’t know the language, but his undergrad was in ancient cultures; it gave him a few insights. Although Kathleen had a PhD in ancient linguistics, she wasn’t comfortable with computers. He designed a computer program that helped greatly with the translation process.
The admiral had made translating the ancient writings top priority, second only to the calibration of the machine. He gave Ashlyn the duty of teaching the sailors some hand-to-hand fighting techniques. There were a thousand troops living in barracks to the east—a mix of sailors and marines. She went there daily because they weren’t allowed at the VIP section of the base. The barracks were impossible to see in the darkness.
No one had seen Dierdra since that first day. They all assumed that she was standing guard in the pyramid, or off on some other assignment. It was just as well; Ashlyn wouldn’t want to rock the boat by killing Dierdra before they had figured out a way to shut down the machine and get out of there.
***
Mark and Ashlyn were sitting on a bench outside the Genesis Station; their watches told them that it was supposed to be evening. He had his arm around her as they looked up at the starless sky.
“It’s strange, living in this world of perpetual night,” he mused.
“I wonder what’s happening out there.”
“I don’t know, but the admiral has some communications with the base above and a few satellite feeds, but he won’t share”—Mark spoke somberly—“it can’t be good.”
“Are you any closer to a solution for destroying the machine?”
“The physics involved are quite complicated”—he shook his head—“I can see why the admiral wanted my help. I have an idea what I might do, but when the Atlanteans built something, they did it right.”
“Do you know what year he is trying to go back to, or is it a shot in the dark?”
“The calculations are pretty specific, but the admiral only gave me a series of numbers. He doesn’t want me to know.”
I’m not surprised”—she looked away—“it makes sense that he wouldn’t let that information out.”
“With the kind of technology he has”—Mark breathed deeply—“I think the world might be better off if the machine ends up creating a black hole.”
***
The world above was indeed in distress, especially in North America. There was no way to enforce the law to protect Canada, or the U.S. from anarchy and riots, which were running rampant. Troops stationed across the globe had not returned because they deemed it pointless.
The grocery stores had been devoid of food and supplies within the first seventy-two hours, and people were killing in the streets for the smallest items. The hospitals, previously overwhelmed with the injured from the many airplane crashes and riots, were ineffectual at best. They had virtually no electronic equipment, and they were unable to obtain fuel for the few remaining generators, and no way to restock supplies.
Even the power stations that had been able to restore limited functioning had no way to deliver their energy because of the loss of the grid. No electricity made it impossible to process waste materials, or clean water. Even if they could have cleaned it, they had no power to pump it into the houses. The few supplies available were reserved for military enforcement only.
Disease, chaos, and starvation were quickly becoming the norm. Furthermore, because the people were used to the conveniences of modern life, very few even knew how to grow food, make candles, dig wells, or any other survival skills. The knowledge, which had been commonplace just over a hundred years before, had been almost entirely lost through apathy, and over confidence in technology.
Fear of plagues and pandemics were no longer considered the paranoid delusions of the few. They were now common to every Canadian and American. Those further away from the cities were the least affected. Mexico had sustained substantially less damage than her northern neighbors had because her infrastructure had not been as dependent upon technology.
***
The admiral’s plan required vast amounts of energy. The machine, called the Meliorator, had been built directly over a recurring magnetic anomaly. However, they lacked the power source that the Atlanteans had used. This had not deterred the admiral. He had scheduled their time trip to coincide with an experiment across the globe.
The Hadron collider was going to attempt to create an artificial wormhole. Had they known of his plans, they wouldn’t have been so eager. He intended to turn on the machine at the exact moment of their test. The distance from the collider wasn’t the problem. The enormous wormhole would easily connect through the planet with two points of origin.
The earth spot under them was only sporadically powerful enough. In order to overcome that problem, they would use a nanotech drill to penetrate nearly down to the core. This would produce a continual energy flow from the whirling eddy below. The timing had to be precise, down to a millisecond, and it would take nearly every minute they had to prepare.
***
Mark was mentally exhausted and had gone with Ashlyn and Stewart to the library to unwind.
“How do we get new supplie
s down here, food and such”—Mark asked Kathleen—“especially with the disasters up top?”
“The entire base is self-sufficient”—she motioned with her hands—“you guys probably haven’t been over to the farms.”
“Farms?—” Stewart asked “—How big is this place? Why don’t they just use food replicators?”
Mark shot him a look. “Stewart, just because you’ve seen something on some sci-fi show, doesn’t mean it’s real.”
“Why not”—he furrowed his brow—“all of this other impossible stuff works, why not the things we have imagined?”
Ashlyn fought back a smile. Mark didn’t answer; he just shook his head.
When it was clear that the interchange was over, Kathleen answered. “The dome is twenty miles long and ten miles wide.”
Mark whistled. “Imagine the amount of water that dome is holding back”—he looked up and shook his head—“seriously guys, of all the miraculous things around here that one’s the most incredible.”
“You’re not very comforting—” Ashlyn breathed deeply “—I feel claustrophobic every time you bring that up.”
“Sorry babe”—he put his arm around her—“if it breaks, remember we have scuba-gear.”
“Ha ha”—she rolled her eyes—“the depth would crush us before we had a chance to worry about needing air.”
No one said anything for a moment. It was considered bad luck to talk about such things while deep under the ocean.
“If you go east from here”—Kathleen broke the silence—“about two miles you’ll get to them.”
“A trip for another day”—Mark said—“the admiral would kill me if I wasted that much time right now.”
“How do we grow food without sunlight,” Ashlyn said to no one in particular.
“If you look off in the distance to the east”—Kathleen pointed—“you might be able to see a soft glow.”
“Yeah I’ve noticed that before,” Mark said.
“There is some kind of artificial lighting that helps with the plant’s photosynthesis. To be honest, we haven’t been able to figure out where it’s coming from”—she shook her head—“the plants also help with the supply of oxygen, but the entire dome seems to scrub any excess carbon dioxide or other harmful substances itself.”
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