by John Freitas
Thomas took out the power drill with the screwdriver attachment on it. He checked the screws through the feet of the cabinet into the floor. They were tight and the drill made a grinding sound as he tested them. He probably had ruined the value of the cabinet and he was not getting his deposit back on the apartment now. This was all assuming that world would still be here once this was all over. He put the drill back into the cabinet and latched it closed.
Thomas felt his pocket vibrate and he pulled his phone free. As he looked at the screen, his face fell. It was CDR again. Thomas declined the call for the tenth time and put it back into his pocket. He was doing to CDR what his brother was doing to him. That was assuming Seth was even getting a signal. Lines were jammed all around the world like never before. Thomas had been watching the chaos on TV and saw lines of traffic jams that crossed entire states even with the curfews.
Smart people were tying down inside bunkers and secure buildings. Thomas was packing his bag and preparing to join his brother on a suicide mission to Nebraska. He thought it was Nebraska.
Thomas sat down on the couch. It creaked, but did not budge where it was bound to the floor now. He could not even remember Seth’s ex wife’s name. They had met a couple times, but it had been years. Not long after they were married and long before they were divorced. Thomas had only seen the girl when she was a baby and then again when she first started walking. If he had sent birthday cards, he would at least have an address.
The girl’s name was Mary or Martha. He shook his head. Maybe Ruth. It was something from the Bible.
He couldn’t find an address. He couldn’t remember names. Even if any of them did survive this disaster, he wouldn’t have enough information to begin looking.
Thomas stood up and pulled out his phone again. He tried Seth’s number and approached the television. As the line rang, he pulled at the straps that held his flat screen secured. The TV jostled, but remained in place. He looked at his empty bookshelves and though about the boxes tied down in the guest bedroom. He thought that he should probably check those again.
His bed was strapped to the floor in his bedroom and he had a bag packed on his bed. His car was in a parking garage a few blocks away. It had been stored and he wasn’t even sure anyone was manning the garage now to get his car out. Why would they be? Did he think he was going to take a bus to Nebraska on the off chance that his family was somewhere in that state? Was he going to walk?
There was no time left. He knew this as he listened to the phone ring. As his brother’s voice message picked up and man’s voice seemed calm and cheerful telling Thomas to leave a message again, Thomas knew he had no intention of going anywhere. He never planned to run off to help his brother or his family. He had gone through the motions of packing a bag because deep down he wanted to be the guy that would do those things. Seth was the guy that ran out to save people against all hope and reason. Thomas was the guy that tried to talk people out of it.
The beep sounded over the phone and Thomas said, “Seth, listen. We are out of time. I don’t know if you are getting my messages or ever will, but there’s no time left. You need to help your family by being alive for them after all of this is over. You need to find a safe place and tie down now because this thing is coming and it will be bad. I’ll help you find them after this is all over, but you have to be alive for us to do that. So, please, get to shelter right now wherever you are. I love you, man. Be safe.”
There was a harsh beep and a woman’s voice said, “The mailbox you are trying to reach is full.”
Thomas hung up and tears stung his eyes. That seemed like information that would have been useful before he tried to leave a message. He turned away from the TV without turning it on. He didn’t want to know what was going on out there.
“Eve,” he said out loud. “Her name is Eve.”
The tears came heavier as he finally remembered the name of a niece he might never see again.
He walked over to the window of his apartment and looked out. The streets were nearly empty. A few people ran around the corner on a sidewalk below and then they were gone.
He looked up at the sky and realized there were no planes. The sky was silent. It was eerie. It reminded him of right after the September Eleventh attacks when all the planes were grounded for a while. The sky felt empty. He remembered thinking at the time that this was how it would be if the world ever ended. He wondered if the skies would stay empty this time.
Motion between the buildings in the distance caught his attention. He saw debris and objects that looked like cars lifting into the air. Thomas grabbed hold of the edges of his window. Was this it? Had he lost track of time. He wanted to look at his watch, but he held on afraid to let go.
Glass shattered and flew out and up into the air in the distance. Mark heard car alarms and saw everything falling back toward the Earth.
He had felt nothing. Whatever that was had not reached his section of the city. That told him this was not the big one. He looked at his watch. The time was getting close though.
He could not save his family, but he could do his job at CDR. He could have a job after all of this was over.
He looked back out and saw dark smoke rising in the distance in the affected section of the city. He did not know what was burning, but soon it might be the whole world and there would be no one to put it out. No one would be able to save them no matter how many androids CDR had tried to build.
Thomas turned and ran toward the front door of his apartment.
13
Mark Spencer ran another diagnostic of the servers.
Calvin Hall sucked in a breath and turned his back. “Can we hurry this along? I have other things to see to.”
“Go see to them, then,” Mark said, “I’m not stopping you. I’m doing my job.”
“Your job is on a timeframe and we need you to deliver quickly,” Calvin said.
Mark sighed and turned back toward the open server and his device reading the bars of the diagnostic on the floor. Mark leaned down and whispered to the screen, “Listen, Calvin Hall wants you to hurry up. If you could run a standard diagnostic at a faster speed just because he wants you to, that would be super.”
Mark sat up and turned his attention back on the security chief. “Sorry, Calvin. I can’t make the universe move faster just because you want it. Maybe if you stopped being such a terrible distraction, that would help things some. It might help all of CDR.”
“I don’t care how important you think you are, Mr. Spencer, you need to finish your job.”
Mark nodded. The device beeped and he unhooked everything before closing up the panel. Mark began packing away his gear.
“Well?” Calvin asked.
Mark continued to pack without acknowledging the question. Mark shouldered his pack and turned toward Calvin. “Done. You care to walk me back up?”
“Let’s go.”
They took the elevator and stepped back out into the lobby.
Dr. Kell ran from the metal detectors toward the pair. “Is it done? I need to get down to the labs.”
Calvin Hall crossed his arms. “We’re beginning transport now. You need to be sure the other factories are shutting down on schedule. We’re almost out of time.”
Thomas Kell turned to Mark. “Sorry I wasn’t here. The world has ceased to make sense. My brother … nevermind. The locks are completed on the vaults?”
“Yes, it’s all exactly as Decker requested it,” Mark said.
Thomas nodded. “Are you locking down here with us?”
Mark knew he needed an excuse to go. His plan was not to start off in the building. He looked to Calvin Hall.
Calvin said, “Mark Spencer isn’t cleared to be here during the event. You will be paid, of course. You should go quickly to whatever hole you have dug for yourself for this thing. You’ll want to be sure you survive since you are being paid so handsomely. It would be a shame for you to not be around for your reward. You also took a lot of time here, so now y
ou must hurry.”
Thomas swallowed and asked, “Do you have a place, Mark?”
“Nevermind him,” Calvin said as he grabbed Thomas’s arm and pulled him along. “We all have our own responsibilities and he is responsible for himself now. We have CDR business to attend to.”
Thomas glanced back at Mark one last time and then turned away as Calvin Hall hustled him along.
Mark turned away and walked out the front doors. He wanted to leave and needed to get out of CDR for the final set-up, but it still burned. He had been prodding Calvin Hall the entire time he had been there, so it was understandable that the man would be hostile now. Still, as far as Hall knew, he was sending Mark out to die. He might even be hoping he would die. Mark was trash to him and Hall was glad to throw him out.
Mark could smell smoke as he stared down at the street. He could taste acid in the back of his throat that had nothing to do with the smoke.
He climbed behind the wheel of his car started driving back to his apartment. He had time for one last check of his system including the recent set up with the vaults and then he needed to get back in position.
He made a turn and saw a roadblock across the street a few blocks up. All the street lights were flashing red as far as Mark could see in the distance. He was going to have to find some way around now and again once the job was done. That was three separate trips through the city. It was too late. He didn’t have time for this.
The roadblock was chained down. A metal hatch opened on a low structure in the vacant lot beside the roadblock. Two men in body armor carrying automatic weapons stepped out. They had riot gear masks on as they stepped over the sidewalk and into the street facing Mark’s car a few blocks away. They turned their heads toward each other and began walking toward him with weapons aimed.
Mark backed up into the intersection and drove the other way on the barren street. As he passed under one flashing signal after another, he thought the city should have taken those down to keep them from flying all over the city.
He had run out of time. Mark drove back toward the CDR headquarters and hoped for the best. It was time to make his plan a reality. He reached under the passenger seat as he drove and pulled out the laptop without looking. He had some things he needed to check on the security feed before it all started.
14
Dr. Thomas Kell tried his phone again. There was no answer. There was no ring. If Seth was out on the road trying to drive through the chaos or tied down at home like he should be, Thomas was not going to know until all this was over. Maybe he wasn’t going to know for sure until long after depending on how long communications were down.
Thomas put his phone away and ran his hands over the lab equipment locked into holders along the walls. He turned back toward the empty consoles at the center of the room. “It” was gone. “It” was locked away where “It” should be safe. There was no light dancing off the wall from the chamber. Dr. Kell did not realize how much he had grown used to that strange light until it was gone.
The chairs were missing too. Loose tables had been moved out of the lab as well. Thomas had no idea where or how they had been put away, but they were gone. The lab looked barren and abandoned as a result.
Most of the people were gone too. They had been sent home to hide with their families. Some would live and would be expected to report back to work. Those that died would be replaced by CDR like broken pencils or cracked glass. Others like Dr. Kell would be strapped down in the headquarters away from their families. They would be expected to rebuild and worry about their families later on their own time.
Thomas Kell left the lab and sealed it behind him.
He checked his watch and hurried through the halls toward the stairs. His footsteps echoed through the empty halls. The elevators were already locked down. Thomas should have been too, but like his brother, he felt compelled to check on his baby one more time.
Thomas became winded as he ran up floor after floor, but he kept going, grabbing the railing as he went.
He finally saw his floor ahead of him and pushed his way through. As he weaved his way through offices and cubicles, he stopped in the middle of the floor. The offices weren’t secure. They were abandoned, but not a secured. A few computers still sat on desks. A couple headsets still hung on racks beside monitors or were slung over the low walls from their cords like the workers expected to come right back after the gravitational wave and pick up where they left off like nothing had happened.
Some desks were cleared, but others were still stacked with papers, had cups full of pens, or sticky notes and tacks in bulletin board squares.
“Tacks?” Thomas shook his head in disbelief as he imagined these objects flying about like deadly shrapnel.
There was a bobble head of some figure holding a basketball. It really was going to bobble one the final wave hit. It was going to bobble and might never be found again.
Thomas looked through the glass walls of some of the enclosed offices. A few were still cluttered from some of the earlier waves. They had not been cleaned up with papers and supplies still scattered around the floor. No one had returned to these units or no one had bothered to deal with them.
Other offices still had staplers and paperclips arranged neatly on top. There were plants in corners and pictures in frames on desks and shelves. This was going to be a disaster.
No one was prepared. How could anyone be prepared for this though? If they locked their goodies inside drawers, would it matter then if the entire desk flew into the ceiling or the entire building snapped loose from its foundation? The skeleton of steel inside the stone walls could snap and bring the entire building down from the inside.
There had been other collapses around the city and around the world already from the minor ripples that proceeded the big one. The best scientists in the world had done their calculations. CDR had recalculated and had come to the same conclusions. Still, Thomas could not imagine that the basic math prepared anyone for what was coming. This was going to be the first event of its kind in the history of the world. They had no idea what was going to happen to them or who or what was going to survive once it was over.
CDR planned to survive and they did not much care who joined them. They would replace the pencils, the cracked glass, and the dead employees. And then they would move on as they had always done. They would clean up any record of the dead as they had quickly done with Hazel Conrad. She was senior partner and then she was erased. Her office was already emptied and her things were swept away. If she could be forgotten, then they would not lose any sleep or miss a step over any other losses.
Thomas checked his watch and continued to run through the offices. He used his code to get through two doors and then stepped out into the hallway where he stopped short when he nearly walked headlong into Calvin Hall.
“What are you still doing out?” Calvin asked.
“What are you doing here?” Thomas asked.
Calvin narrowed his eyes. “I’m doing a last minute check and then strapping in for the ride.”
“Me too,” Thomas said.
“Doctor, you’re supposed to be downstairs. The lower levels are sturdier. We assigned you your spot within the concrete columns of the lab complex for a reason.”
“I wanted to check the vaults again.”
“They’re sealed. We’re not opening them again until this is over and we assess the damages. Not a moment before, Dr. Kell.”
Thomas swallowed and nodded. “The Q1 project was secured in the vault. You’re sure.”
Calvin Hall stared for a moment. “If you had been at your post and oversaw the security yourself, you would know the answer to that. But, yes, everything is where it should be. I am sure of it.”
“I guess we are ready for whatever comes then,” Dr. Kell said.
Calvin Hall took hold of Thomas’s shoulder and led him out away from the main passage. “Not quite yet.”
They were not close enough to see the vaults, so Thomas had t
o take his word for it that everything was locked away. Calvin entered a security code and pushed open a steel door. He led Thomas to a chair bolted to the floor and forced Thomas to sit. Calvin Hall strapped Thomas into a three point harness.
Calvin unlocked a cabinet and lifted out a blue helmet.
“Is this where we ride it out now?” Thomas asked.
Calvin strapped the helmet on Thomas’s head and then locked back the cabinet. Calvin moved along the wall and shook all the equip in the harnesses. “You will be here. I need to be at a different post. We all have jobs that we are supposed to be doing. Stay put now, please, Doctor.”
With that, Calvin closed the door and Thomas heard the electronic lock catch.
Thomas sighed and looked behind him. One of the trackers was on the wall. He reached out and pulled it loose from its clip. They had only just completed this part of the FBI’s list of security demands before the world stopped making sense.
Thomas powered up the device and looked at the screen. It had power, but no signal. Thomas frowned. It could have not been working after all that trouble or it could have been other interference. There were heavy walls and a coming gravitational wave. If the tracker didn’t work through thick walls or certain materials, what good was it?
Thomas shut it off and strained to lock the device back into its clip.
He leaned to the side in his own harness and took his phone out of his pocket. The phone powered up, but got no signal at all. CDR’s network wasn’t showing up and he had no cell service either. The room that was meant to protect him was keeping him from making one last attempt to contact and save his brother.
If he wasn’t somewhere safe by now, it was probably too late. Thomas thought again that he had no idea where his niece or her mother lived. If something happened to Seth, he still had no idea where to begin looking. There was still no contact with their father’s care facility. Thomas had spent years mostly ignoring family and he might never be able to find or contact any of them ever again.