Insolation

by Bradlyn Wilson

  She looked up expecting to see a statue. But of course it was not there which she knew before she even looked up. She stood looking at the architecture of the room. It was massive. The ceiling had to be at least 10 meters tall.

  The ceiling was a biblical depiction of good and evil that appeared to have been chiselled in hundreds of years ago. Hadley looked at the artist’s depiction of Satan. He was quite charming in his fiery oasis. His minions, demented creatures crawled out from the fire towards earth. Oppositely, three figures stood surrounded by angels that extended down towards earth. She looked between the two and felt sadness for the people caught in the middle. They were helpless bystanders in a war that was bigger than them.

  She looked away from the painting full of grief. Who was looking out for the middle people in our war? She wondered.

  Then again, no one had believed in God for hundreds of years.

  She sighed and opened the doors leaving the room. Something glittered in the corner of her eye as she walked through but before her body could stop her, the doors closed behind her. She tried to reopen them but they were locked. She went as far as to try her program and access to open it but it was futile.

  She shook her head and started walking down the hall, reaching an occasional abandoned door every once in a while until she emerged just off of the main atrium. The door she came through had a huge sign that read: access restricted.

  Pax came out of nowhere, giving her a puzzled look.

  “Where have you been?” Pax asked running his hand through his hair. He raised an eyebrow towards the door.

  “I honestly got lost.”

  “Right,” Pax replied but he didn’t press further.

  “Where did Kane say I was?” Hadley inquired subtlety.

  “Sick. He left it at that actually. I didn’t press further.”

  “Of course he did,” Hadley sighed

  Pax looked straight into her eyes. “What’s up Had?”

  Hadley just shook her head for a moment, and then realized she needed to tell someone about everything that had happened. She needed desperately to tell Pax why she was being distant and cold. Why her thoughts were with a man that she barely remembered.

  But she couldn’t, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him just yet. So, instead of telling him about what just happened and Saul’s reveal, she started to ramble on and on about Kane. She went into a long ramble about Alice and his marriage, about Kane’s advances and his distance. She went on about the way Kane had been treating her.

  When she was finally done Pax was silent until he exploded, “What the fuck is wrong with that asshole?!”

  Hadley hadn’t expected him to react so viscerally. The expression on Pax’s face scared even her and she retreated away from him a little. He noticed her shock and pulled her towards him taking deep calming breaths.

  “Sorry Had— It’s just— I just—.” He let out a yell at the top of his lungs.

  People turned to stare.

  “We’re in the atrium!” Hadley exclaimed as she instinctually clasped her hand over his mouth. His hair lay wildly over his eyes and she saw the rage leave his face. She uncurled her fingers from his face and kissed him gently. She kissed him with more love than she ever remembered kissing anyone.

  “You know I love you don’t you?”

  “I love you too Hadley,” he said nuzzling his head into her shoulder.

  A ringing erupted around them and suddenly, though not really if Hadley thought about it, it was 8am. They were late for a meeting.

  They practically ran through the atrium, winding their way through the desks trying to get to the conference room they were using for the meeting today.

  You could cut the tension in the room with a knife as they walked into the meeting. Hadley was sure no one else in the room noticed. But Pax, Kane and Hadley sure did. Hadley and Pax took seats to the side, and quietly opened their documents off their coinets. Hadley was basically holding her breath, trying not to let out the deep breaths she needed. Her heart was pounding from the running.

  Though as she sat there, all she could do was study Hemmer. He had more secrets than she could have in an entire lifetime. She deeply wanted to know what he was up to, especially since he was planning to send them West.

  Hadley, tried to catch up by skimming through her notes, just to discover they were discussing grain and plant resources. Most of the world had radiation poisoning and thus the only sources of plants and animals had to come from heavily government controlled greenhouses.

  Hemmer had a model greenhouse in front of him today. He was visually showing how the system was closed and no outside material was needed. Hadley was fascinated with the advance in technology. The greenhouse used only its resources and water and with the correct plants that’s all it needed.

  The water cycled through the system as though it was outdoors. The temperature was controlled to allow both condensation and evaporation throughout a twenty-four hour period. Cellular respiration and photosynthesis did the rest.

  Hadley raised her hand, “How many people can each greenhouse sustain?”

  Hemmer looked at her completely annoyed at her blatant interruption of his talk, “Each of the small can sustain 100 people per year, whilst the large are around 2500—”

  “And how many did you say we have?”

  “12 large and 60 small—”

  “So around 100,000 people? That’s less than a percent of the current world population”

  “Yes Hadley, thank you for pointing out the flaw in everything. We realize that we can’t sustain the population and are building as fast as we can,” he snapped at her, a vein in his forehead popping out.

  Hadley sat back in her chair. “Sorry—”

  “I’m afraid Hemmer may poison you one of these days,” Pax laughed under his breath nonchalantly.

  Hadley didn’t even giggle. “Me too actually.”

  “Maybe stay quiet for a while,” he suggested and she nodded, realizing immediately that was best. When Hemmer stopped talking everyone started to get up.

  “Hadley, a word please,” Hemmer nodded to her.

  Pax grabbed her arm and gave it a squeeze, “I’ll wait right outside the door. Scream if you need me.” Hadley nodded at him and swallowed. She walked to the front of the room and waited in silence while everyone cleared out.

  “Do you want to be here?” he snapped at her walking forward.

  “You know I do!” she said puffing out her chest triumphantly.

  “You have a tendency to ruin morale—”

  “I actually just have a tendency to point out the flaws in what sounds like a great plan on the exterior.” She turned on her heel and walked towards the door.

  “You don’t want me as an enemy Miss Evans. Be careful—” The way he said it reminded her of one of her favourite classic movies, Harry Potter. He sounded a heck of a lot like Alan Rickman. Hadley remembered watching it with her grandfather, as he reminisced about old grainy films.

  “I always am.” Without another look she walked out the door and up to Pax who was leaning coolly against the wall. Half the time she thought he was better suited to be on a beach somewhere, drinking and surfing. Today she was just happy to have him waiting for her.

  “I need to be careful,” she whispered to Pax, letting the reality of what he said sink in.

  “No shit Sherlock!” He laughed as he grabbed her hand and they proceeded to interlock fingers. Hadley smiled as they walked down the hall. But in the back of her mind Hemmer’s threat stuck with her.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  It had been days since Hadley had talked to Kane and every night she thought about the way she could most hurt him. It almost saddened her, though it was mostly pity. He thought that her lost memories meant a new start for him. It would never be a new start.

  She decided a swim would clear her head. She put on a bathing suit and walked to the pool, which was illuminated as though bathed in the early morning sun. The projectors glim
mered off of the old stone ceiling. She looked at the water and dove in headfirst. She raised her elbow high out of the water and started to swim. She regulated her breathing and calmly swam back and forth.

  Then she flipped over and swam back. She flipped onto her back and laid there in the middle of the pool looking up at the ceiling. The ceiling was exquisitely carved. She let her eyes wander around the leaves and trees that were carved into the ceiling. It was odd looking at the architecture in the pool. This room was decades older than everything else in the complex. Though maybe not as old as the marble entry way she had found herself in days before.

  She brought her arms over her head and back down to her waist. The water rippled away and she faintly heard it splash over the edge. Somewhere in the distance she heard a door open and pulled her head out of the water continuing to lie on her back. She ran her hands through her hair pushing the water out and swung it over one shoulder. She turned around and saw Kane standing watching her. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

  “Hi?” she half asked, trying not to show her hatred. She moved her hands back and forth to steady herself in the water.

  He stared at Hadley for a moment in silence almost looking through the water at her, “I need your help.”

  “Ok?” She stayed where she was in the water and let her feet sink.

  He was irritated and fidgety, “Hurry please!”

  “Whoa, calm down.” Hadley swam to the edge and pushed herself up. Kane watched her and threw her towel towards her. Hadley caught it and wrapped it around herself in a hurry. She wrung out her hair with her hands and tied it up into a tight bun on the top of her head.

  “Let’s go! You’ve been avoiding the lab for the last three days. And I’m sorry but we need to put everything on hold for a few hours and you don’t have to like me, or talk to me, or even look at me, you solely have to work. The world is actually going into the extreme ice age we’ve been waiting for, but so much faster than we previously thought. We need to do something!” He rushed out of the pool and down the hall. Hadley quickly followed leaving a trail of water behind her. They rushed into their housing, through the kitchen and down the nondescript hallway. Hadley caught a glimpse of a bowl of fruit on the wall. Her least favourite painting. She turned to go to her room but Kane grabbed her arm and dragged her to the door.

  “Can’t I at least change?”

  “You don’t know what’s happened now—” The strain in his voice was palpable. So she kept walking with him. Her bare feet left wet footprints as they went. They clapped against the ground making gurgled sounds. The floor, which was a light concrete was now painted black in places as it got wet.

  They hurried down the hall. As they passed people Hadley got strange looks, which made her laugh. They must have been such the sight, Kane in a hurried frenzy and her practically running along behind him in a wet swimsuit.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Hadley said breathlessly as they started into what was almost a jog to the lab. They reached the lab and Kane scanned his program and they ran in. Vanya was scribbling furiously onto a tablet.

  “About time. I had wondered if you just gave up,” Vanya said not looking up from her work.

  The earth model was spinning at an abnormally fast pace. Hadley watched a large white patch get bigger and bigger. It was the size of Greenland and was sitting just north of it. It was a massive snowstorm and it was growing, engulfing the planet.

  “What’s going on?”

  Vanya looked up from her work as she took a sip of coffee pursing her lips; the bruise around her eye was healing into a subtle brown and green. She hadn’t even tried to hide it today. This was the first time I truly realized something was wrong. She saw Hadley and choked on her coffee. She spat half a mouthful onto the desk. “What are you wearing?”

  “Kane didn’t give me a chance to change.” Hadley laughed

  “I think we could have waited another five minutes Kane. She hasn’t been here for days.” Vanya laughed lightly teasing Kane. She was in fits and held her side while Kane just stared at her blankly.

  “Never mind her attire. We have work to do.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “The storm we were watching the other day has doubled in size overnight and a new one has started just west of Australia.” He stared at the girls intensely and then whispered, “It’s time.”

  Hadley held back giggles at his attempt at a doomsday prediction, saying bluntly “Jesus Kane. Was that last part really necessary?”

  He just rolled his eyes and went to his office. Hadley grabbed some of the info-chips and started putting simulations into the model knowing all the while that they should really be planning how to survive these storms not how to change the weather. She threw the info-chips into a pile on the clear table in front of the globe simulator. Working like puzzle pieces she attempted to fit the pieces together to either stop the storm or keep human kind alive. Each piece contained prediction and/or historic climatic data. Man had made leaps and bounds over the last four-hundred years, but this was too much. The storm was here, months earlier than anyone had expected and they weren’t ready. The only thing they could do was see how it went and how they survived; they needed to predict its movement so they could figure out what to do next.

  All of Hadley’s predictions saw the storms continuing into the foreseeable and predictable future. The thing with ice ages is they were intermittent throughout the Earth’s history. A series of positive and negative feedback loops that created global temperature and climatic variations.

  Hadley shifted uncomfortably in the chair she was sitting on, typing like crazy into a computer. She pulled angrily at the bottom of her bathing suit that had continuously been going up her butt since it had dried almost six hours earlier. The armpits were digging in and when she moved the straps aside she could see the red marks the one piece was leaving on her body.

  Kane’s eyes were red and he furiously was shifting through a pile of ancient books and holographic information on the other side of the room. Vanya was fast asleep with one hand still clenched on her half full cup of coffee. Her other hand held the info-chips from her last failed idea.

  The last few hours were spent putting solutions into the simulator. They had come up with nothing more than a way to freeze over the entire earth in a matter of days. This had made Hadley cry with laughter. At least she knew how they could make it worse. Hadley, Kane and Vanya were exhausted and frustrated. None of them could figure out any way to stop it. They were the only ones who could, and since they couldn’t the world was utterly doomed. This had led Hadley to think the whole thing was hilarious. She was on the verge of tears from pain and laughter at any given moment.

  She exhaled in frustration, half from the work, half from the fact she was still in a bathing suit that was so uncomfortable it made her wish she was naked. They had the technology to put a certain amount of heat, cold and gases into the air. But no amount of pressure or heat was going to stop this storm. They were too late. She desperately typed into her computer, changing the amounts of everything. But the storm continued to circulate in the earth simulator.

  Kane, looked dishevelled emerged from his office after a brief entry to get something and then looked down at his watch, “Let’s call it a night—”

  “But, we can’t we have no time!” Hadley exhaled, not wanting to give up. Kane got up and closed his tablet and it clicked into his hand. He slowly paced to the simulator and turned it off. Hadley couldn’t do anything but watch the globe pixelate, and in a single flash of light it was gone.

  “We’ve really done all we could manage tonight” Kane said in utter defeat. His eyes were jumping every which way. His brain was fried. He had resigned to failure.

  Hadley had nothing else to say, “Ok”. Nothing else was functioning in her brain except mathematical formulas that calculated atmospheric pressure and global warming. Kane put a hand on Hadley’s shoulder briefly and walked to the
door. He stood beside it waiting for her.

  Hadley went over to Vanya and woke her up slowly. She shook her shoulder gently. “Vanya— it’s time to go get some actual sleep.” Vanya groggily opened her eyes, spilling her long cold coffee across her info-chips.

  “Has the world ended yet?” She asked sarcastically as she stood up and stretched her arms high into the air. She reached down and touched her toes.

  “Take six hours and we’ll meet back here?” Kane said with as he opened the door. “At which point we will just figure out what the storm is going to do, and how we can best prepare the people on earth.”

  Hadley rolled her eyes albeit glad he finally figured out where his priorities should lie. Vanya and Hadley walked to the door and Kane held it open for them. Vanya hit the light switch on her way out. The door closed silently and the three of them took a moment to look through the glass at the few blinking lights still on in the lab. Then they all turned away in silence. Kane went right and the women went left.

  Hadley turned one more time and glanced over her shoulder to see Kane sulk away looking at the floor.

  Neither Vanya nor Hadley said anything on their walk through the dark hallways. Hadley occasionally glanced at Vanya and her eyes were skirting around, the dark bags under her eyes almost growing as they walked the short distance. Hadley scanned her program to let them back into the dorm and they both went to their separate rooms.

  Chapter Fifty

  Pax was asleep in her bed snoring loudly and muttering to himself, Hadley smiled. He breathed gently and she watched his chest rise and fall, as if it was a lullaby.

  She peeled off her swimsuit and threw it into the laundry basket. She grabbed a t-shirt off the floor and put it on. Then she opened her top drawer and pulled out a pair of underwear, which she slid into.