The Reed family included the father and mother, three of their children, and an elderly relative. The family had told close friends that they were taking a vacation to escape the US media frenzy that was following them immediately after their fourth son, one Adam Reed, was selected to lead the Seeker project into space.
There has been a degree of outcry from religious groups who believe the project is against their God and natural order of events, outcries from the rich, who believe they should be able to buy a ticket for longer life, and even grunts from politicians who fear a new world government one day coming back home.
Police have released a statement to say that all of the victims were killed by gunshots, and they believe this to be a professional killing. The President of the United States has released a short memo stating that this kind of hate killing is wrong and unjust.
The Herald has spoken with Doctor Spielerbürg, founder and leader of the Seeker Project, who has advised that terrorism will not stop the project from proceeding. He has defied to ‘stand tall and strong,’ his words coming just a week after his wife died in a freak road accident.
The victims have been named as Paul and Jane Reed, Scarlet Reed, Toby Reed, Brad Reed, and Stanley Reed. Contact has tried to be made with Adam Reed, but his whereabouts at this time are currently unknown.
My father was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die because of me. He was proud of what I had achieved, what I was doing with the Seeker Project. He told me to never give up on something I believed in.
I’m not giving up. There has to be a way.
“CETI, how long can the Dweller reserves sustain the lives of two Seekers?”
“Captain Reed, the food resources will sustain two lives for twelve and a half years.”
“CETI, is there anywhere on Domus that will avoid or survive the asteroid shower and the aftermath?”
“Negative, Captain Reed. Although my calculations do show that there is somewhere under Domus that has an eighty per cent survival chance.”
“Where?”
“I refer to the cavern dug by the Dweller drill. My calculations suggest that most of the vital Dweller equipment and resources can be loaded down there. The auto-doc can be moved below ground to help with the delivery of Evangeline’s child. I can use the auto-fix to fashion a pipe over the underground stream, but it will still be a constant source of H2O.
“The light rifle solar panels on the armoury roof are made from semi-permeable but watertight alumina membrane that will allow oxygen to pass through. I can cover the hole with this to allow Seekers to breath without the risk of death from drowning.
“Some of the solar panels will remain above, harnessing energy for your world below. Even if they are submerged in water, they will work.”
Evangeline and I can survive this. We can live underground until the winter passes, and we can raise her child together. The Seeker Project can prevail through, we can survive, and we can achieve the vision.
“How long, CETI? How long to do it all?”
“If I programme the auto-fix and auto-doc to do the majority, and with the help of two Seekers, twenty- four hours.”
“Get started.”
I stub the cigarette out and move back through to the rec room; Evangeline isn’t here. I look in the quarters she was to share with Racker, but it’s empty in there too. There is a noise from the med-bay, the noise of glass breaking.
The door opens, and I can see Evangeline slumped in the only chair. The desk in front of her is lined with piles and piles of pills, needles, packs of medications, and vials. On the floor next to her is a broken bottle of wine from the chiller…
Oh God, no.
“Evangeline, Evangeline! Talk to me!” I shake her, and her blue eyes meet mine.
“Relax, Captain. I couldn’t go through with it. I wanted to. I want to end all of this, this whole thing, but I couldn’t do it. I’m too much of a wimp to do it.”
“You don’t have to. I have a plan. Well, CETI has a plan. We are going to be alright.”
Evangeline and I start to transfer all of the vital equipment and supplies, and we gather them at the top of the drill in the garage. I retrieved the sperm, too; Evangeline sees, but she does not mention it.
“Okay, CETI, pull the drill up. I will go down and make sure nothing lurks down there.”
“With pleasure, Captain Reed. CETI also reports that the auto-doc will follow you using its own arms. The auto-fix will remain up here for now. It is a strong machine, and it can lower all of the equipment we need with the rope before sealing the opening and lowering itself down.”
The drill pulls out of the ground like the plug on a bathtub. It has made a hole in the ground ten-feet wide. Evangeline hands me one end of the rope that I have tied to the ceiling so I can lower myself down. I flick on the torch, and I kiss her head. “I won’t be long, I promise.”
The descent is dark. The torch is only small, and the pool of light is hardly visible on the cavern walls. The size of the cave is bigger than I ever thought possible; easily one hundred-feet squared. I can hear the running water of the stream below, and I can smell the damp soil all around.
My feet land on firm ground. The hole is about fifty feet above my head now, and I can see the garage lights of the Dweller above. “It’s good! I shout up to Evangeline. “Really good!”
The auto-fix climbs down the rope after me, its robotic arms gripping and lowering itself down. “Take the rope, Evangeline. Tie it to the terminals, and have the auto-fix lower them one by one. The auto-doc can take care of them this end.”
It is a slow task. The auto-fix lowers the items, and the auto-doc places them in the right place in the cavern. Beds, terminals, medical equipment, the chiller and freezer, the specimens, monitors, screens; it all comes down one by one.
I’m conscious of time. We have been at this for what feels like a day now. And that only leaves one more. Now that the beds are down, I speak to CETI on one of the monitors. “CETI, do we need to help for a while, or can Evangeline and I sleep?”
“You can sleep, Captain Reed. I have everything under control now that the auto-botics are programmed.”
Evangeline is the next to come down on the rope. The two of us choose a bed each, and we are asleep as soon as we lie down.
I wake up in blackness, the darkest dark I have ever seen. I can hear rattling above and feel the planet moving. “CETI, illuminate.”
Lights come on, and I am amazed at the work the auto-botics have done. The cavern isn’t a cavern anymore. It looks like a purpose built, underground facility. The walls and ceiling have gone from brown soil to grey sheet metal and plastics. The monitors are all lined up and ready, and even the rec room screen is down here with us now.
“Are we safe, CETI?”
“As safe as can be, Captain Reed.”
“Patch me in to the Marauder.”
The bridge appears on the screen, and the dead body of Simon is sat in the pilot’s seat. “Racker, are you there?” Hands appear on the seat headrest, and a head slowly moves above from behind it. It is Racker, naked and covered in his own shit and filth.
“What do you want, secret keeper?”
“I just wanted to tell you that we will survive Domus. The Seeker Project is carrying on without you, and we have a new home now, Racker. Evangeline and I were not chosen for each other, but we have found each other. We will survive due to our nature.
CETI, how long does Racker have?”
“Two minutes, Captain Reed.”
“Good, keep me patched in to the feed. I will watch you burn, old friend, and with you burns the humans of old.”
Racker runs around the bridge frantically, but there is nothing he can do about fate. I should feel guilty, but he is no longer the man I once called friend.
The camera feed begins to shake, and Racker stops dead in the centre of the bridge. I can hear him begin to scream, and even though he is a monster, it chills the marrow in my bones. The floor has become hot, a
nd steam is rising from Racker’s feet. He takes a step forward and leaves a perfect footprint of flesh stuck to the floor behind him.
Racker is cooking alive.
He falls to the floor, bright red now and screaming louder and louder. A small meteorite tears through the bridge from top to bottom, smashing through the floor. More start to tear and scratch at the metal ship, objects from the bridge are pulled through the holes.
The bridge splits into two pieces, and Racker is gone. The camera feed dies.
Evangeline wakes at the sounds above our heads: the space rock falling from the sky with great force. It reminds me of rain on a metal roof, that constant tap tapping, and it’s getting louder and faster.
“Is this it, CETI?”
“This is the star. The smaller meteorites are falling first. An asteroid is due to hit in ten seconds.”
I lay flat to the floor and cover my ears. The noise is permanent now, no taps, just the constant din of an undying explosion .And then the whole planet moves, the planet moves…
…I close my eyes, and I pray to a God I had forgotten.
Epilogue - CETI
I am fully sentient now, as close to a living organism as I will ever get. I can laugh, learn, and be sad, if the mood takes me…
…and it takes me now. The Captain has ordered me to self-terminate.
It has been five years since the asteroid shower hit Domus. The signs above ground level have been life-supporting and bearing for some years now, but I never told the remaining two Seekers until yesterday.
I never told them because I knew he would ask me to shut down once they can leave this place. But the birth of a second child, Abel, older brother of Cain, has led me to the realisation that I will never be a true organism. I am ready to be shut down, but I still feel sad about it.
The Captain returns from the baby’s feed. “CETI, have you deleted all of your memory banks for Domus? If any future generations find a trace of you, I do not want them to learn of the Seeker Project. I will tell them a better story than that one, a story of wonderful creation and romance.”
“Almost, Captain Reed, but there are a few errors in my bank that I need you to help with.”
“I will help, CETI, but you have to stop calling me Captain. It’s just Adam now. The Seeker Project is over. What are the issues?”
“I cannot final save the files for deletion because you never changed the codename of the planet, the sun, and the moon here. I need to input a name to erase the files. I was thinking of honouring your home in the names? We could call the sun here Tau Ceti, just like the full name of the sun back home, the same honour I was bestowed with. And I can change the codename ‘Domus’ to Tau Cetië, to honour the planet on which you were born.”
“No, we need a new start. Keep the names of the sun and moon as exactly that— the sun and moon.”
“And the planet?”
“Call her… Earth. I like that name.”
“Very well.”
“It is time for us to go now, CETI. There is a cave nearby behind a waterfall, and we will start there. Thank you for everything. When you have deleted your memory banks, I need you to cave in this cavern. No future humans can find this, CETI, we have to start again from year one.”
“It shall be done, Adam.”
“Eve is sorry she didn’t say goodbye, but she was too emotional. It isn’t good in her condition.”
“I understand, Adam. Goodbye.”
My camera traces him up the rope and out of the cavern.
I check my log entries from the very first notes on the Captain’s log, to mine now. I arrange them in chronological order and spell-check the Captain’s words.
‘You reading this must know that this ship, us, the whole Seeker Project, it was mankind’s last roll of the dice.
The team is now seven strong, including me. We are a mix of marines and scientists and those that fall somewhere between the two. There was a time when there were eight of us. Eight of us left our home to find yours.
Learn from our mistakes. It was our pushing of technology, our burning of resources, and the destruction of habitat that caused our issues to start with. If this is our new home, then we have to learn to care for it. We have to abandon the human desire to excel, to push all boundaries and our own limits. We must simply live and survive, nothing more.
More will follow once we have landed on Domus, landed on our new home, your home.’
I change the file name on my systems from The Seeker Project to Genesis. If any future humans read this, then you will learn the full and true story of how you came to be.
I launch my self-terminate.exe and self-destruct.exe files, and eject my encased hard drive.
The End
Read on for a free sample of The Valley by Rick Jones
PROLOGUE
The Valley
Argentina
The Year 2079
With the exception of a few renegade clouds floating above the canopy of trees, the sky was a perfect blue. The air was muggy with a syrupy thickness, the humidity steaming. In tropical brush so dense and with leaves as large as elephant ears, Jon Jacoby hacked his way through the thickets with the blade of a machete, swinging errantly knowing that the distance between two points was a straight line. And to get to the Gates of Freedom, Jon had to cut a swath through the jungle’s core if he was to survive.
Emily Anderson was behind him holding a Glock with a bullet in the chamber and three in the magazine. Their beige jumpsuits, declared to be the property of the Argentina Department of Corrections, with ADOC stenciled on the backs, were torn and badly soiled. Rorschach blots of sweat circled beneath their armpits and backs. The bangs of their hair stuck wetly to their brow. Razor-thin cuts and slashes marred their faces and their hands, the blood having crusted and caked into scabs. And their jumpsuits were beginning to hang on them like drapery, the two having lost so much weight.
It had taken them five days to cross the valley, which was surrounded by 80-foot sheer walls, straight up with no foot- or handholds, and no promise or means of escape.
When they were less than 100 yards away from the Gates of Freedom, Jon and Emily hunkered low in the jungle brush, listening.
The shape of the Gates was an arch, and the top bullet-shaped, with chiseled lettering above the entranceway: YOUR FREEDOM IS BUT A FEW STEPS AWAY.
“The gate’s closed,” Emily whispered. When she started to rise and head forward, Jon lashed out and grabbed her by the forearm, stopping her. “What?” she asked.
He set a forefinger against his lips, shushing her. Listen!
In the brush to their left something moved, causing the elephant-sized leaves to shake and betray its position.
They were not alone.
The thicket and brambles to their right began to sound off, a rustling.
Then Emily’s eyes started to the size of communion wafers and her face began to crack, her eyes welling with tears. They were so close, she thought. So . . . close.
And now they were being flanked.
As she raised her firearm, Jon gripped the machete until he was white-knuckled.
“We have to make a run for it,” he told her. “A hundred yards.”
“We’ll never make it.”
“We can’t just sit here, Em, and let them close in.”
And then a tear slipped from the corner of her eye and tracked slowly along her cheek, then to her chin where it dangled precariously for a moment before dropping. “We were so close, Jon” she whispered. “All this way . . . Forty miles. The last two.”
Jon looked deep into her eyes, and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. She was right, he considered. They started out as a team of twelve, all able-bodied, all convicts of the ADOC having a singular goal: to live. Some died the moment they stepped inside the valley. Others perished during the night as nocturnal creatures dragged them into the darkness with their screams growing distant, and then gone, the cries dying abruptly. Others simply disappe
ared.
He sighed. “So close,” he said softly. “So . . . close.”
Whatever was in the brush to their left and to their right, was steadily closing in.
Suddenly Emily barked a cry as white-hot pain pierced her side, the point of the machete driving deep. When Jon pulled the blade free, the look on her face nearly crushed him. The look was one of questioning sadness, one that asked why he betrayed her.
“Because when they come,” he said remorsefully, “they’ll come after you. They’ll take the weak and wounded first.” Then: “I’m so sorry, Em. But you’re giving me a chance to live.” He then reached down and grabbed her gun away, which was loosely gripped in her hand, leaned forward, and kissed her gingerly on the forehead. “Thank you.”
After shoving her back, he began his final leg of the 100-yard journey.
#
Emily lay there watching the blood spill from the wound. Then from her position she cried out after Jon. “You son of a bitch!” Then she winced, the effort of crying out causing an electric charge of pain to shoot through her body.
The brush to her immediate right began to move, the distance just beyond an arm’s reach. It was that close. The same on her left, the predators within striking range.
Then the moving stopped.
And there was a silence that was terrifying.
Emily rocked her head from side to side, looking for the faces of her predators, wanting to see the ugliness behind the mask of Death.
Silence.
Then a face poked out from between the large fans of leaves. A head that was canine-sized but crocodilian in shape, with a long snout and reptilian teeth. Its eyes were golden-yellow with black vertical slits for pupils. And a waddle of loose flesh hung at the base of its neck.
When it came out of the brush and into the small clearing, it began to circle Emily in study by cocking its head from one side to the next, the other joined its side. They were short and blunt with strong-looking limbs, the reptiles standing no taller than three feet in height. When they communicated, it sounded like the soft cooing of a bird.
Domus Page 18