CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel

by M. L. Banner

  The mole was sure that he had entered the Comms room without being seen. If he was caught, because of his position, he’d at least have a reason for being here. The clean room’s lights were on, and he could see Magdalena inside with her back to him. She was running her tests, so he had enough time to do what he needed and leave before she would possibly look his way. Not that she could see him, as all the lights in the Communications room were off.

  After making sure the door was secure, he walked over to the Comms console and sat. Reaching down to the bottom drawer, he inserted his key, unlocked it and slid it open. Inside sat something that would have seemed odd in the high-tech world preceding the Event. After the Event, it seemed odder still. In fact, he was one of only maybe two dozen people on the planet who knew it existed. Grabbing the receiver of the 1970s-style phone, he put his ear to it and depressed the clear plastic buttons for the fifth and sixth lines at the same time. Both lit up bright red, indicating he had a line. His receiver crackled, and then he heard something like a dial tone. Then, it rang. It always reminded him of the ringing sound in Magdalena’s Pink Floyd’s The Wall album—a quick double-tone, followed by a pause; another quick double-tone followed by another pause. On the third ring, someone picked it up but said nothing.

  “Bios-2, this is Cicada Comms,” he said into his receiver.

  The other side, after hearing the correct words in the correct order, asked in a thick German accent, “What do you have to report?”

  “Mr. Thompson and his friends, the Kings, arrived today. We also had another attack that badly damaged the north gate, but it is being repaired. The attack hurt Mr. Thompson, though not badly, but it killed Doctor Ronald Sampson. I checked Dr. Sampson’s room and couldn’t find anything incriminating. I will call in again tomorrow. That is all.”

  “What is your current scientist count?” asked the German voice.

  “I have no update from the last report—minus one, of course.”

  “Thank you for the intel.” The German hung up.

  He nervously put the phone back into its cradle and shut the drawer.

  A clicking alerted him that someone was about to come through the clean room’s door into Comms. He had to get out right away!

  “Webs, are you still here?” Magdalena thrust her head out the door and saw the Comms door swing shut, as if Webber had just left.

  “This is the main research facility, where our scientists make their magic.” They were standing in an empty foyer, in front of an elevator. Max pressed his thumb against a small, rectangular raised plate. A light flashed and the elevator doors opened. “This is a biometric scanner for entry and use of the elevator or the door to the first-floor offices and labs behind us—there’s a stairwell through there.” He waited for them to enter then closed the door.

  “Although there are five floors where our scientists are working on various problems, I’m taking you to the top floor.”

  “How many scientists are here now?” Sally asked.

  “I believe twenty-one.”

  “That seems lower than I would have thought,” Lisa said, whose claustrophobia had kicked in almost as soon as the door shut.

  “It is. We had planned on a lot more, but many didn’t make it.” He hated where this conversation was going. “Bill, you’ll love Dr. Cockerell’s lab. From what I understand, he’s building some sort of new hovercraft using something called John-Teller metal, although I have no idea what that is.”

  The door opened with a ding. Quietly, they exited the elevator and walked down a long hallway with many doors to many labs. Max noticed that Lisa and Sally were looking down rather than into the labs like Bill was doing with interest. Seeing Rob Johnson standing in front of a lab door gave him an idea.

  “Johnson,” Max called out, “can we borrow you for a moment?”

  Johnson hesitated then marched their way, looking distracted. As if on cue, he started to beam.

  “Good to see you finally made it, Mr. Thompson,” he gushed, shaking Max’s hand enthusiastically. “We all wondered, since your last call.”

  Bill looked at Max curiously. Call? Cell phones hadn’t worked since the Event.

  After introductions, Max asked Johnson if he would escort them through the labs—especially Dr. Cockerell’s—and then he’d meet them all in front of the Library.

  “I’m sorry, but I have one task I must attend to first.” Max excused himself as Johnson and the Kings headed for Cockerell’s lab. When they left the hallway, Max went to Sampson’s lab, door 4G. Interestingly, it was the same door Johnson had been standing in front of when he called him over. Max entered, turned on the lights and immediately started looking for Sampson’s computer terminal, hoping what he was searching for would be near it. This lab was one of the largest, taking up three lab spaces. Immediately in front were several test displays of gray concrete-like blocks stacked on scales. At the far corner, Max found a likely spot for his objective: a lab cabinet with a monitor and desktop PC beside it. Below were multiple shelves and a single, locked drawer. He tried several keys until the lock clicked and the drawer slid open, revealing only two items: a small portable hard drive and a composition notebook with graph-paper pages and lots of mechanical drawings and illegible scribbling. Snatching a satchel on another table, he placed both objects inside. He locked the drawer, turned off the lights and headed to the Library. He would have to investigate those contents later and figure out who had been searching through Sampson’s apartment—and why.

  “Okay, now for the real cool stuff.” Max flashed a wide grin.

  He had met the Kings—Johnson excused himself, saying he was in a hurry—at the elevator entrance of the Recreational Center and School. They proceeded down one floor.

  “All who reside at Cicada have biometric access to where we’re going. I’ll get you into the system tomorrow because you’ll want to come down here… a lot. Also, this floor is only accessible by elevator—there are no stairs like in other buildings.”

  The elevator doors opened into an all-concrete hallway. Nondescript neon lights illuminated the small hall and its three doors.

  “We excavated this area down three floors. Where we’re going is the biggest open area in all of Cicada, other than the outside. The next floor down is much of our mechanical, electrical, ductwork, ventilation, etc. Below that is power storage.”

  Max stopped at a door marked Library. “So, here we are at—”

  “—the Library,” Sally finished, sounding sarcastic. “And me without my library card.”

  “You joke, but get a load of this.” Max pushed on the door and held it open for them.

  It was, in fact, a library… gigantic by any pre-Event measure. “We have over one hundred thousand volumes here.” He looked at each of their faces and saw the delight he had hoped for. “Everything from ancient Biblical texts to best-selling fiction. But this is nothing compared to what you’re about to see.”

  Max walked through a large reading area with tables and inviting chairs parked around them, each with stacks of books, piled in various configurations. At a glance, Sally thought it could have been any big public or university library. But then after the last table, there was a glass wall separating the Library from rows and rows of metal cabinets.

  They walked through a glass door and into a much cooler temperature.

  “Those are server racks,” Sally said with enthusiasm. “Looks like fifteen rows, with twenty racks in a row, and maybe, what, twelve servers per rack. Oh my God, that’s what, ten petabytes of storage?”

  “Actually thirty,” answered a woman’s voice from the back of the room as she strolled toward them.

  “That’s over thirty million gigs of storage space.” Sally continued her thought progression, not realizing that all eyes were on the woman coming their way. “You could store…” She thought about it.

  “Everything!” the woman, now standing in front of them, answered. “Well, not literally everything; certainly all of the important st
uff we need. We have the collective storage of all the public universities, the Library of Congress and thousands of information websites, including Wikipedia, all stored here. So when we figure out what the hell is going on outside and get back to normal, we’ll have most of the important knowledge base of humanity stored here to start again,” she finished with a big glowing grin.

  “Damn good to see you, Magdalena.” Max lifted her in a bear hug.

  After a long moment, she said, “I’m so glad you’re safe, Max. I thought I’d never see you again.” Her eyes were watery and happy. “Hi,” she said the others. “I’m Magdalena, but everyone here calls me Mags.”

  A large clunk sound echoed around the server room, and then they were plunged into darkness.

  “Uncle Max, what happened to the lights?” Sally screeched, trying to sound strong in front of Max’s pretty friend.

  “It’ll be okay; they’ll come on shortly,” Magdalena said resolutely.

  A couple of beeping noises from the UPS, protecting the servers from shutting down, chirped its desire for more power in the darkness.

  There was a crash and a thump, prompting shrieks from both Sally and Lisa.

  “Pendejo! Sorry, my bad. That was me.”

  “Magdalena, are you all right?” Alarm tinged Max’s voice.

  A light clicked on. “Yep, I’m so clumsy.” She was holding a flexible light plugged into the USB port of a laptop that rested on a worktable with several chairs. She shined it around the room—first on Sally and Lisa, who were holding onto each other. Sally was wiping away her tears before all could see them in the bright glare. Next, on Bill, who was walking over to his wife and daughter to offer comfort; then on Max, who was already there, staring down upon her with concern. Last, straight down, giving them all a place to walk to. “You’d best come over here and sit down; it might be a few hours before the power comes on.”

  5.

  Bios-2

  “You mean, almost a year after the Event, Maxwell Thompson finally shows up in the flesh?” Westerling said, sitting in his favorite office lounge chair, Lunder on the couch across from him. It was their daily meeting where they discussed all of B2’s security issues.

  “Yes, sir.” Some days, Lunder’s German accent was so thick it sounded to Westerling as if he had just arrived from the old country. “And they came in right when some of the Squatts were attacking.”

  “Did any of them get hurt?” he asked, eyebrows raised, expectant.

  “One of our moles bought it, a Dr. Sampson.”

  “Dammit! At least Sampson was expendable. Nothing incriminating left behind, I trust?”

  “Our guy says no and will check in with us tomorrow, I hope with more details.”

  “No one else?”

  “Thompson was only slightly hurt.”

  “That boy is sure damned lucky. Did the blast at least cause some damage?”

  “The north gate is in bad shape; they’re going to have to work hard to get that fixed, but it is definitely their weak point.”

  “Excellent. Be sure to get some more explosives into the Squatts’ hands. They seem to be making good use of it. See what you can do to step up their attacks, lend a hand if we need to. I would sure love to see Cicada fall, before they figure us out.”

  “You got it, boss.” Lunder wrote a note and checked off something else. “Next, the EMAs are all back up and ready.”

  “I love our ray guns.”

  “Yes, Dr. Reid said she found the problem, fixed it and we reinstalled them. I had one of my men test one out on some poor slob who was walking below the wall. It works great.”

  “I thought I saw the EPF go down this afternoon; now I understand why. Were all your men set for—”

  “—Yes, of course. As always, everyone was on high alert when we took the EPF down. So, all five EMAs are back up and covering nearly 100% of the area outside the walls. We’ll be ready if we have to service the EPF again. The Outsiders will stay back.”

  Westerling knew that the EMAs were vital to the protection of Bios-2, not so much as a first line of defense, but as a deterrent. Each was a truly awesome weapon that fired the equivalent of a lightning bolt. Anything it touched was instantly burned to a crispy marshmallow. But the damned thing had worse aim than a snub-nose .38. That’s why they installed a Taser-like dart that shot out of a barrel mounted below the EMA. The dart would hit the target, and then the EMA almost simultaneously blasted its deadly bolt of electricity, now with complete accuracy, up to four hundred meters. They only had one dart per gun; after that, the EMA’s electrical bolts would travel to the nearest ground in the general vicinity of the intended target. But the Outsiders didn’t know this. They also didn’t know that when B2’s generator went down, taking their Electric Protection Field, or EPF, with it, they only had two or three shots from all five of their EMAs. All the Outsiders knew was when one of those things was fired, its intended target was about to experience hell on earth.

  “Good. What else do you have for me?”

  “Well, speaking of Doctor Reid…”

  “Dr. Carrington Reid?”

  “No, his wife. Melanie Sinclaire-Reid, the NASA astronaut.” Lunder didn’t expect his boss to remember all the details, although it was more important that he know the pertinent particulars. “If you’ll recall, we separated the Reids and put her under guard for stirring the pot with the other scientists, trying to convince them to leave. Anyway, her guard”—he opened his notebook—“a Simon Washington…”

  “I know the kid, big and stupid, but loyal for comic books.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s him. Well, he caught them meeting up in the ladies’ room again.”

  “For what purpose?” Westerling asked and immediately realized, making a smirky O with his mouth and nodding affirmatively. “So, what’s the problem with this? They’re married, they miss each other.”

  “Well, it’s against the rules.”

  “They do good work, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but if everyone decided to break the rules they didn’t like, we’d have chaos.”

  “Fine, throw her in the brig for a few hours, and then put them back together. They should not be separated. Keep them under watch, but let them have their fun together. Of course, she can no longer stir the pot, or she’ll face longer jail time—or worse. Make it known to her.”

  “What about Mr. Reid?”

  “Leave him to me.”

  “Okay, but—”

  There was a knock on the door and Deanna—obviously tipsy again—stepped inside without asking for permission; she knew he hated this. Leanne broke free from her mother’s hand, rushed the span of his office and jumped in his lap.

  “Ooof. Geeze, you’re getting big, my baby-girl,” bellowed Westerling in his jolly Santa-like voice.

  “Crapaw, I’m six now. I’m a big girl.”

  “Daddy, I’m sorry, but Leanne was dying to show off her new dress to her grandfather.”

  “We done here?” he asked Lunder while bouncing his granddaughter on his lap. She yipped with glee after every jolt.

  “Yes sir. Everything else can wait until tom—”

  “Thanks, Lunder.” Westerling cut him off, not even looking back at him. His attention was on the only two people who mattered in his life.

  Leanne hopped off his lap and spun around so her dress flared out in a perfect cone.

  “Wow, that’s beautiful.” Westerling clapped merrily.

  Lunder closed the door behind him, miffed that two girls, even family, came before concluding their business.

  6.

  Bios-2

  A quick look around showed no one was paying much attention to her. Melanie drew one knee to her chest. About a dozen or so scientists were sitting with her at the picnic-style table, one of several in the dining room. She pretended to adjust the sock she wore over her shoe, leaned closer to the man nearest to her and whispered, “It’s time we break out of this place, but we have to be smart about it. What I want
to know is who is in. If you’re in, just turn your milk carton upside down, and we’ll count you and be in touch with you. Pass the word.”

  She rose abruptly and left the table, taking a square nutrient bar and her allotted murky glass of water from her tray and left the lunchroom.

  A few minutes later, Carrington and Rush—a big supporter and friend for both of them—walked down the middle of the room as Carrington dictated to him the name of each one choosing to be a part of their scheme. Within a couple minutes, their census was done. Over fifty percent of the scientists and workers had announced their desire to break out.

  Carrington smiled, remembering their interlude earlier.

  “She’s quite the planner,” Rush said.

  “Among other things,” he answered and grinned some more.

  When Melanie turned the corner of the hallway leading to their apartment, she knew she was up shit creek without a paddle. Two security guards, and not the usual dumb kind, were waiting for her.

  “Please come with us, Mrs. Reid,” said the larger of the two.

  “Dr. Reid, please. I think I earned that title.”

  They said nothing, both glaring at her.

  “Would you at least tell me where you’re taking me?” Her heart was thumping. She knew she had been caught. She thought the plan would work great because only a few even knew it was her idea to conduct the census at lunch break.

  “We’ve been ordered to take you to the brig, ma’am.”

  “What? For what?”

  “Dr. Reid,” said the shorter of the two, although he was still two inches over her, and she was nearly six feet. “Please don’t ask us any questions. We have a job to do. Someone will check in with you regarding the reasons why you’re in the brig.”

  “Just wanted to know what rights I have.”

  “Dr. Reid, you should know by now that you have no rights. So I’m asking you one last time to be quiet.”

  She may have been stubborn as a mule, but she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t say another word.