by Paul Teague
Although the falling of the darkness has been frightening enough, I’ve a nasty feeling that it’s just the beginning of something much bigger. I’m also very concerned that I’m living on borrowed time at the moment. I still don’t understand why I have access to this bunker, it has to be a mistake or an error. Let’s face it, where tech is involved, it wouldn’t be the first time!
Yet what was it that Dad had said in the video? ‘Dan, there’s something special about you that makes you really important in all this ...’ And why was Dr Pierce there with him? So many questions, no chance of any answers yet. The next best thing is to do what Dad had said - go to Level 3 - then to catch up with Mum’s pal James to see what he can tell me. He should be clear of the MedLab by that stage, and I need to speak with him alone. I need to know if he managed to make contact with Mum. Whatever happened, she wasn’t in the entrance area when I returned, so maybe it didn’t work out.
I head off down the corridor to make for the lift. There are a few people going in and out of the lift when I finally reach it, so I wait for it to clear, then make my own way in. I don’t want anybody to see me pressing the buttons for Level 3. That’s my little secret for now. The lift descends and the doors open. I’m greeted for the second time by the thick, red stripe running along each side of the wall. There is nobody to be seen in this area, no sign of activity. The best course of action seems to be to follow that red line, to see where it takes me. The layout of this level is completely different to the areas above me.
The upper two levels, although they have completely transformed, maintain the essential structure and layout of the original Cold War bunker. So the rooms are the same size and same position, they just look like they’ve had the most amazing makeover in the world. This level looks like it has been built and designed separately. Maybe it was added after the initial bunker was built. Perhaps it has been here all the time. It is much bigger than the two upper levels. What is immediately clear to me is that this area is deserted. If there is anybody down here, I can’t hear them, that’s for sure. The other big difference on this level is that there are no Green or Red Zone areas. We appear to have moved through the colour palette once again. The areas here are Blue Zone and Purple Zone.
I come to the first of the doorways off this long corridor and place my hand on the entry panel. So far this has worked for me in Green and Red Zones - I’m nervous, but I need to try my luck here too. The door slides open. Incredible. And there are no alarms. Why can I do this? I’m stunned by what I see. This is like an underground barracks of some sort, it’s clearly meant to house a lot of people, and it’s divided into self-contained areas of 12 beds. It’s sleeping quarters, bathrooms and showers for a lot of people maybe 500 at a rough guess. 12 beds, four bathrooms, two large shower areas per dozen people. This is no Paradise Hotel, I’d guess this is Military if all these people are housed together like this. It’s battery farming for humans. There’s a sense of waiting in this room - of expectation.
Whatever its intended use, it is clearly not needed right now. I exit this huge area and re-enter the corridor. I make my way to the door opposite. Once again, it opens for me, even though this is marked as a Purple Zone. The door opens. I seem to have complete access to this place. Except for those strangely marked buttons in the lift. They give me a jolt of activity, but they don’t actually take me anywhere, they won’t activate for me.
If I was surprised by that last room, I’m shocked by this one. It is full of what is quite obviously weaponry. The like of which I’ve never seen before. This is really hi-tech kit, recognisable for what it is, but not like anything I’ve ever seen on TV - except in sci-fi films perhaps. And the Military uniforms are light and metallic, they look more like they’d be used in space than on a battlefield. Once again, there is no sign of activity or usage here. Just a sense that this equipment is being stored. Ready at a moment’s notice to be deployed. For something that might happen in the future.
That seems to be all there is on this level, just two very large areas, Military in nature I’d say, but presently unused. I’m about to make my way back to the lift, when I notice that there is a final door, right at the end of the long corridor. I half expect it to be a broom cupboard, it’s tucked so far out of the way. It’s another Purple Zone area. I place my hand on the access pad. The door slides open.
I walk into a massive operations centre, packed with screens, terminals, displays and workstations. It is far more portentous that the one on the floor above me, whatever goes on here, it’s the full works. It is powered up, and on the massive screen that is the focus of this room is a computer generated 3D image of the Earth. At a rough guess I’d say that this is monitoring the spread of the darkness across the planet surface. We appear to be at 96% coverage according to the stats on the screen, it’s pretty easy to assess what’s going on here.
Each of the workstations has a nameplate on it: Jones, Swift, Lucas, Taylor and so on. But it’s the raised workstation at the front on this room that particularly catches my attention. This work area has its own Zone colour. This time it’s Black Zone. There is an access pad on the desk, so I place my hand on it. It seems like the workstation is about to leap into life, then it stalls. A bright red laser-like light is released from the pad and it appears to scan my eyes. I blink in surprise at first, then it resets and tries again. This time I keep still and the scan is complete.
The entire workstation is powered up in an instant. Once again I seem to have gained access to a new zone area without any trouble. If this is a technical error, somebody in IT is in for a big dressing down. It’s not the tech that draws my attention, even though it is quite astounding stuff. It’s the nameplate on this particular workstation that I notice. This is clearly where the ‘boss’ sits. It’s raised up and has a lot more technical apparatus than any of the other workstations. But it is that name which warrants most attention here. It reads ‘Doctor Harold Pierce’.
MedLab
James is escorted to the MedLab by the security team and he is scanned for injuries. The doctor notes the metal plates in his head with great medical interest. ‘How did you get those?’ she asks, mostly in conversation, because she can see exactly where they came from on the medical records which are currently displaying on her screen.
‘It’s a long story!’ laughs James, and he lets her get on with her tests. ‘No concussion at least,’ the doctor announces, ‘I suggest that you rest here until the mission briefing at 20:00 and if you’re feeling okay by then, you’re clear to return to your station.’
‘No problem,’ said James. It was the perfect solution. With clearance to be away from his station, that should give him time to catch up with Amy and find out what’s going on. After all these years, why should they have been brought together once again - and in this place? There’s no way this could be a coincidence and he needed to find out why as soon as possible. Especially as they’ve both seen equipment like this before. It’s just like the room where they shot each other all those years ago.
Stealth
Although he’d never actually been inside this place, he knew the drill already. With the alarms now sounding throughout the bunker, he’d be able to slip in unnoticed during the confusion that followed.
This bunker was standard procedure for The Consortium, with its Green, Red, Blue, Purple and Black Zones. Green Zone was available to everybody who had biometrics clearance for Consortium buildings. That included him fortunately, which meant that ducking into one of the first rooms that he encountered resulted in his grabbing a uniform and name badge. Red Zone was management level, he should be able to access those areas too. Nothing too secure at Red Zone level, just MedLab facilities, Control Room areas, Stasis rooms and some limited weaponry where it was required. Blue was Military operations only. He’d had Blue Zone access previously, but it tended to be mission dependent, the sort of access given to serving troops on a particular mission. Purple Zone was well out of his clearance level - at that stage you
were dealing with some serious issues.
If E-Troopers were involved, something really nasty was going on. And then there was Black Zone access. He’d never even got a sniff of that, it was security clearance at the very highest rank. Even Global leaders within the Consortium didn’t get that. Black Zone access was in the hands of a very small group of designated people in whose charge rested massive power and responsibility. It was probably in those Black Zone areas that the answer to this mystery lay.
He quickly changed into a uniform so that he blended in. He had sufficient access to this place to be able to make his way around without any trouble, but he was going to need to find a way to access other Zone areas. If he could get to the child, it was his guess that that problem would be solved. Instant access to all areas. As he opened the door to re-enter the corridor, he quickly ducked back into the room again to avoid the security team who were escorting the man he’d just seen at the bunker entrance. He’d caught his name badge as they passed: ‘James’. Judging from the colour of that man’s uniform, he was Control Room staff which meant that there would probably be an unmanned terminal available in the Control Room.
If he could access the internal mainframe, he’d be able to get an idea of where the heart of this place was. Once he’d located and accessed the Black Zone, the chances were that the answers he was seeking would be found there.
Extraction
This final mission was more hurried than The Consortium would have liked - a year ahead of schedule - because the drilling had hastened the planet’s doom. A process that had begun so innocently in the Nineteenth Century, perfected at scale in the 20th Century and then unleashed across the surface of the planet in the 21st Century. It was as if men couldn’t help themselves.
But with industry and commerce hungry to consume resources, this destructive, ravaging process couldn’t be stopped even though at the very highest levels of world leadership, it had long been understood where this would all lead. And how soon it would all begin to happen. But the people who denied the planet of its natural resources hadn’t the instruments to measure the damage that they were doing.
So they’d continued in ignorance since the beginning of the industrial age, believing that the end would be some distant time far away in the future. A problem for future generations to solve in hundreds or thousands of years’ time. But the problem was very real and it had to be solved now. Even sooner that even they had anticipated.
Undercover
If anybody had actually been able to monitor the cameras in the long entrance corridor, the bunker would have looked like the most insecure facility that you could possibly imagine. But if nobody is expecting anything to happen, then nobody is looking for it. This was a routine operation, there were no security issues anticipated. It was James who’d marked the perimeters clear, James who’d disabled the cameras and James who’d opened the bunker door. Nobody else was any the wiser. So Amy and her young companion, following only minutes behind the armed man who’d just sneaked by them at the bunker entrance, managed to exit from the long corridor just in time to avoid Kate and the security team.
It had been a real ‘skin of the teeth’ moment though. As they’d reached the end of the corridor, they’d tried to duck into the first door that they came across. Amy had pushed it, tried sliding it and then realised that entry must be given via the pad to the side of the door. At first she pressed it, then she pushed it, then she thumped it. The door didn’t open. The sound of footsteps could be heard approaching along the corridor. Her young companion touched the pad and the door slid open.
They got in just in time to avoid a determined-looking Kate and her security team. Amy was desperate to talk to her new companion, but knew that they’d need a plan first. They had to try and blend in in some way, but everybody else here was dressed in a uniform. They were in civilian clothing, that didn’t look like a good bet for going unnoticed in this place. The room they’d entered was a dormitory, so it was lined with beds, small wardrobes and bedside storage tables. Pretty sparse really. It was a pretty good bet that there would be some clothing in here, so she started to search frantically, looking for one of the grey uniforms that James had been wearing. Frustrated, she found an orange uniform first, but that’s what the security staff wore, that was perhaps not the best thing for to her to wear right now. More searching and finally success. She found a grey uniform and the sizing was good. She got changed as quickly as she could and turned to the child to see if they’d be lucky enough to find a second uniform. But her young companion had gone.
Chapter Five
Solution
It had taken only a couple of hundred years of industrial activity for humans to destroy the planet. As it would turn out, their consumption of Earth’s resources had proven as foolhardy as thinking that you could sail off the edge of the earth or that the earth is the centre of the universe.
Theories that are easily debunked when you have the tools and knowledge to disprove them. Hilarious when viewed with the benefit of hindsight. So it would be with man’s industrial phase on earth. In centuries to come, scholars would laugh at how men once thought that they could endlessly plunder the earth’s resources with impunity. ‘How could they ever have thought that?’ they would cry in astonishment.
There was only one solution to rescue this dying planet, and The Consortium knew that it would have to be done. It was a matter of survival now, the planet had maybe 10 years left before the critical point was reached. It couldn’t be done without their help, they’d have to accept the only real prospect that was still available.
The Earth was going to have to be saved using very drastic measures. It would require environmental alteration. Carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere. It would be seeded with algae to convert nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water into organic compounds.
Microbial life would be introduced, geophysical and geochemical processes would be implemented. The earth’s geology and planetary biosphere would require complete recalibration. These processes had once upon a time been proposed for Mars and Venus. Now they were urgently needed on our own planet. If earth was to survive this impending catastrophe, it would require something radical and unique. The entire planet was about to be terraformed.
Clarity
Amy was momentarily stunned. Only moments ago she’d left her companion standing by the door, now she was on her own. She allowed herself an expletive. Normally she was very controlled in front of the children, but she was an adult and this situation required a swear word. Her emotions were running furiously, she’d had a lot to take it in a very short amount of time. And she needed to know what had happened to her family - she was desperate to find out if they were okay. Amy made for the door and had her previous lack of success with opening it. First she pressed - as was instinctive - then she pushed, then she remembered how it had opened the first time. She placed her hand on the pad - it opened.
She stepped outside in the corridor, scanned for any other bunker staff in the area, and when the coast was clear, she tried her hand on the door pad again. It wouldn’t open. Okay, so it looked like you needed special access to get inside rooms, but once inside, you could easily get out again. She’d need to be careful to follow other people into rooms, try to avoid getting caught without access. There was a long list of people that she needed to locate. And she hadn’t even worked out yet if there was a problem with her being in the bunker.
She knew enough about military life to understand that it was very unlikely that there would be freedom of movement for civilians, so stealth mode seemed to be the best bet for now. She would need to summon the nerve to walk confidently through the corridors, any hint of looking furtive or suspicious and they’d be onto her.
Amy walked along the corridor, aware of the surveillance cameras overhead and trying to get a sense of what this place had become since she last walked along here. It was very obvious that some amazing changes had taken place, and whatever was going on outside, the pe
ople in this bunker were clearly connected with it all in some way. Everything here had the feel of military efficiency, but this was not the Military that she’d known. Here there was no expense spared, the quality, newness and technology used in everything that she saw was beyond her own experience.
She decided to try to pick up a main flow of movement through the bunker and to follow that to the centre. Wherever she ended up, it would probably enable her to glean a little more information at least - and get a feel for what was going on here. As she walked along the corridor, she became suddenly aware of a person walking quickly behind and gaining on her. They were walking with purpose, at some pace. She wanted to hurry, to run - and even to look back - but she knew she had to stay calm and continue walking at a steady pace. The person caught up with her and grabbed her arm. ‘Come with me!’
Glimpse
So Dr Pierce is connected with all of this in some way. I’d never known his first name - he’d always been ‘Dr Pierce’ when I’d encountered him at school - but this has to be the same person, it’s just too much of a coincidence. And in the video message from Dad, he’d been with Dr Pierce at the time. Dad had told me to find Level 3. Well, here I am and this is Dr Pierce’s desk … but no sign of Dr Pierce himself. I’m supposed to find out what’s going on here. I lay my mobile phone on the desk, might as well get rid of this somewhere safe, it’s no use to me right now.
I scan the screens at the workstation, but everything seems to be set on that graphic of the earth. The darkness appears to be at 98% now, looking at the time, I’m guessing that we get the mission statement at 8pm, when it reaches 100%. That would make sense, but I’m only guessing here. Maybe putting 2+2 together and ending up with 5. There’s nothing more to be done here as far as I can see.
I scan the work area once again, there’s no sign of Dr Pierce, nothing on any of the screens that gives me a clue and no sign even that anybody has been here recently. A dead end. I decide to move back towards the lift to check out Level 4. I have a nasty feeling that I’m not going to be able to gain any ground here, I think I’ll have to wait until the briefing at 8 o’clock to get some clarity.