“Yes, so you should be!” came his English accent. Looking chastened, she held the child tighter. He sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s just…” The man then turned to Annabelle. “You probably don’t want to overhear all this, do you?”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Kassandra said. “These are trying times for us all. Where were you trying to get to?”
“My mother’s in Kent, England,” the man said. “We thought it might be safer to head there than to stay in a big city.” Annabelle nodded. “How about yourselves?” he continued.
“We were… just passing through,” Annabelle said. “I’m trying to get to Paris, actually, to my mother and sister. So, we’re trying to get to a big city, while you’re trying to get away from one.”
“Oh. Are you going to stay somewhere in Lyon?”
“We have nowhere. We thought there might be somewhere to sleep in the enclosed part of the city…”
“Oh. Well, anyway, I’m David, and this is my wife Vivianne.” The pretty, olive-skinned woman, sitting between him and Annabelle, looked up at them through her tears. Her hair had loose curls and wispy ends that caressed her neck. She continued stroking Etienne’s head, which rested on her lap.
“Do you guys… uh… live in Lyon?” Kassandra said.
“Yes,” Vivianne said. “In the underground section.”
“Ah.”
“Are you three together?”
“Yes.” Kassandra introduced herself and the others.
“You could… stay with us tonight, if you wanted,” Vivianne said.
Kassandra’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes.” Vivianne turned to her left. “That’s okay with you?”
“Sure,” came David’s grumpy response. He had short cropped brown hair, which was receding. His too-large forehead and nose looked slightly comical.
“Wow… thank you so much!” Annabelle said. “We won’t forget it. Really, we won’t.”
“It’s a small place,” David said.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s somewhere indoors, and safe,” Kassandra said. Angry, scared tones could be heard from other parts of the large bus’s upper deck. The vast work of art that was the outer shell of Lyon was now visible. It was a cylinder, many kilometers wide, glowing dull gold in the sunset. Its height was roughly a quarter of its width, and the roof sloped gently, as though it was a stick of rock that was cut cleanly at an angle. From this, two much narrower cylinders rose, one at each side. Their tops were also sliced off at the same angle, opposite to that of the main part. “Wow…” Kassandra said, as she squinted.
“Yeah, it’s pretty impressive,” David said.
“People live in the top part too?”
“Yes. It’s known as the sky level. One of the three levels of the city. The others are ground level, and lower, which is underground.”
The giant structure slowly drew closer, and then was suddenly out of their view as the bus entered a tunnel. Several minutes later, the vehicle entered an underground bus station. Its interior was of white ceramic tiles. Antonio, Kassandra and Annabelle took the escalator down and out of the bus, which was twice the size of those from previous centuries, and into a cacophony of noise and confusion. Vivianne clutched Etienne close, resting the sleeping child’s head on her shoulder, while David dragged their two duffel bags. “No luggage?” he said.
“No.” Annabelle said. “All we have is what we’re wearing.”
“Oh. Well, follow me.” Three gendarmes and three soldiers in camouflage, with their weapons prominently displayed, patrolled the concourse, as other buses arrived and disgorged their angry, frightened masses. The six people walked straight ahead through soulless white hallway. The travelers joined a throng of people at a bank of elevator cars. The line moved quickly, as the living room-sized cars filled up and were replaced by empty ones. “There,” David said, nodding at one of the doors. They slid open. The glowing words above them said: RUE BORCHAL. “Let’s go.” They packed into the car with a tired, agitated crowd. The smell of body odor was strong as most people grabbed subway-style straps that hung from the ceiling. The doors closed. It began to move, down at first, then sideways.
“Lower level?” Annabelle said.
“Yes,” David said. The wall to their left displayed a map of the city, black on a white background, with their current position denoted. Annabelle craned her neck to see past the other occupants, but only the top half of the map was visible. “The city is basically a hub and spoke system,” David said. “It’s much like a snowflake. Where we live is around eight kilometers west of the center.”
“Ah.”
“It’s only about another two minutes to get there.”
“Good.”
“I’m very tired,” Antonio said. “We’ve been traveling for over a day, and getting nowhere fast.”
Annabelle studied Vivianne’s face. Vivianne closed her eyes, and held Etienne with both arms. She was only prevented from falling over by the mass of people jammed in around them. Conversation around them was muted. The car decelerated gradually, and pulled into a station. The doors opened, and the six travelers jostled their way out. Annabelle, Kassandra and Antonio looked around. The road was a wide tunnel, rectangular in cross section, cut straight from the rock. It stretched further than they could see in both directions. Its dark concrete roof was low. Harsh lights at the edge of the roof, every few meters, were the only illumination. This gave it a close, claustrophobic feel, despite the street having wide sidewalks and three lanes of traffic in both directions. The sidewalks were lined with lighted storefronts of various kinds. The food outlets were closed, and small groups of people gathered outside their doors. Vehicles whooshed by in both directions. “This is Rue Borchal,” David said, “such as it is. This way.” The small group shuffled off along Rue Borchal, left from the exit of the station, with David and Vivianne taking the lead.
“Can you walk, baby?” Vivianne said to Etienne, setting her down. The toddler took Vivianne’s right hand. They slowed down to accommodate her speed.
“This is going to take forever,” David huffed, after half a minute. He scooped the little girl up. Another two minutes’ walking brought them to a left turn. “This is our street.” Rue Delacort had all the charm of a highway underpass. It was narrower than Rue Borchal. The still too-close roof was black. Instead of being studded with lights every few meters, however, it bore recessed strip lighting in two lines, a few meters apart, parallel to the road, which angled in and crisscrossed each other every so often. There were no shops. Each of the regimented apartment fronts was gray concrete, with a sky blue front door. Annabelle, Kassandra and Antonio exchanged looks with raised eyebrows, behind the others’ backs. A few cars swooshed past. “Here we are,” David said brightly, after perhaps two minutes of walking. The clunk of an electronic lock was heard on their left, and the front door swung inwards. It bore the number 11789.
Vivianne entered first, and set Etienne down just inside the door. David looked annoyed, as he tried to squeeze his way past without success. “We’re home, baby. Are you hungry?” Vivianne said. The sleepy child nodded. “Okay,” Vivianne said, taking her hand and leading her down a short hallway.
“Well, this is it,” David said. “Come in.” The other three entered, and stood in the hall, looking at each other awkwardly. “I’ll give you the grand tour,” David said. The hall extended straight back from the front door. There were two doors on the left and two on the right. “This is the living room,” David said, opening the first door on the right. The three travelers poked their heads in. The décor was a bland off-white color. The front of the room was deep black: it was their display, currently switched off. A light-colored, striped three-seater couch and an armchair completed the picture. “Bathroom is next,” David said, opening the next door on the right to reveal a basic light blue-tiled space. “Then there are ours and Etienne’s rooms here,” he said, indicating the doors on the left. A ginger and white-striped cat walked towards them from the far
end of the hall, meowing and purring, tail held in the air. “Hi Vlad,” David said to it, pausing to tickle it behind the ears.
David then walked to the end of the hall. It opened out into a small light yellow open-plan kitchen. The back wall was a screen, also switched off. Etienne sat awkwardly atop a bar stool pulled up to the breakfast bar on the side of the counter farthest from the small sink. “We have the NBH system here,” Vivianne said, indicating a white unit the size of a large microwave, on the counter to the right as viewed from the door.
“NBH?” Antonio said.
“Nutritionally balanced homogenate,” Vivianne said. “It’s kind of a nutritional goo that’s piped straight into the machine, which can make almost any meal from it. We also have a small electric range, in case we have to cook something else.” This was a countertop unit, located next to the NBH. Next to that was a refrigerator, with a brushed metal finish.
“Very… nice,” Annabelle said, scanning the kitchen.
“You three look exhausted,” David said.
“We are,” Kassandra said.
“I’m afraid all we have are a few extra blankets.”
“That’s okay. It beats trying to sleep rough somewhere,” Annabelle said.
“Let me get them for you,” David said. He entered his and Vivianne’s room, returning a moment later. “The only space we have is the living room.”
“Okay.”
David set the large pile of blankets on the floor, and then headed back into the kitchen. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Thanks.”
As soon as the door closed, Antonio said: “I had no idea people lived like this,” gesticulating wildly with his hands. “I know France has the Share system, but they live underground like rabbits! And this apartment…”
“I know, right!” Kassandra said.
Annabelle looked angry. “Shhh! They might be able to hear us! Besides, you should be grateful they opened their home to us. They didn’t have to do it. Who knows where we’d be now if they hadn’t?”
“Hmph,” Kassandra said. “I hope things get better soon.” Antonio’s brow furrowed as he laid out a yellow blanket on the floor. All three bedded down as best they could. Couch cushions were used as pillows. They were asleep before anyone thought to turn off the light.
----
“Some bandwidth to Earth just opened up!” Kato yelled excitedly, as he stood near the front of the bridge of Revenant.
“Woohoo!” Zara yelled, from her seat five meters away. “Call Kassandra.” She heard static. A few seconds later, ringing.
“Mom!”
“Oh my God, sweetie! Are you okay?”
“Yes!”
“Where are you?”
“Lyon. We got stuck...” The line went dead.
“Kassie? Are you there? Talk to me, baby! Dammit!” Zara turned quickly to her left. “Akio! She's okay!”
Kato wondered aloud: “Who to call first… hmm… right… call Jose Hernandez.”
“Kato!” came the voice of ISI’s Chief Operating Officer.
“Jose! Give me the five-minute digest. What the hell's going on down there?”
“It's total chaos, as you can imagine,” came the breathless voice. “I guess you must be near Earth, since there doesn't seem to be a lag. Anyway, the big news is the FSA is appropriating all our ships to get people off of Mars!”
“LIKE HELL THEY ARE! Do not let them!”
“Uhh... don't shoot the messeng...” The line went dead.
“Damn! Jose? Jose? Call me back… okay… calm down. What to do… call General Phillips.”
“What’s up, Kato?” Phillips answered from his cabin.
“Can you get messages through on military channels?”
“No civilian messages, I’m afraid.”
“General, they’re going to take all ISI’s ships to evacuate Mars!”
“What?”
“I need to get all our assets away from Earth. I gotta get orders through. Jose didn’t get a chance to acknowledge it when I told him to do it. Is there any way you can get a message through for me?”
The General sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. I’d be risking my neck, since I’d have to have the cooperation of someone at the Pentagon.”
“Thanks, General. Again, the fleet’s at America’s disposal. Not for caving to that sucker, but for fighting back.”
“I’ll get it done, Kato. How will ISI know the order’s really from you, though, and not the Pentagon?”
“I’ll record a video.”
“Good enough.” The General paused for a second. “I’m guessing they’ll lift the quarantine on Earth soon if they’re going to evacuate Mars. They’ll have to. Haven’t heard anything about it yet, though.”
“It’s going to be broken as soon as our Earth-to-orbit shuttles take off anyway. Not sure where we’ll park them yet, nor where to put the warp ships. The FSE can take somebody else’s fleet, though. They’re not getting mine.”
Korolev entered the bridge and strode purposefully up to Kato. “I’ve got it!”
Kato looked nonplussed. “Got what?”
“How Seung Yi and his cohorts survived all this time, inside a space rock with no known contact with the outside world!”
“I’d been wondering that myself,” Kato said. “They could have been in hibernation. Only problem with that is they had to have been reanimated for at least thirty years to have deployed the Extinction Switch…”
“The Venter Curve, Kato. They got MCTs: Matter Creation Technology.”
“I know what it means!”
“Right. Well, Jessica Venter theorized back in 2230 that if you got enough MCT machines, they can create all the food, water and air needed to sustain a population. They’d have no need of an atmosphere, farming, or trade with other civilizations. Then, add in a few extra machines, and you can create more MCTs. You then have a snowball effect. The population can grow exponentially, without restriction.”
MCT machines were units about the size of a house, containing their own zero-point power source to supply the vast amounts of energy needed to create new matter from scratch. Literally anything could be created, albeit slowly. The matter creation chamber was roughly the size of a refrigerator. One of the most innovative uses was to heal and upgrade the human body with new cells, since material could be created with micrometer-level accuracy.
----
The living room smelled stuffy and sweaty, as Kassandra, Annabelle, Antonio, David and Vivianne packed into it to watch the news. “Two days have now passed since the demands of a despot, thought to be long dead, were made, and backed up with the deaths of an estimated six billion people,” the newscaster said. “Every country on the planet is in chaos, as governments struggle to maintain control of society. In France, the organized crime group known as Block B is very active in theft and extortion. Government officials who have long been suspected of corruption and association with Block B are being rounded up. However, the main breaking news at this point is that Mars' government has announced it is officially cooperating with the evacuation of the planet's thirty-nine million people. Mars’ citizens, however, have said a resounding no to this plan. They are forming an army, known as the Martian Defense Force, and vowing to fight their extradition to Earth with force. Their leader, Uzziah Kysley, based in Marineris, gave the following statement: ‘Mars is our home. Most of us have grown up here, and own property on Mars. We will not allow it to be taken from us, by the so-called civilization of Vesta, or anyone else. We are already manufacturing weapons. We will fight to the last man.’
“What the flying f…?” David bellowed. “They'll use the Extinction Switch on everyone on Earth if they can't occupy Mars! The Martians are going to put the rights of forty million ahead of the lives of twenty-one billion!”
The newscaster touched her ear. “We have just received word that President Legrand is about to address the French people. We're switching to Parliament now.”
The gr
ay-haired, weary-looking president leaned forward onto the podium, as if using it for support. The camera flashes were almost continuous. “As you know, this is the most grievous chapter in the history of France, and of all humanity,” he began. “Parliament has met privately around the clock since the crisis began. We have consulted with experts in every field imaginable. We now have a plan to safeguard our citizens.” He drew a deep breath, took a sip from a bottle of water, and continued, “The nanovirus on which the Extinction Switch depends has to be activated by a remote radio signal. This signal probably cannot penetrate rock. Therefore, to be protected from it, we will become an underground society. Construction will begin right away on a new civilization below ground. All vertical farms will be moved below ground, as indeed the ones that serve the existing underground cities already are. Living space will be created for every French man, woman and child. After that, schools, parks, work spaces, and recreation facilities will be created. Eventually, giant caverns will be opened up, with simulated weather. Air will be drawn in from outside. Those wearing lead-lined suits will still be able to roam above ground. However, the fundamental nature of human existence must be altered in response to this threat. Construction and tunneling work will begin immediately, using every robot, tunnel boring machine, and human available. You will be drafted and put to work according to your abilities. Those already living underground will be required to either house more people in their residence or, in some cases, give up their home entirely. We will keep you informed as further developments happen. Thank you, and may God bless and keep us all.”
David and Vivianne looked at each other, speechless, their faces as white as ghosts. Kassandra, Annabelle and Antonio looked at them. David eventually spoke, “A wholly underground society? I bet they’ll try and stuff lots of other people in this apartment too!”
“At least we'll live, though,” Vivianne said. “So will Etienne, and everyone else they can fit down here. Think about that.”
David looked over at Etienne. “She'll never know there was any kind of life other than underground… Crap! Will I ever be able to get back to England? What about Mum? Will the UK do anything like this for its citizens?”
The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series Page 4