Beyond the Event Horizon - Episode Three

by Albert Sartison

  Footsteps could be heard inside the apartment. Someone was coming to the door on tiptoes, barefoot. Again there was silence, broken only by the whisper of light rain hitting the glass of the panoramic windows looking out onto the side street. Maybe he had imagined the footsteps?

  “John... is that you?” whispered a voice from behind the door. It was so quiet that the words were barely audible. He wasn’t even sure that he hadn’t imagined them.

  “It’s me,” he replied, just as quietly.

  There was the loud click of a lock and the door opened slightly. The light in the apartment was switched off and, just like the evening they first met, John could only see a silhouette and a few facial features. How many years had it been since he’d seen her? Twenty? Twenty-five? And she looked exactly the same.

  “How did you know it was me?” he asked.

  Jena just shrugged her shoulders. She also had the same gestures as twenty years ago.

  “I don’t know, I just knew,” she replied.

  Still standing in the doorway to her apartment, John felt for her warm hand in the darkness. She didn’t resist, but neither did she return the gesture. He didn’t know what to say. Explaining himself somehow would have been foolish, but remaining silent was also out of the question.

  “Jena, I...” he began tentatively, as she suddenly pulled his hand towards her. He stepped inside and took another step forward, closing the distance between them, and he could feel her chest pressing against him. The door closed slowly behind him and the lock clicked.

  “No foolish words,” she whispered as she moved towards the bedroom, taking him with her.

  13

  John opened his eyes and saw that it was already starting to get light outside. Little by little, the approaching dawn was filling the bedroom with its light. Jena was still asleep and snuffling slightly, her head on his shoulder. He carefully disentangled himself and got up to go over to the window.

  Having spent several years with Jena in his younger days, he thought he had uncovered all the mysteries he saw that New Year’s evening in her dark eyes and in the droplets of rain in her hair reflecting the sparks of the fireworks. Why exactly he had decided to seek her out yesterday he had no idea. It was like some long-standing dependence that had seemingly been conquered long ago and hidden deep within, but which turns out to be capable of breaking to the surface unchecked at any moment. Having allowed himself a moment of weakness, he felt not only indescribably free, but also peaceful and calm for the first time in years. Jena was his strange, incomprehensible drug. You never knew what it would do the next time.

  “Is something troubling you?” John heard her say and he jumped in surprise, having assumed she was still sleeping.

  “In my job, there’s always something to be troubled about.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case here, I think it’s something particular.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I would, but I can’t.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  John turned his back to the window and leaned back on the windowsill.

  “There’s a really urgent matter I need to make a decision about. If something goes wrong, there won’t be a chance to fix it.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Do you think I’m too trusting...”

  “Of people?”

  “...Of anything and everything.”

  “You? Well... maybe a little bit.”

  She sat on the bed, not bothering to cover herself with a sheet, and John took the opportunity to admire her naked body.

  “Do you think I should be more cautious?”

  “I think you should be exactly as you are.”

  “Come on!”

  “Is there anybody in your team who’s less naive than you?”

  “Of course; it’s full of them. They see through people straight away.”

  “And they’re your superiors...”

  “No, of course not!”

  Jena got up from the bed and went over to the window. Putting her hands on his shoulders, she began to examine his face.

  “Why not, if they’re so good at understanding people? Listen, you got to where you are today by being exactly as you are. Clever, cunning, and a little naive,” she said, passing her hand over his head and letting his hair slip through her fingers.

  He caught hold of her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  “That’s also true,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  “Lady Luck spoils you for who you are,” she said, tilting her head to one side. “She’s gotten used to you over the years. If you suddenly changed your personality, she might not recognise you.”

  Half an hour later, the president was already seated in an armoured minivan with heavily tinted windows speeding him away from where he had spent the previous night with Jena. Putting his feet up on the seat in front of him, he thought about her words as buildings, traffic lights and streets sped past the window.

  An identical minivan was following them a short distance behind. As the modest, inconspicuous motorcade reached the edge of Island City’s residential area, it picked up speed.

  The wide, elevated road stretched out in front of them as far as the eye could see. Where it disappeared, as if into the sky itself, the factory chimneys of the industrial district could be seen in the morning fog, while aquaculture lakes gleamed below them, under the road. From such a low height, their perfect geometric shape seemed particularly unnatural, giving the impression that they were somehow unreal.

  Every now and again, the fish teeming in the water would jump out, their scales shimmering in the light of the rising sun. The fishes’ muscular bodies, with their black backs and white bellies, jumped out of the lapping coolness, scattering glittering drops of water in every direction, and hung in the air for a second before flopping back in, throwing up even more spray.

  Sitting next to the window, the president feasted his eyes on the frolicking fish. Long ago, when he was still a boy, he used to come here to catch fish with his friends, although his parents forbade it. The tame fish were so naive that you could just grab them with your hands. All you had to do was approach the shore and the curious fish would gather there in a shoal to see who was coming. After catching and gutting the fish, they would cook them on a campfire, feeling like real savages. Everything was man-made on the island that was their floating city except for the taste of that freshly-cooked fish, steeped in smoke.

  Looking through the window at the lakes speeding past, he could see the shadow of what looked like a large animal flying over them. The president glanced through the windscreen and saw a military ship passing them overhead. Overtaking them slightly, it reduced speed and began to lower itself directly onto the overpass. It looked like its belly was almost going to touch the asphalt.

  The president’s minivan gradually caught up with the ship and, when the distance had been reduced to a good hundred metres, the ship opened its cargo compartment. Every so often, the open ramp scraped along the dark road surface, sending up showers of sparks. Inside the ship, a dozen people wearing the uniform of the space fleet could be seen in the darkness. They stood along both sides of the walls, holding on to handrails and signalling to the minivan’s driver. As he got closer, he sped up suddenly and drove straight into the belly of the ship at full speed. A few seconds later, the second minivan followed them in.

  The ship retracted the ramp, closed the hatch and turned towards the sea, soaring skywards.

  14

  “John, have you decided yet where the meeting is to be held?”

  The president knew that such a question meant that the head of security had already thought of a suitable venue.

  “Do you have a suggestion?” he asked, answering one question with another.

  “How about Poseidon?”

  “You mean the underwater hotel?”

  “That’s right. It’s directly under the central park. The othe
rs will be able to get there before you do.”

  “I’ve no objection.”

  Dennis moved away and said something quietly into a microphone. The ship at once picked up speed, passing around the city to come in to land from the other side. It was as if he had decided on an excursion so that John, who had not visited the city for a number of years, could admire it from the air.

  The president stayed close to the window. On this sunny, cloudless day, even from a height of five kilometres, it was apparent how greatly the floating city, his birthplace, had changed over the years since he was last here. In the east, at the end of the aquaculture lakes where fish were bred for the city’s needs, it had considerably increased in area. But instead of housing complexes, industrial buildings could be seen, and smoke rose from the numerous chimneys. Many new tall buildings he had never seen before had been erected in the city centre. John was not absolutely sure, but it looked as if the city now also extended further to the south.

  Quickly flying around the city, the ship came in to land, and he realised it intended to come down somewhere in the ocean several miles from the shore, where a submarine cutter was waiting for it.

  John had never liked travelling under the city. He did not suffer from claustrophobia, but all the same, the sight of the city from underneath, like a floating monster, always induced a sense of horror in him. The gigantic floating foundation platform on which the city rested was overgrown on the underside with slime and water weeds, creating a gloomy impression. The ocean underneath was lifeless, since the area of the platform was so great that it blocked out the sun, leaving the area in pitch darkness.

  Having taken the president on board, the cutter submerged several metres and set off towards the city. Bright gleaming sunbeams came in through the portholes, coloured azure by the ocean. The huge shadow of the city approached threateningly, and in a few minutes had covered the cutter completely. The merry morning sunbeams were lost from sight and the water outside changed to a greenish colour. The cutter went deeper. A little further and they were under the city.

  The multi-billion ton structure, drifting only a few dozen metres overhead, produced a chorus of plaintive noises. The metal components reinforcing the structure groaned under the weight, filling the nearby ocean around it with low-frequency vibrations, sounding at one point like the songs of the whales that occasionally swam towards the city, apparently out of curiosity. The whale song was gradually replaced by creaks, creating the impression that at any moment one of the steel girders would fail and break, destroying part of the foundation and taking thousands of inhabitants to the depths of the ocean with it. It was now completely dark outside. The president stayed in his seat and listened, wincing, to the floating structure’s song. The surface was probably teeming with joyful life, but down here he felt himself entombed.

  Finally, a light glimmered in front of them. They had almost reached their destination. The cutter surfaced right inside the underwater hotel, where several other submarine cutters were moored in a huge pool. John hastened to leave his cutter, inside which, even though it was now on the surface, the songs of the city’s dark side could still be heard. He followed the guard into the conference hall, where several people were already waiting for him.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Please excuse the invitation at such short notice,” he began, while shaking hands with those present. “Let’s get down to business.”

  He pointed to the chairs in the front row, but remained standing in front of them.

  “I need your help as specialists. Now is not the time to go into all the details. We’ll have time enough for that later.

  “In a few minutes, you will be attending a conference on the most important project in the history of mankind. There are no cameras here, I am not speaking publicly, so I am not exaggerating in the least. You will be taken to the heart of the matter. It is important to me that you give your assessment. You should answer the question absolutely intuitively, without long discussions or calculations. Yes or no. What your inner voice tells you. The voice of people able to see into the future.”

  The president stopped for a theatrical pause, then turned to the oldest of those present.

  “Chris, I was not even born when you began working on the project for this city. You must remember how it all began!”

  “Certainly, Mr. President. The capacity calculated for the floating platform of the city’s first module was up to ten thousand people, and the absolute theoretical maximum was assumed to be about fifty thousand.”

  The president spread his arms, as if trying to embrace the whole city.

  “And today? Almost ten million! Gentlemen, the power of your engineering thought created this splendid city.”

  “Ten point three, Mr. President, to be precise. There has been a real boom in construction here in recent years. We can barely cope with all the new floating modules we are putting into service,” said one of the engineers, correcting him.

  The president went up to him.

  “That’s what I mean,” he said softly. “The power of our intelligence knows no bounds.”

  After this, he signalled for the video conference to begin. Most of the ‘Dawn’ team were already online.

  “Gentlemen,” the president said to them. “I have with me here in the hall the world’s greatest specialists in floating platforms. Professor Shelby, could you bring us up to date in a few words?”

  “Certainly,” replied Shelby, smiling.

  He spoke for no more than five minutes. When he had finished, the president did not wait for the engineers to recover from their shock.

  “So, the important question is: what are we going to do with so much energy? Hank, you promised to think about that,” he said, turning to the minister of power.

  “Yes, I’ve had one or two ideas. After you told us of the aliens’ proposition, we gave it a great deal of thought and came to the conclusion that the imposed conditions are too restrictive.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. The aliens propose moving Mars towards Earth. That is, to create a sort of cluster, a cosmic agglomeration. But we thought: why a cluster of only two planets, when we could have four?”

  “Four?”

  “Yes. There remain Mercury and Venus. We can bring them closer to Earth too, build a frame, create an artificial force of gravity. Mercury is the smallest of the inner planets, a little smaller than Mars, and Venus is about the same size as Earth.

  “All the planets, including Mars, are currently lifeless. Conditions close to their surface are totally unlike our own natural ones. Since we shall have virtually unlimited energy, we can move some of the water from Earth to Mars. Instead of one earth-like planet, we shall have four. We shall increase the habitable area four-and-a-half-fold, by comparison with dry land on Earth.”

  “Four and a half? Not bad!”

  “Wait, that’s not all. Today we are still growing food under the Sun, to save energy. Not all of it, but a lot. The greater part. If energy is virtually limitless, we can simply increase the population density many times over, since the supply of food will no longer be a bottleneck.

  “Using artificial light, heat and desalinated water, we can build enormous hothouses wherever we think fit, including underwater. We are no longer restricted to surfaces penetrated by natural sunlight. We can go one, two, five kilometres deep.

  “We can build at the poles. In deserts. Beyond the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Hothouses can be built anywhere that is not suitable for comfortable living. No more droughts or rainstorms. The quality and quantity of the food produced will be higher. We shall be able to supply a population dozens of times as numerous.”

  “But what if the energy supply should pack up one fine day? Can you imagine the consequences?”

  The president asked this question to appear more sceptical. But really, he had long since been caught up in the euphoria of the opportunities opening up.

  “Hmm... Do you think the consequences would be any diff
erent if they packed up today? As soon as man left the country and moved into towns, he stopped being self-sufficient. He no longer has his own well for water, domestic animals, kitchen gardens... He no longer produces food himself, he buys it. A breakdown in the supply chain would make urban life impossible in a very short time. The super-cities would very quickly die of starvation, if they didn’t choke in their own waste first.”

  “To be fair,” interjected Professor Shelby, “there is a difference here. Of course our economy is deeply integrated, and only one crucial link in the supply chain has to break to destroy the supply.

  “Nevertheless, the destruction would be of a local nature. If all the energy is coming from one source, namely from the sphere, its failure would bring about a global collapse. Every country, every planet, everything.”

  The president became lost in thought. In the depth of his soul, he was afraid that a reason was going to turn up that would make the project impossible.

  “Let’s take a cool hard look at the situation, without romanticising it. Let’s say we do what Hank suggested and then, one fine day, the sphere stops supplying energy. What will happen and how many lives will be lost?”

  “When the energy supply from the sphere is switched off, the artificial forces of gravity and magnetic fields on Mars, Venus and Mercury will cease to function. If there is water on the planets, terrible tsunamis can be expected. Hurricane-like winds may occur. Within a few minutes, whoever has survived that stage of the cataclysm would be in a rarefied atmosphere not fit for breathing,” replied Shelby.

  “So everyone except the Earth’s population, because the force of gravity is created naturally here. That’s right, isn’t it?” asked the president.

  “Absolutely right. And on the Moon.”

  “Would anything threaten Earth?”

  Shelby shook his head.