by Tom Abrahams
DENVER, COLORADO
Clayton sat on the side of his bed, his palms pressed flat against the thin cotton blanket that covered the thin foam mattress. His bare feet were flat on the cold floor. He stared at the wardrobe and matching desk on the opposite wall. The room had the feel of a motel room without the starving-artist paintings on the walls.
He shuddered at the sterility of it and edged from the bed to his feet. He fought against a flash of light-headedness and stumbled toward the desk, leaning against it for support.
“How did I get here?” he asked himself and searched his memory. He reached around to touch his lower back. “I hope I still have my kidneys,” he muttered.
The last he remembered he was being interrogated by a group of overly-amped jerks who questioned his integrity, his veracity, and his loyalty to his country. They’d made it clear he wasn’t welcome, but they weren’t letting him leave. Gradually, the fuzziness was clarifying itself.
Clayton recalled he’d argued with the man named Perkins and the woman named Van Cleaf. He’d insisted he needed to get home to his family. They’d tried to calm him down. It didn’t work.
He’d punched somebody. Perkins? Sergeant Vega? He wasn’t sure, but he knew they’d restrained him and stuck a needle in his neck.
Now he was here in what was best described as a well-appointed cell. Stuck. No closer to home than he’d been on the ISS. Clayton scanned the room and settled on the door. He crossed the room and grabbed the handle. It spun but didn’t open. He ran his thumb over a red light above the locking mechanism and tried the handle again. Nothing. As suspected, he was a prisoner.
A sudden well of anger exploded inside him and he kicked the door, pounding on it with his fists.
“Let me out of here!” he yelled, his voice scratching against the back of his throat. “You can’t keep me here!”
As quickly as the outburst materialized, it ended. He was out of breath, and kicking the door had sent a vibrating pain through his injured leg. His heart pulsed angrily in his temples and across the back of his head.
He thought back to what Van Cleaf had said to him before he lost his cool. Without any empathy or hint of humanity, she’d smirked at him, her words dripping with condescension. “You don’t understand, do you?” she’d said. “You can’t leave.”
That was the only moment since the first CME blasted the ISS that he lost faith. She wasn’t giving him her opinion, she wasn’t doubting his ability to traverse the rough terrain between Denver and Clear Lake, Texas, she was telling him with total certainty that he couldn’t leave. She wouldn’t allow it. It was fact. Pure and simple fact.
Recalling her words and how they’d sliced through his gut, they emboldened him and gave him new resolve. Who was she to tell an astronaut, a man who’d risked his life for the betterment of mankind, he couldn’t do what he damn well pleased?
Clayton cursed and refocused. He exhaled, trying to ease the pounding in his head. He couldn’t escape if he allowed his anger to consume him.
How could he engineer his way out of this? He stepped back to the desk, dropping into the rolling chair in front of it. He pushed back with his heels, wheeling across the floor to the bed. He pushed off the bed and rolled back to the desk.
His eyes searched the room. “How do I get out of here?”
He opened the drawers to the desk—empty. He checked the bedside table—nothing. He pushed himself from the chair and walked into the bathroom. He found a sink, toilet, and shower stall. He was checking the plumbing under the sink when he heard a magnetic click from his room followed by a man’s voice calling his name.
“Clayton Shepard?”
He poked his head out from the bathroom and saw Perkins standing in the open doorway with a nine-millimeter pistol in his hands.
Clayton frowned and kept his distance. “What do you want?”
Perkins aimed the weapon at the ground in front of Clayton. Behind him, beyond the door, was the sergeant named Vega, also armed.
“You calmed down yet?” asked Perkins.
Clayton took a step from the bathroom. “You letting me go?”
Perkins shook his head.
“Then I’m not calm.”
“That’s problematic,” said Perkins. “I’d like to be able to give you some privileges. I can’t do that if you can’t remain…amenable.”
Clayton crossed the room to his bed and dropped onto his mattress. Perkins kept his weapon trained on the astronaut while Vega kept watch.
“We believe your story,” Perkins said.
“Some of us don’t,” Vega chimed in.
Perkins shot Vega an angry look. “Keep the door open.”
Vega scowled unapologetically.
“So let me go,” said Clayton. “I’m not a threat to anyone.”
Perkins lowered his weapon and holstered it at his hip. He stepped over to the empty desk chair and sat down, rolling himself close to the bed.
“Not now you’re not,” he said. “That would change if we let you leave the facility. You’d become desperate as the world falls apart and you’d come looking for us again. You’d bring people with you. That would be problematic for everyone.”
“You like that word,” said Clayton. “Problematic.”
“It’s appropriate.”
“So what now?” Clayton asked. “Assuming I’m calm, assuming I’ve accepted your nonnegotiable proposal?”
“We get you acquainted with the technology available here. We find you a job. You contribute to the new society.”
Clayton glanced at Vega. The soldier stood with his feet shoulder-width apart. He held the door open with a jackbooted foot. He looked as if he were holding in a fart. His attitude was as foul as it had been in the hospital room. Perkins, however, had softened.
“Your boss,” he said, “Van Cleaf, said this is a secure facility designed to preserve civilization.”
“That’s correct.”
“She said the world is dark,” Clayton said. “Two CMEs were responsible for that. She said it would ‘thin the herd’.”
“Correct.”
Clayton’s eyes drifted across his cell. “It doesn’t add up.”
Perkins tilted his head. The corners of his mouth curled upward, as if he knew the answer to his question. He asked it anyway. “What doesn’t add up?”
“This,” Clayton said. “How is it you have this facility up and running a few days after a CME nobody wanted to admit was coming? How are you so sure the power is out everywhere? How can you know the herd will thin? It’s too convenient.”
Perkins looked Clayton in the eyes as he leaned back in the chair. He scratched the back of his head and folded his arms across his chest. It was clear he wasn’t dignifying the astronaut’s doubts with a rebuttal.
“How many people are here?” Clayton asked. “How big is this place?”
Perkins shrugged. “A few hundred,” he said. “Maybe a thousand people.”
“And the facility?”
“Five buildings,” he said. “All of it underground.”
“And nobody’s allowed to leave?”
“Perimeter security like Sergeant Vega,” said Perkins. “That’s it.”
Clayton nodded at Perkins and eyed Vega.
Perimeter security. That’s how I get out of here.
“So we understand each other?” Perkins prompted.
Clayton sighed. “What choice do I have?”
“Good,” said Perkins. “It’s so much easier this way.” He stood from the chair and tugged open the large velcroed pockets on his thighs. From one pocket he pulled what looked like an all-glass iPhone, from the other, he withdrew a smartwatch. He offered both of them to Clayton.
“You’ll need these,” he said. “The watch is called a DiaWatch. The device is a DiaTab.”
Clayton took both and studied them “Dye-uh?” he asked. “What is that?”
“It’s short for Denver International Airport. D-I-A,” said Perkins. “Somebody in IT th
ought it was clever to name the proprietary technology after our location.”
Clayton put the watch on his left wrist and held up the palm-sized glass tablet. “These are trackers, I’m assuming? As helpful as they are for me, they’re more helpful for you or whoever else is trying to spy on me.”
Sergeant Vega snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Perkins frowned at his colleague and rolled his eyes. “They do have a localized positioning system that runs through the internal Li-Fi system.”
“Li-Fi?”
Perkins motioned to the overhead lights in the cell’s ceiling. “It’s like Wi-Fi, but uses visible light to transmit data. I don’t know how it works.”
Clayton flipped his wrist and the watch displayed its first message.
Hello, Clayton. Good morning.
He tapped the watch, and the time and date appeared. His stomach dropped.
“It’s January twenty-ninth?” Five days had passed since the CME. Five days that at once felt like a minute and a month. Five days his wife was alone with the children. Five days closer to the herd being thinned. His heart racing, he considered what he’d already missed, how he’d already failed his family.
His fingers trembling, he tapped the DiaTab. In the upper right of the display he saw the battery indicator. It read one hundred percent. He ran his finger across it again and the screen glowed red. It showed the time and date and also a location.
ROOM 29-4 OFFAL LEVEL
Clayton looked up at Perkins. “29-4 offal level?”
“You’re in room twenty-nine, building four.”
“Offal though,” said Clayton. “That’s a slaughterhouse term. I’ve got family in Amarillo. Offal is what they call discarded parts.”
“That’s appropriate,” snarked Sergeant Vega.
“I can’t speak to that,” said Perkins. “I don’t know anything about it.”
Clayton studied Perkins’s face. As far as he could tell, the man was telling the truth. He looked down at the DiaTab and pressed the home button. It vibrated against his thumb and the screen changed to a control display.
OVERHEAD LIGHTS, LAMP, SHOWER, TELENET MONITOR
“Telenet?”
“Push the screen,” said Perkins.
Clayton touched the icon and the screen changed to give the DiaTab the look of a remote control. There was a power tab, which he tapped, and on the wall at the foot of his bed, a large rectangular image appeared.
“Is that a television?” he asked.
“Telenet,” said Perkins. “It’s interactive. I’m sure you’ll have more questions. The preprogrammed message will answer most of them. We’ll leave you alone.”
“Can I leave the room?”
“Not yet,” said Perkins. “Once we’ve established your willingness to stay and work toward the common good, my bosses will consider giving you travel privileges. Until then, you’ll be escorted everywhere. We’ll be back to take you to breakfast.”
The men left without saying anything else and the door shut behind them. A click and a red light told him the door was locked. Clayton stood up and faced the Telenet. He pressed his DiaTab and a welcome page appeared on the sixty-inch screen in front of him. There was a translucent infinity icon spinning and flipping in the lower right corner.
Hello, Clayton. Good morning. You have 1 new message.
Clayton pressed the message icon that populated on his DiaTab and looked back at the Telenet, where the woman who called herself Van Cleaf appeared. At least he thought it was Van Cleaf. The woman he’d seen hours earlier looked older. Her eyes had been sunken and framed with deep crow’s feet, her cheeks sallow and thin with age.
The Van Cleaf on the screen was happier and tanned. Her eyes shone with hope. She sat in a control room, her head held back with confidence. She was easily five years younger, if not more.
“Welcome to your new home,” she said gleefully. “You are here because you are important. Please keep that fact in mind as I familiarize you with this facility.”
“Clearly she didn’t record a version for the disposable innards like me,” Clayton said to the screen.
“If you have questions, you may ask them by pressing the question button on your tablet. Speak normally and the Telenet system will record your query. I’ll answer your question from a series of prerecorded answers. We believe we’ve anticipated most anything you might ask.”
“I doubt that,” Clayton mumbled and pressed the question button on the DiaTab. There was a haptic response and he felt the vibration in his fingertip. An audio wavelength appeared on the screen atop Van Cleaf’s frozen face.
“Where am I?” he asked.
The icon at the bottom of the screen flipped and spun as the computer worked to populate the prerecorded answer. It stopped and Van Cleaf’s image jittered before she spoke.
“You are in room twenty-nine, building four, on the offal level,” she said. “On this level you don’t have keycard privileges or travel privileges.”
“Why am I on the offal level?”
The system cycled through the same series of steps. Van Cleaf unfroze. “You are a threat to the safety and security of the facility.”
Clayton clenched his jaw. He wasn’t the threat. “What are the other levels in this building?”
“You don’t have access to that information at this time.”
“Of course not,” Clayton grumbled. “You’re no better than Perkins.”
“If you don’t have any further questions at this time,” Van Cleaf’s avatar said pleasantly, “I’ll return to the original presentation.”
Clayton dropped onto the bed, half listening to the litany of instructions and directions. None of it mattered. He was a prisoner until he freed himself.
CHAPTER 6
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020, 1:00 AM MST
DENVER, COLORADO
Chip Treadgold pushed the button on the coffee maker and the machine gurgled into service. He plucked an extra cup from the stack to the right and offered it to Vihaan Chandra.
Chandra waved him off. “No, thank you. When we’re finished here, I’ve got to get some sleep.”
Treadgold smiled. “Suit yourself. I thought your circulatory system was fifty percent Arabica.”
“I cut back,” Chandra said. “I have trouble sleeping.”
Treadgold took a yellow packet of artificial sweetener from a dispenser and ripped off the top. He poured it into the cup as the coffee maker finished its drip.
“Why did you bring me here?” asked Chandra. He motioned to the empty cafeteria, looking around the room for effect. “We could have talked in my new lab.”
Treadgold shook his head. “Too many ears. We have a little more privacy here.”
He led Chandra to a table at the center of the room and pulled out a seat. He blew on the coffee and drew a slurp from the steaming cup. He winced and sucked on his tongue.
“Too hot,” he said.
Chandra sat opposite his boss and rested his elbows on the table. He watched his boss take another sip of coffee, only to burn his tongue again.
“You ever notice people’s predisposition toward stupidity, Chandra?” he asked. “Here I am taking a sip of coffee I know will burn my tongue, but I do it anyway. It’s like when a waiter brings you a plate of food and warns you not to touch it because it’s too hot. What do you do? You touch it anyway. It’s stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s stupidity,” said Chandra. “I believe it’s healthy skepticism. We choose to discover the truth for ourselves, despite what others might tell us it is.”
A thin smile snaked across Treadgold’s face. He blew on the coffee and took another cautious sip. His eyes stayed glued to Chandra’s as he drank. Steam filtered from the cup into the air. There was something maniacal about it.
“Or,” said Treadgold, “it’s not stupidity or skepticism. Maybe it’s something as simple as obstinance. People don’t know what’s good for them, even when told.”
Chandra sh
ifted in his seat, beads of sweat populating on his forehead. His loose collar suddenly felt tight at his neck. He tucked a finger inside the front of it and tugged. The room felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
“I’m not feeling well,” he said. “Can we dispense with the philosophical debate and get to whatever it was that brought us here?”
Treadgold nursed the coffee and smacked his lips. “Okay. I didn’t realize you were in a hurry. You know we technically have all the time in the world.”
Chandra sat back in his chair, bouncing his knee up and down impatiently.
Treadgold rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he huffed. “Clearly you have no sense of humor tonight. I’ll get to the point.”
“Which is?”
“I’m told you have a lot of questions about this facility. You aren’t sure it’s what’s best for those sheltered here.”
Chandra’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you I had questions?”
Treadgold spun the cup on the table. He raised his eyebrows in question.
Chandra sank back in his chair. “The Telenet. It was the Telenet, wasn’t it? You’re tracking all of the questions.”
“It’s no different than Google recording your searches,” said Treadgold. “Or Facebook inserting ads into your timeline based on your Internet searches.”
“It’s different,” said Chandra.
Treadgold shrugged. “Agree to disagree. Regardless, I’d like to allay some of your fears.”
“Go ahead.”
“This facility, as I told you before, was first conceived decades ago. It was a product of two events. One was the Cold War. We were in the midst of a space race and an arms race with the Russians.”
Chandra rolled his eyes. “I know what the Cold War was.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Treadgold. “I’m just giving you the background here.”
“Go on.”
“In May 1967, things came to a head. We were closer to war than we’d been since the Cuban Missile Crisis; however, nobody writes about it or teaches it in the history books.”
“What happened?”
“Our surveillance radars in the polar regions stopped working,” said Treadgold. “They were jammed. Convinced the Soviets were responsible, the Air Force prepped aircraft for war. They were ready to go. World War Three was on the horizon.”