Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  “Hmm,” he replied, unconvinced, then began climbing to the upper deck.

  Both the Sea-Bass and the other USVs utilised rubidium atomic clocks to ensure digital integrity and security. He knew that a simple power failure would not have disrupted the USV’s clock. Under normal circumstances it was impossible to have a discrepancy; except of course, their arrival here had not been under normal circumstances.

  “OK, Tris,” Pavna called from below, “I’m reading a steady atmosphere on the other side of the hatch, minimal pressure differential, so I guess we’re still going to use Pod Two?”

  “It will give us a little more flexibility,” he patted the surface of Pod Two and began walking around its perimeter, inspecting it before its deployment, “We don’t know why the anomaly brought us here, but if we need to shuttle resources around, Pod Two can move slightly faster.”

  He found his attention drawn to a small patch of rust and crouched to inspect it.

  “I know what you mean,” Pavna replied from below him, “but wouldn’t Pod One be a bit… safer?”

  Tristan smiled to himself, the small piece of iron in front of him had never been exposed to water and should have shown no signs of oxidisation. Yet quite clearly there was flaky rust in the form of a circle; its upper right portion being interrupted by a small dot.

  “We go with this one,” he ran his fingers over the mark.

  “As long as you’re sure.”

  “Absolutely sure,” he stood and stepped inside Pod Two, “Let’s get down there.”

  OPPORTUNITY

  ~

  In the warm living room replica of Samphire Cottage, Monica Walker sat back on the comfortable sofa.

  “No, I know you’re right, darling,” she confirmed her husband’s reasoning, “The Sea-Bass second Pod made much more sense. It’s just…”

  She heard Douglas draw a deep breath. Despite neither of them being corporeal anymore, Monica still found it surprising how many of their subtle mannerisms had been transcribed into the Boundary.

  “It’s just…what?” he sighed.

  “Isn’t it all a bit… morally grey?” she whispered, “I mean, do any of them get to make the choice?”

  “I know what you mean, but by the time she’s making the intervention,” Douglas replied, “there’s usually not much of a choice left to make.”

  “And you’re comfortable with that?”

  “Don’t hit me with that look,” Douglas shook his head, “There is a certain logic to it.”

  “Logic or coldness?” Monica raised an eyebrow, “I worry that she’s been doing this alone for too long.”

  Douglas, who had been using a simulation of a paper jotter to make notes, put it down on the small wooden table.

  “OK, if you knew that your time-line was approaching a discontinuity and you would never see your family and friends ever again, but you had the opportunity to make it count for something…” he leaned forwards, “Wouldn’t you do it?”

  “Well that’s sort of my point, darling,” Monica countered, “These people don’t know of any impending ‘discontinuity’, or if their efforts will benefit anyone. Where’s the choice?”

  Douglas leaned back again, “It’s not like she’s had the chance to discuss her approach with anyone.”

  She knew he was right about this too.

  Despite the long conversations they’d had in this room, Monica found it difficult to comprehend how much time her daughter had actually lived through since arriving in the Boundary. Douglas had once said that linear time had no meaning here, but the sheer amount of experiences that Kate had detailed could equate to many human lifespans.

  Monica heard the cottage door open.

  “We need to talk about the FLC,” Kate’s voice echoed along the short hallway as she walked towards the main living room, “and Eva Gray’s decision to-”

  “Hold on a moment,” Douglas raised a hand, “First of all, did everything go OK with the USV?”

  Kate sat down in the armchair nearby.

  “Of course,” she presented her hands towards the living room fire, which was crackling realistically in the grate, “but I’ve been thinking about their destination, and there may be a safer way of doing this.”

  Monica sat up straight, “What do you mean?”

  “Eva Gray’s actions stopped a singular Siva reaching Earth by putting a fragmented Moon in its path,” Kate recapped, “The human race narrowly avoided immediate extinction because a single devastating impact was changed into several thousand miniature ones.”

  Douglas pointed to the window.

  “But you’ve shown me the end result of that,” he said, “You’ve shown me the ice age that sweeps over the world, the polar destabilisation. At best, Eva bought the Siva survivors a few thousand years before the planet was uninhabitable.”

  “All she did was delay the extinction,” Monica agreed, “The human race is still facing the same problem it did back in 1951.”

  “You told me that we were going to change it,” Douglas turned to Kate.

  “Yes, but I think I’ve found a better way than I first imagined,” she replied, “and it will link seamlessly with our USV efforts. So… we need to talk about the Moon.”

  They listened as Kate outlined the broader theories.

  The Moon’s detonation was now a fixed point in time; altering that event could even prevent the Walkers from ever entering the Boundary. The exact way the Moon detonated, however, was still a variable.

  During the devastation of the lunar shard impacts, no satellites survived to observe and quantify the remaining debris field in orbit. When Siva impacted the debris field fifteen months later, there were no longer any methods to scientifically record the event. The ISS, which could have made broad observations, was absent from orbit during this time; its occupants on a long trip around the Solar System.

  When Siva impacted with the lunar remains, the only witnesses were human eyes on the Earth below. Even if anyone were clear-headed enough to ignore the devastation that was going on around them, then the impact and resulting orbital debris would simply appear chaotic.

  “Embrace the chaos!” Monica laughed out loud at one of her favourite maxims, “We can alter the debris field! The intervention would be undetectable!”

  “Specifically,” Kate raised a finger, “We can alter it to be more useful, while preserving local causality.”

  “What do you mean by ‘useful’?” said Douglas, “Do you mean we can use it to stop all of Siva’s pieces?”

  Kate’s cheerful expression drained,

  “Why do I get a bad feeling about this?” Monica shook her head.

  “If we intervene to prevent Siva’s debris from impacting Earth, then the human race will be spared extinction in the short term.”

  “Great, what’s so wrong with that?” Monica shrugged.

  “After the seven lunar shards fell,” Kate replied, “Life survived, but civilisation fell. The human race continued for a while longer, but eventually succumbed to the long-term planetary effects.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Moon did more than just drag the tides around the Earth, it provided gyroscopic stability… it kept the planet upright, if you like. Without the Moon…” Kate mimed a ball tipping over, “If we completely remove Siva’s influence, we ensure that the human race lives out its remaining time on a dying planet.”

  “And you have an alternative?” asked Douglas.

  Kate leaned forward in her chair.

  “I travelled back to observe some of Archive’s earlier days and, before all the power struggles, there was a noble intent to it all. I’ve seen the Fort Gillings phone call between President Eisenhower, Sam Bishop and Grandad Howard, the moment when Archive was first named…”

  Douglas seemed surprised to hear his own father being mentioned, but Kate didn’t stop.

  “… I’ve even seen the pivotal conversation between your dad and William Pittman at one of his ‘Pitstop’ clubs! I
t pains me to admit it, but in those first few hours Pittman said some things that actually made sense. He said that when considering the human race, carrying all your eggs in one basket was a bad idea. He also said that as a race we needed to plan on getting off the ball of rock.”

  Despite Monica’s loathing of the Pittman family, the naive sentiments were absolutely right.

  “We have an opportunity here,” Kate glanced between them both, “We can succeed where Archive failed.”

  As Monica listened, Kate outlined her plan for the seeding of specific minerals, volatiles and lunar formations.

  GLAUCUS DOCK

  13th April 2014

  “Check,” Tristan spoke into his handset.

  “Check,” Lucy’s voice returned.

  Pavna stepped into Pod Two, adjusting her handset, “Check, Lucy?”

  “Got you too, Pav.”

  “Keep an eye on the anomaly, Mat,” said Tristan, clipping his safety harness to the pod’s framework.

  “But I was going to put my feet up… maybe read a good book…”

  Tristan couldn’t help smiling, “Just let us know if anything unusual happens.”

  “Define unusual,” came his flippant reply.

  “I know we’re trying to keep an open comm channel,” said Pavna, “But isn’t there a way to mute Mat’s feed?”

  “Love you too, Pav…” Mat laughed, “but, you know, stay safe.”

  During their time at sea, Tristan had seen their social dance, but apparently neither of them seemed capable of making the first move. Mat’s comment, though delivered with his usual mocking edge, appeared to have a genuine sentiment at its core.

  “Sorry, Mat,” she apologised and clipped her harness into place, “You stay safe too. Both of you.”

  Tristan passed her a pair of lightweight goggles as she sat down next to him. The open-framed nature of Pod Two also extended to the wire mesh flooring. During the descent, the experience would be similar to sitting in a wind tunnel.

  “Pod loading sequence away,” Mat reported as the pod lowered into the airlock below, “Keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times.”

  Tristan watched as, from his perspective, the tubular wall of the lower airlock appeared to rise around them. As the pod reached the Sea-Bass deck, it locked into place and the airlock closed over their heads; a set of interlocking curved plates spiralling closed like the iris of a camera lens.

  “Equalisation,” Lucy reported.

  Tristan found himself stretching his jaw open to force his ears to pop, and could see that Pavna was doing the same.

  A metallic sounding thump vibrated through the pod then the lower airlock door spiralled open underneath it. Around the perimeter, he could see the mechanism was damp with seawater; a tiny percentage that the pumping system couldn’t fully evacuate, but the rest of the airlock was bone dry. He’d upgraded his father’s original design template several times but the principles at its heart had remained the same. He turned to share his satisfaction with Pavna, but saw that she was focussed on the deep black space beneath the mesh flooring.

  Illumination within the shaft walls clicked on: dotted lines of lights converging and growing fainter with distance. It dispelled the black void, but now highlighted the extreme perspective of the long drop.

  “Hey, Jones,” said Mat.

  “Go ahead,” Pavna replied.

  “Are you missing me yet?” he laughed, then triggered their descent before she could reply.

  Through the exposed framework, Tristan had an uninterrupted view of the surrounding mechanism; a view normally denied while using the more comfortable Pod One. Using gears built into its side, the pod sped down a set of teeth embedded within the shaft wall. The regenerative braking of the pod’s motors was slowing their descent; converting potential energy to electrical, in preparation for the ascent phase later.

  The buffeting air had a faint ozone smell and was warm; a side effect of the shaft being at the highest point in the USV. However, the further they descended, the more the temperature dropped. As they neared the bottom, he could see the telescopic rods were poised to decelerate the pod; a set of pneumatic rams that were designed to compress air and cushion their arrival, but also store this compression for later use in overcoming the inertia of the pod’s departure.

  “Here’s our stop!” he called to Pavna, who appeared to be grinning.

  Hair flying in the wind, she gave him a thumbs up.

  The dampers were less effective than those of Pod One, so the deceleration hit them more severely, but the discomfort was momentary. Tristan heard the rams compress, but before the pod could bounce back up again, locking mechanisms sprang into place.

  In contrast to the Sea-Bass, which necessarily utilised top and bottom access points, the airlock door at Glaucus Dock was more conventional. From inside Pod Two, he could see the wide, round-cornered doorway set within the curved wall.

  Pavna was looking back up through the shaft to its summit.

  “Hey, Kaufman,” she grinned, “I won’t forget this.”

  In response, it was Lucy’s voice that replied.

  “Tristan, we’ve picked something up.”

  The smile on Pavna’s face evaporated and Tristan removed his goggles.

  “Sitrep,” he replied, unclipping his harness and getting to his feet.

  “We’d just closed the outer airlock again, then we started receiving a message.”

  “Relay it,” he slid open the wire mesh inner door of the pod.

  “I can’t,” she replied, “I’m recording it, but it hasn’t finished arriving.”

  “You mean it’s a text string?”

  “No, it’s radio. Low tone. Continuous.”

  Tristan was about to question her response, when a thought crossed his mind. During their arrival within the anomaly, a sonar pulse had arrived. Its time-stretched tone had begun as a low-pitched frequency that slowly transitioned back into its characteristic ping.

  “Status of the anomaly?”

  “No change,” she reported, “Sea-Bass pressure and temperature, no change.”

  Tristan activated the airlock and the door began to swing open away from him.

  “Keep recording, but try playing back what you already have at different, higher speeds.”

  “What do… oh, I see,” she replied.

  “Mat,” said Pavna, “We’re about to go in. Keep your ears open.”

  “Understood,” Mat’s former levity was suddenly absent.

  Tristan stepped out onto the metal decking of the Glaucus Dock and turned on his flashlight. Casting the beam in front of him, he could see metallic stairs that descended into darkness. A general murmur of activity appeared to be emanating from below.

  “So, do you know the layout of this place?” Pavna arrived at his side, taking off her goggles.

  “No,” Tristan admitted, “Archive compartmentalisation. The extent of my knowledge ended when we set foot on this deck.”

  He cast the beam to his right.

  There was a narrow tunnel that was in the process of flooding. Water was trickling from the furthest point and heading towards the stairwell.

  “Looks like this is just getting started,” he stood and aimed the flashlight down the tunnel. The flow rate seemed to be increasing.

  “Tris,” whispered Pavna and pointed at a dim light that was coming from the opposite direction.

  Leaving behind the tunnel, they backtracked along the metallic walkway and onto a narrow corridor with one open doorway. The light was coming from within. As a precaution he turned off his flashlight and allowed his eyes to adjust to the lower light level.

  The door had obviously been forced open; although it was technically still on its hinges, a triangular section was missing from its lower half. Clearly this was some sort of administrative office. Among the keyboards, monitors and desk phones, only a dim lantern seemed out of place.

  He became aware of a slight rumbling from one side of the room, it was follo
wed immediately by an electronic-sounding elevator bell. He quickly motioned for Pavna to step back. The elevator doors opened, and in the suddenly bright light he could only discern two silhouettes.

  “After you,” came a woman’s voice.

  Tristan quickly turned on his flashlight and aimed it at the man who was stepping from the elevator. While the man reacted to protect his eyes, the additional light now allowed him to see the woman more clearly. He recognised her immediately as Sarah Pittman, the daughter of an Archive executive.

  “Miss Pittman?” he called out.

  The man in front of her swore and slowly raised his hands.

  Tristan suddenly realised that the bright flashlight could be preventing her from seeing him, so he placed it on a desk and angled it upwards. The white ceiling tiles returned the beam to the room as an ambient, flat light.

  With a slight look of confusion, she turned to look at the man who’d shared the elevator.

  “If these are your stairwell friends,” she said, “why’ve you got your hands up?”

  “Cos you’re the one with the trigger finger,” the man replied, then a look of realisation appeared to flicker across his face, “But if you’re asking that, then these guys ain’t your dad’s security, are they?”

  Tristan had no way of knowing how much time they had down here and felt the need to advance the discussion in a more productive direction. He quickly considered how he might phrase things to avoid mentioning the fact that an anomaly, shaped like a prevalent Exordi Nova symbol, had been instrumental in their arrival at the Archive facility.

  “Miss Pittman, I’m Tristan Westhouse of the Sea-Bass. Earlier today, we… received a message, that sent us to this location. Currently we’re docked with the USV’s vertical access shaft -”

  “Wait. You’re saying we can leave?” she cut in, stepping out of the elevator, “Now?”

  “All of us can get out of here?” the man next to her seemed similarly stunned.