Karl took a deep breath and turned to face the metallic surface of the Command Module. It seemed almost like an act of vandalism to alter the historical equipment, but the lives of his family were at stake.
He raised the drill into position and began boring a hole through the ablative material. He felt the drill jump as it passed through the metallic honeycomb layers and then again as it emerged into the air on the opposite side. A few minutes later, the improvised inflation hose had been fed in through the hole and Ross had begun interfacing it with the few controls that were still in place.
When Karl looked inside the craft, the absence of the main computer was obvious. In its place, glue-gunned to a horizontal piece of console was Ross’ smartphone. In terms of computing power, the phone was a thousand times faster than its 1969 predecessor and, crucially, it was much lighter.
Cramped against the sloping roof of the module, Lawrence was hunched over a bundle of copper wires that appeared to be soldered to the phone’s USB port.
“How’s it going?” Karl asked.
“I’ve managed to get the RTO thruster valves talking to the phone’s gyroscope,” Lawrence didn’t look up from the phone’s touchscreen, “so it will give us a level flight out of here.”
For most people, the phone’s gyroscope did little more that determine which way up a photo had been taken. In contrast, Lawrence was building a flight interface. Karl knew that it really shouldn’t have surprised him though. Earlier, in his typically modest way, Lawrence had admitted that although his university major had been in quantum mechanics, his minor had been in computing.
Karl climbed down the ladder and Ross followed him.
“Karl, we need to get the hypergolics ready,” Ross stole a glance at his watch, “Damn, twenty minutes… I’m going for the MMH, can you get the nitrogen tetroxide from the Fifty-four?”
“Sure,” Karl nodded as Ross left.
It took him only a few minutes to locate the oxidiser component and begin syphoning it from the Apollo 54. While he waited, he found his attention drawn to an external identification plate near the access hatch.
The letters read ‘EVA’.
He knew this was simply an abbreviation of Extravehicular Activity, but in his tired state he felt a sudden stab of anger at the woman who had destroyed everything. He swore loudly at her name and used the base of his fist to deliver a satisfying dent to the EVA plate.
Karl suddenly spotted that his son had been quietly watching him and was clearly stunned by his father’s loud outburst. Before he had time to apologise, his son had run away.
SHIELD
DAY774 : 30JAN6764
Marshall Redings lifted the cover plate off a section of Field emitter casing, exposing the electromagnetic shielding equipment.
“Circuit D?” Trevor Pike confirmed the memo.
“Yep,” said Marshall, “Look at it. It’s pretty far gone.”
Running the Node’s Field at twice its rated temporal ratio was beginning to take its toll on the machinery. Finding spares was not a problem, but maintenance was more frequent now. The necessity to keep the Field running during servicing also meant that shortcuts were necessary.
Trevor dragged the temporary bypass fuse box into position.
“You catch the movie last night?” he crouched next to the box and began attaching the heavy-duty cables.
“Already seen it…” Marshall placed the cover plate down on the floor, “…twice.”
Trevor made a slight grunt and passed him the free end of a cable.
Marshall took the plug, slotted it into place and waited for the unit to charge.
In the reflective metalwork of the Field emitter, he caught sight of two people nearby. One was holding a small bag, the other was desperately trying to look casual, but doing a lousy job of concealing a handful of Node credits. It amazed him that people were choosing such an open place to conduct what was obviously an illegal transaction. Perhaps no-one cared anymore.
The man opened the bag slightly so that the buyer could see what he was getting. In a previous role, the bag had presumably been some sort of foil lined picnic cooler-bag, but now it contained a distinctly hotter property: a set of digital recording binoculars.
From their furtive behaviour, Marshall could easily conclude that these DRBs were of the illicit variety: rewired units containing virtual reality movies that satisfied darker needs.
Marshall thought about speaking out, but immediately decided against it. Reporting the offence would bring severe punishment to people who were just trying to get through life. It would also label him as an informant; he’d never be trusted again.
The man placed the bag down on the floor and after a moment walked away casually, leaving the other man to pick it up and swiftly depart.
“Trev?” Marshall lowered his tone slightly, “Have you ever watched one of those… you know… ‘other’ movies?”
Trevor stood up from the box and took a step towards him, a faint smell of alcohol presenting itself as he spoke.
“Don’t know what you mean…” he said, then lowered his tone, “… but they’re fucking awesome!”
Marshall could feel his cheeks go red but for the sake of appearances he fixed his mouth into a grin.
“You, er…” Trevor glanced around, checking that no-one was listening, “You want me to hook you up with one?”
The charging cycle completed and the unit emitted a confirmation tone, which came as something of a relief.
“I’ll let you know, Trev, thanks,” he managed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he winked and then donned a heatproof glove.
Although the degraded fuse was electrically insulated, it was carrying a high current; when Trevor pulled the fuse out, it would be too hot to handle with bare hands. Marshall opened up a new replacement fuse and prepared for the live swap-out.
The eager offer to put him in contact with someone who could supply DRB video material, seemed somehow typical of Trevor’s reckless outlook. Over the past few years Marshall had seen him slowly become more troubled and self-destructive. Almost as if proving the point, Trevor pulled out the hot fuse without waiting for him. Thankfully the fuse bypass unit held steady until Marshall slotted the replacement into position.
When they were satisfied that the new fuse was functioning properly, they disconnected the equipment and Marshall lifted the cover plate back into position. Trevor tapped at a poster that had been stuck to it; an open invite to come to the grand opening of ‘Beta Beach’.
“So, next week, eh?” Trevor raised his eyebrows.
The operation to convert the unused Sub-1 Beta segment into a recreation centre had been a Node-wide project lasting several months. Being task-driven had given people a much-needed focus, but now that focus would revert to trivial matters, as people clamoured to be seen in public as coupled icons of fashion or popularity.
“You got yourself a hot date?” Trevor seemed to mock him.
“Maybe,” Marshall replied.
Trevor appeared to assess him.
“I think you’d have more luck in private with a DRB movie!” he laughed and leaned closer, “Just get yourself a damping bag first!”
Marshall frowned, “A what?”
“A damping bag, so its RF chip doesn’t trip the…” Trevor’s laugh stumbled to a halt, “… never mind. Get a date. I need a drink.”
He left Marshall behind to clear up the tools and headed in the direction of the Node’s convenience store.
Recalling the suspicious exchange he’d seen a few moments ago, Marshall suddenly knew why they’d chosen this location. During emitter maintenance, the electromagnetic field was exposed; the RF location signature of the DRB units would be completely masked.
As he continued to pack away the toolkit, he reached another conclusion: during normal Field operation, any movements of illegal DRBs would still need a method of concealment. Recalling Trevor’s drunken advice gave him an idea.
He had to tell the others as quickly as possible.
MOON
~
Suspended against a backdrop of distant stars, the Moon lay round and grey.
“OK, Mum?” Kate checked.
It was the first time that her mother was experiencing a perspective of the Boundary that wasn’t framed by the Samphire Cottage window.
“Where did the living room go?” there was a note of mild panic to Monica’s voice.
“It’s all still around us, Mon,” Douglas reassured her, “We just can’t see it.”
“I can’t even see you!” she replied.
“Monica, I C U…” he pronounced the three letters of their private code, “and I’ve still got you.”
“It feels like you’re still holding my hand, except…” she struggled to come to terms with the disembodied nature of her perspective, “except… Is this what it’s like? For both of you? Not being able to see yourself? Just a… I don’t even know what to call it!”
“Point consciousness,” he replied.
Kate could almost hear her thinking.
“Mum, there are some perspectives that are best seen without comparing them to the world you knew. What we’re about to, er, see, would be obstructed by having reminders of the cottage. Language makes this difficult to explain in words, but… trust me.”
“Squeeze my hand,” said Douglas and a moment later he responded, “There. I’ve still got you.”
“Here we go,” said Kate and gently moved their viewpoint towards the grey, crater-dappled surface of the Moon.
“Whoa!” her mother reacted.
It was to be expected, Kate thought; it was the first time she’d been to the Moon. She remembered her own first forays into this region and the childlike fascination and excitement it held. Watching someone experience the view for the first time, rejuvenated some of her own enthusiasm.
“Hold on tight…” Kate sped on.
The eastern and western horizons swept out of view and for a while the lunar surface had a fractal quality to it; getting closer to the surface didn’t seem to alter the cratered patterning. Eventually though, Kate slowed their approach and brought them to rest.
“Is this it?” asked Monica, “I can’t tell what size things are. Are we just above the ground?”
“I know what you mean,” said Douglas, “With no atmosphere to fade distant things, it’s difficult to tell. We’re about a hundred feet from the surface. If you look carefully you can see artificial structures.”
“So where’s the FLC?”
“Buried under a few feet of regolith,” he replied, “to cut down the radiation.”
“And this is the moment it happened?” asked Monica.
“Yes,” said Kate, “I’m going to move us inside the FLC central Drum.”
Their view accelerated forwards, passing clean through the regolith and walls of the FLC, arriving at an environment with a more human scale.
In a few places, crew-made Christmas decorations hung limply, doing their best to impart a sense of festive cheer to the grey walls.
“I can see my hands!” said Monica suddenly.
“Those are Eva Gray’s hands,” said Kate, “We’re seeing things from her perspective.”
They watched as Eva locked the entrance door to Chamber 4 and held a tense conversation with Mike Sanders over the comm panel. The last words that Eva ever spoke to him rang out.
“No. You'd only try to talk me out of it. Goodbye Mike.”
“This is where she used the crew ID keys to gain control of the Floyd computer,” Kate explained the actions as they unfolded, “and tried to correct Chen’s purposeful mis-targeting.”
They saw Eva’s repeated attempts to override the computer’s core programming and her anguished expression reflected back from the monitor screen in front of them.
“What’s she doing now?” asked Monica.
“Targeting the FLC deflection optics to focus down through the Drum itself… preparing to fire into the Moon below.”
“Like her dream…” said Douglas, “breaking apart the Moon to put a debris field in Siva’s path.”
“Here it is…” said Kate as their perspective suddenly collapsed to floor level.
“I am Eve,” Eva wept, “I will birth the new mankind.”
They experienced her perspective as she continued to curl herself into a ball, facing away from the firing beam that would arrive from above.
“Born in the fires of the old,” she whispered now, “they will renew the Earth.”
The scene froze and Kate pulled away.
They could see the moment that the incredible concentrated fire had ignited the air; a lance of blistering white light poised to impale Eva as she lay curled in a foetal position.
Still within the same moment, their perspective slowly passed through the FLC walls and regolith, rising first to see the Coriolis crater and then the whole of the Moon again. Still in silence, time resumed and they saw the Moon tear itself apart.
On one hemisphere, billions of projectiles were thrown away from Earth in the direction of Siva; an expanding cloud of debris that would collide with the comet over a year later.
On the other side, lunar super-fragments were ejected and captured by Earth’s ample gravity. They watched the events on Earth unfold in horrific detail; each lunar shard initiating devastating earthquakes and tsunamis that lapped the globe.
“Everybody blamed her,” said Monica quietly, “The FLC sabotage was Chen’s fault, but nobody down there knew. They didn’t have a clue… they just thought she was just some psycho trying to get Siva to hit.”
Kate had witnessed the scene several times before, but again her mother’s initial exposure to the event was causing Kate to see it afresh; re-experiencing it though human eyes that were less jaded by time.
They saw the last shard, Tranquillity, impact Colombia and a tsunami begin to wash northward; the waves would reach both the Gulf of Mexico and, much later, Iceland. Somewhere down there, Kate thought, her younger self was still desperately running through the Node to witness her father’s clipboard message.
Her mother’s voice interrupted her moment of abstraction.
“Did either of you stop to think that Eva’s actions were indirectly responsible for bringing the three of us here?”
“Of course I did,” Kate found herself slightly offended, “The shards caused the premature launch of the Node. Of course I stopped to think about it. I’ve looked at every angle of the Moon’s detonation and the debris it caused afterwards, but I found no sign of any external intervention.”
“Afterwards?” Monica replied immediately.
“What?” Kate found herself actually feeling irritated.
“Katie,” her father began hesitantly, “You said you checked for interventions after the detonation?”
“Yes?”
“Katie,” came her mother’s calm voice, “You yourself have influenced events over long timescales. We’ve literally just been discussing the high likelihood that we ourselves may be subject to some sort of external intervention. Isn’t it possible that an intervention was made over such a long timescale that even you would miss it?”
Infuriatingly, she knew that her novice mother was right.
Because Kate had spent so much time alone before her parent’s arrival, the experience had altered her. The arrogance that came from multiple lifetimes of unchallenged opinion had ruined her objectivity.
By only assessing events that had followed the lunar shard’s influence, she had successfully avoided the possibility of paradoxing her own arrival within the Boundary. However, in reducing the scope of her study, she’d ignored the Moon’s deep past.
“Mum?” Kate sighed, “Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got this habit of being annoyingly right?”
“Yes,” Monica and Douglas replied in unison.
Although she couldn’t see them, she could hear the humour in their voices.
“The lunar debris,”
Kate began, “It broke Siva apart. If we’re planning on augmenting that material and seeding it within Earth’s orbit, then we should definitely check for much earlier signs of intervention.”
“Absolutely,” Douglas agreed, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it odd that the Moon itself had zero rotation.”
“You think that was another intervention?” said Kate, “Designed to direct the later lunar shards?”
“Possibly,” said Douglas, “It might even be the cause of the asymmetric detonation pattern.”
“Sorry if the tense is wrong,” said Monica, “but when do we start?”
“Buckle up,” said Kate and, without waiting for their reply, she began shifting their perspective backwards through time.
Tranquillity led the way for the other six lunar shards: leaping from the equator and leaving the untouched Earth behind. The seven super-fragments and a cloud of lunar material arrived at the same point in orbit and neatly slammed into one spherical grey mass. Once more, Kate guided them to the Coriolis crater and the Floyd Lunar Complex it contained.
Tracks from the FLC lunar rover crawled and flickered across the grey regolith and thousands of footprints began un-placing themselves. The Regodozers’ snail-like trails swiftly unmade themselves, returning Helium-3 rich material to the top layers of the lunar surface and restoring the rugged geology. Everywhere, chaotic patterns were defying thermodynamics as they reversed into a more orderly state.
Suddenly the tonnes of regolith covering the FLC began to erode and they watched as the facility was unburied by the automated lunar bulldozers. One by one, the bulldozers retreated from the starfish-like structure, pulling mounds of regolith into ever shallower piles.
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