Each of the FLC’s six cylinders began detaching themselves from the central Drum and were quickly upended and dragged from the surface by bright bursts of multiple retrodropper units.
In the crater’s west quadrant, the light began to change. The sunflower-like panels of the solar array had been designed to orient themselves towards the sun. Now each of those panels appeared to suddenly wilt and disappear, leaving nothing behind but the pockmarked grey ground.
The central Drum of the future FLC now stood alone at the centre of the wide crater, surrounded by fluctuating footprint patterns. But soon these too reduced in complexity and number. Following two bright flashes of rocket fire, the Drum’s components also un-arrived, leaving behind only a pristine lunar surface.
A beautiful desolation as yet untouched by human hands.
“Do you see it?” laughed Monica.
Without human influence, the bare Coriolis crater was a massive circle. In the distance, another much smaller crater broke its circumference.
“Maybe that’s why NASA chose this site to -” Monica faltered and stalled, with good reason. The broken circle symbol had only arisen decades after the Apollo program was already established; it had only risen to prominence because of its association with the Exordi Nova.
At this point in history, the symbol had no significance to the seven billion people on Earth. At the rate they were receding through the decades, Archive had not even begun. Even Siva’s collision course had not yet been detected.
“This was a symbol for us to find,” Kate realised, “here and now.”
With no weather or geological processes to disturb the symbol, the cold immutable landscape had held this formation for eons; waiting inanimately for their arrival.
Abruptly, the smaller crater imploded and a meteor sprang from the lunar surface, erasing the symbol’s small dot. Almost immediately, the massive ring of the Coriolis crater itself un-erupted into a vast cloud of lunar material. The debris snapped into a single mass and leapt away into the dark sky.
They had just witnessed the creation of the symbol, albeit in reverse.
“It began here?” asked Monica.
“Or ended,” Douglas offered, “The lunar surface is still covered with thousands of meteor impacts, maybe we just saw the last one.”
On Earth, the shard impacts had caused devastation and triggered earthquakes that had shaken the planet. The Moon had clearly received several thousand such impacts. Kate found herself wondering what those impacts must have done to the Moon’s own mantle layer.
“I need to check something,” she told them and altered their perspective to take them inside the Moon itself.
Rather than view simple matter, she chose to look at the Moon’s underlying density and internal stress forces. She saw that the constructive interference of several hundred thousand cumulative meteor impacts had produced a startling effect.
Underlying the FLC’s future location were massive, branching, tree-like fissures that ran deep into the mantle. Once beyond the mantle itself, the geological flaws expanded and spread throughout the whole sphere; lines of structural weakness lying in wait for the moment that Eva would trigger a runaway fusion event.
“New Tree?” Douglas appeared to be commenting on the branching structures that riddled the Moon’s interior.
“The exact opposite,” Kate replied, “This is old.”
The timescale for this level of intervention was immense. When the very first impact had begun marking the Moon, the human race would not even have been in its infancy, and yet this tree-like flaw had been retroactively placed only when the FLC’s exact location was known.
Fault lines had been woven into the very structure of the Moon with such precision that they would later trigger the delivery of the lunar shards to the Earth’s surface. If she looked carefully enough, Kate could even see the outlines of the seven super-fragments within the structural stresses.
The level of temporal manipulation and outright patience involved was chilling. In Kate’s mind there was no longer any doubt; external intervention wasn’t theoretical, it was a fact.
At first glance, the targeting of the shards simply appeared malevolent. But when she considered that this level of destruction could easily have been directly applied to the Earth itself, she knew the actions were evidence of something else.
The forces at work here were so great that it would have been a trivial matter to arrange for Siva’s deflection, or even its non-existence. Yet this simpler solution had not been taken. Mankind had been forced to alter its thinking; they’d had to face the uncomfortable truth that the human race was contained on one small rock.
The decades that had followed Siva’s discovery had undoubtedly been manipulative and bloody. The majority of deaths had occurred in the days immediately before the lunar impacts, as people struggled against the inevitable. However, from a species-wide point of view, Siva’s approach had triggered an acceleration of mind and progress. Without that impetus for change, the human race would have evolved and died on the same planet.
Kate had reviewed enough of the Exordi Nova’s past to have heard an emergent phrase: ‘Siva must complete its path’. For the human race to survive, it appeared they’d been right.
“Why show us this?” said Douglas, “Why is our attention being so purposefully directed to find this underlying intervention?”
To Kate it now seemed very clear.
“We’re being given an education,” she said, “A lesson in patience and restraint. We cannot save everyone, but we can use this incredible resource to encourage the human race to leave its cradle.”
Remaining under the lunar surface, Kate moved them slowly forwards in time. The final two meteors struck and created the Coriolis crater above them sending a shockwave through the tree-like flaw. The definition of the future lunar shards was now crystal clear.
“We’re being shown the area that we ourselves cannot interfere with,” said Kate.
“Yes,” Douglas agreed, “The causality of our Boundary arrival depends on those shards, we can’t risk anything that would self-paradox.”
“By deduction though,” said Monica, “We are being shown what we can change.”
Kate knew she was referring to the large portion of the Moon that would never reach Earth; the hemisphere that had once been referred to as ‘the dark side’.
“So, as ever,” Monica continued, “When do we start?”
Kate focussed beyond the tree-like fissures.
“No time like the past,” she said, “We’ll start right here.”
THE GIFT
9th July 2113
The planet beneath Lana was still a spinning-top blur. Every few seconds, daylight would wrap around the globe presenting swirling patterns of dense cloud. Then night would creep over, swallowing the Earth into darkness; the only clue to its continued existence being the absence of background stars.
On the cupola console she could see that the year outside their Field stood at 2113. Over six months had elapsed since the Discovery had departed, but for those aboard the ISS this time had passed in mere hours.
As if arriving instantaneously, a pair of fabricator units appeared outside the Field. Relative to the ISS, they remained motionless and appeared to have towed something with them. Lasting several seconds, a strobe light from one of the units sent a series of rapid pulses through their surrounding Field.
“Fai?”
“Yes, Lana,” she replied.
“Did we just receive a message?”
“Yes. It is a progress report and detailed internal scans,” she said, “Would you like to review the information here?”
“No, we do this with everyone together.”
Turning to her microphone, Lana instructed everyone to assemble in the central axis modules, then departed to join them.
Generally, the crew seemed to have reacted to the long-range grainy photographs with genuine curiosity. Even Chris Powell seemed engaged: his typically acer
bic interactions with her had softened to become polite exchanges of data.
She felt a nagging guilt about Ivan Meznic though; largely because she’d once had her own free will invisibly adjusted by a similar process.
Before the crew’s revival, Fai had used audio stimulation within Ivan’s hibernation unit to suggest optimistic possibilities to him. These suggestions had been reinforced by a collection of control words.
Lana had brought him out of hibernation first, which had guaranteed that he would be isolated from the others. She’d then used the control phrase when she’d handed him a thirst-quenching water pouch; the hope being that any gratitude he felt would be directed at her alone.
So far, Ivan had responded positively and had lent his full support with enthusiasm. This was no doubt assisted by the fact that Lana had picked the control phrase from the Foothold video itself: Anna Bergstrom’s last words, delivered directly down the lens of a webcam, had been ‘We can work together on this.’
She could see Ivan emerging from the radial access tube into the main central axis modules. He was carrying a small white rose, its stem contained in a sealed bag of dyed water. Lana had seen him conducting this exact experiment several times before, but had never asked him why.
“It is beautiful, Ivan,” she called to him,
“Capillarity in zero gee,” he smiled at the red staining that was working its way efficiently through the rose, “Superb… So, is this it then?”
She knew he was referring to the briefing she’d just called; shortly they would be able to see any progress in unprecedented detail.
“I hope,” she nodded and crossed her fingers.
In reply he placed the flower in the air between them.
“For luck, Commander,” he crossed his fingers at the floating rose, then gestured for her to take it.
She couldn’t tell if it was Ivan’s free will, or Fai’s conditioning that was responsible for his actions. Either way, she felt completely unsure how to react. She also knew that it made no sense to refuse; she would only hurt his feelings, and she needed to make sure he was on her side.
“Spasibo,” she bowed her head slightly to thank him.
She plucked the thornless rose from mid-air and made her way through to where everyone was gathering. People lined the workstations that ran down both sides of the central modules.
“Thank you everyone,” she began, “Fai, unlock the data file.”
“Working,” she replied.
Lana had grown used to Fai’s normally speedy compliance, but it seemed the task was taking her longer than usual.
“Is there a problem Fai?”
“My apologies, Commander Yakovna. The delay was due to the density of information. The files are now ready.”
The various screens throughout the module illuminated and the crew began examining the reports, diagrams and photos. From the surface data that Lana was skim-reading, the results seemed positive, but she knew she’d have to wait a little longer to get the outright confirmation that she needed.
Within a few minutes, chatter started to return to the quiet space as people hurtled up and down along the axis to reach different workstations.
“Geology confirmed,” a voice reached Lana from the far end of the axis, “Surface has definite lunar origin… Helium-3 concentrations are, wow! This thing’s gotta be made from dark side stuff…”
The original blurry photographs had given no hint of its construction material; it had just appeared broadly cylindrical in form. But Lana could now see clearly that the entire object was composed of lunar rock.
Far from being a blurry cylinder, this was a rugged, pitted landscape. In some places the surface was cratered, as it had been when Lana was at the FLC. In other places, craters had been interrupted by jagged ravines, glass-smooth sponge-like formations, or convex plateaus of crystalline structure; as though the whole object were somehow composed of cross-sections from throughout its lunar history.
“Damn!” Loren laughed loudly, “It’s hollow!”
Lana closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. Earlier, she’d chosen not to reveal several other photos to the crew. Shadows in the photos had suggested the presence of an interior space, but poor lighting and the low resolution of the images could not specifically confirm it. She’d had to present a case to the ISS crew that was beyond supposition, so she’d omitted the images. With a blissful sense of relief, she knew that her actions and the actions of those aboard the Discovery were completely justified.
“Check it out!” Loren pointed to the Lidar data; a false-coloured, three-dimensional scan was filling her screen.
It appeared that the interior was like an exaggerated milk churn; a narrow circular entrance that suddenly expanded into a much wider cylindrical space.
Someone whistled before adding, “Why are there no interior photos?”
“Probably because it’s so bloody massive,” Loren laughed again, “Imagine the size of flash you’d need!”
Lana knew the other reason was of course that the fabricators didn’t need light to navigate the dark environment, they’d captured the topography using wavelengths that were invisible to the human eye.
Throughout most of the digital model, the curving interior surface appeared to be covered in undulating peaks and troughs, but Lana found her eye drawn to a detail that was a complete contrast.
Neatly dividing the interior space in two, a narrow ring ran around the circumference; its ice-smooth band was broken in one place.
SYNC
28th December 2013
As Janine watched the old cathode ray tube monitor, she mentally ran through the Houston escape plan.
At departure time, the RTO thruster base would fire, lifting the attached Apollo 73 Command Module up through the cavernous room and out through the sliding access roof.
After ejecting the RTO base at the apex of their flight, the plan was to put the craft into a controlled free fall so that the parachutes could deploy and allow them to splashdown safely in the sea. However, if the RTO ran out of fuel and failed to reach the full apex height, then the parachutes would not have time to open; the Command Module would simply fall out of the sky.
The launch window was therefore critical: launch too late and the facility would drown before they could escape, launch too early and they could run out of fuel before the tsunami had even arrived. To compound matters, the earlier hacking attack on Houston Mission Control had disabled all external digital communication; there was no means of tracking the planet-wide impacts and floods that had already begun. However, with launch timing being so pivotal, they’d been forced into creating their own early warning system.
A few minutes ago, the access roof above the FLC staging area had been opened. The giant metal plating had painstakingly slid aside to expose the dark sky; a dense black square that sat beyond the steel-beamed latticework of the roof.
Janine looked up at the square space and the long cables that were running up into it. Although she couldn’t see it now, she knew that at the end of the cables was a large helium-filled balloon, carrying two cameras salvaged from the Apollo 9 and 11 lunar modules. The live feed from the old cameras ran down the long cables, through a bulky-looking junction box just outside the Toy Cupboard and finally arrived at the monitor in front of her.
Ross made another adjustment to the junction box, then called over to her.
“How about now?”
The monitor in front of her flared into life and the screen’s phosphorous bloom settled into focus. There was an image but the framing kept rolling from top to bottom of the screen.
“Yeah,” she shouted back, “but the image is rolling.”
“Vertical sync?”
She slowly twisted the knob at the base of the monitor until the image stabilised.
“OK, that’s got it,” she called.
Ross stopped work and joined her by the monitor.
The low-resolution, black and white image was relaying the feed from
the Apollo 9 camera.
“Damn hackers,” Ross grumbled, “Digital cameras would’ve been so much clearer.”
“At least the analogue stuff’s still working,” Janine shrugged.
“Yeah, they built things to last,” he sighed, “Antique plug ‘n’ play.”
He used his sleeve to wipe the dust off the curved screen and the image became slightly brighter.
“Is that the I-45?” she pointed to a long, dense line of lights, that trailed into the distance.
“Everyone’s trying to get out by car,” Ross nodded, “They’re not gonna make it.”
He switched the live feed to the balloon’s second camera. Being mounted in the opposite direction to the first, Janine knew that this should be the view of Galveston Bay, but with the landscape only defined by patches of street lighting it was difficult to tell. She adjusted the brightness and contrast knobs until the coastlines became more discernible. When the tsunami approached, this low-resolution view would be their early warning system: the distant horizon line of the Gulf of Mexico would suddenly rise and they would have only one minute and thirty seconds to complete the launch.
Karl arrived, wiping his hands on a rag, “How’s it looking?”
“Not brilliant,” said Ross, “but it’s the best we’ve got. Are we good to go on the thrusters?”
“We’re fuelled but Larry still has to look at the intermix valve controls,” Karl began glancing slowly around him, “he says the most wasteful part of the main burn sequence will be manoeuvring our way out of here.”
“How long?” Ross switched the camera feed to look at the mass exodus of car taillights.
“Don’t know, but he’s going as fast as he can,” said Karl who now began to look completely distracted, “The whole assembly still needs to… sorry… Janine, where’s Abel?”
“I sent him over to you,” she replied, already feeling a sense of swelling anxiety.
Karl closed his eyes and rubbed at his face.
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