The more the group talked, the more they realised that every single one of them had been purposefully guided or brought here.
The exact guidance method varied for everyone, but the circle-dot glyph was always at its heart; coffee stains, dust rings, Exordi Nova symbols, airlock blueprints, rust patterns and ice anomalies. Even the source of the E.V.A. message itself was intrinsically linked to the geometry: a pulsating, Earth-sized red spot, within a nebulous band that encircled Jupiter.
Coincidences seemed to multiply.
Using a combination of Nathan Bishop’s stolen Z-bank and Fai’s computational analysis, a connection was discovered: the genetic receptivity to metathene was held by a large number of those gathered. Working with Noah Broadstone, Fai concluded it was entirely feasible that the genetic traits could be mapped and even augmented.
For a long while, they noticed their conversations were treating the times they’d left behind like physical places; as though the past were somehow still happening in their absence. Inevitably though, the group’s conversation moved towards a common thought.
“So we can never go back?” said Janine Meyer, holding her son tightly.
“I don’t think so. When it comes to time,” Anna replied, “Always forwards, never back.”
Danny reacted instantly.
“Doctor…” he tried to recall her name.
“Bergstrom…” she nodded.
“Sorry, but where did you hear that phrase?”
Anna sighed.
“My early Archive days, at a Salisbury Plain military base,” she recalled, “Douglas Walker was telling your father that the Chronomagnetic Field could not be used to create a negative temporal gradient.”
“Always forwards, Danny, never back,” he rubbed at his forehead, “My mum always used to tell me those words. All these years… I never knew she got it from my Dad…”
Anna nodded, looking around at everyone.
“Entropy prevents backward travel, but as many of you seem to have demonstrated, you can travel forwards.”
“Obviously we’re here, but how is that possible?” said Ross Crandall, then began sketching imaginary lines in the air, “From our point of view, the future didn’t exist yet.”
“Yeah, but from our point of view,” countered Mike Sanders, “you’re from our past. And that definitely does exist.”
“I have studied time for a long, ha, time,” Anna was staring at a photo of Douglas through teary eyes, “It’s all a matter of perspective… To someone in the future, our present day is their distant past.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” said Lawrence Clark, “Perhaps the future is dependent on our actions right now.”
“But how’s that different to any other day?” said Ross.
“It’s different because of who is here,” Tessa Locke looked around at everyone, “For one reason or another, we were all spared. The diversity of skills and genetic traits cannot be a coincidence.”
“So the question is, what are we supposed to do now?” said Noah, “Why are we all here?”
“Very philosophical,” muttered Mat, earning him a slap on the arm from Pavna, “I just meant, haven’t we been wrestling with that question since we stopped climbing the trees for lunch?”
“Maybe we’re supposed to rebuild the planet?” Ryan Flitch asked those around him.
Anna exchanged glances with Mike and Cathy, then spoke quietly:
“Actually, we think we’re supposed to leave it.”
Confusion seemed to spread though the cargo bay, but Anna calmly brought people back to order and outlined her thoughts.
Archive had failed because its solutions were built upon mistrust and secrecy; an approach that had arisen because, with just 64 years’ warning, only a fraction of the Earth’s population could ever be saved. The extraordinary events that surrounded today, both on Earth and above it, pointed to an unprecedented opportunity to do things differently.
Anna explained the operation that was underway in orbit: the firm ‘Foothold’ that would allow mankind to make its next giant leap.
A leap for the stars.
The task ahead for those on the ground would be no less daunting. They would have to travel far and wide, giving people a choice. Not the illusion of choice favoured by Archive’s population control mechanisms, but a genuine one. A choice to continue living their lives on the planet of their birth, or to leave the cradle behind.
“Not everyone will want to leave,” said Anna, “which is fine, there’s no guarantee that any other planet will be any safer than Earth, but the choice will be theirs to make. If Siva has taught us anything, it’s that the risk of keeping the human race in one place is too great.”
It was Danny Smith, permanently marked with the Exordi Nova’s ‘New Beginning’ symbol, who spoke first.
“Where would we go?”
“Short term, we don’t know yet,” Cathy admitted, “We only left the ISS a few hours ago, Lana’s still awaiting confirmation on some data.”
“But long term…” Anna added, “… we’d go everywhere there’s a speck of light in the night sky.”
A contemplative quiet descended on them as the sheer scope of her simple statement began to sink in.
“We do know where to start though,” said Mike, “Right here. We’re at the exact location that was encoded into the E.V.A. message. If -”
“My apologies for the interruption,” Fai’s voice suddenly spoke from a wall speaker, causing everyone to turn towards it. Although they all knew what she was, for many it was the first time they’d heard her speak.
“Go ahead, Fai,” said Anna.
“I must correct an assumption,” she replied, “We are not at the location stated within the Jupiter transmission.”
“Fai?” Anna’s tone seemed to carry a mild frustration, “We were on a direct approach to the coordinates, why didn’t we land as programmed?”
“Because the specification of the Discovery’s redesign did not include the requirement to land at sea,” Fai reported factually.
“Wait,” said Cathy, clearly confused, “The coordinates are not on land?”
“Correct,” Fai replied, “They are located at the epicentre of the earlier temporal disturbance.”
Anna began chuckling, causing everyone to look in her direction instead.
“What’s so funny?” said Cathy.
“The E.V.A. message was directing us to an event, not just a location. Given the temporal nature of everything surrounding us, I really should have expected as much,” she continued, smiling, “It seems that our first action should be to check out the actual coordinates.”
“But if the Discovery can’t… oh,” Mike suddenly broke off, “Of course.”
“I would say that it’s lucky that we happen to have a submarine at our disposal,” Anna smiled, “But I don’t think luck has anything to do with it. Miss Jacobs, is the Sea-Bass able to investigate?”
“Hmm,” said Lucy, “I think our manoeuvring jets took a bit of a beating at the USV, but what do you reckon Mat?”
“Five, maybe six hours to reset,” he said.
The exo-limb framework around Anna’s legs whirred and she stood to her feet.
“Good,” Anna looked at her photo, then refolded it into her pocket, “Let’s see what the future holds for us.”
TRUST
13th April 2014
Sarah now faced the future, turning her attention to the man who’d reached the top of the wrecked Glaucus stairwell.
“Miss Pittman?” called the barrel-chested man.
“Hello, Vic,” she replied.
“You OK?” he wiped the water from his face and began reaching for his radio, “Your dad said -”
“Stop!” she interrupted, pointing to his radio.
Vic froze.
Sarah looked around at the water-stained walls and glanced down the stairs.
“Vic,” she stared at him, “we’re in trouble if we stay down here.”
Vic now looked at the walls, “Was it a breach?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t talking about that,” she said, “I meant my father.”
“You’re talking about the Monica Walker thing?” Vic was nodding.
“What thing?” Sarah replied.
“I ran into Gordon Dowerty on the way over,” Vic shook his head, “He said that your dad lost it, threatened him with a gun. Gordo made it down in the bucket-lift and -”
“Wait. Monica was up at the Eye too?” she pointed out in the direction of the main USV.
Vic looked down at his feet, “Gordo said he killed her.”
The image of someone falling from the Eye during the electrical disturbance forced itself into her mind.
“I just thought that someone had fallen because of everything that was going on,” she admitted.
She’d assumed that Monica was still being held in the detention block; never connecting the two events together. She’d spoken with her father on an office speakerphone, not realising that it was only minutes after he’d committed another murder.
“How long have we known each other, Vic?” she asked.
He frowned, “Since your dad hired me to take you to school, so -”
“Do you trust me?” she interrupted.
Vic seemed to consider her question carefully.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he apologised and checked behind him before continuing, “All due respect to your father, but I trust you more than him.”
Sarah nodded.
“Vic, there are survivors up there,” she looked directly upwards, then pointed at the offices, “Some of them made it down here.”
“What?” he frowned.
“We need to let everyone see them,” she said, “They’re the proof that life survived up there.”
After talking with Vic about a possible approach, she arranged a private radio channel with him, then returned to the offices. She could see that Izzy and Tristan were checking for supplies in the adjoining office, but Marcus was inspecting the various computers around the room.
Before coming up to the Glaucus Dock level, she’d seen him working on a laptop in full view of a hovering drone. A drone that hadn’t attacked. Either her father had developed mercy, or the nickname Monica had spoken contained a more digital context.
“Mr. Networking?” she called over to him, “Time to put your Anti-social computing skills to work.”
“Yeah, well I would,” Marcus glanced scathingly at the boxy computers, “But these things are so bloody old that they’ve got slots for coal.”
Sarah picked up her shoulder bag.
“Better use mine then,” she handed him a compact laptop, “Admin level login. Daddy trusts his little girl.”
“Nice,” said Marcus, rummaging through a desk drawer, “But I don’t trust him.”
He sticky-taped a ruler across the laptop’s built-in webcam, then held down three keys while booting it up. A black screen full of text popped up and he began to scroll through various settings.
“Huh,” he commented and began overriding various functions, “Sneaky son of a bitch… nope… definitely not… yes please… go swivel…”
After a few seconds he stopped and pulled the network cable out from a neighbouring workstation and plugged it into the laptop instead. Holding down a different set of keys, Sarah saw him restart it.
“My other one had network camouflage, yours doesn’t,” said Marcus, “At least they won’t be able to pinpoint you now.”
The machine finished rebooting, but instead of her normal desktop there was a command prompt on a black screen.
“Did something go wrong?” she said.
“No,” he looked thoroughly confused, “We’re at the root.”
“OK,” she said, “We’ll need to connect to the main network.”
“This is the network root level,” Marcus grinned, “What d’you wanna do?”
The four of them talked through all the elements that would have to be put into place, but the fact remained that Tristan and the others had entered via an airlock that was now ruined. Showing everyone a dead end was unlikely to unite people. A more positive demonstration would be needed.
GENESIS
23rd December 2172
The future appeared to be arriving at an ever faster rate, thought Lana. The Field surrounding the ISS, which in turn held the Field around Miles Benton, was making it difficult to assess when things were happening relative to something else.
From Miles’ point of view, his clock stood dangerously close to the 24-minute limit. From her own point of view, the ISS had travelled through approximately 19 days. For Fai’s counterpart, busily working on a solution to Miles’ condition outside the ISS Field, almost 60 years had elapsed.
Matters hadn’t simplified.
Ivan Meznic had shared his life’s research with Fai and advised her of the likely timescales, but then Fai had taken over the actual logistics.
During the fabricators’ remote preparations for the Foothold project, the ISS crew had not been idle. Lana couldn’t remember a time when she’d worked so hard. The journey had taken two whole weeks of manoeuvres to reach the correct orbital position, but finally the ISS and the cylinder’s relative rotations were in perfect sync with each other; the circular disk in front of them appeared stationary, while the stars cartwheeled around the outside.
There were moments, like now, when Lana wondered how differently things could have turned out. If she hadn’t used her father’s ‘matryoshka’ nickname in front of Anna before she left for Earth, Fai probably wouldn’t have researched nested volumes. The M-Field may never have been created.
The augmentations that Fai had made since then, had not been limited to theory; the complex M-Field surrounding the Foothold cylinder was both immense and necessary.
“I am receiving a Trans-Field communication,” Fai reported.
Although direct radio communication was not possible across a Field boundary, simple pulses of light could be used to encode a form of digital Morse. To the human eye, the density of the pulses that Fai was receiving would appear simply as uninterrupted solid light.
“The signal is a video feed,” said Fai, “It is being relayed from the fabricator that was caught in the cylinder’s artificial gravity. A single frame is being created for each passing week within the cylinder.”
Ivan took a place next to Lana and Chris at the monitor, his eyes scanning the blank screen.
“Is something wrong?” said Loren, floating into position next to them.
“Someone left the lens cap on,” said Chris with a grin.
“The fabricator in question has no lens cover,” Fai reported, factually, “The damaged unit was instructed to visually record the -”
“Fai,” Lana interrupted, “Mr. Powell was attempting humour, please disregard.”
There was another second of darkness, then a flickering moved over the surface. The fusion reactors suddenly came online and flooded the cylinder’s interior with a bright warm glow.
“Let there be light,” remarked Loren.
The rod-like sun that ran through the cylinder’s rotational axis, pushed energetic light throughout the entirety of the space; every curving surface, every outcrop of rock, was pin-sharp. With no atmosphere to diffuse the light, Lana found it difficult to assess the distances involved; something that had also been an issue during her former FLC days. She found herself tilting her head to adjust to the perspective that the camera was presenting.
The ground appeared to curve gradually upwards to the left and right of the screen, then arch to a meeting point directly overhead; a loop of rocky landscape, wrapping itself around the interior of the cylinder. In the distance, embedded in the cylinder’s circular far wall, was the vast and jagged structure she remembered seeing on the interior scans. In broad daylight though, the structure was bright and crystalline; an icy Siva super-fragment that had apparently collided with this lunar space.
Under the conti
nuous blaze of the axial sun, and the spinning of the cylinder itself, the icy structure began to thaw. The jutting lances of ice began to lose their sharpness and coalesce into a frost-white disk that covered the cylinder’s rocky end wall. For a short while the frozen mass persisted, but amid a gathering of mist brought on by the persistent sun, it began to melt.
Flowing smoothly out over the circular end and then across the cylinder’s curved walls, the waters began to wind their way through dust-grey valleys; arteries of water that quickly refroze as they came into contact with the space-cold lunar rock. As the rock continued its slow warming, it permitted the silvery, frozen arteries to melt into wider branches. Vast seas and lakes began shimmering into existence throughout the entire cylinder, forming distinct patches of dry ground.
As the inundation progressed, a cascading ring of time-blurred water began pouring into the deep, onyx-black, circular trench that ran around the halfway point of the cylinder. In the far distance, beyond the beam of bright sun, the water appeared to be flowing upward into the trench; a simple consequence of the cylinder’s invisible spin. The circular trench overflowed and the slow inundation of the land continued again; a patchwork of grey, broken by reflective pools of light.
There was a brief flurry of fabricator activity and it seemed that the lunar grey area began to change tone.
“What are they doing?” asked Loren.
“Seeding cyanobacteria,” said Ivan, “They’ll start converting the low-level carbon dioxide into a waste product.”
“Well that’ll be helpful,” said Chris sarcastically.
“I hope so,” Ivan nodded without taking his eyes from the scene, “their waste product is oxygen.”
The faintly blue patches were joined by a growing number of light-purple blotches.
“Bloom,” Ivan reported, “Algae. Larger celled structures… bryophytes… mosses…”
Mottled green-brown tones started fluctuating over the exposed ground. Fabricators flickered across the surface as it changed texture; an almost microscopic and continual folding of the surface.
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