by H C Edwards
The worst part of it all was that there was nothing they could do about it. Their air transports were too few to mount any sort of rescue operation and even if they did scramble all of them, there was no assurance that they could withstand the barrage of radiation long enough to make it back.
Somehow that seemed the worst of it…their helplessness.
Misao had argued with Talbot about the aid they could deliver but in the end she had to concede that any effort they expended would be wasted. The flooded tunnels had been sealed, which meant Charlottesville’s only safe avenue was cut off. Exposed to the ocean and the elements and rads, no humans could survive beyond a day. Even the QUBITs wouldn’t last much longer.
When Councilman Talbot relayed this information to her he did so propped in the corner of his couch. He appeared withered and frail almost to the point of being brittle, as if the slightest pressure would shatter his austere frame like glass. Misao couldn’t even speak she was so stunned.
“I know your mind is racing in a dozen different directions,” Talbot said, his voice cracking on almost every syllable. “Trust me when I say that the council felt the same way. So many…”
He trailed off, staring at the floor.
“All those people,” Misao whispered.
The councilman attempted to stifle a groan as he sat up and reached with a shaking hand for the decanter of tea on the end table. He poured them both a glass, handing one to Misao, an intense look on his face as if he were willing his hand not to shake when it crossed the miniscule distance.
He succeeded to some small degree but she was reminded of how little time Talbot really had left. Ideally, with the drugs and stem cell rejuvenation techniques they were capable of he had another twenty to thirty years, but when the fate of the race rested upon one’s shoulders no amount of science could hem the tide of stress that would eventually overcome the body.
“Have you eaten?” she asked, concern for her mentor taking the forefront.
As expected, the councilman waved a flippant hand, adorned with a meager smile that spoke volumes.
“I am as well as can be,” he explained, while also deftly avoiding the question. “We have much more pressing matters than the contents of my last meal.”
She knew not to force the issue; nodding instead.
The councilman sat up and reached across the space from the couch to the chair and placed his hand upon Misao’s. When she looked up in surprise it was to see that his expression was solemn and consoling.
“You remind me so much of her,” he said.
“Of whom?” she asked, not shying from the contact.
“My granddaughter,” he explained, his face wrinkling in thought. “I don’t suppose you two have ever met?”
Misao shook her head.
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” he said, his eyes lowering.
“You are very similar. There is a passion and fierceness about the both of you, a strength and conviction that I find lacking in myself now that death is at my doorstep.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered, to which his reply was a sad chuckle.
“Oh my dear, it is inevitable; in less time than you might surmise. I only regret that my determination has exceeded my humanity; that I wasn’t able to be the true mentor you deserved…or the parent my granddaughter so needed.”
“You do what you do for the good of all. Because of you and the council, Akropolis flourishes. There is hope.”
Talbot patted her hand before withdrawing, leaning back with a heavy sigh, his meager frame conforming to the contours of the couch.
“There is always a price, Misao. This you know…but sometimes the price is more than you can bear…”
He trailed off, eyes glassy and staring into some faraway place.
“Councilman?” she queried, bringing him out of his reverie.
“Hmm?” he replied, before realizing that his train of thought had petered out.
“I apologize, Misao. I am weary beyond compare. This news of Charlottesville has drained my spirit.”
“It’s understandable,” she said, then cleared her throat uncomfortably. “But I’m afraid that I have some more bad news…if that’s even possible.”
Councilman Talbot’s eyebrows lifted. When she didn’t reply he prompted her with a nod.
“You recall the problem in the aquifer?” she asked.
He tilted his head with a quizzical expression.
“Remind me.”
“Wu Lin, department head of the aquifer, had reported tremors recently, some strong enough to warrant an inquiry,” Misao explained, recalling the older woman’s warnings with more than a fair share of concern.
The terrifying stint in the water brought back feelings of panic and anxiety, neither of which she wished to relive at the moment.
“The council sent me down for a report.”
“Ah yes,” Talbot replied. “I recall now. Multiple tremors of increasing frequency. She was quite distressed, as is her nature concerning any news that might be the slightest bit troubling. She is a bit of an acronym; top of her field but prone to wild speculations.”
The councilman gave Misao a cynical smile.
“She is the best person for the job, despite this fault. No one is more capable than her.”
Misao nodded, feeling slightly uneasy as the instrument of opposition.
“I’ll admit she is somewhat abrasive…but from the geographical surveys and readings she showed me, I do believe that there is a real concern that we need to address.”
Talbot frowned.
“I don’t see a few tremors as any real concern. We’ve had them off and on throughout the years.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir, but these are not just a few tremors. The data is real. The tremors are increasing in strength and frequency.”
Misao reached into her bag and pulled out her personal screen pad. She handed it over to the councilman.
“She forwarded it to me this afternoon.”
Talbot took the screen pad and perused the data with a few swipes of his finger.
“What is this?”
Misao licked her lips.
“The last tremor opened a fissure in the bedrock. We lost two centimeters from the aquifer.”
Talbot’s hand froze over the screen and when he looked up his reaction had lost its flippant offhandedness.
“This morning you say? Did you get a work team down there?”
“Wu Lin and I sealed it ourselves this morning.”
His eyebrow arched.
“You and her?”
She nodded.
“It was…an interesting experience to say the least.”
“I imagine,” he replied, his face unreadable. “Any predictions on if this was a localized event or a continuing hazard?”
“I couldn’t say,” Misao replied honestly. “But with the frequency of the tremors it seems inevitable that further damage will occur in the bedrock, and I’m certain I don’t have to tell you that we could ill afford to lose any more water, or what these tremors could eventually do to the stability of the sanctuary.”
The councilman handed back the screen pad, forming his fingers into a steeple before his lips. It was his usual thoughtful pose.
“How inevitable?”
She was at a loss.
“I couldn’t begin to presume-“
He held up a hand to silence her. This show of authority was unusual but not completely out of character. In his increasing age, the councilman tended to lose patience with uncertainty.
“I am asking for your opinion, and an educated one at that. Do you foresee a catastrophe of our own?”
Misao sat silent for a long moment. In her mind she reviewed the data, the seismic activities that had increased over the months, and the sudden appearance of the fissure that prompted the emergency repair to the bedrock. It wasn’t her field of specialty but it didn’t take an expert to see where it was all heading.
“I think the seismic
tremors will continue to increase and perhaps spread throughout, not only the aquifer, but Akropolis as well. They are localized right now but from the data you can see that with each spike, the reverberations drift further and last longer. I don’t know when it will happen, but sooner or later we’re going to be able to feel them up here in the city.”
Talbot’s shaking hand reached up and shaded his eyes.
“We thought we’d have more time,” he mumbled.
Misao was stunned by these words, this confession. She began to reply but fumbled it, uttering nothing but a few gibberish syllables. She swallowed the lump that had popped up in her throat and fought down the anxiety that was threatening to overcome her good sense.
“Y-you…knew about this?” she began, her voice gaining strength as she felt her anxiety being replaced with incredulity. “How could you not tell me? How long have you known? And the council? What about them?”
Talbot drew his hand away. She saw that her assertion as well as the rapid fire questions had affected him. There was something in his eyes that went along with the haunted expression that had crept onto his face, something she had never seen before. It took her a moment before she realized it for fear, and with that insight came a cold feeling in the bowels of her stomach that stifled the train of questions that wanted to spill out in a torrent.
“Misao, I’m so sorry,” Talbot said. “The council decided to keep this to ourselves until we could obtain more data.”
“All this time…and you’ve done nothing?” she blurted out.
“No,” he said defensively. “We tasked a group of four to gather more information in a…discreet manner.”
“And Wu Lin wasn’t a part of this group, I take it.”
Talbot’s face hardened.
“Wu Lin is too stubborn to look at the data objectively, and she is anything but discreet.”
“You mean you wouldn’t be able to keep her quiet about it?”
The councilman’s expression morphed into anger, red spots blossoming in his cheeks.
“You need to be careful how you address your future accusations, Misao. The council has been seeing after the safety of this sanctuary long before you were born.”
“Fine,” she replied, but she was anything but acquiescent.
Misao felt betrayed. She knew that there were parts of the job she had not been privy to yet because the transition process of her position in the council had not been finalized yet, but this was the welfare of their civilization at stake. This was no minor issue of clearance but a possible catastrophe, just like the one that had struck New Charlottesville. If Akropolis was lost, all the other minor sanctuaries would fall like a stack of dominoes. They depended on the underground trade routes. None of them were as self-sufficient as Charlottesville and Akropolis. The human race would never recover from such a blow.
“What was the finding of your group then?” Misao asked.
Her voice was steel. She refused to be shamed or cowed by the councilman’s words.
He stared at her with that piercing glare for a few seconds, but when it was obvious that her anger was unrelenting, it was he who glanced away.
“The team’s report was completed a month ago,” Talbot explained, his voice softening. “They were not privy to the most recent scans and data.”
“What was their finding?” Misao pressed.
“The same, or nearly so,” he confessed. “Their conclusion was that within a year it was possible that a quake could hit below Akropolis. While the city itself would sustain minor damage structurally, it was of their opinion that the aquifer would be a total loss.”
And there it was, the reason for the secrecy. Such news would no doubt cause panic amongst the human population.
Misao felt her anger draining out of her. She felt cold and small. In her life she had never felt so powerless. Within a year, Talbot had said. What could they do?
“Is that it then?” she asked. “We just sit around and wait for it to happen?”
Talbot sat up.
“No,” he said with conviction. “This is hard news, even worse now after what has happened to New Charlottesville, but we are far from done.”
“What can we do?” she asked quietly. “Without the aquifer there will be no growing fields. Our stores won’t last long. We’ll starve…or worse.”
The councilman reached over and grasped her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“There is hope.”
Misao allowed the contact but she felt little comfort, producing a wan smile that mirrored the helplessness she felt.
“The council might be slow but we are not daft,” Talbot said. “We started construction on tanks and pipes the moment we received Wu Lin’s initial report, as a cautionary measure.”
“Tanks?”
Misao looked up from her lap.
He was nodding encouragingly.
“We have diverted construction from all other product, including the QUBIT production lines. There are giant tanks, built below ground, parallel to the Wall, far from the tremors, that will hold the water from the aquifer.”
“But the growing fields?”
“A lot of it will be lost,” Talbot said with a miserable shake of his head. “There is nothing we can do about that. But we will save enough of it that we can rebuild somewhere below ground beyond the Wall.”
“Do we have the resources?”
“We didn’t initially,” Talbot said. “That has changed now.”
The realization dawned on her.
“Charlottesville,” she whispered.
Talbot nodded.
“It’s terrible what happened. The loss of life is awful beyond compare, but their disaster will be our salvation.”
“You plan on scavenging their sanctuary to support ours.”
It was a statement and not a question.
“It’s our only chance.”
“But the tunnels have been closed off. The flooding-“
“According to our scans the water is already receding. Whatever is left we can pump out of the tunnels. We just need to have a work force on the other side working in conjunction with ours.”
“Even the QUBITs wouldn’t be able to survive,” she argued. “Not long enough to get the job done. You’re talking about a massive operation.”
“Initially yes, the QUBITs will expire rather quickly. It will take the bulk of our air transports to get them there and the trip will be one way, but once they open the tunnels we can send more to work on stabilizing the magnetic field. After that we can start moving the materials we need.”
“And you think it’s ok to send them off to die like that?”
“They will be safe in the Cloud. We’ll disconnect the pain receptors so they don’t suffer. We will ask for volunteers, of course. We are not monsters, Misao. But I can guarantee you that this is the only way to save Akropolis, and I have no doubt that we will have the volunteers we need.”
“They will be too far away to upload with our Cloud system. Even if we keep reviving them here we don’t have enough transports to keep sending them back.”
“We have someone who is going to work on that problem.”
“Who?”
“The major,” Talbot said simply.
“I’m curious as to what he can possibly do,” Misao replied.
“The major has volunteered to retrieve the quantum processor unit from Charlottesville. He’s taking an air transport tonight.”
“Will the transport make it back?”
The councilman’s frown was answer enough.
“We are not certain. That’s why we’re sending him with a housing unit. He will make certain the processor is safe and functioning before attempting the trip back, leaving the unit behind for when we send our work force.”
It made sense. Stabilize the Cloud in Charlottesville so that when their QUBITs expired there, the new ones they sent could re-download their profiles from that Cloud and continue working without a hitch.
“There
are so many variables,” Misao said after some thought. “So many things could go wrong. Can it be done?”
“It will work,” Talbot assured, and the conviction wasn’t just in his voice but on his face as well. “We will have to depend on our stores and it will come close, but by our calculations we believe that we can build the new aquifer and replace the growing fields before our situation becomes desperate. Even taking into consideration multiple delays, our food supply will last if we ration it. There might be a missed meal or two here and there but our city will live.”
Despite the councilman’s assurance, something still nagged at Misao. It took her a few seconds to identify it.
“You said before…you thought we’d have more time. You weren’t talking about disclosure of this plan, were you?”
Talbot hesitated.
“The new data you presented suggests our timetable is a bit shorter than we had anticipated.”
“Meaning?”
“That there can be no hesitation. We need to start now, today even. The tanks are finished. The pipes have to be laid to pump the water but that will take a matter of days. The growing fields will be salvaged as much as possible but we just don’t have the resources yet to sustain all of it. I have been assured from our scientists, however, that we can sustain enough to restart our fields once the building of the new aquifer is complete.”
“We’ll have to tell the citizens everything,” Misao said. “We’re going to need everyone’s help.”
Talbot sighed and nodded his head.
“That, my dear, is where you come in.”
Sanctuary
Trey finished performing the systems check on the air transport, alerting ATC that he was green light.
“Roger that, Gopher One, you are good to go. Be safe out there.”
“Will do,” he responded.
A loud horn blared from outside of the cockpit as the whirring yellow lights signaled the ascent. The lift groaned as the hydraulics kicked in, jerking the entire platform upward. The ceiling opened just a few feet above the top of the transport, a trail of LEDs illuminating the long tunnel overhead.