Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  AFTER DINNER, JACE went outside to pee off the back porch because at minus thirty-three (–36 C), even the outhouse was a journey too far.

  The sky was clear, and the aurora was out. One of the joys of a lack of indoor plumbing was the number of opportunities each day one had for standing outdoors and gazing up at the stars.

  Jace thought he saw a blue flash on the southern horizon. He continued to watch the spot for as long as he could stand it before the cold drove him back indoors. The flash didn’t repeat. Maybe it was his imagination.

  CA4 1.0

  GOVERNOR VERA TETLIN was finishing up a live Night Desk interview on MSFOX from her home studio in Wallis when the satellite feed went kablooey. Lines, stars, frozen pixels, then a screen of color bars. Bradd, her camera operator and station engineer, leaped into action to troubleshoot the failure. He had built the studio for her and knew every switch, cable, and fuse in the place. He went from camera to control board to electrical panel, while she remained in her chair under the video lights. The feed returned a half minute later, but by then the network had moved on to the next segment.

  “Sunspots, probably,” Bradd said as he cut the lights and shut down the equipment. “I’ll run a diagnostic tomorrow.”

  “I have a teleconference with Juneau first thing.”

  “All right. I’ll do it tonight after dinner.” He went to the doorway to the house. “Coming?”

  “NORAD’s inside a mountain, isn’t it?”

  “Used to be, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, but they moved it.”

  “It was part of the Army?”

  “Air Force. It was a strategic command center during the Cold War. They designed it to withstand a nuclear blast. Why do you ask?”

  Vera got up and accompanied her husband to the house.

  “I was just wondering. Some old coot said he was living inside a mountain near McHardy.”

  After Vera changed into sweats and let down her hair, she sat at the kitchen counter and watched Bradd preparing dinner.

  “Tell me,” she said, “how easy would it be for them to cut us off?”

  “For who to cut us off what?”

  “For whoever, for whatever reason, to cut all communication to and from Alaska.”

  “Not a clue.”

  “I want to find out. Call someone. Call Swayne tomorrow and have him come over.”

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Colonel Swayne appeared at their door. He was wearing his ALF uniform, he explained, because he had just come from a meeting with his senior officers. The uniform was of his own design, a forest-green, button-down cotton shirt tucked into a loose pair of forest-green dungarees. There were no insignia except for an embroidered patch on one shoulder that depicted a rearing, roaring grizzly bear encircled by the words ALASKA LIBERTY FORCE.

  To Vera, it resembled the uniform a Forest Service janitor might be required to wear, except for the patch. Also, it made Swayne look even more ridiculously boyish than he already did.

  Yet Colonel “Beaver” D. Swayne did command, by his own count, over three thousand loyal sovereign patriots. Patriots who, it seemed to Vera, were in need of a civilian commander-in-chief.

  They sipped cold beer in the living room overlooking the lake. They were feeling each other out with small talk. It was a job interview in which each party was looking to hire the other. Impressed by what they saw, they quickly got down to business.

  “Beaver, I have a security question for ya.”

  “Shoot, governor.”

  “If Obama wanted to, how hard would it be to cut Alaska communications off from the rest of the world?”

  Swayne didn’t even have to think about it; his answer was instantaneous: “Not hard at all. They just demonstrated last night how easy it would be.”

  Bradd said, “Last night?”

  “Yeah, it’s why I called an emergency meeting today. Around 8:00 p.m. last night, someone cut the feeds of the entire Landsat system for about a half hour.”

  Vera and Bradd looked at him with blank expressions, and he continued, “The Landsat are the non-military satellites that continuously record images and data of the Earth from space. There’s been seven of ’em since the 1970s, two of which are currently in service. Landsat 8 is supposed to launch in February, making it three satellites up there at the same time. A record, I think.”

  Vera said, “What does that have to do with communication?”

  “On the surface, nothing. But think about it. If you wanted to do something you didn’t want us to know about, like, I don’t know, move a shock force of troops from Point A to Point B, it would be very helpful to have a kill switch to disable all civilian Earth observatory stations, wouldn’t it?”

  “I see,” Vera said.

  Bradd said, “But couldn’t it have been a technical glitch, a sunspot or something?”

  “Sure, except that the Landsat system incorporates independent receiving stations all over the world, and according to my inside sources on the internet, they all went offline at the same time. That’s a helluva glitch.

  “Look at it this way,” Swayne went on. “Last night’s action might’a been a proof of concept. If you can cripple the Landsat, you could also take out the telecom satellites, GPS, weather satellites — the works. Alaska relies on about eight key satellite systems at any one time to communicate with the outside world.”

  Bradd said, “What about fiber optics?”

  “The government’s already had total control of that for years. All of our digital optical traffic goes through four trunk lines to the Lower 48. They run for hundreds of miles under the Pacific Ocean to Seattle and Oregon. All civilian traffic goes through ’em. I don’t know how much redundancy the military maintains. Maybe lots. But civilian traffic relies on just these four cables. The land portion of our network is a loop that follows the road system. You remember that statewide internet outage we had a couple of years ago? The official explanation was that two unrelated bozos with backhoes in different parts of the state accidentally cut the fiber-optic cables on the same day. Yeah, sure.

  “The fact of the matter is, besides the satellites, Alaska stuffs all of its weather, navigation, government, business, entertainment — you name it — into four pipes, which they already have the kill switch to.

  “So to answer your question, Governor — how hard would it be for Obama to cut us off? — the answer is: laughably easy.”

  Swayne finished his beer, and Bradd got up to fetch him another from the kitchen.

  Vera said, “It may be laughable, Colonel, but you’ll notice we’re not laughing.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What can my government do about it?”

  “Funny you should ask. That’s the same question I put to my officers not two hours ago. I laid out the problem and gave them forty-eight hours to bring me solutions.

  “I’m no expert in telecom,” he continued, “but I believe there’s enough ham radio capacity in our membership to bridge the gap and sustain a modicum of command and control throughout the state and across the border. There’s probably some high-tech solutions too. Maybe we launch tethered weather balloons across British Columbia to act as relay stations, or we set up our own distributed networks, like they actually did in San Francisco where a few years back they made a civilian’s network out of old Xboxes.

  “I don’t know what my men will come up with, but rest assured we have some of the best minds in the state wearing this uniform.”

  If only that uniform were more reassuring. “Will you share what you learn with me?” Vera said.

  “It would be my honor, governor.”

  CA5 1.0

  PARTLY OUT OF curiosity (or suspicion), partly for the novelty of riding the new Bearcat again, on Firstday morning Poppy returned to the ravine alone to see the effects of the flare. He left right after breakfast, before the sun was up.

  The temperature had moderated, the trail they had broken was firm, and Poppy made good time to the overlook where they h
ad kept vigil. He was shocked to see what the light of dawn revealed. The ravine below him was nothing but bare ground. The snow that had blanketed the forest was gone. The forest itself was gone. An irregular circle, perhaps three miles wide (4.8 km), was denuded of all trees, brush, and sedges. The thick muskeg mats of moss were missing, as well as the underlying layers of peat and the humus in the soil. In a word, all organic material, living and dead, had been stripped from the land. That included hibernating bears and ground squirrels, foraging rabbits and moose, lynx on the prowl, and any other living thing unfortunate enough to become entrapped by Hosea’s “rattling trees.” What was left was not just bare ground but dead ground — sterile silt, clay, and sand, and a minefield of scoured stones. If ever there was a land of scorched earth, this was it.

  Poppy searched for the pillar with his binoculars. He couldn’t see anything solid, but he caught the glint of sunlight bouncing off something suspended in the air. It was still there. The threads attached to it glinted in the dawn light as well, like strands of spider silk.

  Poppy continued down the ravine, cautiously now, and halted at the borderline of teetering spruce and birch trees. He dismounted and stepped to the very edge of the wasteland. Hosea had spoken of sizzling slush, how stepping into it had cost him his boot and nearly his foot. There was no slush now, no sizzle, only a patch of desert.

  Poppy picked up a handful of snow and tossed it over the line. It sprinkled the bare ground and did not melt. He found a fallen tree branch and scraped the dead ground with it. Then he brought the end to himself for a close-up look. The wood was not melting. He tossed the branch into the dead zone, intending to test the ground further inside. The branch tumbled end over end in a smooth arc, but before it hit the ground, it struck something invisible and was sliced in two.

  He walked along the edge while watching the spot, and when the angle to the sun was right, he saw the glint of spider silk, or colored thread, or whatever it was.

  Arming himself with another stout stick, Poppy said a little prayer and put one foot over the line. Immediately he raised the sole of his boot to check it. It wasn’t melting, or at least not yet. He took another step into the dead zone, and another, all the while tapping the stick in front of himself like a blind man.

  When he hit an invisible strand, it sliced through his stick. The severed end was glassy smooth. Slowly, cautiously, he made his way toward the glittering pillar. He had another mile to go when he heard the drone of an airplane in the distance. He turned around looking for it, but it was still too far away to see. It couldn’t be the mail plane; today was Firstday, not Twosday.

  Poppy continued on, but the engine noise grew louder, and he repeatedly glanced over his shoulder. Finally, when he saw a speck low on the horizon, he trained his binoculars on it. The small aircraft was still miles away, but it did seem to bear the familiar green color of Ned Nellis’ Cessna. And then it occurred to him that Christmas fell on Mail Day this year, and Nellis had pushed the mail flight up a day to accommodate the holiday. Still, Nellis’ usual route would turn him north before he got much closer to the bare patch of ground. And, in fact, as Poppy watched, the plane banked and headed toward McHardy.

  Poppy offered a little prayer of thanksgiving and continued toward the pillar. Like the threads, it was invisible unless he kept it at a certain angle to the rising sun.

  Before long, Poppy realized that the hum of the aircraft engine, instead of fading away, was increasing in volume again, and when he turned he saw that the plane was heading straight for him. Apparently, it was hard to miss a three-mile-wide bald spot from the air.

  What to do? What could he do but pray? It was too late to pray that Nellis not see the dead zone, so he prayed that the man, a Christian of sorts and not an evil man, might keep the sighting to himself. For the sake of Archangel Martha’s mission, let Nellis never report what he has seen to the authorities. That would be a miracle, but that was what Poppy prayed for.

  Nellis was still up pretty high when he flew over. He banked hard to make another pass. The plane dropped lower as it went over a second time and rocked its wings in greeting. Poppy knew Nellis had spotted him. It would have been impossible for a person to hide in that bleak landscape.

  “Go away, Ned,” Poppy shouted at the receding airplane. “For your own sake, go away. Elder Brother Jesus, send him away.”

  But Nellis banked again and came back over, even lower, as low as the pillar, which he probably couldn’t see. He passed so low that Poppy could make out his face in the cockpit and feel the thrum of the engine.

  Fool.

  And then it happened, the small airplane’s left wing detached from the fuselage. It simply came off. The plane began to spin as it plummeted to the ground. It cartwheeled when it struck and caught on fire. Poppy began to jog toward the wreck but quickly remembered to slow down and wave his stick before him.

  The fire was too hot for Poppy to approach. Nellis’ bloody forehead was pressed against the glass on the pilot-side door, and flames engulfed the cockpit.

  He’s dead, isn’t he? Dear Lord, let him be dead already.

  No such providence. Nellis wasn’t dead. He clawed at his chest, at the door, at the window. Poppy could do nothing but watch and pray. The pilot’s agony was shocking but brief, and Poppy prayed for mercy on his soul.

  When the fire had burned itself out, Poppy left the wreck and went to examine the fallen wing. The wing hadn’t been torn off but sliced through cleanly. Like his stick, the edges had a glassy finish. As he trudged back to his sno-go, he heard a crashing sound behind him, like an avalanche of broken crystal, and when he turned, the central pillar was gone.

  Poppy glanced at the broken airplane one last time. “I guess you won’t be telling nobody. At least there’s that. Amen.”

  CA6 1.0

  IT SURPRISED JACE how indifferent the other overwintering McHardyites were about the problems with the phone and internet service. Of the small Mail Day crowd, only Kelly Cobweal was moved to complain. He had a business to run, as he repeated ad nauseam, even though both his saloon and hotel were closed for the season. He, of course, blamed the unreliable service on over-regulation by the Obama administration (although it was the same administration that had extended service to McHardy in the first place).

  For the most part, the technological difficulties with the wireless service only confirmed what most dyed-in-the-wool McHardyites had believed in their hearts all along — Maya Apocalypse or not, civilization was going down, brother, and you had better get used to it. It was the reason why many of them had come to McHardy in the first place. Also, they were already practiced in living off the grid; they even preferred it that way. Ed Sulzer, for example, dusted off his old 1990s-era radio transceiver, the one he had used to report his thrice-daily meteorological readings before the process was automated and his contract was allowed to expire.

  Pre-Mail Day, as they dubbed Christmas week’s early mail delivery, proceeded as usual with coffee and blueberry pie and overheated bombast from Cobweal. Local anchorites got in their weekly dose of human contact. The one deviation from the script was the absence of the mail plane itself. Nine o’clock went by, ten o’clock, noon — the pie tins were empty, the coffee cold, and Nellis’ Cessna was still a no-show.

  Kelly Cobweal said, “Maybe Ned forgot about the day change.”

  “That’s not it,” Sulzer said. “I just radioed his wife in Gulkana, and she says Ned left at his usual hour.”

  “Has he called in since?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what do you suppose . . . ?”

  No one wanted to jinx Nellis by supposing that he had mechanical problems, or worse.

  Ed said, “If she doesn’t hear from him soon, she’s sending a chase plane to go look for him.”

  After a moment of silence, Ginny Sulzer flicked cigarette ash on her own hardwood floor and said, “In the last thirty years, Ned’s had trouble exactly twice. Both times were in the winter, and both times h
e simply set ’er down on a river or glacier and drank lukewarm coffee till help arrived. Don’t worry about Ned. Ned knows what he’s about.”

  By 1:00 p.m., still with no word from Nellis, people started leaving Pre-Mail Day for home without their last-minute Christmas cards, mail-order packages, and bills. Before they got away, Barbara Jean de Saul reminded everyone of the potluck Christmas dinner at her house the following day. She went out of her way to make sure Jace knew he was included. She told him to invite Ranger Masterson too.

  “What should I bring?” Jace said.

  “Bring anything you like, dear. Or just bring yourself.”

  “Good. Thanks. I’ll be there.” Jace had been wondering what he was going to do with the restaurant-size cans of sliced beets he’d purchased from the lodge. What a fine opportunity to put one of them to good use.

  CA7 1.0

  CHRISTMAS DAY 2012 was a bust. Without a Christmas tree (a pagan tradition) or exchange of gifts (every day is a gift), the Prophecy children had little to look forward to. The chores still needed doing, and work in the keep continued at breakneck speed.

  Poppy spent the morning in the prayer cabin studying the Bible or sleeping in. When he came to the house for lunch, he seemed more irritable than usual, snapping at anyone who crossed his path. Outside, there seemed to be ten times more small aircraft traffic than usual, and every time a plane flew over the house, Poppy rushed to a window with his binoculars. Woe to the child who got in his way.

  After lunch, before everyone returned to their chores, Deut organized the traditional Nativity Game. She set up the stable, star, and manger. Then she asked Bible questions, and the child who answered correctly was privileged to place a cow or Magus or angel into the scene. The child who scored the most points at the end won the honor of placing Baby Jesus in the manger. Little Uzzie won that honor, as he had every year since he could talk.

  Then it was back to work. It was Sarai’s turn to plan and prepare a special Christmas dinner, and she was hard-pressed to come up with a moose dish they hadn’t eaten a million times before.