Ark-13: An Odyssey (5 page)

Log Entry # 4

My father’s name was Walter Hansen. He was a partner of Teague, Hansen and Kendrick, LLC – the most prestigious law firm in Washington, DC. He handled many confidential matters for all branches of government. The majority of their business served what he would call the fourth branch of government: government contractors.

My dad controlled my whole life. He had a formula for me to follow. It started with straight A’s all through school, active participation in sports, boy scouts and even volunteering. ‘It’s all about the resume’, he would constantly remind me. If I started to like anything growing up he would immediately figure out a way to spin it into a professional credential of some kind. After graduating with a 4.0, I would get into an Ivy League school where I would study pre-law immediately. I would graduate with highest honors, I would pass my BAR exam, work a clerkship for a couple different judges that he knew and then I would work at his firm. I would carry his torch.

That was the formula.

But there was one major difference between my dad and me.

I was never good at
his
Math.

I had wondered for the past few days why he could possibly want to talk to me. After five years of no communication, the message was clear. I didn’t want to be him. So what could he possibly want to talk to me about? He had only talked to me about my career plans, so if it wasn’t going to be that then what would cause him to have Nora come ask me to call him out of the blue?

I was sitting on my bed, dialing his number when my finger rested over the last digit for a moment. I had to exhale a lifetime of tension before I pressed that last number. After a few rings, my father answered.

“Jake…” his voice was older than I remembered. It had a slight quaking behind it.

“Hello…” the awkwardness settled in quickly.

“It’s been too long my son.” I didn’t respond, wanting to get down to business.

“I’m so glad you called...” he continued.

“What is this about?” After a moment, he began with the full weight of gravity in his voice.

“Have you ever heard of Cyrus Holder?”

“Founder and CEO of GENESIS Enterprises… of course…”

“I am sending him to come see you. I can assure you that it is of the utmost importance that you listen to him and do everything he says.”

“Dad, if you are trying to get me a job, I swear—”

“I’m not! This is serious son. I have been working solely for GENESIS Enterprises for the last two years on a particular matter. All I can say is that I was able to negotiate your selection.”

“Selection for what?”

“I can’t say. Cyrus will tell you. Do everything he says, do you understand me?” I sensed a begging in his voice. I had never heard my father beg before. Something was amiss and I knew I would have to comply to get to the bottom of it.

“You are telling me that one of the most influential people in the last decade is coming down to Georgetown, SC to meet with me.”

“Yes.” He was dead serious. I took a few moments to process everything.

“Alright… but you’re leaving me with a lot of questions…”

“Answers are coming soon,” he responded.

“Where do I meet him?”

“He’ll come to your office. Tomorrow. Cancel all your appointments. It is critical that you listen to him. He will give you the answers you are a looking for. And I assure you what he says is true.”

“Alright then.”

“I love you, son…” he admitted with great difficulty. I couldn’t say anything in return, I was shocked. I couldn’t remember any time in my life that he had told me that.

Without another word, I hung up the phone.

Now that I know what happens in the end, now that I know he saved my life with that conversation, now that I know he looked out for me as a father should, I wish so badly that I had told him that I loved him back in that moment.

But it’s too late and I’m left to regret the man I was before impact.

“The Insurrection?” Jake asked, as if wondering if he had heard it right. Danny turned his chair from the computer to face him and held his hand out. Jake pulled the insertable drive out of his armport and placed it in his open palm.

“You are not the first, Jake…” Danny smiled. “I couldn’t tell you until you were overwritten,” he said nodding to the drive in his hand.

“How many of us are their?” Jake asked.

“You are the seventh… To be honest, we needed you, Jake. We have no leadership. Just crazy rebels willing to risk everything for our rights.” For the first time Danny broke from his confident swagger. His voice carried an emotional cadence behind it. A slight quiver resonated behind his words. “We have no strategy, we have no direction. We need someone… like you…”

Jake remembered Meredith’s note,
Trust Danny Ryder
. And he saw why. Jake could see in his eyes a hope for a leader.

He nodded to his new friend, eyes still locked on his.

“I’m all in…” Jake affirmed but Danny leaned forward and appraised his admission. He arched his eyebrows in an effort to emphasize his assurance. Danny nodded, accepting the commitment, and leaned back in his chair.

“Who are the other five?” Jake continued his line of questioning.

“Coop Nolan, Nurse Lucy from Sick Bay, Elijah Johnson, Zoe Maddon and Junior Posey.” Jake’s ears perked up at mention of the last name.

“The last time I saw you with Junior Posey, he was about to beat the snot out of you,” Jake exclaimed. Danny smiled, devilishly. “Was that for show?”

“He wanted proof that overwritten vitals would work… so I had to show him,” Danny shrugged. Jake shook his head again in disbelief. He had to hand it to Danny, he was three steps ahead of him.

“I know Coop and Lucy but who are Elijah and Zoe.”

“They are my age. Elijah is popular with most of the rough and toughs. Quarterback-of-the-football-team type of guy. Zoe is more of the artistic type. Kind of emo but I love her anyway…” Jake nodded his head and changed the subject.

“Was Meredith a member?”

“No… she wasn’t overwritten.” Danny shook his head.

“What did you talk to her about before they issued the detainment order?”

“Meredith followed me here, much like you have, and asked how I had hacked my armport. She caught on to me somehow from our little episode in the Stalls. She expressed some interest in being overwritten herself but first wanted to know what else I had hacked. So I showed her the Q drive, which not only contains all the surveillance feeds from around the Ark and all of the e-messages transferred across the network but also contains every colonist’s vital prints.”

“Woah, woah, woah… you mean to tell me you have access to all of that?” Jake asked, astonished with an open hand, slowing him down.

“Yeah man…” Danny responded as if it wasn’t a big deal. Jake turned his hand as if to release the brakes on the conversation.

“But the problem is that most of the data is useless at this point. Each colonist has been assigned a random identification number. They are only referred to on the Q drive by that number in the data tables and we don’t have the corresponding names. So I can see a message being transferred but I don’t know who it is from or who it is to. I can see that a guy is crushing and a girl is blushing but I don’t know which colonists. If I did, I could be quite the matchmaker.” Danny leaned back, pleased with his wit. He let the information settle and tried to read Jake’s expression.

“Are ya with me?”

“Yeah, I got it…” Jake affirmed, waving for him to continue.

“So in a nutshell we have all of this data but we don’t know how to read it, so we can’t use it. The colonist master file serves as the map between names and IDs. It is critical to being able to use this data on the Q drive. I told her that I couldn’t hack it without GENESIS knowing and that it would have to be copied manually, which sucks because the file is on the…”

“X drive…” Jake finished his sentence, recalling Meredith’s note.

“But as you know the X drive is in the Vault of the Archives. She seemed eager to joining the cause, but a little too eager…” Danny punched one last command on the computer to bring up the surveillance footage from the previous day of the Archives. It showed Meredith sneaking through the aisles of the server farm until she reached the glass room in the back of the chamber. A door with a keycard slot stood between Meredith and the one server behind it.

Meredith pulled a homemade hacking keycard out of her back pocket. A series of flat wires streamed out the back end of the keycard and small monitor connected to the end of the wires. With a few commands punched in, the device attempted to hack the lock.

“Yeah, she swiped that from me. I didn’t know that she had. It took me awhile to build that, too.”

After a few moments, the door to the Vault opened. Meredith walked in and plugged into the server with her holographic. She swiped through the different directories and then stopped.

Her hands came over her mouth.

Her mouth dropped in shock. And then sirens sounded and the lights on the feed flashed red.

“As you can see, Meredith saw something that she was not supposed to...”

“She said that very thing,” Jake spoke, eyes still fixated on the feed.

“What did she see, though?” Danny asked, through his befuddlement.

“The truth…she saw the truth, which means that what Cyrus Holder told us… was a lie…”

Log Entry # 5

I remember performing my morning ritual. I grabbed a coffee from Earl at the corner cafe, popped my headphones in and walked along the boardwalk listening to an old crooner from the 50’s. The sun peered onto the bay and the seagulls gathered. I sat on the lone bench on the boardwalk, looking out over the harbor. Being a creature of habit, this morning ritual was repeated before each and every work day.

I always found it to be a peaceful way to begin my day.

I arrived to my office at 9. My secretary was on edge by the time I walked in.

“What is it, Doris?” I placed the blueberry muffin I had bought her on her desk.

“There’s a man in ya’ office. I sure tried to get him to wait out ere’ but he said you’d been ‘xpecting him.” She shook her head in a tizzy.

“It’s okay. Just enjoy your muffin and hold all my calls,” I tried to offer a comforting smile but she was an old Southern woman who would think what she thought regardless.

I entered my office and found Cyrus Holder, inspecting the pictures on my wall. He turned and smiled a toothy grin at me.

Cyrus Holder did not look like your typical CEO. He had a feeble, skinny frame, large outdated glasses and thinning hair atop a receding hairline. He wore a navy blue cardigan with elbow patches and a plaid button-down underneath it, atop a pair of wrinkled khakis.

It was the appearance of an older man with no woman in his life.

I was slightly star struck as the man before me was in fact one of the most powerful men in the world. GENESIS Enterprises was the world’s leader in all things technology. They had the best selling gadgets, phones, tablets, cars and solar panels. GENESIS was a private firm, so was able to maintain a level of discretion that most public companies could not. Most of their research was kept under wraps and the company was at the center of every conspiracy theory from Bilderberg to the Illuminati.

The news had been reporting over the last six months on his progressing cancer, as questions circled about.

With no children or spouse, what would happen to the company in the event of his death?

I wondered if he was going to use me to plan his last will and testament. I am an estate lawyer after all, but why would he give such a small town lawyer that responsibility when he has a cohort of lawyers, including my father, on payroll.

As I looked at the man at the center of every tabloid in America, I could see that he had a much different purpose. And his will was the last thing on his mind.

“Mr. Holder, a pleasure.” I shook his hand and dropped my bag near my desk.

“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Hansen.” I motioned a hand for him to sit in an armchair by a nearby coffee table. I grabbed the other chair.

“Would you like some coffee? I can call Doris…” I dropped my hand to the intercom, but Cyrus’s hand waved it off. He adjusted himself nervously.

“No, no coffee and in fact…” he gritted his teeth for a moment. “I’m going to need you to dismiss her right now.”

“What?”

“She is your only employee?” he asked. I nodded my head, affirming his assumption.

“I need you to send her home.” Oddly, he seemed serious, deadpan and direct.

“Okay…” I kept my eye on Cyrus to ensure he remained as forthright as he was. I pressed the intercom button.

“Doris?”

“Yes sir!” she responded, eager to help in any way possible.

“Why don’t you take the day off…” At first there was an odd silence.

“Are… are… are ya sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow—” Cyrus shook his head disapprovingly at these words.

“I’ll see you when I see you, I’m not sure if I’m coming in tomorrow.” I tried to make it sound like less of a question, but I’m sure my confusion came through the intercom.

“Well…well… okay then! Have a good day.”

I looked up at one of the world’s most powerful and influential people.

“Can I call you Cyrus?” I asked trying to get comfortable with his presence.

“Mr. Holder will be fine.” I remember thinking, ‘what the hell is up with this guy?’ I took a moment to adjust myself amidst the awkwardness building in the room.

“What can I do you for?”

“You have been selected for Ark-13…” A wild smile came over Cyrus’s face. I remained nonplussed to say the least.

“Ark-13?”

“Yes, Ark-13. The last voyage of humanity’s life boats,” he spoke as if I was supposed to know what was going on.

“I am not following…”

“Jake, GENESIS discovered three years ago that an asteroid would be hitting our planet. It will destroy everything and it is scheduled to strike in seven days…” I sat still and looked him over. Again, he was the same contortion of awkward seriousness.

I had heard what he had said, but it didn’t register. It just bounced off as ridiculous.

I laughed out loud – I wasn’t even polite about it.

“This is some messed up prank my dad is pulling…” but then I realized my dad does not joke, especially in the mist of our current relationship.

But Cyrus’s cemented expression did not crack.

“Wait, wait, wait… you are telling me the world is going to end?” I tried to figure out the meaning written on his face.

Cyrus offered one small and steady nod, not taking his eyes off mine.

“Get outta here…” My laughter had mutated into anger and I stood in an attempt to usher him out of my office. But the man before me did not flinch. He only looked up, disarming me with heavy eyes as I processed the information.

Cyrus did not stand to leave, rather he pulled out a file. The file had a telescoped photograph of a jagged rock. He handed me the file as he prepped his laptop.

“The Pale Horse, that’s what we are calling it, is 32 miles wide. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was only 8 miles wide. The Earth will be engulfed in flames, everything will die. Everyone you know, your mother, father, sister and Doris will die. There is no escaping it.” The words finally began to settle as I flipped through the stack of photographs showing the measurements of the asteroid.

Cyrus flipped his laptop around to show me an illustration of the asteroid’s trajectory. The muscles in my face slowly began to loosen as the information seeped in. Cyrus continued as if there was nothing wrong. He was very matter-of-fact about it. And he laid it on thick.

And then tunnel vision settled in.

“You have more satellites in the sky than anyone...” I realized aloud. Cyrus affirmed with a glance.

Then an image of Georgetown, SC bursting into flames flashed before my eyes.

Then things spun.

My head lost its center of gravity and my grip loosened on my coffee mug.

And then it dropped.

The coffee splattered on the floor, the mug shattering on impact. My eyes fell to the pieces scattered across my office floor. After a minute of deep, heart-wrenching reflection I lifted my eyes back up to the strange face of Cyrus Holder. He looked down the bridge of his nose at me.

“Now… now… You didn’t let me explain the good news…” I raised my hand to my head, rubbing it in hopes that the newly learned information would smear away.

Cyrus helped me take a sip of water as I reestablished my bearings. I lifted upright and focused on my breaths.

“How is there good news…” I exhaled with difficulty. “You’re telling me the world is going to be destroyed.”

“Yeah… but you aren’t going to be on it when it is destroyed…” I turned my head to eye the man before me.

“What?” Cyrus opened another folder for my viewing. Atop the small stack of papers was a letter with the Presidential Seal on it. The first line read: “From the Office of the President of the United States…” the letter went on to congratulate me on my selection for the project. I shuffled the letter behind the stack to reveal another photograph.

It showed a large gray ship, encased in solar panels and surrounded by a large ring. It was upright on a launch pad with multiple large rockets attached to its underside.

“This is Ark-13. The twelve others have already taken off from different points across the world. We have worked with a number of governments, including our own, to plan a coordinated evacuation of Earth. Launch is in 4 days. We need to be at a safe distance from Earth for the Armageddon,” Cyrus spoke as if he had said it many times before. The words had no meaning behind them anymore; rather they were just muscle memory.

“Are you serious?” I couldn’t think but to ask the obvious question. With one more stare through his glasses he met me eye to eye from human to human.

“Yes, I am…”

“Why me?”

“The Ark Project would not have been possible without your father. One of the selected colonists unfortunately took his own life at the news, providing a vacant seat. We need someone on Ark-13 with a legal background, because you along with the other colonists will be creating and governing a society indefinitely.”

“What next?” I wanted to kick him out of my office but I decided to ask the question off the top of the stack, just in case he was serious.

“You need to first disseminate your cover story to everyone you know. Put it on your Facebook wall, your Twitter or whatever. Your cover is that you have decided to go on a mission trip to help build houses in Haiti with our non-profit Alliance. You will be gone for two months. There will be no phone or internet connection, so you will be off the grid. It is imperative that you don’t tell anyone about the Ark or about the Pale Horse,” he said pointing to the photographs of the asteroid.

“What?! Not tell anyone.” Cyrus leaned back in his chair and sighed. “How can we not tell anyone?”

“It will endanger the launch, not to mention everyone would kill each other before the Pale Horse hit. Panic would spell the last days of Earth. We don’t want that for the human race.”

“But that is not right. They have a right to know that their lives are ending!” Somewhere along the way a tear welled up in my eye.

“Did they know when their life was beginning?” Cyrus asked plainly. “Why would it be any different for when their life was ending?” I was speechless. The full weight of the information again weighed down on me. I leaned back into the small couch and stared at my office ceiling.

“Where do I go? What do I bring?”

“I cannot tell you where you will be going. We can’t risk word getting out about our launch site. It’s nothing personal but we’ve been building the Ark for three years and some colonist with a loud mouth will not be ruining our efforts. As for what you can bring… you can bring anything that fits in this box.” He handed me an empty personal parcel. “No weapons. The details are contained in this file here, which also has your chartered plane ticket. You will be on the first flight tomorrow which gives you the rest of the day to make your amends and disseminate your cover.”

Over the following two hours he answered almost every question I had in detail and tabled the others for orientation, which would be the following day. After finishing my questions about the functioning of the Ark and the details of the launch, he gathered his things in a disorderly way and said his goodbyes.

He began to leave but I called after him.

“Cyrus…”

“Yes?”

“Why are you calling it the Pale Horse?

“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him… Revelation 6:8” he nodded and exited the office, leaving me to the full weight of our impending Apocalypse.