Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse (24 page)

The silence was thick. Christine had barely eaten her salad—and turned down the perfectly prepared chicken-and-rice lunch—and her stomach’s hunger noises were louder than the children’s voices outside. Principal Smith did his best to recover from the shock of her proposal. He licked his dry lips and did his best to speak. His voice sounded dry when he finally responded, but he pressed on.

“Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

Reich felt herself smile. She was not happy, but rather relieved that she did not have to deal with her burden alone. She took her time to explain the situation to him so that she could do it without invoking terror. Her mind flashed back to the night she had learned the truth about her dear friend Anthony Perez, Terra, Venus—and a whole new universe.

“I picked this task because at some point in our future as a species, we will have to deal with a possible extinction-level event. Those children out there are the future—that is why this school is named Future Academy. Those discarded children, left to fight alone and die on the streets, are the future. I would rather have them work on such a project in the safety of this world, this academy—now—than to deal with the mindless leaders who they could have to depend on after it happens. I have more hope in their creativity, ingenuity, and survival instincts than I do in most of the people out there. And I want them to be rewarded for their best efforts. We do this right, your staff will see a substantial raise, and our students will be able to focus on academics once they leave our nest, without the burden of tuition and expenses. A valuable lesson to learn while in school. Their home.
Our
home…” Reich said. Her smile must have faded and her voice trailed off as more children came into view from her seat overlooking the campus’s yard. She turned to see the principal looking quizzically at her.

“Is there something I should know?” he asked. His gaze was serious but somehow also warm. Like Anthony Perez, Adam Smith had lost his wife—but to cancer—and his son to war. He was alone. These students were his children now. He shifted his focus to the playing youth outside. She turned to look at them while she spoke.

“I know that nothing will happen to those kids, no matter what. Fear is the enemy. Preparation and adaptation are the keys to success. I am privy to a lot of information, and I fear something will happen in just a few short years. I know it will. My close cabinet members know, and now you know. No details. For now. They will come.”

“And the file?”

“True and false,” Reich answered without delay. More hunger sounds and children’s voices filled the room.

“Thank you, Ms. Reich, for giving us this task. And thank you for giving me reason to live,” Smith said.

Reich turned to look at him. Without taking his eyes off the youth, he answered her unasked question. Images of her sister chasing her nieces flashed before her.

Maybe I can save them when the end comes.

“Being their principal is a great honor and a joy—something I never thought I would feel again. But it’s about more than guiding them through their present,” he said as he pointed to the children. “It’s about their future, now. It all just got wicked serious.”

“Yup,” Reich said. “As serious as it gets.”

Attachment is the root of suffering.
—The Buddha

“I can’t believe Dee Dee and the doctor took me out. No warning. Nothing,” Anthony Perez said. He sat crammed in the small galley area of their living unit. They had only three small rooms, including the shared sleeping area where they pitched their cots.

Andrea reflected often on the spacious, near-luxurious college dorms she lived in a lifetime ago.
Open air, trees, plenty of space, places to go freely without need of pressurized suits to protect against solar winds, severe lightening, and massive tornadoes.
The constant vibration under her feet that she was typically able to ignore made it clear that she was not on Earth. The constant hum of the planet’s machinery helped pull her thoughts back to the present. Her father was now rubbing the back of his neck where she assumed the injection site was located.

“You know, the doctor’s injection was not without pain, but it was fast and far better than the shots we got back in the service. He’s a fast doctor for sure,” he added.

Andrea smiled at his amazement—and at her good fortune that Dee Dee, Paeoniis and Dux Cloelius were worried about her father, too. Not to the obsessive degree she experienced, of course, but worried enough to hint that he should think about returning to Earth. On Earth, her father’s physique and health would be envied for sure. A sixty-year-old in a forty-year-old body would be prized. But fighting against a younger, profoundly stronger Terran male? He’d had no chance. She was also glad he had been unconscious so he did not see her outfit. She was sure he would have not approved of the shock-and-awe tactic. Now, dressed in her usual reddish-brown clothes and tunic that designated her engineering-warrior classification, she sat across from her father, likewise crammed into her own seat. They were both sipping the closest thing Terra had to tea, made of mushrooms, fowl, and rat-meat broth. It sounded vile, but she had grown to like it.

“And you shaved your beautiful hair, too? Andrea! I could have resolved this without you doing all that. I should have known something was up when Hydra kept coming around, looking for you,” the elder Perez said.

“Wow, Dad! You’re the one who got Hydra and her team all jazzed up about looking for some ‘lost city.’”

Andrea watched her father drop his hand and look at her. Every time she called him on his research and all the old maps, charts, and books he had found in the Great Library, he gave her the same stare. She already knew what he was going to say.

“You know, they thought the City of Troy was a myth, too. But then they found the ruins and all of a sudden, fable became fact.”

Andrea did her best not to roll her eyes or to look disinterested.

“But Dad, come on! Obviously the ‘Hades’ here is different from our understanding of what Hades represented on Earth. And even if there was some remote connection between an underground world here and our Hades, it’s clearly Terra that’s both underground and built by a great planetary architect they call Hades. You know that.
Hades
is a person, not an actual place. That’s probably what was meant by it all. Earth’s master computer is nearly inoperable,” Andrea said. She closed her eyes immediately as she realized the trap she had just walked into.

“You mean the other myth, Atlantis? Where Earth’s master computer is? A mythical island that was supposed to have been the locus of civilization until it was wiped out?” he said. While his answer was devoid of smugness, she knew he had a point.

All right. Change tactics.

“Don’t you think our sonar and seismic monitors would have discovered chambers under the crust?” she asked. Andrea was trying her best to derail her father’s escalating argument.

“We should have realized that Terra was here while we were still on Earth, too. But we missed it because of deception and missed hints. I’m betting that there is a real Hades, an underground world filled with heat, teeming with life, devils in the dark, fire, and brimstone. You’ve seen all the old maps, charts, and manuscripts?”

Andrea nodded. Then she looked down at her cooled drink. Images of old manuscripts and documents flooded her mind. She didn’t have to look over at their sleeping area to know that his bunk was littered with all sorts of material related to his studies. She moved her hand to her head and was surprised to feel that she was bald—while she was not used to it, she admitted to herself that not having any hair made it very cool and pleasant. The silence grew.

“Well, at least Hydra believes,” he said. He did not sound dejected, but he did not sound happy, either.

The feeling was mutual.

“How come you’re leaving for Earth? You’ve spent months on this search and have located possible sites for the city, and now that you’ve got a team together, you’re leaving? Why?” Andrea asked. She felt her heart beginning to break. It was easy to see that her father felt the same pain she did.

“Honey…I really don’t fit in here…”

“You haven’t given it a try,” Andrea interjected.

“Honey, you’ve been here for years. You’re part of the caste system, with your science background and your warrior status. I’m more like a specimen in a zoo,” he said. He spoke softly, which made the truth of his words more palpable. His argument was almost verbatim to what Dee Dee had said. He reached out his hand to touch his daughter’s. She grabbed it immediately.

“Anyway, Bobby Jo will need help putting together her ark. When Jupiter ignites, I really think Terra will be fine. Earth will become nightmarish. If she and I can convince General Farrell to shift resources from searching for Terra to preserving the next generation, it will be time well spent,” Anthony said.

“You mean the elusive Christine Reich?” Perez the Younger said.

“Yup. She’ll always be Bobby Jo to me, but you’re right. I have to start training myself to call her by her new name.”

“General David Farrell…” she said.

“He’s a decent guy. He’s the guy that tried to keep you safe and has been hunting Terra down.”

“Yup,” she said. She actually remembered her first meeting with the man, a mild-mannered, articulate military colonel at the time. When he told her what he suspected about another planet behind the sun, she was sure he was mad. But when his explanation happened simultaneously with all her scientific research vanishing from the computer servers, she knew it was no joke. Her memories of earlier times on Earth were filled with a sense of mystery and scientific adventure, but that didn’t mean she was enthusiastic about her father’s plan to return to a marked planet.

“And if Earth doesn’t survive?” Andrea felt her eyes welling up.

Anthony squeezed her hand in reassurance. “I don’t think Earth is going to, honey. But we’ll make sure that our shelter will keep us safe. Worst-case scenario is that we all come here. While there might not be a lot of room,” her father said as he gestured around their small space, “at least we have an escape plan.”

“It takes two Earth months to get there from Terra.”

“We’ll be able to last that long, at least! We’ve got time and resources to find a suitable location for shelter. Based on the assessments Hydra gave me, it looks like being underground will be the safest plan, as long as we stay far from fault lines,” Anthony said.

Memories of her mother and brother, both resting in graves on Earth, came to mind. At first she had wondered if her father’s desire to return home was to be closer to them. It didn’t take long for her to realize, though, that being on Terra without a purpose when he could be on Earth doing something useful was a primary motivation for his decision. She had a purpose, role, and function on Terra. Her father did not.

“Well, at least you’ll have more to put your mind to on Earth than searching for some lost world here,” she said as a means to try to lighten her mood. Her father smirked and squeezed her hand before letting it go. Andrea thought he was going to let her flippant comment go, too, but he went back to it.

“Those huge rats came from somewhere. And now they’re suddenly in short demand. You gotta wonder where they went…”

Andrea and the others had indeed wondered about the precipitous drop in rattus sightings, and rat meat had become a rare commodity over the past several cycles.

He’s got a point there.
She reluctantly agreed with her father’s assessment.
They have to be going somewhere.

Radiate boundless love toward the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity. —
The Buddha

Reich found herself enjoying the panoramic view from the enclosed observation deck of the John Hancock Tower in Boston, Massachusetts. While the view was crystal clear and there were few other visitors, she wished she were alone—and not waiting to spring a trap.

“Officer John Middleton is twelve meters north of your position, and Officer Virginia Spenser is fourteen meters south of you,” her master computer said through a small earpiece in her right ear canal, making her tablet’s mechanical-sounding female voice so clear it was as if she were right there. The tablet, Christine knew, was more likely in the hands of Lux, who was running the mission.

Attired in a black, form-fitting, one-piece, sleek jumpsuit underneath a long black dress, black blouse, and tapered black jacket and boots, Reich looked more like she was on her way to attend a funeral than to meet Chief Inspector Arthur Bradley. The only color she flashed was her red hair and lipstick. To her, this would be more of a tête-à-tête than a real a “meeting.” She had gone to some trouble to give Bradley the impression that she had been caught, just so she could talk to him. Her black attire stirred up memories of the funeral of her former lover, Dr. Hiaki Nakamura. On that bleak day, she had also reconnected with Anthony Perez. That day, the Earth had stood still for her, and a new world order came to light. Reich looked out and tried to enjoy the view.

It had been several days since she met with Principal Smith. Lux and Pax thought she was crazy to give him and the children such a challenge. Her own Master Keeper, embodied now in a small tablet, had labeled the approach “ingenious,” however. Principal Smith had called her yesterday to say that the campus was already buzzing with the assignment, and she finally felt much better. Now, with part one of her plan in the works, the time had come to talk to Chief Inspector Bradley. Then she could begin to check out future sites. With the three “emergency preparation” stores purchased and a gun company and ammunition reserve on the payroll, all that was really needed was to get everything in place and wait.

Two years. Maybe three.

“Chief Inspector Arthur Bradley has secured all possible routes of escape below your position. As expected, there is minimal coverage above you,” her disembodied tablet computer said.