The Victor Project (9 page)

     The test had executed smoothly and John specifically remembered grading the scenario with high marks.  Transport dockings carrying building materials and supplies occurred about every three or four days on a fairly regular basis, so it was obvious the scenario wasn’t for that.  Someone wanted to test the process of lining up twenty-five Brandon Transports and unloading them in a hurry.

    The big question was what event was going to involve the entire fleet of transports and what the hell were they going to unload in such a hurry?  He would get the answer to that question from the FSC.  The reason for that was the simple fact that nobody told the FSC anything either.  What little information they were given, they classified in their own secret way in their own little secret world.  John’s first guess was that it was some sort of a disaster drill to evacuate people from another space station to C-Orbit.  But he was unaware of any other GEP space station besides C-Orbit and items like space stations were difficult to hide, even in the vastness of the orbiting space around earth.  The logistics of keeping the construction of a space station a secret, even one half the size of C-Orbit would have been just as phenomenal.

     A space station evacuation was his first guess for the testing scenario, because he really didn’t want to contemplate the second, which was the evacuation of earth survivors.  John guessed that a transport could hold about one hundred people in a very uncomfortable way.  But if your choice was either waking up to some rancid disease every morning or smelling some guy’s armpit for a few hours, catching an overcrowded space bus would be the pick.  Twenty-five transports would get you twenty-five hundred human beings tops.  Just twenty-five hundred people left to carry on the human race.  He wondered how many people were living on earth at this moment, ten million, fifteen million?  Certainly he would have heard something on the news if another plague was ravishing the earth.

      He began to wonder what process the government would use to choose the lucky evacuees.  A few hundred would have to be special-skills personnel from the military, medical fields, scientific fields and of course a few politicians would no doubt be chosen.  The thought struck him that being a chosen survivor of some viral holocaust with the possibility of never being able to return to earth might not fall into the category of luck.  It might just be close to hell.

     Over the past thousand years man has been able to search the relevant universe, he still hasn’t found another bountiful rock of life, so C-Orbit would have to be home sweet home.  Of all the time he had spent on the station, he had never thought of it being a permanent residence, much less a totally self sufficient city.  Many bio-social studies had been conducted over the past hundreds of years on humans living in seclusion.  Most of the test cases involved teams of ten or twenty humans, but he had never heard of a scenario of twenty-five hundred.  Unlike the other studies, this test would involve hundreds of subjects who, unlike their previous test volunteers, have perfect knowledge that they may never set foot on earth again.  That would pretty much throw all of the previous test findings out the cargo bay.  The surviving C-Orbit rats would eat each other alive after the first year.  The more he thought about it, he would have no problem remaining on planet earth, waving goodbye to the last transport as it left for the space station, then heading for the high-country alone.

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     The security man gave a subtle wave of the hand as Rick walked through the front door of his apartment building.  It was good to be back home.  Four other tenants were already standing at the elevator doors as Rick strolled up.  Upon hearing a comment about the amount of time the four had been waiting, along with a derogatory comment about the function of the elevator itself, Rick made a quick detour up the staircase.  For him the option was easy, his apartment was only five floors up.  He felt sorry for the poor saps that lived on the upper floors of the thirty-five floor high-rise.

     As he strolled down the hallway he noticed Stan and Trish’s door standing open along with a fair amount of their possessions sitting in the hallway.  The door on the far elevator was propped open causing the backup of passengers on the main floor.  No doubt the freight elevator was in the same predicament.  Rick had spoken with them only last week and they hadn’t mentioned moving.  They seemed to be good tenants, so he couldn’t imagine that they were being evicted.  Just before turning the doorknob to his apartment, Stan stepped out into the hallway.

     “Hey Rick,” he said.

     “You guys moving out?” asked Rick.

     “Yea, got a great deal on a place in Camden Heights.  We’re just renting for now, but we have an option to buy the place.”

     “Sounds like a good deal,” said Rick.

     “Trish and I will have you out as soon as we’re settled.”

     “Find me a deal and I’ll move out there,” said Rick.

     “Well keep our eyes open,” he replied as he continued toward the elevator.

      Each time Rick closed the door to his place, the quiet seemed to overcome him.  The realization of how much more interesting life was while he was traveling always hit him square in the face in the quiet of his home.  The desire to own a pet had always been strong, but his job made it impossible to care for anything more than a plant.  For now, his two plants and his computer would have to do as the welcoming committee.

     The communication system had logged zero incoming voice messages and only one hang-up that failed to register an originating number or address.  One incoming electronic communication had arrived this morning. 

     “General, bring up the message,” Rick commanded.

     “Electronic message presented,” replied the machine.

     The message was from Frank:

How was your trip home?  All blood results normal.  All CVD program standards achieved.

Attached is your next assignment.  Have a nice day.

     “General, print the attachment,” Rick commanded.

     “Attachment printed on local device,” replied the machine.

      The assignment stated he was scheduled to travel again in two days, allowing him only tomorrow as a free day between assignments.  Most of the time the assignments were planned as such that he would receive a couple of paid days prior to each weekend.  It was one of the perks of being a Traveler.  There were only six or seven weeks where the bonus day landed in the middle.  There was probably some logical or scientific reason for the four day weekends.  Most likely it allowed him to interact with the inhabitants of his primary zone, in hopes of catching the latest cold or virus to pack along for the next trip.

     “General, cable screen.”

     “Any particular channel?” asked the machine.

     “Begin with my favorites.”

     A loud noise bolting through the wall adjacent to Stan and Trish’s apartment signaled that their moving woes were continuing.  He didn’t hear any loud scream so whatever catastrophe that had just occurred must have only done harm to the inanimate objects.  One of them would knock on the door if help was needed.  The second loud noise that was emitted was a little more annoying.

     “General, volume up two.”

     Rick realized that there were chores like cleaning and grocery shopping that needed attention, but now just didn’t seem like the time.  He felt more like relaxing on his couch and getting reacquainted with his home.  As the viewing screen emerged from the wall, Rick worked his way into the kitchen to survey any snacks that might look appealing for the moment.  He hadn’t had a grocery delivery in over a week so there wasn’t much available.  He returned to the living room with a lone drink in hand.

     After a series of channels Rick had the computer stop on a news program.  The commentator was discussing the scientific findings of the cooling earth climate.  Only a few hundred years ago, everyone was screaming about global warming.  Luckily, the thinning population stifled that problem.  He remembered reading that toward the end of the twenty-first century, scientists were predicting an eleven degree rise in temperature by the end of the twenty-second century.  They also predicted that the rise in the in sea levels due to polar melting would have submerged much of
California, all of Florida, and a lot of the coasts of Europe.

     With less population, there were less toxic emissions, which led to a halt in ozone depletion.  In addition, it led to less water pollution, garbage land fills and nuclear waste dumping,  Mother earth benefited greatly from the epidemics.  She definitely needed the break.

     Rick began to wonder what it would have been like to wonder the earth like the early cave man, or the sailors that crossed the sea looking for the new world.  Even though Frank had laid a sound rebuttal to what Val had debated, emotionally he was still on her side.  The beauty and wild that he had seen first hand from his travels was there to be challenged, to be absorbed by human senses.  Not interacting with its wonder was like buying a loaf of bread and allowing it to spoil before tasting or even smelling it.  But now it seemed that the newest generation of man had been reduced to a passive voyeur.

     Ever since man evolved, he had risked his life for adventure and research.  The GEP had ventured to many planets over the last two hundred years and had never returned with some all-killing space virus.  If historic man wouldn’t have risked their lives, he wouldn’t be sitting here today.  Man was never meant to be caged and pampered like an ignorant pet. 

     But there was a chance that even though earth itself was the same as long ago, the human nature of man may have been different.  People solved there own problems back then.  They didn’t come running to the government for guidance or salvation.  Frank was right about one thing, the masses would panic and seek out that one foundation that could provide the cure.  It wasn’t a pretty site picturing thousands of infected people being shot just outside the zone gates in order to save the few who elected to stay under the wing of the government.  Those who stayed in the zones would deserve that sacrifice.

     In a way he wanted the next two days to pass quickly.  The thought of seeing Val again was the main motive for that.  He had felt something click the moment he sat down across from her in the restaurant.  Their personalities seemed to complement one another.  He could only hope that she felt the same.

CHAPTER 6

     Frank made is way off the elevator and back down the hallway to his office.  Much of the floor was dark with only a few standard safety lights glowing for navigating after office hours.  It was usually around 8:30pm that the building computers took over and followed a sequence of procedures that switched off all non-critical lighting.  If any personnel were still in the office at that time and needed to continue working, they could simply hit the over-ride switch located on their wall or cube. 

     The hallway was silent enough, but he made every attempt to navigate the hallway as quietly as possible pausing at junctions to survey the offices and cubicles.  The darkness of the floor signaled to Frank that no one had overridden the computer’s commands to keep their desk illuminated.  More importantly,
Sherman’s office was dark and quiet.

     Frank opened the door to his office and reached in to flip on the switch for the light.  As if it were noon, he casually strolled by Sherman’s office just to make sure the old freak wasn’t sitting in the dark working on some covert scheme.  If the old man had been sitting at his desk, Frank would have had to wing some excuse for returning to the building.

     Making his way back toward his office, he detoured to the water cooler to grab a cup full.  Sneaking around the office at night was making his mouth feel like sandpaper.  He had always wondered if the computer knew when a light switch was overridden and even more so did it keep some type of log or notify the guard on duty.  He had only flipped the override switch twice in the past and nothing of the sort had transpired, so there was really no need to waste time thinking of things like that.  He had a right to be in his office at any hour he chose.  It really wasn’t anyone else’s business.

     The door made a slight squeaking noise as Frank eased it shut.  The sound was something you just didn’t notice during the regular routine of the day.  At the moment it sounded like a police siren.  Settling back in his chair, he unlocked his desk and opened the bottom drawer.  Below a stack of obscure files, he had placed a small brown envelope containing a disk.  After letting the disk flop out of the envelope and onto the top of the desk, Frank grabbed a pair of scissors and began to scrape off multicolored label that someone had placed on it.  In a few minutes, he had successfully removed all but the remnants of some sticky adhesive.  On the new label, Frank wrote the words
Miscellaneous Research
to replace the original text, CVD test files.  Changing the title on the disk label helped cover some tracks, which made him feel a little safer.

     What little information Frank had previously gained from a document on the disk, gave every inclination that it contained more than just some random Epidemiology guidelines or study results.  What he had seen earlier that day was the outline of a project that had Subversive-Sherman written all over it.  The scariest component of this mystery was that he wasn’t quite sure how it made its way into his office.  Only one day earlier, he had discovered the brown envelope and its contents lying at the bottom of a series of correspondence that Trudy had typed.  The disk alone was inside the envelope.  No letter, no note, no hint of why he now possessed it, much less who stole it, if they stole it, or even who created it.

     After getting a glimpse of its contents, Frank was afraid to snoop around for the Disk Fairy.  It was obvious the messenger had a strong desire to remain anonymous.  It didn’t take a genius to conclude that the thief had some concept that he could be trusted to do the right thing with the information and not squeal to the department.  Tonight he hoped he would discover just what the right thing was.

     The clock on his desk displayed 10:23pm.  He had already blown twenty minutes and hadn’t even booted a file yet.  He had turned on his PC upon entering the office and the glass display was just now warming up, ready for voice recognition to complete his access into the network.  Frank quickly inserted the disk into the computer and slipped the BIO-Pointer onto his right index finger.

     “Frank Belker,” he said quietly into the CPU microphone.

     “Access Denied.  Invalid Voice Recognition,” the system replied.

     Frank’s whisper had altered his voice tone and pitch so much that the machine could match it to what had been previously recorded by the VRM.  Frank felt a little paranoid about speaking in a louder voice, but the emotion was ridiculous given the time of night and the emptiness of the office. 

     “Frank Belker,” he said in a normal voice.

     After a few seconds the computer granted access.  It struck him at that moment that there was probably a substantial amount of light sneaking through the small opening between the bottom of the door and the carpeted floor.  Most likely enough to be easily seen from the elevator down the hallway.  Hastily Frank leapt from his chair and as he darted around the desk, he bumped his thigh on its corner.  It was all he could do not to let out a yell from the pain.  After pausing for a moment to grit his teeth and rub the soreness from his thigh, he covered the last few steps toward the wall and flicked the over-ride switch to the off position.  Without the competition of the office light, the three-by-three display screen stood out like a beacon posted on the zone gates.  Frank moved back to his seat with a greater sense of balance and restraint. 

     “Dim display 4,” he commanded to bring down the vibrancy of the screen.

     Frank touched the icon for the file manager to bring all of the files on the disk up for display.  To his amazement, there were only three.  A few days ago, there seemed to be many more, but no one could have found the disk where he had stashed it, much less tampered with it.  Three was enough for the night anyway.

     The first file Frank opened was a text document that was named VictorFile.  The total page count at the bottom right hand corner displayed thirty-five pages in length.  Page one simply read “THE VICTOR PROJECT”.  Page two had the standard monotonous garbage about confidentiality along with the tedious details defining the associated federal laws, but it was page three that held something more interesting.  The beginning summary read.

The following document outlines the procedures and directives for completing all phases of The Victor Project as part of the legislative act H773P of 2807 signed by the of President of the United States of America.  These procedures are to be executed upon directives initiated only by the President himself. 

     It could take all night to read the entire document, given all the bullshit that the department typically filled their reports with.  At most all he had was a couple of hours in the office.  Frank guessed that after two hours, the odds were that a guard would stumble upon him and he just didn’t feel like making up any stories on why he sitting in a dark office late at night, much less get caught with the disk. 

     Only a few pages further, the section title PHASE I DIRECTIVE caught his eye.

IT READ….

Phase I of The Victor Project directs the systematic evacuation of all 19 functioning purified zones across the seven continents.  The designated sequence of the evacuation is outlined on page 1 of document VP-2.  Key personnel in each zone have been identified and will be notified by Class-6 Communication exactly 1-10 days prior to Phase I execution.  The document cataloguing the key personnel mandates a Level-2 classification and will not be published in this document or attached documents.

     Key personnel necessary to prepare and conduct the evacuation will be evacuated 30 days prior to Phase I execution.  The fully functional C-Orbit Station will be the interim habitat for all selected organisms.  C-Orbit-Station staff have been directed to remain on board for preparation-functions until further notice.  The deployment areas for each of the 19 zones are listed on page 5-6 of document VP-2.  Module assignments for evacuated groups are listed on page 7 of document VP-2.

    One Directive Lead will be assigned per zone.  All Victor Project Directive Leads are responsible for successful evacuation of key personnel from their assigned zone.  Reports will be required at the end of each day during Phase I.

     All Phase I elements are required to maintain Priority-One security throughout Phase I and Phase II execution.  Any key personnel not adhering to Priority-One security guidelines……

     To Frank, the document seemed to be some sort of evacuation plan in response to an event such as the onset of an incurable disease, an atmospheric catastrophe or possibly earth’s demise to due an immanent collision with another cosmic mass.  All of the above seemed to be fair explanations for the document.  It seemed only logical that a plan would be needed for a speedy evacuation of key personnel from the planet.  And if by key personnel they meant doctors, scientists and certain government employees, it was easy to assume that he was not one of the key personnel.

     The document also mentioned something about a C-Orbit Station.  Its name implied that it was a space station, but where was it orbiting and when did they build it?  Out of necessity, space exploration had been put on hold during the twenty-second century, after an epidemic wiped another large percentage of people from the face of the earth and subsequently drained the world economy.  The last station that GEP had built was in orbit during that year had somehow contracted the same virus that was ravishing the world.  Within days it consumed all of the eighty-seven crew.   Frank had read that some of the scientists of that time had blamed the space station for the origin of the virus.  The station had, only days prior, boasted of contact with some alien life-form.  The alien life-form that the crew had encountered was never re-discovered.

     Alien virus or no alien virus, the panic and pressure from the few remaining inhabitants of earth demanded the total abandonment of the station without any recovery attempt.  Supposedly, the GEP used the station’s thrusters to catapult the menace out of earth’s orbit and towards some outer galaxy to prevent the threat of it plummeting back into the earth’s atmosphere along with the virus. 

     This C-Orbit space station was undoubtedly the safe-haven for the lucky people that would be chosen to escape whatever unavoidable disaster that would overrun mankind.  One thing was for sure, if  C-Orbit was to house a lot of people, it must be a colossal craft.  He guessed that something like it would be designed to at least carry a thousand people and even though the station wouldn’t be illuminated like a city or a star, a good telescope should able to detect it at night.  Frank once again began paging forward, searching for other significant information about the Victor Project, but little else from the file contributed.  At least there were two other documents on the disk.

     Even though the hall outside his door seemed quiet as before, Frank paused and nervously listened for noises as the computer opened the spreadsheet on the disk entitled VP-2.  The VP-2 spreadsheet that appeared on the screen in front of him was definitely the report that the previous document had referred to.  Page 1 listed the sequence of evacuation of the zones.  All seven of the United States zones were first in the sequence and all evacuated within a fourteen-day span, each two days apart.  Frank guessed that each zone would have to be limited to less than one hundred evacuees to accomplish a feat such as that.

     It was the fourth column of the spreadsheet that brought a chill to Frank’s spine.  VP-2 not only listed the sequence of how all the zones would be evacuated, but it also listed dates, specific dates for when each evacuation began.  One date in particular caught his eye. 

      The date to begin the evacuation of Zone 1 began on the fifteenth of this month, which was only nine days from today.  If the dates in front of him were the real thing and not some test run of the plan, someone was planning on a total evacuation in just two days, meaning that one of the catastrophes he had previously pondered over was the culprit.  And if that was true, then the government was doing a great job of keeping it a secret.

     Scientists had been screaming for hundreds of years that the earth was overdue for a collision with another celestial object
, maybe the odds had finally caught up with them.  Maybe the mother of all mother comets is bearing down on earth at this moment, he thought.  That theory would easily explain the evacuation scenario as opposed to finding a solution, which there was none.  What man made device could stop an object half the size of earth or even a third the size?

     And revealing cataclysmic news such as that to the masses would release panic beyond everyone’s imagination.  The chaos and desperation that the plagues had caused were bad enough.  At least with the plagues the population had hope that the virus might somehow skip them or at the very least they had a place to go that might offer salvation.  A large meteor playing chicken with the planet would leave little hope and a lot of anarchy.  It really didn’t matter what catastrophe had been predicted in the past or the current probabilities of one disaster over another, the lone questions was whether he had been reading about the real deal or just some drill.

     Pages 5 and 6 listed the deployment areas for each of the zones.  Each zone had been assigned only one area for deployment.  The column immediately to the right of the area where the names were listed what appeared to be some type of coordinate numbers, but the format was unrecognizable.  They closely resembled longitude and latitude numbers, but appended to them were additional dashes and digits.