CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Roslyn Research Center — Earth
Roslyn watched the cradles ascend into their active perch positions, then lost visual access to the chamber as something above interfered with her line of sight. She redirected her attention to what remained of the invaders and materialized beside Colonel Dmitri as he pushed down the tunnel toward the cradle chamber, his men methodically clearing the remnants ahead of him.
“Colonel, we’ve got one more of those bipedal constructs tunneling down, along with a handful of the smaller ones.” She glanced toward the breach. “It might be a good idea to pull your men back. They’re making that hole a lot bigger than it needs to be, which tells me they’re planning to drop something through it.” Dmitri glanced back at her. “Drop what? More of these things?”
“No.” She paused. “I’m thinking of something a lot more explody.”
“All right, that’s it.” He raised his voice, turning to his men. “Everybody back! I want everyone back in the main corridor and taking cover right now!” He raised his pistol and put three quick rounds into a heavily damaged spider construct still twitching on the ground, then fell back with the rest.
Roslyn had feared that when Gavin reentered the cradle, she might lose the expanded area of influence his control nodes had granted her. Instead, she retained full access to the entire facility. The initial anchor he had placed in what remained of her old lab gave her approximately two hundred and twenty-five feet in every direction. Additional nodes pushed that range further outward, but the central anchor sat near the heart of the underground complex, and that was enough to give her access all the way up to Sublevel 1.
The more pressing question was, what would happen as Gavin and ARi’s abilities continued to develop? Would her range extend here on Earth? It was something she would need to monitor closely.
For now, she was just going to have to make do.
Without access to the surface facility, she was blind to whatever the invaders were preparing above. She would only know when it passed through her range.
Her projection materialized beside the colonel again. Dmitri had managed to make it all the way back to the barrier in front of the cafeteria doors, and was still out of breath from the run.
“Colonel, you need to get all civilians and survivors to the back of the cafeteria. Everyone needs to take cover.”
As she spoke, the constructs broke through into the tunnel below.
Roslyn looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then turned and gave the colonel a faint smile as she phased three small metallic drakes into existence on the ground in front of them. The constructs turned toward Roslyn, waiting for instructions. She pointed down the corridor toward the tunnel entrance.
“Destroy them.”
They launched forward in a blur, darting across the barrier and down the corridor with unnatural speed. Brief flashes of beam fire strobed through the tunnel, and the metallic shriek of tearing and scraping echoed back toward them.
Roslyn followed the Colonel and the rest of the Marines back into the cafeteria, looking around at all of the stunned people. There were parents holding their kids. And some of the adults were flipping additional tables and piling up anything they could, to build up the makeshift cover they had been hiding behind.
“All right everybody, listen up. I need everybody to take cover now against the back wall and shield your eyes!”
She felt it a moment later. The object dropped past Sublevel 1 and entered her range. She reacted without hesitation, phasing a dense shell of material beneath it and catching the device just before detonation.
The explosion followed immediately.
The ceiling shuddered. Dirt rained in a thick curtain, and a deep, rolling concussion tore through the facility.
The colonel peeked up from behind a barricade of overturned tables and supplies just in time to catch the blinding surge of fire as it tore from the mouth of the tunnel and roared into the corridor.
He winced at the blinding light, as Roslyn raised her hand. The double doors slammed shut, and she filled the corridor and the area around them with solid stone.
The lights in the ceiling went out and the slow red strobe of the emergency lighting filled the room.
She turned and looked at the colonel with a satisfied smile.
“So, remember when I said something explody? It was a thermonuclear device. Small one, somewhere between ten and thirty kilotons.” She tilted her head. “They dropped it down the hole expecting it to fall all the way to the bottom before it went off. If it had, we wouldn’t be standing here right now. The blast would have driven straight into the rock and brought the whole facility down on top of us.”
She clasped her hands together, rocking slightly on her heels.
“Instead, I caught it right below the upper level and let it go off there.” She paused, letting that sink in. “So instead of collapsing down on us, it blew straight up and out across the surface.” She glanced toward the glowing doors and then back to the colonel. “I can’t see past sub-level one, so I can’t tell you exactly what it looks like up there. But based on the yield, the surface facility is almost certainly gone. There’s probably a crater somewhere in the range of five to eight hundred feet across. Everything within about half a mile would have been destroyed, but at that yield, the blast should have dropped off well before it reached any populated areas.”
She looked up at him, her expression was impish.
“I’m also fairly certain that whatever invaders were still standing over that hole when it went off are not a problem anymore.” She paused. “I’m pretty sure we just ended the siege, Colonel.”
The professor removed his glasses and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. The colonel stared at her for a long moment and said nothing.
Roslyn smiled softly.
“You’re welcome.”
Henry only shook his head at her. The colonel, on the other hand, wore a wide, almost feral grin.
“Well, serves them right. Traitorous sons of bitches.”
General Daniels pushed himself up and helped his wife Thea to her feet, taking a slow look around the room before settling on Roslyn.
“Roslyn, doesn’t that mean we’re trapped down here now? Buried alive?”
“Not exactly, General,” she said. “I can tunnel us back to the surface without much difficulty, but I wouldn’t recommend it yet. I’ve had enough time to analyze the humans working with the invaders, and every one of them was suffering from acute radiation poisoning. If they hadn’t died in the fighting, they would have died anyway. Slowly and painfully.”
The colonel cut in. “I wonder if they even knew.”
“They probably did, Dmitri,” General Daniels said, brushing dust from his shirt. “Death is a strong motivator. Whoever sent them down here could be offering treatment as an incentive.”
“Exactly,” Roslyn said. “Which means the surface isn’t safe right now. We need to get any civilians up there underground as quickly as possible. None of you can go up, so we’ll have to send constructs. I hope everybody on the surface was smart enough to take shelter and avoid direct exposure. But there isn’t really anywhere up there that’s truly safe. We don’t have much time.”
She glanced toward the ceiling for a moment before continuing.
“I’m already expanding the facility below Sublevel 12, eventually we’re going to have to get everybody a lot deeper to avoid radiation saturation from the surface. For now Sublevel 11 is going to be our best option. The storage and manufacturing level has two reinforced warehouse-scale structures, which gives us more than enough space to stage operations while I carve out additional room for long-term survival.”
“Roslyn,” the professor interjected, adjusting his glasses. “Those facilities are packed floor to ceiling with supplies. Equipment, materials, food, water, rations—”
Roslyn smiled at him.
“Professor, I am very much looking forward to a long conversation with you about quantum storage. For now, just assume those rooms are empty and that everything inside them is safe and accessible whenever we need it.”
She raised her hand.
Small rebreathing devices appeared at the feet of every man, woman, and child in the room.
“Everyone put one of those on,” she said. “The air down here is going to thin out pretty quick, and a lot faster than I’ll be able to restructure the facility. These will make sure everyone can breathe.”
“The good news is that the technology they brought back for these rebreathers can be scaled. We’ll be able to build fully self-contained air scrubbers from it, which won’t solve the radiation problem, but it will keep everyone from suffocating. It also removes one of the major development hurdles we were facing with the arks.”
The professor slid his glasses back on and looked at her over the rim. “Roslyn, it’s hard to imagine humanity completing any of those ships while we’re all huddled together in a cafeteria hundreds of feet underground.”
“We won’t be doing it alone, Professor,” she said, a faint, knowing smile touching her expression as she began to lay out the plan she and ARi had built together.
As she spoke, the faces of Colonel Dmitri, Henry, and General Daniels changed. Shock settled in first as the full scope of what she was proposing became clear, followed by something quieter and considerably colder.
Fear.
“Even if we’re successful,” General Daniels said at last, “that still means we’re putting an awful lot of eggs in a very small number of baskets.”
“Untouchable baskets,” Roslyn replied. “Unbreakable ones. The people inside them won’t age or experience time at all. They’ll step into stasis and step back out, whether that’s because we’ve reclaimed Earth or found somewhere new to go. While they’re under, they won’t have to worry about food, water, or air. Not only is it going to keep them safe, it’s going to be a huge logistic relief.”
“And what about leadership?” The colonel asked.
“Roslyn, for everything you and ARi have done, you have more than earned my trust. But you’re going to have a hard time convincing people to place their lives and the lives of their children to a handful of AI while they sleep.”
Roslyn inclined her head slightly. “We were working under time constraints when we first developed this plan, but I do have an alternative. I’m not entirely sure you’re going to like it.”
“We don’t have to place everyone into full stasis. The original WBE framework was always intended to allow individuals to remain active and contributing while their physical bodies were preserved. There’s no reason we can’t extend that to leadership as well.”
She looked between the three of them.
“You would be able to project your presence, make decisions, and lead, within the limits of whatever area of influence is available to you. You would have limited access to constructs and other mechanisms, enough to act on the world in a meaningful way. And like everyone else, you wouldn’t age, you wouldn’t die, and you could be returned to a physical body when the time comes. The only difference is that you will experience time.”
“Gavin, and the others were willing to make that sacrifice. They chose it so the rest of you would have a chance.” Her eyes moved between the three men. “Would any of you be willing to do the same?”
The three of them stared at her.
The tension in her posture eased slightly.
General Daniels was the first to speak. “If we agree, explain again how we interact with the physical world?”
“Through me, through my sisters, and through constructs,” Roslyn said. “You would interact with the world the same way that I do.” Her tone sharpened just a little. “Just so we are throwing all of our cards on the table though.. Anyone who agrees to this should understand that my sisters and I will gain some of your knowledge and experience through the process. This is the very reason we were pushing the development of the WBE technology in the first place. I should also make it clear that I will not bring anyone into stasis or into my system without their full consent.”
The colonel let out a slow breath. “There are going to be a lot of people who refuse.”
“Yeah,” Dmitri muttered, “but there are going to be a lot who won’t. The real question is how many we can reach before it’s too late.”
Henry adjusted his glasses and stared at the floor for a moment, thinking it through as he spoke. “Realistically, we would need no fewer than two hundred and fifty thousand people to agree to stasis per ark to maintain a viable population. Some of my colleagues would argue that number, but we aren’t selecting only young, healthy adults. We’re talking about children, the elderly, and entire families. That’s not counting cultural preservation either. For this to work, we have to pull people in from all over the world and from as many cultures and places as we can.”
He smiled looking to Roslyn.
“ARi knew this, didn’t she? This is why she wants to put an AI and facilities in every major population center.” Henry looked up. General Daniels, we’re effectively making decisions right now for the whole world.”
“It’s Thomas, Henry. I think we can go ahead and stub formality at this point.”
“My last orders,” he said, looking over to the Colonel,” we’re to protect this facility and safeguard any of the advancements made here that could help save our civilization from Armageddon.”
He rubbed the back of his head with his palm for a moment before looking back up to Dmitri who was already slowly nodding back at him.
“That’s a lot of responsibility,” Henry said. “If we intend to survive on another world, we have to think carefully about what else we bring. Equipment. Crops. Livestock. Do we develop the technology to scan and store other lifeforms? Wildlife? Entire ecosystems? How much of Earth are we actually trying to preserve?” He looked up at Roslyn.” These aren’t small questions.”
“No,” Roslyn said quietly.” They aren’t. And that’s exactly why my future sisters and I won’t be able to do this alone.”
She let the weight of that sit for a moment before she continued.
“The good news is that with the ability to adjust clock speeds, we’ll have a lot of time to think it through.”
Her tone shifted, as she looked around the cafeteria at the survivors.
“In the short term, the radiation and fallout on the surface are going to make it impossible to safely bring anyone down here. We either wait four to eight weeks, or we begin tunneling away from the facility, and establish a new access point well outside the primary blast zone.”
She looked back towards the doors to the cafeteria at the slowly cooling stone.
“I’m going to finish establishing the infrastructure below so that everyone here is secure first. After that, I’ll begin bringing another AI online. With two or three of us working in tandem, we’ll be able to move material significantly faster.” She gave a soft smile.” Once I move beyond the area of influence provided by Gavin’s control node, my effective range is going to drop to roughly twenty-five to fifty feet, and I’ll have limits on how much I can move before I need to stop and recover. With three of us, we can cut that time down considerably.”
She looked between them.
“It will also give all of you the time to decide how you want to approach the survivors still on the surface, and where we should deploy the first of my sisters to begin establishing additional facilities beneath other population centers.”
