Time Goes By

The penultimate

When Beth and Ingrid finally got to their seats Xavier greeted them with a curt, “finally”, then turned to Jake, “so why don’t you tell us what’s going on, buddy?”

Jake lifted his arms and looked around the basement, “well, it’s a bunker”, he said.

“Jake we can see that”, Ingrid said, then continued, “what’s it for?”

“Ingrid, you said it yourself this morning, the people in power are no longer satisfied with allowing us to run the show. There’s too much at stake, the closer we get to…the end, the more difficult life on Earth becomes, the more desperate to design the future they envision, and that would be fine. I’m just scared their future is designed to look a lot like our present, just on a new planet, with new people.”

Xavier finally sat up in his chair, “Jake, how would they do that?”

“I found a file the other day in one of our shared folders, no doubt it was saved to the wrong drive. Anyway, the file contained plans for a massive operation, there was a spread sheet filled with thousands of names and columns of characteristic preferences, including coordinates and intelligence as well as payment status. It’s a recombinant dna undertaking on a scale not yet previously seen.”

“Why does that scare you Jake?” Beth asked

“To society a single genius might be disruptive, but a cohort of geniuses likely will be repressive.” Jake said, looking expectantly at the faces of his friends, searching for comprehension in their eyes, but not seeing it. “They are going to send a myriad of intelligence enhanced zygotes to some of the most suitable for life destinations we’ve mapped on Unum. With those two factors alone they have an insurmountable headstart…”

“Okay” Ingrid said slowly, “so what do you want to do?”

Jake shot up, “let me show you. Let’s take a little tour.”

The other three slowly rose from their chairs, not entirely sure they wanted a tour. Deep down they knew they were being sold a reality they aren’t sure they wanted, but would probably agree to, eventually. Jake walked them past a winter garden, furnished with large overhead sunlamps, comfortable recliners, and an overstated presence of fake green plants. “This would be our nature room”, Jake said as they strolled by and stuck their heads through the threshold.

“Next we’ll check out one of my favorite rooms”, Jake said as he walked backwards as he talked. He then smoothly turned into a doorway off the hall. The room was very long and games of various types lined the shelves on the left side of the room and hung from wall racks attached to the left wall. The right side of the room had shelves lined with books, “we’ve got four, two, or single player games of all types, and for books we’ve got poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, and if it was published in a series, I bought the whole series, you won’t have to wonder what happened in the story.”

“How long do you think we’re staying down here Jake?” Xavier asked, looking around at what appeared to him as nothing more than a toy closet for a grown man.

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“It doesn’t look like this place was made for a short vacation”, Ingrid added.

“Just let me finish showing you the place, there are only a few more rooms.” Jake pleaded.

Beth thought she saw a hint of worry in Jake’s eyes as he led them around a corner to a door that appeared different in appearance to any other design in this bunker, it looked secure. “This is where the magic is going to happen”, Jake said over his shoulder as he punched in a six digit code into the door’s punchpad. A hiss erupted from the doors as they parted.

“What was that?” Xavier asked.

Abruptly, Jake with a mischievous grin, showed them his phone’s screen, it displayed an app named Weird Sound Effects. “There’s no need for this room to be air tight, but I wanted to see what you would do.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t funny Jake. None of this is funny, in fact…this whole set up is a bit concerning. Why the hell did you build a bunker down here?”

“Well, we’ll need time to finish getting everyone’s DNA mapped and stored in their own nanospheres, if we don’t finish that there’s no telling how it’ll get done, specifically I mean who gets added. I explained this, didn’t I”

“But why are we in a bunker?” Xavier asked loudly.

“Ugh, fine, I was thinking we could just stay down here”, Jake went quiet and shuffled a bit in place, still blocking the doorway entrance, “I thought we’d stay down here until the end.”

“The end of what?” Ingrid asked.

“Ingrid, the end of Earth…” Jake said.

“Wait a minute!” Xavier added in a panic, “Jake do you have any idea how long that is, we’d die long before that day arrives.

“Actually we wouldn’t. Did you notice the bedrooms? Their dimensions were slightly off, the inner walls filled a lot of the room’s available space, they should have been a lot larger. I did that on purpose, those are cryo-chambers. The refrigeration technology packed into those walls is powerful enough to keep our rooms cryo-cold for at least a century. I always hated those tiny little pods people envision when they think about cryosleep. Could you imagine?”

“I think you’ve lost it Jake, you’re spinning”, Xavier said, slowly backing away. Then the floor beneath their feet shook, Jake braced his hands on the threshold. When the Earth stopped moving he sprinted past the group into a room filled with television screens connected to the various CCTV cameras on the compound above; one by one the TVs on the three screens on the top row of six went out. The three remaining screens were covered in a haze of smoke, details were shrouded but Jake could see people coughing and running. They were being chased by armed soldiers in gas masks.

When the other three showed up, Beth asked hurriedly, “Jake what is it, what’s happening?” Jake sat slumped in his chair but managed to solemnly point to the screens ahead. Beth’s hand shot to her mouth and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.

“They’ve come for the project”, Jake said as he stood from his chair. “I don’t think we have a choice now”, he said casually as he drifted down the hall. The scenes on the screen were distracting and Jake was halfway to the stairwell entry before Xavier looked for him. Beth was frozen in shock, but Xavier tugged on Ingrid’s shoulder, and pointed in Jake’s direction when she finally made eye contact.

“What is that?” Ingrid asked, pointing to something on the wall to the right of the hall. A fright gripped her and before she realized she was jogging in Jake’s direction; instinctively, Xavier joined her. Time slowed, even as they ran faster, and just as they reached Jake, he turned to them and whispered, “I’m sorry.” Then he pulled a lever and the lights changed, they grew brighter and there was a thunderous sound. Instantly, the bunker felt more like a tomb, and Jake exhaled loudly.

“What did you do!?” Xavier shouted as he struck Jake in the face with a right cross. No one moved while Jake laid on the floor with a blood smeared cheek. Slowly he sat up and leveled Xavier with a stare.

“I just sacrificed our present to save our future, and by ours.. I mean humanity’s future. What did you do?”

All hands in the hallway found the faces of their owners. The sound of deep breaths filled the room.

“This can’t be undone, where here for good now”, Jake blared.

“Did you really just trap us here? You psycho!” Xavier spat.

“They were here, we didn’t have time…”

“We’re trapped Jake!” Ingrid shouted before he could finish. She didn’t wait for him to complete his thought. She bolted down the hall and entered one of the rooms Jake showed them before.

Xavier was still glaring in Jake’s direction, seriously contemplating doling out more physical blows. As he moved in Jake’s direction Beth intercepted him and with a look that expressed empathy but no compromise. Xavier turned away and exhaled loudly, stomping off in frustration. Jake and Beth watched him turn the corner in the direction of the gaming closet.

When Beth turned back to Jake her eyes were moist with tears that had pooled but not yet fallen. “Did you have to do that Jake?” The first tear slid down her face, and she didn’t wipe it away. “What about the kids?” A sob erupted from her chest and the saline from her eyes now flooded her face as another sob consumed her. “We left them, we…”

“No Beth, we didn’t. I did. I’ve built contingencies for the people on our property and we still have leverage. We may no longer be able to interact with the people above, but we can still communicate with them. If they touch our place above, there will be consequences of eternal proportions. The thing the three of you still haven’t grasped is that everything we’ve designed and planned was in jeopardy. One day I hope you come to realize that you’re only perceiving this as an act of lunacy, in reality this was a calculated preemptive strike. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that bullies don’t become miraculously gracious. Now no one else will get to manipulate or distort whose progeny gets to walk on the purple planet. I don’t regret this, I wouldn’t give this up for anyone… The kids are going to be fine. They’ll live long, weird, end of the world”

Now Beth whipped the tears from her eyes. Jake’s resolve soothed the panic, but didn’t dull her ache. She exhaled loudly, “okay give me the rest of the tour, let me see how I can talk to the kids.”

Happy to finish the abruptly halted tour, Jake’s hand reached for Beth’s and when they met their clasp was warm in temperature, the way it is when warm and cold hands meet, but it was affectionate in temperament. A smile emerged on Jake’s face as he led Beth through the last door of the tour.

Shock gripped Beth’s chest, the kids were so different now… she turned to Jake, her jaw slack with awe. “How long were we asleep?”

“Seven years, it’s a trip right?”

Beth turned back to the screen and took in the crystal clear image of the teenagers. Her hand touched the screen, it was a subconscious act of verification. Uncertainty played hide and seek in her mind, this could all be a dream…she swiveled in her chair again; “Jake, how long were we asleep?”, she asked a little more aggressively. Frustration blossomed in her stomach and she let it bloom.

“It’s been seven years, and it’s perfectly normal to feel agitated right now. Cryo sleep takes some getting used to, you’ll see.”

The children’s voices called her back from her conversation with Jake. They had been telling her all about what life had been like up above, but now they were querying her about her life below.

“I can’t believe how old you all are…I’ve been”, she paused, “I’ve been sleeping this entire time”.

“You slept for seven years?” Asked the voice belonging to the smallest child. “Did you dream?”

“You know what, I didn’t.” She slurred the ‘t’ in ‘didn’t’, suddenly feeling extremely tired. Jake watched just outside of the camera’s view but entered the lens when he saw Beth struggling.

“Hey kids, we’ll talk to you guys a little later okay? She needs to rest a bit.” Then he ended the call. “Come on Beth, you need to move around a bit.” The first stop was the gaming closet. There, prominently centered was a chess table with a note from Xavier, you’re move…

Jake picked up the note and huffed, “man even his messages seem angry”, he said to Beth.

As if just remembering something, Beth snapped to, “oh yeah, where are they? Xavier and Ingrid?”

“They’re asleep if they kept to the plan, they would have started their slumber three and a half years after we did, so we’ll see them in about three and a half years. We can check the logs to make sure, until we do, I won’t really know.”

Jake frowned as he reviewed the logs, initially they resembled the work of a petulant toddler, including snarky updates, and snide comments; Xavier wasn’t done expressing himself. He even set his cryo room to go to sleep 4 weeks later than they had agreed, out of spite. It was clear to Jake that Ingrid took over responsibilities for organizing the audit trail. Miraculously things started to make sense and there was even a question left, hey Jake, it looks like the seeding phase is almost complete, which is odd. According to what I’m seeing we launched four nanospheres about a year ago..didn’t we?

Beth read the note over Jake’s shoulder, “what is she talking about Jake?”

“I sent four recon spheres out along the established route”, Jake said, shrugging.

“Why?”

“Well, data collection, clearance, tunneling, and transportation. These spheres are small so they don’t need a lot of space but they still need a path. The first two I shipped about a year before the other two in single file formation. The first sphere was equipped with a slightly denser coating, it was the bulldozer. It moved slower, but it cleared a path, which was really important. The second sphere drafted off of the first, which allowed it to save energy. That spared energy was used in data collection, I loaded that thing down with sensors and transducers, and it collected information from here to Unum. All of that knowledge was beaconed back to the third sphere still docked here waiting to deploy. The third sphere left a tunnel in its wake, and the 4th sphere moved the first zygotes; they’ve already been there a year.”

Jake then turned and entered, yes that is correct, into the log and then closed the screen.

Beth laughed, “so what do we do for fun around here?”

Jake shrugged, “I think there’s something you might like…”

He shifted in his seat for a moment and then shot up and clapped his hands together, “let’s go! I didn’t get to show you guys this before”, Jake said while pointing to tiny speakers positioned in the corners of the room that contained the kitchen and the living space. “We’re going to be stuck down here, so we should create some rituals right”, he said as his fingers twisted a knob and his foot began to tap. Regrets collect like old friends, the volume was still low, but Jake’s hand kept turning it up… here to relive your darkest moments… It took Beth a moment to remember, but at the top of her lungs she belted, “I can see no way, I can see no way”, and she was jumping up and down.

On beat Jake tossed her a giant drawing pad, then slid a pack of her favorite color pencils across the ground. She caught the note pad out of the air and bent over and grabbed the pencils, and the music blared, tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground, Beth spun and landed hard on the couch and smiled with the chorus, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa…

Many more moments like this one were created as the years passed. Each time Beth sat and conferenced with the children they left behind, the less they looked like children. One day, they weren’t, in fact the day came when Beth looked younger than they did; her beauty preserved by cryo sleep while theirs eroded due to over exposure to time. Eventually, Beth met with the children of her children, it’s then that the meetings lost their appeal. She didn’t announce anything on the last they met, her wave goodbye was a little more melancholy than usual, but not enough for them to detect something may be amiss. The four of them stopped alternating cryo shifts with about 30 years left on Earth’s clock. To Beth, bonding with Xavier, Jake, and Ingrid, was the only version of an endless loop she could imagine reliving.

After another decade Xavier finally forgave Jake for pulling the lever that day. He’d made peace with the fact that his anger didn’t stem from being stuck underground with the people he begrudgingly, and privately referred to as his family. No, he was upset because now he would never have the chance to prove to himself that he could have created the life he fantasized about, now that the life of his dreams was taken from him. Xavier pursed his lips, “check”, and then smiled at the fact that after 37 years he could almost be Jake in a game of chess.

Ingrid stared at the monitor, she was even more obsessed with the status of Unum, its flares, rotations, revolutions, and atmospheric pressure. Jake made this her mission in life, literally, so she decided to fully commit to the role of savior. She’d never get any credit, and no one would remember the way she automated the zygotes’ organization process. The code she ran to ensure the veracity of the records. There were 9 billion distinct zygotes, packaged into 9 billion nanospheres prepped and ready to deploy, all coded with a number for 01 to 9,000,000,000. As far as she was concerned those weren’t just numbers, they were names and she felt like she knew each one. She often thought about how the first humans to grow on Unum would survive without names; like how would they know what to be called?

They are never going to get this, Jake thought. “No! Everything is going to be fine, the nanospheres are designed to dissolve once they embed into Unum’s surface. Once that happens the amniotic sac will grow with them until they reach viability. While in our case that was around 5 to 10 months, for them it won’t be until adulthood. They’ll wake up and have the strength to escape the sac and the depth beneath the soil.”

Blank stares, that’s all he ever managed to elicit when he discussed exactly how this was supposed to work. He actually thought it quite fun now, after all of these years Jake finally found the ability to relax. If none of this worked now, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. The processes were automated, the list was complete and everything was mapped out. All there was left to do was enjoy a life he loved more than the last. He never communicated to any of them that he was glad he was forced to pull the lever that day. A nightmare for many others, was his delight. His lips split in a small but honest grin, but underneath, deep down, it was the smile of the Cheshire cat. Glass clinked as the last drop of wine, from their final bottle, poured into Ingrid’s glass. All was right in the world, Jake thought, how ironic.