Unwilling From Earth Page 33

  They all ordered up new sets of body armour to replace the mud and blood stained armour they were wearing and presented themselves at the exit as the lander gently settled down.

  Big Bang Theory

  As they walked down the ramp into the gentle rain of the late morning, Mark thought the First Minister looked a bit more agitated than he expected.

  “You’re here at last!” The First Minister greeted Sally, sounding cross.

  “You were in a hurry? The I message I got said you wanted to meet sometime for an informal meeting. There was no mention of urgency.”

  “That was just diplomatic nicety. Of course I wanted you here immediately. Why would I want to meet with - you, if it wasn’t urgent?” He said, sounding quite angry with her now.

  “Maybe to thank me for saving your planet from destruction and your species from genocide and being eaten!” Sally snapped. Diplomacy wasn’t her strong suit.

  “You were only doing your job. There’s no need to make a big thing of it. And you’re a female too. If you can’t be more civil, I’ll get your superior here. I ordered you here because the invading army left something in the middle of the capital when we withdrew. We don’t know what it is but we don’t like the look of it. I have evacuated the city. Go with our Science Minister and deal with it.” With that, the First Minister turned his back on her and strode off towards a small aeroplane which had its engines running.

  Sally turned to see Simon taking aim at the aircraft with his KE weapon. The Gnn’Ath armed guard who had been standing behind the First Minister stood with their weapons up facing Mike, Orange and Mark who were training their weapons on the guards. Ti’rrk stood quietly in the background, not saying or doing anything.

  “Simon, stand down!” Sally ordered. “And you idiots,” She snapped at the Gnn’Ath guards, “Drop your weapons. They are useless against our armour, but our weapons will rip you to shreds before you can blink. Orange, disarm them. Mike, Mark, stand down.”

  Orange made his KE weapon safe and clipped it to his backpack. He walked over to the guards and took their weapons, crushing them in his hands as he took each one. The guards looked nervously at him and shuffled a little closer to each other.

  Sally looked at the Science Minister, who was looking very nervous and making a quiet clucking noise. “Come with us and show us this thing.”

  “I need to take the guards with me.” He said nervously.

  “We don’t need them, tell them to leave the city with everyone else.” Sally told him.

  “I’m sorry.” The Science Minister said. “There’s no one else left and no transport. They’ll have to come with us.”

  “Shit. OK, get them on board. Is your First Minister always such an arse?” She asked, crossly.

  “Yes.” Answered the Minister, with a bluntness which surprised Sally. She expected him to make some kind of defence.

  They got on board with Orange standing watch over the Gnn’Ath guards. The Minister directed them to the location of the device worrying the First Minister and they landed close by. They were in the centre of the city, in a large square at the front of their government building.

  The device was standing in a paved area that was clear of any obstructions. It was a grey, slightly shiny, rectangular box about two metres long, one metre high and one metre deep. It looked to Mark like a large chest freezer.

  “Let’s have a look.” Sally said and led them over to it.

  Simon pulled at the top which swung up on hinges, revealing a complex assembly of machinery and electronics.

  “Well, I’m no expert, but my AI is.” Said Sally. “That’s a fairly unsophisticated fusion bomb. There’s nothing we can do about it, we’re not bomb disposal experts. Come on, back on the lander I’ll get specialists down here to deal with it.”

  Mark looked in at the device. He recognised the numerals on the countdown timer - they were the ones used by the People. The timer now read the equivalent of four hundred and twenty-eight and it was counting down at a rate of just under one second per number.

  “Kate, how long before this goes off?” Mark asked his AI.

  “Six minutes and eleven seconds.”

  “Fuck! Everyone get on the lander, this goes off in six minutes!” He shouted.

  Sally grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the lander as the others broke into a run

  “It’s OK Sally, I can do this.” Mark said, pulling himself free.

  “Really? I don’t think so. Get on the lander now!” She ordered.

  “I’ve spent the last eighteen years pulling apart things I don’t understand and making them work again, part of the shitty jobs I got to do at IFG. With help from my AI I can do this. Get out of here just in case and come back for me in half an hour. Go on, go, now!”

  Sally shook her head with a worried look on her face, but ran to join the others on the lander. Mark watched as she ran to the lander and sighed. She really did look good, even when going away. He hoped he would see her again.

  The lander took off as soon as they were all on board and sped away at full acceleration.

  “Mark, I have no idea what to do with this. You are on your own with it.” Mark’s AI told him.

  “How difficult can it be? I’ve seen loads of movies where the bomb is defused. Admittedly it’s always a second before its due to go off which would be a bit scary, but I’ve got plenty of time. Feel free to chip in with anything useful.”

  “If you had asked five minutes ago, I would have chipped in with the useful advice to get on the lander.” His AI replied.

  Mark stood in front of the fusion bomb. He had no idea how to defuse it, but thought that stopping the timer would do for now. Someone else could defuse it - or take it far away where it couldn’t do any harm. Trying to stop his hands from shaking too much Mark pulled away the plastic cover that surrounded the timer display, which was now showing two hundred and twenty-one.

  “How long now?”

  “Three minutes twenty-three seconds.”

  Seven wires went into the timer - all of them pale grey, which was a pity because in all the movies he had seen the hero cut the red wire and the clock stopped when the counter got down to one. “Or was it the green one? Doesn’t matter now.” He thought. “They’re all bloody grey.” He felt sweat dripping down his nose and quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand to stop it falling inside the electronics in the bomb.

  “Oh my god, what do I do now?” He hadn’t even got a pair of wire cutters with him. James Bond always had, but Mark was no James Bond. “Why didn’t I leave with the rest. What was I thinking!”

  Desperately trying to think what to do next, Mark thought of his parents. He knew at some point he'd been given good parental advice but what the hell was it? His mother was always telling him to keep his shoes spotless. No, that couldn't be it. That wouldn't help here. He remembered his father getting angry with him for stepping on the cracks between paving stones. No, that couldn't be it either. Then he remembered some kindly words from his father. They stuck in his memory because it was the only time he remembered his father saying anything that didn't put him down. His father had said to him: "Sometimes son, all you can do is trust your luck and just do something, anything, and it will all turn out fine. Just you see."

  The counter had reached one hundred and fifty-five. “Shit! OK,” Mark said to himself, “I’ll do what dad said and just do it!” He grasped one of the wires chosen at random with his right hand and yanked it as hard as he could. All the wires came out together, surprisingly easily.

  “Oops.” He said.

  Everything went black and silent. Mark couldn’t see, hear or feel anything.

  “Oh shit, I must be dead.”

  It started to get lighter and Mark saw he was standing in a shallow crater of bubbling white hot liquid, in the middle of a rapidly expanding cloud of glowing dust. His body armour, helmet, backpack and Mark Eight were gone. He was standing in just his jumpsuit and boots. As the dense cloud expa
nded away from him, there was nothing left apart from the shadows of outlines of buildings on the ground. No trees and shrubs, no lamp posts and signs, nothing left of the steel, glass and masonry of the tall and elegant buildings that had stood there just moments before.

  The cloud extended upwards more quickly than sideways and started dragging the rest of the cloud of dust and debris up with it. As the rising cloud took up more of the expanding dust cloud. heavier pieces of debris began to fall out of it, great blocks of concrete and masonry the size of houses started to drop, hurtling to the ground from thousands of feet in the air. The cloud at ground level slowed it’s outward rush and started to come back again, being drawn back and upwards by the tremendous heat raising the great column of dust and debris high up into the sky. As it slowed, it dropped its payload of debris which rained down on the ground in an obscene storm of bits of demolished buildings, crushed and torn vehicles and all the other bits of the shattered urban landscape that seemed so permanent before the cataclysmic blast ripped apart the city. The wind rushing back inward gained speed until it was like a hurricane, picking up everything it had just dropped, smashing the pieces together and scouring the ground with them before finally lifting them back up into the air and feeding the great column as it lifted up and darkened the sky.

  Mark looked round in despair. He sat down in the pool of molten slag and put his face in his hands. “Fuck this.” He thought.

  No Fall-Out

  “Would you like me to arrange transport?” Mark’s AI asked.

  “What? I’m sitting in what looks like Hell and you’re offering me a lift? What are you going to do? Put a call into Uber?”

  “Would you prefer to go to Sally’s operations room or your team quarters?”

  “I want to see Alan!” Mark said. “How far do we need to go to get on a transporter?”

  “Wait here, I’ll get the shuttle to come to us.”

  “Won’t it melt here?”

  “No, it has the same protection you have.”

  “Fine. I’ll just make myself comfortable in this lake of molten slag and admire the hurricane full of rubble swirling round my head.”

  “If you recall, it was your idea to disarm the bomb. My advice was, or would have been, get on the lander while you had the chance.”

  “Yes, well, I thought it would be easier. There was nothing inside I recognised, apart from the timer. Can you get a message to Sally?”

  “I’ll open a link so you can speak to her.”

  “No! Don’t open a link. I, I don’t want to speak to her right this moment. Can you send her a message?”

  “Of course.” Replied his AI. “What message would you like to send?”

  “Tell her I’m safe, and I’ll see her soon.”

  “Done.” Confirmed his AI.

  “Thanks Kate.” Mark said.

  A few minutes later the shuttle which had taken Mark from Earth dropped through the swirling clouds and plummeted down, stopping just above the surface of the still molten, white-hot slag. Mark took the few steps necessary to get to it, the door slid open and he stepped in.

  “You’ll need to put your feet into the cuffs…” Mark's AI began.

  “And hold on to the straps, ready to re-orient, I know. Why does Alan keep this thing? I know this is miles ahead of Earth technology, but it’s a bit primitive compared to most of the People’s tech I have seen.”

  “Alan likes it. He has been using it a long time.”

  “Like the transport cabin thing he took me on last time?”

  “Yes, he really likes that. You are the only person he has ever taken on it.”

  Mark experienced the abrupt falling sensation he had first felt on leaving Earth. As soon as it settled down again he let go of the straps, pulled his feet out of the cuffs and looked round for a synthesiser. He ordered a glass of cold water and sat down with it at the console.

  “It would be a good idea to finish that before we get there. There will be a short period of weightlessness before docking if you recall.” Mark's AI told him.

  “Oh, yeah.” Mark drank the water and put the glass back into the synthesiser. “Can you take us to the small dock that Alan used when I first boarded Mother please.” Mark asked his AI.

  “Certainly. Did you want to use Alan’s transport cabin?”

  “No, I’ll blink directly to Alan as soon as we’re on board.”

  “Would you like me to tell him you are coming or do you want to surprise him?”

  “Tell him I’m on my way, please, Kate.”

  “We have arrived now, do you want to disembark first or go from here?”

  “Let’s go now.”

  Mark blinked to the Command Centre. Alan was sitting waiting at the oval table. Mark noticed it still had the wood effect Alan had given it when Mark was last there.

  “Hello Mark. It’s good to see you again.”

  Mark grunted and walked to the synthesiser. He took out a mug of tea and a silver flask with Alan’s drink he had ordered. He sat at the table opposite Alan and slid his drink over to him, then took a sip of his tea.

  “You look tired.” Alan said.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “Your time with the military has coarsened your language.”

  “The last few days have changed me in a lot of ways.”

  “Yes, they must have. For the better in many ways. Except for the swearing. I’m sorry Mark. This wasn’t supposed to have happened.”

  Mark gave a half smile. “I didn’t think you planned it. But to repeat my question, what the fuck happened?”

  “That’s a broad question, considering how much has happened to you since you left Mother. I have been getting reports.”

  “From my AI. I know.”

  “It’s absolutely standard for the People Mark. I wasn’t spying on you. It’s done to ensure your safety, well being and to get you support if you need it.”

  “For my safety? I was never in any danger, was I.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “No, you weren’t. There is a lot I haven’t told you. You will have worked out some of it already.”

  “Some, but there are more gaps than information. Just to satisfy my curiosity, why wasn’t I reduced to atoms by the bomb?”

  “Among the many enhancements I have given you is the same protection that all the People have. I implanted phase shift protection in you. Now you have fully accepted and bonded with your AI, which controls it, no external event can cause you any physical damage.”

  “But that’s not just armour, is it. I could still breathe, and the blast should have sent me flying out with all the debris.”

  “It's not armour. It was developed as an environment suit, to protect the wearer from hostile environments. The vacuum and hard radiation of space initially, so naturally it also allows you to breathe.”

  “Can anything get through it?”

  “No, it isn’t like armour. It doesn’t do anything physical to protect you. It takes you out of phase with the normal universe. The way it interacts with the normal universe is adjustable. Your AI will decide the most appropriate interaction but you can of course instruct it to do what you want it to.”

  “So, I could tell my AI not to protect me?”

  “It will always protect you, your AI cannot do otherwise, but you have control of how it does that.”

  “OK, now tell me about this Friend of the People thing. How does that work?”

  “Certain alien individuals can be made a Friend of the People. It is not done lightly and can only be done with the consent of all the People - at least, all of them who are interested in expressing an opinion. I proposed you because I thought you had the qualities to be a suitable assistant and trainee Archivist, and would develop into a useful and active member of the People’s society. On my recommendation, you were accepted, despite the fact that you are a member of a pre-emergent species. Being a Friend of the People means that you become a citizen of the People’s civilisation, wit
h all the privileges and responsibilities that go with it. You will be introduced to those privileges and responsibilities during a period of what you might call an apprenticeship.”

  “Oh. That’s, er, well, something to think about. Back on Earth, when I first asked you to take me with you, you said I had one thing in my favour. What was that?”

  “Sally seemed to have a high opinion of you. She is the best judge of character I know. She’s almost as good as I am. That reinforced my confidence in you, even though you weren’t making the most of your innate abilities while you were on Earth.”

  “But why me? There can’t be that many Friends of the People around, no-one seems to have met one before. I wasn’t exactly a high flyer back on Earth. I know I was pretty lucky compared to most of the human race, but I was about as low as you can get in the IT department of IFG. My department had eighteen-year-olds who were higher up the tree than me. And I didn’t need to be made a Friend of the People just to help you. That job wasn’t much more than a library assistant.”

  “Being a trainee Archivist is an honour not given to many and you may have heard this before, you have greatness inside you that can be seen by almost everyone but yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So I keep hearing. Why do all you aliens misjudge me? I’m just a natural under-achiever who has blundered through all the weird stuff that’s been happening to me since I left Earth and been a bit lucky. Why can’t you see that?”

  “To use an old human saying which you may be familiar with ‘there are none so blind as those that will not see’. You’re not the only one right while the rest of the universe is wrong. Yes, you’ve had luck, but you have already done great things and I know that you will do more. Remember that your AI has reported to me everything you have done. No ordinary person would have sent his colleagues away to safety while they stayed to try to defuse a fusion bomb, even if they knew what they were doing. You were an under-achiever on Earth because you wouldn’t see what you are capable of and wouldn’t do anything about it. Since leaving Earth you have been forced into doing things that have started to show your true nature. Open your eyes and see for yourself.”