Isle of Man

CHAPTER 3

Sorry, Jimmy, I’m with Hannah



The power does turn back on.

But I almost wish it hadn’t.

For three days, we collect bodies. The dead scientists float bloated to the surface, or are exposed trapped in their rooms as water is pumped away. Jimmy and I use the boat to patrol the underground bay in the dim, gray glare of LED lights, towing the floaters back to shore where we drag them with ropes to what’s left of Eden. The water from Radcliffe’s flood had washed away most of what the fire we had set didn’t destroy, but the steel-lined killing room is eerily intact.

It’s hard for me. I remember looking into that monitor and seeing my father’s head opened before his body was sloughed off into the trap door in the floor. Turns out that trap door leads to an industrial-grade meat grinder that renders bodies into a paste before flushing them down sewage pipes the length of the step locks into the Pacific. So we toss the dead scientists in and grind them up and send them as fish food out to sea. It’s a much better burial than they deserve, if you ask me.

Fortunately, almost all of the materials used down here are either synthetic plastics or metals designed to resist corrosion, so there is very little damage from the flood. Hannah and the professor—we refuse to call him “Moody,” like he asked—spend most of their time restoring the critical mechanical systems around the Foundation: heating, lighting, waste-water pumps. But even though the computer systems are water-tight, designed with heat sinks instead of cooling fans, we decide to let them dry for several days, as a precaution, before rebooting to see if we can take control of the drones.

The professor walks us through the Foundation and uses his codes to unlock the few remaining rooms we haven’t been able to check for bodies. He takes us into the sintering plant, where Hannah and I stood with her father and watched the missiles being built. Although pools of water remain on the floors, everything seems operational enough. Still, we all hold our breath as he opens the munitions room door. But there, too, everything seems to have been moved around by the water but hardly damaged at all.

“Why is that here?” I ask, pointing to the strange black box marked with red letters that read: ANTIMATTER.

The professor squats and peers into the box’s blue-glowing window.

“This little baby here,” he says, running his hands over the box as if petting it, “contains almost a trillion dollars-worth of worldwide scientific work.”

“What’s a dollar?” Jimmy asks.

“A measure of currency, when the world used money.”

“Oh. Like pearls or somethin’?”

“Like pearls,” the professor says. “But the money aside, this represents an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately, like everything we lousy humans did, it was only produced because of its potential use in weaponry.”

“How much is in there?” I ask.

“A little over 200 grams,” he says. “But don’t worry. The design of this case, really a large battery itself, keeps it trapped in permanent suspension. Unless it’s detonated, of course.”

“Whataya mean by detonated?” Jimmy asks.

“Let’s get something to eat,” the professor says, changing the subject. “My stomach is growling loud enough to be rude, I’m afraid.”

We’ve scrounged up enough sealed rations to eat fairly well, heating our meals on the cook stove in the living quarters. But with the rooms still drying out, Hannah, the professor, and I sleep on separate bunks in the submarine, while Jimmy sleeps outside the submarine in the boat with Junior.

On the fourth day, with no bodies left to be found, Jimmy, Hannah, and I gather at the command center door and wait for the professor to let us in so we can reboot the computers.

“What’s that say?” Jimmy asks, pointing to a metal plaque mounted next to door and engraved with the words:

MISSION STATEMENT

THE PARK SERVICE THUS ESTABLISHED SHALL PROTECT AND CONSERVE THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF THE EARTH BY EMPLOYING ALL AVAILABLE MEANS TO ERADICATE FOREVER FROM THE PLANET THE VIRAL SPECIES KNOWN AS HUMANKIND.

To my relief, before I can read the plaque to Jimmy, the professor shows up and punches his code into the keypad and leads us inside the command center. It reminds me of the safe room at the lake house, only larger and more sophisticated. It has a concave wall lined with LCD screens in front of several cockpit-style chairs, complete with joysticks for controlling drones and fire switches to release weapons.

I sit in one of the chairs and notice that the seating surface is heated with buttons for vibration-massage settings, just in case you need to relax a little between kills, I guess. I imagine Dr. Radcliffe and his team of environmental terrorists spending countless hours down here “working.” I wonder if they enjoyed the hunt. I wonder if they kept score of their kills. The thought of it makes me really dislike the professor, and I wouldn’t be able to forgive him except he claims the command center was off limits to everyone except Radcliffe and a select few others, and I’m tempted to believe him because he doesn’t seem very familiar with the room.

After mumbling many pseudo-profanities, the professor finally locates the mainframe racked up in a server closet and tells us to hope for the best while he reboots the “Big Iron.”

The computers are noiseless. The screens flicker, then run a dizzying display of code before going dark and coming back on again with a patchwork of vibrant scenes from around the park: a snowy sunset high in the Himalayas; a gorgeous view of blue ocean waves breaking on a tropical coast; a prairie caught in the gold light of sunrise; a billowing dust storm in a desert; a peekaboo view of reflected moonlight in a tangled marshland as a drone glides on its mindless midnight mission. Lowlands and highlands, rivers and lakes—it’s an orgy for my tired eyes, which have been four days in this gray and dreary underworld looking for bloated cadavers in the dark.

“Is all this happening somewhere right now?” Jimmy asks, stepping forward and reaching out to touch a screen.

“Yes,” I say, reminding myself that he’s never seen a video image before. “These are from cameras mounted on drones.”

The screens change to new images every sixty seconds or so, and with the third changeover something terrible happens. All at once, the screens combine to create one image the size of the entire wall. The scene is of an ice sheet in the permanent twilight of early arctic winter. Several seal groups huddle beside blocks of ice next to their breathing holes. A handful of fur-clad hunters inches toward them, hidden behind a white, skin-covered blind that they push ahead of themselves on the ice. When they’re close, the hunters spring out from behind the blind and rush to the seals and crush their skulls with clubs.

“Oh, no!” Hannah exclaims, beside me.

A few of the white pups rush for the breathing hole but are caught up and clubbed, then hung from hooks on the wood framing of the blind, and bled. Several moments of butchery follow, and an impressive radius of ice around the scene turns blood-red. Just as I’m about to ask how far away the camera is, crosshairs appear on the screen. A few seconds later, two of the seal hunters explode, their severed limbs skittering, along with hunks of blubber, across the bloody ice. Another hunter is left in the frigid water, clinging to the icy edge of the hole blasted by the bombs. He struggles and kicks to climb out, scrambling up and running across the barren ice. The camera follows him, the crosshairs zero in again. One moment he’s running for his life, the next moment he’s a pink mist, and only a blood-stained hole is left in the ice to mark his life.

The gory scene disappears as the screens change over to various peaceful views of the park. When I peel my eyes away and look around the room, I notice Jimmy clutching the back of a command chair, his face frozen in an ashen stare.

“What’s wrong with him?” the professor asks.

I put my hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

“He’s upset because he’s seen this before in person.”

“Ah ... ,” the professor sighs, “it never gets any easier to watch. Especially when they club the little whitecoats.”

“He’s not upset about the seals,” I say.

Jimmy shakes his head and mumbles: “What in the hell’s wrong with you people?”

“I’m sorry,” the professor says, “I didn’t mean to ...”

“Let’s just see if we can control the drones,” Hannah says.

The professor hangs his head and approaches the panel of controls, mumbling as he types commands into the keyboard. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Holy shrimp in the sea, there’s nobody stupider than me.”

Red letters pop on the screens:

COMMAND POST DEACTIVATED

SITREP MONITORING ONLY

“Oh, piffle!” He slams his hand down on the keyboard. “No good. No good at all.”

“We’re locked out?” Hannah asks.

“It appears so, young lady,” he says. “Flood triggered the emergency system. Just as Radcliffe planned it to, I’m sure. The command and control lines are severed.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means that the drones are now operating autonomously with their own internal software systems. They’ll continue to execute their mission. All we can do is watch.”

“How many can there be?” I ask.

“Many thousands of them,” the professor answers. “We’ve substantially increased the fleet over the years to cover more ground as ... well, as populations thinned.”

“Don’t candy-coat it,” I say. “You mean as you killed more people.” The professor nods, apparently untroubled by, or at least unwilling to refute, my statement. I continue, “They can’t possibly run on their own forever, can they? How long?”

“No,” the professor replies. “But they can operate in the theater for many years. The drones have solar skins and electric engines, and they’re loaded with enough traditional munitions to perform many hundreds of kills each. They have backup lasers that are of reduced effect but can still incinerate a biped from quite a distance. The ships will last even longer.”

“Can we use the drones here to target the other drones?”

“We might see what’s left in the hangar,” he says. “But when Eden caught fire they flew most of them as a precaution. And even if there are any left, and even if they’re salvageable, I doubt we could launch them with the system on lockdown, let alone program a new mission.”

“What about the submarine then?” I ask.

“Research vessel,” he says. “The weapons on board are strictly defensive. We didn’t bother maintaining the fleet of ballistic submarines we found here, and they’ve long since been scuttled ... them being of little use in targeting ... ,” he pauses to look at Jimmy, “... ahem, well you know.”

“But there must be some way to wrestle back control of the drones,” I say. “Some way to reset the system, maybe?”

The professor covers his eyes with his fingers as if reading something written there. He inhales a long, deep breath, and when he removes his hands his bushy eyebrows are raise above wide, staring eyes.

“We might try reloading the mastercode.”

“What mastercode?” Hannah asks.

“The software that runs the system,” the professor says. “But we’d need to get it first.”

“Okay,” I say. “Where is it?”

“In the basement.”

“There’s a basement here?” Hannah asks.

“Not here,” he says.

“Then where?”

“Holocene II.”

“That’s perfect,” I say. “We need to free them anyway.”

The professor jolts back so fast he bangs his head against the wall.

“Free them?” he asks, rubbing the back of his head. “What in the name of science has gotten into you?”

“Nothing’s gotten into me,” I say. “It simply isn’t right to keep them imprisoned down there.”

“But they’re happy,” he says, a confused look on his face. “They have everything they need. They even have Eden to look forward to. Or at least they did. You can’t take their ignorance away from them. What right have you? You can’t burden them with the reality of their situation. It’s not humane.”

I shake my head.

“They’re not happy down there.”

“How would you know?” he asks.

“Because I’m from there.”

“Oh,” he says, nodding, “you’re the boy Radcliffe brought up. He told us you were lost in that derailment.”

“I was, but I found my way here.”

He clucks his tongue and chuckles.

“Of all the wild places in the world to end up. Don’t you sometimes think coincidence might just be us living out some cosmic destiny, over and over again, forwards and backwards, for eternity? It pains me to consider it, because this life really has been too long already. But you’ll never know the pain of living a millennium, will you? Or did Radcliffe already infect you with his serum?”

I open my mouth to tell him we’ve all taken the serum, but Hannah jumps in: “Tell us more about the mastercode. Can we get it without letting anyone in Holocene II out?”

I grab Hannah’s arm.

“What are you saying?”

“I know, Aubrey,” she says, pulling away. “We have to free them. I agree. But have you thought it through? We need to stop the drones first. There’s no room for everyone here. And there are no facilities for producing the things we need to survive, either. Think about it. Food, shelter, electricity. It’s all down in Holocene II. You can’t very well bring them up here to be slaughtered, can you?. The logical thing to do is deal with the drones first. Then we’ll devise a plan for reintroducing the people to the surface. Don’t you agree?”

I have to admit, she makes some sense. I hadn’t thought about the logistics of bringing all those people up. I have an image of thousands of them stumbling around, confused and blinded by the sun, drones picking them off like eagles hunting fish caught in a puddle. She’s right. We have no real system of government, no infrastructure, no formal economy.

The professor’s voice snaps me back to the room: “Well, we have visited Holocene II undetected before. We control the train from here, for obvious reasons. And that’s on a different system than the drones. The transfer station is vacated and locked down during rest hours. Elevator takes us to six, where another goes to the basements. Timing is critical, but it can be done. If that’s what you really want?”

Hannah raises her hand.

“I vote we do that.”

I look at Jimmy. He shakes his head.

“What are you thinking, Jimmy?”

“It ain’t our call to make.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we always done stuff by vote.”

“But we’re voting now,” Hannah says.

“We is,” Jimmy replies. “But they ain’t.” He points down.

“But they’re not prepared to deal with this,” she says.

“Why do we get to decide that for ’em?”

“Whatever,” Hannah sighs, turning to me. “It’s up to you then, Aubrey. You’re the tie breaker.”

I’m torn. I agree with Jimmy in theory. It isn’t our decision to make on behalf of the people of Holocene II. But I also see Hannah’s point. And no way do I want to be responsible for all those people starving to death up here. Or freezing. Or being slaughtered by drones, even. I reach into my pocket and grip my father’s pipe. What would he do? I remember him telling me to always trust my heart.

“The brain is a powerful servant but a heartless master,” he’d always say. But then I think of that day I saw him for the last time. The day he walked right into Eden to be slaughtered. I tried to tell him that we’d been lied to. I tried to reason with his mind. But his heart was set on meeting my mother, and it clouded his judgment. If he’d only listened to his mind instead of his heart, he might still be alive.

“Sorry, Jimmy, I’m with Hannah.”

Jimmy looks at me and shakes his head slowly.

“Figures,” he says. Then he storms from the room and slams the door.

I start after him, but Hannah calls me back.

“Let him vent, Aubrey. That all can wait. We need to make some decisions here.”

“All right. I can catch up with him later, I guess.”

“Tell us about this mastercode,” Hannah says.

“It’s quite simple, really,” the professor replies. “With the mastercode we should be able to restore the system and reclaim control of the drones.”

“Then could we change their mission and stop the killing?” I ask. “Or even call them all home and retire them?”

“Well, there’s not room enough for them all here at once,” he says, “but I see no reason why we couldn’t reprogram them to cease their fire and observe only. Then, as they cycle home for maintenance, you could certainly disarm them.”

“Or maybe we keep them armed for defensive purposes?” Hannah suggests.

“Defense against what?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I agree that we need to stop this senseless slaughter immediately.”

“And what about freeing my people?”

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time,” she says. “As soon as the drones are under our control again, we can put our heads together and come up with a plan for that.”

“I’m only going along with this if we all agree: as soon as the drones are stopped, we tell the people of Holocene II the truth, and we set them free. Deal or no deal?”

“Fine,” Hannah says. “Agreed.”

“Professor?”

“Fine with me,” he says.

“Okay then. When can we leave?”

The professor glances at his wrist then looks puzzled by the fact that he isn’t wearing a watch. He leans forward and reads the time on the bottom edge of a screen. Then he closes his eyes and talks to himself.

“If we call the train now ... five hours up makes nineteen hundred ... rest hours begin at sixteen hundred ... twenty-seven ... subtract five hours down ... twenty-two. We can leave in twenty-two hours.”

“There was an easier way to do that,” Hannah says.

“Yes, well ... arithmetic never was my strong suit.”

“But you’re a physicist.”

“Theoretical physicist, young lady. Theoretical.”

I leave them to bicker about math while I go to look for Jimmy. I have a sinking feeling even before reaching the docks. The boat is gone, and Jimmy and Junior are gone with it.

I look across the empty, underground bay at the mouth of the tunnel leading to the locks. It’s seems like an evil archway through which my departing hope has passed. My instinct is for pursuit, but I quickly realize the powerlessness of my situation. I’m trapped. Jimmy’s gone up there, and I’m stuck down here. While the submarine can pass through the miles of step locks down to the Pacific, it is much too large to pass through the upper locks to the lake. I could build a boat, maybe, but there’s no time. We leave on the train for Eden in 22 hours.

Several hours pass as I sit on the deserted dock and rerun everything Jimmy and I have been through. That delirious first encounter by the sea. Him teaching me to catch pigeons. The cove. Learning to swim. The horror of the drones slaughtering his family. The bodies and the blood. I remember tending his infected leg and praying to anything that might hear me to restore his health. I remember our long, depressing days of mourning as Jimmy recovered from his wounds in the cliff-side caves. I remember crossing the mountains together, and finding Junior on the trail. And as much as I don’t want to, I remember betraying Jimmy when we first arrived at the lake house—lying, conniving, caught up in Hannah’s spell and conspiring with Dr. Radcliffe. It’s unforgiveable, really. But Jimmy did forgive me when he saved my life in that river. And he helped me blow up Eden; he helped me free my folks.

I feel Hannah’s hand on my shoulder, and I’m suddenly aware of the cold. She sits down and puts her arm around me. I’d rather blame her than blame myself for Jimmy’s leaving, and I’m prepared to yell at her the second that she speaks. But she doesn’t say a word—she just sits beside me on the dock and stares across the bay at the empty tunnel, looking sad herself.