CHOSEN: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel (15 page)

“Stephen!
Stop being dramatic. Just promise you won’t tell,” Stella said shoving her
brother.

“I
would rather not know anything that may actually cause me death,” Alexis
complained.

“You
can leave now then if you want to Alexis. There will be no hard feelings,”
Stephen said firmly. 

Stella
rolled her eyes. “Just start talking Stephen,” she said nervously.

“I
need them to promise they won’t share this information first. Do you both
promise?” Stephen said, remaining firm.

“Yes.
I promise,” Marco said anxiously.

“Fine.
I promise too,” Alexis gave in. She was curious about what could be so
important.

“You
probably both know our parents work down here on a project funded by the
science divisions of World Consensus and UniCorps. They do a lot of different
things in monitoring, collection, analysis, climate monitoring, ecological
systems, and engineering. The ARC is its own little world, in a way. We’ve
recently started more detailed tracking of things like tremors, earthquakes,
volcanoes, fault lines, and ocean life and following those trends to understand
them better. They have access to data that goes back longer than we’ve been
alive and have other historical data from even further back. It’s a lot of
data,” Stephen said before pausing.

“And,
it’s a lot of talking. Stephen, you are putting me to sleep. Get to the good
part,” Stella said over his shoulder.

Stephen
ignored Stella. “Over the past six months or so they’ve been looking at data
from over the past couple years much closer. It was tremors and earthquakes,
especially around the pump holes; you know where they dump the emissions and
gases.”

“The
fault lines closest to the holes are more active than the ones far away.
There’s a trend and Stephen and my mom’s team have finally started making sense
of it over the past few months,” Stella said smiling smugly at Stephen.

“Wait,
why were they even tracking the earthquakes? Isn’t that what the Science
Institute is for?” Alexis quickly jumped in.

“They
didn’t use to track the tremors and earthquakes that closely. It was only when
it directly impacted our main work we had to look at it too. There were too
many changes in ocean life to not look into it more. It’s getting worse,” Stephen
said before Stella could try to explain.

“I’m
not the expert but from what I’ve seen, it’s to the point that something big
could happen, like a serious earthquake or even a volcano sometime soon. When
it happens, because, yes, it probably will, it could kill a lot of people,”
Stella chided.

“And
there is more than one place at risk so we are talking a lot of people,”
Stephen jumped in again.

“Serious
as in worse than what happened here?” asked Marco who was now looking at his
screen as the files were populating. Stephen managed to peak his interest, but
he and Alexis were in the middle of something else – their little fun game with
potentially serious consequences. 

“In
reality that wasn’t a major event Marco. It was bad enough, with the structural
damage, but very few lives were lost. To answer your question - yes, possibly,”
Stephen said bluntly.

“So
what’s it all mean?” Alexis asked.

Stephen
scratched his head. “It means the need for mass relocation of billions of
people in a short period of time.” Marco and Alexis looked at Stephen, waiting
for more.

“And
that is hard to do. It costs a lot of money and there is no place for them to
live.” Stella stepped in realizing her brother wasn’t picking up on the cues.

“Oh.
That’s rough,” Marco said rubbing his chin distractedly.

All
of the data they were after was in and it was time to finish up and get out.
“Hold on,” Marco added. 

He
stopped the video feed and sound. Alexis and Marco had to quickly make sure
they had everything saved. The files being synced must have been over one
hundred and they were forced to jump through the interspace of the subsystem in
order to protect the two hackers.

Marco
looked at the remaining time left to completion. He could tell someone was
trying to track them right now and they risked their location being compromised
the longer they remained tied in.

He
smiled to himself as he thought of the person on the other end who was probably
swearing right now as the files floated across space and time. Eight. Seven.
Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Complete. He immediately disconnected everything
from the Region’s system. They were done.

Alexis
turned to give him a high five. “We did it. We actually did it. Crap! I can’t
believe we did it. What if they are still trying to track us? What if we get
caught? I could lose my funding for school, or even get kicked out, or worse.
Marco. What if we made a big mistake?” Alexis continued, feeling both
exhilarated and scared at the same time.

“Al,
calm down. This isn’t even like you. We did everything right. Just like we
planned for months. If what Stephen is saying is true, this could be even more
valuable. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to get caught and you are going to be fine.
Besides, I,” Marco stopped talking as his phone beeped. 

“I
forgot I put Stephen on hold,” he accepted the call again.

“Hey.
Sorry about that. We had to finish something up over here. Now what was this
again about relocating people and time and money?”

Stephen
was irritated, noticeably and Marco wasn’t helping. “Look Marco, we have a
situation where it is very likely that the earth is going to crack and swallow
up millions or billions of people or it’s going to explode and make lava
structures out of millions or billions of people. It’s not likely anyone can
get that many people relocated before our projections show the first series of
serious earthquakes. You know earthquakes are triggers for volcanoes.” Stephen
was almost breathless having said all of that without a single inhale. 

Stella
stood in the background waiting with Stephen for Marco’s response. Of course,
he could have said anything and it wouldn’t have mattered. She just liked
looking at him.

He
had these soul stirring brown eyes and thick wavy hair that dusted his
forehead. His skin looked like he’d lived near the equator his whole life and
she could imagine he had his pick of girls. After all, he was there with
Alexis. Perky, persistent, pretty, persuasive Alexis. Whatever they had going
on, Stella reasoned she didn’t stand a chance but it didn’t hurt to appreciate
the view.

“And
you are telling all this to me because?” Marco didn’t get what he had to do
with any of what Stephen was saying. Stephen was unsure of exactly how to put
the next part and afraid of saying anything else over his regular
communication.

“Can
you log into our science class chat site. It uses a secure system? I think it’s
better if we talk there.”

Marco
got on Alexis’s system and pulled up the portal to the chatroom for the
classroom. At the same time, Stephen was connecting in through his system. He
had state of the art equipment like everyone on the ARC.

Stella
didn’t even try to hide her boredom as she sat behind Stephen. “So, Alexis, how
do you think you did on your final project? I passed mine, which was enough.”

“I
got a really high mark. While you went down and played on that piano I was
studying. So yeah, I did well,” Alexis teased her. “Are you still going back to
civilization with all this new stuff happening?”

Stella
looked at Stephen. That question wasn’t even something she’d considered yet. “I
don’t see why not. They can take all this info home with us, right Stephen?”

Stephen
looked over at Stella. He hadn’t been listening. “What?”

“We
can take all this home and you guys can keep working on it from there, right?”
Stella asked again.

“Yes.
It will go home with us,” Stephen answered quickly.

Stella
suddenly felt like there was something else going on or someone watching but
didn’t see anything on Stephen’s screen to show someone else besides the two of
them. It was like a ghost in the system. She could feel the energy but didn’t know
where it was coming from.

Stella
spoke into the class chat portal where she could see Marco and Alexis. “Guys,
could someone else be watching what you write here but not show up in the chat?
You know, hide themselves?”

“There’s
not a setting like that I’ve ever seen. Then again, I don’t usually go in here
for fun, you know?” Marco replied sarcastically. “If someone wanted to, there’s
always an invisible in. You just have to know the vulnerabilities, the weak
points, and then you start there. Why?”

“I
feel like someone may be lurking in there. Watching. I know it’s silly -
strange and I can’t really explain it, but when I get this kind of feeling, my
hands tingle and get warm. Is there any way you can check?” she wondered.

“If
you think something’s there Stella, we should probably pay attention to it,”
Alexis said turning to Marco.

“It
would be hard to do unless you have the teacher code and I’ve never had a
reason to get those because it’s just never been that important to me,” replied
Marco.

He
knew there was a way to do it, but didn’t see why anyone would be in there this
time on a Saturday night, for no reason, in an invisible state. Like him, most
people had better things to do with their time.

“I
doubt we have anything to worry about Stella,” Stephen said hurriedly, wanting
to get going. “Look, we are both in and I see you. Make sure you put voice on. Turn
the video off, just to be safe and I’m going to disconnect this other video.”

Stephen
abruptly shut off the video that Stella and Alexis had just used to talk and
turned his attention back to the chat room he and Marco were logged into.

“Seriously,
Stephen? We are in a class chat with our classroom IDs used to log in and with
our voices on here and you don’t think they can figure out who we are because
we don’t have the video on?” Marco asked and Alexis laughed in the background.

“Fine,
you put your video on if you want. Mine is staying off,” Stephen huffed. 

“I
think you are forgetting that you need to show him some things on this side and
you will actually need the video,” Stella reminded him.

She
was getting a little tired and annoyed. It was already late and with all that
was happening, nobody was going to be sleeping in tomorrow, even after the
party. It was going to be all work, even if she didn’t do anything there’d be
too much going on for her to sleep.

Seeing
Marco and Alexis’s faces reappear brought a smile back to Stella’s face. They
could see her and Stephen too. “You ready over there?” Stephen asked before
going on this time.

“Ready.
Now what is the big deal?” Marco asked.

“Ok.
We have to report all of this to the funders at the science divisions of
UniCorps and the World Consensus. My mom is sending the report tomorrow
morning. I’m afraid they won’t do anything about it. They’ll try to deny it,
say the science isn’t right, or just bury it.”

“Why
do you think our government would do that?” Alexis asked sarcastically. “They
have a policy of honesty and service. It’s in the creed.” They all laughed. 

The
creed had been established when the World Consensus had been created nearly
eighty years before. Before the World Consensus, the government had become so
corrupt and dishonest that no one outside of the government knew what was going
on.

When
the World Consensus was formed it was with the promise to be different. The
founding leaders promised transparency so people knew what was happening and
trust could be rebuilt. Shortly after the new government came to order, there
was a great amount of money and investment put into science, research,
education, social programs, health issues, and the environment.

They
began investing in schools for everyone. Their grandparents retold stories from
their parents who’d lived through the earlier years of the World Consensus.
They’d lived through the transition from individual nations to one world but Marco,
Alexis, Stephen, and Stella had only read about it in reports of history. 

“I
need to make sure we don’t lose this fight. We have to make sure they don’t
bury it. We have to make sure people know the truth if they do try to bury it.
They have a right to know,” Stephen pleaded.

There
was silence for a moment and then a sound that almost seemed like static. It
was a faint electrical pulsing and then it was gone. 

Stella
turned to look at Stephen. “What was that? Did you all hear that?”

“I
heard it too,” Alexis added. It was like something else was happening in the
background.

“Hold
on. Let me try something. I’m gonna disconnect and reconnect. Maybe what we
were working on earlier is causing some kind of interference. Be back in just a
minute,” Marco said.

Marco
disconnected from the class platform and rebooted his entire system.

“Alexis,
make a copy of what we got from Southern Allegiance on a microdot. I have a
feeling it may be important down the road,” he said, turning to Alexis and
continuing to disconnect out of the school’s entire system.