CHOSEN: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel (19 page)

“No
problem. Do you want me to look at anything or do anything while I wait for
you?” he asked Zura. 

“No.
Thank you,” she said curtly. He was in the dog house. He took off his boots and
refilled his coffee before meekly heading through the door and down the steps.

Once
he was gone, Zura pulled Stephen over to a large table and they sat down.

“Stephen,
I need to know if you found something, figured something out, or whatever you
are looking for, I need to know,” she said looking at him intensely.

He
lowered his head from what seemed like her secret seeking eyes. She’d never really
pursued developing it, but he knew that she sometimes just ‘knew’ and this was
one of those times.

“I
made a copy,” Stephen said quietly.

“Uh
huh. Ok. What did you do with it?” she then asked.

Stephen
squirmed. He’d get in trouble if she knew he’d shared it outside the ARC and
their circle. “Nothing. I showed Stella,” he answered trying to keep his face
from revealing anything more.

Zura
looked at him, knowing he wasn’t telling her everything, but she couldn’t
afford for him to shut down. “Okay. Well, what is it that you were working on with
what you saw?” she asked.

“Mom,
there are files on there that even we can’t open. We don’t have the passwords
or a way to decrypt them. What are they? Why are they protected even from you?”
he whispered to her inquisitively.

“There
are some things that are even above my clearance level and I have access to the
things I need for my job,” Zura said, glancing at Stephen. “I was able to get a
hold of those other files. I am hoping someone else can access them,” Zura said,
looking worried.

“Is
that why I gave it to the pilot?” Stephen asked in the same curious whisper.

“Yes.
I think he knows someone who can help,” Zura answered.

Mave
was in the background confirming that the most recent report on earthquakes,
seismic activity, and the underground fissures that they were noticing would be
transmitted by 8:30 a.m. She hung up the phone and gave a thumbs up to Zura. Rupert
was still pulling his report together when Zura stood up and got ready to go
into the lab.

“Give
us ten minutes, please,” she said. It couldn’t be more obvious that Johan was
in trouble.

Antarctic
Research Center

Mave was pouring
her second cup of coffee and asking Rupert if he’d like another cup when an
urgent transmission came through. Zura and Johan were still in the lab even
though more than ten minutes had passed. 

Mave
read the message aloud. “Talk at 8:30 a.m. UniCorps and World Consensus.
Confidential.” Mave finished before adding, “Talk about abrupt. This isn’t
going to be a friendly gathering.”

Mave
prepared to enter the ROC room to tell Zura and Johan the update. At least their
funders would get it over with soon and then get on with fixing the problem.

She
slipped her shoes off and started towards where she knew Zura was lighting into
Johan. Rupert stood to the side watching. He had no intention of walking
through those doors with Zura, not if he didn’t need to. Not that morning.

A
few moments later, the door leading up from the ROC room opened again. Zura
marched out taking her white booties off as she waited for Mave who was behind
her. Johan trailed both of them. He’d sobered up a bit.

Zura
looked at the time and then stalked over to Rupert. “How are things looking
Rupert?” she asked, without stopping as she continued her short trek to her
work station. “Mave, what do you have for me?” she asked without waiting for
Rupert’s answer.

Rupert
handed Zura a small chip, which she loaded in the reader to pull up in front of
them all. Not much had changed, but more importantly, she needed to document
the full record before anyone had a chance to change it. She’d be holding on to
that chip.

“Thanks
Rupert. This is just what I needed. I need you to make one more copy and put it
in a safe place.” She gave Rupert a look to make sure he knew what she meant.

“I
will. Don’t worry,” he said as he went to work on making a second copy of the
data.

“Okay,
Mave, give it to me,” Zura said, turning her attention to Mave.

“They
are working on the report as fast as they can. They should have it by 8:30 a.m.
like I asked. We’ll just need to be ready to receive it even if we are already
transmitting with UniCorps and the World Consensus.

“As
soon as it comes through, make a copy to give to Rupert. I want both of those
to be kept safe. I’ll keep the original transmission. We can’t risk losing any
of the data we have today. Do you all understand?” Zura looked at the time and
then checked her reflection in the glass window.

“Okay,
get the equipment ready. Johan, pick up your desk please, it’s visible on the
screen. Stephen, you have to stay out of the shot and stay quiet. Technically,
you aren’t even supposed to be in here,” Zura ordered.

Stephen
sat down reluctantly by the door and then got back up again and moved to the
opposite side of where the transmission would take place. He took out a small
device and propped it on the table beside him.  He would line it up once
everyone was on.

Soon
there was a beeping sound. “Okay guys. This is it,” Zura said. 

The
team was seated closely together around a small oval table. Zura pressed a
button and in front of them appeared a large holographic image of a round
conference table with Representative Gregor Magiro, Dr. Tomas Sporgsman, Dr.
Sandy Ashby, and another man who seemed to obliterate the room with his
presence. The latter was distracting with his twirling of his large mustache. They
were all familiar with Mirkal ‘The Stache’ Dempstead.

Somehow
they’d managed to pull both UniCorps and the World Consensus together in such a
short time. As they looked at each other the sour looks on all of their faces
made Zura even more nervous.

“Good
morning, everyone,” Zura said trying to sound cordial and friendly. She wasn’t
sure she could set the tone for the meeting given the seriousness of the
report.

“Good
morning Dr. Bello. Good morning everyone,” Gregor responded, speaking for the
room.

Gregor
didn’t want to waste time. He knew something was coming but wasn’t expecting it
to be this bad. “What the hell is going on, Dr. Bello? I wake up this morning
to find this waiting for me,” Gregor said pointing to a projection of a page of
the report Zura had sent a couple of hours earlier.

“Yes,
Gregor. I do understand the concern,” Zura said. She pulled up her projection
as well so that her team could see it.

“As
all of you are well aware, the ARC project began more than twenty years ago. We’ve
been collecting data before we ever built this place or put the first emission
pump hole into the ground. Things have changed. When we started we weren’t
tracking the pump holes because those weren’t even in existence then. Before
this issue, we were looking at ocean health and using that as a way to measure
environmental and ecological health in general.” Zura looked at the team on the
other side of the transmission to make sure they were following her.

“Okay.
So what does that have to do with this? Sounds like you are saying that looking
at all this isn’t even really your job then?” The Stache jumped in.

“You
may not know this, but once the pumps went in we were asked to watch for
anything else unusual in the high risk areas around the tectonic plates and
fault lines in addition to changes in the ocean’s health. We aren’t the only
ones looking at that, but everyone else who is looking at it is not looking at
the other things we consider.”

“Doesn’t
anyone else see a problem with the lack of checks and balances here? Why are we
paying all these organizations to look at the same damn thing? You want to talk
about waste? There it is!” The Stache attacked again. Zura tried to ignore him
so she could maintain her composure through the meeting.

“It
doesn’t matter who noticed this. It just so happens that we did,” Johan spoke
up in defense of his wife and the work they did.

“Right.,
and with what we began to see we had to step back and look at the bigger
picture. We looked at as much as we could and kept track of it. We didn’t see
much outside of what we expected to see at first, but after some bigger
disturbances and anomalies we decided to go back and look at our data. These
disturbances and anomalies can’t be explained away by the normal shifting,”
Zura said and waited for them to respond.

“That
shouldn’t have anything to do with our project. We dug those emission holes far
away from the fault lines,” Dr. Tomas Sporgsman from UniCorps responded.

“And
you can’t really say that without a doubt, this isn’t normal or hasn’t happened
in the past,” The Stache defended the pumping again, causing the muscles in
Zura’s neck to tense as she shot him a steeled look.

“We
built them far away from the fault lines we knew about,” Zura said back. “What
we didn’t know was that the fault lines we have known about aren’t the only
ones. There are new fault lines that can show up and small ones that can become
larger ones.” She paused before continuing, “And they are growing and what we
are seeing is that some of them are developing fissures.These small cracks
spread a little like tree branches, spreading out and connecting.”

“That’s
not this program’s doing. That’s just nature,” The Stache responded.

“Zura,
can you definitively tie any of this to our emission pump program?” Gregor
asked. He didn’t want to agree with Mirkal’s argument but he had a reasonable
point. It needed to be as certain as possible.

Zura
looked at Gregor. His concern was genuine, but she couldn’t tell if it was
because he was concerned the program might be causing the problem or because he
was concerned his program and reputation might be at risk. Or both.

“Not
absolutely definitively, but there is a very strong correlation.”

“Correlation
does not necessarily imply causation,” Dr. Sandy Ashby said, speaking up in
defense. “This has been a highly successful program in eliminating air
pollution. Dr. Bello, do you really want to suggest that it is the problem?”
she asked Zura.

Mave
saw the report from the Science Institute come in but she couldn’t do anything
about it without disrupting the conversation. She shot Stephen a look and then
tapped her wrist once. He would get the hint.

He
left the small device on the table and spun around to pull up what had come
through to Mave. He loaded it onto his system’s projector so that the ARC team
could see it but it remained out of view for the team in the Capital city.

Zura
looked at the woman from the World Consensus. This was what she’d expected. “We
don’t want to blame the program. We want to make sure that we are operating
safely and that we protect citizens who may become at risk.”

“Are
you suggesting we tell people about this Zura?” Gregor asked.

“If
it gets worse, yes. They need to know if their lives are at risk.”

“That
would cause mass panic and consumer confidence would immediately tank along
with our economy,” The Stache said, giving the grimmest image he could imagine.

“Or
we stay quiet and those people die, along with your sales to those consumers.
Now that could also tank the economy,” Mave shot back.

“Okay.
Okay. This is the thing. You are suggesting that we have some time before this
becomes really dangerous, right?” Gregor asked.

“It’s
hard to tell exactly. We’ve already had earthquakes in Southern Allegiance,
ones that have rattled people and caused damage in Northern Allegiance, and
other smaller incidents in Southern Liberty. No one is even talking about the
earthquakes happening in areas where most people have already left. Some of
these earthquakes have been pretty bad but not devastating,” Zura said
attempting to conceal the frustration that she could feel just under her skin.

“Take
the most recent one in Southern Allegiance. There was very little warning, but
what little they had was used to get people to safety. Thankfully, it was only
a 5.5 on the Richter scale. Had it been worse and they weren’t warned, it
would’ve meant major casualties that could’ve been avoided,” Johan added.

“The
seismic activity we are tracking, the tremors, have really been one of our few
real warnings, but we don’t know when the next major incident will happen. It
could be days, weeks, months, or maybe a couple of years. What we do know is
that there are more of the underlying signs. We are seeing more connections,”
Mave said, nodding towards Rupert.

“We
are seeing an underground map of what looks like these tree roots and they seem
to be happening closer to the emissions pump sites than they happen the further
away we get. So to your point Dr. Ashby, no, we cannot prove causation, but
there is too much correlation for it to be coincidence,” Rupert said, as he
pulled up an image that overlaid the pumps and their lines with the seismic
activity.

“We
think that the emissions being pumped into the ground are the cause of excess
pressure and gas. This is building up and has to go somewhere. It appears to be
pushing through the earth and causing these fissures. We can’t prove it, but we
can’t see any other explanation,” Rupert said, highlighting one of the graphs
he’d put together.

“Dr.
Bello?” Dr. Tomas Sporgsman called out before anyone else could continue. Zura
turned her attention back to him. “I just want to remind you that you and your
team, which means every person on this project and on the ARC, have signed a
confidentiality agreement and a nondisclosure agreement.

There
it was. What they’d all expected to be thrown out at them at the start of the
conversation. UniCorps and the World Consensus held true to form.

“Sharing
of any findings from research conducted on the ARC without approval from the
funding committee is not allowed and is legally punishable. The sharing of this
information may cause panic and social unrest amongst civilians and could
possibly incite illegal behavior amongst civilians. Being a part of or
contributing to any of those illegal behaviors is also illegal and punishable
under the law. Do you understand this, Dr. Bello?” Dr. Sporgsman finished and
awaited her response.

Zura
could feel her nails digging into her hand the entire time he spoke his threat
in the form of a warning. “Yes, I understand what the law is. Do you understand
what our moral duty is to the citizens of the world?”

“Don’t
push this, Dr. Bello. We have obligations. UniCorps is obligated to protect the
interest of our partner organizations and I’m sure you can understand that the
World Consensus has obligations to protect the citizens. That means we can’t
allow anyone to incite civil unrest or anything that might endanger the
immediate safety of those who entrust their leaders to protect them,” Dr. Sandy
Ashby added.

“Zura,
you know that what you all proposed as a solution is nearly impossible, right?”

“No.
It may be difficult, it may take time and resources, but it isn’t impossible,”
she shot back.

“You
all proposed the mass evacuation of major cities around the major fault lines
because those areas are more likely to become active with everything else
becoming weaker. I’m sure you know that most of those lines are centralized
around the Ring of Fire. Of course you know, you’re the scientist,” The Stache
said mockingly before continuing to denigrate her team and the work they’d
done.