CHOSEN: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel (20 page)

“There
are only so many places people can go that aren’t in danger. Besides that, we
are talking about relocating nearly half the world’s population in a matter of
months or just a couple of years. I don’t even think it is logistically
possible. These people won’t want to leave their homes at the threat of a
possible earthquake or volcano happening at some unknown time in the
future…maybe. You see? What you are saying and suggesting, doesn’t make a whole
lot of sense,” The Stache argued as if everything Zura had said was laughable.

“That’s
enough Mirkal. For now, this remains completely confidential,” Dr. Sporgsman said.
“We’ll talk more at the annual debrief next week. We need to talk on our side
before anyone does anything,” Dr. Sporgsman warned.

Zura
looked back and forth between Tomas and The Stache. Their only concerns were about
what this meant for UniCorps. The evacuation from just the one city in Southern
Allegiance cost the government millions. Just one or two more cities that size
and the government would be almost broke and UniCorps would have to support it
even more, costing their stakeholders and corporations millions that they may
never get back.

“We’ll
be waiting for your visit and to hear how we will move forward responsibly with
this issue,” Zura said. “If there is anything else I can answer for you, please
let me know. Thank you.”

Zura
cut the transmission. She relaxed the pressure her fingernails were placing as
they dug into the palms of her hands. She made sure they were gone before
turning her attention to Stephen who’d been sitting silently.

“Did
you get all of that, son?” Zura asked him.

“I
sure did. Every word,” Stephen answered with a smirk of a smile.

Antarctic Research Center

Johan tossed tiny
rounded paper pellets at the small window in the room where he sat.

This
had been his life’s work. The work that defined all of their lives. The place
that was built to help save them, now felt constricting, a prison of its own.

Johan
had always been proud of the work that he and his team of architects,
engineers, scientists, and technicians had done. It was a beautiful work of engineered
art. Zura made sure it was also comfortable by hiring interior designers to
make the space not just functional, but livable. They knew they would be
spending a lot of time there over the years. 

The
idea for the ARC was begun more than thirty five years before as part of a
global initiative to ensure the continuity of the human race. The scientists,
technicians, analysts, engineers, and every person who worked on the ARC as
regular employees had been carefully hand selected by the leaders of the
collaborative that preceded UniCorps.

Someone
else needed to know. The only person he could tell would be there any minute. Johan
hoped it wasn’t a mistake sharing this with anyone else not already approved,
but keeping it to himself now felt too risky.

He
looked out the oval window at the land that stretched out from the ARC. Though
he and Zura owned their little unit, others who’d bought shares of ownership
could lease a unit for Antarctic Expedition vacations. Most people never
utilized this benefit and on the rare occasion that someone did they were
usually placed in the outbuilding units. From the surface they looked like
separate units but underneath, every part of the ARC was connected.

A
light knock on the door brought Johan’s attention back to the present.

“Come
in,” Johan said from his position by the window.

Rupert
walked in and took a seat in the empty chair that rested near the out of place
birch wood desk.

“You
seem to have a lot on your mind these days, old friend,” Rupert said without
waiting.

“I
do. We all do. I need to talk to you Rupert, about the ARC.”

Johan
sat down in the chair opposite Rupert and leaned forward. His graying hair
showed his years - the ones he’d used getting to where he was.

“Things
are going to happen quickly I think and I don’t know if you know enough about
the ARC, though by now, you should. I’ve been trying to protect you –protect
all of you.”

“What’s
going on Johan? Did something happen we don’t know about?” Rupert asked
concerned. He rarely saw his friend like this.

“It’s
more about what’s been going on before now that I need you to know about. It
might not make a difference right now, but I feel like it may matter, one day.”

“I’m
listening.”

“Let
me start with some things you may be familiar. Before becoming UniCorps a group
of powerful organizations came together as a collaborative of sorts, to promote
some of their joint interests in a more efficient way.

“That’s
well known. No surprise there.”

“Well,
that collaborative convinced the World Consensus to join in the efforts after
making a convincing argument about continuity of life and the protection of
natural resources, the environment, and the health of citizens.”

“I
read about those programs, even helped implement some of the earlier ones,”
Rupert said curiously.

“Once
they got the World Consensus on board, they began finding the people who would lead
the work and build the ARC, this place. They found people from all over the
world, Rupert, who could and would be able to work together. They chose Zura to
lead up the main work. They chose me to assist that work and to lead another
project.”

“Another
project? The one you disappear to work on?”

“Yes,
but that’s for later. They gave Zura leeway over choosing other two members of
her core team. She lucked up with Mave and Mave helped her get you.”

Rupert
smiled, knowing he had always been a sucker for Mave.

“They
did a good job recruiting. Everyone I work with is highly rated, from top
universities or from some of the most powerful private companies, including
those under UniCorps. You should be happy that the ARC can attract and keep
that kind of talent.”

“I
am, but what I want you to know is why it was all so important. Why they are
willing to recruit and pay for the best. You see, UniCorps invested an unnamed
amount of their own pooled money as well as an unnamed amount from the World
Consensus budget for Security.”

“Security?
Is that why Mylar is so involved?”

“Yes.
Exactly, though it’s hard to see the connection.”

“Yeah,
it is,” Rupert agreed.

“They
are able to argue that Security includes the security of our environment – how
safe it is so that life can go on. The push for the ARC came in earnest after
reports on the changing climate, the water crisis, and concerns over the
emissions and pollutants that had never been fully resolved. I’m sure you
remember the initial solution for the emissions issue was pushed through by an
overeager lobbying group. They did not want to disrupt production and sold the
prior individual nations on creation of jobs. If I remember correctly, you
yourself wrote a report on what we learned from that experience as part of your
graduate school program.”

“I
did. Almost everyone had to address it in some way.”

“So
you know that the first solution lasted nearly one hundred years before people
began realizing the problem and calling for an end to it. Unfortunately, by
that time, it had already impacted the water and started poisoning people with
lead. Nations built miles and miles of pipe that pushed emissions several feet
under ground and then into cleaning factories that were designed to clean the
air,” Johan continued.

Rupert
nodded his head. He knew the story. “Yes, the pollution above ground had been
relatively well contained in the nearly airtight buildings, by using the
deatomization process to break down the poisons. No one wanted to pay for the around
the clock monitoring required or deal with the risk associated with
deatomization. It made the air too unstable. After a couple small explosions,
they started shutting them down.”

“Exactly.
They never tried to determine how to improve them. Even with the small explosions,
the risks, we had the data that the benefits were outweighing the costs. No one
ever got to the see that data,” Johan said, feeling upset about the failure.

“We
wound up with two issues. There was the instability of the deatomization
process and then the poisoning of the water supply. That wasn’t even something
they’d thought about and didn’t worry about much. They figured someone else would
eventually come up with a better solution, before the pipes corroded. When
they’d been put in originally, the pipes had an estimated life of about 100
years. So by the time the life of those pipes had worn out, the people who’d worked
on them or been around when the pipes went in were also gone,” Johan said as he
thought about the lack of foresight that was being repeated.

“That’s
when people started noticing the water tasted funny and sometimes came out of
the taps a strange color. We lost a lot of people in Southern Allegiance
because of that,” Rupert said, shaking his head and thinking of his
grandmother’s stories.

“Even
the ones who’d maintained the pipes had been pushing for someone to fix the
real issue decades before it ever broke down, but it wasn’t broken then, so there
was no outcry to fix it,” Johan said as he considered the reports he’d read
during his studies.

“Yeah,
and no politician wanted to be the one to cause panic or a budget shortfall
over something that might not even really be a problem. My grandmother was a
local representative in her area and couldn’t get anyone to listen at the
time,” Rupert said, shaking his head.

“Well,
when the pipes began failing and contaminating the water supply it happened on
a global scale. The solution of the pipes had been global and so was the
problem. The world needed a way to manage and control it all and to work
together for what was a global water crisis that soon became a global food
crisis.” Johan said standing up and looking out of the window at the clear
water.

Johan
and Rupert both considered what they’d learned about and read about as children
growing up and as scientists. The era of the storms spanned nearly ten years
with weather conditions so turbulent and unpredictable that people would be
caught in tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and snow storms with barely enough
notice to leave before it hit.

The
casualties in those years had been astronomical, especially for the time. There
were only twelve billion people living and nearly a billion had been killed in the
era of the storm. By the end of the water crisis, another billion had died.
Rupert shook his head as he listened. Some of this was new to him as it hadn’t
been reported the way Johan told it in any of his years of school or as a
professional scientist.

“It
was the weather crisis that gave birth to the idea initially for the World
Consensus. The water crisis became the policy window for the idea to catch on
and go through. Those leaders, with the support of those who would become
UniCorps, were finally able to act on the ideas and quickly proposed the solution
of pumping the emissions miles down into the earth, below the water supply
using a safe non-corrosive material. Rupert, I can tell you I have my own
opinion about those crises, but let’s just say that it seems very convenient.”

“But
out of that came a solution. Finally. It wasn’t meant to be a permanent one and
everyone agreed on that much, at the time. Now if we could just convince them
or remind them that it was a temporary solution and we are now working on
borrowed time because we still have to deal with the emissions problem and the
current system can’t handle it,” Rupert said not convinced of where Johan was
going with the conversation.

“The
other solution isn’t ready. It was the second part of deatomizing the particles
that became a problem with the poisons being pushed so far down. Unlike the
cleaning factories, there would be no way to access them directly or control
how they spread.”

“And
this is where we are today. I know they argued it was better financially to
start a new process rather than to replace the existing pipes with the new
non-corrosive materials. I remember how vague everyone was around a long-term
plan and long-term solution, but because people wanted the quickest and
cheapest solution they agreed to it all. It wasn’t long after that they asked
if I wanted to be a part of the solution,” Rupert smiled as he remembered how
he’d come into this life.

“You
and the rest of us got pulled into this mess Rupert. It was a problem scientists
had been trying to solve for as long as it had been a problem. The ARC was
supposed to be a part of that solution and we haven’t solved a damn thing yet
Rupert.”

“Seems
like there is a lot of talking about what needs fixing, but there’s not a lot
happening to fix it,” Rupert said crossing his arms and leaning back.

“We
have some ideas. In fact, what we have is better than just ideas on how to fix
it long-term, but no one is listening. Rupert, I’ve started working on ways to
improve the deatomization process. It’s been a lot of years since then and the
science has advanced so tell me why no one wants to look at it again.”

“And
if that technology to do it was created here, it belongs to them, doesn’t it?”
Rupert asked as more of a statement than question. He sat back, understanding
Johan’s dilemma.

“There
is a solution. I know it, but it may not happen in either of our lifetimes.
It’s that tidbit of information that is only given on a need to know basis, and
very few people know.” Johan was now speaking in a low voice.

“Things
like that take a lot of time to get right and it’s not something that can be
done and not be right. We can’t take that risk and wind up in the same position
twenty years from now.”

“Of
course not. With the right support, it could be done in a few years, but me,
working alone in secret, it could take twenty more years Rupert. That’s not
fair to any of us.”

“It
will take resources committed to the research and to the maintenance of the
infrastructure. No one wants to stop or slow production to make it happen.
It’ll never get through any vote to do that, but if the resources were in
place, do you really believe it could be a matter of a few years before we
started seeing success.?” Rupert asked Johan curiously.

“Yes.
I do. We need a place to test and god knows we need more dedicated brains. I’m
frustrated Rupert. I feel like a pawn in their game and it’s not something I
ever wanted to be. I only wanted to fulfill my duty, and help save us.”

“I
understand Johan. I don’t believe it’s over. There is still time for you to do
that, but you can’t bear it alone. You shouldn’t have to. No one person got us
into this mess and no one person is going to get us out.”