The Dark and Shining Future Page 7

  He motioned towards the screen.

  “As you might be able to see: the tower itself is a little bigger than two city blocks per floor and stands at seventy-seven floors tall. Taking out the space for walls and such, this gives us a really big living space of more than two hundred thousand square feet per floor and, with the number of floors we have, about fifteen and a half million square feet in the tower itself. That's all above ground mind you.”

  He pressed a button and the display reversed to start going down. The virtual ground dropped away and a much larger complex could be seen beneath the surface.

  “Below the tower itself is where a lot of the real work gets done here. The below ground portion has exactly one hundred floors, and each is about twice the size as those above. This gives us a lot of usable space down there- and that's after nearly an entire cubic half mile of reservoir.”

  “Reservoir? You have your own water?”

  “Yep,” said John, “Sure do.”

  He pressed another button to highlight what appeared to be a massive self contained water system. It looked simple but Hank could easily imagine the vast space it actually represented. How could all this have been built without the world knowing? Who had done the work? For every question answered it seemed that two more sprung up in their place. It was frustrating. John was still speaking though:

  “-We can recycle all the water that gets used here, and with some of the projects we are talking about a lot of water, so no one is going to get thirsty any time soon. We also have automated hydroponic gardens here-” he pressed another few buttons and a bunch of sections lit up, “and some pretty dang impressive storehouses for canned goods and any possible supplies we might need-” another few button presses showed more sections lighting up. The storehouses seemed mostly confined to the lower levels, though there did appear to be caches built into nearly every floor of the above ground structure as well. Redundancy of design was essential when engineering for the worst, even Hank knew that.

  “The food you ate earlier?” said John, “Came entirely from these gardens and these-” he pressed another button, “-invitro meat growing facilities. The specs for all of which were built with a maximum occupancy for the entire structure of just over ten thousand individuals.”

  He smiled ever broader.

  “We don't have even close to that right now of course but, eh, give it time. We'll grow.”

  Hank frowned. He didn't like that tone of voice.

  “What do you mean: give it time?” he asked, “Just how long do you think we are going to be stuck in here?”

  John leaned even further back.

  “Well...that is the question isn't it?”

  # # #

  “You tried the cafeteria right?” asked Miriam somewhat excitedly.

  “Oh yeah, right before the...” Adriana shook the memory away, “Well we tried it. It's really good actually. I just had a burger but, well, it was pretty-”

  “Well all that food is grown and harvested automatically from the labs downstairs. Even the meat is grown in-vitro on these giant loom looking machines. We use cutting edge technology in our meat production, and have about a dozen different animal species going at any given time. My team actually designed some of the protocols for some of the machines down there, so I have a little stake in that as well. We also have ridiculously advanced growing techniques for vegetables and carbohydrates. Things that won't be out on the market elsewhere for decades and here we-”

  “Assuming there is a market,” said Adriana quietly.

  Miriam only nodded slightly at that.

  “Yes well, there is that to consider I suppose. Still: my mother always insisted I look at the positive so...” she swallowed a moment and Adriana felt slightly bad for derailing her. Eventually Miriam asked: “Did you have any potatoes by chance?”

  Adriana nodded yes.

  “Well great! Was it the fries? It was probably the fries. Personally I think our potatoes actually taste better than any so-called natural potatoes. We grow them in these big bunches and it takes only about three weeks now. The wheat has only twelve harvests a year, but we can expect sixteen out of the potatoes. Most of the other vegetables are somewhere in between that, of course, but there should still be plenty whenever we want them.”

  Claire was looking intently at the graphics the woman was showing on a giant monitor turned towards them. There was a large 3D representation of the complex with all kinds of notes and ways to expand or enhance the image. Miriam had a natural flair for presentations, and both mother and daughter could tell she was used to doing this sort of thing. The woman clicked another button.

  “There is some speculation that when our population reaches around seven thousand here we might have to begin a gradual reduction so as to prevent anyone going hungry- but personally I think that by that time we will have a much higher yield anyway so it won't be a problem.”

  Claire leaned forward.

  “What's the maximum possible sustainable population here?”

  Miriam smiled broadly at the question.

  “Well the specs right now say ten thousand, but I've spoken to a few of the engineers around here and we think that number is really quite conservative. Even assuming a very moderate rate of innovation we should be able to support twelve thousand before twenty years have passed. After that: who knows!”

  She seemed quite excited by the prospect, but Adriana had a sinking feeling. The way the woman said it sounded so callous, so casual...

  “Twenty years?” she asked, “Just how long are we supposed to be cooped up in here?”

  Miriam looked her in the eyes for a moment but said nothing. Eventually she opened her mouth, but Claire beat her to it.

  “I'm guessing we are going to be in here as long as it takes,” she said. Adriana looked at her and then back to Miriam. The blond woman just shrugged.

  “She's right. The designers didn't know how long we would need so it's designed to be indefinite. For all we know the whole thing could blow over in a few years...or it could be generations. The variables are too complex, some of our computations are obviously off, and the direct lines to other towers haven't yet been activated to gather more data. In short: we really just don't know.”

  Adriana felt dizzy. A sea of faces flashed through her head: random faces and those of people she knew or cared about. Even acquaintances suddenly seemed important to her. They seemed to go on and on. There were people she didn't even know that somehow seemed familiar in her mind. There were mail-men and chatty cashiers at the local grocery. She felt sick just thinking about it. There were waiters she used to flirt with, the paper-boy who still delivered the news on his bike and always called her ma'am as if it were still 1950. They just kept going and going. An entire life that was now-

  “Yay birdo!” squealed the baby as it pointed at the window. Adriana looked up and gasped just as a massive winged monstrosity of tentacles and claws crashed against the glass. The creatures wingspan was dozens of feet wide and the body looked larger and heavier than a car. The impact of it didn't even make a sound through the glass, and Miriam didn't turn around to look at it.

  “Don't worry,” she said sweetly, “They tested this building's materials with a focused nuclear explosion of ten megatons. The glass didn't even crack.”

  The creature reared back, impossibly hanging in the air as tentacles and teeth by the hundreds writhed in inhuman hunger. It slammed against the glass again to no avail. Somehow it could sense them inside, but it couldn't fathom what kept it away from it's prey. Adriana imagined a noise like a horrible roar, but she heard nothing.

  Miriam said: “The best estimates right now, for the completed structure mind you, are that we could survive anywhere up to a fifty megaton blast...but again: I think our engineers tend to guess conservatively.”

  # # #

  John Smith had led Hank to an observer lounge located on the second floor of the building. It was a large comfortable room with soft plush furniture a
nd a self serve coffee bar. Slightly out of date magazines littered the tables and a massive screen television occupied one entire wall. Smith had made some sort of alterations to the large glass window that looked out over the parking lot. Now the whole pane of glass was tinted a dark red. With this adjustment they could see through the fog now, but not very clearly and their vision faded away completely before the parking lot even ended.

  Hank could see the piles of bodies by the main entrance being slowly devoured by giant snake-like creatures. They swallowed bodies, and pieces of bodies from both ends of their fat spiked forms. A few of the ape-like brutes hid among the bushes or sniffed at the cars in the lot. There was a thing like some giant spindly spider, made seemingly entirely out of legs and standing at least as tall as the second story window. Some of its' appendages were still stained red from earlier. It didn't move much, but when it did: it seemed like something right out of a nightmare. Other things could be barely glimpsed moving around in the red-tinted hellscape outside.

  For one of the only times in his life: Hank Fletcher felt like he wanted to cry.

  John Smith patted him on the shoulder supportively.

  “It's okay,” said the elderly guard, “You can let it out. It really is quite terrible you know...”

  “It's...It really is the end isn't it?” said Hank softly, “The end of the world? I just can't believe it...but there it is...”

  John Smith said nothing. He just nodded slowly in response.

  There was a slight shake in the ground. At first it was barely perceptible but in a few moments one of the tables rattled in response. Out near the fence that led to the compound: something impossibly massive placed a humanoid claw upon the top of the concrete fence. Hank could just barely make out one giant red eye glowing in the darkness, even at this distance it appeared to look directly at him. The eye was larger than his entire car and within it's depths he swore he could make out many things. It stared not just at him but somehow into him as well.

  Then, a few moment's later, the eye withdrew from view and the claw with it. There was a deep rumble and the ground below seemed to shake a bit further. Then there was silence.

  “Come on,” said John as Hank wiped at his tears, “You are here now and there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Let's go find your wife and kids.”

  Hank nodded wordlessly. He turned to go and then thought for a moment.

  “John, just how many people are here anyway?” he asked.

  John smiled proudly.

  “In this tower? Counting you folks: there are now one thousand and fifty three people here. I'm told that the highest number among the other towers is one thousand two hundred and eighty nine...though to be fair: we lost the normal connections pretty quick, and haven't set up the direct lines yet.”

  Hanks eyes grew wide.

  “Other towers?” he asked incredulously.

  “Oh sure,” said John Smith as if it were no big thing, “There are seven of them altogether. Spread all over the world too. We know this isn't just a local thing Hank. We know this is for real. The plan is that even if the rest of humanity is doomed we should have more than enough people in these towers to restart the human race bigger and better than ever.”

  The man took a big breath, looking for all the world like the proud creator of something truly brilliant.

  “Welcome to Nodencorp Mr. Fletcher. Welcome to humanities last, best, hope for a better future. We are glad to have you along for the ride.”

  Part Two:

  One Week After the Incident

  Chapter Six:

  There was a lot that happened during that first week in the Nodencorp building. On the seventh sub-basement a man called Gottfried created a new breed of poppy that would hold less than half the addictive properties of the old one. On the eighth floor: a woman named Sandra coded an algorithm that could make beautiful music, with each song distinct from the last. One of the few survivors from the world outside, a woman by the name of Evelyn Hamilton, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. She named this girl Hope, and her colleagues on the fifty first floor threw her a lavish party for it. The Fletcher family didn't hear about this birth till almost a week later, and when they did they wondered why it had taken so long to get the information around.

  “Everyone is usually so wrapped up in their own little world,” said John Smith with a casual shrug, “They often forget there are people right next to them leading completely separate lives.”

  That was pretty much the way of life in the building. Everyone was so crammed together in proximity, but yet also impossibly distant. In some fashion the world outside was becoming much closer together than they were. Outside everyone who had survived was uniting in the quest for survival, or turning on one another to gain whatever benefit that could give. There were wars, starvation, radiation, famine, drought, disease, and a prevailing sorrow borne almost upon the wind itself.

  Entire cities were quickly becoming graveyards. Governments were falling like dominoes. Rivers were turning to poison from chemical warfare, or choking with the bodies of the dead. Mountains were being leveled by atomic blasts or the strength of monstrosities too terrible to contemplate. Those men in power thrashed and died as the reigns of the world slipped from their hands. There was no law, only brute force. There was no justice or civility. Outside the tower: there was no hope to guide them.

  Yet mankind was also surviving. The light of man would not be so easily extinguished.

  # # #

  Adriana still hadn't really gotten used to living inside the massive office building. It wasn't so much the confinement as, well, there always seemed to be plenty of room wherever she went. One entire floor, the twenty third subbasement, was being cleared out completely and panoramic wall screens set up to allow those seeking the solace of open space to get it. It was impressive, but not quite the same thing as a genuine outdoors to explore.

  It was not claustrophobia that plagued Adriana, nor a feeling of being too close to other people. Though there were supposedly about a thousand people living alongside her, she quickly found herself spending a lot of time alone- just as she liked. Part of this was the layout of the building, designed according to complicated spacial principles and seeking always to give the impression of vast unexplored depth beneath the surface. Adriana liked that too.

  She wasn't bunked up with others in a barracks, nor even crowded into an apartment building like she had been much earlier in her life. Her family was given a series of vacant offices/apartments that were surprisingly easy to change and customize for their liking. They had two bedrooms, two small living areas that they had combined into one larger one, and two bathrooms. The setup wasn't quite as large as her house had been, and the living area had to act as both office, receiving room, and entertainment area, but really she could not seriously complain about it.

  Whenever she, or anyone else, grew hungry: they could go to one of the many automated eateries and get whatever food they desired. Whenever she grew bored she could watch any film recorded since the dawn of film, read any book from ten thousand libraries around the world (all digitized of course,) or attend any number of classes, workshops, or social gatherings. She could get lab space if she wanted, or play a dozen different sports within the various gyms and work-out rooms. She could go for a swim, or get drunk, or simply sit and stare out the window.

  She found herself doing that a lot for some reason.

  There were over a thousand people here, and yet it seemed she spent most of her social time with the same group of about forty people that occupied the floor she had randomly stumbled upon. Her analytical mind struggled with this. It made perfect sense in a way. A human's tendency for geographical tribalism was well documented. No one from the other floors was unfriendly to her, and what minor feuds she had encountered were easily resolved. There was, simply put, enough to go around...and then some.

  Claire was happy with their random choice of tribe-mates. She was more than happy: she was ecstatic. Th
is seemingly random choice in floor now allowed her to play some of her favorite computer games with the very people who had designed them. A few of the younger programmers had quickly taken the cute teenager under their collective wing and were busy instructing her on the basics of programming under their proprietary development tools. Every time that Adriana saw her step-daughter she seemed to have new things to be excited about, be they her own discoveries or simply marveling at what her friends had made.

  Adriana believed this was the happiest she had ever seen Claire.

  If only she could shake her own sense of unease about the whole situation. If only she could get beyond these walls, if just for a little while. If only-