The Dream Cloud, page 2
part #2 of Akropolis Series
“I don’t understand, Grandpa.”
“You used to call me Papa. What happened to that?”
“You’re trying to distract me,” she replied in kind. “Tell me what you mean about my mother.”
A shadow blanketed his face, and she could not be certain if it were an intentional veil or the mask of grief they had all worn these last few days.
“Someday, when you are much older, I will explain everything to you.”
“People always say that because they think the other person is afraid of the truth,” Claire said defiantly. “I’m not afraid, Papa.”
The last was an obvious barb in his direction and it did not go unnoticed. The look he gave her was surprise that quickly segued into shrewdness. A cursory glance over his shoulder to make certain their parlay was private proved that some element of truth was about to emerge.
Her grandfather leaned forward, his voice dropping an octave.
“The truth then, Love,” he said with a resigned sigh. “There was something in your mother’s blood, a genetic abnormality that could possibly be replicated to help thousands of others. The same gene runs in your blood.”
She thought about this for a moment.
“Was my mommy trying to help you, Grandpa?”
“For awhile she did. Unfortunately she became ill and wasn’t able to continue.”
Claire nodded.
“Is my daddy mad because you want my blood now?”
He winced. She couldn’t tell if it was from her blunt response, which tended to draw that reaction from adults, or because he felt uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation.
“You are much too young, even if you could help,” her Papa said, revealing a silver dollar in the palm of his hand.
Claire gave him a tired smile. It was her favorite trick, and even though she never felt less like a child than she did today, her nod to proceed was more to assuage her papa’s conscience.
The coin was tossed a couple of times into the air, then danced across his knuckles, starting with the pointer finger and then to the pinkie, disappearing for a split second before starting again, bobbing up and down, over and over again, until finally with a flourish and a shake of his hand, the coin disappeared completely from view.
At the exact moment the coin disappeared, Claire felt a sharp prick on the side of her neck.
“Ow,” she said, putting a hand to the spot, though the pain was already receding.
Papa Talbot’s arm withdrew quickly and was lost in the pocket of his coat, along with whatever he had in his hand.
“Sorry, Love. I think I must have accidentally pinched you. But look here,” he said, producing the coin with another flourish, this time behind her ear.
He held it up before her eyes.
“It’s yours to keep, until the next time I see you.”
Claire took it with her free hand, the sting in her neck already gone, but the memory of it still very fresh in her mind.
“Maybe someday when you are all grown up, you will help me, all of us, the way your mother was trying to.”
She nodded as she took the proffered coin, but deep down she felt the seed of doubt begin to sprout.
The launch was unlike anything she had ever seen. In all the books and vids and pics in the Akropolis library there was nothing that compared. Only the aeroplanes came close, and while they were something to behold on their own, they were very similar to the air transports that were still in use in the city. Their purpose was simple and quantifiable, the transfer of people and goods from one point on the planet to another.
The purpose of the great cylindrical object that had disappeared into the atmosphere was a mystery. She could still hear its residual rumbling and see the faint glow in the sky as it left its trail of fire and smoke behind that took it’s time dissipating.
When it was gone and only the memory of the experience remained, she turned to her father with wide eyes and a bellyful of questions.
“Its hope,” he replied to her first question, the obvious one, of which an origin and explanation was hopefully forthcoming.
Her father was maddening like that, always proffering clues and hinting at the greater picture and then dispelling tidbits of information a little at a time until Claire was able to piece together the bigger puzzle. He said it made her intuitive and sharp. She couldn’t argue with that, but at the same time it still seemed like a game that she had tired of playing back in childhood.
He wouldn’t say anymore until they were on the other side of the Wall, and by then the list of questions was like an unreachable itch.
“Where does it go?” was her next question, once they were past the faux pas vines and treading softly along the darkened trail.
“You tell me.”
She gave it a moment’s thought before responding.
“The other side of the planet?”
“Perhaps,” he said without commitment.
They walked in silence for a bit, following the slightly winding path in twilight.
“Space then,” she surmised.
His grunt was still not confirmation but it seemed the most viable route of reasoning.
“For what purpose?” she egged.
“For hope,” he replied.
Her cynical smirk went unnoticed.
“Fine then; space and hope. You’re not leaving me much here, Dad.”
His chuckle was genuine. She didn’t hear him laugh much these days. He was always brooding and thoughtful, consumed with his work, barely conscious of what occurred around him if it didn’t pertain to the task at hand. His research was, beyond doubt, the most important aspect of Akropolis. The gene manipulation therapies, vaccinations, and molecular recombination experiments were the only hope that mankind had in reclaiming their own planet. She couldn’t imagine the pressure of such work. The weight of the world was on his shoulders.
So when she heard the mirth he exhibited with her facetious response, the tiny parcel of levity was more than enough to convince her to play along.
“Ok, the hard approach it is. I don’t actually mind the research.”
Her father paused in the middle of the trail, resting a hand on her forearm.
“You won’t find anything that way.”
“Surely the Akropolis library has something.“
He was shaking his head.
“It doesn’t. Anything that could possibly pertain to the launches was erased or blocked long ago.”
“Somebody, somewhere has to-“
“Listen to me,” he said with an edge to his voice, the hand on her forearm clamping down tightly.
“You are never to speak about this to anyone. Certain knowledge is dangerous, especially in these times. You can speculate and theorize, but that will be the extent of your investigation.”
“Dad…that hurts,” she said softly.
He looked down at her arm and released his vice-like grip, stepping back so that his face was obscured in shadow.
“I’m sorry, Love.”
She rubbed her forearm, more troubled than curious now.
“I don’t understand. Why show me this if you don’t explain it? What possible purpose is there in that?”
He brought a hand down across his face, as if he were trying to wipe away an expression he didn’t want her to see.
“Certain truths need to be revealed in parts, Claire. I promise you that someday soon you will know it all, but for now, I want you to think about what you’ve seen. I want you to consider what we are trying to do in Akropolis and what it might mean if I fail.”
“What are you trying to say, Dad?”
His gaze had turned to the canopy of trees above them, but she knew he was looking beyond.
“What if we are all doomed here? What do we do then?”
“Claire?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you woolgathering?”
She gives her grandfather a wan smile.
“A bit. I was thinking about Dad.”
“Ah,” he said with an understanding nod. “It is only natural. After all, it is his work you are continuing.”
“And Mom’s,” she added.
“Yes, of course,” he replied in a subdued tone. “You know, it isn’t too late to change your mind.”
“You and I both know we’ve gone as far as we can go at this stage. It’s time for the human trials.”
“Yes, you are correct. And yet, I feel beholden to argue against your taking part in the first wave. Perhaps if we-“
“We’ve been over this, Grandpa,” she interjected, quickly flashing him a more amiable smile to soften the blow of exasperation that might have been evident. “You know my genome structure is a necessary component in the trial. The others are merely window dressing with a minute possibility of a viable outcome, and even then it would take another generation or two before we could make use of their altered DNA for a vaccine. This is our best chance right now.”
“I know, Claire. Forgive me for not acquiescing so readily. With your mother and father gone…you are all I have left.”
She paused in the middle of the hallway and put an emphatic hand to his bicep and gave it a gentle reassuring squeeze.
“All we have is each other,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t the entire truth, her mind wandering for a moment to Quentin and then snapping back to the moment; this wasn’t the time for wistfulness. “The risk is minimal, and if we are successful we will have the beginnings of a new vaccine. After that it’s only a matter of time.”
“Time is in short supply these days,” Talbot replied somberly.
“Grandpa…are you ok?” she asked, feeling an underpinning of despondency emanating from him.
He waved it off, as he did whenever a crack appeared in his surface. A smile of reassurance, a gesture towards the end of the hall, and they both resumed walking.
“I am getting very old,” he explained, attempting to assuage her concern. “My mind has started to wander.”
Claire knew an excuse when she heard one but didn’t feel it necessary to press the point. She was already anxious enough, despite her obstinacy with partaking in the first trials.
The hallway curved ahead of them, the smooth walls pulsating with an ambient color that changed every few seconds, but so subtle it was barely noticeable. It produced a calming effect, which was deemed necessary in this wing far below the Pantheon. Here, the brightest and best of Akropolis toiled day and night to solve the genetic mystery of infertility that had plagued them since the war. There was always the undertone of desperation haunting the rooms and halls, coiled around the shoulders of the scientists and lab techs like a sinister serpent, slowly squeezing the hope out of them.
They came to the door.
Claire took a deep breath and waved at the sensor. It slid open, revealing an oval room with half a dozen people who paused in various positions to turn towards the two standing at the threshold. In the center of the room were twelve glass-covered pods placed in a circle with their bases pointing out, various tanks and monitors and screens attached to them in an organized mess.
When she and her grandfather entered, the techs in lab coasts were spurred into a frenzy, rushing about as they took readings, checking levels on the pods, tapping on screens.
Claire slowly walked into the midst of the tumultuous gathering, right up to the first enclosed slumbering volunteer. The clear glass of the pod gave her an unhindered view of the young man within. He was young, a few years her junior, with close-cropped hair and the beginnings of a fledgling beard. She wondered at his story. Was he the forlorn lover who hoped to elevate his standing with a ‘fertile’ status, or the young idealist who wanted to secure the future? What of any of them? Eleven volunteers…the hope of all.
She walked around the center of the circle, circumventing the cables and hoses, monitors and wires, until she came to the one empty pod, her pod.
“This one is yours,” her grandfather said unnecessarily, standing at the foot of the oblong object.
Claire untied the belt of her robe, letting it drop to her feet. She still had a gown on, a flimsy thing that did little for modestly but allowed the two techs who immediately appeared at either side to start attaching nodes and ECG sensors.
When the techs were finished, one of them opened the pod from a monitor. She stepped in and lay against the cushions, flinching at the cold press of the material, her rapid heartbeat betraying the apprehension she felt.
Talbot was at her side, his benevolent gaze fixed in place. He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and smiled.
“Your mother and father would be proud.”
Claire nodded, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. The glass lid of the pod started to close.
“Just a few days,” her grandfather said. “And hopefully you will awake to a new era.”
It had been a lie. How much was up for debate. She did not know the truth of the matter, how far down the rabbit hole they had tumbled, but the hope she had fostered before going into the pod had been dashed the moment she awoke on the gurney in the room full of subdued patients.
Her first thought had been to find her grandfather and seek justice for whatever crime this was, the subjugation of God knew how many people, put through some horrifying trial where they relived memories while floating around in the Cloud like lost souls in a hellish Dante setting. But was it so? Had she awakened to an unwholesome experiment or did something go wrong with the original process?
If the latter, how to explain the number of patients? There were only eleven others besides her in the original experimental group, volunteers as she was told. The room she had fled contained at least a hundred, and there was no telling how many other rooms contained the same. In her escape she had crossed at least three more doors like the one she had emerged from.
Then there was this place. She thought she had seen everything Akropolis had to offer. Her clearance allowed her to even the most secret of labs and access to the most dangerous of experiments, but she had never been privy to this facility. There was nothing in the database about it; the fact that it was manned by scientists, techs, and security was even more troubling. The amount of manpower it took to operate this site meant permission, the kind that only the council could bestow, which meant her grandfather obviously knew about it.
Claire sat in front of the console, her knees having gone weak at the sight of the monolith on the other side of the blast shield. It was the same type of object she had seen many times since her father took her through the crevice in the Wall, with one little difference. The majority of the launches she had witnessed were sleek objects, long and thin, composed of a shiny metallic alloy that shone even in the thick blackness of the night sky outside of Akropolis. The object she was looking at now dwarfed those in comparison. This was a behemoth, fat and bloated with a wide rounded nose and letters going vertical. What it read fully she could not tell for the base of the thing was lost in darkness. It had to have been ten levels in height at least.
“US Air F” was what she could make out before the rest was obscured in shadows. None of it made sense to her, but she began to put the clues together. Looking around at the consoles and panels she realized that the majority of it looked made for analog. There was no interface system, holographic projectors, or touch screens; only buttons and switches, labeled with letters and numbers that made as much sense as those painted on the side of the cylindrical object. Even the paint on the consoles was fading and peeling in some places.
It all seemed incredibly outdated, maybe even ancient. Suddenly it occurred to her that this facility might be older than Akropolis. If that were so, and it certainly seemed to add up, then the council had kept it running all this time, hundreds of years, meaning it was the best kept secret in the city. The purpose, of course, was still a mystery, and she doubted that her pursuers would be willing to discuss the origins once they caught up with her.
She stared at the object on the other side of the glass partition, as if she could will it to give up its secrets. Her father had left her the schedule of launches before he died, written on a piece of paper no less, meaning it was private and for her eyes only. She had brought Quentin along because she wanted to share something wondrous with him, and she had a feeling her father wouldn’t have disapproved. Could this be the underground facility out in the desert from whence she had seen all those launches? Perhaps, and yet those guards and lab techs out in the tunnel weren’t dressed in any garb she recognized.
Claire sat up suddenly, wondering how long she had been sitting prone in the chair, postulating and letting her thoughts meander around. Sooner or later those chasing her would realize that she was not in the lead and backtrack. It was only a matter of minutes or less before they found her here, trapped in this tiny room at the end of a lone hallway.
Her eyes began to probe every recess and cranny of the room. There wasn’t much to reveal since her initial inspection but her intensive gaze did hone in on a cream-colored binder hanging from a small chain that was latched to the wall. She rolled her chair over to the end of the console and picked up the binder, leaving smears in the layer of dust covering it. Turning it over she again saw the letters ICBM but with the words ‘LAUNCH CODES’ next to it. She opened the cover and noticed that although the interior was faded to the point of nonexistence, the pages were coated with some sort of slick material that no doubt preserved the paper beneath.
Claire squinted at the diagrams in the first page. They appeared to be the specs for the metallic monolith outside of the blast doors. At the top of the page were the letters ICBM again, but this time she saw that it was in actuality an acronym, for beneath the letters were the words, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Here was finally something she was able to piece together, yet not a single word produced anything but anxiety within her.
A weapon?
It could be nothing else, and yet why would such a facility be allowed to remain open, to operate? There was no enemy anymore. History had taught them that the last Great War had decimated the human race, forced them behind the Wall to wait thousands of years until the earth was habitable again. Sanctuaries have fallen since then, and Akropolis had lost contact with all but three: The Mountain, Denver, and New Charlottesville. The only threat to their existence was the world itself.
