The Colony Ship Eschaton: The entire ten book series, page 112
The scene shifted again. This time, the same man was observed, but in a different location. There was a woman with him, and they were surrounded by old time machines.
A different man walked into view from the side. He too was wearing some kind of costume, with a colorful cloth tied around his neck. “Olga and Franklin Mayberry are here to pick up their Amalgamated Farms new GRT 505 pick-up. You’re allowed to choose your own color from these selections. Then the AF logos and graphics will be applied and you can drive it out to your home on the farm!”
“Oh Franklin, this is so exciting. What color do you want?” Olga Mayberry asked.
“We can choose between red, black, white, or silver. I say we chose red since this is a red letter day for us!” Franklin replied.
Suddenly a young boy ran into the picture. “Daddy, do we really get a truck? The GRT 505 gets great reviews and has lots of new features. Does it run on soy diesel which we will grow on the farm? Or is it an algae hybrid? And does it have the new permalloy coated undercarriage? Modern permalloy is a wonderful, super hard material. It is actually spun into place after all the components are integrated. It is not the stuff invented back in 1914 by Gustav Elmen. That was just a nickel-iron magnetic alloy. Modern permalloy is more exotic and stronger than diamond and very malleable. It will make a great material for rockets and spacecraft. I did a project on it in school.”
“Well, well, your son sure seems to be up on the latest technology,” the man in the suit said. “Yes, the GRT 505 pick-up can run on either soy diesel or on algae based fuels, both of which Amalgamated Farms will allow you to grow on the farm. But permalloy is not available for the general public yet. That is only on military grade equipment. But maybe someday permalloy will be available.”
“Yes, Kevin is smart as a whip. He loves reading about rockets, and space, and anything with an engine. He might even take apart the new pick-up if he gets the chance,” Olga said with a smile.
The man in the suit frowned and was very serious. “Only authorized personnel can do any kind of maintenance work on this pick-up. It is all specified in your contract. Any deviation from the contract will subject you to substantial penalties and potential loss of contract.”
Both Olga and Franklin looked stricken.
“The boy won’t do anything wrong, we’re just too excited,” Franklin stammered.
The scene shifted again, and a red ground vehicle rolled into the picture. Across the sides were emblazoned, ‘Amalgamated Farms: The Future is in Our Hands’ in huge letters. Olga, Franklin, and the ten year old Kevin all climbed into the vehicle and drove away.
The last few seconds of the recording showed the outside of the building as they pulled away in the GRT 505, Kevin waving at the camera. There was a huge crowd of people holding signs, and yelling. The crowd was hostile as they pushed against barriers set up to keep them away from the moving pick-up. Whatever the signs had once said, it had been pixilated out and only blotches were left on the recording. The recorded ended, and the display went dark.
The top of the record cylinder stopped glowing.
“So Jamie, we watched an old recording of the time before the Great Event. But what does that matter? Why would that bother Izzi?”
“She said she left seven of these record capsules. That seems really odd. Her helmet had excellent recording capacities and she was sending the reports somewhere. Why would she hide these? All that showed was that some farm was working before the Great Event.” Jamie was puzzled.
“There is certainly more to this that we know,” Michael said. “Izzi was not easily troubled, and she never mentioned any of this. So it must have really upset her. And who is Klay?”
“Not long after she made that first recording, she lost the other Liduma. Was she really that distracted?” Jamie pondered. She reached down and found that the record capsule could fold up into a compact size. It was designed in very similar ways to the Richardson Utility Helmet Izzi had used. Jamie carefully folded it together and as she made the last fold, there was a click and a vibration. Then a previously concealed hatch popped up from the floor. A series of clanking noises were heard from the opening as a spiral stairwell telescoped downward and locked into place. Small lights were along the edges of the steps.
“Not more stairs,” Michael said as he watched Liduma trot down the stairs with her nose down and ears perked forward.
“I am tired too, so we should call a rest at the bottom,” Jamie stated.
They both followed the dog Liduma down the spiral staircase and found a room that had several hallways leading in various directions. Liduma was nowhere in sight.
“Liduma, where are you?” Michael called as he stepped off the stairs. The lighting was similar to the room above with the dim blue shades.
“Liduma, come back please,” Jamie added as she stepped from the stairs as well. As soon as she was a pace away, the stairwell clicked and clacked and retracted itself upward into the ceiling. All that could be seen of the now gone stairway was a triangle shaped protrusion of permalloy from the ceiling ten meters overhead.
8 under-dwellers
Jamie and Michael stared at the closed triangle on the ceiling. There was no way to reach it, even if they wanted to cut through and climb out the way they had entered. They were tired and worn, and wondering about what they had gotten into. And Liduma was missing. Despite their calls, she had not returned. There were five hallways exiting this one room, none of which were illuminated.
“I say we sleep here, and see if she comes back,” Michael said. He plopped down on the permalloy floor and shrugged off his backpack. “She has wandered away lots of times, on her own adventures. She will find us here.” He said it with more confidence than he felt.
“But where are we? Where did Liduma go? I thought we were right behind her,” Jamie stated as she too dropped the backpack and sat down.
They consumed a fungus bar each, since Michael had not traded away any he carried, and took a water ration. They considered posting a watch, but neither had enough energy to do so. Instead, they sat back to back, in the center of the lit room, each with a Willie Wackers in hand. Should some threat appear, they would awake as quickly as the situation allowed. Both were soon asleep, but it was a light and fitful sleep.
They awoke, still leaning against each other at the sound of Liduma’s barking. They had no idea how long they had slept, and each was cramped from the uncomfortable sleeping position.
“Liduma!” Michael called out in a loud voice as he stood up. He shook his legs and stretched his muscles.
The dog hound rushed in from one of the hallways. She licked Michael’s hand and her tail was whipping about in joy.
“So what now?” Jamie asked as she leaned backward and tried to relieve the ache in her low back. “I hope to never sleep like this again.”
“You call that sleep? I guess we pick out a hallway, turn on the fusion pack’s light and explore,” Michael said then he groaned and stretched as he dug out the light.
Liduma walked around and nuzzled Jamie a bit. “You are the reason we are here, and now you want to cuddle?” Jamie smiled at the dog as she rubbed her ears. Liduma then started to sniff at the floor again while walking around them both. “Nothing down there but permalloy.”
Liduma chose a hallway and started to trot down it.
“I guess we follow,” Michael said and put on his backpack and walked on. Jamie did the same.
The beam from the fusion light showed that the hallway was much shorter than the room they left, and it had an arched ceiling. The passage was segmented into sections each about four paces long. At the end of each segment there was a reinforcing strut all the way up and over in an archway. Conduits, pipe works, ducts, various wires and cables ran along the ceiling and through round holes in the reinforcing struts.
“I wonder why this place is so reinforced. I mean, it already is permalloy, what would be able to put so much pressure on this place to require reinforcing?” Jamie was speculating as they walked.
“And do you notice it is not level, but we are heading downward on a gentle slope?” Michael added. There were no doors, and no cross passageways. The light was not strong enough to reach the end of the tunnel.
After a bit, Liduma was no longer visible ahead of them. The passageway had turned. When Jamie and Michael reached the corner, they just strolled around it. There had been nothing to see for a long while except the same reinforcing struts every four paces or so. But rounding the corner, the light shone on a different view.
Liduma was standing near a small pool of water. She was lapping at the water. There was the sound of running water. As they approached, the light revealed more. For a long time, the water had been flowing down from a crack in the ceiling. There was a steady, but small, flow of water. The water pooled in a small collection, and that then ran across the hall and into an entrance to another descending stairwell. The crack had let in more than just water. Silt had deposited a pile of dirt nearly as high as the ceiling on that side of the passageway. The dirt was dark and made a sharp inclined pile from the crack to the floor of the passage but growing out of that dirt were many off-white colored plants. Each plant was about a hand span high, and had an upside down cup shaped top over a straight stem.
“How can something grow down here?” Jamie asked. “I wish Roxanne were here. We need to be recording this stuff, and we need to track where we are.” Jamie walked over to look down the stairwell. Michael shined the light over there, and the stairs were covered over with a slimy looking green something. The stairs spiraled down into utter blackness, dripping noises echoed up from the darkness.
“We are not going down there,” Michael said. “That stuff looks disgusting, and those stairs are slippery. Is that some kind of vegetation or what is it?”
“I am not sure what that is or what those white cup things are on the dirt.”
Michael shined the light back toward the pile of dirt with the whitish plants. Liduma smelled around the white things, but she was not biting them. Michael had occasionally seen Liduma bite some green plants out in the habitat, and he figured that was part of her natural diet. But down here, he was unsure what was living and what was not. His eyes then noticed the footprints in the dirt.
“There are people down here,” Michael said as he squatted down and looked at the footprints. They were clearly human, but without shoes. The five toes were unmistakable.
“So we watch a bit more. This place has just been mostly boring and monotonous. But maybe there are people here because there is water here?”
“But how would they see? They do not have shoes, so would they have lights?” Michael patted the fusion pack.
“Joel and Jacob do not always wear shoes, either. So we are on alert more. Liduma, I guess we are following you. Where do we go?” Jamie gestured with her arm.
Liduma briefly glanced at the slimy stairs, then turned her nose up at it and continued down the hallway. Her tail wagged back and forth as she walked. Occasionally she put her nose to the ground, and then walked more side to side. She was sniffing out something.
Several quick turns of the hallway led them to where they could see light ahead. The light was flickering, but not like flame. They had seen camp fires made many times, since coming to the Eschaton. This light was not that kind of flicker. Liduma walked ahead seemingly without a care. Jamie and Michael were more alert than ever.
As they reached the flickering light they discovered it was from a fixture above a doorway. The door was broken off its mounts and lay propped to the side. The door was labeled with faded lettering “Hydroponics and Concentrates.” Liduma went in and so they followed.
“Michael, in a ship with enormous ecological habitats, why would they need hydroponics? From what I remember, that was some weird way to grow things in tubs of water. Totally wasteful of water.”
“Good question. Yes, this ships seems to have an abundance of water, remember Secondary Aquatic? The ship does seem to have a lack of any clearly defined plan or systematic scheme. Or at least I do not understand it yet. I have often wondered what it was like at launch.”
Hydroponics and Concentrates was inadequately illuminated by sparsely functioning ceiling lighting. There were no tubs or tanks of water, which they had expected, but rather the whole area was a shambles of broken things. Some of them might have been water containers at some point in the past, but they were unrecognizable for now. Large crates were also in the area, some broken open and shattered apart. With all the shadows and poor lighting, even as the fusion pack’s beam played over the area, it was hard to tell just what it had been.
“Michael, can you connect the fusion pack over here? This is one of the first control areas we have found down here,” Jamie said as she pointed to a small desk which was behind where the broken door had been leaning.
Michael shut down the beam of light and connected in the fusion pack to the wall jack. The flickering light in the hall above the door suddenly shone brightly, and nearly all the ceiling lights in the large room came to life. So did about a half dozen small people who screamed, jumped up, covered their eyes, and tried to run for the door where Michael and Jamie were standing.
“Children?” Jamie said in amazement as she caught sight of the people who ran past her. Liduma sat down on her haunches and just watched as they scurried from the room. Apparently, they had been hiding in among the broken items or the crates.
“Why was Liduma so quiet about the children?” Michael asked. “She always gets excited about Jacob, Joel or Lindsey.” He peered out into the hallway as the last of the children ran away. The hallway was fairly well lit now, since the fusion pack had regenerated some kind of power system. It looked totally different than when they had walked in. Down the hallway the direction the children had fled, Michael could make out that the hallway ended, and looked like it opened into a large area, but that was unclear from this angle.
He turned and looked back at the place called Hydroponics. The destruction of the place was even worse when seen in the better illumination. Nothing here was repairable, nor was anything useful in the crates. Mostly it was broken porcelain, or plastics, or thin and soft metals. There was a wall that had some kind of deep green discoloration on it. It reminded Michael of the stuff on the stairs they had seen by the small flow of water.
Liduma began sniffing around in earnest. Perhaps she had been waiting for the children to depart, but she now was sniffing and sticking her nose into places, and actually digging some of the ruble apart. Michael and Jamie assisted, even though they were not sure what they were looking for. “Is there another record capsule in this mess?” Jamie asked.
“Why are you here?” A man said from the doorway. Jamie and Michael turned and saw a short and thin man, blinking rapidly, but holding a long spear. “What are you?” he asked. He was dressed in shabby material which basically draped in large folds over his body.
“We are exploring,” Jamie responded. She did not feel a need to explain more until she knew more herself. She put her hand to the holstered Willie Wacker.
“The young ones of the tribe said there were angels of light here. Are those you? The brilliance here is painful for my eyes.” The man responded. His spear was still held in a defensive position.
“I shall remedy that?” Michael said. He then unplugged the fusion pack. The lights dimmed significantly, but not back to the low levels of when they had first arrived. Apparently the system retained some of the power that infused it from the fusion pack.
“Thank you. That is still pretty bright, but I imagine angels need the brightness. Am I correct?”
“We are Michael and Jamie. Who are you, and what is this place?” Jamie asked. Her hand was still on the weapon, and she was ready to draw and shoot if needed.
“I am one of the Under-dwellers. I am called Warren Nine. Why are you here? You scared the young ones severely. And you bring a dog with you.”
“Warren Nine, we are only passing though. But you know about dogs?” Michael asked with some surprise.
“All Under-dwellers know about dogs. They make a good meal, but are rare. Not like the rats or the roaches or even the mushrooms. Sometimes dogs do wander in the under-world. When they do we catch them and eat them.”
“You will not eat Liduma!” Michael said. He was puzzled by the dog’s lack of response to this man, but did not devote much time thinking about it. He was more concerned with how to get away from this man.
“Okay. Since it is an angel of light dog. We eat the mostly black or gray colored dogs, not like the white of this angel of light dog. I will remember, no eat angel of light dogs.” Warren Nine pulled back his spear and then asked, “You are passing through? There has not been an angelic visitation for a great long time. Why now?”
