The Journey of Atlantis_Leaving Home Read online

  “Particle densities inside a star’s system are much higher than out in interstellar space. We are working on a magnetic bubble to surround the ship to repel any charged particles and micrometeorites that we will encounter. Now, this brings us to propulsion. We are testing a faster than light drive that looks promising. We should be ready to make a test flight sometime next year. There are a lot of mathematics to work out, but we believe we can adapt it to the Project ship. If all the math and engineering pans out, we’ll be able to accelerate to speeds of about ten times the speed of light. It’s a manipulation of space-time. We intend to warp space in front of and behind the ship to create a “push-pull” effect while keeping a bubble of normal space around it. The hardest part will be navigating out of the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud which extends out about a light year from the sun. We won’t be able just to zip out of the solar system. That brings us to another sticky point. We will need to leave the solar system about five years before the star gets here. As I mentioned, it will take some time just to get out of the solar system before we can put the “pedal to the metal” and head for our new home. The solar system will feel the gravitational effects from the star long before it gets here. We don’t know what kind of havoc may precede its arrival. It’s entirely possible that the solar system becomes a shooting gallery from disturbing the asteroids in the asteroid belt and ice balls in the Oort cloud. All it would take is a little nudge to send them on a new trajectory. The likelihood this will happen will increases as the star gets closer to our solar system. Are there any questions?”

  “Where are we going?” The general asked.

  “That’s a very good question,” the admiral replied. “Our astronomical department is working feverishly to answer it. All astronomical investigations have essentially stopped all over the world. Everyone has been re-tasked for just two missions. Monitor the neutron star’s approach, and continue to find new planets and analyze their information for possible habitable conditions. As you may be aware, that is difficult to do from here with our current technology. We’re hoping to improve our prospects shortly.”

  “Thank you, Monty,” Hari said. “And now I will give a summary of governments and the world populace. As chairman, I do a lot of traveling and discuss details of the Project to keep people up to date. I also speak at the U.N.”

  “As you are all aware, when the President revealed our planet’s fate, many countries followed the United States and declared martial law. Democracy became unnecessary. Some countries, at least at first, did not choose to help for various reasons. Later, countries banded into a loosely organized world cartel. The countries that did not participate at first were left out in the cold and received no resources from the “cartel.” A good number of those countries unwillingly threw in with us just so that life could go on in their part of the world. China and India have been great partners in this endeavor, supplying much technology, manufacturing, and manpower to the Project. One of the pluses to impending doom is that it gave many people around the world new purpose. Many people were not happy with their governments and livelihoods. The neutron star gave all of us a common enemy to band together against like no other time in the history of the human race. Not all of us were as altruistic, which was discussed by Security. Some countries would not come on board with the Project unless the Consortium could give some assurances on behalf of certain families. They just want to use their power to get passage for their family line. At this juncture, we cannot make any promises or take anyone who is less than the criteria for genetic stock passengers. The list goes on and on about making deals for passage and the lot. One of the things that keep me up at night is the realization that altruism is fine when the doom is scheduled past your lifetime. But as time goes on, I would expect fewer people being born. With the stress and tension of the doom happening in their lifetime, altruism may go out the window. We may be dealing with less and less help as we get closer to our departure. The psychology department echoes this view.”

  “Don’t let those guys slow you down, Hari,” Sam said emphatically. “You’re our cheerleader and a damn good one too!” There were calls of “Hear, Hear,” to emphasize the group’s agreement with Sam.

  Hari said, “Thank you all for your support and friendship. It is the longest road that humanity has ever had to walk, and I am glad that my journey is with such great companions. This will conclude our meeting for today. You may break up now and conduct your meetings as you see fit.”

  They all headed down to their temporary offices. Mostly, these big get-togethers were needed to have face to face conferences. Sometimes, department heads would meet them there in Hawaii. The offices were luxurious to put people at ease. The section leaders the rest of the time lived in hotels and occasionally a department head’s house. Department meetings happened through VPN video feeds with people that needed their direction. These meetings in Hawaii were to give people something nice to look at which tended to make people more productive. It was like having a working vacation. A break from doom was always welcome.

  It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. ----Theodore Roosevelt

  T-Minus 65 Years

  “Corporal, look alive there! The sniffers say those two houses down the block are hot! Wait ‘till I get there before we move. Just continue to monitor while this unit verifies that these houses do not have someone in there that has outwitted the sniffers," Lieutenant Zhou snapped. The lieutenant was coordinating the evacuation of this area of housing on the outskirts of Manila. He was overseeing this operation from his personal drone that darted from area to area giving instructions to his subordinates. His drone was much faster that he could ever cover over the short distances. The units he commanded were made up of surveillance, reconnaissance, and medical teams along with the storm troopers. Military people were generally not the best negotiators, but that was often the role the Lieutenant had to play to see that people were safely moved out of their homes before the bulldozers got there to clear the land. Sometimes there would be squatters in vacant houses. Sometimes home owners would refuse to leave, and sometimes there were enemy militia types setting up booby traps and ambushes. You never knew how the day was going to end up, so you had to be careful. That means that things can turn on a dime (when there were dimes), and go from good to bad in a hurry.

  Protocols had been worked out over time (and lost men) to use robots and drones to recon the buildings ahead of their arrival. The sniffers, which were medium sized drones about the size of a desk, were equipped with all kinds of infrared, x-ray, sonar, and listening gear you could pack in. It also had two delicate “arms” for complex manipulation and two bigger “arms” for tearing things apart. A pair of medium caliber guns for its own protection rounded out its features. Accompanying the sniffers were robots that rolled on tracks for all terrain stability. The robots were likewise decked out with all the equipment a recon robot needs. Both were semi-autonomous and could protect itself if attacked. They were good to send in first to check for booby traps and ordinance. The sniffers had small hand sized mini drones you could launch from it to go in windows to check inside, or pipes and other small hidey holes.

  Currently the lieutenant was waiting for the storm troopers to double check the three houses the sniffers said was clean before moving on to the “hot” house down the street that the sniffers had detected human si
gnatures. It was possible to fool the sniffers if you had some experience with them. For instance, if you were hiding in a box with a thin lead sheeting you would not show up on the scans. However, a human monitoring this feed would see that there was an un-penetrated “box” that could hold a human(s) and would raise suspicion. Usually the ambush would come in the form of a trap door of some type that was overlooked by the robot if it gained access to the inside.

  The houses checked out and now were labeled green on his display. As the lieutenant was walking in the direction of the “hot” house, he sent his drone to circle around the house carefully. He also instructed his surveillance team to send out the other drones and bots in a circle moving away from the house to make sure that nothing sneaks up from behind them in the event this is a coordinated ambush. The other units were taking up their place at various distances from the house to optimize their effectiveness. Only the storm troopers were the closest, ready to rush in if need be. Snipers were stationed at some of the cleared houses across the street. Lieutenant Zhou waited with the snipers while he moved his drone to about a dozen feet from the front door. He patched his Philippine translator to the drone’s speakers and began a process for what seemed to be for the thousandth time. “This is United World Security, does anyone inside speak English? Inquired the translator.

  “I know why you’re here, and you are not taking my home. Build around it or something,” the unknown party inside shouted. Sounds like pretty good English. That’s good for us, thought the lieutenant.

  He told the translator, “I will take over now, but don’t go too far in case I need a cultural consult. Corporal, get on the horn and tell surveillance teams alpha and beta to continue monitoring the house, and let me know immediately if anything out of the ordinary happens. Tell surveillance teams gamma and delta they can move on to the next houses and start collecting data. We’ll be along shortly”. He now addressed the house. “I can appreciate that you do not want to leave your home for a variety of nostalgic reasons, however, the bulldozers are coming through here in short order behind us and the house is coming down, with or without you. If you need assistance, we can help you gather some of your things you want to save.” He had seen the scans. It appeared to be one lone person in the house; however, the sniffers said that the house was booby trapped. This was either a suicide ambush to lure personnel close enough and set off some bomb, or just a guy who sent his family on while he defended the home from the intruders.

  “I will waste you if you try to come in,” the male subject said. The Lieutenant thought that the voice sounded like a middle-aged male with definite stresses in the voice. An ambusher would love to have you in for some “tea and crumpets.” This was looking more like an owner. Lieutenant Zhou always tried a little harder in these cases since he sympathized with their situation.

  He addressed the house again. “Look, I understand about your impending loss. You can’t hardly run into someone that not been displaced themselves, or know someone who has. Hell, I have even had to give up my family farm to the bulldozers. We will see that you are joined with your family, and see that you get housing, just not here. Not that you care, but this area is slated for a manufacturing complex. I lost my farm to a space port. These are the years of sacrifice we all have to contribute willingly or unwillingly to see to it that the human race goes on. It won’t be us, but let’s face it, we can’t be that selfish to let the human race die just because we can’t go along, or we can’t let go of some belongings.”

  “Sir,” the sergeant said in his ear, “it looks like he is loading weapons and tending to some objects in the house.”

  “Shit,” the lieutenant said, “this is not working.”

  “I don’t care about your reasons, the owner shouted. You and the government just take and take, well; you are not crossing my door in one piece.”

  “My offer still stands,” the Lieutenant negotiated. “We will get you some housing and you can be with your family, which should be your primary concern. However, I hate to sound like a prick, but I can only afford a few minutes per house to check out and you are running us behind so be a good guy and put your weapons down and walk out of the house with your hands in plain view please."

  “How can I trust you?” The owner said suspiciously.

  “We have the firepower, so of course we trust you,’ said the Lieutenant. We all have to die sometime. Security forces know that dying is sometimes an outcome in performing their primary mission. But we are willing to die so that we can see to it that our loved ones are protected. That includes you sir. I will not however, allow you to be selfish enough to harm anyone out here, because I care about them too. I can just drop a flash-bang inside and probably set off what explosives you have armed in there and blow up the house with you in it while we sit and watch, or you can put down your weapons and come out. Not that you have a choice, but I give you my word you’ll be treated fairly as I have previously said.”

  “Sir, there is some movement,” the sergeant from alpha team notified anxiously. OK pucker time, the lieutenant dreaded. This was the time when you found out whether the whole thing was a ruse, or everything goes as expected and people get to live one more day. He looked around and could see the whole unit tensed like a cat about to pounce. “He is coming to the door,” said the sergeant. It doesn’t appear that he has anything in his hands.” From his drone the lieutenant saw the door starting to open.

  With his radio set to the unit-wide channel, he said to his men, “stay alert, and do NOT do anything unless he makes a provocative move.” To the man coming out of the house he said, “Walk slowly toward the other side of the street with your hands in the air. Now stand in the middle of the street and wait to be sniffed.” One of the sniffers came over and inspected him for a few minutes.

  “Sir, the sniffer says he has a rather large knife in an inner pocket over his right thigh, but otherwise clean,” the sergeant notified the lieutenant.

  “OK, remove the knife from your person and lay down on your belly with your arms and legs spread out and wait for someone to put you in restraints,” the lieutenant informed the owner. He was cuffed and taken to the mobile interrogation office. After prints (finger and voice), and retina scan was put through the system, it was determined that he was what he said he was and just could not let go of his house.

  He much preferred this scenario than what happened last week. It happened very similar to this outcome except the “owner” claimed that he was injured and could not come out. A sniffer revealed that he indeed had a broken leg, so a medic was sent in along with a couple of storm troopers. As soon as they stepped into the house, he set off ordinance that took out the house and everyone else in there. Some of the men outside were wounded by flying debris. It was dangerous business, but it had to be this way to protect the construction people as they went forward to clear the land. He had suggested to his superiors that we just bomb these places after the “get outta town” deadline and this way the houses would be mostly demolished and it would be safer for his men to clear out an area. Sure, there would be the occasional casualties, but weren’t there already occasional casualties? The difference was who.

  ∆∆∆

  Consortium Meeting

  “Welcome to all of you. Hope you are all well,” Hari beamed. People were still milling around finishing up their small talk and looking for seats. “If you all could find a seat, we’ll begin.” Hari waited patiently another couple of minutes for people to be seated. “Very good; we’ll begin with the Selection section. Sam, if you’re ready, please begin.”

  “Thanks Hari,” Samantha said. I know that I speak for everyone here when I say that it is good to see you here!” Sam was referring to the ambush on Hari’s convoy when leaving a hotel in Egypt about nine months ago. More than half of the convoy was destroyed. Hari’s car made a bee line to the nearest security checkpoint which repelled the attackers. If it weren’t for the quick thinking of the driver, Hari would not be here. “One phas
e of our project is nearly complete,” Samantha started again. “We are ninety five percent complete on genetic testing for everyone on the planet. It has been an interesting project. One of the questions to be decided on is that genetic purity is one thing, but diversity is another. We often find that families that are pretty genetically pure are interconnected to other pure families. A species cannot survive the long haul without some diversity to hedge against curve balls that nature can throw at you. We’ll work out some formula for the mix. I think the main thing here is that if we have to start over somewhere, let us begin again with the least amount of disease in our genetic stock. We’re not looking to cook up a master race, just a good healthy stock."

  “From the dimensions of the ship, it is projected that we will be carrying around seventeen million live passengers. Only about ten percent of those will be running the ship. The rest will be in hibernation. As we speak, hibernation units are being designed. Hibernation has only been something that we’ve played with in the past, but now it is a real mission. We will keep you informed on this area. There will be approximately fifty to seventy-five million sperm and egg donations that will be frozen for the ride. We are designing these units as well. Space has already been allocated on the ship to be below the surface of the ground that will be in place. Once we arrive at our destination, each couple will be allowed to have as many children as can be supported. However, half of these children will be born as a result of artificial insemination from the frozen pool. We’re working on growing some animals in vitro all the way to birth. We may do the same for humans in the frozen pool. We’ll keep this in mind as we work through this problem.”

  “As time draws nearer actual selection of the passengers and donors will be made. Most will be the donors that will have their sperm or eggs collected, thanked for their gift, and released. Passengers will be segregated into the sleepers and the crew. Roughly fifteen million of them will be sleepers, riding out the trip in their hibernation pods. The ship’s computer will take care of all the sleepers, but the crew will have the extra duty to personally inspect about ten sleepers per crew member to be sure everything is alright. This will also serve to remind the crew about the precious cargo they are carrying. Our biologists and related fields will oversee the animals, both frozen eggs and sperm, and the live ones we will carry on board. I will let Hari talk about the terraforming of the ship when it is his turn.”