The Exodus Ark

Chapter One

TB145 Image from NASA JPL

The first we knew about  Asteroid 2015 TB145 was the photo we saw in the news sites, dubbed Creepy Space Skull by humanity. The rock was destined to graze the earth so said NASA in their statements to the media. Nothing to fear they said. It will simply rock by our planet’s orbit between us and the moon. It was big, but not big enough to make a difference to the planet they said.

Well, behind the scenes some of us knew better. Last time this rock passed the earth it meant the end of the dinosaurs. Last time it was here was about 65 million years ago. When TB145 passed by then it left a scorching climate change in its wake that only the hardiest and most adaptable small life survived. It wiped the planet nearly clean. 

These facts were not announced and any amateur astronomer or academic that said different was quickly denounced as a loony or simply vanished.

The first radar images of the rock came from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They were released and commented by Kelly Fast the Infrared Telescope Facility program scientist at NASA. They joked that it had donned a creepy costume for its Halloween flyby. Of course, all of this was designed by the best minds available to pacify humanity. To make a joke of the approaching rock. Some of us knew better. As far as most of the world knew near Earth tracking only discovered the rock weeks ago. Really it’s been predicted and confirmed for many years.

Once it became well understood exactly what impact the rock would have, it certainly wasn't going to impact the planet, any half skilled amateur with a telescope and an ability to do some mathematics could understand that. What wasn’t widely known was that when it passed between the moon and the earth, it did so at such high speed it would briefly and dramatically change the forces at play between the two bodies. The impacts upon the earth would be huge. Ranging from hardly anything at the poles to complete disruption of the fabric of the earth in the temperate areas where most humans live. Some people would survive the rending of the ground and massive eruptions of volcanos along with enormous simultaneous earthquakes along all existing fault lines where the great plates meet. The destruction of civilisation by the combination of earthquakes, tsunami waves and lava would be almost complete.

At that time construction of great stasis chambers was begun in Antarctica. Each would house 40 people in deep sleep. Each had its own power supply. Each had its own store of preserved food, seed bank, animals in stasis and established plant collections. It was hoped enough would survive. This was the only way to preserve humanity for certain.

Three months ago I found out when I was approached to lead an ark team.  I was informed that we would be in stasis for at least a year while the planet calmed down and the temperate areas became habitable again then locked into our stasis chamber for at least another three months after that to wake up and re-establish some social order. To ensure resilience, there are 250 teams of 40 people. Each with 4 adults and 36 children. The teams have been chosen for diverse biological and DNA background. The adults chosen for their ability to accept and adapt to protect and ensure survival of the children in their charge. The children when they emerge will in time form a new society and come to renew population of the planet.

Finding the adults was relatively easy, the world was scoured for people with particular characteristics. The leaders were found first. I've known for a year now and helped select my team of three from the available pool. Six months ago we were brought together and the other three informed. At that time we were segregated from our old lives – we simply vanished from the planet. Of course this caused grief and investigations but we knew we had to be strong. We had to leave our lives behind. The only consolation was if we had children under sixteen ourselves that they got to come along, but not in our ark – they would be in someone else’s to ensure there was as little favouritism as possible later.

A few days ago our 36 and four adults headed to the Antarctic to our stasis chamber. The kids and their parents think the kids are going to an ICE Adventure arranged through the schools of the world and would be back home in two weeks time. They were all told they’d been picked because of characteristics they’d shown at school. This part was true, the remainder, a story to placate the masses. We all cheerfully and excitedly said goodbye as we boarded our buses at Monash University and headed to the military airport in Sale. From there we flew in massive Hercules down south to Antarctica. Each ark crew in its own plane. We all knew there were others and thought that we’d be meeting up when we got there (well most of us did, the leaders knew better). 

On arrival, each ark crew was ushered into their chamber by the base personnel. These people would likely survive too and had a part to play in protecting each exodus ark chamber. The difference was they would be awake for the entire time and we would be in stasis. While the ark chamber’s systems were largely automatic, these people were the backup. They would also form the initial controlling body once everyone reawakened. It was felt they were necessary to take control of any remaining society that might survive beyond the chambers. 

On arrival the leaders found the surroundings familiar as we’d been here for months training for this day, learning the facilities, learning the techniques for managing the children we would be looking after.

Naturally the kids were totally excited but we convinced them to stow all of the gear they’d brought into their lockers and get changed into their camp uniforms. The uniforms were all soft clothing designed to be protective but also yielding so as not to damage the skin of the children while they slept. Then we all met on the floor of the chamber to start some get to know each other activities. 

This was the last time they would be conscious for the next year. Each of the adults wore a head set designed to deflect what was about to come.

As the children played the games and talked in the soft floored chamber a gentle soporific wave was generated, one by one and sometimes in groups they started to sleep. They simply collapsed wherever they were. Once all were unconscious each was checked by the base medical team then we loaded them into the individual chambers and hooked them up to the systems that would take them into deep sleep and protect them on the verge of death for the next year. Once this was done, the adults climbed into their own chambers and were similarly hooked up. Sleep came.

Outside on the 31st of October Skull Rock came and went, the predictions were right and the earth shuddered. Along the equator dormant volcanoes were the first sign of the impending doom for most of civilisation as they at first smoked then spewed forth great columns of lava, ash and rock into the sky obliterating the sun and plunging the planet into almost complete darkness. The earthquakes began within hours of the eruptions. The news media went wild before going silent as the power grid was destroyed. Around the globe millions perished in the waves of heat, vibration and water. Most of civilisation crumbled and was erased from the face of the planet. Here and there pockets survived but would face a very difficult future with no assured food supply and little or no sunlight until the volcanoes calmed and the skies cleared.

From above the personnel on the International Space Station watched what was going on below. They were the vanguard that would declare that it was safe to open the ark chambers and wake the sleeping inhabitants. That moment would be some time distant. While they waited, they charted where they could find light sources at night marking the likely places of adhoc survival. It would be important to know these places and make them known to the sleepers as they would likely form a tribal society with a local kingpin. Should the ISS not survive, the chambers would automatically awaken after one year, one chamber every three months to spread the load of looking after the awakening sleepers on those that were left.

In the chambers we waited, unaware of what was happening around us. 

What happened to Antarctica was a surprise to even those who predicted it would be stable. It became more than stable, it became a paradise, the earth’s poles shifted, rotation changed and old poles became the new equator with the new South pole at what was Madagascar and the new North pole through the wasteland that had been the bay adjacent to San Francisco but was now simply sea. San Francisco lost forever. Perhaps it will be found as the new Atlantis in the future. In these locations ice formed and in our location the world warmed. These changes finished the society more than the earth’s upheaval ever could have. The ark’s inhabitants and their supporters were now alone.

The new rotation calmed the volcanoes much quicker than anyone had expected and triggered the sleepers to be awakened early to their new world having slumbered for only a few months instead of the planned year.

End Chapter One.

Note that the image on this page is reproduced under implicit license from JPL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/imagepolicy/

The Troll

As I cruised the asteroids in search of precious metals much needed by our industrialised society based on depleted Earth I noticed one would flash with stunning brightness along with a burst of static on the near field radio. The flash was periodic. I observed over time and saw it had a pattern. It would blast out the light and static for a time then go quiet. Almost as though it had something to say but no one was listening. Being pressed for time to meet my quota I couldn't investigate but I did mark the asteroid in the spatial tank for later attention but didn't bother claiming it.  The tank is a combination four dimensional map of near space with x, y and z coordinates with time as the fourth, communicator console, hologram display age personal recorder. I moved on following the faint whine of the metal detectors that stretched their fields out in front of my single ship.

Questing on and on it was several days before the detectors groaned with the tone that they'd found something interesting, a metal on their configured list of desirable elements. I turned on the Strebor analyser and spun the ship over its axis giving a quick blast on the drive both to slow me down and to hit the rock with charged particles for the Strebor to measure. Quickly spinning about again I aimed the Strebor probe towards the rock. As the blast hit home the Strebor did is thing. Call me mental but the thing always seemed somehow happy when there was a rain of particles to observe the dance. Squinting at the screens I read the information displaying with the spectral graph, a mixture of lithium, beryllium and mercury with some traces of other elements. This was a great one. This one would give me some serious pocket money.

Warming up the spatial tank I marked the rock and put in my claim to identify the rock as mine. Of course it takes a while for the claim to be transmitted, processed and received even at light speed. Once again I spun the ship and gave a longer blast on the drive to stop me alongside the rock while I waited. This is always a calculated gamble. Stopping in space relative to another object is costly in fuel. Sometimes more costly than the worth of the rock.

I grabbed a bite to eat and some coffee and pondered over the most recent news feed from Earth reporting on all the trivial problems back home. It was one of those problems that had me out here hurling through the void. I didn't want to be home. It was too easy to be found there. No privacy. How gratified would Orwell feel had he known his dream of 1984 was merely the beginning.

Finally I got a response from the tank. Unexpectedly there were two messages, one that congratulated me on my claim and told me which space dock to transport my rock to for processing and a priority 1 warning message. This was a little unusual, well ok, completely out of the ordinary, so much so it had never happened to me before.

I flipped my hand into the icon for the P1 and the message opened, it was from space command. The message was very terse and simply told me to not approach the object I had noticed earlier in the trip under penalty of no dock. No dock was essentially a death sentence, it meant you would be refused docking rights everywhere in known space. This seemed totally fucked up that I'd be warned off with such a harsh penalty over a rock I'd only marked not even claimed. Straight away I decided that I'd need to quietly take a look at that rock sometime. I'd always had a bit of a problem with authority. It was one of the other reasons I was out here alone.

I suited up and went outside into the jet black nothing of space and tethered the rock to my tow points. Job done I had time to pause and simply look at the stars and planets. I always did this, it made the hardness of the mining life worthwhile. Seeing just how small and insignificant we really are when compared to everything made being in the can of a ship bearable, because you couldn't see out. You could be happy in that small space simply because you couldn't see more.

Going back in I unsuited, carefully checking all the parts and stowing them neatly. You had to be neat in space or you'll quickly die. I scanned the board and seeing everything was ok I transferred the dock coordinates into the drive computer. I checked the promise given for the rock and saw there was a fast delivery bonus - enough to pay for heading there via overspace. I finished programming the drive and kicked it in the guts. The mind rending jerk marked the transition into overspace. This was the real reason there were no ports in my ship, in overspace there is nothing, lots and lots of nothing. It isn't possible for humans to experience nothing and not go insane.

Dragging my rock to the processing dock was uneventful. Just prior to arrival the drive dropped out of overspace near the dock. and I guided the ship to the arbiter that took the rock from my tow system freeing me to dock my ship and go inside for a little hard earned booze. No pilot was ever drunk in space, to much death to be had but in dock it's anything goes. My usual plan was booze, a meal that didn't come out of my shit hold, a bath then some nice young thing for a bit of fun.

After a few days I'd had about as much company as I could handle. I went back to the port and paid my fees. Entering my ship I checked that the store had loaded my usual order and that my fuels were full. Time to go. I headed out following a course that would take me back to the curious rock while passing right through the belt in search of more bounty. I found a few small rocks not worth towing in, I launched them to dock using the magnetic canon. They'd get there eventually. My launch computer plotted their trajectory and velocity into the tank so everyone else could avoid them. Ships drive always worked out their path to avoid the flying chunks.

All mining pilots knew how to kill the auto position reporting so we could move less than legal stuff around the system. I configured my agent to report I was stationary and smelting a rock then I went into overspace and visited the flasher. On arrival I dropped out of overspace and stopped alongside relative to the rock. The Strebor didn't find anything of interest and the computer couldn't make anything of the broadcasts. The interpreter simply labelled the transmission as meaningless noise.

To learn more I suited up and went outside, I flitted over to the rock towards the source of the transmission. Touching down I found a large box about the size of a small human with a transparent panel. There was a dessicated mummified woman inside. She looked like she was screaming even in stasis. There was a panel with a plaque. on the plaque was the sign of mental plague and here lies the body and forever personality of a social media troll.

Now I understood, before society learned how to fix mental issues, the extremely antisocial who did little but attack everyone around them always claiming it was the fault of others were packed into a life box and hurled into space. The life box would keep their body in stasis allowing their mind to be awake to experience the ultimate revenge of a society so sick of the self promoting attacking damaged individual. This one had managed to meet this rock on the way out of the system and come to grief. Checking this box showed that both the stasis and warning beacon were damaged but still working. This explained why the messages were just static. Her brain was still active, this was the source of the transmissions as that personality struggled to still get her message out to anyone. This must have been a particularly bad one to rate a P1 warning.

Once back inside the ship, I asked the drive to work out a trajectory into the sun and boosted her rock out of place to meet the brightest moment she'd ever have. In time she would be consumed and her torture ended. Not even a troll deserves forever torment. After the boost I moved back to where I'd been reporting I was and recommenced my quest for bounty.