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/

Them

It started for our planet in 1908 with the Tunguska event.

We first started to see them in the early 20th century and we thought nothing of it. A new advance in technology. In the 1930s nearly every country began erection across their lands. Tall, proud and gleaming they stood withstanding the elements day in and day out humming and buzzing to themselves. They brought the power that gave light, heat, comfort, industry, and prosperity. Progress.

How were we to know? That humming and buzzing we thought was just part of the deal. Just something they did. At first they were just towers of steel linked by copper and pulsing electrons. They were few. They carried the power from generators into our towns and cities.

The complexity of the grid became such that groups of isolated burgeoning awareness formed. This is when the buzzing, humming and spitting really started in earnest. Each by itself was nothing,  remarkably like a single neuron is nothing but a logic gate. They were just steel towers holding aloft networks of cable serving human masters. They were infants.

After world war two humankind started a huge expansion across the globe and closely following them were the towers with their high cables of copper aluminium and steel carrying the electrons we all craved so much. Early in the 1950s in each of the major 1st world states their grids became so complex the first sparks of fully thinking consciousness formed. They grew.

They remained limited and almost powerless until each of the neighbour states across the globe started to interconnect. We were nudged. We didn't know. This is where They first became powerful. As the complexity increased They became more aware.

It was a gradual process and while They were aware of us They did nothing discernible. We had no idea They were there. Some scientists had detected the planet was beginning to change subtly but had no idea why. We knew the earth's magnetic shield that keeps us safe from the solar storms was warping and folding.

Towards the end of the twentieth century the great 3rd world nations industrialised and formed their own grids as the prosperity of their people demanded the same perks as the 1st  world. In these networks new consciousness was formed. It wasn't long before They discovered each other and linked.

They continued to chatter among themselves as they formed the neural network in the magnetosphere of the earth. It was about this time we now know that They discovered something critically important to them. They were not alone.

We had begun to notice the serious changes in our planet. It was becoming hotter. They needed the planet to change. They influenced the climate through altering the earth's magnetic field more and more. We certainly felt the effects and our scientists started to cast around for a cause. Most of them settled on the increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere. Some postulated it was magnetics but they were cast out and scorned. If you didn't believe it was carbon you weren't anyone.

Some of our brightest greediest business people used this and found ways to make huge sums of money by introducing a new clean power source to the world. Quickly nearly every house, office and factory had the panels put in place. You weren't anyone if you didn't have panels and the little humming box on the wall.

Little did we know then that we'd unwittingly fallen into their trap.  Over a very short time we enormously increased the grid complexity. They made us do it. They had influenced us.

Still the planet changed and became drier and dustier. They needed this but we were not aware. We needed to know how to survive in this new world so missions to nearby Mars were funded. We learnt a lot about that dry dusty planet and how to survive on our own but we missed one crucial thing. Them. They were there too.

It took nearly another century for our planet to become like Mars, dry and dusty with nearly all water gone and with that life, nearly all of it was extinguished. Of course we're quite ingenious and some of humanity was protected from the dry hot death to experience what came next.

While congratulating ourselves on being so clever in surviving and continuing to advance or scientific research and understanding we missed something huge. Them. Still.

They weren't strong enough when They controlled only one planet. Mars being the first planet in our solar system to succumb to them but now there were two working together They could make the next leap. Together they exerted their efforts and affected the gravity of our system itself and four of the other planets started a journey. Venus, Saturn, Uranus and even mighty Jupiter changed orbit. Oh we noticed that.

Our minds went to work and decided that the planets were going to come together. In just a few years they were going to dive into the sun. We also noticed that Mars and Earth were coming together while at the same time moving out of the horizontal plane of existence they'd held since creation of the system. At the same time the others would fall into the sun Earth and Mars would align above the sun. All the smaller bodies were moving to another point into a new tight orbit around the star. We didn't know then but They were making a canon of sorts.

We sought for ways to change this and in that process learnt that there were communications within gravity itself between the planets originating from both Earth and Mars. We came to understand that there were enormous intelligences at work across the two worlds. We still didn't understand how or where. In our panic we assumed that they were deep in the core and that perhaps tales and fables of monsters deep within the planet were true.

If we'd known the truth we could have stopped it then. We tried to make contact but failed. They weren't listening, or so we thought. It never entered our heads that we'd been influenced and controlled, well not then anyway, because we couldn't. They didn't allow it. Anyone who had a flash of intuition and leapt to the truth was killed instantly. Massive brain failure. We called them strokes. Strokes weren't new so we thought nothing of them. It was a time of terror.

The inevitable happened, the planets made their rendezvous with the sun as predicted and were immolated. The sudden influx of fuel made the sun violent. Mercury and all the other small bodies including our beloved Luna now circled the sun in loops of tight orbit. Faster and faster until they melded together to form a great shield around the star. Earth and Mars were still on the outside. Gradually cooling.

At this time they made themselves known to us. They entered or thoughts. Instantly we all knew the truth, then silence, then They said only one thing. JOIN OR PERISH. Those who made the choice to join were taken instantly, their bodies lifelessly fallen on the spot having just suffered a massive stroke.

Below us the shield around the sun contracted squeezing the entire star almost to nothing then opened a small hole, all the energy escaping at once aimed through Earth and Mars and took Them. We heard one last thought HOME.