Noriama: Chapter 13
Victoria used to think that space was empty. Now, she knew that what she thought of as void was really full of radiation, background static, dust molecules and dark-matter. As far as was practical, however, it was all empty.
For centuries, humans were taught the solar system on a scale that was reasonable. No, more than reasonable; conceivable. The astronomical distances between even the earth and its moon were difficult to comprehend on a visceral level. The most common emotion when seeing the planets of the solar system to scale for the first time was awe, coupled with no small amount of disbelief.
But the sun really was that much larger than Jupiter, which really was that much larger than Earth. And seeing the planets’ sizes was nothing compared to the distance between them. To truly understand the distance one light-year covered was nearly impossible. Such a massive stretch of sheer and unmitigated emptiness.
There was a terrible thing that happened when the human mind is faced with emptiness; The brain tried to fill it.
Years ago, cartographers filled the emptiness with “here be dragons;” blunt warnings about the dangers that awaited fools who struck out without care or caution. Over time, the unexplored regions of the world were carved away, bite by bite, filling the hungry void with rivers, mountains, and villages.
An empty schedule was filled with meetings, an empty mind was filled with dreams, and empty hands would soon find something to fiddle with. It was human nature. Victoria had never been plagued with emptiness for long: there was always another catastrophe, and in the meantime there was training and drills.
On a practical level, Noriama was a nightmare.
The hallways were clean, with no detritus or even dust to mark the erosion of time. Under Churji’s powerful lamps, the darkness was replaced with barren walls and sealed doors. There were no corpses, no equipment, nothing to mark the existence of the people who had once wandered the hallways of Noriama.
With the absence of clues came the discomfort of obsession. Victoria couldn’t keep from staring intently at her screen, noting every shadow, every curve in the walls, every possible scar or scrape that could give some hint as to what had happened hundreds of thousands of kilometers below them.
“Is it bothering anyone else how clean everything is?” Sughouri asked.
“Yes,” Victoria said through dry lips. “It’s bad.”
“Why so?” Kristiana asked, “I find it informative. It tells us a lot about what happened. Or rather, what didn’t happen. If there was an explosion of some kind, say the reactor went critical, there would be wreckage. If there was internal conflict, we’d see signs of struggle or fighting. If the catastrophe were sudden, the colonists would have been caught in the middle of their day, or perhaps in a panic, only to die in the corridors, leaning against doorways, or collapsed against the walls.”
“Exactly,” Victoria swallowed hard. “It, whatever it was, wasn’t quick. They knew it was coming.”
There was a pause as the team digested this.
“That could be a good thing,” Sughouri said. “Most catastrophes don’t give you time to prepare for them. They may have been able to react.”
Victoria took a deep breath. She had been a First Responder for long enough to have her own opinions. She hoped that when she died, she didn’t have enough time to see it coming.
“I mean,” Sughouri continued: “They might have managed to get to the Security Lockdown. Or packed themselves into the freighter before it launched.”
Zuri snorted. “I don’t know what’s in the ore freighter, but it’s not colonists. That ship wasn’t generating enough internal power to keep fifty people alive, much less two hundred. Whether alive or dead, they’re still here. It could have been a disease of some kind. They’re all in their rooms, you think?”
“I don’t know,” Victoria forced herself to breathe calmly. “If there are dead bodies, there are two places they could be. The first is the Security Lockdown section.”
“Wasn’t that supposed to be a safe place?”
“But not a long term solution. If they weren’t able to leave within a few years, then eventually their life-support would fail, and either their food, water, or air would run out completely.”
There was a pause. “And the second place?”
“If whatever happened was foreseen, then they chose their final resting place. Their rooms are certainly possible, but we might find scientists who died at their posts, or the leader of Noriama in the command center. The mess hall or common room is likely, too; anywhere their social or emotional needs were met. Comfort in their last hours.”
Sughouri sighed. “I just meant the empty corridors were spooky. Damn. Now I’m depressed.”
Finally, the nexus reached its target.
“Central computers,” Sughouri said as Churji forced open the sealed door. “Hub and command center for all your automated colony needs. Boxes of every color, as long as its black.”
No one laughed. Their eyes were all locked on the video feed as the drone crawled through the central computer room. The camera turned left and right, then held still as the wheels moved Churji back and forth.
“What’s it doing?”
Zuri smiled. “Probably matching camera data to its laser sensors. It knows the shape of the room because of its radar, and now its seeing what the radar image looks like.”
“Learning to see?” Victoria was almost charmed. “Why didn’t it do that in the hallways?”
“It probably was,” Zuri answered. “The Hallways were smooth and easy to compare to the camera data.”
The computer room, on the other hand, was filled with consoles, chairs, server stacks, and equipment. The camera wobbled as it panned the room, giving the team a full read of the whole room.
Finally, Wolf had seen enough. Churji carefully moved across the room, making its way to the security panel implanted in the floor. When it was in reach, the camera moved to watch as its mechanical arm extended down to slowly unlocked the release.
When the panel opened, the team breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank god,” Zuri said. “I was afraid it was going to be missing too.”
“I was terrified,” Sughouri laughed as the drone’s clawed arm reached out to disengage the safety lever and free the black box from its compartment. “With our luck so far, I was ready for a time-bomb.”
“Should we look for the station’s black box?” Victoria asked. “The colonists could have moved it down to the colony.”
“I’m not sure why they would have,” Kristiana shrugged. “Let’s wait and see what this box tells us before we start hunting for another one.”
An hour passed as Churji lumbered back to the elevator. The team was quiet as the drone rolled up to the relay, pulled the large black box from its back, and fixed it into its specially designed slot.
Victoria watched the medical readings on her screen relax.
There was a pause as the team all looked at each other. She understood the relief. Technically, their mission could be over. Once they transmitted and decoded the information in the black box, they’d know everything that happened in the colony. They’d know what happened to the Station’s black box. They’d know where Section D was.
It was not their only objective. Yes, the black box had been connected to every computer in the colony, recording every piece of information it could, but even such careful scrutiny would miss important details. Personal effects, papers, and other such non-electronic artifacts could help complete a picture given only a simple shape by the black box.
All the same, knowing that the entire electronic history of Noriama was currently waiting for them was tantalizing.
“Okay, Zuri,” Kristiana said at last, “do your magic.”
Victoria knew before the rest of them did. She was watching Zuri’s pulse rate.
Victoria was about to ask, when Churji began to move on their screens. Its arm extended, and removed the black box from its seating in the elevator’s relay.
“Zuri? What are you doing?”
“I’m can’t access the box,” Zuri said as Churji placed the box back into place. “The connectors might have not been sitting right.” After Churji reattached the box, Zuri’s brow furrowed further. “Still no connection. The relay itself might be faulty.”
“I beg your pardon,” Sughouri’s light tone was contrasted by her furrowed brow. “I set up the relay myself. It was working perfectly when we sent it down.”
“It’s not working perfectly now. We need to bring the box up here so I can access it.”
“Okay,” Sughouri said, “we could do that. Or, we can keep looking around a bit with Churji first. Without the relay, we won’t be able to pilot it. It’ll just be sitting there.”
“I don’t like the idea of stumbling around without knowing what’s waiting for us,” Victoria admitted. “I think we should wait and decode the box before exploring any further.”
“So we wait for forty-eight hours, just sitting here?” Sughouri grimaced. “I don’t mind telling you how much I hate that idea.”
“Me too,” Kristiana said, “but I hate the idea of losing Churji to an avoidable mistake more.”
“Fine,” Sughouri crossed her arms. “We’ll play it smart, and safe, and wait. Doesn’t mean I won’t complain mercilessly about it.”
“Oh good,” Zuri grinned as she chorded a command to Churji to call back its drones and prepare to return to the Croatoan. “I’d hate for you to be unhappy.”
Forty-eight hours later, the black box arrived at Noriama station. Sughouri left the station to fetch it, and handed it off to Zuri with a nervousness that was quite uncharacteristic, if understandable. It was, after all, the most important part of their entire mission.
It had always bothered Zuri that the black boxes were never black. She knew bright colors made them easier to see in recovery operations, and black box was a misapplication of the term for flight recorders, but it conjured such a strong image in the mind.
It was a puzzle. An enigma. Data went into a black box, and something new came out. There could be anything inside a black box, any process or function; it didn’t matter. All that mattered is what went in and what came out.
Sometimes it was obvious, but other times it took the truly clever to ascertain what happened inside a black box. Based on the input and the output, the stimulus and the response, you could figure out exactly what was happening behind the opaque curtain.
After an hour of fruitless labor, Zuri studied the box itself.
Flight-recorders on earth were small things, not much larger than a sandwich. By this comparison, the Noriama black box was gigantic, as big as a briefcase and twice as heavy. It needed to be big; it was designed to record over a thousand years of data from an expanding colony.
She asked Sughouri to help her take it apart.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sughouri laughed. “These things are designed to survive explosions.”
“Why do you want to?” Kristiana asked. “What do the recordings say?”
“I don’t know,” Zuri admitted. “I can’t read any data.”
“Nothing?” Victoria asked. “What do you mean nothing?”
“I mean nothing,” Zuri’s jaw was firm. “As far as the Croatoan is concerned, there is no data in the box.”
Kristiana snorted. “What do you mean, no data? Of course there’s data. If nothing else, there should be the test block they used when the box was built.”
“The what?” Victoria asked.
“They recorded a small piece of prose to the boxes, and then read them back to make sure they worked. When the boxes left Earth, there was already data on them.”
“It’s not there now,” Zuri said.
“Could the data have been erased externally?” Victoria fumbled with what little electronics she knew. “An EMP pulse, maybe?”
Zuri shrugged. “To wipe the data without affecting anything around it? I can think of several possibilities, but the black box was supposed to be shielded from all of them. Anything that could affect the black box would have been so powerful that we should have seen evidence everywhere. That’s why we need to cut the box open.”
“That’s not possible.” Sughouri said. “The outer casing can take more punishment than anything we have in storage. Besides, anything that could get through to the box’s innards would likely destroy the data inside, melt right through it.”
“I’m no expert,” Zuri admitted, “but I think someone already has.”
“Already has…” Sughouri blinked. “Has what?”
“Gotten to the box’s innards.”
In moments, the whole team was studying the box.
“You’re right,” Sughouri admitted, running her fingers over the seam. “This welding was done after the box was built.”
“So someone cut open the black box and sealed it up again?” Kristiana asked. “Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Zuri said. “The Croatoan can recognize the box has been plugged in, but can’t read any data. That means there are two possibilities, and neither are particularly pleasant. The first is whoever opened the box took the drives inside and sealed it up again. Whatever data was recorded during Noriama’s operation is somewhere else, or destroyed.”
“Why would someone do that?” Victoria asked.
“Who knows,” Zuri shrugged. “But the alternative is worse. If the drives are still inside, then that means the connection between the connectors and the drive-controller was severed, and we don’t know when that happened. It’s possible the historical data was never recorded in the first place.”
“Shit,” Kristiana said at last.
“Okay, well, we don’t know for sure,” Victoria said before the mood got any worse. “It could be they took the drives out and hid them somewhere in Noriama. We just have to find them.”
“But why?” Sughouri shook her head. “It makes no sense. If they wanted to take the data, why not just take the whole box, like with the station? Why waste the time and effort to cut the thing open?”
“We’ll know more if we open it,” Zuri said. “You certain we can’t do that up here?”
“We could,” Sughouri admitted, “but it’s dangerous. Not enough space, and if something goes wrong, too many vital systems. If we’re doing it, we need to do it somewhere wide open with access to better equipment than we brought with us.”
“They did it,” Victoria said, “so they must have the equipment in Noriama.”
“Okay, hold up,” Kristiana rubbed her temples. “First thing’s first. Before we start running off the rails: Zuri, we can’t get any data from this black box, and there might not be any data to get. That means our only source of Noriama history is the colony’s computer database, correct?”
“As far as I know,” Zuri nodded. “It should have its own logs and backups. We could get everything we need from them, assuming the database wasn’t also wiped,” Zuri answered.
“And we can’t access them without power,” Sughouri crossed her arms. “I don’t see any other option — we need to turn on Noriama’s reactor.”
“We’re nowhere near ready to do that,” Kristiana shook her head. “The power systems of Noriama are complicated. We need to do a full survey of the colony’s structural integrity, to say nothing of the whole power-grid, just to learn if it’s safe to turn the generators on, and that’s even assuming there’s still fuel.”
“That could take months.” Sughouri bit her lip. “I don’t like the idea of spending all that time crawling back and forth across the colony, pumping open doors and shining lights into every corner.”
“I like the idea of firing up a fusion bomb on the planet less, even if it is over two hundred kilometers below us.” Kristiana pinched her nose. “We need do everything at once, and we can’t. We need an accurate map of the colony, along with historical and log data from the Noriama’s computer, which we can’t get without power, which we can’t turn on without a complete report on the safety status of the power-grid, which we can’t get in a reasonable time-frame without the computer. Have I got that right?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Sughouri nodded. “It seems to me that all roads forward lead through the power-station.”
“Right. Well, let’s at least go take a look. Maybe we can get emergency power, enough to run the computer system, and figure out what the hell is going on.”
Another forty-eight hours, and Churji had returned to Proxima’s surface. One more hour saw Churji making its way down the hallways towards the doorway leading to the power-stacks. All along the way, they didn’t see a single body.
They didn’t talk any more about it. Victoria was glad about that; if they talked, they might start to make guesses, and that would not be productive, practically or emotionally.
At long last, the nexus rolled to a stop in front of the large doors that separated the kilometer long hallway to Noriama’s main power generator from the rest of the colony.
Churji’s single eye wobbled back and forth as its arm pried open the panel and began to pump pressure into the manual release. The team watched in silence as Churji released the handle and pressed the switch.
The camera feed flickered. A series of small alerts sounded off as Churji reacted, jogging backwards from the open door..
“What the hell?” Kristiana’s voice sounded more irritated than worried.
“Radiation,” Sughouri waved her free hand. “Well below danger levels. Nothing Churji can’t handle.”
Victoria sat up straighter, her brow furrowed. Radiation was a bad enough danger in space at the best of times. Buried underground, without wind or natural protection, the same thick layer of Proxima that protected the colony from galactic radiation was a double-edged sword. Of the thousands of possible reasons for Noriama’s silence, a radiation leak was near the top of the list.
The camera-feed was moving. “Why is Churji still retreating?” she asked.
“Wolf’s cautious,” Zuri answered. “Sudden increase in radiation, even if it’s at a safe level, is an increase in danger. Once it thinks its safe, it’ll study the radiation and decide whether or not to continue. Watch.”
Sure enough, Churji was already rolling to a stop. Victoria stared at the readout on her screen. Every piece of information was a clue. The type of radiation, the amount…everything gave a hint as to a possible explanation.
“A bit of a mixed bag,” Kristiana gave voice to their thoughts as they studied Churji’s readings. “From what I’m seeing, I think there was a fuel leak.”
“Wolf agrees,” Zuri said. “More decayed Hydrogen-3 than active. There,” she said as Churji began to move again. “Wolf decided the radiation is within safety limits, and is guiding Churji to the power station.”
The radiation levels didn’t change as Churji crawled forward through the long hallway. Nor did they change when Churji opened the door at the other end, and entered the power station proper.
Victoria was unfamiliar with high-end power stations. In the course of her career as a First Responder, exploding or malfunctioning power stations caused their fair share of catastrophes. With energy being the only scarce resource left on the planet, there had been a major push to improve efficiency, safety, and reliability. It was only the poorest regions that had to rely on outdated and unreliable generators.
Noriama’s power station was barely recognizable. They passed tiny rooms filled with computer screens and consoles covered with buttons, switches, and dials. At the far end were the thick metal doors containing the main fusion generator.
“Okay,” Sughouri sighed, “That’s good news. The blast doors are open. Nothing triggered a lock-down.”
“So there wasn’t a fuel leak?”
“Oh, there could still be a fuel leak, but it didn’t happen before the colony was shut down, or else the trip-locks would have flipped and a two ton lead door would be separating the fuel cells from the colony. A bit difficult for Churji to open on its own, yeah?”
In spite of her relief, the airlock to the fuel room was not simple to open at all. Three doors separated the fuel room from the rest of the section. As each door was opened, the team relaxed further. The rise in radiation with each door was less and less, never raising high enough to be any danger to Churji, or even a human, if prepared.
At last the final door opened, and the radiation level didn’t raise at all. As Churji rolled around the large metal containers, there was no sign of any leak.
“Do we know how full these containers are?” Victoria asked.
“Not without turning on the computer system,” Kristiana answered, “and I don’t want to do that until we find out where the radiation came from. Sughouri, can you take us to the main generator?”
Victoria knew nothing about construction or engineering, but she knew emergency situations, which building a colony on Proxima certainly had been. When building shelter in volatile situations, it was always easier to build wide than tall. Gravity was a powerful force, and when speed and energy conservation were a factor, it was better to remove gravity as a factor altogether.
She knew about digging shelters too, and when digging it was always more expedient to build thin rather than wide. Wider meant complicated ceilings and more points of failure. Granted, she had never seen a dug tunnel that was meant to last longer than a few days, but the principle made sense even for longer lasting structures.
All of this was combined on Proxima to a simple code; build small.
Victoria had expected a massive room, stretching off into the distance with mighty fusion reactors standing dormant like mighty oak trees. It would have been fitting for the source of an entire colony’s power.
Instead, the reactor room was impressively thin. The cylindrical reactor was only five meters wide, and stretched almost twenty meters long. The room itself was only a few meters wider and longer, just enough for a few workers to attend to any necessary maintenance. The walls, floor, and ceiling were thick concrete, and the reactor looked for all the world like a large water-heater, belying the fact that if something went terribly wrong, it could have caused an explosion capable of destroying the entire colony in seconds.
“Radiation levels constant,” Sughouri reported as the nexus rumbled alongside the reactor. “I’m not seeing anything that looks like a leak or — what the hell is that?”
Wolf had noticed it seconds before the rest of them. Already, confused alerts were flashing on their screens as Wolf begged for someone to take over, or give instructions about what to do next. Fruitlessly, as it turned out, because the team didn’t know what to do either except stare at their screens.
To Victoria, it looked about the size and shape of a small car engine, with a plastic covering of odd lumps and angles. A case almost as big as a purse was bolted to the side, and a tiny screen was stuck in the middle of a collection of dials and switches.
It sat — or was affixed, she couldn’t tell — to the main generator.
“No idea,” Kristiana said, her tone belying her concern. “It looks like a…no, I don’t know. Nothing I’ve seen before.”
“Anything in the Croatoan’s database?” Zuri asked.
“No. I’d need to take a closer look to know for sure, or even take it apart. It’s mechanical, I can say that much. What’s it doing on the side of the reactor?”
“No idea,” Sughouri answered. “It could be a…I don’t know, some sort of fuel cleaner? An injector improvement? Maybe it records and adjusts the fusion process?”
Kristiana pointed at her own screen. “It doesn’t look like it’s plugged into the generator. It looks like it’s just…bolted on. I’ve got absolutely no idea what this is.”
“It could be a bomb, then?”
Victoria could feel the room grow colder. Their pulses rose further, as did their breathing.
“Okay,” she interrupted, “Medical intervention. Everyone take a breath.” The team stopped and breathed in unison before Victoria continued. “Do we need to talk this out now, or should we keep moving forward?”
“We need to talk,” Kristiana spoke first. “We want to turn the main generator on, and if we don’t know what this is, it could cause major problems.”
“Like explode,” Sughouri muttered.
Victoria blanched at the suggestion. It was a heartbreaking thought, as well as horrific. “Why would there be a bomb on the generator?”
“What better place for it?” Sughouri asked. “If I wanted to destroy the colony, this is where I’d put a bomb.”
“It would kill everyone, not just the attackers. Hardly a deterrent.”
“Aggressive Suicide works, as long as the opposition believes you’ll do it.”
“Okay,” Zuri said, “but it’s still a huge assumption. Who would have wanted to destroy the colony?”
“I don’t know,” Sughouri shrugged, “but someone must have, otherwise why put a bomb on the reactor?”
It was coy and pithy, but frustratingly sound logic. There was so much they still didn’t know that questioning someone’s reasoning was self-defeating. There was no reason to believe — or disbelieve–anything yet.
“Sughouri,” Zuri continued, “Wolf wants instruction. Can you take over and have Churji show us the whole thing?”
“Sure can,” Sughouri squeezed her keyer. Two seconds later, the video wobbled slightly as Churji moved forward, slowly panning and circling the strange object where it sat. “No vibrations, no electromagnetic radiation, no thermal…it’s currently inert, whatever it is.”
“Okay…” Victoria’s voice was calm. “I don’t mean to make this worse, but that there, on the side…is that an activation switch?”
“Could be a light switch, for all we know,” Kristiana muttered.
“What I’m saying is, this device, whatever it is, appears to be off. We have no idea what it does. Do we turn it on?”
“Hell no!” Sughouri protested. “I don’t want to do anything with this thing until it’s taken off the generator. I say we take it off and bring it back so I can take it apart.”
“I don’t even want us to take it off the Reactor,” Zuri shrugged. “If that is a bomb, tampering with it could set it off. Or they could have drilled a hole into the reactor to attach it.”
“Look, the question is, can we activate the reactor with this device on it?”
“Can we? yes. Should we?”
“If the device is off, can it hurt us?”
“Depends on what turns it on.”
“A candlelit dinner?”
“Be serious.”
“Seriously, the thing gives me the jitters.”
“Me too,” Zuri clapped her hands once. “We don’t know anything about it, so here’s the important questions. One: if we leave it alone, does it cause a problem? Probably not, it looks dormant. Two: Can we detach it from the generator without causing a problem? We don’t know. Three: Can we activate it without creating a problem? We don’t know. Four: can we figure anything out about it without detaching it or turning it on?”
“We’ll have to,” Kristiana groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Any other option is too risky. What about the solar panels?”
Sughouri shrugged. “If the power-grid is still functional, we might be able to switch over to the backups. Ordinarily, there would be some amount of charge to flip open the panels, but I doubt there’s anything left. We’ll have to plug Churji’s battery into the grid. It’ll take a while, and won’t be a permanent solution, but it will give us enough to access Noriama’s computer.”
For all the confusion surrounding the device on the main generator, activating the beamed-power receptors was refreshingly simple. Wolf directed Churji to the nearby emergency station, and plugged it into the system. Churji’s battery was powerful, but even so it took almost a quarter hour for the emergency panel to open enough that the station’s laser could hit it.
The laser provided enough power to open the panel the rest of the way. Then it took another hour while the Colony’s batteries began charging under Sughouri’s watchful eye.
“So far so good,” she said. “We should have enough to start turning on a few systems. Main computer systems first, of course, and then we can work from there.”
Kristiana breathed a sigh of relief. “How long do we think Noriama Station can keep the colony powered?”
“Hard to say,” Sughouri pursed her lips. “Hydrogen-3 has a pretty short half-life, all things considered — only twelve years. The reactor’s efficient, though, so the station could run on what’s in the tank for, oh, say ten years. Problem is, we can’t pump every watt of energy into the laser to beam to Noriama, so we’ll be losing a lot in the transfer…and depending on how much we turn on in the colony…” she shrugged.
“Just the computer system and the doors. What do you think that would look like?”
Zuri answered: “As long as everything is still functional, based on what the station is outputting now, we could get by on the Station’s backup power for maybe a month.”
“That’s not bad,” Sughouri nodded. “If we’re damn lucky, a month could be all we need. I say we head over to the main computer section and get the computer systems on. Once we have access to the colony’s logs, we might learn something about this device on the reactor.”
“Maybe,” Kristiana shrugged, staring at her own screen. “I hope so, because I have no idea what it is, and that worries me.”