Six people stood in a circle, staring at each other in a pensive state. A woman sighed. “Are we really going to kill the entire world?”
No one answered.
A pale, redheaded woman exhaled and everyone came alive upon her reaction.
One man studied her. “Erica?”
Erica folded her arms and bared a sarcastic look. “Yeah, everyone wants the world to end and now all the pressure suddenly falls on me.”
“But you said you would do it,” the guy said to her. “That’s what we all agreed to.”
“Erica snarled. “I know what I said. But you people seem so eager to commit murder it makes me feel like nothing else matters to you.”
More silence from everyone.
“People, maybe we should rethink this,” another man said. “I mean … it IS three billion people we’re talking about.”
“Screw it,” a third man interjected. “Yeah, they would all be dead but it’s a sacrifice we can afford to make.”
Erica shook her head. “I can’t stand here and listen to any more of this. I’m going to my lab.” She stormed out of the room. “No one disturb me for the rest of the day.”
The third woman among the group made motion to leave, and a pair of eyes trailed her.
“Risé, where’re you going?” the first woman asked.
“To boot up the software. We’re going to need it running in its full version to help convince Erica that we’ll be doing the right thing in the long run. Heads up though: I’ll be using over 9,000,000 terabytes of RAM from our mainframe to run the program in its entirety so electricity to some of the dome’s facilities may be temporarily affected.”
“When can we see the program in operation?” someone said.
Risé tied her long, brown hair into a bun. “It’s ready to be seen. But I need to run something past Erica first.”
Everyone nodded. And Risé left.
The following day Erica had been standing within a greenhouse, peering into the distance at a huge, round metallic building several hundred meters away. The sight of that building caused her mind to sway. Hmm, a world without people. What would that be like? After staring at the infrastructure long enough she turned her attention to sniffing and caressing beautiful white lilies and buttercups. She then left the conservatory and traversed to the outskirts of some land.
Erica sat down near the edge of a cliff and closed her eyes, locking off the world around her. She tuned in to the soothing songs of seagulls and the roars of crazy waves bashing the base of a mountain way down below.
Time passed. Erica’s eyes flickered open as she felt a brush against her shoulder. She turned to find a young, fair-skinned woman glaring down at her.
“Risé?”
Risé smiled. “Hey, can we talk about something?”
Erica paused, then nodded. “Sure.”
“Let’s head back to the dome,” Risé said. “There are some things I’d like to show you in the computer room.”
After strolling through the greenhouse, they wandered towards the circular building where they were soon able to view the construction in its magnitude. There were no doors, windows, fissures or designs engraved on the surface of the dome, causing it to appear completely sleek and smooth.
“Fortified titanium-graphene,” Erica said as she peered at the dome. “I see it every day and it never ceases to amaze me. You’d think I’d get used to it by now.”
They stepped closer to the front of the dome and a path opened up then closed itself the moment they went inside.
“I need to stop off at my lab first,” Erica said, “to check up on a few things.”
The two roamed through the dome, bypassing various computer devices that spoke to them, moved, flashed, twirled or turned invisible before their eyes. Erica marched towards a specific computer terminal and pressed a button that teleported them to a different section of the dome. It wasn’t long later that they were standing before Erica’s laboratory where she used a triple combination of her iris, saliva and fingerprint to decrypt the advanced security lock that protected the room. They went inside.
Right away Risé observed a string of life-size glass tubes standing in a line at one corner of the room. But the real surprises were the creatures contained upright within each of those tubes: nude human bodies that were alive but unconscious. They were all young men and women of different ethnicities and there were no children.
Risé’s eyes widened. “These bodies always creep me out.” She ogled the face of a handsome young man resting in the tube, then allowed her eyes to trail downwards where she eventually noticed his virile private part. She turned away but could not resist looking a second time, at which point she tittered. “Interesting.”
Meanwhile Erica had been busy running tests on a female subject who had been lying face up in the middle of the room within an enclosed glass tube that was reminiscent of a coffin. Next to this tube was another tube, though this one had no body resting inside.
Risé strayed towards the empty tube. “What did you do with the guy?”
Erica moved to and fro from the female body lying in the test tube to her scientific machinery that had been linked to the body. “I’d ask Derrick and Quasee to move him down to the VR room so we could more easily begin prepping him for the experiment. But that was before I started having second thoughts about the whole thing. So now we have him resting in the infirmary until further notice.”
“But…”
“He’ll be fine.” Erica removed a pair of surgical gloves from her hands. “It’s not like he’s on life support or anything.”
“Yeah,” Risé replied, “he’ll be fine … but will you?”
Erica stopped what she was doing and stared at Risé. “Maybe if in the end we can conclude the experiment a success without having to murder three billion people then I will be.”
Risé moaned. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. When you’re done running the tests on the woman meet me back at my room, alright?”
Though this time reluctant, Erica agreed.
Risé took one final look at the woman resting inside the test tube and the muscles on her face relaxed. “My, she’s so beautiful. I think she might be the one.” Then she left.
A moment later Erica completed her tests on the unconscious woman and she was satisfied that all was well. She began packing up so she could hurry over to the computer room to meet Risé, making sure to slip some medicinal items into her lab coat for safekeeping before heading out. But she was delayed from leaving when a man barged into her laboratory, an irate expression on his face. “Erica, I need to talk to you.”
Erica groaned. “Doesn’t everyone? Derrick, don’t you ever knock?”
He ignored her and shut the door behind him.
Erica looked up at him. He was tall, dark and had a lot of lean bulk packed onto his skin.
“What’s this about, Derrick?”
He marched straight up to her. “Some of us have been talking about you lately. We don’t think it should be solely your decision to decide if we’re going to stick with the plan and kill everyone.”
“Is that so?” Erica countered dryly. “Considering I’m the only scientist on this island who has experience with nuclear technology then I think it’s pretty much going to be up to me to make that call.”
Derrick’s face hardened. “Don’t make it seem like you’re the only of us who’s here for a purpose.”
“Yes, I know,” Erica said, “you’re the electrician. That’s why you should stick to doing your job and let me do mine. And my primary job right now is deciding…”
Derrick stomped his foot. “Dammit, Erica! I don’t want to hear it. Once the program is proven to be successful we’re killing everyone whether you like it or not. And that’s final!” He retreated to the exit but stopped midway, faced Erica and began rattling, “1912, 1939, 2024, 2040, 2061, 2073 and of course this year: 2084. Within the last sixty years the frequency of world conflict has increased. The population has been reduced from what was one time eleven million, now down to three. What the hell does that tell you?”
Erica held a stern face and did not speak.
“Woman, wake up and see the light. If we don’t do something about it now then there won’t even be a future left for a world war 8 to take place.”
Erica kept staring in silence.
Derrick shook his head, face aloof. “Yeah, you think about that. I’m out.” He left.
Erica then gathered herself and her things together and headed to Risé’s room. Risé opened her door and let her in. “What took you so long?”
“I had a brief encounter with Derrick.”
Risé sighed. “Oh boy.”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.” Erica shrugged. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“This way.” Risé led Erica to an array of high tech computers, each fully motion sensitive and capable of producing third dimensional holograms based on as little as the blink of an eye or the snap of a finger. Risé snapped her finger and a hologram of the dome came up. She then commanded the computer, “Show me each of the dome’s rooms for twenty seconds, until I specify otherwise.”
The first image that popped up displayed a room filled with various animals, at least a pair of each: goats, pigs, sheep, birds, cows, etc.
Risé’s eyes glistened. “There’s one of our indoor farms.”
Erica didn’t appear surprised.
“Show me the greenhouse,” Risé said to the computer again.
And the image within the hologram changed in conjunction with her vocal command; a woman in her mid-thirties with long, golden hair could be seen tending to a garden in the greenhouse.
Risé smiled at the hologram. “Rachael sure takes good care of the plants.”
Erica looked on.
Risé then ordered the computer to display rooms containing giant aquariums with sharks, dolphins, piranhas, jellyfishes and many other sea creatures respectively. She then snapped her fingers to shut off the computer. “OK, that’s enough visual updates for one day. Follow me for the real surprise.” She took Erica to a more advanced computer and ordered it to turn on, then commanded, “Display the entire dome collection.”
Holograms of seven domes came up, including the one they had been occupying. Each dome resembled the other.
Now Erica seemed interested, alarmed at the same time. She spun around to see if anyone had been coming through the door behind her. “Risé, what’re you doing? We can’t let anyone else know about these domes, remember? I only told you about them ‘cause I trust you as a friend and you also happen to be the programmer.”
Risé shuddered. “Oh, sorry.” She waved her hand and the hologram of the domes disappeared. “Through satellite technology I’ve linked every dome located on each of the seven continents so we can keep track of what’s going on inside them regardless of how far we are from each one. Well, more accurately I should say we can keep an eye on six of the seven domes.”
Erica frowned. “Why six?”
“My ability to setup manual connectivity to one of them seems to be locked by an encryption code and password that’s off the charts, so I’m still working on it; it’s the one located in Antarctica. I got it to show up through the hologram but right now all of that dome’s data is still fully inaccessible.”
Erica placed a hand on her chin. “Hmm. Encrypted, huh? I’ve never been to any of those domes, nor was I told much about them, with the exception that they exist as backups to aid me in my work. At least that’s what they told me before assigning me the rights here to conduct my advanced experiments.”
“I see,” Risé said. She paused. “I’ve setup dome North America as the primary dome seeing that it’s the only one we’ve been occupying. So now that that’s set up we’ll pretty much be able to monitor the activities of the other domes straight from here.”
Erica smiled. “Excellent!”
“By the way, the password to access info on the domes whenever you need to is: The Silent One Observes. But you’re free to change that anytime you want; just inform me of the new password afterwards.”
Erica nodded. “Got it.”
Risé took a deep breath. “The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is the program. The final version of the software is complete and I’m ready to demonstrate it to everyone. But I’m also curious about one thing in particular.” Her face stiffened. “If the software works, and I know it will, will you be able to keep up your end of the deal?”
Erica gaped into space.
“Erica? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Can you really live with the guilt of killing that many people?”
Erica gulped. “I’ve been thinking about it. I’m still not sure if I can do it. But, I do know that we need to take some form of severe action.”
Risé pondered. “Maybe it’d help if you pay Ralph a visit. But first, let me show you how the software runs.”
Erica agreed.
“Computer,” Risé announced, “launch project 3.16.”
The software booted up and a voice inside the computer introduced the program with the words, LET IT BENIGHT.
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