3 AL: IRENE
The hatch was eighteen inches in diameter. It took Irene two days to dig down to it. Scree from the rock slope to the north kept sliding down to refill the hole. Irene set a series of retention blocks in a terraced pattern upslope as she dug in order to hold the debris back. The finished product looked extremely fragile to Irene. She didn’t think it would last through the winter freeze thaw cycle. She was working with little more than a lever, dolly and shovel. A more lasting solution was not within her current capacity. All the heavy equipment was dedicated to building windmills.
Irene scooped out the last few handfuls of gravel from around the hatch. She didn’t want anything to fall inside when she opened it. She reviewed in the ship’s archive how to open it, but the mechanism was complex and it took her a moment to identify all the parts. She punched in the code and began turning the crank. The lugs holding the hatch in place retracted. With a final clank the wheel locked.
It took considerable force to break the seal. A hissing accompanied the escape of some of the gas inside. The sound reminded Irene of the next danger. She heaved the hatch fully open, before going back to her cart for her oxygen mask and bottle.
The chamber below was filled with argon gas at launch. Since argon was heavier than air, opening the hatch would not clear it. If Irene were to go inside without oxygen, she would suffocate in minutes. She put the strap on the tank over her shoulder. The tank hung at her side where she would be able to maneuver it around obstacles. She strapped the mask into place and opened the valve. She checked to make sure the oxygen was flowing.
Back at the hatch, she lowered herself into the opening. She instinctively took one last large breath before her head dropped below the level of the ground. In the near total darkness, she fumbled to switch on the light hanging from her belt.
She was violating half a dozen safety rules by entering the chamber alone. Agatha was the only one who even knew she was here. The old woman sent her. She told Irene to pick someone trustworthy to go with her. It was Irene’s decision to go alone. She knew she shouldn’t but she could not get herself to trust her life to someone else.
Irene slid her way through the racks of equipment. This small compartment, buried in the rocky slopes above the Speedwell’s landing pad was what was left of the advance ship. The Swiftsure traveled most of the way from Earth with the Speedwell. It served as the counterweight in the spin that created gravity on the colony ship. When the Speedwell began to decelerate on approach to their target system, the Swiftsure continued on at full speed. Its engines fired much later with higher thrust. Since it was completely automated it could sustain deceleration forces that would have killed a human crew. Arriving first in the target system, it was these computer systems that chose the Speedwell’s landing site and prepared it. Almost the entire ship was used to create the colony ship’s landing pad.
Irene was crawling into the computer control center. One of the first things it did after landing was to bury itself for protection. Its solar panels were integrated into the landing pad, providing power for the guidance systems that landed the Speedwell. Power and data lines still tied this computer center to the landing pad and from there to the Speedwell itself. As soon as the colony ship was safely landed, this computer center was no longer needed. Its job done, it powered down. It remained hidden where it was buried as a backup resource in case of emergency. Powered down and packed in argon, these systems would remain viable for centuries.
The interior was dark and tight. It was not designed for human occupation. The access hatch was an afterthought. There wasn’t even a ladder. The footholds Irene was lowering herself down were part of the interior structure used to mount the equipment. The only way to turn the system back on was to go inside. Once power was restored, Irene would need to create a new account and open it to remote access. After that she would be able to control the computers from the Speedwell.
She reached the bottom. She was looking for two things, the power breaker box and the administration station. Strangely Irene couldn’t find any diagrams of the interior in the Speedwell’s archives. The interior was larger than she expected. The racks towered over her head. The narrow passages she moved through were designed for the robots who did the final assembly. Built by the highly automated industry of Earth, Irene might be the first human to walk through these spaces. Or maybe crawl was a better term, Irene thought as she squeezed through a gap, manipulating the oxygen bottle to follow behind her.
She headed in the direction of the outer wall closest to the Speedwell. She thought that was the most likely location for the power connection. She found it fairly quickly. The large power unit stood out against the more delicate computer enclosures. The door to the unit could not swing open in the small space. It banged against the enclosure in the next bay when it was only a quarter of the way open. Irene was forced to pull the pins from the hinges and remove the door to gain access. Inside was an array of breakers of the exact same type that the Speedwell used. Irene was impressed by the quantity. This system was designed to distribute a lot of power. Since power was in short supply they would need to be careful about how much this system used until the windmills were online.
It was for the windmills that she was in here. Agatha wanted to use these computers to automate their running and maintenance. The colonization plan called for very little true automation after the landing of the Speedwell. People were expected to run and direct the tools and machines, but people were now in short supply.
Irene reset the main breaker. A slight hum started up as the pod’s cooling systems came online. She remounted the breaker box door and secured it in the closed position. She didn’t know where the administration station was located. She used her flashlight to illuminate the equipment in this bay. She wasn’t even certain what the station would look like. She was just searching for something that looked different. She crawled higher up on the racks to search the upper half. She checked her oxygen supply before continuing to the next bay.
In the fourth bay she finally found something different. About halfway up the stack near the sidewall one of the enclosures lacked a front panel. When Irene crawled up into position she could see that inset into the enclosure was a small display panel. At her touch the panel lit up, asking for a username and password. The username field was prefilled with ‘admin’.
This was the original account used to install the software needed to run the advance ship. This account would always have more power than any later account. Unfortunately there was no record of the password anywhere in Speedwell’s records. Irene needed to make a new account for them. She tapped a small asterisk in the lower left of the screen. The new account screen opened. A physical keyboard was mounted below the display. Irene used it to create the new account, using the details Agatha provided. When she was done, she logged on using it to confirm that it was working. She logged out and checked her oxygen supply. She was down by about half. As she readied herself to climb out, her light caught a flash of color on the side of the interior of the enclosure. She shifted her light around and focused it on the color.
A yellow square of paper was stuck onto the inside side panel. Hand written on it in dark black ink was ‘S@f3Pa$$ag3’. It would appear that Irene was not the first person in this control center. This proof of the presence of that long ago visitor touched something in Irene. She looked at it for a long moment in wonder that such a fragile thing could have clung there during the long journey from Earth; through the launch, the brutal deceleration on approach and the heavy vibration of landing.
Then it struck her what it was.
Its presence here confirmed the existence of a community of technicians that reached all the way back to Earth. A community that didn’t quite trust the systems they supported to work without any input for centuries to come.
She turned back to the login screen and replaced the new username she just entered with ‘admin’. For the password she entered ‘S@f3Pa$$ag3’. The input was accepted. The admin workspace opened up. A stream of outdated warnings streamed across the screen, along with a message on which file they were saved to for future reference. After the warnings cleared, four error alerts continued to display.
Stolen novel; please report.
Intrigued, Irene wanted to investigate them, but she knew her time was limited before her oxygen ran out. She didn’t want to get this far and end up dying in here because she lost track of time digging into an error report. Whatever the errors were, they were no longer relevant. The Swiftsure completed its mission flawlessly. She logged out and left the yellow square of paper where it was. Afterall she was a member of that same community of technicians. For what they wanted to use this system for they didn’t need administrator access. She climbed up to the light spilling in from the open hatch.
She crawled out of the hatch, being careful not to knock any rocks inside. She shut off her oxygen and took the mask off. She returned the unit to her cart. She found a clean cloth inside the cart. She ran the cloth around both sides of the hatch seal, ensuring that it was free of debris, before pushing it closed. She spun the wheel in the opposite direction, cranking the lugs back into their locked position. As the lugs slid into place they ratcheted the hatch down against the seal. It became harder and harder to turn the wheel, until it reached the limit of her strength.
Thinking of that note with the admin password on it, Irene went and got her tools. She pulled all the retention blocks and returned them to the cargo section of her cart. When she was done, the sun was close to the horizon. The only sign of the hatch was a slight dip in the scree slope. She didn’t think it would be long before it was completely gone.
She decided to return the blocks in the morning. She parked her cart in its customary spot and secured it so no one would accidentally take it in the morning. On her way to dinner she swung by the engineering center to inform Agatha that the new account was set up on the advance ship’s systems.
After getting her food, Irene joined a table of construction crew. Upon Irene’s return from the ruins she found the engineering division transformed. Construction crew members were being rotated through the engineering department in order to cover the labor shortages. The construction crews didn’t realize Irene wasn’t one of them. Since she was missing from engineering for most of the winter, they thought she was just part of the next rotation. They accepted her as one of them far easier than her original engineering teammates. Irene was enjoying the comradery.
“Looks like you ended up on the wrong end of a shovel today,” the woman at the next place setting commented when Irene sat down. Irene glanced down at the dirt and grime on her work pants. Maybe she should have changed before coming to dinner.
“Yeah,” Irene responded. “It was a special project for Agatha, but I finally got it done today.”
“I had a nice position in the crane cab today,” the woman responded. “You need to find something like that for yourself tomorrow.”
“I wish, for some reason, supervisors look at me and see manual labor,” Irene responded.
“It’s the toolbelt,” the woman said with a laugh.
“Did you see the video that dropped today?” someone from down the table asked.
“No, what is it about?” came the reply.
“It shows the complete process for curing hides. What I found interesting is that the education department released a module showing nearly the same process and a couple alternates,” the first speaker explained. Irene listened to the conversation as the group went over the details given in the video.
No one here was aware that she was the protagonist in the videos. Agatha scrubbed Irene’s identity from the footage. Agatha went so far as to mask Irene’s voice and alter the name people addressed her by. The video starred Eileen, whose voice was higher than Irene’s. Certain sections, where Irene interacted with her mother and brother and it was impossible to hide her identity, were not released. Irene was grateful, but at the same time a bit worried that the warning that the healing spell was addictive was not getting spread.
Irene was constantly surprised by what Agatha selected. She expected the older woman to pick and choose what she released in order to show life in the structure in the worst light. She didn’t. The short videos showed both the wonders and horrors of life in the structure. Irene stopped watching them herself after the surprisingly detailed imaging of the wound on her leg. Her own memory of that event was fading when she made the mistake of watching the video. It brought everything back and gave her nightmares for days.
That was early in the video releases. Agatha was publishing the content in roughly the order the events occurred. If Agatha was up to the curing of hides at The Heights, she must almost be out of material. Each of the releases was followed by the advertisement of one or more new educational modules. Often the educational modules offered content that correlated with what the video contained. When Eileen visited a crafter in Londontown about getting her sleeve repaired, educational modules on spinning thread, crafting fabric and basic sewing were offered.
Irene thought this campaign was Command’s method of pushing back on the wonders of the structure. It was their way of saying, look we have that thing too. The fact that the education version of curing hides was the same as the structure version made Irene think the crafters missed the ‘magic’ version of making leather. She wondered how many other crafting steps could be replaced with a more manual method but still result in the same final integrated product.
“I think it is weird how everyone is always wearing white,” the woman next to Irene commented. Irene took a drink from her glass to clear her throat. When Irene walked out of the structure's area of influence all the integrated cloth and leather she carried with her transformed into a white plastic like material. The more solid items she carried like her door wedges and vent pins turned into a gray material. She was still surprised when she reviewed the recordings with Agatha. The green of the hunter’s clothing, the leather of warrior’s armor, even the blue of her mother’s silk robe were all transformed to white. All of that detail must have just been projections on her cornea.
“I’ve heard that the outfits look different when you are in the structure,” Irene said in a quiet voice.
“Really?” the woman asked her.
“It's what I heard,” Irene said, trying to cover the true source of her knowledge. “It is some kind of optical effect the camera doesn’t pick up.”
“Magic,” the woman murmured. She turned to pass the rumor on.
The first video started by showing Eileen loading up into a construction vehicle on the western terrace. It ended with her hurrying after the group into the darkness of the structure. Immediately afterward Command announced they were moving up the distribution of land. Everyone who was on the ship at landing qualified for an allotment. This meant children born on the planet didn’t qualify. Large sections of the eastern fields were available, along with the untouched woodlands beyond. Even sections of the peaks to the north were marked available. These rocky parcels were all earmarked by the Swiftsure surveys as potential quarries and mine sites.
Everyone was given thirty days to make their primary selection. If a property got more than one applicant, one of the names would be selected randomly. Everyone who didn’t yet have an allotment was given another thirty days to make a new choice from the remaining parcels. This sequence would continue until everyone who qualified was granted land.
They were on the second or third cycle already. Irene wasn’t certain which, since she did not put her name in on anything. The thought of leaving the Speedwell haunted her. The safety of its hull was the only thing that let her sleep at night.
Irene finished up the last of her meal. Not surprisingly the conversation at the table turned to magic. Irene’s conversation with her brother about the percentage of people who actually managed to do magic made the video releases with just a light amount of editing. Since that episode, where Eileen admitted she could cast ice-bolt, everyone watched for signs of it. Agatha released footage of ice-bolt, lightning, and fireball. It amused Irene how people very rarely detected their true use and called all kinds of normal events magic.
The camera possessed a relatively narrow angle lens on it. It only rarely caught a flicker of her hand movements. Listening to her acquaintances talk Irene wondered if she should pass on the secret of magic to all of them. Would an influx of magic users equalize the society inside the structure or would the newcomers use that power to oppress those that were already there?
“I’m going to clean up,” Irene commented to her near neighbors. “What are the plans for the evening?” The table offered up options included dissecting the latest structure video, researching the current land choices and checking out the new educational modules. Irene made vague promises to join up with them later and headed back to her apartment.
After a shower and a change of clothes, Irene sat down at her home terminal and brought up the education software. During her long trip through the structure, Irene fell behind on her engineering studies. She wasn’t certain anyone was paying attention anymore to education requirements. Irene felt like she was too heavily invested to give up on her education now. She felt that her knowledge of engineering principles helped her survive in the structure.
Even with the automation Agatha was putting into place, if the colony was going to survive for the long term someone would have to do maintenance and make repairs. Irene saw that as her future role.