After more fumbling around, this time without any arachnidan interruptions and throughout the bunker, various lamps were found and placed in the entrance to the emergency exit.
“That wasn’t there before.”
Zach and Sasha both stood in the now well-lit man-made cave just outside of the bunker proper. To the left and back trailed an upward slope with various conduits and pipes lining the ceiling. At the bunker wall, some of the pipes went straight in, while the majority rotated to being flush with the wall, weaving above and below the bunker entrance before disappearing into the foundations. Though not visible from their vantage point, vents also hung down from the cluster here and there through the tunnel. Above and to their right, knelt Josh, framed by wires and pipes streaming into the cave as well as the laboratory’s lights from behind. Before them, though, lay a hole in the cavern wall, about two feet up from the floor and had a diameter of about three feet.
“When was the last time you were here?” Zach asked.
“Oh, when was the last time?” Sasha mused. “The exit is checked routinely, so maybe three months ago? Six months at most.”
“What about you, Josh?”
“I wasn’t part of the check the last few times,” he answered. “It’s possibly been more than a year and that was in minimal light. What are you seeing again?”
“An unapproved tunnel,” Sasha called back. “Wait…”
Zach could guess what she was thinking. “The timing?”
“Exactly,” she strode back towards the bunker entrance. “Josh, do we have any cameras on wheels anywhere?”
“Uh, I would need to check…”
“We’re talking exploratory mining equipment here.”
“We don’t do any more mining here, remember? It all got too big to send down here and then, well, the company went in a different direction.”
“There should still be something small and snake-like for checking crevasses and such. You do still do mineral analyses.”
“On the surface only,” he corrected. He thought for a moment. “Let me try a couple of people.” He disappeared from view. Soon the sound of muttering could be heard from within.
“Surface only?” Zach repeated. “How did this tunnel get drilled, then?”
Sasha shrugged. “Beats me.”
The investigator looked around scratching his head under the helmet, unsure of what to do next. “So, I take it that crawling in there is a no-go?” He jabbed a thumb towards the new opening.
Sasha glared at him. “Of course not! No one is allowed to go into a cavern that hasn’t been tested for stability, yet!” She shook her head. “Wait. Aren’t you here as a safety guy?”
Zach turned away, grumbling, “Not usually.” Turning back, he suggested, “Anyway, this might take a while. Do you have documentation from around the time the scents started? Or is there more to show of the bunker?”
Sasha leaned her head back with her eyes closed. “It would give Josh more room to find something, since he wouldn’t be spotting for us. I’ll give you a more formal tour after we rope this off.”
“Okay. Where are the ropes for that?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know what? Let’s just put the panel loosely back in place instead.”
“You don’t know where the ropes are?”
“Oh, I know where the ropes are. Just not the steaks.”
“Of course.”
The two climbed back into the electronics room and leaned the panel loosely over the opening. After a quick word with Josh between his phone calls on the available landline in the room, they headed out.
Sasha smoothly veered into tour guide mode. “The room we were just in was the electronics room. It also doubles as a control data acquisition room for both apparatuses in the large hall here.”
“Can you tell me what these big things are? Or is that ‘confidential’?”
“Hah. One is a variable vacuum system. The whole thing services several types of vacuum chambers. That’s why there’s so much plumbing all over the place.”
Right, vacuum systems use their own type of ‘plumbing,’ which would explain the various solid-looking metal pipes. “You must have a lot of chambers.”
“That’s right,” she nodded. “Here and even plumbed into another lab. And the other thing over there is actually a centrifuge of sorts.”
“It is? But I don’t see any wheels.”
“It operates more as a piped loop. It somehow qualifies, but I’m not on that project, so I’m fuzzy on some of those details.”
The two members of Solutions headed back up the stairs and back into the hall. Sasha led her guest into the room on the immediate right.
“This is one of the prototyping rooms,” she began. “We actually have a miniature motor being tested here for underwater tolerance.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s in that barrel over there.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She pointed towards the middle of the room, where a vertical metal cylinder stood, tied up in various wires and levers, bolts and rings.
Zach looked it over. “I take it that there are no windows?”
“There’s a small one back here.”
She went around back; Zack followed. Once there, Sasha pointed to a single circular window framed in bolts. Zach peered in but was unable to see much.
“Is it at the – ”
A light flooded from behind and into the window. Zach carefully peeked around to see Sasha holding a small flashlight.
“There are a lot of those things around, aren’t there?”
“What things?”
“Lights.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I guess there are,” she nodded.
Coming closer, she aimed the light down into the deepest part of the barrel.
“The engine is at the bottom. Right…there.”
Zach saw the mass that was illuminated by the small spotlight. The engine was almost spherical and studded with bolts. Something appeared to project out to the left, but that was out of range of the spotlight.
Sasha panned the light to the left revealing a spinning end. “You can see the turbine running over there.” She then panned around the engine. “Those bars are for holding the engine in place.”
“This whole thing is really reinforced. How strong is this engine that so much is needed to keep it from flying?”
Sasha blinked, a bit confused, and then her face lit up. “Oh, I can see where you might think that. But no, that’s not what the reinforcement is for. It’s for the water pressure.”
Now Zach was confused.
“The barrel is designed to compress the water to simulate deep ocean pressures.”
“Ah-oh!”
“Yep. The engine is being tested for its resistance against strong water pressure.”
“So, how deep are we taking?”
“Not very deep, yet.” She went over to the connected computer. “It says about a thousand meters here. This thing is in the very early stages of testing.”
Zach smiled. This was one of the things that he enjoyed with his work, all the varied research he got to come across. The fact that he was in the interdisciplinary department allowed him to see large swaths of company research in person, just like this.
Sasha continued with the tour. There were other engine designs being fiddled with the room, but nothing else was active.
The next prototype room turned out to the 3D printer room he had spied earlier. Two sides were lined with various printers with the middle containing a laser cutter the size of a ping pong table. Boxes of raw materials were stacked up to shoulder height along the two remaining walls.
Continuing down the hall, they passed by a storage room and a clean room. Peering through the clean room window, Zach could spy a single worker in full clean gear handling a highly polished piece of copper.
The final two rooms consisted of the offices and the large break room. The offices had wooden panels up into the ceiling with doors, so the room had more of a feel of a cluster of private offices than cubicles. The break room had all of the typical accoutrements, from two large tables and two worn couches veering into a dilapidated state to the large fridge, microwave, water cooler and side table of drink packets. Where things veered away from the typical started with the Swiss coffee machine on its own table and continued down with a stack of board games and around with three gaming consoles framing a large screen.
Zach pointed towards the gaming rigs with a quizzical look.
“Sounds odd, I know. But we have used those for work reasons.”
“How?”
Ignoring the question, she turned to the one other person in the room. “Hey, Johnny!”
Zach perked up. “John?”
“Different John,” she quickly corrected.
Johnny came up with a freshly brewed cappuccino. “Hi, Sasha? Is this the guest?”
“Yep. Zach, this is Johnny. He’s the only engineer down here from the engineering company who’s down here with us full time. In case you couldn’t tell, we started to call him ‘Johnny’ to tell him apart from John.”
“Got it,” Zach nodded.
“I’m here to keep everyone honest,” Johnny added with a twinkle in his eye.
“Hardy-har-har,” Sasha replied. “Johnny, this is Zach from HQ. He’s here to investigate that smell.”
“Right,” he turned to Zach. “I’m a bit surprised that your company would take this so seriously.”
Zach scratched his head. “Well, there is a certain historical precedent…”
“Right, but wouldn’t that be my company’s side not yours?”
“Our people are here, so yes, it is very much my company’s business.”
“I see. Well, nice to meet you – ”
“Johnny, wait.” Sasha interrupted. “Could I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You have access to both your company’s and my company’s reports, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you pull all of the smell reports for the last few months, please?”
“And any with odd sounds.” Zach chimed in.
Johnny became incredulous. “Are you serious?”
They spent the next few minutes explaining the situation to Johnny, including the newly discovered tunnel in the emergency exit. Johnny had some difficulty understanding that there was a new tunnel in the previous tunnel, so Zach whipped out photos of the area.
Sasha’s jaw dropped. “When did you take that?”
“I always take pictures,” Zach emphasized. Then he thought a moment and amended, “Now.”
After that, things started to fall into place in Johnny’s mind and his eyes widened. “You mean to tell me, that someone, somehow, has been secretly digging another tunnel without anybody knowing?!”
“Well, we don’t know if it’s a person, yet.”
Johnny became even more incredulous. “That hole was big! What do you think dug it? A bear? What would a bear be doing down here?!” He paced back and forth. “Do you realize how big of a security breach this is?!” His hand reached dangerously close to pulling out his hair.
Sasha waved close to his face. “Johnny. Johnny!” She grabbed his shoulders. “Reports.”
“Right…reports.” He sprinted out of the room.
Almost immediately after he left, Josh appeared in the break room doorway.
“What’s up with Johnny?” he asked as he entered.
Only a brief explanation was needed.
Josh changed the topics. “Ah, right, reports. That reminds me,” he pulled out his phone. “I was able to get a hold of someone to test the tunnel for stability, but he won’t be here until this afternoon. As for a camera, well, there is one available, but well….”
“But?” Zach repeated.
“The motor’s not working. That’s why it’s available; it’s been pulled for servicing.”
“That’s not going to help,” Sasha commented.
“One of the people I talk to mentioned printing a new motor in a pinch.”
Sasha glared at him. “Those printers don’t just spit out a working motor in five minutes!”
While the others continued to discuss the finer details of engine manufacturing, Zach looked around the room, thinking. He studied the various details of the room, from the far concrete wall of the original bunker to the fridge to the board games.
What prompted each of those toys? Zach had seen toys in plenty of offices, just not out in the middle of the break room, but not usually board games. Most certainly not…
Hm.
He looked towards the game consoles, the wires, the screens and around until his gaze rested on the controllers.
Would those work?
He thought back to the tunnel and how uniformly circular the discovered hole appeared to be from the outside. He then thought about how all calls were over landlines and not cell phones. The cell phones weren’t banned, after all Josh had one out for note taking right now. The cells just were not used for calling. He looked back to the consoles and to each of the controllers. Only one had wires going from the controller to the consoles.
Worth a shot.
At this point, Sasha was describing the polishing of rotor parts in great detail to Josh and how, at smaller and smaller sizes, the parts required clean room assembly.
“The pieces even have to be cleaned once they get into the clean room …”
“How?” Zach shook his head. “Sasha.”
“…So, this chamber is also used for outgassing…”
“Sasha…Josh?”
Josh was also engrossed in the discussion. “How much does metal outgas?”
“Depends on the alloy,” she answered.
“Sasha! Josh!”
They both turned to him in unison. “Yes?”
“I’ve got an idea. It won’t take five minutes, but we should be able to pick one up over lunch.”
“Huh?”