Chapter Fifty-Eight

By the end of the day, over seventy thousand people had come forward. They volunteered to offer their skills for the different available job positions, adding to the existing members of Team Halikkon.

The Halikkon Global Gathering Initiative, HGGI, was immediately ratified as a worldwide resource system to provide everything required to execute the global project.

Before the HGGI, the world’s general population had no motivation to labor their last days away for a single ark, one vessel, which would shuttle only a fraction of humankind away to safety. At the same time, the very souls working and making it possible would be left on Earth to freeze and die.

Once Viktoriya solved the HH190 travel problem on the Spectrum, everyone would have a place on one of the many arks to deliver them all safely.

Everyone was welcome, and everyone was expected to assist.

Some workers were best suited for physical strength and health. Others contributed by sharing their skills and technical aptitude. All talents were welcome to contribute and have safe passage aboard one of the arks.

Massive, worldwide harvesting initiatives began. Teams formed and were dispatched to the ends of Earth to retrieve the materials and resources needed for building four much larger arks that would accommodate everyone on Earth and the two auxiliary arks to provide for animals and vegetation of various sorts.

The following day, dropships, cargo ships, and anything else that could collect and harvest materials were already in motion. A symphony of machinery mimicking worker insects targeted their specific payload, which brought the goods to several Earth aggregation sites. After that, the materials were finally ferried into space, where the construction, testing, and provisioning of all the arks would take place.

One team, selected for a specific mining mission: the renowned Professor Evan’s group, chosen for their years of experience and expertise in heavy drilling and searching for nuclear isotopes.

The men arrived in Antarctica the next day, setting up their drop-in modular buildings and generators before unloading the enormous core drill.

* * *

Viktoriya finally sat alone on her couch, pondering about everything that had transpired. She had hardly had any time to herself since the mini-ark experiment.

She exhaled, her body weakened and exhausted from the prior day’s activity. Just as she made it to the couch, she heard a visitor tone at the front door.

Initially, she thought she had misheard, but then there was another tone, causing her to rise to make her way to the door.

As she opened it, she could not believe who stood there, and her heart began to beat harder. Her eyes grew as big as constellations as she muttered, “Choe.”

“I just want to say congratulations and to thank you in person for saving us,” she said.

She turned to leave, covering her mouth with her gloved hand to hide her sadness.

“Choe! Please, it’s so cold outside, please come in!” she called, but Choe did not stop. She was more distraught and nervous than she thought she would be and could not bring herself to stand before her old friend.

Viktoriya had so much to say to her.

So much that she wanted to apologize for, but she stood there silently, watching as she continued down the walkway to their gate, then into the waiting car.

“Choe!”

Viktoriya exhaled, closing the door behind her. Her eyes stung from the warm tears that formed while she fought to keep them from falling.

She lay on her couch, memories of Choe flooding her mind.

CLEFF walked in, hearing her muffled cries as he approached.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

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She did not say a word, but the sobs stopped. She pressed her face against the big brown pillow in the corner.

“Viktori-Ya?”

“I am fine!” she yelled back at him, causing him to take a step back.

There was only one other time he had seen Viktoriya distraught like this, and that was the encounter at Halikkon with her parents.

He kept quiet, making his way up the steps toward her.

She could not take it.

She had to tell Choe.

She needed to explain all of it to her.

She must show her how sorry she was.

If she had never gone back to that apartment, Aura would still be alive now.

Choe knew it.

And Viktoriya knew it.

* * *

During all the celebrations and activities, the ark resource harvesting missions continued all over the planet. Thousands of missions, day after day, night after night, non-stop—as though the lives of the entire world depended on it, which indeed they did.

The same dance played out repeatedly—the teams harvested their list of materials, brought the resources to one of several localized primary stations. Next, they were transferred onto huge space cargo ships and then relayed into orbit, where the new arks were under construction.

Almost all of the harvesting missions went smoothly, as expected. The teams had returned with their payloads within a couple of days or less.

As the volunteers came forward and the ranks grew in number, they were assigned to one of over two hundred and seventy teams deployed worldwide, helicopters and heavy transports used to haul the teammates and their payloads into space. Within weeks, the team had grown to over three hundred thousand individuals.

Team sixty-five, Professor Evan’s team, headed out to gather rare, naturally formed deuterium isotopes from deep beneath the surface. In the past, that was a rather simple mission, or at least; it was supposed to be. Just head to Antarctica and check on a site showing signs of possible deuterium deposits. The Frost now required dropping in dozens of extra heating grids to keep the location survivable as the workers labored.

If they discovered deuterium there, they would mine the isotopes from the Earth’s crust hidden away in the mantle.

Usually, deuterium was a stable isotope abundant before warming took hold of the planet.

Now it was all but gone, except in several rare deposits.

In recent years, a team of nuclear scientists, including Rosa, had performed an atom-splicing experiment on a subatomic level, adding a radical alpha electron to the molecules, effectively splicing them together, creating the most efficient and powerful nuclear reaction known to humankind.

This offered a practically endless supply of nuclear energy for the ark, powering and fueling the nuclear reactor drives created by Viktoriya’s parents. If she had given the world the ship, this would be the wind in her quantum electromagnet sails.

The team's first phase was a simple task of drilling down to about one hundred and eighty meters. The drilling began a few hours after they arrived on the scene. Professor Evan had set up everything alongside the team members and started their task.

As they drilled further and further down, the machine suddenly halted, causing a backward bind. The deafening sound of the drilling shaft breaking caused a significant ripple of shock waves that made all the men turn toward the hole.

“Dammit!” the engineer handling the drill cursed.

“What the hell is going on there?” Evan called.

“We’re facing some issues. The rig got stuck, and I was trying to get it out, but then it was like it just, you know. It broke.”

“Pull it back,” Evan said. He pushed the button on the controls, and the broken core rose to the surface.

“We’re going to need the TF-11 rig,” he complained, striding away. “I’m ordering it in. We should have a cargo ship with the new drill within two hours.”

“What the hell did we hit? This should have been like slicing butter!” the engineer said as he jumped off and followed behind Evan.

“Corundum, perhaps?” another person asked.

Professor Evan pondered on that. The sizing was just perfect based on the mantle data, hard enough to cut through any rock found underneath the surface.

There was something more to it than just breaking. Nothing breaks that kind of core that easily. He entered their bunker, falling to the chair.

“We’ve had a minor setback. Should be good to go again, in two hours,” he said to the rest of the team, then lay back.

A few hours later, they heard the deafening screech and whine of the approaching cargo ship’s engines. One man pulled open the modular building’s door, calling the professor.

The engineer climbed into the cab and powered it up. He made his way out, driving up the new, larger machine to the site, easily twice the size of the original drill.

“Awesome! It’s a two-meter core drill. All right, let’s get this baby rolling,” he said as he moved the new vehicle over the hole. He pressed the buttons and yanked the levers while steadily controlling the system until it hit the same marked depth again.

It drilled down to the same level, bound, and stuttered again.

“It’s happening again, boss!” the man said, hailing the professor. Evan rushed toward him and climbed into the machine, taking the adjacent seat.

“Just keep it going,” he said, watching the stats of the drive.

The indicator displayed a consistent red on the screen, indicating it was undergoing severe stress. Despite that, Evan told him to keep drilling. If this drill broke, then there was something else underneath there. The TF-11 drill could cut through six feet of steel easily without flexing.

“Keep it going,” he urged again.

Suddenly, the beeping halted, the red lights completely vanished, and it reset to the green level, zero resistance. The drill plunged another three meters.

“What the hell!” Evan cursed.

“Hey guys, this isn’t right. Something is not right. It’s like we’re spinning in thin air. There is literally no resistance at all.”

“What?”

“Yeah, look. Down. Up. Down. Zero. Dead air! It’s a cave or something.

“Boss, I’ve never seen anything like this… what could it be?”

“Well. It could be trouble. That’s what it could be. Big, big trouble.”