Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity, Chapter 4

“WHERE ARE THE FLASHLIGHTS?” Irene shouted over the noise of the earthquake.

Their apartment was completely dark. Over to his left Jack heard something crash to the floor. He tried to stand up, but then a piece of furniture collided with him and sent him sprawling. Crawling on his hands and knees, he made his way across the pitch-black room to an end-table – only to find that it was gone.

“I can’t find them,” Jack shouted back. “They could be anywhere.”

“Then let’s get out of here!” Irene replied.

Jack couldn’t tell where his wife was – he could hear her, but in the darkness it was impossible to see anything. He turned around and started crawling toward the front door. As he made his way through the debris that cluttered the floor he felt the shaking start to die down. By the time he reached their door the earthquake had stopped.

The young inventor felt for the doorknob and then yanked the door open. He sighed with relief when he saw that the colony’s emergency lighting system had kicked on, bathing the outside hallway in a dim yellow light. He turned around and saw Irene stand up behind him, a little disheveled but otherwise unharmed.

Jack walked down the hallway past his neighbors’ apartments and headed for the stairwell that led up to the colony’s main level. He tried to open the stairwell door but it wouldn’t budge.

“Is it stuck?” Irene asked.

Jack studied the door and saw that the doorframe had partially collapsed, pinning the wooden fire door in place and causing it to buckle slightly. “I think if we had a crowbar we could open it,” he said at last.

Irene nodded. “Do you know where we could get one?”

At that point an apartment door opened and a badly-scared woman stepped out. “Oh my goodness! What was that?” Molly exclaimed.

“We’re not sure yet,” Irene replied soothingly. She walked over to the lady and put her arm around her. “Are you ok?”

“I think so,” she replied uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“Jack, I’m going to check on our neighbors,” Irene called out. “Let me know if you find a way to open the door.”

Jack nodded.

As Irene knocked on door after door, Jack wandered around looking for something he could use to pry open the stairwell. Halfway down the hallway he spotted a small fire box that was mounted on the wall. Inside the metal box was a long fire hose and an axe. Jack grabbed the axe, walked over to the door, and carefully stared at it. After studying it for a minute he lifted the axe and began chopping away at the door.

It took him ten minutes to hack his way through the sturdy door and force it aside. I really need to exercise more, Jack thought wearily as he returned the axe to the fire station. Sweat poured off his brow and his arms ached from exertion. By that time Irene had returned. Her search of the nearby residences had turned up nine people. Some of them were cut or bruised but there were no serious injuries.

Jack stepped through the doorway into the stairwell. His heart sank. Large chunks of the ceiling had given way, sending giant rocks tumbling down that crashed through the staircase. There was nothing left of the stairs but twisted girders and shattered concrete.

“What do we do now?” Molly asked.

“We climb,” Jack said quietly.

None of the apartments had rock-climbing equipment, a fact that didn’t surprise Jack. He volunteered to climb up the ruined stairwell and go get help. Irene volunteered to stay down below with the trapped colonists.

It took Jack an hour to reach the surface. He found it difficult to find solid handholds to grab, and his arms were already tired from chopping down the door. The lack of light in the stairwell made the climb even more hazardous. It was excruciating work, and progress came very slowly.

The main level was three floors above them. When Jack finally made it there he saw that the city was in a state of complete pandemonium. The colony’s main streets were filled with people that were milling about in a state of near-panic. A few courageous souls were trying to restore order but no one was paying any attention to them. Power had still not been restored and only available light came from the emergency lighting system.

The main level of the colony was designed to look like a regular, above-ground city. The streets were wide enough to cover two lanes of traffic (not that anyone drove hovercars in the underground portion of the colony), and the ceiling soared fifty feet above the ground. The walls of the tunnels were designed to look like modern buildings, decorated in an open and elegant style. Restaurants and shops lined the streets, and live trees dotted the sidewalk.

Under normal circumstances a cleverly-hidden series of artificial lights made the look bright and cheery. But in the darkness there was little to be seen but frightened people. The yellow emergency lights made everything appear unusual and strange.

Jack walked up to a nearby colonist, who was holding a megaphone. He had been trying unsuccessfully to restore order. “What’s going on, Morgan?” Jack asked. Morgan worked in the colony’s manufacturing sector.

Morgan sighed. “It’s just a mess, Jack. Where’s the mayor? Where are our leaders? We’ve got panic here!”

“Is anyone checking the power plant?” Jack asked. “Those emergency lights aren’t going to last forever.”

“I have no idea,” Morgan replied. “As I said, nobody knows anything and I can’t reach anyone. The communication lines are down.” He handed Jack the megaphone. “Maybe they’ll listen to you.”

Jack grabbed the megaphone and got everyone’s attention. He told the crowd not to panic, that everything was under control, and that he needed their help. Using Morgan as a leader, he quickly took a poll to see who was present and what skills they had. After he knew who was in the area he divided them into separate teams.

Morgan led a team to the lower apartment levels to see if they could rescue anyone who might be trapped. Jack warned them that the stairwell was a mess, so the team left to find some search-and-rescue equipment. Jack made sure they had people in their squad with medical training.

Jack sent another team into the administrative and office district to look for survivors there. He then led a third team to the power plant, to see what he could do to bring it back online.

Four hours later Jack finally stopped to take a break. The power plant had been badly damaged in the earthquake, and it took a lot of ingenuity to bring the geothermal units back online. When Star City’s electrical grid came back to life everyone cheered.

“I’m afraid we’re not done here,” Jack warned Virgil Keyes, the power plant’s lead operator. “There’s still a lot of damage and we’re only running at 30% capacity. That’s barely enough to run the manufacturing sector! A lot of the city will have to remain in the dark until those other units get repaired.”

“But we can take it from here,” Virgil replied. “Now that manufacturing has power again Morgan can start making replacement parts for us. In another couple weeks we should have all the damage repaired. In the meantime we can use rolling blackouts to distribute power to the residential section. It won’t be pleasant but we’ll survive.”

At that point Jack’s wife walked into the floor of the power plant. She smiled when she saw Jack. “Looks like you’ve been busy!”

“Well, we got the power back on, at least,” Jack said wearily. “That’s a step in the right direction. How are things outside?”

“I’m afraid there’s a lot of damage. After Morgan rescued us we were able to dig Reynolds out of his apartment – it turns out he was trapped – and he put together some teams that did a high-level damage survey. A lot of things were destroyed. It’s going to take months to fix everything.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Jack asked.

Irene nodded. “We haven’t found any casualties so far but there are a lot of missing people. The search and rescue operation is still ongoing, though, so hopefully we’ll be able to locate everyone soon. There are a lot of injuries, though – broken bones, concussions, you name it. Doug has his hands full. He needs all the help he can get.”

Jack nodded. “Where’s the mayor?”

“He was found trapped in his office. By the way, he wants us to take the Behemoth out into space and find out what just happened. He’s hoping you can use its instruments to pinpoint the cause of the earthquake.”

Jack frowned. “I’m not sure that’s possible. We don’t have any seismic instruments on Myra. The earthquake was bad, but without instrumentation there’s no way to find out how bad or what the epicenter was. The Behemoth does have sensors but they were off at the time of the incident.”

“Still, you might be able to find something,” Irene argued. “And something is better than nothing. It’s worth a look, anyway.”

Jack and his wife made their way outside the colony to the surface of Myra. Jack was relieved to see that the canyon had suffered little damage. There were rock slides, but nothing had collapsed.

Jack and Irene got in their hovercar and Jack drove it to the spaceport. The unpaved road was strewn with boulders, so Jack used the car’s ground-effect hover ability to fly a good twenty feet off the ground. It took them ten minutes to reach the spaceport. They parked the car beside the Behemoth.

“It looks like she’s undamaged,” Irene said. “That’s a good sign.”

The couple entered the starship and walked up to the bridge. It took the giant ship a half-hour to warm up, engage its engines, lift off the planet, and enter into orbit. After they were in place Jack began scanning the surface. Over time a series of readings appeared on the ship’s forward viewscreen. At first there was nothing conclusive, but then the picture changed.

Jack gasped. “Do you see that?”

Irene nodded. “Just wait until the mayor sees it,” she said.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Jack replied.

* * * * * 

Early the next morning the Falcons presented their findings in the council’s debating chamber. The small room was packed. All of the colony’s top officials were there and every seat in the audience area was taken. Even more people were crowding around, standing wherever there was space. Jack had managed to get the city’s communication system back online and a live video of his report was being broadcast to the entire colony.

Using a projector, Jack displayed a series of photographs that he had taken from orbit. The images showed a titanic chasm that now scarred the planet’s surface – the aftermath of the earthquake they had experienced the day before. “That canyon is six hundred miles long and more than a hundred miles deep,” Jack replied. “If this planet were geologically active it would be deep enough to penetrate the crust. That’s how bad the earthquake actually was.”

“How far is it from the colony?” Reynolds asked.

“It’s on the opposite side of the planet,” Jack said. “All we felt were the outer edges of the quake itself, which was tremendously weakened by the time the shocks reached us. If the earthquake had struck any closer to the colony it would have completely destroyed it. We got really lucky. I can’t even begin to estimate what it would have measured on the Richter scale!”

“But earthquakes can’t happen on Myra!” the mayor protested. “You said it yourself – this world is geologically dead. What could possibly have caused an earthquake at all, much less one of that magnitude?”

“I have an answer for that,” Jack replied. He switched slides. “These are the readouts we obtained from sensors on board the Behemoth. As you can see, a serious spacial anomaly spontaneously formed that just happened to barely graze Myra. The anomaly only existed for a few seconds, but during its short life it warped local space – or, in this case, damaged the crust of our planet. This led to a titanic release of energy, which created the chasm that I showed you.”

Irene spoke up. “If the anomaly had appeared in the planet’s interior it might have torn the world in half. This whole situation could have ended very differently.”

“Is this likely to happen again?” Reynolds asked.

“Yes, it is,” Jack said. He moved to the next slide, which showed more numbers. “I was able to trace the anomaly to a local cluster of wormholes. From what I can tell they appear to be destabilizing the area. There is no reason to believe that this was a one-time event.”

“So what can we do about it?” Doug Garcia asked. “Is there any way to stop this? I mean, you’re Jack Falcon, after all. If anyone can fix this it’s you.”

“There is a possibility that we can stabilize the situation,” Jack said reluctantly. “I’ve drawn up plans for an invention that might solve the problem. However, I think it would be much safer to evacuate the planet. My invention is untested and may not work. I can’t offer any guarantees.”

“Nonsense!” the mayor replied. “Abandoning the colony is not an option. The whole reason we came out here was to colonize the stars, and that means overcoming any problems that outer space might throw our way. I’m not going to turn around and go home just because we’ve had a bad scare. Besides, the truth is that there’s no safe place in this whole star system, right?”

Jack nodded. “That’s correct. The other three planets in this star system are no safer than this one.”

“Evacuation still sounds like a good idea to me,” Doug said. “Couldn’t we at least evacuate until Jack fixes the problem and then come back?”

“We can’t evacuate,” the mayor said flatly. “All of these anomalies are messing up subspace and keeping Jack’s kronolator from working. Sure, we could round everyone up and load them into the Behemoth, but without a faster-than-light drive it would take a thousand years to get back to Earth. We are all trapped here until Jack fixes the problem.”

“Is that true?” Reynolds asked.

Jack nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it before, but yes, it’s true. That’s why the Liberty wasn’t able to land – its drive failed when it neared Epsilon Eridani.”

“So it looks like our lives are in your hands,” Doug replied. “We’re counting on you.”

Jack let out a deep breath. “Ok. Irene and I have a plan, but there’s a catch. In order to build my quantum singularity device I’m going to have to take the Behemoth into space and cannibalize its parts. She’s the only ship we have, and the singularity can’t be located anywhere near Myra.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” the mayor replied. “I don’t care what it takes and I don’t need to hear the details. We wouldn’t understand them anyway. Just go out and get it done. We don’t have a lot of time here, Falcon.”

“He’s right,” Doug replied. “We’re all behind you on this. If there’s anything we can do to help just let us know.”

A chill went through Jack as he scanned the room and saw the anxious look on everyone’s face. Even the mayor was too frightened to be hostile. They really are counting on me, he thought. The question is, do we have enough time to fix this problem, or will another wormhole strike before the singularity is operational?