Guardian Program Ch 18

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Guardian Program Ch 18

A novel by R.C.PeterGabriel, all rights reserved.

Even with the fuel stop we landed in Interlaken, Switzerland, in eleven hours forty-one minutes, minus the five hours for time changes, making it 07:14 Friday morning.

I was getting worried. I'd promised Toni, that I'd let her call me when she'd finished wrapping up the auction, so she could let me know how it went. I decided if I hadn't heard from her by the time we'd gotten to my rabbit hole, I'd call her anyway.

We rode the train to Breitlauenen Station and jumped into the Jeep that had been left for us a few hours earlier. Less than five minutes later, we pulled off the trail that was supposed to be a road. Because I was practically its only user, it was being lost back to nature, which was very okay with me. We turned into a drive that wasn't even navigable without a high clearance four-wheel drive.

Sam watched as the woods swallowed up any hint of the road behind us. She squeaked and spun back to the front when I hit a nasty bump, just in time to see our destination.

She gapped at the sheet metal building that seemed to be in such bad repair that it was only supported by the rock face behind it. I stopped momentarily waiting to see if she would comment when the phone rang. I answered it, using the Jeep's Bluetooth connection.

"Hey Mrs. Smith, I was getting worried. Is everything okay?"

"Hey yourself Mr. Smith. Yes, I'm fine. I've just been sitting here thinking."

"Isn't it almost midnight there? And you don't sound fine. Didn't the auction go well?"

Toni's voice perked up to its normal jovial tone. "Oh yes, very well. We raised, um ... Well you guess," she prompted.

I chuckled, "You know I can find out. It wouldn't be much of a guess. You tell me. How did you do?"

"Mr. Smith, that would be cheating, but since I know how much you hate being ignorant of anything, I'll tell you. Thanks to the online bidding, we raised two-hundred sixteen thousand dollars!"

"Toni, that's great! Congratulation. That's way over your goal."

"Yes, you're married to a fund-raising wiz. I'm happy with my first effort, but I will do two auctions next year. One public like this one, and one private, inviting specific well-to-dos. I think I could inspire higher bidding without them hiding behind anonymity.

"But, if I'm not mistaken you have news of your own. How did the launch go?" Her voice seemed to be slipping back into a distracted tone by the time she finished her question.

"Well Mrs. Smith, we now have three more fully functioning satellites in our fleet. I can go ahead and announce my big surprise at the end of October."

"So soon? That's wonderful Sweetheart! I'm happy for you!"

"Toni, you sound like something is bothering you. What happened?"

"Well, that's why I'm calling so late. I was wondering how to tell you. But I've realized I don't want to tell you over the phone. I'm fine and I would rather tell you face to face."

"Are you sure you're okay? I can come home right now if you want."

"No, really I'm fine. It can wait. Where are you by the way?"

"Sitting outside the 'Tardis'. I was about to go in and call you."

"You landed already? You made good time ... Robert, I ... I'm sorry I couldn't be what you needed me to be. I truly hope Sam can."

"Toni, what kind of talk is that? You know I'm all kinds of fucked up. No one could possibly be everything I need. You fill a huge need in me. Sam will probably fill a different one, but that doesn't mean I won't need something else later. I love you, Toni. Sam knows that and she knows I'm not trying to replace you.

"I'm going to turn around and head back to the airport.

I'll be home in the morning."

"No, Robert, you will not. I'm fine, I just have a lot on my mind. I miss you and can't wait to see you, but I want you to know that I truly want you completely happy. Stay in Switzerland, push Sam to her limits, and see if she can relieve some of your tension. You've been ... distracted. I could tell you've had something bothering you for a year now.

"I need you to be as stress-free as possible when you get home. So please stay as long as you need. I'll be here whenever you get here. I love you. Stay an extra week if you want. Just come home happy, not before.

"Now it's late, and I'm off to bed. I love you."

"I love you too, Toni. Are you sure?"

Positive Mr. Smith. Good night." She hung up before I could argue some more.

I looked over at Sam, who was looking at me with a guarded expression, waiting for me to determine the mood, but when I didn't say anything, she indicated the shed with a nod of her head and said. "Gee Robert, you take me to the classiest places."

I tried to stay deadpan saying, "Yes, but when the sun gets high enough and reflects off the rust just right, it's a beautiful place."

When Sam gave me an 'Um, what?' expression, I had to laugh.

"You called it the Tardis. Why?"

"Toni called it that when I first brought her here because it's bigger on the inside. I like to call it the 'Under Dark' myself."

I put the jeep back into drive and bounced us the last fifty meters. When we got to within twenty feet, a section of the front wall swung inward and upward allowing me to drive into the dark interior.

Sam grabbed both armrests when we immediately started nosing down the thirty-degree ramp. The ramp ended twenty-five meters below the surface in a large garage area, holding five other SUVs and room for three times that many more. We parked and I helped Sam down from the jeep, as two very large and well-armed men appeared in Bridge Security uniforms.

"Welcome back Sir. Miss Thornton," he added with a head nod. "Your quarters have been prepped, and I assure you, the facility is ready for inspection at your convenience."

"Thank you, Mr. Wang. We only have a few bags. I'll give Miss Thornton a tour before making our way to our quarters, so take your time getting our bags there."

With that, I took Sam's hand and led her to an elevator. I told her to hold on as I braced myself into a corner and pulled her against me.

We descended one hundred meters at close to freefall, then braked to a stop in the next five. If I hadn't been holding Sam, she would have been on the floor, which was the designed intent.

The car is small enough that only six adults could fit, and with the extreme deceleration, an invading force would have been disoriented and tangled as the doors snapped open the very second the car stopped.

Sam just grinned up at me, as we exited the car.

"I guess I'll have to take you sky diving sometime," I mused before she looked where we were going coming to a sudden stop.

The elevator opened into a ten-meter corridor with steel walls, ceiling, and floor, but what stopped her was the manned M134 minigun at the far end of the corridor.

I smiled and urged her forward to the middle of the hall.

"Yes, if you had been an intruder, you would have been met by six thousand armor-piercing rounds per minute. In actuality, it's a completely unnecessary redundancy left over from when I was building the place but the security personnel seem to feel better when they have a belt-fed weapon. I can't blame them, they are fun to shoot."

Once I gave the password, 'white rabbit', the elevator doors closed and a moment later the floor in front of us slid to the side revealing a set of stairs. On the landing at the bottom, was another elevator.

We entered and I pressed the bottom for the tenth floor. We descended fifteen-hundred meters, at a fast but non-stomach-dropping pace. When the door opened Sam gave a short gasp.

I led her out of the elevator onto what would have been an exterior walkway, had it not been for the fact that we were underground. The cavern we stood in was formed at some time millions of years in the past when the range was born. It was just over a kilometer across and two-hundred-fifty meters wide at our level. The distance between the granite walls expanded to almost five hundred meters at the base, seventy-five meters below us, and came together roughly in a peak one hundred meters above us.

Sam beat me to the rail and started gawking at the sites. "Wow! You built this?"

I laughed. "No, I designed the complex, the cavern was already here. Well, in truth, I only designed the layout, and my quarters, experts in their proper fields engineered the rest. Although, you'd be surprised how fast things can be built when you have enough money.

Anyway, you can see the ground level was smoothed into gentle hills. I left those spires for the aesthetics, and that one houses the church, but they also break up sound and keep echoing to a minimum. You'll be able to see them better from the 'ground' level.

"We have a soccer field there, with the running track around it. Exercise equipment, a pool, tennis and basketball courts, a café ... Actually, we could see the rest better from down there."

I led Sam back into the elevators, and exited on the 'ground' floor, then led her out to the middle of the cavern.

"It's almost like Central Park here, in a weird alien sort of way. The plants seem healthy which means the light is ultra-violet.

"Are those apartments?" She asked while pointing to the wall we had entered from.

"Yes, with very few exceptions, every window on the south wall belongs to apartments, as are a few on the north side. There are just over four hundred units. Most are single bedroom, but a quarter are two and a handful are four."

"How many people live here?"

"Currently, this cavern houses, eight-hundred-nine people, including thirty-two children. Nine of whom were born right here in this cavern. There are two other caverns down that tunnel, over in the northwest corner, near those offices. All total we have fourteen-hundred thirty-one personnel and family members.

"Those offices house, administration, and a few chem labs. Electronics take up all the space in that long wall to the west there. High up in the northwest corner, near the electronics wall is our quarters.

"I haven't had to use the east wall for much, the school, a grocery, theater, a restaurant and bar, bowling alley, game room, and a doctor for emergencies. Unfortunately, we keep having to rotate the doctors out to keep them in practice, because they don't have much to do here. They're mostly here for the occasional birth."

I started leading Sam toward the side of the cavern housing the electronics as I continued to explain. "The next cavern over, houses our power, water, and waste treatment plants, the engineering offices, and the maintenance facilities. The cavern beyond houses our livestock, fish hatchery, and main security areas.

"Security is down there because that's where the main entrance is. The one we came through is only one of the escape tunnels. I use it because it's closest to the airport. The only problem is the train doesn't run in the winter.

"Regrettably, we don't currently have enough space to grow crops, so we have to import grains from the outside. Several side tunnels have mushroom crops, used mostly to offset the cost of grain but we aren't quite self-sufficient yet. We're currently drilling towards a cavern about twice this size, forty kilometers west of the central cavern, and are planning to grow crops there."

"Don't the Swiss have a problem with you moving into all of their caverns?"

"No, they don't know we're here. These aren't living caves. We had to drill into them.

"What I found interesting is two of the three caverns, actually had positive air pressure in them from when Africa pushed its way under Europe."

Sam was looking more and more impressed as we entered the main doors to the electronics labs. "You seem to be using a lot of power. How are you generating so much?"

I smiled at her curiosity. "Almost half comes from hydroelectric generators. We draw water from springs that are actually above us, so we capture the energy from that. We also generate some from the steam created by the computer's waste heat. The rest we get from two decommissioned Delta IV Class nuclear submarines that I traded from the Russians. In actuality, they got an incredible deal because they didn't need the reactors, and were going to disassemble them anyway. The only risk they took was selling them on perspective future profits from my phone traffic."

Sam stopped dead and grabbed my arm. I turned to find her gawking at me. "Are you telling me that there are two nuclear reactors in this cavern? Decommissioned nuclear reactors?"

I chuckled. "No, I'm telling you that in the next cavern over, which is eight point six kilometers down the tunnel I pointed out, is a hardened structure, that has had an Eight-hundred-meter shaft drilled under it. And in separate rooms at the bottom of that shaft, are two perfectly good re-conditioned nuclear reactors that are manned twenty-four-seven by eight rotating teams of very competent personnel.

"I'm also saying that should something happen, the shaft would be filled with a half-mile of concrete, and one way or the other there are about nine kilometers of solid granite between us and them. You have nothing to worry about." I leaned down and gave her a light kiss. "Promise."

Looking reassured, Sam nodded and started walking again. "Where are we going?"

"I have someone I want you to meet," I admitted with a hint of pride, then led her to another bank of elevators.

"The two levels below, and the first three levels above us, along this whole wall, are dedicated to processing, coupled with other facilities around the world, I process at over fifteen hundred zettaFLOPS. However, my systems don't run on conventional computer architecture so the equivalency doesn't exactly match up. Anyway, I should have over seventy thousand with my next upgrade.

"The next floor, which is where we're headed, is the main processing level and the three floors above the processing levels are for research and development."

The door opened and we stepped out into a corridor with glass walls on both sides. The techs on the right side were in street clothes and the ones on the left were all in clean room garb. I led Sam past a few dozen techs, most of whom waved when they saw me. I acknowledged them in return but continued on.

Finally, we came to a steel door that opened for me as we approached. Once inside, I picked up two pairs of goggles and handed one to Sam, then stepped up to the glass wall in front of us. We put them on and could instantly see the thousands of multi-colored lasers leading from a large horseshoe computer to row after row of servers. The floor was clear and many of the lasers were aimed at levels below us.

As Sam mouthed the word 'Wow!' a disembodied voice startled her "Welcome, Samantha Thornton."

Sam started looking around for who had spoken to her, so I took her arm and pointed to the computer in front of us. "Sam, this is Hal," I bragged with more than a bit of fatherly pride.

"Um ... Hello Hal," Sam hesitantly said with a shrug and a confused look on her face.

I laughed. "Hal, we only came by so that I could show Samantha your shining face."

"Sir, I have no components designated as 'face' that you can show to Samantha Thornton. Please clarify your statement."

"Disregard Hal, I was showing you to Samantha. What do you think, Sam?"

She looked worried, but said, "I'm sorry Robert, I know Hal is important to you and he is really cool for data research, and he certainly is shiny, with all the lasers and all, but I have no clue what I'm looking at."

I laughed, while Sam looked somewhat embarrassed, so we took off the goggles.

"Okay, how about heading to our quarters? You can explore them for a few minutes, then I want a long conversation with Julie."

Sam's breathing hitched when I mentioned Julie. "Are you going to spank her?" she asked while playing with her fingers.

"So eager Miss Thornton, if I didn't know better I would say that you didn't like Julie."

She blushed for a moment while still looking at her fingers, then a slight grin started, and she bit her lip trying to squelch it. That didn't work and a grin burst across her face as she looked up at me.

"I like Julie just fine, Sir," she stated as I took her hand and started out of the complex. "I owe her a great deal. If it wasn't for her, I never would have met you."

We made our way northward along the walk on the sixth floor. After passing through a security door we took one of my private elevators to the top.

Exiting we found ourselves on the lawn of a half-acre 'rooftop park'. Although rooftop is a misnomer because my quarters sit on a rock shelf in the northern wall. We walked past the 'endless' pool and workout area, to an open archway leading into my living room.

Once 'inside' Sam briefly looked out the two-story glass wall, with a view overlooking the cavern. "One-way glass?" she asked.

"No, actually it's a view screen, the cavern view is the default setting. You can watch anything you want on it." I informed her while smiling to myself because I knew what was coming.

"Hal?" she asked, with a grin on her face. When I nodded, she spun back to the wall. "Hal, display the view from Maui, north shore." The wall suddenly displayed a dark seascape with eight-foot waves breaking just offshore. Sam pouted for a split second realizing it was the middle of the night there.

I interupted her next attempt with, "Hal, display the easterly view from the Estuarium, Mobile, Alabama, elevation plus one-hundred feet, beginning yesterday 06:45 increase volume." The scene shifted to the sun rising over Bon Secour Bay, complete with the sounds of waves, seagulls, buoys, and boat horns.

Sam's delight was evident as she ran to me, threw her arms around my waist, and hugged me as hard as she could. "You are truly an amazing man. Thank you. We went there so many times when I was a child."

"As you've told me, and you're welcome. Now, take your bag, and go look around. Your room is the one in the middle upstairs, put your things away there.

"You can look anywhere you want, but behind the double doors in the tiled hall. The layout is similar to my house in Poison just reversed. The double doors correspond to my front door there.

"When you finish exploring, I'll be in my office, which is off the foyer to the right."

I had left my door slightly ajar, so I only knew Sam had entered because she knocked lightly. I turned around and waved her in.

"I'll call you back in a few hours." I hung up my cell, then noticed it was Julie standing at my door and not Sam.

"Julie, so glad you could join me," I greeted her motioning to a chair in front of my desk.

She proceeded to the chair but was looking around the office as she did. My wall-o-business caught her eye the most, but since it was going to be at her back she had to turn away.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Sir. Sam explained that you wished to have a conversation with me." Julie stated, role-playing her part perfectly.

Since she showed up as Julie I knew she wanted to play, and so did I. "Nothing that can't wait, and yes, Sam was correct, I do wish to have a very in-depth conversation."

Julie didn't seem to have missed the implication, because she blushed but tried to act professional. "Mr. Smith, was that Tagalog you were speaking?"

"No, Japanese. I also speak Guan and Yue Chinese, as well as Portuguese, Hindi, Malay, and Italian, as well as those we've previously discussed, Miss Thornton."

She started counting on her fingers for a moment.

"You speak thirteen languages?" she asked with both eyebrows raised and her voice a full octave above normal.

"That depends on whether or not you consider Guan and Yue Chinese as languages or dialects. But to answer your question, no. I'm only fluent in thirteen languages and while considered a native speaker in several of the ones mentioned, I speak many more," I clarified in a normal tone but switched to stern with an expression of slight anger.