The Nature of Change

An Offer He Can't Refuse (Terry 01)

Whenever your life goes to shit, it always seems to start with either a phone call or an explosion.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

"Hello?" I ask, picking my phone off the faded mahogany table.

"This is Admiral Aquilino, for Terence Alfred Lawrence."

"This is he," I acknowledge in shock. I immediately curse at myself internally; I completely forgot to address him in a way befitting our rank difference. The commander of USPACFLT - the Pacific Ocean division of the US Navy - wanting to speak specifically to me? I'd met him a few times before at naval functions, but never like this. Never off duty, never colloquially... Something must be seriously amiss.

"I have a proposal for you. You might want to sit down for this one," Aquilino continues.

I purposefully move towards the couch, taking a relaxed seat. "Okay. What's the spiel?"

He pauses. "What I'm about to tell you is classified information."

My eyes widen. Classified info? Do I have the clearance for this?

The admiral anticipates my question. "I can assure you I'm not breaking clearance with this. You've been given the required clearance, if in relative bureaucratic silence. However, I need to hear it from your mouth as a final confirmation that you won't tell anyone else. Not even your family, at least not until... well, until what I need you to do is done."

I sit there in solemn silence, pondering what this could possibly be about. Some sort of secret weapons program that I'm being asked to head? A test ship for one of those newfangled railguns, and I'm supposed to command it - but then why me? I can't help but ask; whatever he needs, why me? I never signed up to do anything special; I've never had any special talents that anybody could really want, and I've sort of accepted that any job I can do, somebody else can do better. I've had to hide that now that I've got a commission - the USS Paul Ignatius, DDG-117 - but unless I can stay with my current responsibilities I haven't planned to go much further. So why does the Navy want me?

"Okay."

The tiny shred of silence held the unspoken understanding that I would regret it if I told anyone else what Aquilino was about to tell me. We both knew. There was no need to say it aloud.

"The Canadian government is constructing a bunker one and a half kilometers underground, near the Athabasca Basin. The bunker is designed to serve as a cultural and academic archive, so that humanity can rebuild if we, ah, go extinct."

I immediately wonder why Aquilino is talking about the Canadian government. Sure, Canada and the US are definitely close allies, but neither of us is directly involved in their internal affairs. Why is he telling me about something going on there that sounds covert?

More importantly, how does he know?

If it's from the Intel guys, why are they investigating our allies? Could it be... a threat from Canada?

Then I facepalm. I've been concerned about the wrong thing.

It's not to scare us. It's to protect from something that's scaring them.

"Point is, we need people to manage the bunker. It's much like a ship - you have to survive on just what you have in the bunker. It'll be a little different, because you can mine the walls for metals and the like, and you have to keep carbon dioxide out of the air. But the concept is the same - a closed environment."

"Hm. I'll run it by the family," I say.

"Well, see, that's the thing."

And now we get into "what's scaring them."