The Nature of Change

We'll Be Back (Terry 05)

In what seems no time at all, milestones flash by. The plane lands. Bunker personnel escort everyone off the plane into bunks on the surface. We eat a final, solemn dinner, the last food any of us will have before descending into the bunker, our last meal under the light of the sun. And then we sleep.

The sun rises.

I go through the motions one last time. Roll out of bed, make bed, shower. Gerry and Bea are in another section of the facility, and despite the coursing humanity throughout the base, I am alone.

I trudge along with the other military personnel, hiding in the masses amidst the crewmen I knew before. Many of them banter, oblivious to the implications of their surroundings. Others are like traffic obstructions mixed with black holes, absorbed within the potential devastation that they are only just beginning to comprehend.

A familiar face pops out of the crowd as its owner looks backwards.

I straighten up slightly, craning my neck, trying to see. Who is it?

The face reappears, looking for me once again.

We lock eyes.

THAT'S where you are.

In the passenger decks, without a clear role among the crew, I haven't had much time to mingle. And from my own experience, captains tend to be needed on the bridge most of the time, so they rarely come down to the crew decks. Calgary isn't the most massive ship, but she's got some decent spacing between the rooms the crew opened up for passengers and the CIC. All of which means, I haven't managed to run into her captain.

Now I have.

I slip my way through the crowd, my smallish frame allowing me to deftly find the gaps, and I approach a fellow captain.

One quick squeeze, and Captain Anita Vauxhall stands before me.

She nods smartly, locking her stance. I do the same.

Awkward silence.

"At ease," we both say, in unison by coincidence. Both our stances slouch imperceptibly, yet the quiet remains, uncertain.

"Long time no see," Captain Vauxhall starts.

I nod.

I haven't spoken to her for four years, since the RIMPAC naval exercise in 2016.

"Yep."

We walk in silence, following the directions of the bunker personnel.

I'm not alone anymore.

They herd us down a set of stairs to an enormous gathering area, margins filled with crates and boxes. At the far end, a railing borders a gaping rectangular hole, with six great pulleys at the top. One of the pulleys hefts a great platform, supporting an orderly pile of massive shipping containers and assorted smaller crates, that covers about a quarter of the hole. Wheels on the platform slot into grooves in the wall at the far end, which looks to be made of monolithic concrete as opposed to the sheet metal and exposed frame of the rest of the boxlike room. Heavy machinery lifts the vast cuboid of a shipping container onto the platform as a forklift drops one last load of crates into the few remaining gaps. Deep mechanical rumbling emanates from the motor on one of the pulleys as it rotates ponderously. As I watch, the forklift pulls away, the last container clunks into place, and the platform begins to descend with a subtle electric whir.

The platform descends, an omen of things to come.

Anita cranes her neck to get a good look as a couple of tall Marines pass in front of her. "That's gotta go down all one point five klicks," she says.

"I thought it was one point seven?" I say, leaning over subtly.

"Uh... no? One point five," Anita asserts.

I think a bit, recalling the conversation with Aquilino. "Ah, dang, it is one point five," I correct myself.

"Point five four to be exact," she playfully points out, and I chuckle a little.

More people begin to stream in from two other doors, funnelled as we were into this box. Carefully placed lines of crates prevent the groups from physically mixing, while allowing us to engage in crosstalk. Everyone starts to look around expectantly.

"And to think we're all that's left..." Anita reflects, gazing out wistfully, the playful sparkle in her eye giving way to hints of an abyss of sorrow.

I nod amid the din of the machines.

"It hurts," she continues. "All the friends. They'll never know that I'm not coming back."

I turn to look at her, and she's staring off into space, eyes downward a bit, grasping at words to convey a pain that is too big for words.

She senses my gaze and looks up.

"Captain, I feel it too."

She nods.

She grasps my hand with her grip of steel, holding back tears, and slaps the back of my hand with her other hand. I nod, reciprocating the time-honored gesture. That act was our first conversation, the simple fundamental human exchange of "Hey, I exist, and so do you, and that's amazing," and until one of us graces the grave with our presence, that will be our way of saying what no words can say. We'll never be more than friends, we both know that, but good friends.

Captain to captain, I nod.

Captain to captain, Anita nods back.

We turn to listen to the bunker official brandishing a megaphone.

"May I have silence," the bunker official orders.

Chatter slows, but doesn't stop all together.

"Attention!" she bellows, and the last conversations swiftly cease. All that's left is the clunking and rumbling of vast machines.

Attention in her grasp, the official begins to use it. "My name is Kelly Tavson. I am among the leading council of the Mustard Seed Foundation, who organized and built this bunker in conjunction with many of the national governments you hail from. You'll be dealing with me and the rest of the leading council a lot in the days and weeks to come, laying the groundwork for how things are going to work for the foreseeable future."

"Today," Tavson continues, "is your last day above the surface of Earth, for at least the next few months, and probably longer." She pauses to let this sink in. "That said, we will not let this stop us. We all lost something to live down here, and by God we'll take this chance we've been given! Do not let down the people we left behind! We will build, we will scheme, we will engineer, and in the end we will return! We will break the seal of our quarantine, and take! Back! Earth!"

Tavson pumps her fist, and the room erupts into a chorus of cheers.

"So say we all!" someone exclaims.

Another voice echoes the call, and soon it's a chant.

We may be going underground for the foreseeable future... but we will return.

We'll be back.

====================================

The ride down into the bunker is filled with a new sense of vibrancy. Anita and I banter with two of Calgary's engineers, Kendrick and Skye, old familiars who I met on naval exercises with the Calgary back before I was a captain. We all notice the descent, the growing darkness around us as the lighting goes from the soothing warmth of sunlight to the harsh artificiality of bright LEDs along the walls.

It's a long trip down.

Anticipation builds.

At last, we step off. By sheer coincidence, I happen to be at the front as the doors open.

I step forward into the unknown of the bunker... and stop.

My eyes widen.

My jaw drops.