Chapter 31

Earth time: 4:48:24 PM Wednesday, September 24, 2024 (EST)

Aina time: 2:31:12 AM day 254 of 1425

"One minute to go," said Ura as she hugged her daughter to keep her warm. "You realize, don't you, that nothing's going to happen now. We'll still have to wait one more year before we see daddy."

"Oh no," said Sarah. She looked up at her mom, lit by the light of two lanterns in the pitch black of the cloudy night. The temperature was about 40F, and a raw cold wind was blowing. "I'm hoping I see daddy now!"

Ura smiled at her daughter's optimism. "Well, we'll know in a few seconds." She spoke into her cell phone. "Council, this is Ura with the first contact team, testing the comm link."

"This is the council Ura," answered her wife Nalani calmly. "We hear you fine. We're standing by..."

Flashback to the spring of 1418...

Leon gave one last smile to Kiana and lay down on the skateboard. He dimly noticed the sunrise was just a few seconds from touching the mountaintop as he nodded to Nalani behind him that he was going to start down. He began to paddle slowly into the tunnel, and reached to turn on the flashlight mounted on the skateboard. A touch of dawn sunlight seemed burst into the spiral around him, and suddenly everything winked out of existence...

"What the fuck?!" he thought wildly. He had a burst of a thought that Nalani had thrown a tarp over the tunnel entrance behind him, but then his mind dismissed that as insane. He braked the skateboard as his fingers finally found the flashlight. He turned it on just as he heard a child start screaming. It sounded like a young girl, and the sound touched the core of his soul. One part of his mind was sure he had never heard the voice before, and yet it seemed so hauntingly familiar...

Leon quickly backed out from the tunnel feet first and stood up. Ura threw her arms around him in a fierce hug, and the girl was at his waist, holding him and sobbing and calling out his name. "My gosh, is she called me her father?!" thought Leon. "Ura!" he shouted. "What the hell is going on? Ura! What happened to your face?! Where's Nalani?! Where the hell's the sun?!" Ura began to sob in his arms. "Ura! You're not pregnant!!!"

Meanwhile, a hundred meters down the spiral tunnel...

"I'm telling you Hiapo, it's open! Just like old times!" Lois blinked at the open path before her and felt like pinching herself. She was dimly aware of the adrenaline flooding her body.

"So, a year early!" Hiapo called from the blue ring. "Well, it's nothing we haven't planned for. We go with Plan-A. Lois, start heading up. Tal will be right behind you."

"Okay!" Lois started to paddle rapidly up the tunnel, trailing the comm link wire behind her. Her heart was bursting with happiness. She was going home at last.

Tal caught up with Lois at the top of Blue Spirit, and after brief hellos and introductions began the hike down the mountain, led by people with lanterns and a young girl who refused to stop singing. They were all in the assembly hall at the transfer station by 3:20 AM. Sunrise was still about 40 minutes away. Tal and Lois couldn't resist munching on the large assortment of early spring vegetables laid out as snacks on a side table. Mayoni was there and she looked on nodding thoughtfully. The meeting was just about to come to order.

"Leon!" whispered Lois. "It's so nice to see you! You look fabulous! Really!"

"Lois, I have so much to tell you! I've just met my daughter! I think they're about to start. I'll explain later. I barely understand it myself..."

Mark started the recording machine. "This is Mark as moderator of the congress, calling the meeting to order. Before everything else, Tal, Leon, Lois, welcome home! Kalea and Hiapo, can you hear me?"

"We hear you fine Mark," came Kalea's voice on the speakerphone. "Hiapo and I will be extremely busy with the Ring until its closing time comes. Lois and Tal will explain. Are all the porters we need coming?"

"Yes," answered Mark. "We have the entire village being shuttled here, just about as fast as we can. Reminds me of the Battle of the Gorge! Tal mentioned you have a limestone cave about a quarter mile from the Blue Spirit tunnel that you have filled with stuff..."

"Yes," answered Kalea. "We need to get as much of the equipment as possible to Aina. A bucket-brigade set-up is the only way it'll work. Get everybody you can."

"Okay." Mark looked around the council for a moment. "I propose we limit this meeting to a few minutes, and then help with the transfer. Lois, Tal, we have so much to tell you, about our progress with Jumpstart, about our understanding of the plague, about our new government, about Athens and Sparta. It can all wait. Just tell us what we need to be doing now."

Lois stood up and faced the council. "Thanks Mark. It's the same for us. We have so much to tell you. The plague appears unstoppable so far on Earth. The very youngest are now freshmen in high school. All the primary schools are shut down. Earth has found the cause of the plague! It was triggered by a massive solar flare in early December, 2009. Earth doesn't know about the Aina tie-in though. The plague did originate from here. We'll explain later."

Tal spoke up. "There's been huge progress in understanding the ring. The current opening is at the end of position ten of an eleven part cycle, pivoting on the one-year interval at position six. It all started on December 6, 2009. The path opened at 2:43:27 PM that day, Cider Junction time, just as the first shock wave of a massive solar flare was hitting the Earth. The following path interval between openings was a little less than 9 days, and after that a little less than 18 days. It was at the opening at the start of position three that you saw the play Annie with your family Mark, at the beginning of January, 2010."

Lois spoke. "Kalea and Hiapo thought the five openings above one year would be at 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13-year intervals. But the path opened a year early. I guess they'll have some rethinking to do on that one. But we're still go for Plan A. I'll explain. Kalea's model of the Path is three slip bubbles, arranged in series. The core bubble is centered around the blue ring, and extends about 12 meters in both directions, to the bottom of the vertical well, and including the first revolution of the spiral tunnel. There's another bubble in top, leading to the entrance at the top of the mountain on Aina, and a bubble at the bottom, exiting the cave system on Earth."

Lois took a deep breath. "We can't control the Path closure, at least not yet. But we think we can control which part of the bubble will close. We're going to try to switch the closure to the bottom bubble, leaving the top spiral open. After closure, we'll have long- term access to the core bubble from Aina, not from Earth."

"There's a huge amount of equipment on Earth now," Tal said, "that we need to get over to this side. Our hope is that someday we can develop full control of the ring. It'll take years, and massive amounts of power, perhaps more than a hundred megawatts. Hiapo and Kalea are now furiously decoding echo shadows of the ring's interior, from parts that are only visible when the path is open. They think they can work even with the transfer going on. They should be the only two people in the tunnel at the closing. The procedure is not without risk... That's it! Let's get to work!"

Mark closed the meeting and the assembly began their trek to Earth.

The next day...

Earth time: 4:22:24 PM Thursday, September 25, 2024 (EST)

Aina time: 2:27:12 AM day 255 of 1425

"Time mark! Five minutes to closure." Kalea looked at the speakerphone by her side in the core tunnel. It was hanging on a cord inches from the blue ring. "Tal, tell me everybody is out of the spiral."

Tal answered from the top of the mountain. "Not yet Kalea. Another few minutes perhaps."

"Shit!"

Hiapo turned to his wife and hugged her. "They were needed to bring the last of the equipment into the core bubble. Everything is so vital, it was worth the risk." Kalea breathed deeply and nodded. The minutes passed in agonizing slowness.

At the top of the mountain, that last brigade of the transfer team was pouring out of the tunnel into the black of the night, the last member shouting "That's it!" to Tal.

Tal shouted into the speaker, "The spiral is clear! Time mark, 90 seconds..." Ignoring the warning from Kalea and Hiapo, Tal and Lois insisted on monitoring the mountain top by the light of their lanterns as the other porters ran down the sides. At the scheduled time for closing, they were both dismayed to see the path wink out of existence. But then it returned one second later, only to wink out again. The process repeated several times and accelerated, the flashes between open and closed becoming a fast flicker. Then the path opened to show a pool of molten lava, bright glowing yellow and red liquid rock that forced Tal and Lois to jump back and shield their faces from the intense blast of heat. By the time they looked back, the path was closed. The two observers remained standing in stunned silence.

A few minutes later, in the core bubble...

"Well, that didn't go very well, did it?"

Hiapo chuckled to his wife. "This might be a case where half a loaf is worse than none."

Kalea smiled back. "Indeed. We definitely managed to close the Earth side of the bubble. Probably the first time that's happened in six million years. The polarity of the core bubble is reversed too. Opening to Aina is the only possibility now."

"Yes, and we still have a huge number of things to try. Don't despair."

Kalea took a moment to kiss her husband. "I'll never despair Hiapo, with you by my side." By the light of their batteries, the pair got back to work, both wondering how long the oxygen in the bubble would last. "Hiapo, perhaps you should have jumped into the spiral before the closing. The air here would last me twice as long, and you would still have survived if I failed..."

"Oh, I don't think so. Take a look at monitor six..."

Kalea paused for a moment. "SHIT! Over 2000F?!"

"Yeah, and for more than two seconds. Liquid rock. Anybody in there would have been absolute toast."

"Shit..." muttered Kalea again, and the she and Hiapo fell silent.

"At least we have lots of battery power," said Hiapo after several minutes. "Kara ran a power cord, we're fully charged."

"Yep. That's a plus."

"And we won't run out of oxygen," said Hiapo after several more minutes. "It's the CO2 build-up that would be fatal."

"Yeah."

"I remember reading some numbers about human respiration rates..."

"Ah, my dear husband! I knew I married you for some clever reason! What do you know?"

"A resting adult will produce about 450 liters of CO2 per day, much more if exercising."

"Hmm..." thought Kalea. "I estimate the volume of this well at a little less than 90 cubic meters, plus some air in the piece of the spiral we still have, minus all the volume of the equipment. How about we assume we raise the CO2 level 1% per day?"

"That's probably a very good estimate, assuming we don't move around much."

"What's the toxic level for CO2?"

"Four percent is considered dangerous, at five percent we'll probably see obvious physical effects, flushed skin, heart stress, stuff like that..." Hiapo worked with a monitor for a moment and then went on. "The CO2 will bind to our hemoglobin. There won't be enough left for oxygen transport. Higher than six percent, we'll become disoriented, then pass out..."

"Well," said Kalea, "I guess the conclusion is obvious. Let's get out of here within four days..."

"Not a bad idea..."

Ten hours later...

Hiapo whispered, "Is it my imagination, or is it getting a bit stuffy in here?"

"Ha!" laughed Kalea. "Shut up and eat your lunch!"

Hiapo munched another of the super-spinach leaves. "It was so thoughtful of Mayoni to drop these off for us. These leaves are so tasty! A heart of pure kindness, that girl..."

"Not a girl, Hiapo. You're probably still thinking of her when she was in her marriage class. She told me she has two children of her own now. How does it feel to be a great uncle? Lynnea was born in the spring, at the end of 1420, and Thomas was a leap-day baby, at the end of 1424..."

"Ah, I thought my niece's front looked particularly attractive!"