Chapter 55

Later that afternoon.

Time: Friday, March 1, 2019 3:52 PM

Mark was working alone in his home library at Blue Mall. For the next half hour, the sand park just outside his window on his right would be lit with late afternoon sun and shadows. It was a peaceful setting and a great contrast to the turbulent worry inside his mind.

The library elevator opened silently on his left and a very somber looking Frida walk towards him. Mark offered eye contact and was surprised when Frida declined. She walked instead behind him and hugged his neck and shoulders. Mark reached up and touched the hand that was against his throat. “Meeting still on for 4:45?”

“Uh huh.”

“Emily’s team back yet?”

“No, not yet, another half hour maybe. She promised they’d make the meeting.”

Mark took his wife’s hand and felt it trembling. He put the back of her hand to his lips and softly kissed it. “You okay?” The unspoken question was why she declined to link.

Frida leaned low and kissed the back of his head just above his neck. “When I was a girl, my parents taught me never to dance on other people’s graves, and that’s what my soul is doing right now. I’m too ashamed to let you see my mind like this.”

“Uh ... What?”

“I see you haven’t noticed yet. The census counter dropped again about twenty minutes ago. That’s the third drop of two today. It’s now reading 009:085.”

Frida’s point hit Mark immediately. Earlier before 2 PM, the census counter had dropped from 009:089 to 009:087, and combined with the morning drop, there was a dreadful fear that Jada’s entire team had somehow been killed. But now less than two hours later, another two women had died. Frida’s hope now was that all these deaths had nothing to do with Jada’s team.

“Strange how the deaths are occurring in pairs,” Mark said quietly.

“Yes. We were discussing that, a whole bunch of several theories. Maybe pairs of people are trying and failing to do something that is mortally dangerous. What could their motivation be? Maybe people are committing suicide in pairs. Maybe...” Frida was silent for a moment and then sighed heavily. “But the end result is I’m feeling much more hopeful about Jada now ... So, what are you doing here? Working on something interesting?”

Mark nodded. “I think so. It seems the interface has made a small incremental boost to my access authority. I found a high-level file system for long-term resource planning. I have access to the top folder.”

“Oh wow! That sounds useful!”

“Yeah, or at least it would be if I had access to any of the sub-folders. There are hundreds of them, and they all have very interesting titles. Unfortunately I’m locked out of everything I’ve tried so far.”

“But you can see are the folder categories?”

“Pretty much, but I still have about another hour to go before I test everything.”

“Ah. Then I should let you get back to work.” Another kiss on his neck. “Have hope for Jada. I think she might be okay.”

Mark nodded and the then stood up and turned. He shared a long goodbye hug with Frida before getting back to work.

An hour later...

Fatima looked at the clock in the Hilton Complex and wondered whether she should send someone to the Blue Mall library for Mark. The meeting was supposed to start three minutes ago, and everyone else was present. It was unusual for Mark to be late for a meeting, even by a few minutes. She thought perhaps she would send Toshi or Frida.

Fatima looked around at the people around her and sighed. Besides herself, there were nineteen people in the room, Charles and eighteen women. The group around her would have been considered a small, intimate party by Earth’s old standards, but now, at least according to the census counter, it represented over twenty percent of the human species. It was a very sobering thought.

The elevator that served the Hilton was just outside their meeting room, and Fatima heard Mark call out excitedly from the hallway. A few seconds later he walked hurriedly into the room. “Hi,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but it was worth it!”

Fatima tilted her head and decided to let Mark go ahead with the presentation he obviously wanted to make. A moment later he began passing out the first of two sets of papers. “I know everybody knows this, but here’s a list of everyone in our society.”

The paper Mark handed out showed familiar information that was sorted by ID Tag and grouped by original Party affiliation. The interface would tell anybody who asked what their ID number was.

Party #5: 22, 23, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 39, 40, 41, 45, 51, 54

Party #4: 117 (Aggie)

Party #1: 131 (Fatima)

Party #5: 140, 141, 142, 143 (Toshi, Akiko, Kiyoko, Ann)

Party #1: 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149 (Madison, Ashley, Hannah, Mark, Emily, Jada)

Mark continued, “Sorry for not including the names for the first group. I was running out of time. Charles and Tom are 51 and 54. Anyway, I have some really great news! There is a Section-0 executive officer position with the title of Director of Long Range Planning. The position is vacant of course, but the interface allowed me to access an HR folder under the director’s portfolio. The system is set up to show what people might qualify for various jobs within a number of different time periods.”

Paige looked up from the list that Mark had handed out. “So you can tell me which jobs I might qualify for?”

Mark shook his head. “No, not yet. I was locked out of almost everything. But not quite everything! There was one high-level file the system let me see. It was extremely valuable! It’s the master list of all eligible ID Tags that may eventually be assigned jobs. The list contains ninety-four ID Tags, and every one of our ID Tags is on that list!”

Paige saw the reason for Mark’s joy immediately. “So Jada’s team is alive! All of them!”

Mark grinned. “Yep! And it gets even better. Take a look at this.” He passed around a second set of papers with the following information:

Active ID Tags grouped by Party (for everyone outside of our society)

Party #1: 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 16 (six women) - Red Mall

Party #5: 24, 26, 27, 49, 50, 53 (five men, one woman) - Black Mall

Party #6: 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71 (eight people) -Yellow Mall

Party #2: 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 82 to 86, 90 (eleven people) - White Mall

Party #3: 91 to 94, 96 to 108 (seventeen people) - Blue Mall

Party #1: 129, 133, 138, 139 (four people) - Red Mall

Party #4: 109 to 116, 118 to 126 (seventeen women) - Green Mall

Mark stared at the paper with the other people and said quietly, “We know who the six people at Black Mall are. I also remembered that Emily’s original log recorded Fatima’s description of the order in which the different groups of men and women left the tunnel for each party. I combined the two sets of data and managed to produce this breakout.”

Aggie shivered and gave out a soft cry. “So they all survived! All my people from Party #4 are still alive!”

Mark nodded. “Green Mall is the only Party that hasn’t suffered casualties, and Blue Mall has lost only one. Besides Party #5, all the other losses are concentrated in Party’s One, Two and Six. Of the eighteen nurses that made the first trip to Party #1, only six have survived. And the people that rode the elevator with Fatima...”

Fatima looked grim. “There were a dozen people with me when I made the journey, eight women and four men.”

“I remember,” said Emily. “Many of them were my friends. They took off shortly before the drug really started to hit us.” Emily stared at the second list for a while and then looked at Mark with teary sadness in her eyes. “You’re saying that only four are still alive?”

He nodded and then looked around the table. “We’ve talked about this before. Two separate groups of people left Party #1. A first group of twenty-one left shortly after 3 PM, and then another group of ten left after we had dinner. I remember coming out the kitchen with Jada and watching them leave.” Mark was silent for a moment and then added, “If we only knew to warn them...”

Fatima looked up from her handout. “I think I see what you’re suggesting. You’re thinking that we should concentrate our searches in Red and Yellow Malls.”

Mark nodded. “That’s where people are dying. The Party from White Mall also has multiple losses, but we already have a search team for that.” He paused and sighed. “I know it’s a difficult choice. I’m suggesting we abandon our searches in the Green and Blue Mall areas, at least for a while. I’m assuming that those two groups are relatively safe. And I know, we really don’t know that for sure.”

Alison appeared deep in thought. She said quietly, “It was Yellow Mall that had the nine couples. Perhaps ... No wait, that doesn’t work.”

Whitney looked at her. “Alison?”

“I was wondering if the couples were trapped in a hopeless situation and committing suicide in pairs, in couples. But the last two pairs to ... to die have been pairs of women. And Mark, there’s only one man left in all of the groups you’ve labeled “people”, right? My gosh Mark. For the nine couples that were in Party #6, at least eight of their men have died. What could kill off the men so selectively?”

Fatima was thinking furiously about all the decisions that were before them. She cleared her throat and said, “We need to get back to the discussion on how to help Jada’s team. But I don’t want to trap more people in the underworld, at least not until we can send in a rescue team with new Leophone. Lynn, Akiko, how about it?”

Lynn looked at Akiko and then turned to her leader. “Bottom line is, we don’t know. Maybe tomorrow.”

Fatima persisted. “Give me a probability for success.”

Lynn and Akiko locked eyes for a long ten seconds. Then they turned to Fatima and said simultaneously, “Sixty percent,” and then Lynn added, “And perhaps eighty percent within two days. But if we haven’t got it done by then, we’ll need to do a major re-think in how we’re approaching this. If it’s not done in two days, it might take weeks.”

Fatima nodded. “Do your best. That’s all anybody can ask. If I remember correctly, we already have all of the long kayaks from Herman’s?”

Paige nodded and spoke up. “That’s right. But there’s another sporting goods store less than a kilometer from here. They have six recreational kayaks called Little Auks. They’re much smaller boats, just over three meters in length, but I think they would still be serviceable for day trips.”

Fatima nodded and let the conversation go on. The group discussed the pros and cons of an underworld rescue mission for another half hour before Fatima made her decision. “Tomorrow we should port four of the Little Auks to the bottom of the stairwell. I want to have a rescue mission set to leave by Sunday if we can equip them with a new Leophone. Charles, I want a small expedition, two to four people I think. I’m not quite sure how many yet, and I want the expedition to be armed. You and Mark are our last two people familiar with the pistols, and with Mark’s growing authority with the interface, I consider him too valuable to send. Will you volunteer to lead the expedition?”

Charles’ answer was immediate. “Absolutely.”

“Thank you.” Fatima looked around the room. “Tomorrow will be the day for moving the kayaks and planning our new search missions. We will focus our missions in the underworld and in the Red and Yellow surface areas. Team leaders, please meet after we close to discuss your options. We’ll start moving the boats early tomorrow morning.”

Charles felt thrilled that Fatima was trusting him to lead the new team, and he offered a suggestion. “Why not port the boats to the top of the stairwell tonight, or at least to the White Mall library?”

Fatima nodded. “Yes, good idea. Everybody, we’ll meet back here again at 4 PM tomorrow.” Fatima received many nods back and she closed the meeting shortly afterwards with a brief prayer. The team leaders then met with Charles to discuss the new division of labor.