Chapter 95

Time:?

It was definitely not a job for the faint hearted, Jessica thought. It was difficult even to estimate how long she had been doing this, edging her way down pitch black corridors in absolute silence, on guard against a single touch from Ricardo. The slightest contact would almost certainly result in her death, and potentially the collision was always just an instant away. No, not a job for the faint hearted. She tried not to sweat. The smell of her body would be another clue for Ricardo to zoom in on.

She had passed the first triangular room and was now down the next corridor, pressing lightly with her hand against the door leading to the octagonal room. It was the room from where she had escaped from Ricardo. And in the darkness, it was also the ideal spot for him to wait for her to return. What should she do?

And how long had she been doing this? So difficult to tell, but Jessica guessed at least a half hour since the lights went out. She had been practicing her slow walking in deadly earnest and it had taken her that long to get here. And now the great decision was before her. Did she really want to enter the next room?

What choice did she have? It all her time down on this level with Ricardo, they never found any indication of water. And Ricardo had their entrance locked. Jessica did the cold calculation and could see no other way to survive other than to check if Ricardo had unlocked the hatch at the entrance pentagon.

Why would Ricardo ever let her free? But down here it was certain death by dehydration. Jessica decided to risk it. Perhaps Ricardo had unlocked the entrance and Jessica she would find a chance to run by him and escape. Jessica worked to maintain her silence. That last thought sounded so pathetic, but her throat already felt dry. Well, maybe the servos would let her out. A possibility, wasn’t it, and thus better than certain death. In utter silence, she slowly opened the door and entered.

An hour later.

Jessica could not believe what her hand was feeling. The hatch out of the museum maze was unlocked! Why was Ricardo letting her go?! This must be a trap!

“If it is a trap,” she thought ruefully, “it’s infinitely well baited. I need water!” How long had it been since the lights went out? Jessica had glanced at her watch just before entering the drawer. The time was around 10:40 AM, and she thought it might be a little after noontime now. Jessica had make great progress after transiting the octagonal room where she had escaped from Ricardo. Walking rapidly with her hand gliding along the wall for guidance, she walked back more than two kilometers along the map she had memorized in her head, every corridor, every door count at every junction, Jessica was quite proud of her ability to remember it all. She always did have an excellent memory, and it had certainly come in handy now.

There! She was standing in the room above the entrance to the museum maze. Now what? The room was in the deep interior of the first floor. “Escape! Escape!” her mind was screaming. “Do you think you’re done?! NO! Move or die! Move or die, girl! Don’t you dare think you’re done!”

Was there a way out of the building complex? With the power out, there just might be, but it would be a journey. The spot where she was now was an enclosed area. To escape, Jessica would have to go up to the second floor and then later come back down. She whimpered slightly. This part of the journey was not well memorized. One blank wall where she expected a door and she would be completely disoriented.

“It’s not fair!” the child within her screamed. “Life never is,” the adult mind thought back in a consoling tone. “But life is also what you make of it.” Jessica moved silently in the utter darkness, the thoughts of her different personalities integrating and focusing on the correct path to the stairwell.

Later that evening.

Time: Friday, August 8, 2019 8 PM GHT

Fatima was sitting near the western end of the lounge at Green Mall. The room was adjacent to the northern vertex of the hexagonal home complex, and through the windows see could see the last half hour of orange sunlight touching the trees and the bi-level hexagonal walkway across the pine park. It was a peaceful scene, and Fatima took the moment to try to calm herself.

Forty people! Including herself, she was in a room with forty people! The experience felt so unusual Fatima would occasional shiver as she looked across the room. It was a poignant reminder of how social a creature a human was, and how far the species had fallen. This simple gathering represented almost half of all humanity.

Aggie had asked Amber and Whitney to come down to the library a while ago, but they were back up now and sitting on a sofa talking with Lucia. Over the past month, the three women had become very good friends. Fatima thought that was good. Amber and Whitney had always been honest members of their society and very diligent workers, but there was also an initial hard edge to their personalities. That edge had all but disappeared now.

And Whitney, she used to be a bit of a loner. But just this last month, finally, Fatima had noticed her pushing herself to be more gregarious, offering trust and friendship to the people around her. It was a joy to behold.

Fatima noticed Amber and Lucia linking. The two women were still for about ten objective seconds, and then their link abruptly ended. Lucia looked startled and Amber’s expression was much more difficult to read. What was up with that? Fatima was momentarily puzzled. Well, no matter. Amber and Whitney were consenting adults with rights of privacy within their links.

Fatima shrugged and turned her head and continued to scan the room. On a sofa nearby, Tom and Madison were holding hands and linking. And the smiles on their faces! The tenderness of the newly reunited lovers was plain for everyone to see. Carla was sitting happily on the other side of Tom, ready to interrupt his link with Madison once the meeting started.

Once the meeting started? Fatima blinked. The delay was now a half hour! What was keeping Mark, Emily, and Aggie so busy in the library down below? Aggie had come up around forty minutes ago and told Fatima she and Emily and Mark were onto something extremely important and they would show up when they could. After Aggie ran back into the elevator for the micro-jump to the library below, Fatima had decided to wait for them and just let people continue with their celebration of the latest prisoner escape from Wobanakik.

The power outage had lasted over two hours, coming to an abrupt end about fifteen seconds before 2:23 PM. All members followed the outage contingency plan and jumped to Green Mall. For many it was their first experience with having their jump command delayed by a busy use of their destination.

And within a few minutes of the end of the blackout, exciting news began to sweep the complex. Sandra’s team based at the entrance rooms at Wobanakik had managed to beat the clock and were now on the other side of the entrance elevator and beginning their long climb up the stairs. Tom asked for and received permission to program the six stair-cats to meet them on the next landing. The cats performed flawlessly and the lost group arrived at Green Mall just before 4 PM.

Sandra told of their experience with the blackout. Power had failed completely in Wobanakik, just as if someone had pulled the plug. Her team of six were by the boathouse, Madison and Parni and Sachi working the mobile observation balloons from the dock while Sandra kept an eye out for the local cats. Amy and Margaret were taking the opportunity for a quick swim. It was the first day of autumn in Wobanakik, and over the last week people had been noticing the days were slowly losing their summer warmth.

A few seconds after 12:13 PM, precisely at Wobanakik’s solar noon, the world suddenly became pitch dark. There was stunned silence for a moment, and then Amy and Margaret began calling for help. They swam to the call of Sandra’s voice for a while, and then Madison helped by cranking her generator light from her backpack. This was all so completely unexpected, but they had discussed the possibility of this before. Unfortunately they were down at the lake, several kilometers distant from the entrance rooms. And the hike back would have to be done in pitch blackness.

Would the power outage last that long? Sandra decided it was worth a try. The darkness was so eerie it was difficult to see it as an opportunity, but nevertheless her group hiked back home as quickly as they safely could, their observation balloons all but forgotten.

And they found their home as dark as the outdoors but accessible by leaning and pushing open the sliding doors. A quick walk through the rooms revealed the path to the great staircase was open. Shaking off the disbelief that their escape could be this easy, they grabbed emergency water bottles stored nearby and exited Wobanakik. After a short 25-meter walk across the bottom corridor, they began climbing the stairs. They were on their third ascending flight when the power returned.

It was a profound stroke of good fortune. Only seven people now remained trapped in Wobanakik; Jada, Charles, Thara, Lynn, Mandy, and the Abenaki cousins Abit and Oona. And as Fatima waited to start her evening meeting, Jada’s group was on the bridge and sharing in the conversation. Her group was back at Manhattan after a very harrowing day.

The blackout hit them while they were about ten kilometers downriver from home, investigating a promising lead from an observation balloon that turned out to be just an unusually shaped symmetric rock. And then the lights went out. They were hiking down a short but steep incline at the time, and Thara became so disoriented she tripped and skinned her knee before stopping. The wound wasn’t serious but their position certainly was. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the world. What the hell had happened?