Chapter 7
Selection
Back on Earth the first round of the selection process had gone well; a billion names had been selected from every discipline one could imagine. It had been decided that not only would the selection include scientists, engineers, architect, builders, designers and other practical skills, it would also include great names in the arts, music and every discipline in that realm. In the end just over three-quarters of a billion people ended up, with their families on what became the 'A' list, this left some extra places for the random secondary selection process. By 'R-Day' minus three-hundred and sixty-five; fully thirty days before the deadline, the list was complete. The volunteers who had elected to stay started their year of princely living and the final list of names was announced. Across the Earth communications centres informed the selected people of their success. Many places on Earth were still not totally connected with modern technology, so in some areas of Africa, South America and Asia, teams were sent out to remote areas to inform people. Unbelievably some had not even heard of the plight of the Earth, let alone the alien ship, even though many had seen the object in the night sky.
One team sent out to the Congo encountered a village where the news had not gotten through, the head-man, Comba Mura, refused to accept the news and almost chased the team out of the village. Fortunately a cousin who had accompanied the team managed to show the man several local newspapers that contained the news, and he relented. Comba and the village were shown pictures of the craft and the area where they would be resettled, the team did their very best to sell the idea of a better life, but they were on an up-hill struggle. The village had a meeting of the elders and they made the decision that they would, “take their chances.” Many Buddhists across central Asia had also refused on religious grounds. Many thousands, for one reason or another were refusing their places on the ship, so multiple supplementary lists needed to be produced.
In London however, there were riots when the programmed sub-dermal implants started at 'R' minus two-hundred and fifty. The implant centres were attacked and broken into several times and the British army were called to stand guard over the centres, both in London and in the main centres. Mobile centres had to be abandoned as these were being hijacked en-route and in two cases the driver and one team member were killed. In Liverpool someone decided that a private army should combat the regular army and brought in tanks and armour-cars from a military museum to stop the centre and supplement their own choices. It seems that this was led by various criminal elements controlling gangs from the Toxteth, Norris Green, and Croxteth areas of the city. Fortunately little munitions were available for the tanks and the army easily overcame the situation. All those arrested were removed from the list, if their names were already on it. Manchester decreed that it would make its own selections and proceeded to choose the City Council as it primary choice with their families. The central government dissolved all city Metropolitan Councils as a result, saying they were no longer needed. At the U.S. Navy’s submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland and the Royal Navy's Clyde Submarine Base a huge mob tried to take over the base and hold the submarines to ransom for places. Both the US and the UK Navy told the mob they could have the submarines, and the mob left. In Portsmouth and Plymouth in the south of the UK more demonstrations took place and the Royal Navy was called in to protect the cities and the navy bases.
Similar incidents were taking place across the world, NASA's bases across the US was of particular interest to those not on the 'B' list. It was still assumed by humanity that the population was to be lifted to the alien ship by Shuttles and rockets, indeed some would be, the information about the transporters had been kept under wraps. So NASA was the obvious target, unbeknownst to the population in general, most NASA sites had been deserted in readiness for the expected backlash. Only Houston, the Cape and Edwards, were operating, and those sites were heavily guarded, more than any other sites in the history of mankind. The larger US cities all had their continual demonstrations, New York, Chicago, LA, east to west. Tokyo, saw some of the worst riots, claiming that the west was being favoured in the places on the ship, and India threatened to launch its own craft to take their selected people to 'The Return'. Following that the Indian army started planning a takeover of the rescue ship; this was foiled just six hours before take-off by a detachment of US Navy Seals.
Nevertheless, by 'R' minus two-hundred days the sub-dermal implant scheme was almost complete and one point nine-five billion people were ready to be moved. It was estimated that the uplift could be completed in just twenty seven days, using the transporters alone, others would still be lifted by the previously arranges means. With all systems on green for go, twenty-four hours a day, it would give the uplift an extra day. Strangely, things started to quiet down after the one-hundred and fifty day point and Earth's population seemed to accept its fate. Those who had faith prayed, of those the ones that had places prayed for the ones that hadn't places and vice-versa. The suicide rate was horrendous, thousands every day and churches were filled with bodies, thought to be the best place for them. With forty days to go before up-lift start, everything seemed ready to go and the final programming of the transporters was under way by Julia French who was now the ‘Transporter Director’ and resident expert. Every code for the implants was fed into an add-on computer, which had been tested a hundred times, nothing was left to chance, the implant codes, known as SDC's, would both up-lift the people and forward them on to their designated homes automatically. The down-time between up-lifts was just one point seven seconds, and would be monitored by a team trained by Julia, each pod could be stopped the instant a glitch appeared.
Finally 'R' minus sixty arrived and at midday, according to the meridian in Greenwich England, the up-lift started, but within minutes it was discovered that things were not going according to their very finely laid out plans. As the first people appeared in the transporters cubicles, the readouts were just wrong, family seventy-two had no SDIs no information appeared on the monitoring screens. Some did have the correct codes, but it seemed that they were in a minority, those were then forwarded to areas that had not been designated for them. Sure, farming families, it was found later, were assigned to agricultural areas, but the powerful computers were not following their programming. The up-lift was immediately halted, just four minutes in. Julia and her team set to examining the programming code and the interfaces to the alien system, after six hours they could find nothing to account for the error. Ten tests worked just fine and the self checking system was confirming all was well. Julia felt that she was being blamed for the errors and attempted to put things right by reversing the transporters and downloading the people who had been lifted in error.
Each time the transporters were instructed to redeposit the families back at their point of origin the system blocked the action with was growl and closed down. At eight that evening President Bose got to hear about the issues and personally made contact with Julia. “Professor French, I just wanted to assure you that no one here is blaming you for these errors, we are dealing with alien technology here Professor, and we just need to be thankful that we have been able to discover so much about the ship.”
“Thank you Mister President, but that is little consolation to those people who are expecting to have a life-saving place on this ship. May I suggest Sir that we use the various conventional vehicles we are using to return the non-codes to Earth and transport the codes we miss up here.”
“That sounds like a possible solution Professor, however I am not totally happy with dumping those who are up-lifted by mistake, back on Earth, it's just not fair on them. Do we have spare capacity?”
“Some, about point zero-five billion.” Julia informed Bose.
“Not enough, Professor, I guess we had better try your solution, go ahead,” ordered the President.
An hour later the first non-code family was on its way back to western Belgium, by six the next morning all of the non-codes had been removed from the ship. Almost immediately the up-lift began again with the same results, the Belgian family were once more transported back to the ship and one group of non-codes on their way back to Earth were seized by the transporters and returned to the ship. An hour later, after working all day and all night, the hard-headed Julia was in tears. Blake arrived at just after nine and went to the temporary monitoring cabin, pushing his way through the crowds that were gathered around the line of transporters.
“How are things Julia, I hear we have some enormous problems,” Blake asked.
“Problems?” spat Julia, “is understating what's going on by the wide Atlantic, I just give up, the ship obviously has its own agenda.”
“Yes, I got that, no matter what we do, it switches back,” mused Blake, “I certainly don't understand how or why.”
“Honestly Blake there is nothing I can do here, I may as well just go back to Harvard.”
“Professor French, Julia; we need someone to monitor all this and you are the only one of the team who is up to the job.”
“Sure, but I am not holding my breath that I will be on this ship when it leaves, I have the feeling that it's just putting up with me,” said Julia almost in tears again.
“That's just silly Julia, this is a machine, and it doesn't have feelings.”
“Yea, an alien machine that we know almost nothing about, for instance do we know where the central computer core is?”
“Good morning Mister President,” said Blake, “I am sorry to report that nothing we are doing is making any difference to the way this ship is up-lifting people.”
“I have been thinking,” said Bose, “yes, Presidents do think now and again,” he laughed, “this ship seems like it has some agenda of its own, it was obviously sent here to do a job.”
“Agreed,” said Blake.
“What if . . .” started the President thoughtfully, “the ship has been pre-programmed with all the prerequisites that are needed to establish a civilisation, and maybe that's from experience; I don't know, I'm just exploring.”
“You make a real good point Sir, I have to admit that I started to think in that direction last night,” agreed Blake.
“So,” continued President Bose, “I am making an executive decision, I got Prime Minister Eric Johnson out of bed this morning and we agreed to just go along with the ship's selection and let's see what happens. Can you please implement that for me Blake?”
“Yes, of course Sir, I don't honestly think we have any alternative.”
“We sure don't Blake, but would you ask Julia to monitor the skills, background of the people the ship chooses, as far as she can, I know we are dealing with billions.”
“Will do Sir, I think she will be glad to have something to do, she's feeling' pretty useless just now.”
The ship's computers, or whatever ran the ship continued to make its selections and slowly the internal world of 'The Return' filled up with life. Agricultural equipment was up-lifted through the large transporter, as well as thousands upon thousands of other machines. Works of art and literature arrived in everything from cardboard boxes to huge wooden crates and work started in earnest. The farms started to be planted, mobile dairies started to produce milk, and butter and fishermen started to fish the various lakes. Domestic animals roamed the grasslands, and the zoo started to fill with every species that hunters could find and transport. Above all there seemed to be a peaceful calm over this mini-world, and that was the one thing that impressed Blake most. He put that down to their situation and how they were in the hands of an unknown alien civilisation and heading to an unknown land, somewhere out there in the vast blackness of the universe.
One day, twenty-eight of the scheduled uplift the transporters stopped working. They were in the middle of a team meeting when one of Julia's team reported in.
“Should I go look see,” Julia asked.
“Not much point, I guess,” said Blake, “by this time we must have learned that the ship will do what the ship will not do.” Julia regained her seat as Blake continued, “as I was saying, we have a departure date, and as we are aware the ship has its own idea and possible timetable, so we must be prepared for a departure at any time, so I have discussed this with President Bose and PM Johnson, we agree that in three days time we will seal the ship and start preparing for departure.”
“I think you're right Blake,” ventured Josh, “however I would suggest . . .” Josh’s words were interrupted by the now familiar hum produced by the transporters, and the image of Julia wavered and a senior crew member, dissolved into nothingness.
“Hell!” shouted Blake; the others just stared into the space where the two team members had once been, “Julia said this may happen, she said that she thought the ship was merely tolerating her.”
“I don't suppose there is any point in lifting her,” said Josh.
“I'll go and try,” said Jo, who rose and left the cabin.
“I just don't understand this, if I were asked to make a list, Julia would be right at the top,” said Josh.
“We seem to be in the hands of these aliens,” said Ed, “just a matter of sitting back and enjoying the ride, isn't it.”
“I don't like not being in control,” stated Josh and little too angrily. Just then there was a knock on the door, which opened immediately and one of the matter transfer team came in.
“Is there a problem Nicky,” asked Blake.
“Well there might be sir, just now, we lost three of our team,” she said, “and I have a message from Deputy Director Douglas Martins, he said that we just lost Conrad Delph.”
“Thanks Nicky,” said Blake, “I wonder how many more we're going to loose?”
Blake returned to his office in the administration building and started reviewing some schematics that Ed had drawn up for him, supposedly for the transporter controls, but little made any sense. He was deep in thought when there was a knock on the door, or what passed for a door here in this wonderland, “There are a couple of people here asking to see you Boss,” said his assistant.
“Is it urgent,” asked Blake, “only I have a job trying to sort this out.”
“I think they may think it urgent, they were found wandering in the French zone and asking for you,” said the P.A.
“Stop pretending you're busy Dad and let us in,” a familiar voice echoed from outside, that Blake recognised immediately.
“Don,” shouted Blake, and jumped up from the table that served as a desk, “and you too Paul, am I relieved to see you two.” Blake almost ran to the boys and hugged them both.
“It seems we brought some more passengers with us,” said Paul as the 'girls' waved from outside the door. “We all sort-a popped out of those Star trek transporters at the same time, we weren't even together at the time.”
“You are all so welcome, we have been so worried about you, that is just what I was working on here in fact, a way to select you, but the ship seems to have its own ideas on who it wants on the ship. Your mother will be so relieved, thank God!”
“We tried to get in touch with you a couple of weeks ago, just after you last rang us, our universities passed everyone out,” said Donald.
“So you're a qualified doctor?” asked their Dad.
“Well only to GP level, not what I wanted, as you know, I had another ten years to do,” continued Don.
“And I have another engineer for my team, Paul,” said Blake laughing, “we can never have too many on a ship of this size. Come on guys, let’s tell your Mom, she'll be ecstatic, and she can find the 'girls' somewhere close by to live.”
For the next three days people came and went, both by choice or by the ship's decision, the last pieces of equipment came aboard and communities started to organise themselves, neighbour getting to know neighbour. The hangars were full of spacecraft of all kinds, from the old Atlantis through rockets to experimental craft and on the designated day the hangar doors were closed as the last ships switched of their motors. At other parts the transporters were locked off and the equipment transporter sealed up. Other than the ship making its own adjustments, every body that were on board now were there for the journey and those who were on Earth awaited their fate, sixty days in the future. It was agreed that from one week after the ship pulled away, there would be no more communication between the ship and Earth. It was unanimous that communications after that would be too upsetting for everyone. The following thirty days were busy, the core team were needed throughout the little world, speaking to new communities and advising on one matter or another. There were so many questions from the new population that their heads started to spin. At last everything that could be readied was ready for departure and the last week was one where little was done. The ship was ready, communities were forming and the selection process was over.