The Precipice: The Chronicles of Altor, page 4
Quinn believed that this perceived value would be held onto by some, but that most of those people would likely be dead in the next five or six years. Many of them would die with their horde of gold and gems buried somewhere safe, guarding it until the very end, like Smaug himself.
Quinn preferred the safety and hope of Altor, and he was thrilled at the possibility of building a new society.
The chopper landed several miles away from the construction site, close to what was lovingly referred to as Dust City. To build an entire city—especially one as advanced and large as Altor—required a city’s worth of workers. Before they could seriously undertake the construction of the most advanced and unconventional city in history, they had to build a conventional town to house the workers.
Dust City was intended to be disposable. It was meant to be in place for six or seven years, then could be dismantled or sold off piece by piece. In the interim, it consisted of temporary shelters often associated with natural disasters, primarily pole or manufactured buildings that could be dropped and moved as needed.
With so many people working on a project of this size, accidents were inevitable. Where some worksites had signs that read It’s been XXX days since our last accident, there were no such signs in Altor or Dust City. If there were, it would have rarely budged past 0 days, which wouldn’t be great for morale.
Because the nearest town was so small, Quinn had a ten-bed hospital built and staffed. It had state of the art equipment, so the people of that nearest town would sometimes show up, hoping to get better care than they could get at their little rural hospital.
In some ways, that small town—Destry, Nevada—became almost like an offshoot of Dust City. Everyone who lived there and wanted to work on-site at Dust City or to build Altor was given a job at higher wages than anything else in the area paid. They were encouraged to stay and, unless they were grossly incompetent and a danger to others, they were never fired.
Thus, both Altor and Dust City were very popular in Destry.
Before Quinn arrived, the town was in the same shape as many small towns in remote areas. There had been a downtown area that was mostly abandoned and a few corporate-owned stores and fast-food franchises just off the highway.
That all changed once Quinn started Altor. It was slightly ironic to him that it was money that allowed him to attempt to escape what he saw as the day of reckoning for money and financial inequity.
That was the way of the world.
Or, at least, the way of the world up until that point in time.
Quinn, Marshall, and Jim Cummins stepped out of the helicopter, heads ducked low and hands shielding their eyes from the inevitable flying dust of the surrounding desert.
A new SUV that was black but looked yellow and gray because of the dust, waited a few feet away from the spot where the helicopter touched down.
“Take us inside,” Quinn said to the driver, who shifted into gear and drove toward the dome.
The closer they got, the bigger it looked, looming over their heads.
There was a theory that the reason so many small woodland creatures got run over on the highway was because there was nothing in their experience that moved at sixty miles an hour. That made them doubt their own senses and think they could scurry across the road.
The sheer size of the dome had a similar effect on everyone who saw it for the first time. It was too big, so people tended to shrink it down to a size that was manageable in their minds.
As they approached the only remaining opening in the dome, it was similar. From a distance, because it was so small in comparison to the rest of the structure, it looked like it might fit the SUV, but not much more. However, the closer they got, the more the perspective changed until it became obvious that the opening was actually a hundred yards across, with numerous roads running in and out of it.
Before the construction of Altor had begun, the biggest building in the world had been Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas. That building would have fit inside Altor many times over. There was simply nothing in the human experience to give it the proper perspective.
Getting the materials necessary to build this behemoth dome was among the biggest challenges Quinn had faced. He and Marshall had done a cost analysis as to which would be cheaper—improving the roads leading to the area or using cargo planes and helicopters. The huge planes required a runway of their own, but building that turned out to be cheaper than building the equivalent of the Dalton Highway that led from Fairbanks, Alaska to Prudhoe Bay for the Alaskan Pipeline.
As there had been since the pandemic of 2020, there were product and material shortages, but Quinn empowered Marshall to bid whatever was necessary so they had what they needed on hand.
When the SUV entered the dome, the road dropped perilously, giving everyone in the vehicle the feeling of going over the big drop on a roller coaster. The construction had started by digging two hundred feet down. Once construction was completed, it would appear that the floor of the dome was level with the ground outside it. What wouldn’t be seen was the hydraulics and support that went below. Like an iceberg in the Atlantic, a surprising amount of Altor would be beneath the surface.
Quinn knew he couldn’t think of everything, but having Janus meant that he didn’t have to. The AI spit out lists, plans, and blueprints. Quinn only had to implement them.
Marshall handed earplugs and hardhats to everyone before they stepped outside the vehicle. The noise of construction was a shriek that rivaled the sound of a jumbo jet taking off, except it was continuous, twenty-four hours per day.
There had been some challenges in building the main elevator shaft that ran from the bottom level of the pit up to the very top of the dome. Not just a challenge in getting it built, but a challenge in making sure it hit Quinn’s exacting standards for wear. His goal was to have the outer dome withstand whatever nature could throw at it for ten thousand years. In the interior, his goal was to have the mechanical systems function for at least a thousand years. He didn’t want to build this ark just for himself but for whatever civilization would come to life inside the dome.
When Quinn had a hard time sleeping, which was most nights, he soothed himself by imagining a civilization many thousands of years in the future, still using Altor for shelter from the elements.
Because conversation was so difficult in the open areas of the dome, Quinn had small, semi-soundproof areas installed in various locations around the project using a new technology one of his companies had developed called anti-sound curtains.
He called the engineer in charge of the elevator into one of those conference rooms.
The man was red-faced and wore a gray work shirt, gray pants, and a pristine hardhat. The nametag on his shirt identified him as Jenkins.
“What you’re asking is impossible,” Jenkins said. “The standards of operation you’re expecting us to hit are beyond human capability. I’ll finish the project for you to the highest standards I can achieve, but you’ll have to be happy with that.”
Quinn nodded and dismissed the man. The shrill sound of drilling blasted into the small room as Jenkins stepped through the anti-sound curtains, momentarily allowing noise to enter. Once he was outside and quiet was restored, Quinn opened his phone and dashed a message to Anna Chan.
Send a deposit for six months’ wages to Harold Jenkins, the elevator Chief Engineer.
He snapped his phone shut and turned to Marshall. “Tell Jenkins his services are no longer needed.”
“It’s late in the game to do something like that,” Marshall answered. “We’ll never get someone else of his caliber.”
Quinn had his hand on the door handle, ready to go inspect another section. He stopped and turned back to Marshall.
“That man has heard he is the best for too long. He’s come to believe that whatever he thinks is correct has to be the only answer, just because he thinks it. He’s already made a deal with himself not to hit the specs we’ve set for the project, so what are the chances that he would do so?”
“No chance,” Marshall said.
“Exactly. So, go find someone younger, someone who is good, but is still open to the possibility that he might not know everything already. Someone who looks at the impossible specs we set for him and says, Maybe I can do that. Got it?”
“Got it,” Marshall answered. “Sometimes I think I’m too much like Jenkins. When someone says something is impossible, I believe them.”
“That’s your personality. Mine is to say the impossible just takes a little more overtime.”
Quinn stepped through the curtain and out into the blast of noise, Marshall trailing behind him.
Chapter Six
The Fifteen
2033
Without a push from all the right people in all the right places, the Rage Wars might have burned out, like a fire that ran out of fuel.
The shadowy figures who wanted to watch the world burn chose that precise moment to make their move.
They had been planning the events that unfolded for so long that the initial plan had been launched before their great-grandfathers were born. They had waited patiently for the inevitable arrival of a flashpoint.
The first meeting of what came to be known as The Fifteen had taken place in a private room at the back of an upscale bar in Chicago in 1893, during the famous and influential World’s Fair. Many modern marvels were introduced there—the elevator, the first sound recording, and the Ferris wheel. It brought forward-thinking men of means from all over America and the globe.
Three of those men—all white, wealthy, and unhappy with the world as it was evolving—came to sit at the same table. They had fine whiskey in front of them. It was the golden age of Cuban cigars and each man puffed contentedly on one.
The conversation began innocuously, with talk of the state of the world. As it became more obvious that the three of them were simpatico in their world views, the direction of the evening took a decided turn.
After three hours of increasingly heated conversation, they had agreed to meet again.
Privacy and security were simpler matters at the end of the nineteenth century. The first electronic listening device was still a decade away.
Nonetheless, those three men leaned heavily into their concerns that they might be overheard. So much so that it would be easy to label them as paranoid.
That paranoia served them well during the embryonic stages of their enterprise. As the world evolved and security became more difficult, they increased the steps they took to avoid detection accordingly.
An unbiased observer might have thought it was impossible for a group with intentions of changing the world to remain hidden from the light for a hundred and forty years, especially as new people joined.
The membership in the group fluctuated over the decades. At its peak in the 1960s, there were more than thirty members. It was a group with a single-minded focus: to change the world.
One particular man changed his perspective and no longer shared the goals of the rest of the group. That created a challenging situation for the others. If he spoke out, the secrets of more than seventy years could be gone in an instant.
He swore that he would never reveal anything. Swore it on his life.
Several weeks later, a beautiful brunette thirty-five years his junior became smitten with him. Pillow talk led to some of the smallest of those secrets leaking out as the man sought to impress the young woman.
He had a cardiovascular event the next day. The coroner confirmed the cause and did not even notice the tiny pin prick wound in the man’s side.
Some of the seats in the group were inherited. If the seat holder believed their offspring to be worthy and able to carry on the tradition, that was what happened. Others went to their natural grave with their secrets hidden in the unknowable part of their hearts.
And so it went, through the decades, and then past the century mark, until the world arrived at 2033.
The members of the group now thought of it as The Fifteen, though there would never be a group logo, stationery, or business cards.
These people did not meet in subterranean lairs like Bond villains plotting the end of the world.
They met in a private club to plot the end of the world. A club so exclusive that there was no mention of it anywhere. So exclusive that there was no name for it, and no registration allowed or required. Like an exclusive restaurant that had no prices on the menu, if you had to ask, you didn’t qualify.
These gatherings were in purposefully innocuous settings that looked plain but were high on security. People were required to leave their phones at home, along with any other listening devices like high-tech watches or glasses that normally tracked their every movement. They arrived in old cars without microchips and met in rooms with a grounded fine mesh copper enclosure—a Faraday cage—built into the walls.
Before anyone spoke of anything other than unimportant topics like sports or the stock market, each person was separately wanded for bugs or other active microelectronic devices by a security team as they entered the room. The security team immediately left the room after everyone was cleared.
In 2033, it was as close to anonymous as a group of powerful people could get.
There were no electronics at all inside the meeting room, so the news footage of the incident in Seattle was not playing on a continuous loop as might be expected. There was no need. They had all watched it dozens of times. It was the signal—the match—they had been waiting for.
They had planned for this day for so long—allocating monetary and human resources to continually be ready—that the only thing remaining was to vote to go forward.
There were fifteen people in the room, twelve men and three women.
There was no official chairperson, but a tall, thin man with distinguished silver hair sat at the head of the table. He was dressed in an understated blue suit and red tie.
His name was Alastair Struan. Everyone else in the room knew that, but they would never use his name.
The fourteen others around the table deferred to him, so he spoke first.
“There is only one order of business,” Struan said. “Do we authorize the burn?” He looked around the table, making eye contact with each person.
Every person knew the heavy stakes behind that question. They all knew the personal risk they faced. They all had their reasons for their presence there. For some, it was revenge. For others, an idealistic desire to see the world reset. For a small few with glittering eyes, it was the embrace of chaos, and the opportunities that might result.
“Are there any questions?” Struan didn’t bother with any niceties, such as “Once we make this decision, we can never go back to the way things are.” Any person who might need a reminder or warning like that had been weeded out of the group much earlier.
These were serious people, with serious ends in mind. Everyone and everything else in the organization was part of a cell and knew nothing beyond that cell. Only these fifteen people knew everything.
They sat with their fingers on the figurative red button, ready to light the apocalypse.
Only silence greeted the question. “Very well,” Struan said. He picked up a small velvet bag. In front of each person were two marbles, one white, one black. “If you believe now is the time, place the black marble in the bag. If you think there is a more optimal time ahead, place the white marble in.”
He reached down and plucked the black marble up from its spot in front of him and dropped it in the bag. “So you know where I stand.”
One by one, the people around the table did the same. They accepted the bag, picked up the black marble, and placed it inside. When the bag had made its way around the entirety of the table, there were fifteen white marbles still gleaming in the mellow light.
“So be it,” Struan said. “I will light the fire.”
One by one, the people stood, left the room and returned to their own homes. Each had plans of their own to put into action.
Chapter Seven
Money for Nothing
Jerry Burns nursed his second beer of the night. He was sitting at a table full of men who looked just like him, in a tavern that looked like every other roadside bar in America. The four other men sitting around the table were his friends, or as close to friends as he had these days.
He had been born in Baltimore and worked up and down the Eastern Seaboard all his life. He’d followed a typical life’s path, getting married at twenty-five, with kids at age twenty-seven and twenty-nine, and divorced at thirty-five.
Now, at forty-four, he had left any trace of home he’d ever known behind and moved west. He’d found work that paid well. Well enough, that is, to keep him current on his child support payments. It was not work he found particularly fulfilling. Not what Gen Z would call a dream job.
Jerry was so tired and burned out, he couldn’t have found the willpower to come up with a dream job. That idea had fled him decades before.
The overhead speaker blared a bro-country song about tailgates and girls who looked good in shorts. That was a fantasy Jerry could still work up to, but it took him a while. His beer was flat, but his wallet was even more so, and his debit card wouldn’t be good on any charge over twenty dollars, so he took a tiny sip and set it back down.
Behind them, a loud crack reverberated—a solid break at one of the pool tables.
Across the table, Bob Lambert, who was the Supervisor at his job site, reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Bob had fifteen or twenty years on Jerry and showed it by squinting at his phone through bleary eyes for a few seconds. As if he just remembered he was half-blind, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. He stared at his phone for long seconds.
The other men at the table were oblivious, talking about a bet they had made on the Thursday Night Football game, but Jerry was different. He was a keen observer of other people. While everyone else watched the game, he watched Bob. From the reaction he saw, he guessed that Bob had just received some very bad news. A car crash, a dying relative. Something big enough to cause the color to drain from his face.
