The 45th Parallel, page 4
“Want some lunch?” Dad called to me as I sat on the floor surrounded by pieces of pump and filter, placing myself to avoid the pool of oil dripping from the old pump. Did Dad never service this? It was filthy and full of grime.
“Sure.”
A plan formed in my head as I cursed and assessed the jumbled array of pieces before me. Grabbing a rag, I wiped the old pump clean and identified what could be reused. Focused on my goal, I made several trips to the workshop next door. It still held things I had left there from projects over the years. I was surprised no one had cleaned them out. Painstakingly, I modified the old pump. A shadow darkened the room, and I glanced up, startled. Dad had returned with two sandwiches and a plate of fruit, but he stood watching from the doorway. The smile lit up his face as he saw the improvements I had made.
“See, one pump can run both tanks much quieter.” I showed him as I reassembled it between bites, trying not to get grease on the bread. “It is more efficient now, double filtering the water. But you will need to maintain it. I can show you how.”
Dad was thrilled and kept offering me more food, knowing I had a healthy appetite, but rarely ate when working on a project. Somehow, I seemed to lose track of time and realized I was ravenous afterward. Sera had always teased me about being “in the zone” when I could see a solution in my head and was desperate to build it. After demonstrating the new infrastructure and realizing it was only early afternoon, I offered to help plant the new seedlings. Dad pointed out the new varieties and how they grew well, teaching me about companion planting. I knew some, but it had been years. Horticulture wasn’t my thing, but I just enjoyed his company. Dad had always been the easier parent, but I hadn’t realized how much I had missed him until now.
“I’ve missed this, Dad,” I said in a pause, my hands covered in dirt.
“I’ve missed you,” he responded, looking up. “I hoped you would come home, but I know there is an entire world out there for you to explore. You need to find your place, Caitlin. Don’t settle for second best, ever. In anything you do. Be it work or a life partner. Promise me you will never settle.”
“I won’t, Dad.”
“I know people tell you that you are special, and you are. But don’t ever feel that you should do something just to please others. You are your own person. Set your own goals and achieve them.”
“Thanks, Dad. That means a lot.” My stomach clenched. Does that mean you will defend me to Illy and Mum when you know what we have planned?
Chapter 6
“There it is.” As Sera scrolled through the long list of files, I pointed to the folder containing Callie’s notes, complete with diagrams and specifications. I had found it once before, by accident, when looking for something else. Sera flagged it and saved a copy to her hard drive. Peering over her shoulder, I noted the name of the file: “21st Birthday Planning.”
“That should work.” She grinned. “No one would think to open an obsolete file.”
“I’ll try to read them tomorrow,” I promised, wondering how many documents were there and how long it would take me. “Assuming Callie left a full description, and knowing her, she will have, I will just need to sketch it out, source the materials, and not get caught.”
“What is UH?” Sera muttered to herself, scrolling down the screen of hundreds of folders. We had managed to download all the top-secret files, so we were confident we could access what we needed. As we sat on the bed, I leaned beside her and looked at the screen resting on her legs as she scrolled, the screen flickering as long lists flew by.
“Uninhabitable?” I suggested.
“Possibly…” Sera didn’t sound convinced.
“I’ve never heard your mum speak of a place beginning with U, I don’t think. God, she never shuts up about all the communities she has visited, and I think she has been to them all.”
“She has,” Sera murmured, not focusing on what I was saying. “She has been Chief for nearly fifteen years and has visited all the communities several times. A lot more since you and I left. With all her children grown up, she can travel more.”
“Where did you find this reference?” I squinted my eyes as the files continued to roll past. Little yellow squares on a screen of white.
Sera clicked back a level and pointed. “Here. There are files marked UH1-6. I can get past them, but the sub-folders are all locked. I am fairly sure those were part of the original Clava/Auckland files. You know, the ones Mum inherited. Tadhg never spoke about them, did he?”
“Not really. I asked once what files they had inherited, and he said it was mostly establishment phase stuff. The geological testing of the different antipodal sites and such. Assessment criteria for each site, projected data on how many people each community could sustain. I couldn’t let on that I knew they existed and had seen them, so I was trying to ask hypothetically. Tadhg was quite open about it. He told me he had planned to read them but realized that the data was years old by the time he had been granted access, so he didn’t bother. There is also a hell of a lot, and it would have taken him years. Plus, the way he tells it, the few he read were as boring as hell.”
“There is a crazy amount of data here,” she murmured. “But that one is odd. A generic label, not descriptive like the others. See how most are labeled with the year and community or project? That one is vague. But yes, it is probably just some testing that means nothing thirty years on.”
“Not an exciting name. Besides, if it is uninhabitable, why do we care? What else is there?”
“Lots of documents in Tadhg’s personal files, all coded. They are all locked. See?” She pointed over her shoulder as she clicked on each file name. “Password protected” flashed onto the screen.
“Challenge accepted?” I teased. There was no file or password that Sera couldn’t hack with time and motivation.
Sera closed the laptop. “Not tonight. I’m tired. Planting alone was boring and exhausting, but I am glad it is done. Nothing is so urgent it can’t wait a few days.”
Over breakfast the following morning, Illy tasked us with another hundred plantings, this time along the coast.
“We need more protection there,” she ordered, drowned out by our groans.
“That isn’t fair!” Sera’s voice was high-pitched and wavering.
I tried to stay calm. “Mum, we have planted two thousand trees. You can’t keep adding to the punishment.”
“This isn’t punishment.” Her eyes twinkled. “This is your contribution to being part of a community. Do it well; do it once.”
A million times she repeated that mantra to us as children, and we knew without a doubt that nothing would get us out of this job. Glancing at Sera over the table, we knew the truth, and she knew we did. She was punishing us for being in the headquarters, knowing she wasn’t there, and being absent from our assigned job. Consequences for lying to her. Illyria was intelligent enough to know that she didn’t need to make a big deal of it. We knew we were in trouble. Again.
“I’ll help,” Dad offered, but Illy refused.
“It is too dangerous,” she responded curtly. “The wind gusts come in from the ocean unexpectedly. One burst of sea spray, and you could be infected. The girls must do this.”
“Fuck, I hate being special,” I muttered to Sera as we transported the seedlings and tools with one of the few electric cars adapted to take a trailer.
“It sucks beyond the telling of it,” Sera grumbled back.
“Makes you wonder what punishment she would have thought up if we weren’t immune.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Sera replied. “You’ve seen the creative punishments my mother has doled out over the years, and not just to us.”
Planting the next batch of hundred trees took longer than we expected. Traveling to the far west of the community with the trees, we found the ground was hard and rocky near the coast, and digging was tough, especially as we needed to bring fresh water from the greenzone to water them. The wind was relentless, and several times I thought we might be blown off the cliff near Carloway. Flopping into bed at night, exhausted, it was several days before we found the time to investigate the locked files again, and several frustrating hours passed as we battled encryptions.
“I need to get out of here,” I moaned as we returned from another long planting. “What are we going to do? Waste our lives digging? Besides, the boys here are even more boring than those on Newgrange.”
“Tonight, we can start making a list,” Sera agreed, the first time I had seen her smile in days. “I’m totally done with this bullshit.”
Fortunately for me, Callie’s instructions were detailed and contained copious diagrams of the deactivation of the Newgrange and Callanish portals, then the reactivation process, which included detailed cross-sections and associated lists of resources.
“I love you, Callie,” I murmured as I started jotting notes.
“Do you know what all of this stuff is?” Sera asked, wrinkling her nose.
“I do…” I muttered, concentrating on taking notes. “I just need to find some of it.”
“Good, get it done. My hands will never recover from this. I’d like to see our mothers try to marry us off when we have the wrinkly hands of old farmers.”
Chapter 7
“Why do you think your Mum never reactivated the antipodes?” I asked one night, alone in our room. “It has been a long time. All the communities get along. With the oxygen levels depleting, you would think it is time. Might put your sisters out of a job, though.”
“Security, Mum says. Personally, I think it is because she is a control freak. Why, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking, if we can reactivate them, I would like to see where our parents came from. Australia, I mean. We didn’t get to see much when we were there as kids. My cousin Sam still lives there. He would love to see us.”
“Australia? Are you sure?” Sera asked, unable to disguise the tremor in her voice. “After what happened to you?”
Lifting my chin and sniffing, I feigned indifference. Sera was one of a few people who knew that being bound, gagged, beaten, and nearly drowned on my seventh birthday had resulted in me screaming for years, remembering the world going black and knowing I would never see my family again. “That was years ago. Sorcha, Di, and their kids lived there for years after we left. Besides, I only want to see Melbourne and Sam. Meet his family. He will keep us safe.”
Sera’s shoulders dropped slightly. “You know he has a radio and will tell them where we are as soon as we arrive.”
“Yes, but that is weeks from now. Besides, what are they going to do? Come after us? By that point, I don’t care if they know where we are. They need to know we are safe. I am desperate to get out of here and keen to explore, but I don’t need to add more stress to our parents’ plate. They don’t need us disappearing into thin air. So we follow the first part of the original plan and head to August Island. The team there can let them know the same day that we arrived safely. Then we can take one of their vessels and travel to Australia. Mum says they have several. I’m sure they will let us use one.”
“True. At least our parents can’t do anything for three months. The portals are only open on the equinox and solstice. But we don’t want to reactivate the entire Nexus, just that one link. It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Nexus?”
“The network of portals. There were a lot of passages originally, remember? Our Mums knocked them all out of alignment when we were in Australia. But before that, Newgrange and Lewis deactivated their own for several years before reactivating them.”
“I knew that part,” I said, memory flickering. “I just need to follow Callie’s descriptions to determine how she did it. Just activate the one, I mean.”
“Here.” Sera double-clicked the file, pushed her laptop in front of me, stood, and stretched, groaning as her neck cracked. Our backs and arms ached from digging and planting. The sooner we escaped, the less likely Illy would allocate something else for us to do. She despised laziness, so she would undoubtedly have a list already drawn up, in her head if not on paper.
“So, how did they do it?” Sera asked sleepily.
“Magnets. All the sites are magnetically charged, so they pulled this one out of alignment.”
Sera rolled onto her elbow and looked at me over the screen. “Are you suggesting that we could push them back into alignment?”
“Not all of them. Just this one. Callie’s instructions are easy enough to follow.”
“You don’t think my mum will lose her absolute shit at us for doing this?”
“They both will, but we will be half a world away. If we pop off to August Island for the equinox next week, it will be at least twelve weeks before she can do anything. Plenty of time for them both to calm down. Besides, we are twenty-one. They can’t keep up locked up here like children forever. Our parents weren’t much older when they were sent to August and had adventures. Why shouldn’t we? I’m so sick of being babied all the time. We aren’t allowed to do anything, to live. We live here with our parents or are supervised by Callie and Tadhg. I want some freedom. I want an adventure.”
“There is nothing adventurous about being here,” Sera admitted. “I watched Mum over dinner. She is actively plotting the next project for us. Let’s do it.”
“You aren’t concerned it is dangerous?” I asked, building a picture in my head of how Callie and Tadhg built the copper structure and set the charge. Sera was brave, but I was the wild one. She had always been the voice of reason.
“Coward!” Sera fired back, not missing a beat.
“I am not a coward,” I hissed, sketching from the notes in the file, pausing just long enough to look her dead in the eyes. “Next week. We are on.”
Chapter 8
“Where are you off to?” Mum dragged her gaze dazedly away from her coffee, barely registering that we were dressed in our warmest clothes and carrying a backpack each. Mum was not a morning person and didn’t function well until at least her second coffee kicked in. Early morning was the only time you could deceive my mother. After caffeination, she was wicked sharp.
“Well, we finally have a day off from planting and repairing dome panels,” I griped, rolling my eyes with as much dramatic flair as I could muster. Our suspicions had been correct. Illy hadn’t stopped at the last batch of trees and added more to the list as soon as we had finished. This time she had tasked us to be the external team installing replacement dome panels for those noted as likely to breach.
“Sera and I thought we might go out to Dun Carloway. It has been years since we visited the broch.”
“Why?” Mum asked suspiciously. “You’ve never paid it any mind before.”
Recognizing this as the truth, and suspecting this must be her second coffee, I gave Mum the closest answer to fact that I could. “Engineering,” I admitted. “I was helping Dad the other day, and we were talking about insulation for the aquaponics tanks. There are two outer walls in the broch, and they are curved. It is quite warm between, so I want to see how they used the…”
“Fine,” she cut me off with a wave of her hand. Mum was no more interested in engineering than she was in horticulture. “Just be home before dark.”
“We will,” Sera and I chorused. I kissed Mum goodbye, praying she wouldn’t hate me too much for that lie.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sera asked nervously, glancing up at the darkening night sky. We were inside the dome, protected, but it was the most ominous-looking storm I had ever seen. The full moon was hidden behind rolling black clouds, the brilliantly glowing orb barely penetrating the thick, fluffy blanket. The standing stones of Callanish loomed before us, tall and foreboding. I had been here many times, but tonight they felt electrified, charged in a way I had never felt before.
“The weather makes no difference,” I assured her as I finished running the copper cabling, a long cylindrical pole reaching the top of the dome and down into the ancient tomb. “Besides, you were all over this yesterday. I couldn’t talk you out of it. My bigger concern is that this is the equinox and not the solstice, but Callie deactivated it on the equinox, didn’t she?”
“She did. But she did the Newgrange one on the solstice, so clearly both work.” Sera still sounded nervous, but I had worked my butt off all day knowing we had a deadline, and I was not giving in now. I never left a project unfinished.
“I’m so pleased she left such detailed instructions and diagrams.”
“Did you follow them?” Sera knew me well.
“Mostly. I just tweaked it a little,” I confessed.
“Tweaked?” Sera’s voice rose an octave.
“I know what I am doing, Sairs. Thank goodness they left all the copper here. I was dreading sourcing that. Are you all set with the charge?” Keeping Sera focused would be the only way to prevent her from freaking out.
“I’m just worried the components are too old, and it won’t work. Especially the magnets.”
“It should be fine,” I assured her. “If the calculations are correct, and we zap it right when the moon is at its peak…” A loud crack of thunder distracted me from my train of thought. “Fuck, that was loud.”
“Come on. Get it done,” Sera shivered. “It is freezing out here.”
“Two minutes. Get ready.”
As I lit the charge, another deafening rumble of thunder sounded overhead. A lightning bolt illuminated the night sky directly above as the ground shook under us from the charge I had set. The stones lit in a blue-white glow as lightning pierced the dome and directly hit the main stone of the tomb where the portal opened. I watched the enormous menhirs wobble around us as the ground shook beneath our feet, and for a split second, I contemplated running. Destroying a five-thousand-year-old archaeological site would not go down well.
