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Post by geekyteacher on Apr 29, 2022 21:04:52 GMT -6
Hello, everyone! I'm working on several projects right now, and this is the latest one. I thought I'd share it with the wonderful people here.
Forty years ago, the Earth flooded. My name is Ibrahim Hunt, and I’m a passenger on the ARK, the largest, grandest ship ever built. With a capacity for six thousand people, it's like a city of its own. Designed by the great Brian de Marion, also known as the Architect, it’s been the last refuge of humanity since the Great Floods.
This project originally began based on a request from the ARK Council, the group that controls the boat. I got a call from the Committee on History. They told me that they were updating the standards on education for children on the ARK. What they were asking was for me to produce a report that could be used as the basis for textbooks for classes. When I inquired why this needed to be done, they explained that after forty years of living on the ARK, many of the initial inhabitants – the first generation, like myself, who remembered what life was like before the floods – were starting to die off in great numbers. The Council feared that if we did not preserve the human stories on the ARK, they would be lost forever to time. They said they selected me to do it because of my work as a historian before the Great Floods.
I wasn’t initially thrilled with the prospect of the assignment. After all, I’d never had any desire to be a textbook writer. I considered politely turning down the Committee’s offer until they piqued my interest when they explained that, as part of my work, I’d be offered access to all the ship as well as the archives. That was the kind of unprecedented access that only a very select few were ever offered, so I jumped at the chance.
Over a period of several months, my work took me on a journey I could’ve only imagined in my dreams. I visited every section of the ARK from steerage to first class. I spoke with individuals of all ages, races, and genders during my travels, from those who barely remember what life was like before to those old residents who remember in great detail the turbulent early years, the attempted revolutions, and the subsequent strife they brought. I also went through the archives of the ship to find out information that only the Architect himself knew.
When I presented my work to the Committee, their response was that I had gone far above what they’d expected. At first, I took that as a compliment, until they followed it up with the statement that my work wouldn’t be able to be used. I was shocked. After all, I’d followed their guidelines and gotten the human stories of the ARK. They responded that my work presented too sympathetic a portrayal of those in steerage, something that they found to be completely unacceptable to teach children. I couldn’t understand why they’d asked me for the true story of the ARK if what they really wanted was a clean, sanitized version of the events. My work was in no way a revolutionary tract, but the job of a historian is not to simply continue the status quo, especially if the status quo ignores that history is often messy. My attempts to argue my case were shut down by a nine-to-one vote by the Committee to reject my work.
After the meeting adjourned, a member of the Committee approached me. He explained that he was the lone dissenting vote, and that he felt that my work was still important, even if it had been rejected. While it couldn’t be published officially by the Council, he recommended that I use the information that I found in the archives and make my own book detailing the stories and history of the ARK. As he walked away, I considered his words, and decided that he was right. What’s written here is too important to be lost to time.
This is not a history of how the world ended – while there are occasional references to the events of the Floods, they are only included to give context to the stories of the ARK since then. The purpose of this book in the end is to create a living memory of the story of the ARK, and it is as much a character of the story as it is a location for the events that occurred.
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Post by geekyteacher on May 13, 2022 12:00:36 GMT -6
Thank you all for the great response to the prologue! Here's the first interview. Hope you enjoy it!
The first step on my journey takes me the Bridge of the ship. This rarely glimpsed seat of command onboard the ARK is occupied by Captain Mark Wilson. When he took command of the ARK, he already had a successful naval record and had made history as the youngest captain of the Star Fleet Company line of ships. When he was recruited at the ripe young age of twenty-seven, Captain Wilson had sleek black hair and matching beard along with piercing blue eyes and a near permanent scowl on his face. As he approached his sixty-eighth birthday at the time of our meeting, his formerly dark hair has gone white, but he retains his piercing look and scowl.
“Captain Wilson, thank you so much for meeting with me.”
Not a problem.
“What’s your experience been like as the captain of the ARK?”
Well, let me say first off that by this point in my career, what I’m looking forward to most is my retirement. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed every minute of my forty-year tenure, but I’m starting to get tired. Not of commanding the ship, but in general I’m not as spry as I once was. That’s why I’ll be glad to hand off control to one of my young lieutenants.
As for my experience, it’s been quite the interesting one. Dealing with a flooded world is something that they never train you for and you never think you’re going to have to deal with. It brings new challenges to charting our course and keeping our ship supplied. And when you’re dealing with the largest ship in all recorded history, there are certainly a lot of those types of logistical hurdles. At first, there were other ships to deal with – negotiating and trading with friendly ones and repelling unfriendly ones. But, with the help of my lieutenants and crew, we’ve managed to keep the ship healthy and in operation for the past forty years with very little incident. Even when we’ve gone through periods of problems, the bridge has always maintained a firm grip on the ship and guided it. And that’s probably what the thing of which I’m most proud.
“Tell me how you became the captain of the ARK.”
Well before the Great Floods, I initially worked in the Navy. That had always been my dream. I wanted to make my way all the way to the top. But fate had other ideas. I never made it to Admiral, though I was a Commander. My record in the navy was impeccable, and it looked like I was on my way to achieving my goal. Some people even called me a wunderkind thanks to my innovative strategies and skill. Then, everything changed. I was injured during a training mishap and had to be discharged. I wasn’t sure what to do after that. Being an Admiral had always been my dream, and now it looked like that would never happen. But, like the old saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens.
About a half-a-year after my discharge, I got a call from the Star Fleet Company. They were responsible for a series of luxury cruise ships that sailed all over the world. They told me they’d heard about my situation and knew my record, so they had an offer for me. I hoped that they weren’t going to offer me some sort of pity position on their board. I’d had enough of those offers and had no interest in them. But they said what they actually wanted was to give me a chance to captain one of their ships. That got my interest. A chance to be back out on the seas commanding a ship was something I’d longed for since my discharge. I asked them what kind of ship I’d be captaining. They responded that I could start with one of their smaller liners and move my way up through the fleet. That sounded right up my alley, so I accepted the job. And, just like that, I was back in the game.
Sailing with Star Fleet was like a dream come true. The first ship that I captained was a small one called the Majestic. It wasn’t as impressive a ship as the others in the fleet, but it was mine. For three years, I took the ship across the Atlantic Ocean without a single incident. Needless to say, my stock with the company rose quickly and it wasn’t long until I was offered a chance to move up. That meant captaining a new ship. This one was the Premier, a mid-line ship. It was an overall nicer ship than the Majestic, though I still have a soft spot in my heart for that little ship. On the Premier, I was responsible for getting us to Australia and back safely. My record continued to be impeccable, and I even started to get somewhat of a following. Passengers who’d sailed with me on the Majestic started flocking the Premier when they found out that I’d moved ships. That went on for another three years. But then I got my biggest assignment yet.
I still remember the day Star Fleet called me asking if I wanted to move up to a mega-liner. I’d expected that they’d have me captain a large ship after the Premier, but because of my sterling record and glowing reviews, they decided to move me up to one of the biggest ships in the fleet. The Undaunted was a monster of a ship. It could hold over four-thousand five-hundred passengers. And it was a world cruiser. So, we weren’t just crossing the Atlantic or going to Australia, we were circumnavigating the whole globe. It took over one-hundred days, and, let me just say, it cost a pretty penny. That was how I first met some very important people, like Sandra Decker and the one and only Brian de Marion. They were both frequent passengers on the Undaunted. I guess when you’ve got as much wealth as they do, blowing nearly twenty grand to sail around the world is just a fun way to spend five months of the year.
If I thought captaining the Undaunted changed my life, it was nothing next to meeting Brian de Marion. He was a visionary. Just two years older than me, he’d already designed dozens of successful cruise ships. The Undaunted was one of them. He made a point of riding the ships that he designed, and it was that way that we met. Apparently, he made a habit of dining with the captain of each ship that he designed. During our dinner, we found that we had a lot in common. Both only children raised by a single mother, both considered to be at the pinnacle of success in our chosen field, both eager for even more. I wanted to be remembered as the greatest captain, but Brian wanted something even bigger.
As we dined and the wine flowed, Brian started getting bolder and bolder. He started telling me about his grand plan. Before thirty-five, he wanted to design a ship that would put all others to shame. He didn’t explicitly call it the ARK, but I believe that was exactly what he was talking about that night. So even though it wouldn’t be built for another five years, it was clear that the spark of brilliance was already there for our grand Architect.
That wasn’t the last time I heard from de Marion about his grand vision. We chatted at least three times a day, with much correspondence sent in-between. As my successful captaining of the Undaunted continued and my stock rose even higher with the Star Fleet company, I quickly became one of the best-known captains in the world. Sure, it was in the niche market of cruise ships, but it certainly counted for something. But I still yearned for more. I still felt like there was more to achieve. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
It was at about this time that two major events happened: the creation of the ARK and an offer from Brian de Marion himself. He contacted me saying there was exciting news that I needed to know. He told me that he was on the cusp of achieving his lifelong dream, and that he could give me a chance to achieve mine. I asked him what he meant by that. He told me the news about the ARK. At three-thousand two-hundred feet, it dwarfed the previous record holder for largest cruise ship in the world. He told me that there was just one thing missing: A captain. I had an idea of where he was going. He asked me if I’d be interested in captaining the largest ship in the world.
The conflict that I felt after he made his offer was intense. On the one hand, I was very happy captaining the Undaunted, this was the sort of opportunity that only came up once in a lifetime. After all, it’s not every day that the largest ship in the world is built or you’re personally invited to be its captain. That was something that I couldn’t say no to. So, I told Mr. de Marion that of course I would accept his offer. And that was how I became captain of this great ship.
“And tell me more about the ARK itself.”
Oh, well it’s a fine ship. Like I said, three-thousand two-hundred feet. Designed to hold a maximum of six-thousand passengers. Mr. de Marion was truly a brilliant architect. He designed the ARK to be entirely self-sufficient. It was meant to be a world touring ship, but de Marion still went above and beyond. Thanks to the water purifiers, we have an unlimited supply of drinking water. There are actually greenhouses on board, so we have a perfect environment to grow food. There’s everything a functioning society needs, all contained in this ship. That’s why they call him the Architect. He designed every system and we’re still using them today forty plus years later.
“What have your experiences been like as the captain of the ship?”
Well, it’s been the most exciting voyage of my life. Of course, it’s not easy. Being captain means making a lot of decisions that affect the lives of all the thousands of people onboard, whether that’s the course we follow or the decision to allow refugees into the ship. Every day, I have to make dozens of choices. Some are easier than others, but some weigh heavily on me. I wish I could say that it’s gotten easier as time has gone on, but that would be a lie. There are still nights where I lie awake thinking about whether the choices I’ve made have been right.
“What’s been the hardest decision you’ve had to make?”
Back in the early days, there were so many of them. We were in uncharted waters, both literally and figuratively, and everyone was looking to me to guide the ship. Between the decision about what to do with Steerage passengers, the riots, and the restructuring of life onboard, I was being bombarded with questions. But of course, that probably feels like I’m dodging your question. If I had to narrow it down to just one, it would have to be our refugee policy. We figured that, at least at first, there would be a lot of them. After all, when the Floods came, people had fought their way onboard the ARK. We figured we couldn’t be the only ship that had had that happen. But we were probably the only one that was designed to be everlasting and self-sufficient. So, we suspected that there would be more people who’d want to make their way onboard the ARK. For that reason, we had to decide whom we’d let in. It wasn’t an easy decision, so I turned to my officers. They provided me with several suggestions. The first was to let no refugees onboard. Those in favor argued that we were already at capacity and couldn’t take on anymore people without jeopardizing our food supply. While I saw where they were coming from, that seemed like too extreme a solution for me. Another group suggested that we take all refugees. They argued we had the capacity and resources. That seemed to ignore the reality that, while our ship was large, it couldn’t infinitely expand. The same was true with our food supply. So, I had to make a tough decision. I consulted with May, the director of resources, and tried to get a feeling from her of what our carrying capacity was. That is, how many people could we hold while still being able to keep everyone fed and supplied. She told me that theoretically, the ship could hold up to ten thousand people. Early estimates put us close to nine thousand people, so we could conceivably hold a thousand more. With that information, I decided we’d take refugees onto our ship until we hit our limit. To decide who to take, I established a set of criteria. The first was that any refugees had to be healthy. On a cruise ship, any sickness could spread like wildfire. It’d already happened at least once and was prone to happening again. So, all refugees had to be examined by the ship’s doctor before being admitted. Anyone who was sick was automatically turned away. Next, refugees had to be able to contribute to the ship. That meant they could work in some capacity. Not just physical labor, though that was certainly important, but also mental labor. After all, not everyone could be a farmer, but if they could manage supplies, then they were equally valuable. Finally, refugees had to swear their loyalty to our ship. We didn’t want anyone who was a troublemaker or a bomb-thrower. We had enough problems with that down in Steerage. With that set, we started accepting in people from other crafts and even some who’d managed to survive on what land was left.
After it became clear that there were too many decisions for just one person to make, I started looking for a solution. There had to be some way to take some of decision-making out of my hands and delegate it to others. This wasn’t me trying to abdicate my responsibility as captain, but rather, just trying to give more power to the passengers onboard. After all, it was clear now that this wasn’t going to be a half-a-year long trip, it was going to be more of a rest-of-our-lives kind of trip. There had been talk in First Class of starting a council to make decisions about life on the ship. That sounded like a good idea to me. I felt like they deserved to have a say instead of me making all the decisions.
“What about the directors of the ship? What role did they play?”
The directors were the initial hands on deck during those turbulent early days. They stepped up to handle the situation when things were dire. You’ll have to talk to them to get more of the details, but we wouldn’t be here without them. But they were employees of the ARK, and the point of the council was to give passengers a say in the decisions. Like me, they willingly stepped back and let a democratic system take our place. Obviously, we still had a role to play. But it was a reduced one. The council asked me to be their adviser, just to make sure that their decisions didn’t conflict with mine as the captain. I was glad to just be responsible for charting the ship’s course, working with my officers and directors, and playing an advisory role on the Council.
“Did you ever disagree with a decision made by the Council?”
Of course. It would be stranger if I’d always agreed with everything they’d done. In fact, the initial idea to only include First Class on the Council was something I strongly disagreed with. I saw it as a critical error that would lead to a lot of problems. After all, the other passengers onboard needed a voice just as much, if not more, than First Class did. I tried to make that point to them, but they didn’t see it. In their minds, Second and Third Class were in their own worlds, and they weren’t First Class’s concern. Try as I might to convince them otherwise, they just couldn’t see how their decisions would affect the whole ship. You’ll have to talk to someone else about all the strife that that caused.
“How did you feel about Steerage’s position on the ship?”
Well, as captain, it’s my job to be concerned with the wellbeing of all people on the ship. That includes Steerage. I think some people forget that they’re still human down there and they deserve rights the same as everyone else.
“Did you do anything to help those people?”
I did my best. I couldn’t go and participate in the marches for Steerage rights, but I could advocate for them in other ways. Namely the Steerage Decree. I declared that those in Steerage had the same rights as anyone else. That had a huge impact on the events that followed.
When they were first brought onboard, there was a question of whether we should’ve just dumped them out of the ship at the first opportunity. I was the one who shot that down. It was also my idea to start providing them with protein cubes to bring an end to people killing each other just to survive. And those weren’t always popular decisions. I got a lot of pushback from a lot of people who thought that I was stopping the natural order of things.
“Tell me more about that.”
Some people, including ones in very important positions, thought that Steerage should be forced off the ship. They argued that anyone who’d forced their way onto the ship was a troublemaker, and they shouldn’t be allowed to stay. That ignored the reality of trying to get several thousand people off the ship. It seemed like a recipe for disaster if you asked me.
The other thing those people thought about Steerage was that it should be left alone to sort itself out. They believed that the people down there were nasty, uncivilized brutes. As their logic went, if they wanted to kill each other, let them do it. It appalled me that they couldn’t see the fundamental humanity of those in Steerage. After all, when people have no food and no supplies, they’ll do all sorts of crazy things. It wasn’t because of some lust for blood that they were doing it. And when people asked me directly about it, that’s what I said and will continue to say.
“That almost led to a mutiny against you, did it not?”
Yes, yes it did. I see you’ve done your research with the Archivist. It happened in the immediate aftermath of the Steerage decision. I’ve always tried to keep good relations with my officers. That’s part of being a good captain. If you’re out of touch with what the rest of the crew wants or needs, you’re not doing your job. So, I kept in close communication with my First Officer, Sophie. She was an outstanding second-in-command. Had all the traits necessary to be successful: loyal almost to a fault, smart as a whip, and a great communicator. I kept her close and used her as a gauge for the rest of the crew. If Sophie was happy, that usually meant everyone was happy. If she had a problem, others did too.
That was why I got a little concerned after the Steerage Decree that I made. Sophie wasn’t her usual self the day after I issued them. She wasn’t doing her duties with her usual gusto. I thought maybe she just hadn’t slept well the night before, but when I tried to speak with her about it, she ignored me. That was strange. Usually, she would at least talk to me even if she didn’t agree with a decision I’d made. Finally, she said that I’d made a mistake. She didn’t elaborate any further. For the rest of the day, she only spoke when needed for work.
The next day, Sophie was still refusing to speak to me. Worse, I noticed it had spread to the rest of the crew. Everyone except my Second Officer, Jacob. Ranking just below Sophie, he was good at his job. A reliable worker, organized, and meticulous about details, he was a person whom I’d trust to run the ship if I couldn’t.
Jacob came up to me and told me that he needed to speak with me. That was also unusual. Not that we never spoke, but he was usually so focused on his work that he rarely spoke to anyone during his working hours. When I asked him what was up, he said we couldn’t talk about it here. That was also unusual. After all, what could it be that we had to talk about it in secret? I put that thought aside and asked Jacob where he wanted to talk. He said to follow him.
We stepped into a side room of the Bridge. I asked Jacob what was up. He responded that I was in danger. My first thought upon hearing that was what kind of danger. After I asked him, he said that it was the life-threatening kind. He said that my Steerage Decree had pissed off Sophie and she’d started gathering crew members calling for a mutiny against me. According to Jacob, she had at least ten recruits to her cause. He said that Sophie had approached him about it, and he’d only expressed interest so that he could keep an eye on it.
My next question was what else he knew. Jacob said that was all the information he had and finished up by telling me to be careful. Then he said we should exit separately so no one suspected him. I thought he was being a bit dramatic, but he insisted, so I let him leave first. After he was gone, I stood by myself. Just thinking about what he’d said. A mutiny? And from someone I trusted as dearly as Sophie? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, that was exactly what Jacob had said. Now, my philosophy has always been to trust but verify. That was what I immediately wanted to do. I thought that maybe if I could just talk to Sophie, maybe I could get through to her. Except, the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a terrible idea. Because if I did that, she would know that there was someone who had told me, and that risked Jacob’s life.
Exiting the room and returning to the bridge, I was still trying to decide what exactly I would do. My decision was ultimately to try and talk to Sophie but not mention anything about the mutiny. I still thought I could talk sense into her. It may seem naïve, but it’s just the kind of person that I am, I suppose.
Sophie was hard at work when I approached her and asked if I could speak to her for a minute. She turned to me and asked what I wanted. It was the most she’d said to me in two days. I said I just wanted to see how she was doing. Her response surprised me. Rather than answering my question, she told me that I had a day to reverse the Steerage Decree or something disastrous would happen. My response was why did she want the decree reversed so badly. That was when Sophie dropped a bomb. To this day, I still remember her exact words. She said that her brother Roger had signed up to be a guard. They’d put him down in the bowls of the ship on Steerage level. He’d always tell her that the people on that level were fundamentally good and were just victims of circumstance. He made a point of interacting with the people down there and getting to know them, like an old beat cop (This was before the attempted revolt so there were much fewer security measures in place). Well, that’s all fine and good until one day when Roger goes down to Steerage just like always, but this time he doesn’t come back. Sophie and the family are naturally distraught wondering where he is. They can only think of one thing that could’ve happened. Two more days pass with no word or trace from him. Then, there’s something left at Sophie and her family’s door. And what might that have been? Roger’s severed head with a note that said, “First Class Scum must die.” The family couldn’t believe it. He must’ve been hiding his Class from the people down in Steerage. But someone must’ve found out anyways. There was no way of knowing who’d killed him or even whether it was an individual or a group. They exhausted every resource available in First Class but were told there was nothing that could be done about Roger’s death. At that moment, Sophie said, she vowed to get revenge for her brother’s death however possible. Not only that, but she’d hated Steerage ever since.
I’d had no idea. Sophie had never said so much as a word about this ever before. I asked her why she’d never told me about her brother. She just sneered and said that I had a day to decide before something terrible happened. And with that, she basically disappeared into the crowd of people onboard the bridge.
If I hadn’t already been concerned before when Jacob spoke to me, now I most definitely was. While Sophie clearly had a legitimate reason to be angry, she’d also clearly gone off the deep end. I couldn’t let her threaten me, the other workers on the bridge, or the passengers onboard, so I had to act. I wouldn’t revoke my Steerage Decree. Like I’ve said, the passengers down there were people too and abandoning them would’ve been betraying my job as captain. So, I had to figure out what course of action to take.
What I decided to do was increase the security on the bridge. It seemed like the smartest solution. From what Jacob had said, it sounded like Sophie wasn’t working alone. If I went hard against her, it could end disastrously. But I also wanted to send a message to her and her supporters that I wasn’t going to let them wreak their havoc on our ship. The instruction for the extra security personnel was to keep their eyes peeled for anything suspicious. If it looked even slightly out of the ordinary, they were to report it to me right away.
I noticed that Sophie wasn’t anywhere to be found. I looked around for her all over the bridge, but I couldn’t find her. That was strange. She’d never missed a day before. I kept wondering where she was as I went about the day, though less and less as time went on. That was because there were so many problems that needed addressing, from our food supply to piracy. It was around noon that one of the guards, a young man named Andrew, came to me. He must’ve sprinted because he was panting heavily when he spoke. In between breaths, he said there was something urgent that I needed to see. I was going to ask for more context, but from the look on his face, I could tell that he just wanted me to follow him.
As I followed, my mind was racing. What could it possibly be? Did it have something to do with Sophie? We went off the main bridge and into one of the corridors that led to the rest of the ship. The guard walked to one of the rooms that housed our computers and opened the door. At first, nothing looked out of the ordinary. But then, I saw it. It shocked me and made my blood run cold. It was a jumble of wires and cables with a timer on it. I could only assume it was one thing: a bomb. According to the timer, it was set to go off in ten minutes. Now I understood why Sophie hadn’t showed up today, she was planning to blow us all to Kingdom Come. My first thought after that was to find her and make her pay for it, but there was a more pressing matter at hand: disarming the bomb. The problem was I had no idea how to do that.
I called for anyone who knew anything about explosives. It wasn’t like we had a bomb squad onboard. It wasn’t an issue that anyone had expected us to have to deal with. And yet, here we were. But, thank God, my call was answered. The young man who’d identified the device, Andrew, said he’d worked on disarming bombs before the Floods. He said it was clearly an amateurly made device and he could probably disarm it. I hoped he was right and didn’t want to think about what would happen if he wasn’t. I just silently prayed as he approached the device.
For a solid two minutes, all he did was look at the bomb. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing and wanted to say something, but I figured he was probably deep in thought and didn’t want to disturb him. Finally, he asked for a pair of wire cutters. Someone quickly brought over a pair, and he got to work. Slowly and deliberately, he began cutting wires. According to the timer, there were only six minutes left. It felt like we were in a race against time, but I had a feeling that this sort of thing couldn’t be rushed unless you wanted disastrous results.
As the timer continued to count down, Andrew continued to cut wires. There were so many of them on the device, at least two dozen. At the pace he was snipping them, I was worried he wouldn’t finish in time. But thankfully, the pace picked up as fewer and fewer wires remained. With less than ten wires left, there was a pause. Looking at the clock, time was running out. With just two minutes left, we were down to five. But the pace had slowed down significantly. With the clock ticking, I waited anxiously. At the thirty second mark, Andrew cut the last wire and the bomb deactivated.
Now that the bomb was disarmed, I breathed a massive sigh of relief. That lasted for about a second before another thought entered my mind. We had to find Sophie. She had to be brought to justice for her crimes. When we looked in her quarters though, the place was completely wrecked. Everything was scattered all around, like she had had to leave in a hurry. We never found where she went. To this day, nobody has seen her. I don’t know whether she hid somewhere on the ship or if she fled. I have to think she did the latter. After all, we’ve combed this ship from top to bottom looking for her and found absolutely nothing.
After the bomb was taken care of, the rest of the attempted mutiny fell apart. Several of those who were a part of it stepped forward and came clean with me. The ones I spoke to said they were unhappy with the Steerage Decree, but they didn’t know just how far Sophie was willing to go. They were willing to accept the consequences for their action, but I decided to show them grace. They’d made a mistake, yes, but I believed them that Sophie never told them just what the plan was. I did require them to tell me who exactly had been involved as a condition of granting them amnesty, and close tabs were kept on them to ensure that there was no plan for further mutiny.
The other effect of the attempted mutiny was a change in personnel. With Sophie gone, Jacob moved up from Second Officer to First. After all his help, I was glad to see him as my new right-hand man. He transitioned into the role flawlessly and he’s still doing great work to this day. You should really speak to him. He has so much he could contribute to a project like this.
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
Good. Anything else you’d like to know about?
“I think I have more than enough material to work with for now. Thank you for your time, Captain Wilson.”
Of course. Feel free to come and speak with me any time. I’m glad to pass on our story to future generations.
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Post by geekyteacher on Jun 4, 2022 8:10:37 GMT -6
On a ship as large as the ARK, there are any number of places where work takes place. Cara Love is a director of resource management onboard the ship; however, on her off hours, she continues her pre-Flood work and considered by many onboard to be rather eccentric. She and I meet at her “base of operations” as she calls it. It’s her First Class Suite in the North Tower. It’s spacious, but not ostentatiously decorated like many of the others. Most of the wall space is taken up by charts and maps of the world before the Great Floods. When we meet, Cara is busy at work, pouring over data she has collected. Up until this point, I’ve avoided talking about the Great Floods themselves. This is supposed to be a living history of the ARK, so it feels like whatever happened before it is irrelevant. However, I feel like those who were not alive during the Great Floods will be curious as to how it happened, so I’ve elected to speak with Cara on that topic.
So, you want to talk about life before the Floods? Well, I was a geologist. Not a highly demanded job onboard the ARK, but I’ve continued to pursue it as a hobby. I know you said you’re not super interested in talking about the end of the world and that this is supposed to be a living history of the ARK, but I think you’re doing a disservice if you don’t at least touch on how the floods happened. The common civilian explanation is that the oceans rose without warning. Something about the polar ice caps and global warming and all that. But the actual story is more exciting than that.
I’ll start out by saying that all of this is backed up by data, but I’ve drawn some conclusions from it that extrapolate a little bit. With that said, the melting of several ice sheets didn’t help with sea levels. They rose several hundred feet during the 2070s as several sheets of ice in Antarctica and Greenland melted, but even if all of it had disappeared (and it didn’t), that wouldn’t be enough to flood the entire world. So then, what was the actual culprit you’re probably asking. That’s a harder question to answer.
Before the Floods, I was working with a team in Hawaii to study strange disturbances in the Earth’s Mantle. We’d been noticing for years that something was up. For anyone not aware, the Mantle is a part of the Earth’s core. It’s responsible for things like plate tectonics, volcanoes, and the landscape of the Earth. But it was sick. Very sick. It was heating up. Usually it’s about one-thousand degrees Celsius at the border with the Crust – the top layer of the Earth, but from what we could tell, its temperature was a third higher than it was supposed to be. That was causing problems with the surface of the planet. The continents usually float on top of the Mantle, but with its temperature increasing, the continents were starting to submerge into it. Now, like most things having to do with geology, it wasn’t happening quickly. By our calculations, the continents were submerging at a rate of less than an inch per year. That suggested that we’d be okay for quite some time before we had to be concerned. At least, that was what we thought.
I remember walking into work and being told that things had changed. I was hoping for a quiet Wednesday when my coworker Barry rushed up to me. He always looked like a stereotypical science nerd with his thick glasses and lab coat. He was also known for being a skittish man who constantly thought the world was ending. If it was supposed to rain, it would be the one in five-hundred-year flood that would wipe out the city. If it hadn’t rained in a few days, it was the start of a years-long drought. What I’m trying to get across is that this guy was the king of Chicken Littles. But don’t get me wrong, he was smart, just very scared of everything.
So, like I was saying, Barry rushed up to me with his arms full of papers. He was clearly in one of his moods based on the look on his face and frazzled appearance. He said that there was something I needed to hear ASAP. I wasn’t sure what crazy thing was happening now, but I decided to hear him out. He asked if we could go to my office, which I said was fine. Barry practically sprinted there. Once I was at my desk, he launched into his presentation. I’m sure he had to have practiced it many times based on how well-rehearsed it was for something so urgent.
What he told me was that he’d been doing some calculations and had found the Mantle was now twice as hot as it was supposed to be near the Crust. That was causing it to significantly weaken the structure of the continents, more than we had predicted would happen for billions of years. According to Barry, the Continental Crust was starting to liquify due to the heat and would sink into the sea within fifty years at the current rate. He went on, saying that the Oceanic Crust seemed to be unaffected by the heat for some reason. That made no sense. Oceanic Crust is significantly thinner than Continental Crust, so how was it that the latter was liquifying and sinking while the former was fine? Barry said he wished he knew, and he wanted to investigate it right away.
Now, I won’t lie, my first response to what Barry said wasn’t to jump up and tell him we’d put the full weight of our department behind him. I figured this was just a case of Barry being Barry. He was probably misinterpreting the data. That or he was exaggerating it. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. Maybe we could’ve done something more quickly, or at least prepared better for what was coming. You know how there’s always the naysayer in disaster movies? The person who denies anything is wrong, even as it becomes more and more clear that everything is going wrong. Well, I’m glad to say that that wasn’t entirely me. Even though I thought Barry was going a little overboard, I did put him in charge of a task force dedicated to doing more research. Of course, a task force is very limited in what it can do, especially when it has no significant budget, so it was more trying to quiet Barry down than it was trying to do something about the problem he’d found. But, because I didn’t want to shut him down entirely, I did say I’d be a part of it. Other than me, he could choose whoever he wanted to be a part of it.
The Task Force met for the first time the next week. It was on the first Tuesday of August. This was about two BGF.
“BGF as in Before Great Floods, correct?”
That’s right. It’s been a handy way of measuring time, though I know there are some who push back against it, our own Archivist being one of them. You’re a historian, so what do you think? Are BGF and AGF a too “flood centered” way to measure time?
“I think that it’s a little ‘flood centered,’ but people are free to use it if they want.”
Well, I’m glad at least one person sees things my way. So, like I was saying, when we met the first time, I took note of who Barry had chosen. It was a who’s who of the office crackpots. There was Cassandra who insisted that the core of the planet was growing unstable and would lead to the end of all life. Then there was Tracy, or as she preferred to be called Trace. She was known for her belief that every volcano on Earth was going to erupt at the same time also leading to the end of all life. After that, there was Abdullah. His odd belief was that the Earth’s core was drawing in asteroids and that one would hit us, also leading to the end of all life.
With the whole team assembled, Barry got right down to business. As he put it, we were dealing with a potential extinction level event or ELE. He went on, saying that if the continents sank into the sea, it could mean the end of all human life on the planet. His goal for the Task Force was to gather data and create a plan to prevent that from happening. I felt like he was being a little hyperbolic, but my goal was to support Barry, so I kept my mouth shut. He kept speaking, saying that our research would prevent any ELEs. Everyone else cheered at that line, so I joined in. After we’d died down, he said it was time to get to work.
We had several probes going at that time, some of which were very close to the Mantle. That was how we were able to track its temperature. Now Barry suggested that we use those probes for our research. He wanted samples taken of Continental Crust near the places where the Mantle was growing the hottest. Considering I’d designed the probes in question, I thought it’d be best for me to take that job. Barry agreed and told me the location of the hot spots that he’d discovered.
What I found during my research was somewhat surprising. The rising temperature of the Mantle was causing more weak zones in the Earth’s Crust. There are many natural weak spots in the Crust, usually where two plates meet. That causes stress, which is what leads to things like volcanoes where the Mantle essentially breaks through. But now there were weak spots appearing nowhere near plate boundaries. That wasn’t entirely unheard of, but it was concerning. With more weak areas in the crust, more magma could break through and further weaken it. And enough of those could cause serious thinning, which would make it more likely that continental crust would subduct or sink beneath the oceanic crust. If that happened, we would be facing a potential catastrophic event. But that wasn’t all.
The other thing I found with my research was that the rate of weak spots appearing was accelerating. That was a serious problem for two reasons. First, it meant that that more crust was being destroyed and liquified, which was speeding up the subduction process. Second, it caused the process to keep getting faster. That was why we’d gone from the next hundred-thousand years to the next hundred, according to my calculations. And that’s the kind of scale you rarely see in geological time. We’re more used to dealing in millions and billions of years. Even worse, if it continued at the rate it was going, it’d be happening very soon – within our lifetimes soon. And, so far as I could tell there was no way of stopping it.
With that knowledge, there was only one course of action: containing the damage. We couldn’t let this become an ELE. To do that, I’d have to get in touch with a friend of mine. Luckily for me, I knew some important people. One of whom was the Chief of Staff to the President. Victoria and I went way back, all the way to grade school. We’d been friends for almost two decades by that point. We’d gone our separate ways with big dreams after college. Hers in politics in DC, mine in geology in Hawaii. But we’d stayed in touch throughout the years, and I’d seen her parlay a White House internship into a job with the Vice-President into a Chief of Staff position with the new President. Quite the impressive rise, if I do say so myself.
When I reached out to Victoria, she answered in less than two rings, even though it had to have been at least one or two in the morning when I called. Typical Victoria. When she asked me what was up, I tried to keep cool and not go off the deep end ranting about ELEs or the world flooding. Instead, I told her I’d found something interesting that I thought she might want to hear about. When she asked me what it was, I briefly summarized what we’d been studying with the Mantle. Then, I told her what I’d found and the implications of it. After I finished, there was a brief pause before Victoria asked me how quickly I could get to DC.
Bright and early the next morning, Barry and I were on a plane to the capital. Victoria had said she’d arranged a meeting for us with President Parker for the evening. Victoria told me that the President was apparently very interested in seeing us. During the very long plane ride, Barry and I went over what we were going to tell her during our meeting. We decided that I’d do most of the talking with Barry there as the backup. I had all the data from our probes ready to go and spent the rest of the flight preparing myself.
When we arrived at the airport in DC, Victoria was there with a car waiting to take us to the White House. It was good to see her again, though I wished it had been under different, less world-ending circumstances. As we were driving (She was still as crazy a driver as ever), she gave us the rules for interacting with the President. Her rules were: stick to the facts and don’t mix in too much emotion, don’t get too science-y, and offer sensible solutions.
After we got to the White House, we were quickly ushered through several security checkpoints until we arrived at the Oval Office. President Parker’s desk was piled high with several folders. She was looking intently at one with her hands on her forehead when Victoria introduced us. Looking up from the folder, President Parker smiled and stood up. She gestured for us to take a seat on one of the couches. Once we were seated, she walked over then sat too and introduced herself before shaking both of our hands. I noticed that her voice sounded different than it did when she spoke on TV. Her accent was different, which made me wonder whether she was affecting an accent for us or if she did for the nation. I was still thinking about that when Victoria looked at me expectantly and I realized I was supposed to be speaking.
Quickly gathering my thoughts, I began the presentation that I’d mentally rehearsed on the plane. Trying not to get too technical, I ran through what we’d found with the Mantle and how it was affecting the crust. Then, I moved on to the effects that it could have on the world, focusing on how it could lead to the continents sinking under the ocean. I wanted to avoid using the term ELE because it seemed a little too emotional, but I ended with the statement that if we didn’t act, we could be looking at the end of humanity. I looked to Barry to see if he had anything to add, but he was quiet. Realizing I’d forgotten to include a sensible solution, I quickly added that with big enough boats, we may be able to prevent the extinction of humans. I’d never heard about the ARK or the name Brian de Marion at that point, so I had no idea how sensible my solution was.
President Parker was silent for a moment, and I was worried that I’d said or done something wrong. Then she came at me with a litany of questions. How sure was I that this was going to happen? What time scale were we talking? What was the most immediate solution we could pursue? How sure was I that this could be an ELE? Stuff like that. She followed up by saying that she didn’t want to not believe me, but she also didn’t want to go off half-cocked and potentially start a nationwide panic.
I responded to each of her questions. I was at least seventy-five percent sure it would happen in the next fifty years. I wasn’t sure if that was what she was expecting to hear, but it was the truth. I knew that it made it sound like a far-off event, but in geological time fifty years is the blink of an eye, which I tried to get across. As for how likely it was to be an ELE, I put it at seventy percent. It was more likely than not that it would happen, but there was a chance that it wouldn’t. After all, it could be less dramatic than expected and not affect all continental crust equally. If there was enough land left behind, then humanity could survive there. But that was a big if, so I tried to emphasize that it wasn’t likely.
After I was done speaking, President Parker responded. She wasn’t sure what action to take. Based on what I’d said, it wasn’t something that was going to happen tomorrow, so telling the nation about it would only cause unnecessary panic considering it could end up being nothing. I understood why she felt that way. From being friends with Victoria, politics’ time scale was days or weeks, not years. So even though we were dealing with a potential ELE, President Parker was thinking of what to do short term. I brought up that fact but tried to say it in a way that would get through to her, emphasizing that this was a grave crisis in the making.
President Parker looked at me and asked how she was supposed to explain this to the nation. We were already facing a multitude of problems from budget issues to problems with North Korea and Iran to. As she put it, her plate was pretty darn full as it was and adding one more thing to that could overload it and risk causing the whole thing to collapse. Did I want there to be a nationwide panic? Because, in the President’s words, if she made the announcement I was suggesting, that would be the result.
After she was done speaking, I wanted to respond, but found that I had no words. She was right about a public announcement. But that got me thinking about other things we could do. Maybe there were things we could do surreptitiously to prepare. Like allocating more money to research on the subject or increasing our disaster preparedness in general. President Parker responded that that may be doable. We started working out the details of what she could propose and what we could do to help her do it.
Unfortunately, none of us realized the timetable or scale of the disaster to come, so ultimately, my meeting at the White House felt kind of pointless. The only good thing that came from it was that it raised my awareness that the government wouldn’t be able to save us, so we had to look elsewhere. That was when I first heard about Brian de Marion and his plan for the world’s largest ship. It sounded like, whether he knew it or not, he was creating a refuge for humanity that could save us from extinction. I thought about reaching out to him and sharing our research, but I also thought that we wouldn’t be dealing with the Great Floods for several more decades. So, despite what you might be thinking, I’m not the one responsible for saving humanity. That’s solely on the Architect, and thank the lord that he did, otherwise we all would’ve died the next year when the Floods came.
So that’s my story. I hope it’s what you were looking for considering I don’t have any sort of dramatic confrontations or races-against-the-clock to save the world. It’s just the story of a geologist who saw the end of the world coming and didn’t do enough to stop it. That’s my cross to bear and I’ve been living with it for the past four decades. To this day, I still don’t know why they came so fast. That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out with the probes we have that survived. So far, I haven’t had any luck. But I know the answer is out there, and I’m not going to stop looking until I find it. But more importantly, I’m trying to figure out what we can do to undo it. There must be something. We just have to use the little land that survived to launch a new probe. It’ll happen someday before I die, mark my words. I’ve got a good couple of decades left, and I won’t give up. Not now, not ever.
“How did you get onto the ARK?”
Well as soon as I heard about it, I knew that I needed to get onboard. Of course, affording a twenty-thousand-dollar ticket on my geologist’s salary was a pipe dream. So, I did something that everyone told me was insane: I reached out to the Architect himself. I explained to him my circumstances and asked for a job. I wasn’t sure myself what I was doing. A cruise ship isn’t usually the place for a geologist to be working. And yet, when I got a response, it was positive. Call it the vision of the Architect showing through again. He saw my value to the ship and brought me onboard. Not as the ship’s geologist, but instead as a director of resources. I guess he saw my analytical mind and figured that would be something that I’d be good at doing.
“Did you explain about the Great Floods?”
I did. I explained the research and its implications multiple times to The Architect, but he didn’t seem phased by what I told him. He told me that it was all part of the plan and that everything would work out. That threw me for a loop. How he could be so nonplussed about the potential end of the world? I tried to ask more about that, but he just kept saying it was all part of the plan. Like I said, maybe he knew something that the rest of us didn’t. Either way, it got me onboard the ARK and into First Class no less.
“What about your co-workers on the Task Force?”
I reached out to all of them, but only Barry responded. He said that there was still work to do and he couldn’t drop it to work on a cruise ship. I tried to appeal to him, but he shot me down every time that I brought it up. When the ship launched on its maiden voyage and the Floods happened, I never heard from any of them again. It still haunts me to this day. I should’ve done more to help them. Should’ve convinced the Architect to bring them on board. But maybe they survived. Barry was such a conspiracy believer that I can’t imagine he didn’t have some sort of plan in place. Maybe on one of those smaller boats. Or at least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.
So, is there anything else you want to know?
“No, I think you’ve hit on everything.”
Well, feel free to come back anytime. I don’t get many visitors.
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