Chapter 1 - Meltdown
“Alert, alert! Hydro-Fusion bond degrading at extreme rate! ” blared the terminal Jesika Beta-7 was dozing against, jarring her from her day dream.
This coupled with the lighted floor and ceiling panels switching from pale gold to crimson brought her from her half-nap and sent her running down the corridor of the HF (Hydro-Fusion) Station, grabbing an emergency tool kit off the wall as she went.
Taking a corner at high speed, she dashed into the main monitoring room, and came to a jarring halt.
“Tetch! What’s going on?” she demanded of the slim seventeen year old male behind the primary console, the flashing hologram displays lighting up the silver contacts in his eyes like he was a jungle cat.
The contacts fed Station optical data directly to him, just like all senior techs assigned to command the control room. When he didn’t answer, just continued to pound at his keyboard, sweat pouring down his face in anxiety, she slammed her tool kit down in front of him, shocking him into looking at her.
“Tetch! Tetch Beta-8! You there?” Jesika asked again, “What’s happening?”
Tetch blinked as if seeing the 5’6’’, slim and athletic brunette for the first time ever, then pushed her kit out of the way.
“I don’t know, everything was, ah, fine, then the HFB redlined!” he stammered, “ And I can’t shut it down. We have to evacuate the station, it’s gonna frag!”
“What?! If this place goes, it’ll take New Phoenix with it. We can’t evacuate, we have to shut down the Hydro Core.” said Jesika, but Tetch stood, slapped the evacuation control, and made for the exit, “Come back here, you idiot, you’re in command, and you won’t get 10 blocks, before your fragged with the rest of the city!”
But Tetch, and the rest of the control room’s staff still left, leaving Jesika alone in the room, alerts blaring, screens flashing. She hesitated but a moment, then vaulted over into Tetch’s vacant position at the console. She glanced up at the satellite display screen, and saw that this HF Station, one of 17 spread across the globe, was the only one in trouble.
Her fingers danced across his keyboard, and performed a quick scan on the core. The HF Stations were the primary power source for the Earth’s city states, and were all very new and this one was the original prototype, just activated 2 weeks ago, the creation of Venture Consumer Applications.
“8 minutes, 306 seconds until complete breakdown.” she read, “What are my options? Can’t turn it off, it’ll still go. Can’t cool it off, it’s too hot already. With it jacked into the plasma tanks, anything I do to try to halt the breakdown will just trigger it.”
Jesika paused in deep thought, then her eyes lit up with sudden inspiration, “If I can’t stop the cell from overloading, then I shouldn’t try! I should just separate it from the plasma, then only the cell will breakdown, and that will be a contained blast!”
Glancing at the counter she saw she only had 6 and a half minutes left, “Computer, isolate and then terminate plasma injector ports connected to the cell!” Jesika demanded of the stations control computer.
“Command code required.” demanded the computer”
“Override Protocol Jesika Beta-7 Green!” shouted Jesika.
“Override Protocol accepted, isolating and terminating injectors, please wait.” replied the computer, and a hologram appeared above Tetch’s console, showing the cell as the diamond shaped crystal it was, connected to 8 surrounding plasma tanks by single pipes.
The diamond glowed bright orange, the pipes flashed blue, and the takes were yellow heading to crimson as the counter counted down. One by one the pipes went dark, and each tank dropped back to yellow, all except one.
“Computer, why is tank 6 still escalating?” demanded Jesika.
“Injector malfunction, all other tanks are dropping to appropriate levels, tank 6 will still explode in 5 minutes, 48 seconds.” replied the computer.
“Try again to isolate!” shouted Jesika.
“Unable to proceed, requires manual shutdown.”
Jesika froze. Manual sundown meant she would have to enter the core and do it herself, thus she would most likely be at ground zero when the cell blew.
“It’s me or New Phoenix...” she muttered, then grabbed her tool kit and ran out of the room, into the closest lift, and slapped the core button.
The lift shot downwards at high speed, plunged past 7 levels. The computer vox in the lift wall began counting down from 4 minutes. The lift reached bottom, and Jesika dashed out and ran down the long corridor to the cell chamber door, and tapped in her access code. The huge vault-like portal rolled open, and a blast of hot steam and smoke blasted outwards.
Shielding her eyes and gritting her teeth, she plunged into the room, and ran to the suprisingly small Hydro Fusion cell, mounted on a low pedestal in the center of the room. It floated in a plastic sphere that had 8 thick conduits branching out to matching Injector Generators, witch in turn branched out into thick pipes which disappeared into the core’s walls.
Finding generator 6, Jesika dropped her kit in front of it and pulled open it’s maintenance hatch, revealing a tightly packed collection of power converters, tubes of coolant, and micro-filament cables. She knelt and popped her kit, and selected a # 4 filament spanner, and inserted it into the generator at a precise point.
“1 minute.” stated the computer, from a speaker overhead, as she slip the spanner deeper into the recess of the generator, searching for the one cable that connected the injector to the tank.
“Come on, come on, by Odin, come on...” she muttered, then the spanner caught, and she depressed the pad on it that would sever the cable “Got it!”
“Core isolated.” announced the computer.
She pulled her arm out and spun the spanner in the air, “YES!”
“16 seconds.” said the computer.
“Oh yeah, I’ve gotta zag!” gasped Jesika, and she dropped the spanner and torpedoed for the door.
She tore down the passage for the lift, as the computer announced 10 seconds, and crashed into the door that should have automatically opened at her approach, but didn’t.
She slapped the pad, and glanced at the level indicator and her jaw dropped.
The lift was at the top floor, and descending. It would take at least 15 seconds to arrive.
“5 seconds... 4... 3... 2...” began the computer.
“Son of a Bit-” screamed Jesika as the count down completed and the core blew in a blast of greenish-white fire, which exploded toward her in the blink of an eye with a sound like a thousand thunderclaps.
“SIMULATION END.”, boomed a deep voice, and the fireball vanished and the corridor went dark.
A moment passed then the light came on again and Jesika found herself standing in the middle of an spherical chamber, 3 stories high, the floor, ceiling, and walls covered with the low blue pulsing of holographic generators. Sitting on a pedestal 10 meters away from her sat the Hydro Fusion Cell, or HFC.
She blinked rapidly, still breathing heavy, as she tried to make sense of the sudden reality shift. Her eyes steadied on the cell, perched on the tower.
“The only thing that was real. It was all a simulation...” stammered the stunned Jesika, “I’m still at Venture Academy.”
A portal opened in the wall across from her an a short, pudgy man in a green labcoat walked in, carrying a transparent clipboard.
“Of course it was a simulation, Beta-7, do you think we would have let Tetch Beta-8 in charge of the primary monitoring room of a HF station on the two of yours first day on the job?” asked the man, “Really Beta-7.”
Dr. Nathan Riley strode across the floor like he was emperor of all, and stopped a meter in front of her. His lab coat’s right breast sported diamond shaped patch displaying a silver V containing a smaller C, which in turn contained a tiny A, the symbol of Venture Consumer Applications.
He was her primary instructor, for all the Beta’s, advisor, and assigned father figure. Jesika loathed him now, though she had worshipped him until she was 14, when her computer hacking of the Academy’s records had turned up recordings of the female Beta’s shower room. He had personal movies going back till when she and the 4 others were 9 years old.
“How? It seemed so real...” asked Jesika.
“Of course it did, it had too. We just put you out during yesterday’s physical, and placed a hypnotic suggestion with this Alpha Wave Generator” Riley held up an object the size of a pencil eraser he had pulled from his pocket.
“You performed very well. My personal calculations put you at the 94th percentile, second in the Beta group.” said Riley, consulting his clipboard.
“97th.” said a voice behind them, and the two turned to look as one of the hologram generators lit up and displayed a tall muscular man in a maroon financial uniform, and he also had the VCA badge, but his was in gold, “Her willingness to risk her own life for the company, and subsequent sacrifice of her own life bumped her up 3 points.”
“CEO Vorb, what a pleasant surprise, I didn’t know you were monitoring the sims-” stammered Riley, but the projection cut him off.
“Shut up, Riley. Congratulations Jesika, you scored highest in the Beta group, as I knew you would.” said Vorb, “You’ve done your company proud.”
Riley opened his mouth to object to the rating, then shut it. Jesika knew Riley favored Mrala Beta-2, always had, as she was sleeping with him, the slut. Jesika thrilled at the unexpected praise from the owner of VCA and the Academy.
“Th-thank you sir.” she managed to stammer, eyes down.
“You are dismissed, Jesika, return to the dormitory for the evening, you will receive your posting after lunch with the rest of your group.” said Vorb, who then turned away to give orders to Riley, as Jesika exited.
* * * * *
Jesika gazed out the window of the dorm’s common room, at the fog of the city below, 30 stories down. She knew the Academy tower continued another 110 stories below that. She leveled her gaze back up, and stared across the top of the skyline, at the endless towers, struts and scrapers. New Phoenix housed 96 million consumers, the largest of all the city states on Earth.
She glanced at her wrist implant’s tiny screen, 2:32 pm was just 3 seconds away, and she watched the clock reach the new minute, then looked back out. With a barely heard hum a fat cylindrical object dropped into view from above, and extended 4 mechanical arms. As it hovered on a blue fusion exhaust, it sprayed the windows, then extended 4 more arms and began to systematically clean them.
“Just on time, like every 12 hours.” noted Jesika, and smiled grimly.
“Man Jes, you just love those bots, dontcha!” came a familiar voice behind her, and she spun, startled, to see Jetch’s thin form standing there, the silver control contacts still in his eyes, red hair slicked back.
“Didn’t here you sneaking up on me.” she said, as he turned and walked to one of the couches facing the large screen that was built into the opposite wall, she followed suit, dropping down beside her, “That was you in my final simulation this morning, right?”
“Oh, yeah, that was me, got a passing grade for running, that’s it.” he said depressingly.
“But you followed regulations exactly, I was the one who broke them and stayed.” Jes interjected.
“You saved the city, sacrificed yourself for the all important “consumers”. We’re the prototype for expendable living “products”, you did exactly what they want all us “groupies” to aspire to.” he replied, and she bristled at his answer, started to object, then stopped as the screen came on, the VCA logo spinning into view, and exploding to reveal the face of Vorb.
“Congratulations, Beta Group, final trials have been completed, and some of you can now receive final assignments, based on your rankings!” announced the CEO, “Here is the final rankings and postings.”
On the screen all names appeared, assigned with numbers and assignments. A murmur of surprise went through the group, as all but Jesika’s head the same assignment : while she as number 1 was assigned to the Antarctic HF Station, they all head advanced Academy training by their names.
“Do not be discouraged by VCA’s decision to keep most of you here, we just feel that a bit more training is required before you are transferred to our HF Stations around the world” stated Vorb, “Jesika Beta-7 you will leave in the morning for your first assignment, and the rest of you will have the day off before you return to training. That is all, have a fine evening!”
As the screen shut down and most of the group wandered off, Jesika felt someone starring at the back of her head, and turned to see Mrala Beta-2, Dr. Riley’s favorite glaring at her with total hatred. Then Mrala spun on her heal and stormed out of the room.
“Forget her, she thinks she should have been ranked first, and get the glory of early assignment.” said Tetch, patting her on the shoulder, “Congratulations, Jes, I mean it.”
“Tetch...” she started to say, “If you could, like, escape from her, get away, would you?”
“What? Escape, what would be the point, we’re non-consumers, they grew us from genetic samples, we have no credit, no ID beyond what the Academy assigned us.” he said, chuckling, then got up and headed for the exit, “Why would you want to leave, you’ve got an assignment, congratulations again.”
“Yeah, congratulations, Antarctica, great.” muttered Jesika, watching him go, “That’s it, I’m getting out of here...”
