The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (18 page)

Jack wanted to talk more about the importance of keeping the
cryogenics site secret, understanding that its value to any of these
communities was high enough that it could easily start another war. First,
however, he had a question burning in his mind for quite a while that he wanted
to answer. “Teague, tell me more about the trade arrangements. How do the males
feel about being traded off to other communities?”

“Well, as I was saying earlier today, the men and women
understand what is necessary if we want humanity to continue, and sex, while
pleasurable, is simply a tool to get the job done. The trade arrangements were
usually a man for a man, and the details would be worked out as to how many
conceptions, et cetera. Sometimes though, like in the case of Cali, there are
resources or supplies that we need, and we do not always have enough to trade
for them. Since genetic diversity is perhaps the most valuable thing in the
world right now, it makes sense to trade a man’s seed for other items of
value.”

“What about the reborn men? Do they have a problem trading
their morals for resources?” Jack would be offended to be the one offered up
for trade, but he was wondering how the other men like him felt about it.

“We have decided not to use the reborn in trades, for a few
reasons, moral issues being one of them, but less of an issue than you think. The
men born later in your century are far more flexible in that area than you.” Jack
shrugged at this, he wasn’t really all that surprised. “The secrecy of the
cryogenics facility, however, is of paramount importance. It is the ultimate
irony though, we have the most valuable resource on earth but cannot use it for
fear that others will discover we have it.”

“So what do you do for trading?”

“We now trade only fertilized eggs. It accomplishes the same
task, and although they have less value, as it takes time and resources to do
artificially what otherwise comes naturally, it serves the purpose of keeping
our secrets. It was easy to pass it off on Cali; after they broke some trade
agreements we simply said we would no longer give them that opportunity. The
other communities, though, have been asking questions, and currently think we
are dying off and are afraid we will lose our men permanently if we trade them.
For now this works for us.”

“Does that happen a lot? People wanting to leave and go to
another community?”

Teague started shaking his head, then reconsidered his
answer. “As I said before, occasionally there are issues, almost always with
relationships between men and women. The men and women of my generation may
have a different philosophy about sex than you are used to, but they still form
relationships. Any time you have a relationship between two people, you have
the potential for that relationship to end. Sometimes when it ends, it does not
end well.” Jack grimaced knowingly. He’d been down that road once or twice.

“So how do you handle it? I imagine in such a small
community the tension between two scorned lovers would be amplified.” Jack
could see something like this getting out of hand in a hurry.

“Well, in the past we would just arrange a permanent trade
with another community. This worked well because the man had another set of
women in which to find his personal happiness, and both communities gained more
diversity in the gene pool. It has become a greater issue with the reborn
though. Most of the women here are from
my
world, the post-war world,
and only a handful are from
your
world. Our women simply do not develop
feelings for the men that impregnate them. This has not gone over well with
some of the reborn men, especially when the women are fornicating with another
man weeks after giving birth to their child.”

Jack thought about Wendy, and how he would feel if she
started screwing another man next week. Or worse if he had his baby and then
moved on to other men. “So what do you do in those situations? You can’t send
the reborn to other communities, especially under those circumstances – they
would talk about the facility for sure.” Jack knew the answer was not something
he wanted to hear.

Marcus probably sensed his tension and put the appropriate
grim expression on his face when he responded. “It puts us in a difficult
position, and we decided we cannot allow anyone to migrate to other communities
for the time being. Instead, we do what we can to ease the tension. We
rearrange work schedules to try to keep the men, or women, from being around
the people causing their distress. We offer psychological counseling and
medication where necessary. We also move their residence to other locations in
the facility so that they are not seeing each other all the time.”

“I have to admit Doc, this is a sore spot for me. It makes
me feel like I’m a prisoner here. I understand the reasoning behind it, but it
still doesn’t sit well with me. I spent a good portion of my life defending my
freedom to do with my life what I chose. Just answer one question. When you
have revived all the people you can from the Montana facility, will you
continue to hold people here against their will?”

Teague mulled that one over for a few moments, then
answered, “Ideally, no. However, until we are in a position to assure that
allowing people to migrate from here will not affect the security of other
members of our community, we will have to take it on a case by case basis. Like
I said, we will do anything we can to make life better, and we do not forget
the individual when planning for the whole. But we will also not put the whole
at risk for the betterment of the individual.”

It made sense to Jack, and for now was a good enough answer.

* * *

In Jack’s day, visualizing an overview of a battlefield or
even of a large project site was difficult at best. Looking at this giant screen,
he couldn’t help but marvel at the tactical possibilities it presented. However,
tactical overview was not on his mind, but radiation was. “Can you use this screen
to show me more about how bad the fallout in California is?”

Teague pressed some buttons and a large amount of red
shading covered the map. Most of California was covered in red, with some small
dots and lines being the only places that were not red. Western Montana was all
red, as was the most of the south central part. As Jack looked around at the
map he saw that the areas representing about fifty to a hundred miles around
every major city were covered in red. It was actually easier to look at the
area that was
not
covered in red. There were a few dozen large areas,
maybe forty to sixty miles in diameter, but most of the continent was just
speckled in white, complex patterns swirling about the whole map. In general
you could see great swaths of red, usually starting at a major city location,
then sweeping off in some direction.

The visual was, in a word, stunning. Ever since he accepted
his “rebirth”, he had more or less taken for granted that everything he was
being told was the truth. However, he had only really seen the truth in his
immediate environment, and his environment was limited to a few rooms, a few
people, and a mirror. The large screen in front of him was not exactly proof of
the state of the world, but it was the first representation he had laid eyes
on, and it took his breath away.

“The sweeping red areas are the result of weather patterns. The
nukes kicked up huge amounts of radioactive debris and the winds scattered it
across these paths.” Teague was tracing his hand along some of the broader red
areas. “As you can see, there are some large areas that are free of radiation
but totally isolated and surrounded.” He pressed more buttons and the display
zoomed into what used to be California.

“The complex pattern of radioactive fallout does a good job
of isolating and protecting them. It makes it difficult for them to do anything
that doesn’t involve air travel, however. This is good and bad for us. On the
one hand, it makes it nearly impossible for them to launch any kind of large
scale military strike if they decide to get more aggressive. On the other hand,
it makes trading large amounts of natural resources difficult as well.”

He pressed more buttons and the view zoomed out to just
include Montana, New Hope, and the land in between. “Compared to California,
most of the rest of the continent is not nearly as bad. But that doesn’t mean
you can just get in a ground based vehicle and drive to Montana from here. If
you look closely, you can see there
is
a path, but it is far from direct
and would require passing over a portion of the Rocky Mountains as well as the
Grand Canyon.”

Jack studied the map for a minute longer then said,
“Speaking of the path to Montana, what is the plan tomorrow?”

Teague again manipulated the control panel and the display
panned over to Montana. “Like I said, it isn’t so much a mission as just a
tour. As you know, the facility is near the old Malmstrom Air Force Base. We
will fly you and two others in a four seat flyer up to here,” he pointed to a
location about seven miles south of the entrance, “and you will take a small
transport vehicle to the entrance. This way, if anyone is tracking you by
satellite, you won’t lead them directly to the entrance, and it will appear you
are just surveying the area.”

Jack interrupted him, “Satellite? Like those things up in
space?”

Teague looked embarrassed and said, “Sorry, I forget
sometimes that you were dead before much of this technology came about.” He took
a moment to refer to his datapad then said, “In your time, satellites were
pretty simple. They mostly relayed telecommunications around the curvature of
the earth. Later during the Cold War, particularly in the 80’s, technology
heated up and satellites were used for everything from communications to
weather to spying, and eventually, even to help find where you are.”

“And these are still up there and working?”

“By the time the war started there were thousands up there. Mostly
they were powered by fuel cells and solar panels, and eventually all but a
handful of them either ran out of fuel and fell out of orbit or just simply
broke down or fell victim to some kind of debris. See, back then people
concerned with the environment didn’t want nuclear powered satellites
potentially crashing down and spewing nuclear waste all over the planet.” Surprisingly,
he said this without an ironic tone. “However, after the war started, the
various military powers no longer cared or were held back by environmentalists,
and their satellites were built to withstand a lot. Many of these are still
active, and we have control of two of them. If we have control of two, chances
are Cali and other communities also have control of some.”

“How many do you think they have? And they can use them to
keep track of what you are doing?”

“We have confirmed a total of a dozen satellites that are
still in orbit and seem to be functioning on some level. One of those was sent
up during the time of the EoS, to monitor radiation patterns. It simply
broadcasts the information as it orbits the earth, and anyone with a radio
receiver hooked to a computer can read it. That leaves nine that we don’t
control, and despite not being sure if Cali or anyone else controls them, we
have to take precautions as if they do. We are fairly confident they have at
least one of the old missile tracking satellites because of their superior air
defense, and that gives them the ability to track any flights we make. Those
can’t track us once on the ground though. If they have control of any of the
old spy satellites, they could potentially track us with long range video
cameras. However, even if they have control of one, getting it into position to
track anyone is not easy to do. Chances are, once you land they will not bother
to get a satellite on you even if they could. It is not abnormal to send out
exploration parties, and we doubt anyone has the resources to keep track of
everyone else’s exploration crews. Furthermore, from what we know of the spy
satellites, if they happen to have one in the right place at the right time,
the window they can use it is short, fifteen minutes at the outside. So to
ensure they don’t find the facility, we will land twenty minutes away. Absolute
worst case scenario, they would track us within a couple miles of the entrance,
but when we replaced the power source there, we were able to mask it enough
that they would have to be within a few dozen feet of the door to detect the
facility at all.”

Jack nodded. He had become practically numb to the level of
technology he was learning about, but when it came to tactical intelligence, he
automatically pressed to learn as much as he could. This need to know probably stemmed
from some of his near death experiences in Korea where bad intelligence meant
dead GI’s. “What kind of satellites do we control?”

Teague referred to his datapad again and said, “One
communications satellite and one GPS, or Global Positioning System satellite. The
communications satellite is above Texas in a geosynchronous orbit, and the GPS
is a little north of that. We can bounce a laser off the communications
satellite to get secure communication from just about anywhere in North
America, but it takes a rather large device to do that. The flyer you will take
will have one, but your own devices will be shorter range. They do have the
capability of using the satellite to communicate back to here, but the range is
limited and we will lose the signal about the time you hit Colorado. The GPS
satellite will allow you to determine your position on a map, but since we only
have one satellite, it is only accurate to about ten yards.”

“You said that I will have a device for communication?”

Teague reached in his pocket and pulled out what looked like
a datapad only smaller. He gave it to Jack and said, “This is your PDP, or
Portable Data Pad. It has all the functions of your current datapad; a smaller
screen and a powerful satellite communicator are the only real differences. It
is tougher too, and can withstand a lot of abuse. It will automatically stay in
constant communication with us as long as you are roughly south of where Denver
used to be. Anything north of that latitude and you will have to be in range of
an active laser link to the communication satellite. In an emergency, it has a
beacon that is quite powerful, but there are downsides to using it. First, it
takes an enormous amount of power to send out the signal, and during that time
you will lose the use of its other functions for a short period of time, and
second, the beacon uses the open airwaves, so anyone monitoring the emergency
frequencies will know exactly where you are. Unless it’s a last resort option,
don’t use it. This device is your lifeline if anything goes wrong, and I want
to make sure you know how to use all the features before you go tomorrow.”