Whispers on an Undying World

Unexpected Surprise

            Before Micha knew it, they were in an army truck flying down curvy roads and through lush green forests. Far sooner than she though Micha began recognized where they were, in a half hour they would be at her house. It was a lot sooner than they actually arrived though; she watched the confused stares from passersby’s.

            They pulled into the low-income housing and stopped near block C. Micha jumped out and flew up the stairs, using the spare key she got in with three others behind her. Thomas being the nearest was the first to see Nicole jump up from the couch and run to Micha. “Where have you been?! Why haven’t you been answering me?”

            Nicole was clearly stressing, she always cleaned the house obsessively when she stress. Today the house reeked of bleach and her hands were a bright pink.

            “I know, I’m sorry I just got caught up in thing. Listen, go pack a bag and go to the Castle. Grab anyone that will listen.” Pushing pass her, Micha headed to her room.

            “That’s all you say after being MIA? Nor Cal is quarantined and I thought you were stuck in there.” She followed Micha down the hall; Micha knew that she must have been worried. There was no doubt that she had been following what was actually going on in Sacramento and not hearing from her must have made her believe that Micha was dead or injured.

            Spinning around, Micha put her hand up. “Order 66 real time.” The shocked look on her face told her that Nikki didn’t believe her. “I’ll send the code, you get your stuff. Everything should be awake by the time you get up there.”

            Nodding, Nikki turned into the smaller room and began putting a duffle bag together. “How bad is it?”

            Walking into her room, Micha went to the closet. “Level five right now, in a week it’ll be six.”

            Sticking her head out, in front of Thomas, she looked at Micha with crazy eyes. “What happened?”

            Looking at Thomas Micha said, “I can’t say. Make sure you get up there within a few hours with as many people as possible.”

            Out of the corner of her eye she caught Thomas looking completely confused.

            “Will you be there?”

            “I should be, I don’t know how long though. For now I’ll have to be in flight.”

            Thomas walked between them, prompting Micha to start going through her things. She took the boarder on the closet door and moved it to the side; it showed one of her earliest inventions of a finger scanner. It was common now, except this one was made from scratch and incapable of mistake or hacking. Plus it was so small and hidden that no one would think to look for it.

            After watching her in confusion, Micha held up a hand. The machines took a few moments to open up after turning them on with the scanner. When a quiet beep came from the closet she opened the door, revealing her hiding place for all of her current toys. Micha received permission from the landlord to make changes as long as they could be hidden, reversed or upgrade the property. In exchange for her changes, Micha agreed to fix any of the broken appliances or property. Easy enough.

            When she opened the door the shelves had enough time to descend from the ceiling. Shelves hung in the center of the room in front of her hanging clothes. The closet was almost large enough to be a small room so she had plenty of play.

            When Micha originally moved in the apartment she noticed the closet ceiling was a foot and a half off from the height of the rest of the ceiling, she took advantage of that and installed the shelves soon after. There were six pulley systems for the outside, each system has seven shelves. On the right were her favorites, the underwater breather was on that side along with a water condenser and creator.

            The monitors were the front left third row from the bottom, that shelf had all of the supplies to make the device. She went and grabbed the edges, holding the two foot long box up so she was holding its weight. “Center back, third row release.” The voice recognition registered her and did as she asked; when she was holding the box she spoke again. “Duffle release for flying mod.”

            That command released the thin fabric around the box; a strap came along with it. Within moments the box was a gray back that she kept unzipped but handed to Thomas. The bottom of the bag sealed so the contents wouldn’t shift around but she needed to put stuff on top of it.

            “Who are you?” Thomas was too surprised by all of this to answer before now, he watched her almost magically bring these things to life. “Where did you get all of this?”

            Laughing, Micha pushed a button that retracted the shelves and waited as they receded into the ceiling. She had this entire set up at the castle so she wouldn’t need to pack the spares. “There’s a junk yard not too far from here that lets me take what I want if I work weekends repairing whatever they need. After I got access to that it was easy enough to make this.” Micha pushed Thomas back so he was standing in the doorway. “Column center, first pillar release.” Micha had her back to Thomas as the center ceiling came down revealing a computer system. This was a special one; as soon as Micha entered the closet the computer turned on and prepared for any code she gave it. If she wanted she could have verbally told it to send out an Order 66 but she preferred to do it the old fashion way.

            “How have you had time to do any of this?”

            Laughing, Micha began typing the command code to be sent out to anyone connected to this computer. Right now that was twenty-five but they would most likely bring at least one each, the castle was plenty prepared to hold up to a hundred for twenty years. How they managed to get that much food up there was amazing, however it got much easier when everyone put a little in each month. That made for monthly runs to check on the castle and place all of the supplies that had been collected that month up there. To stave off anyone’s concern, each of them took turns going up there, sometimes five or six of them went up at once.

            A bunch of prepared paranoid student’s preparations was going to pay off. “If you like this, you should see the Castle.”

            Pushing the send button, Micha grabbed her tablet and cell; they were both solar charged by their cases and connected to the chatroom they had set up through these computers. Grabbing one of the bags above the computer, Micha waited for a response because she had all of the computers set up that if anyone wasn’t on their computer it would go to the phone and if it wasn’t read there it would go to their personal device.

            That personal device was different for everyone; some were screen watches while other was pendants with a vibration system. The more consecutive vibrations meant the direr the need to get to the castle.

            One long vibration meant there was going to be a meeting at the castle, non-urgent. One long vibration followed by a quick one meant attendance was required that day. Two long vibrations meant within six hours, three was two and four vibrations followed by constant short bursts meant they were at a level five alert or higher. Everything gets dropped, emergency bags are packed, and anyone that is on the pre-approved list is brought up to the Castle. Everyone is to be on their position and getting the Castle up and running, prepared for whatever was happening.

            There was only one time that they were to the fourth alert and that was when there was a cave in at the Castle. Never has the fifth alert been rung. There was never a need.

            By the time was finished Micha had loaded up her bag with random items, mainly boosting devices and stun guns. She really took to Star Trek and tried to make a lot of the devices, some were successful others left her without eye brows for a few months. “Column center, third row release.” The third row came down between her and Thomas, when it was down Micha pointed to the top two boxes. “Load those into the extra room in the bag. Your mom is going to have a cow when she finds out what those are for.”

            McCoy looked around the corner with a frown. “How much longer?”

            Looking at him she stared at him a moment then nodded to the mirror on top of the dresser, “When Thomas’ done with putting that in the bag we’ll be done, in between the mirror and the wall is a square glass. Grab that and that should be all.”

            Frowning he turned around and looked between the slot that kept the data sheet. It was the screen that made it easy to do things. He pulled it out gingerly and showed it to her; she nodded then turned back to the computer to see a slew of responses. Most of them asking what was happening, all she responded was that it was real time and she would explain everything as soon as she could.

            A few quick responses and Micha knew that everything would be up and running long before she made it back to Sacramento. When everyone is on board will be when the real magic happens.

            “Done.” Thomas drew the drawstrings to the bag closed and looked at her. She sent the last message that they had to travel quickly, and then pushed the buttons on both racks so they ascended again.

            “We’re good then, let’s get going.”

            “Seriously?” Thomas looked confused, obviously expecting for their grab and go to take longer.

             They left the closet, but before doing that Micha grabbed her last duffle bag that held all of her favorite lab accessories. Although it was superficial, it helped Micha focus. In that bag was the last crystal she got from her Grandpa. “Yep, we’re good. Let’s go.” Micha strode out of the room while carrying two bags.

            Nicole popped her head out of her room long enough to touch foreheads to Micha. “Safe travels; I’ll make sure all the protocol is in place when I touch down. Keep in contact; you know where we’ll be.” She turned around and threw two bags over her shoulders and grabbed some keys from the wall and walked out in front of Micha. They went through the door in a line, all of them walking quickly.

            When they got down stairs they were met by two of the twenty-five, brothers that were renting down stairs. They were carrying bags themselves, after seeing them they ran over and waved. “Real time huh?” Michael, the older twin and tech genius, shouted at them.

            “Real time. Mike can you take Nikki up top? I have to go with them.”

            Although the homely man was confused he nodded. “I’ll fire up all the scanners when we get there, keep in touch ok?”

            Mccoy stepped forward then and glared him down. “This can’t get out to the public, the only reason any of you are privileged to know is because she’s working with the boss. Knowledge is panic.”

            Jerry, the younger twin stepped forward then. “Bro, this is code 66 real time. Anyone that isn’t already in won’t know until everyone does. We’ll be in everyone’s business before it hits the fan.” He stepped forward and grabbed Micha by the head, touching their foreheads. “Safe travels sis.”

            Mike did the same before running off with Nikki in tow. They were in their own truck before Thomas could look at her like she had lost it. “What was all of that?”

            Now that they were stuck near each other Micha had the time to explain everything from the beginning. “My mom was a prepper, by the time I was ten she had this property in the mountains that we went to every weekend until I got into high school. I hated it for a while until I found some people that had a preppers club. That’s where I met the twins you just met, they introduced me into their crazy click and we started making up codes for any possible outcome. We’re all smart so we started making things like the connection system I used. It wasn’t smart to have it just connected to computers so we made a connection similar to f*******: that attached to our phones. It kind of bloomed since then.” Micha laughed, they passed through town so fast that it was surprising that anyone had time to move out of the way. “When we got jobs we started adding stuff to my mom’s place, she love that we were into it so she gave us free reign. Then we started to go to college and got more people involved, things up there got easier. Before long we had a system that worked for everyone.”

            “Code 66 real time?”

            Shaking her head, she looked into his brown eyes. “We needed some practice over the years, there was a time limit for each code and if you didn’t get to it in time you died. Real time is just like it sounds; it’s not practice but the real thing.” Micha started going through her stuff and found her ear piece, placing it in her ear. There was already chatter from everyone, Micha planned to send all the data she was getting from the Doctor to them so they could try and figure something out on their end. “Code 66 is an emergency call. Two hours is the best time to make it under, however there is a twelve hour reprieve. It gives enough time for everyone to manage anything that needs done on the way up there, if everything can be sorted out before then its better in case the problem can be fixed in time. Most of us work online so they don’t have to give a leave of absence and the few that work in person have cool bosses that work with them. The rest of the half-day is reserved for rounding up animals; anyone in that section helps out. The people not involved with livestock go straight to the Castle to warm everything up, keeping everyone in touch and counting heads. That way if there is any problem they can dispatch anyone nearby to help.”

            “You’ve got quiet the system worked out.” Micha couldn’t figure out if he was being sarcastic or not.

            “Some of us have been working on this stuff for two decades or longer, I would hope that by now we had something figured out.” Micha found one of her watches and motioned Thomas to give her his hand. “Whether we like it or not, the only way we are making any progress or help on your side is if we have you. This watch will make it easy to contact you; also I want those three we came with. Matt, Sean and Garett.”

            “Why?”

            Shaking her, Micha looked at him. “If I’m going to do this, it’s my way. I doubt any of her workers are going to be any help at all, I think those three will.”

            Thomas scoffed then tapped her arm. “A lot of those scientist have been studying for decades, they know more than any of you combined.”

            Laughing again, Micha hit him back. “That’s my point; they’re stuck in the past while those guys are doing what I am. Take the lessons of the past and make something else with a twist. Those people should do what they know.”

            Sighing, Micha finally got through to him. Whether he likes it or not, she made sense. “McCoy, get the three we flew over with. Have them waiting for us to arrive, inform Dr. Rosenberg that we chose the members to the team so her people should get back to doing what they do best.”

            “Yes sir.”