A Far Sun: Synopsis/Treatment, part 5

It's Sunday, so we have two installments! Yay! This entry puts us just past halfway into Act 1. Yes, there is more to come. Much more, so stay tuned.

Click here for part 4

Later Adam and Jane meet again in the computer room. Adam has been researching things, mainly in the computer, but has also done some looking around and has inventoried what he has found.

"Have you found any food?" he asks as she comes to sit in her chair behind him. He is busy typing commands into the computer, but is not happy with the responses he's getting.

"If you call three hundred plus year-old cans of old military meats and vegetables food, then yes."

"That's all you found?"

"Not quite, but the stuff in the refrigerator and freezer all thawed and dried up long ago. Years ago, by the look. Can't really be called food, anymore."

"How much canned food is there?"

She shrugs, "If we stick to a really strict diet," she pauses, mentally calculating, "there's maybe two weeks, three weeks of food."

"And that's it?"

In answer all she says is, "Sorry."

"Not your fault."

Jane turns away from Adam. "That's not what I meant."

"I know," he says, and puts his hand on her shoulder, briefly.

She notices, and seems to appreciate it. "Did you find anything?" she asks.

"Yes." He smiles, ironically. "I found a store room chock full of military gear. You know, camouflage uniforms, coats, jackets, backpacks, tents, rope. That kind of stuff. Guns, too."

She furrows her brow, "What's that stuff doing here?"

"I dunno. Maybe they were expecting a war, or something."

"Huh." She looks around at the stillness. "Got one, if you ask me."

"Could be, but we don't know that, yet."

"Well, what say we go find out?"

"Fine," Adam replies, "but let's eat, first."

Click for more**

Later, we find Adam and Jane standing in front of the main elevator to the surface. The elevator is very large, about 5 meters by 5 meters square, and its wide doors are standing open. Both have changed from their shirt and tie (or shirt and skirt) and lab coats, into camouflage military uniforms complete with shiny, heavy military boots, web military belts, and in Adam's case, he has a backpack containing a tent, sleeping bag, and two canteens filled with water. Adam has also selected a rifle, an antiquated military carbine that looked serviceable.

Jane has not put on a backpack, and is instead commenting on Adam's choice of gear. "I can't see how we're going to need a tent and all that other stuff. You should take just the bare minimum. We don't know what we'll run into."

Adam disagrees, "That's right, we don't know. I think I'd rather be prepared, than not."

"So do I. But how are you going to carry all that stuff if we have to climb stairs to the surface?"

He grins, but not with any humor. "With difficulty, I think."

She looks toward the elevator door opening, then upwards toward the surface, 1500 meters overhead. "Have you checked the elevator to see if it's even working?"

"Of course," he grabs the backpack and rifle and starts toward the elevator. "The computer says it's functional almost all the way to the top." (The elevator was designed not to use a cable, but rather it "crawls" along a pair of rails with its own motors.) "As long as the tracks aren't broken," he says, referring to the elevator's mechanism, "we should be fine."

"But we don't know if the shaft is open to the surface."

"No, we don't."

"So we could get stuck, somewhere."

But Adam is getting a little irritated with Jane's attitude. "We could. But would you rather just sit down here and rot and not even try to get out?"

"Of course not." She begins to follow into the elevator. "I'm just being cautious, that's all."

"Well, so am I. I've programmed the elevator to proceed slowly. It's already programmed to notice small variations in the distances between and direction of the two tracks. If it thinks things are getting 'rough' it will stop, so nothing bad should happen."

"I didn't know that," she admits, impressed. "So you think we'll be able to get out and take the stairs if the elevator shaft is damaged."

They are both in the elevator, now. Adam is finishing pressing buttons to activate the car to ascend. "I think so, yes."

But something in his tone of voice alerts Jane. "But you're not sure?"

"Look," he says, "we woke up down here in the dark with no one around. There's dust on everything that tells me no one's been here in forever, and the computer is saying that it's been essentially sitting here for three hundred seventeen years just waiting for us to wake up." He snorts, "I'm not sure of anything."

"Point taken," Jane agrees.

Adam turns, finger poised on a button, "So, are you ready, or what?"

"Hit it."

**

A few moments later, after the elevator door has closed and the car has started upward, Jane asks, "Don't you wonder how the computer is still running, even with the power failure, and everything?"

"No."

"No?"

Adam explains, "The power was never really 'off'. This facility has its own nuclear reactor that supplies electricity, heat, cooling, light, etc. The reactor powers the computer."

"But the lights were off in the chamber. The equipment was dead. The door wouldn't even open."

"Yeah, I don't know what caused all that."

"You don't know?" Jane seems incredulous.

"Yes, Jane," Adam says, condescendingly, "I don't know everything."

She grins. "And I thought you were the perfect man."

There is a moment while we watch the elevator ascend. There are panels along the sides that have lights that periodically move from the top to the bottom of the elevator car (cinematic indications that the elevator is rising).

Then Adam smiles, "I am."

Jane shakes her head, "Just because you're the only man, maybe."

But Adam doesn't find that remark very funny. He simply stands and looks at Jane, expression closed. A few moments pass in uncomfortable silence.

Then Jane speaks, changing the subject: "It hasn't quite sunk in, yet, for me."

"What? The part where we've been 'transported' over three hundred years in the future, and now find ourselves alone with no earthly idea what's happened or what's going on? Or the part where we realize that if the computer is correct, then everyone we ever knew, all our friends and family, are all long dead and now we're all alone, together? Just us, for the rest of our lives?"

She simply looks at him, blank expression on her face, not saying anything.

But Adam presses her. "Look Jane, I'm sorry. But Brian is dead. Your father is dead."

She reacts loudly, "You don't know that! The computer--"

"--Right. The computer could be wrong. But I really don't think it is." He shakes his head. "It was never off-line. Its clock is very, very accurate. You know that. It has to be to control the stupid equipment. The reactor was designed to be self-contained and self-operating." He pauses. "It was designed to operate for at least a thousand years without anyone ever having to touch it." Jane simply looks at him as if she doesn't comprehend what he's saying. Adam continues, "Do you know why the facility has such a power plant? Do you know why it has such a computer? Do you know why they dug almost a mile down into the rock and earth to build this thing in the first place?"

"They wanted it kept secret. They wanted it to be away from people, where accidents couldn't harm anyone."

"All that. Yes."

She goes on, though, "They knew they were messing with things. Dangerous things. Dangerous forces with potentially dangerous consequences."

"And don't you think that what we're experiencing right now could be part of those consequences?"

She considers it. "Anything is possible."

He agrees, "Damn right. Your father knew all this. He kept it to himself, mostly, but he shared with me the real reason why we were all buried a mile in the ground with a goddamn forever reactor and the world's most powerful computer."

Jane is very, very curious, but angry. "And what is the reason?"

"Jane, he was experimenting with time travel. We were engaged in a time travel experiment"

She doesn't agree. "Bull. We didn't travel in time."

"All evidence to the contrary. We did. Something like three hundred and seventeen years." He points at Jane. "You said yourself it didn't feel like we'd laid on that catwalk grating for three hundred years. We didn't."

"Double bull! What about all the dust and stuff on everything?"

"That. Right. I have no idea. Could be the whole facility somehow got locked into another dimension, or something. I have no explanation for why the facility and the computer seem to have made the trip the 'old fashioned way'--one day at a time--while we seem to have made the trip in a few moments." Adam shrugs. "No explanation at all. But here we are."

Jane mutters 'bull' in response, but all conviction has drained from her. Then there is another rather long, awkward silence as she thinks about what Adam has said. Meanwhile, the lights are still moving, top to bottom, showing that the elevator is still rising.

Presently, however, there is a buzz, an alarm, and the lights begin to slow, and rapidly. "Uh-oh. Trouble ahead," says Adam. "There's something wrong in the elevator shaft."

"What?" Jane is alarmed. "Where are we? How close are we to the surface?"

Adam looks at the elevator's control panel, which he has just opened. "It says we're about twelve hundred meters up. Three hundred meters from the surface."

"That's a long way to go. Can we keep going?"

"Until the tracks stop, probably."

They both stand and watch the lights, still falling, but much more slowly than before. The elevator is continuing to move upward, but very slowly. Almost cautiously.

Jane asks, "How will we know if the shaft is blocked, or if the tracks are broken?"

"When the elevator stops."

"We won't crash, or anything?"

All Adam says is, "I hope not."

Continued in part 6