The Aegis Solution (7 page)

Elias chuckled at the irony of the comment. "Little did you know what kind of an effect he would
have."

Elias finished reading the last page of Kreitzmann's curriculum vitae and placed it facedown on the
adjacent pile, when he noticed that next on the stack of papers was a printed screen shot of the
anonymous plea for help affixed in front of the supposedly hidden camera. Marilyn had obviously
decided to include this disturbing picture in the file, but Elias was not sure if it had been included merely
for completeness, or to elicit an emotional response from him. Regardless of her intent, Elias, upon
once again seeing the hand-scrawled letters, felt the muscles in his back tighten.

He filled the remainder of the thirty-six-hour trip with studying the file, wandering to the club car
for a few breaks, and crawling into the lower bunk for some sleep. He awoke briefly in San Antonio as
they appended the cars from the Texas Eagle, which had arrived from Chicago many hours earlier, to
the rear of the train.

Elias arrived in Tucson late in the evening. He tipped Barton and stepped onto the low asphalt
platform, carrying his own suitcase. Within minutes, his rental car procured, he drove the few blocks
to his hotel. Following a fitful night's sleep, he skipped breakfast and began the three-hour drive west
to Aegis.

    
 

Erin Stephenson sighed with frustration. She was now saddled with the third intern this year,
Amber, and rather than providing any real help, these earnest college students tended to be time wasters.
She now had less than an hour to prepare for the ten o'clock broadcast, and instead of sitting at her desk
working, she was following the twenty-year-old to the intern's cubicle to answer a question.

Trying hard to disguise the irritation in her voice as they arrived, Erin asked, "Tell me again what
it is."

Nervously, Amber answered, in a rush of words, "Check out this surface ob," referring to the
surface observation map on the screen.

Erin's eyes hastily glanced over the barbs, as she noted, "Okay, it's windy."

"I know," Amber replied, succumbing to her hallmark giggle, which Erin found extremely
unpleasant. "At first I thought it was just variable wind, but look at all the wind barbs around this
area…look at the direction…or I should say directions."

Drawing a deep, calming breath, Erin examined the screen more closely, this time paying attention
to the little flag on each barb in the region where Amber had pointed.

"This doesn't make any sense at all," Erin muttered under her breath. Without tearing her eyes from
the screen, her right hand reached out and snatched up the telephone. After punching in a number she
knew by heart, she heard a voice answer on the other end.

"National Weather Service. Rusty."

Thankful that the meteorologist-on-duty was someone she knew, she blurted, "Rusty, Erin
Stephenson. I think you're having a problem with your wind anemometers."



Elias parked the rental car and stared through the windshield at the entrance to Aegis. The
contractor working on the addition, which would create the "cooling off" residence outside the point
of no return, had built a temporary safety tunnel that, Elias knew, would lead him to the turnstile. The
slab-on-grade foundation was already in place and a few of the tilt-up concrete panels were standing,
braced by steel struts installed diagonally and bolted to the new walls and the floor. Elias hoped the
braces were up to the task of withstanding the current winds.

When it was finished, new arrivals would be required to register within the receiving facility where
they would each obtain an RFID card. As a part of the project, the outermost turnstile was to be
modified so that it would only move if an authorized card was carried by the person entering the cage.
The card would not allow the bearer access before thirty days, giving the new arrivals an opportunity
to change their minds. To prevent the buying, selling, stealing, or swapping of cards among those in
waiting, a biometric scan would be recorded at the time the new arrival received the card. The
biometrics had to match the cardholder at the end of the thirty days or the card would be voided.

But, Elias knew, none of that was yet in place. At the end of the 2x4 and plywood tunnel was the
turnstile, and that was it.

A gust of wind violently rocked the car, and Elias' view of Aegis was briefly obscured by dust. He
decided there was no point in delaying any further, and he grabbed his suitcase with his right hand while
firmly gripping the door handle with his left. As Elias tripped the door release, the wind instantly pulled
the handle from his grasp and slammed the door all the way open, wrenching the hinges in the process.
The interior was instantaneously filled with tan-colored powder even though he quickly climbed out and
fought the force of the wind to slam the door of the car. Due to the now sprung hinges, the car door
did not fully close, making it impossible for him to lock it.

Hunched forward, Elias walked/trotted to the mouth of the safety tunnel and gratefully took a few
steps in, glad for the modest respite from the gale. Although he was tempted to again pause, the severe
shuddering and creaking from the wooden tunnel prompted him to proceed through the wobbly,
makeshift structure before it collapsed on top of him. The turnstile, lighted from behind, loomed
ominously at the end. As he neared it, his familiar goulash of emotions returned. Dread, fear, anger, and
frustration were but a few of the feelings elicited by the sight of the steel entrance.

Though it was a chilly day, as his fingers touched the bars, he involuntarily jerked them back; the
horizontal metal rods of the turnstile felt substantially, almost irrationally, colder than the ambient
temperature. Indicating impatience with himself by a shake of his head, Elias firmly grasped the bars and
pushed forward. The loud clack-clack-clack of the ratchet mechanism reinforced his already present
feeling of foreboding.

All of his speculating, all of his contemplating, wondering, and even dreaming as to what he would
find inside was about to be answered. In his mind, he pulled up the floor plan of the entry. After
navigating the entrance turnstile, which was actually a series of three turnstiles, each positioned around
a corner from the previous, the first area he would see would be a wide corridor, which, he recalled, was
one of many spokes on a wheel. He remembered thinking, as he had studied the layout, that Aegis
reminded him of a science fiction space station. It was designed with concentric rings, served by arcing
passageways, each of those accessed by wider corridors radiating straight outward from the center
common area.

This entire thought process transpired in the few paces it took him to pass through the final
turnstile. He reached the interior opening where the horizontal bars of the turnstile passed through the
fixed set of bars, which precluded the entrant from simply staying inside the revolving door and
proceeding back out again. This prevented the turnstile from being used as an exit, since the bars would
only travel in one direction.

Unbeckoned, the melody and lyrics of the Eagles song "Hotel California" filled his mind as he
stepped from the turnstile and surveyed the room. The entire facility was designed to minimize electrical
and water usage and, in fact, was completely off the grid. Daytime lighting was accomplished utilizing
integrated solar collectors, reflective tubes, and diffuser lenses to capture the maximum amount of
sunlight on the exterior and carry it inside to the corridors and rooms of the complex. Most of the roof
surface was covered with solar panels, to convert sunlight into electricity. Water came from a primary
well and a secondary, or backup, well. The pumps on both of these wells ran only during the day, when
the solar panels were generating electricity, each of them maintaining the water level of two elevated
tanks, which provided adequate water pressure due to simple gravity. Hot water was also created during
the day, again by use of the sun and a crisscrossing web of insulated black pipes leading from the roof
areas. These pipes were fed by the water tanks. The sun heated the water within them during the
meandering journey through the latticework, until the water was diverted down into the building where
the pipes were chambered in another insulated raceway and tied into the plumbing system for general
use. Sewage was handled by an extensive septic system installed in the desert adjacent to the facility. All
garbage was to be dumped in a massive, lined excavation with a powerful ram assembly at the top. The
debris was first compacted and then dropped into the pit.

Other than the water from the aquifer and the limitless sunlight, Aegis took nothing from society
and gave nothing back. Zero impact was the goal of its state-of-the-art design.

As Elias stepped into the entry corridor, the first image which greeted his eyes was also the first
answer to his volume of questions. All of the visible walls were covered with graffiti. None of the
so-called urban art had been visible on the video he had seen in Faulk's office because the camera was
tightly focused on the exit from the turnstile and did not show the adjacent walls. To his uninitiated eye,
it was unreadable, communicating contempt rather than any specific message. In one sense, he was not
surprised by the vandalism, since Aegis was anarchy in its purest form with no pre-existing governance
or law enforcement. One of the many problems Elias had with the establishment from its inception was
the concept of creating an environment where people, who were already at the end of their ropes, would
wander in and then be expected to create a viable society from scratch.

The entry corridor, lined with several doors, was easily spacious enough to accommodate hundreds
of people, yet it was empty. Despite the lack of an audience, Elias resisted the urge to wave at the
camera, knowing that Faulk was watching and had been impatiently waiting for his arrival. He did make
a point of ensuring that the lens received a full-frontal view of his countenance.

"I wasn't expecting a welcoming committee anyway," Elias said aloud, his voice echoing back to
him from the various hard surfaces.

On the train ride, he had found the tally in the files: more than eleven thousand people had entered
Aegis since it opened. There was, of course, no way for him to know the current population.

Elias shifted his suitcase to his left hand and reached into the pocket of his windbreaker with his
right, gripping the butt of the 9mm Beretta but leaving it concealed. With his feeling of self-confidence
bolstered, he walked forward into the corridor.

Knowing from his memorization of the plans that he had a nearly one-half-mile walk to the center
of the complex, he paced himself at a steady but not quite brisk stride. He did veer to the side so that
he walked near the right-hand wall, rather than down the center. The silence and emptiness was
unsettling, creating the illusion that Aegis was completely unoccupied and abandoned.

Elias had traveled approximately one hundred yards, he guessed from counting his paces, when he
approached the first of the intersecting hallways. This would be the outermost ring of residential units.
The graffiti was as dense on the walls as it had been at the entrance. Just as he entered the intersection,
two young men stepped into his path from the right side, coming to a halt directly in front of him.
Before he could react, he noticed two more emerge from the hallway to his left, supplementing the
impromptu blockade. Elias stopped and said nothing, wanting them to make the first move.

The tallest of the four, the top of his head covered with a black stocking, declared, "This is where
you stop."

Elias took a brief moment to size up the stranger and his three accomplices before speaking. "Why
is that?"

The young man shook his head as if Elias had asked him a foolish question. "Cuz this is where you
decide."

"Decide? What?"

The leader had obviously expected the newcomer to be frightened. Since he did not hear a
satisfactory level of fear in Elias' voice, he took a step forward, clearly intended to intimidate, and
menaced, "Whether you belong to us or die."

As the man spoke, Elias heard a shuffling from behind and glanced over his shoulder to see that
two more punks had approached. They had, no doubt, been hiding behind one of the closed doors he
had passed. He was now surrounded.

Turning his head back to the front, Elias also took a step forward, bringing himself within inches
of the apparent leader, and while staring directly into those dull eyes, in a low and steady voice answered,
"I don't think so."

Angered by the response, the leader bit his lower lip for a moment before barking out, "What you
mean, you don't think so? You don't have a choice!"

Elias grinned at him, his expression anything but mirthful. "But you said it was my decision. I've
decided to keep walking."

He took a quick side step, and the leader moved to block him. Expecting this, in a series of
movements which were almost a blur, Elias dropped his suitcase and reached up to grip the front of the
stranger's shirt while pulling the 9mm from his pocket. He jammed the barrel of the pistol into the neck
of the leader and ordered, "Tell your other punks to walk away."

The tall one's eyes showed white all the way around the irises as the reality of his predicament sunk
in. But before he could speak, a gunshot rang out in the corridor, and Elias felt the body of the one he
had thought was the leader go limp. Almost instantly, the thug's shirt blossomed with blood. Elias
released his grip, allowing the stranger to drop limply to the floor, and looked around to see that all of
the others had pistols drawn, all aiming at him.