2012 NaNoWriMo: EPOCH

The Story Begins 4,651 words

Bill's journal:

Three days before the crisis--

We are getting settled into the vacation accomodations. It took too long to get here, yet in reality, there were very few obstacles. What is normally a long waiting list to get passports out of the U. S. really didn't happen. I remember Pete Jacobson's long wait to get passports for himself--and he didn't have to worry about family members. It took nearly eight months. And for us, me, Saffi and the 2 kids, it took a matter of days. From the time that we got the notice in the mail and when Saffi checked with Rachel down at the airline reservations office to see if the offer was for real, it took three days for all of us to have passports and tickets to the 'land down under'. Well, we are here. The bell hops loaded all our luggage onto a luggage cart and we followed one of the gals as she pushed the cumbersome thing into an ornate cave in the side of a mountain. I carried Billy and Saffi had Opal; both kids were sound asleep. We waited in a bright corridor for the elevator and the young woman bell hop never stopped her tourist dialogue. She welcomed us to the resort, or rather to the "Unique vacation experience of a lifetime with exclusive family accomodations in the semi-tropical regions of the Land of Oz."

The elevator doors opened and two bell hops pushing empty carts exited and the five of us and our loaded cart entered. The one sided dialogue continued..."The Mount Barney McPherson Range Resort was originally built as a research facility to study the working ecological biomes of the planet Earth. The premise was inspired by the Biodome Project in 'your own' Arizona state back in the U. S. of A. The Queensland equivalent was to be known as the Biodome in the Mountain, but the project failed due to lack of funding. The facility was deserted and stayed dormant for about three years until the foundation Humana for World Tourism bought the facility and converted it into a vacation resort. The Mount Barney facility consists of five levels, three of which are set up with guest accommodations. The fourth level remains pretty much as the original design. Guests are encouraged to tour the fourth level and view the different ecological gardens and zoos. The fifth level is also set up for tours, although it is more for the interests of architects and engineers of how a facility this large is able to cut costs through recycling it's own wastes." Saffi, the sleeping kids and I exited the elevator on the second level and followed our luggage and the 'rote spiel' from the bell hop. We passed through a garden area with a fountain and what appeared to be a meandering stream, all well lit from a cavernous ceiling possibly thirty feet above. If I wasn't so dog-beat tired I think I'd have been impressed. Then finally, the girl stopped spouting words as bubbly as the fountain we had passed and unlocked the door to a fourplex unit that turned out to be a five bedroom house inside a giant man hewn cave. Our domicile was numbered 2-57C. The girl, whose name was Shyla, helped us put the kids to bed. I offered her a paper bill with a five on it and hoped it was appropriate for the local economy. Shyla just smiled and politely explained that the gratuity was unnecessary. I thanked her for her help and she showed us a map of the facility and a list of the recreational and restaurant facilities both inside and outside of the mountain. Then she bid us good-day and Saffi and I stood in the main room, the living room, of our house surrounded by silence. I was numb and trembled from exhaustion and I think Saffi was as done in as me. We fell asleep on the couch.

two days before the crisis--

Sapphire and I slept until Opal woke us up. We were out for probably four hours and I felt as if I could have sleep another twenty-four. Billy was still asleep and Saffi convinced me she'd better wake him up or he wouldn't want to sleep when all of us finally went to bed for the night. We arrived around mid-morning Queensland time and it was close to four or five pm by the time we got the kids fed in grilled cheese sandwiches and milk. The kitchen cupboards and fridge were set up, but we opted for the easy out and dialed the meals up on the food server. Saffi normally opts for the old fashioned home-cooked meals, but she was pretty tired from the trip over. The food server actually served up a pretty mean grilled cheese. I had a mug of hot cream ot tomato with my grilled cheese. The best I've ever had from a food replicator. We were up and the fed and the kids were fussy, so we decided to stroll about the second level and get the hang of where we were within the complex. Not far from our unit was a play ground with swings and a wading pool. The placard next to the pool stipulated All children be attended by an adult at all times. Saffi stripped both kids of their shoes and socks and let them play in the pool. They had a blast. The temperature inside the cavern was really warm, not chilled like one would expect, but the hunidity wasn't as bad as outside the mountain. I had to keep looking up at the huge lamps to remind myself we were indeed inside and not outside. The trees and grass just kept throwing my senses off in that respect. The place smelled like wet dirt and green leaves.

Finally, the kids had enough and were hungry again. We took them to our unit, gave them baths, fed them a home cooked meal and tucked them into bed for the night around eight pm underworld time--or as the locals seem to say--Oz Time or QLD time. I turned on the big screen vid and caught the local news. There was a devastating unseasonal storm raging over the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Most of the middle eastern countries were being hit by hurricane force winds. I turned off the vid. The weather was always bad, and getting worse since the mid twenty-first century. I found myself wondering why people insisted on living on coastal lands--of course most people really don't have much of a choice, but that truthe never really stopped me from wondering. The reporter on the newscast attributed the massive storm system to the continued global weather change and went into the report of the emergency UN council to try and bulldoze both the Soviet and the Chinese to cut down on their carbon emmissions. I fiddled with the sound system and found an audio selection and turned on some soft intrumental blues; then went into the kitchen and helped Saffi clean up.

last normal world day--
Today it was announced over the unit-coms and the internal vid systems that all guests were to attend an Orientation on the third level inside the stadium. Saffi and I received out seating assignment by one of the hops and the time to be at the stadium. At first I thought it was outside the mountain until it registered that the announce ment said third level--given we were on the second level we took the elevator down and followed the crowd to the stadium. When we got there, boy was I in for a surprise. I knew my brother and his family were here too, they arrived last week and we had dinner together last night, but what I didn't realize was that our parents, Sapphires dad, brother, sister and aunt, my aunts an uncles and Samantha's family were all here too. They arrived around the same time as Darren and Sam. In all, it was like a mini-family reunion with 27 of us all here sitting in a group in a huge soccer, I mean football stadium. Saffi knew everyone was here--I was the only one who was surprised--It felt like one of those old classic twentieth century 'This Is Your Life' moments. Saffi apologized and said it just slipped her mind to tell me the other members of the family were here too. I sort of understand, the last week has been rush rush crazy. But still...

We sat through an impressive program the resort staff called guest orientation. There were three, twenty-minute vids with staff speakers talking in between and a longer thirty minute vid and speech. The first speaker and vid told the precise history of the resort--a longer version of what the hop spouted while she pushed our luggage. The second vid showed all the recreational areas and restaurants and cafes and souvenier shops as well as hiking outside and so on. The third showed the medical and emergency facilities available. The program ended with a special Humana Foundation speaker who explained the lottery gimick and how fifty extended family groups from all around the world were chosen to attend the Grand Opening of the newest of the HWTF's resorts. We were all bid to enjoy ourselves and when we return home, to tell all our friends of our vacation experience. I guess given the cost of advertising, this gives them a bargain in word of mouth world wide exposure. A potentially ingenious business strategy.

And speaking of the world, the Middle East countries were reeling from the aftermath of the huge freak storm. World aid advertisements were dominating the airwaves so I turned the thing off.
1,615 words



Crisis Day 1
Today the big screen televisions outside and inside the Mount Barney McPherson Range Resort, all flashed about world crisis. China and Russia were attacked, or so said the news broadcast...It was all very confusing. Talks broke down in the UN emergency session when the whole Middle East Coalition left the building. Nothing new, right. I mean Syria, Lebanon and Israel have always been a powder keg with radical groups of starving fanatics that are expert at disrupting any kind of peaceful negotiation, but somehow, Lybia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan and Turkey; the whole Middle East powder keg with the exception of the main Arabian peninsula, all stood up and deserted the United Nation's emergency world conference. The Judean, Islamic, and Christian factions all came to an agreement that the recent aggressive industrial and manufacturing business policies by the Russo-China Coalition were the worst thing to hit the political environmental hot plate since the turn of the century. Well, the British news caster reported that missles from Pakistan, Israel, Iran and India struck military targets inside China and the Soviet borders. At first, it was thought that the missles were nukes, but it turned out that no nuke warheads were on the icbms. The Middle East Coalition sent conventional war heads stating that Russia and China should share in the casualties they inflict by ignoring environmental mandates. China and Russia, however, believing that they were under nuclear attack, retalliated with nuclear missles while the MEC missles were still in flight. The death toll in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria rose into the millions. But to top it off, when the MEC realized that nukes were exploding in Pakistan and Israel--the whole middle Eastern Coalition opened up with their full arsenal, including the nuclear and biological factions.

All world governments are on high alert. So far, the exchange has been just between the MEC and Russo-Chinese factions.

Day 2
None of the adults, some of the younger children and many of the older children sensing the extreme stress within the mountain resort, haven't slept since the first newscast yesterday. Today everybody met in the third level at the stadium. That is the best place in this mountain complex that can satisfactorily accommodate everybody, including children, all at the same time. The managers of the resort organized the meeting and explained that we were all stranded here for the interim--nobody was leaving Australia because the country is under something like martial law. As the head guy said, all planes are grounded and all ships are docked. Those still flying or floating are heading to ground and port where they will stay until the dangers can be assessed by the military heads. About two thirds of the resort staff left to be with their families during this time of crisis. I wish them all the luck and fortune left in this world. The crisis was made even more frustrating and terrifying when none of the phone lines or comm services worked. People can't contact anyone outside the immediate resort area. Geoffry Fergeson, the head manager of the resort explained that all civilian communications have been shut down--only military channels are operational--that and the now twenty-four hour coverage from 7 News out of Brisbane, Queensland. I helped set the auditorium up with more big screens from around different areas of the complex. My electrician skills as well as guys with framing expertise got the place in order within a few hours. I worked alongside guys from Poland, Germany, India, and Canada. So now the auditorium is the official place to keep up with the unfolding world events. Saffi and other women, as well as most of what is left of the resort staff have been cooking and helping to set up communal dining areas as well as cots for those who wish to sleep near the stadium and the twenty-four hour news.


Day 33
My last journal entry was a little over a month ago. The world turned crazy and we were on the otherside (the underside) of the planet when it got blowed up. About an hour after I wrote my last entry the rest of the nuclear power-heads launched their arsenals at each other. We didn't really get to learn why things escalated beyond sanity, the newscasts just suddenly stopped. At first we thought the power was out in the mountain, but the screens had power, there just wasn't any signal. Then we picked up a weak signal from Sydney where the 7 News corporation is headquartered--that was when we heard of the rising death counts in Europe, Asia, North, Central, and South America, Africa and Eurasia from firestorms in cities and nuclear fallout. Bases in Australia were also hit, about the same time the big screens went blank. Another gathering was called and through the mayhem of crowd hysteria we as a group started organizing into pockets of survival and sanity. The first council was organized with three people representing each group of people stuck here. As it turns out there are fifty near complete family groups from all around the world inside the mountain. Sort of like fifty separate pockets or tribes of different cultures. We have Chinese, Russians, and Middle Easterners. Common people from the very countries that began the dominoes of destruction. No-one inside the mountain happen to be affiliated with government, though; not so much as an elected public school member. The closest thing we have to any type of political organizing unit is we have some business executives and educators and those of us who have had military background.

After the hysteria calmed, we found it easier to group together according to function. Those who can run a kitchen and cook helped to keep everybody fed. Those who know about administration things have organized groups to inventory the installation and get a better idea what we have here inside the mountain. Geoff and those of his staff who were still here were very helpful. Much of the resort staff assisted with the inventories before the mountain was sealed from outside contamination.

I was with one group that discovered a sort of communications and control center on the first level. It didn't take much to get it operational. Another group with technician training and who knew about operating and reading the instruments took over monitoring both before we sealed the installation and afterwards.

We got educators together and found that the kids can go from pre-school all the way to University, so after the second week, school started for the children. It helped to get the majority of the kids out of the way for several hours a day so we adults could get living spaces organized. And I suppose it helped establish a little bit of normal in this time of abnormal.

We have medical expertise--dental, optical, technicians, specialists, surgeons, general practitioners, nurses and a couple veterinarians. Saffi isn't so sure of the choices of gyno's tho, one is from India, another from Iran, and another from one of the African countries; all men; one Hindu and two Muslim. I'd never figured my wife to be a bigot, but then being stuck in this place has definately brought out the worst as well as the best in everyone. There is a clinic on each level, more like a first aide station and on the third level, the same one with the stadium, there is a small hospital.

We have administrators, technicians and scientists, tradesmen, craftsmen, engineers, laborers, and artists of every shape, kind and size. This place has turned out to be an extreme sampling of humanity and world culture; a sociologist's dream come true.

We'd organized into a fare operating community within a couple weeks, then the techs in the control room called a total population meeting within the stadium. Radiation contamination outside had risen to alarming levels and the temperature had dropped so much that snow had fallen and this was Australia's semi-tropics. Geoffry Fergeson reminded the gathering that this resort was originally a self-sustaining environment project. The reason the project never came to fruition was lack of finances. (What he failed to tell us was that it was also incomplete). By this time there hadn't been any telecasts from anywhere for a couple days. The majority decision was to seal the mountain. Those few who dissented were easily persuaded so that the first overall community decision was eventually an unanimous one. The three representatives from each family/tribe group were assigned to witness the sealing of the mountain. Me, Darren and Aunt Storm represented our family. A strange thing tho, none of the resort staff, not even Geoff, were present at the door closing. It was realized by the next day, that none of the resort staff were in the complex. This puzzel bothers me. I can't stop thinking about it. Some of the other's think that the staff all have families near and they wished to be with their families. But if that is so, then why haven't any of them come back for shelter with their families in tow? Or for that matter, why didn't some, even one, stay because it is probably sure death outside the mountain? I mean, the percentages are against the human survival instinct not kicking in for at least one of the staff members let alone the majority.

Day 63
It is a funny thing, it isn't the rat race, or the home I almost had paid off that I miss the most; no, the thing I really miss, out of everything I never gave a second thought to, are Dairy Queens. When we finally get out of here, I hope Dairy Queens are invented again. Of course, I will probably never get to taste a chocolate cone dipped in butterscotch, or dip a french fry into a catsup packet, or eat another Brazier Burger ever again. But, I hope my grand-kids will. I guess that is a small thing to wish for, and more than likely an impossible thing. When the world blew up, so did the idea and reality that was Dairy Queen. That is what is most unfair, the evil isn't what got destroyed; all the innocent and the fun, and so very much of the good that brought smiles to peoples lives, that's what got destroyed.

Oh everyone here tries to carry on with what is good, but humans are territorial animals, and easily threatened by differences. And, as it happens, there are all the world of differences closed up inside this place; almost fifteen hundred people, from all walks of life, from all over the world; and, my family is part of that diversity. Within the last few weeks fist fights and near riots have broken out between groups. Everyone is uneasy, but some hot heads decided that the Chinese and Soviet block families didn't deserve to stay inside the mountain, like these people had anything remotely to do with what their insane governments did. It took some whole hell of a lot of shouting and a majority shoulder to shoulder stand to finally make the hostiles realize that outside world politics and bigotry had no place here. We as a people, the People inside the mountain, have adopted zero tolerance for prejudice and bigotry. We haven't formed a police force or a judge, attorney court system...rather, the 150 council reps get together and hear grievances. We as a body then decide what needs to be done to settle the differences. I never heard of some of the solutions to working out differences before; but, those stanger ones that require reparations seem to work better than physical punishments or threats to throw the most hostile offenders back out into the world.

One teen from Germany decided he was going to turn Nazi and harrassed a Muslim boy about half his age. I thought we were going to have an uncontrollable rift in religions, but as it turned out one of the Islamic family groups from (a central country in Africa) suggested that the teen pay restitution to the boy's family. So now the teen is living with the boy's grandparents for a period of time determined by his own behaviors. The longer he rebels against the culture and the people he is living with the longer he will be required to live with them.

As I look at my daughter and son, I wonder, what changes will be for them. They are both young enough that they won't remember much of what outside was like. Neither one of them ever experienced the delight of Dairy Queen or the social stigma of racial segregation, for instance. So if I ever mention how I miss chocolate butterscotch dips, they won't understand what it is that I am missing. Already, the differences between the generations inside the mountain are huge; and, we've only been here a couple months.

2,152 words

Geologist perspective--

I decided to have a look around the passages between levels. I've read a little bit about Australian minerology and know that silver, copper, zinc, lead and some bauxite and gold can be found in the Great Dividing Range. My wanderings didn't turn up much until I discovered an area of rough hewn rock where construction teminated on the fifth level. It was partially hidden by the recycling processors, but I found a narrow vein of what appears to be copper ore. I also found metamorphosed rhyolite here and there on all levels of the complex. I'm not real sure just how this information can be put to use but I have mapped and logged the locations of my mineral/geological assay in the computer. Then on a gut hunch, I decided to search the computer data-base for mineral and geologic formations of interest within the complex...I should have done this first, as it turns out. It seems that every discovery I made over the last few weeks have already been noted and entered into computer. Tomorrow I will explore the list of minerals of interest which I haven't noticed.

biologist/environmentalists perspective--

Since things have calmed inside the mountain, I have been assessing the flora and fauna, all introduced into the cavern levels to act as an ecological self sustaining environment. The weakness of the shelter in which we find ourselves is electriticy--electrical power runs the computer, the elevators between levels, the lights that provide the equivalence of solar nutrients to the variety of flora introduced inside the mountain, and electrical power is essential for running the recycling processors on the fifth level as well as the air and water pumps on every level.

Some of the systems were ingeniously designed, in that every level has what amounts to be a pond and stream in a series of park like areas. From what I can tell from the computer data and my own explorations, about a third of the recycled, cleaned and purified waste waters on the fifth level are pumped up to the first level where the water surges through a fountain, overflows into a meandering stream watering dwarf trees, a variety of bushes, flowers, mosses ferns and fungi, then drains down to the next level through a pipe to surge up through another fountain and repeated until reaching the fifth level where the water is combined with waste water from all the levels and filtered and purified and recycled. On a separate system, a natural spring located on the fifth level, also feeds into the recycling system, just enough to compensate for volume loss through evaporation and usage. What isn't used within the complex drains/flows out into the mountain, presumably making its way to the ocean. I'm wondering how large is the aquafer that supplies the water for the spring, and if the temperatures outside actually drop enough to begin a glacial age or other cycle of drought that no longer feeds the aquafer, how long before the natural spring dries up?

Another consideration, if the aquafer is maintained by a watershed, we might consider monitoring for contamination of a radiation and biological nature.

The other two-thirds of the water is pumped to all the upper four levels for use in the housing compartments, as well as the little cafes and recreational areas the resort utilized to entertain their guests. I am on a committee whose mission is to find out the feasibility of activating some of these recreational sections. The water system also operates turbines that produce much but not all of the electricity used on all four levels. Another committee has been formed to see how this electrical production can be maximized. There are other shortfalls that basically keep this complex from attaining self-sufficiency. I and others (you could say we are the best scientific and engineering minds available) have the task of compensating for the shortfalls or in a best outcome scenario, eliminate the shortfalls and force this place to be self-sustaining.

Environmentally, there is a lot of diversity, but it is a long ways from being ecologically stable, especially with the human contingent present inside the mountain.

Another consideration that must be compensated for and that is the presence of pets. All pets of a preditary nature must be monitored thoroughly. For instance, the reproduction of cats and dogs must be kept within sustainable limits as well as the rodent, bird, reptile and amphibian pets. I and other biologists and the six veterinarians have agreed to catalogue all pets. In accomplishing this task we have found a large genetic potential among each animal group. I am starting to wonder if there wasn't a plan of preparation in the gathering of these so called lottery vacation winners. From a genetic diversity point of view, you couldn't have formed a more perfect population to be sheltered together. I haven't voiced my suspicions that this group could not be an accident at this particular time in human history--it smacks too much like a control group in an elaborate survival experiment. If it weren't for the environmental/ecological sustainability shortfalls, predominately caused by the volume of humans and their pet population, I would more than suspect an intentional plan or design behind our presence and the 'opportune' (?) disaster that have isolated us inside Mount Barney...

884 words

665 words in an hour
(I need to write for approximately 2h36m to achieve each day's word quota--
so if I manage to write 3-4 hours a day on topic, then I will achieve the 50k
words for NaNo with very little problem)