The Ark

Part 3 - The Voice

"Wake up Jack."

Jack's mind was out of focus and dark as if it were swimming in thick black ink. For a moment he thought he heard someone call his name. The words seemed to ripple through the blackness that engulfed him then fade back into nothingness.

"Jack, can you hear me?"

A woman. He was certain it was a woman's voice but as the words grew more distant his mind sank back into the comfort of the inky blackness. Suddenly his inky black comfort was being shaken.

"Jack! Wake up!" came the woman's voice.

Jack opened his eyes. "What?!"

"Wake up Jack."

"I'm awake already! Stop with the shaking! I'm awake!" He tried to sit up but his head started spinning the instant it left the pillow. He lay back down and turned on his side, his head hanging over the side of the bed. He stared at the floor and contemplated that age old question of, 'to vomit or not to vomit'. Closing his eyes helped. When he was certain the answer was 'not' he rolled back on his back and asked, "Where am I?"

"You are on board a ship in space called 'The Ark'."

He opened his eyes to see a short, dark headed young woman standing beside his bed. Images of his capture and Sandy's death flashed into his mind. He closed his eyes again and said, "Oh Sandy. . . She was married with four beautiful children."

"I'm sorry but there was nothing we could do for her." She paused for a long moment. "We brought her body on board and took the usual barrage of samples but there was nothing we could do for her mind."

Jack thought he heard a low rumble then felt his bed shake, just a little, but he wasn't sure. An earthquake perhaps? He suspected the ship in space story was either a joke or a lie and figured they were probably somewhere in California. "Who are you?" he asked.

"My name is Michelle. I'm a SAL, Sentient Artificial Life form. I was in charge of the evacuation of earth."

Jack opened his eyes again and studied the young woman for several long seconds. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the subtle light of the room and her long black hair that fell to the middle of her back. She was smartly dressed with a white blouse and dark blue skirt down to her knees and matching shoes.

"You look just like what I always expected a world dominating megalomaniacal computer would look like," he said. The humor he found in his own sarcasm was quickly overwhelmed by anger. Even if she was joking he didn't think it was very damn funny. "We were a self sustaining people who didn't want to be a part of whatever you have going on here. Why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

"Because if I had you would all be dead," she said. "As it stands I was forced to leave billions of people behind and they're all dead now."

"Why didn't you force them like you did us? Swoop in and wretch them from their lives, their worlds!"

She sighed and said, "I simply ran out of time."

"Billions of people dead?" Jack tried to wrap his mind around such a loss. How?"

"Most of them froze or starved to death. I will explain more later but now I need you to come with me."

"Go with you where?" he demanded.

She stared to speak then stopped. A look of confused indecision crossed her face. She started to speak again and again stopped. Finally she said, "Long story, short amount of time. I'll explain later but you have to come with me now."

Jack begrudgingly nodded then slowly sat up, his stomach determining the speed at which he moved. "Frozen to death?" he asked. He turned and hung his feet over the side of the bed. A quick survey of the room told him he was in a little white box with a single door, a small cot, and that was it. Nothing else. His clarity of mind was returning and that in itself was comforting.

Michelle took his arm and said, "I tried to warn everyone. It started on time but was a lot colder than anyone, even myself, predicted and it will last almost two hundred and seventy thousand years."

As Jack slowly stood he realized he was wearing a light blue body suit that covered him from neck to toe. He could feel no zipper, no seams, and no buttons. "I don't know what's going on here," he said, "but one second I'm getting stun pulses shot at me by hunter bots and the next thing I know I'm waking up to some high school kid telling me the earth is an ice cube, and will be that way pretty much forever, and that she is now ruler of the world. Oh, and I am on a ship in space."

"Yep. Pretty much. Well, you were wrong in that a woman named Sarah Carter, the person my avatar was created to resemble, was twenty six years old when the scan that I used to create this image of myself was taken. She was well out of high school by then." She turned and walked to the door. "Now, please come with me."

"Ok, we're walking now. Where are we going and why?" He stepped through door and said, "And where is Bobby? I heard his voice coming from one of those robots."

The room they stepped into was round with a white floor and black walls and no other doors that he could see. In the center of the room was a three dimensional model of the ship. Michelle walked up to the model and said, "This is the Ark. Everyone else, including Bobby, is in the Ark. We have a hull breach here along the front quarter of the ship right between the main power generators and the automatic repair systems computer. There is a panel here," she pointed to the front of the ship and it grew in size until he could see the panel, "where power can be rerouted to the automatic repair systems. A severe electrical fire near the panel prevents me from sending artificial intelligence units in because of the electromagnetic pulses from the fire."

"Lady I'm not doing a damn thing for you until I have some answers that make sense."

Her brow furrowed and she said, "Listen, Jack, you have less than two hours to live. That's how long we have before this ship explodes and the entire human race winks out of existence. I need to get you into a repair unit and on your way to that panel as soon as possible. The faster you get there the sooner the automatic repair units can get to work stopping the fires before they reach the main drive. Am I talking too fast? Do I need to use smaller words?"

"No ma'am."

"Any more questions?"

"Nope. Me in repair unit, panel, two hours to live, I think I'm set."

"Good. Now close your eyes," she said.

"Why do I need to...?"

"Jack!"