Order 17

Chapter 25: Tour

"La forter what?" I ask.
"La forteresse de la sécurité, it means the fortress of security" Arno says.
"Since Arno is the leader of this facility, he gets to name it. And since he's french, he gave it a french name" Lili tells me.
"She's right" he says, "Anyway, so I suppose you're looking for answers as to why you're here?"
"Yeah" I say.
"Well, I am one of the higher ranking generals in the Australian military. I heard that the president was planning something big a couple of months ago, and was arranging to meet members of the United Nations. I had a feeling that something bad was going to be the aftermath of this, so I had this fortress build in secret"
"And how come nobody has found it?" Ally asks.
"Well I built it underground in the great dividing range, and since it is an unlikely place to build a fortress, it is a perfect spot"
"So then what does this place have?"
"Pretty much everything to be honest, we're about to take you and your friends on a tour of our facility" he says, standing up from his desk. He walks towards the door.
"This way" he says and walks down a hallway. Each one has letters and numbers at each intersection, probably to help guide you around. We take a right and he begins to speak.
"This is ward E4, we grow all of our food here". He stops by a large window on the wall and I look through it. I see row after row of different fruit and vegetable plants with lights above them.
"I thought that plants can't photosynthesise under artificial light" Rachel says.
"Well usually they can't. Most artificial light doesn't emit as much energy in the red and blue region of the light spectrum as sunlight does. In other words, different ratios of reds, yellows and blues all combine together to make up white sunlight. But we can successfully grow plants using only artificial light in growth chambers. But sunlight is best for most plants. It's generally more intense than artificial light, and it's pretty equally distributed among the different wavelengths that earthly plants have evolved to like best, also we use hydro farming, to make them grow faster".
"What's hydro farming?"
"It's when we pump water full of nutrients through the roots of the plant and because they have lots of the nutrients they need, they can grow up to four times as fast".
"Sorry I got really lost just then" Brayden says.
"He means that you can, but it isn't as good as sunlight, and that the plants grow faster" Rachel tells him.
"Precisely" Arno says and continues walking down the hall.
He takes a left and a right before stopping.
"This is ward G7, our medical ward. We use the latest technology that the government has to offer to us". I look through another window and see a girl no older than nine getting a futuristic looking MRI scan.
"Now this will be our last stop before we stop by the cafeteria for lunch" Arno says and continued walking. We go down another set of corridors and stop outside a room door, this time with no windows.
"This is ward K9, where our security room is located. Here, we survey everything that happens within a one hundred kilometre radius. Now to the cafeteria" he says and walks through some double doors at the end of the hallway. There are tables all around the room and around fifty people sitting at them.
"Over here, there's somebody I want you to meet". He walks over to one of the tables and we follow.
"Allow me to introduce you to General Viggo".