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| Scene Title | 324 Seconds |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | At Mount Natazhat, Richard begins where he ended, and a narrow window of opportunity shows itself. |
| Date | July 22, 2021 |
It took a day for Richard to know whether his gambit paid off or not.
A day locked up in a storage closet without food or water, unable to shift into a non-physical form. But sometime the next morning, guards entered Richard’s makeshift cell to escort him from one form of confinement to another. But his journey under armed guard helped give him a better idea of Natazhat’s new layout.
First, there’s the vehicle garage. That’s where he was held in a storage closet. It’s a detached structure southwest of the main research facility. There’s a snowcat and two snowmobiles parked there, backup fuel, a handful of unused diesel generators, portable heaters, tools, and other detritus. That leads out to the helipad where the Chinook is parked. An elevated walkway connects the helipad to the main research facility through the front entrance.
From here, the lobby. It’s spacious, lots of windows, easy sightlines for approach. This is where the military has set up a command center. There’s a lot of hard cases here, radio equipment, portable barricades facing the front entrance. Enough firepower to hold off a short siege. The stairs up to the mezzanine lead to where Richard was when he first arrived, but that’s not where they’re taking him.
As Richard is building his mental map of the Natazhat HAARP facility, he’s led through double doors off the lobby on the ground floor, down a long tiled corridor past a galley and mess hall to a windowless conference room.
That’s where everything gets trickier.
High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program
Satellite Link Station
Conference Room
Mount Natazhat
Saint Elias Mountains
Alaska
July 22nd
8:14 am
The conference room has doubled as a makeshift prison for the two researchers remaining at this facility, Charlotte Roux and Richard Drucker. There are blankets and pillows set up on the floor, paperwork scattered across the long conference table that once sat 12. Charlotte is seated when Richard is brought in, with a lanky, gray-haired Drucker standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder. They were interrupted mid-conversation by this new arrival.
The soldiers say nothing when Richard is nudged into the room. No introductions, no instructions, just a push of arm’s length away before they shut and lock the door behind them. Neither Charlotte nor Drucker looks to know what to make of it. Drucker takes a step away from Charlotte and closer to Richard, watching him warily, protectively. Neither say a word.
“Drucker,” Richard greeted in tired but affable tones as he stumbles in a bit, lifting a hand up to rub against the side of his neck, “Roux. Got a bit delayed making a run over to Anchor for supplies, guess I should have stayed away longer, right?”
His words were casual, friendly, darkly humorous– but his gaze was serious as he looked between the two, the hand at his neck lifting to point at his ear, a look around the room, a questioning eyebrow raised.
Are we being listened to is the obvious question.
Drucker looks uncertain, regarding Richard with a curious look that isn’t quite suspicion. Something different, less on edge. He looks around the room and shrugs some. He isn’t sure.
“You picked a piss-poor time to come back.” Drucker says in response, holding up the presumed ruse and giving Richard an unwavering stare. Charlotte, meanwhile, gets up from her seat and circles the room, keeping the conference table between herself and Richard.
Richard’s observation of the conference room is a mixed bag. There’s old telecom hubs on the table, but likely no infrastructure to use them with. Were they repurposed to listening devices? But the woman that captured him, Linda Tavara, is a mosaic. Is she listening now? Is she in the fucking room?
There’s so many variables.
“Tell me about it,” Richard says, stepping over to a chair at his end of the conference table and dropping down into it in a slight sprawl; one hand coming up to rub against his shoulder, grimacing slightly, “Would’ve been better off if I stayed, I guess. That musician near the docks, uh, Robyn? She says hi, by the way, was hoping to see you.”
Still playing to the ruse, but he looks between the two with a meaningful glance as he says it.
It flies over both their heads. The name registers for the briefest of moments, but in that fleeting way familiar names do, especially ones you try not to think about.
“Exactly what kind of bullshit is this?” Charlotte asks point blank, shaking her head. “If you think we’re fucking idiots you might as well—”
“Charlotte.” Drucker gently says, holding a hand out to her. She relents, barely, and Drucker places a hand on the conference table, never taking his eyes off of Richard. “I don’t know what you’re game is, sir, but whatever it is… We don’t have the patience for it anymore. We already told the people outside what they want to know…” Which implies there’s more, and the military knows it. Because Drucker and Charlotte wouldn’t be alive if they didn’t have a use. Not with this crowd. “So if you’re not here to try and extort information from us, why don’t we just lay a couple of cards on the table. How about we start with your name.”
“Nnh.” Richard brings a hand up, his fingers rubbing between his eyes, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to hope they aren’t listening, then– the only reason I’m alive right now is because they think I’m one of you, so let’s try and keep that up if we can. My name’s Richard Cardinal. There’s a lot more we gotta talk about, but the most important thing that you probably should know right now–”
He leans forward, resting arms folded on the table’s edge, glancing between them, “Your daughter is on her way.”
Not one bombshell, but two.
Charlotte and Drucker both look overwhelmed when Richard introduces himself. The revelation that their daughter is alive is so far flung as to be astronomically impossible. Each asks different questions over one another:
“Richard?” Drucker is breathless. “How did you get—”
“Robyn?” Charlotte can barely say the name aloud. “That’s not—”
They stop on realizing they’re talking over each other. Neither is sure who should talk first.
Richard had anticipated Charlotte’s reaction, but not Drucker’s– he pauses a moment, and then breathes out a faint almost-laugh, “Oh. You, uh, you must know my mother.”
He gives his head a slight shake, “Robyn was down in the Commonwealth Arcology with her, she’s been– she’s been doing alright, all things considered. Michelle’s also safe for that matter, although she’s not anywhere near here, thank God.”
He can skip the part where Robyn had severe brain damage he had to heal with a miracle. They don’t need to know that part.
“The arcology…” Drucker covers his mouth with one hand, reeling. But also, part of him doesn’t seem surprised right now. More so about his daughter than anything else. But not about Richard’s presence. And for anyone who knew Michelle, the disappearance of her son was her entire driving force in the DoEA.
Charlotte is still and silent for a moment, wiping at her eyes. She doesn’t want to believe this is real, because it seems too convenient, too cruel. Jaw unsteadied, she looks Richard in the eye, and… believes? Richard’s had to deliver this kind of information before, and usually it’s harder. Usually there’s denial, pushback, who are you and why are you in my house kinds of questions.
“She—She can’t come here.” Charlotte finally blurts out. Against her will. Drucker is shaken back to the moment by that, but also agrees.
“Richard I—I don’t know how you got here, how—why you’re here. Fuck, how you even—” Drucker has too many questions, and Robyn has become the laser focus of all of them. To a point of distraction. “You need to tell her to turn around. If—is she with Nova?”
“Unfortunately nobody told us that the Royals had invaded before we started out, and I don’t think they’re about to just let me head back out and go tell them to turn around,” Richard replies a bit dryly, his hands spreading a bit to either side as he leans back again in his chair, “And yes, Nova’s with her. Others too.” He leaves the others ambiguous for the moment.
He hesitates, then shakes his head, “No time to explain interdimensional travel at the moment, we can talk the Looking Glass when we’re all safe if you want, Drucker.”
There’s a moment where Charlotte and Drucker share a look with one-another. Silent, knowing. “We didn’t tell them about the Looking Glass,” is something Richard did not expect to tumble unprompted out of Drucker’s mouth. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
Charlotte crosses her arms, mind busy with so many impossible thoughts. She keeps needing to dab at her eyes with her sleeve, unable to think about anything other than the startling revelation that her daughter—the daughter she thought she’d never see again at best—is alive and on her way here.
Drucker, a more obsessive man, is latched on to something else. “So it worked.” Not a question, a statement. The gleam in his eyes isn’t curiosity, it’s pride.
There’s a slight flicker of something– hope?— in Richard’s expression as he looks to Drucker, his back straightening slightly. “Wait, did you– did you work on it with her? And yeah, it worked. It’s how I got there, how I got back, it’s– not what I’d call reliable technology but it works.”
There’s a pause, a glance to Charlotte, “—but you don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask the other Robyn when they’re here.” You know, if they all survive.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Charlotte hisses. “These people will kill her on site. We can’t—”
“We can’t solve that without a level head.” Drucker tries to detach himself from the moment. Easy when the shock of the revelation hasn’t fully sunken in yet. He redirects his frustration to a question, one of intentions and misinterpretations.
A memory lingers in the back of Drucker’s mind.
“This is Richard Drucker at the Mount Natazhat HAARP facility, transmitting an emergency broadcast. Is anyone listening?”
“Richard, I never worked on your mother’s project.” Drucker is careful to say.
Something else begins to throb like a pulse behind Richard’s eyes.
«WARNING: CRITICAL POWER FAILURE.»
“I thought I’d recognize your voice, but you sound different.”
“Drucker?”
“But the way you talk, the things you know.”
«CORE TEMPERATURE AT CRITICAL, BEGIN EMERGENCY EVACUATION»
“You’re here.”
“H-Hello? Please repeat!”
“Alive.”
«PARTICLE ACCELERATOR CHAMBER COMPROMISED, BEGINNING EMERGENCY REACTOR PURGE.»
“Even—even after all our conversations.”
“This is… Richard Cardinal, at the Mount Natazhat research facility. Who am I speaking to?”
“I never thought you’d find a way to get to us.”
«CORE TEMPERATURE AT CRITICAL, BEGIN EMERGENCY EVACUATION»
“When the communication stopped I just assumed…”
“Richard… Drucker?”
“I assumed you died.”
«WARNING, MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED.»
Welcome to the new beginning.
Ten Years Ago
Mount Natazhat Complex
Communication Center
Alaska
August 2nd
2011
Prime Timeline
Richard Cardinal is slouched against the back of a leather office chair, looking at hastily-transcribed notes in a spiral-bound journal. “The way I’d always thought about it… I don’t know. When I found the remnants of it in New Mexico, I didn’t even know what to make of it. It was advanced… terrifying.”
«Your mother was—is a genius. We were friends. She… she never gave up on you.»
Swallowing hard, Richard sets his notepad aside, then underlines the word gravity multiple times. “So,” he forcefully changes the topic, “what you’re saying is the anomaly you’re observing is a pinch in spacetime, directly over Natazhat? I ran the analysis, my equipment picked up the same thing yours did.”
«So it’s happening in the same place just… worlds apart.»
“Something like that.” Richard taps his pen on the console, then looks up at a monitor showing atmospheric readings. “Which probably explains how we’re able to talk to one-another, in spite of…” he makes a gesture Drucker cannot hear on the other end of the radio, “differences in causality.”
«Charlotte thinks it may be because of increased solar activity. We’ve picked up some heightened solar flares, and they’re only growing stronger.» There’s a pause, filled with a static crackle. «Richard, what we’ve discovered here is… groundbreaking.»
“It is.” Richard’s mind is a thousand miles away.
«You don’t seem… happy. If I can make that observation.»
“I am.” He replies, starting to write something down on a fresh page. “I’m just… frustrated it took me this long to realize. I would’ve…” Guilt tightens his throat. He finishes what he was writing and scowls at the paper.
«Sorry, you cut out there. Repeat?»
“It was nothing.” Richard says, pushing the notepad aside.
It says only one thing:
The way back is closed.
Present Day
Flood Timeline
“But it’s you.” Drucker says, staring into the eyes of a different Richard Cardinal than he thinks. And suddenly, Richard is left with a spinning sensation of vertigo and sickness in the pit of his stomach.
Richard just stares back for a few long, silent moments before he braces both elbows on the table and slowly sinks his face into his hands. “…no,” he finally murmurs, “It– is but it– isn’t. I’m not the Richard you talked to, that was– a possible future version of myself, and he’s– he’s very dead. So you weren’t wrong there, not entirely.”
A part of him expected to find the other Richard Cardinal here, as he walked that backwards spiral towards that new beginning. As impossible as it was, a part of him still expected it was going to happen.
And, in a way, he did find him here.
“Christ. He’s been everywhere I have before me– it–” He leans back, drawing in a breath, “It doesn’t matter. Whether I want to or not we’re walking the same road. Only way through is forward.”
There’s layers of things Richard is saying that peel back obfuscation for Drucker and Charlotte. The two share a wary look with one-another, and Drucker watches Richard with unerring wariness. “You’re just saying these things like you’re talking about the wind. So casual.” He flexes his hands open and closed, feeling the strain at his tired joints to ground him in the moment. “How—” Drucker hesitates, he has too many questions for the moment.
“Whether or not you are the man I spoke to across some…” Drucker says with a broad gesture, “some great divide, you’re here now. In this room with us, a prisoner. Right now that puts us on the same side, and—and if you somehow have our daughter. Doubly so. We can worry about the—the impossibilities of it all later. It isn’t safe here, and our clock is counting down.”
“Do you know what they’re planning to do here?” Charlotte asks, finally coming to stand beside Drucker and take his hand in hers. “The military?” It doesn’t sound like she’s unaware, rather she wants to level-set what everyone knows. If everything Richard is saying is possible—and they have long lived in a world of unlimited possibility—it changes so much for her, for Drucker, their daughter. Everyone.
“Yeah, sorry, I’ve lived an– unusual life, normal for me is literally insane for anyone else,” Richard admits, offering over a wan smile for a moment before closing his eyes, steadying himself. Right. Moving forward. He looks to Charlotte, his head tipping in a slight nod, “They’re going to fire up Hephaestus, strip the abilities of every Evolved to ‘make a level playing field’ for their takeover, supposedly. I’m gonna be honest, given the state of the world, their plan doesn’t even fucking make a lot of sense to me.”
“Who are they even opposing that they’re so worried about?”
“I don’t know.” Drucker says as he scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I… I can’t let them activate it. Hephaestus never should’ve been finished. I thought sabotaging the prototype would’ve ended things but…” He looks up and around himself, then runs his hands through his hair.
“It’s more than that, though.” Charlotte says, squeezing Drucker’s arm gently. He nods, and she looks at Richard intensely. It looks like she’s going to say something a few times, but can’t bring herself to. It’s only when Drucker finally looks into her eyes with so much fatigue from fighting, hiding, and carrying the burden of what they know that she crumbles. At this point it doesn’t matter if Richard is who he says he is or a government operative, they’re just tired.
“If they fire up Hephaestus, it will collapse local spacetime above this facility into a singularity.” Charlotte says quietly. “When we came here after the flood it was for refuge. I didn’t know what this place really was. Drucker… kept it a secret from everyone. Even me.” He can’t look Charlotte in the eye when she says that. But she gives his arm a supportive squeeze. She understands, now.
“Hephaestus had been shuttered for a long time. I’d stayed on here like a lighthouse-keeper,” Drucker explains, his voice distant, guilt-ridden. “I dismantled enough of the systems to make it inoperable, and kept an eye on the facility to ensure it was never misused. But… I couldn’t waste a place like this. The atmospheric research systems alone were… cutting edge. Plus, it was quiet. I had time to think.” He fails to conceal an apologetic sadness in his eyes.
“I came back into the picture later. After the flood, after I thought—” Charlotte cuts herself off and shakes her head. “Drucker and a handful of scientists were holding court here, a bastion against the end of the world. The first year we had a nasty bout of flu rip through the facility… most of the other researchers died. A couple lasted longer, but… sometimes life makes other choices.” She and Drucker share a momentary, sad smile.
“That’s when we heard… you. Or a version of you.” Charlotte steps away from Drucker, gently touching his hand as she does. “The sensor equipment in this facility monitors atmospheric conditions, solar radiation, and the Earth’s magnetic field. All of which, it turns out, are components of how Hephaestus works to manipulate the magnetosphere. But in the years since communication with you—er—the other Richard Cardinal ended, we’ve been observing a growing anomaly in the lower atmosphere.”
Each of Cardinal’s steps, one faster than the next, brings him up through an open bulkhead into a colossal domed chamber. Blue light throbs and hums, flashing from between three metallic rings spinning at different speeds and different angles around a large central machine bathed in light. Lasers sputter and spark, blasted apart by some sort of kinetic force, the same ones that have cracked the metal rings, causing them to wobble.
Drucker pulls out a chair at the table and sits down. “We don’t really know what it is. It started as an electromagnetic anomaly, a… bounded sphere of charged particles a few hundred feet overhead.” He says with a motion to the ceiling. “But it’s been growing in intensity every year. Gravity’s… weird in that point in the sky. I watched a bird fly into the space and it turned ninety degrees and flew straight down into the observation dome at full speed.”
As Cardinal comes up into the partly flooded chamber of the Mallett Device, he can see in silhouette his alter-ego, and hears the click of keystrokes. He pushes a fallen coolant pipe out of the way to get a clear line of sight, looking up to see the sky beyond the demolished dome, a wavering black hole that was once Magnes Varlane churning above. The sound of scraping metal has Ezekiel jerking around, wincing from twisting the injury at his side. In the doorway of the chamber, through a haze of steam from the temperature differences inside and outside, Cardinal is a silhouette backlit by the red emergency lighting in the exterior corridor.
Charlotte glances back at Drucker, then looks at Richard. “We’re worried if Hephaestus is activated it will have an aggressive reaction with the anomaly which could—theoretically—create a localized singularity, or some other kind of unstable gravitational phenomenon. We simply don’t know what’s caused the anomaly to appear, or what it is. The risk is…”
Tall, lean, dressed in a padded arctic survival suit, the intruder's black silhouette is almost as dark as Ezekiel’s own when he turns to living shadow. An arc of red lightning snaps off of Richard Cardinal’s hand, crackling down to the floor and casting him in crimson shades. The machine wobbles, rings spinning rapidly and arcs of electricity blasting off to strike metal nodes around the walls of the room. Spitting up blood and slouching back against the computer terminal, Ezekiel's lips draw back from pink teeth into a feral smile.
“Astronomical.” Drucker breathes into his folded hands.
"You almost had me."
Richard draws in a slow breath, closes his eyes behind his sunglasses, and he nods once, hands coming together on the table and lacing together as he digests that information. He doesn’t know why it’s surprising.
He knew he was walking backwards along his old path; why wouldn’t the new beginning start exactly where his other self had said it was? Right down to the hole that Magnes Varlane tore through the middle of reality, a singularity speared by the lance of the Mallett Device.
“Two– about two– days ago I saw the effects of one of their test firings,” he said slowly, carefully, “I recognized the auroral pattern. It didn’t last long– probably a good thing– but it was forming an overlay spiral. The same effect that an improperly tuned Looking Glass can create, or that happens during certain rare natural events; it’s an overlap between different timelines, and– God knows what else.”
He pushes up from his chair suddenly, moving to pace a bit, brow furrowing, “An overlay’s unpredictable, it could lead anywhere and everywhere, but– if the singularity’s still here– we might be able to use that. It’d weaken the barriers between here and there and if we punched a hole– it could force the issue. Risky. But we know we got back somehow so I can only assume that it works– “ He’s talking to himself now. They probably have no idea what he’s talking about.
Charlotte looks at Drucker, brows furrowed and mouths a wordless, “What?” Drucker’s response is a vaguely dismissive hand gesture and a pinch of forefinger and thumb at the bridge of his nose.
“Why’re you here?” Charlotte asks rather abruptly. “Why—why is our daughter traveling with you? Who are the others you mentioned? Did you come here because of the government remnant?”
“That’s a long way to go for a political disagreement.” Drucker mutters, half-jokingly.
Richard stops, pulling himself out of the obsessive spiral of his thoughts with a grimace as he realizes what he was doing. He looks back at the pair, draws in a slow breath, and then walks back towards them again.
“Cards on the table,” he says, leaning forward and resting both hands on the surface, “This facility was destroyed years ago in the timeline I came from. My team and I came here because we were told that there might be a technology here that could repair the magnetosphere, a way that we could stop a solar flare from wiping most of the planet clean. A bit of a hail mary pass to try and save our world. Along the way we picked up some allies, including your daughter.”
“I– suspect we were lied to. I think the bastard that sent us here wants Hephaestus, for– reasons too complicated to explain,” he shakes his head, “So our mission’s gone to shit. Soup sandwich. Our priority now is getting ourselves, including you two, back across the divide any way possible and as soon as possible. The singularity may offer a way to do that.”
“Alright let’s—not get ahead of ourselves.” Drucker grunts, gesturing at Richard like he’s talking too much. “You’re talking about—about jumping into another world, and I’m still grappling with the notion that this is a thing that can even happen.”
Both Drucker and Charlotte are quiet for a moment. She offering a long, pensive look and he not quite meeting her eyes as he rests his brow against folded hands. Not a gesture of prayer, but close enough.
“I…” Charlotte starts to say, still looking at Drucker. He finally meets her stare and nods a few times, as if on the same train of thought as her. “…don’t necessarily know if you were lied to, Mr. Cardinal. About the technology you were sent here to find.”
Drucker sighs, lowering his hands to the table as he watching Richard for a moment, considering. “When I first designed Hepheastus—before it had that fucking name—it was intended to be a countermeasure against a geomagnetic storm. My uh,” he scoffs out a laugh, “personal greatest fear was a Carrington-event level electromagnetic catastrophe knocking us back into the stone age.” He shakes his head. “Wasn’t expecting a flood.”
Drucker pushes his chair back and stands up. “I’d need to know more about what you’re dealing with back home, but…” he spreads his hands, “in theory what I designed could provide enhancement to a weakened magnetosphere.”
Charlotte’s brows furrow, questioning something she hadn’t been considering. But she keeps it to herself for now. “So, you’re why Nova left, then?” It isn’t judgment in Charlotte’s tone of voice, but it is a nearly parental level of protectiveness. “You and yours, coming here. She—never really told us everything about why she wanted that boat, why she needed to leave. We had some arguments. I don’t know why she couldn’t just…”
“We can have that talk with her later.” Drucker says quietly. It’s clear both he and Charlotte view the young woman as family, even if not blood relations. “How’re you getting us out of this situation, Mr. Cardinal?”
At the news that it might help, Richard’s eyebrows go up - a spark of hope kindling in his breast - and he leans forward, gaze fixed seriously on the technopath.
“…you should probably start doing the math, then, Drucker. Figure out how to stop an extinction-level solar flare from ripping through a weakened magnetosphere, and billions - or more - just might owe you their lives,” he says seriously, before with a tip of his head over to Charlotte he confirms, “Yeah, she was coming to rendezvous with us. She’s an invaluable member of the team, one of our lifelines.”
“As far as our immediate problem… trickier,” he grimaces, “Tavara’s the obvious, biggest problem. If it wasn’t for her, this would be a cakewalk. I have a few cards I haven’t played yet, but I’m still figuring out how best to play them.”
“Do you have any way of getting a message to Nova?” Charlotte asks, “Warn your people about what they’re walking into?”
The question is on Drucker’s mind as well and every time he circles back to it, he thinks about Robyn, a daughter he already grieved, mourned, and finally put to rest now returning like a distracting, open wound. A miraculous open wound. But she’s coming here. To Natazhat.
“We can’t lose—” Drucker’s voice clamps tight and he shakes his head. “They’re walking straight into a trap.”
“They are,” Richard admits grimly, fingers tapping anxiously against the table, “If I can get out of here, I can. If the negation wears off, I can. How is she keeping all of us negated for so long?”
He looks between the two as if they had answers, “Rene was strong but I didn't think he was this strong or they would've had him working jail duty.”
The name Rene means nothing to Charlotte and Drucker. But that doesn’t leave them without theories. “She doesn’t sleep,” Drucker says with a shake of his head. “First few days here, we saw her moving around at all hours. They’ve kept us stationary though, I don’t know if what she does has limitations.”
“I’ve never met someone with a negation ability this powerful.” Charlotte says in a quiet, defeated voice. “I can’t tell if it’s blanketing the entire facility or selective.”
“Honestly, when I first felt… cut off, I thought it was Hephaestus.” Drucker adds, unable to look anyone in the eye at that admission. “But if they’d gotten it running that quick, we’d all be dead.”
Charlotte drags her hands down her face, looking very much like Robyn in a stressful moment in that gesture. “Getting far enough away is risky. I don’t know how many soldiers there are here, but I don’t think they’re going to shout before they shoot.”
“Do… does anyone on your team have access to a radio? A commercial radio would work fine, like a truck.” Drucker says, making a little knob-turning gesture.
“It does. I recognize her ability, I know who she took it from, but… she must be straining her limits with this,” Richard’s brow knits, “Sleeplessness probably helps. She doesn’t need to let her focus lapse. As for radios…”
“Assuming nothing’s changed, yes,” he admits, one hand coming up to rub against his jaw as he looks around the room as if searching for a radio, “CBs but those don’t have the best range, and AM-FM. Can you broadcast from here?”
Drucker nods. “We have satellite uplink capability. There’s a big dish outside, you probably saw it. The dish is also modified to broadcast on lower FM frequencies in emergencies.”
“In theory we could use it to broadcast a message out of here.” Charlotte says.
“But,” Drucker interjects, because there’s always a but. “It’s currently frozen at a bad alignment for broadcasting. Happens sometimes when the sun comes out and thaws for a bit, then the temp drops and—” He sighs. “I got caught by these assholes trying to heat the mechanics so it could be aligned. But if we could get it aligned, we could send a broadcast from the weather station.”
Charlotte motions to the ceiling. “It’s directly above us. It has a text-to-speech system for emergency weather alerts. I doubt these assholes are listening for AM/FM broadcasts, they might not notice it right away.”
“The dish being realigned, on the other hand…” Drucker sighs.
Richard looks upwards, considering the ceiling. “…I don’t suppose there’s a handy access– no, you would’ve used it to escape if there was,” he admits, drawing in a breath, “Alright. So, we need to figure out how to get the dish realigned, without having access to it. Tall order, but I’ve performed harder miracles before.”
A quick smile, “If the dish realigns when I’m not in here, could you get up there and broadcast?”
“Maybe. All our research is up there. Command systems originally designed for Hephaestus. We’d have to give the impression of playing ball to even be allowed near that room.” Drucker says with a shake of his head. “And then we’d be under constant watch. Maybe if we could slip away, but… there’d be no going back at that point.”
“Then there’s the dish alignment time to consider.” Charlotte says with a spread of her hands. “It takes about five and a half minutes for the dish to finish alignment and it won’t broadcast until it is finished making corrections.”
“That’s a long time on the scale we’re thinking at.” Drucker adds, nervously.
“Then we play ball, or we pretend we play ball. Make them think I’ve convinced you,” says Richard, his tone serious as he looks between the two, “You can work on the magnetosphere calculations while they think you’re working on Hephaestus. I doubt they have any eggheads that can tell the difference.”
He smiles faintly, “Leave the dish to me. We won’t have a lot of time to broadcast– do we have paper? I can write you a message to send.”
Charlotte gives a long, pointed look to Drucker. He closes his eyes, nodding once. When Charlotte looks back at Richard, it is with a familiar, quiet intensity.
“No, but I have a very good memory.”