Quintessence
Chapter 10: Inevitability

7 Percent.

I should have seen the trouble long ago. Looking back now, the signs were undeniable. I don’t know if I could have changed anything. Chances are, things would have ended exactly the same.

I had seen the Residents moving equipment which they weren’t employed to move and had simply assumed it was a case of transporting the gear to the newly expanded chambers. I had heard the fights but dismissed them as unavoidable, a reflection of our retreat from the relative freedom of the enclosed city.

The Fatalists had been becoming more aggressive. I had acquaintances from the other religious sects, many of whom were odd but never dangerous, at least as I reckoned it.

The riots were the first I had heard about it. I was looking for a meal in the community plaza, a rare occurrence for me as I usually eat at work or in my chambers, when I ran into the crowd.

According to the gathered Residents, there had been a degree of theft which had been unprecedented since that performed by my Grandfather. Someone had been stealing the failsafe control rods for the reactor. All of the reserves had been taken and nobody was admitting to the crime. These rods were only one failsafe, and we could operate the reactor safely without any, but it still raised alarming questions.

These rods served no other purpose than to arrest nuclear fission, and could not realistically be repurposed for use in any other device. What’s more, these rods were only to be used in the situation where the helium-3 reactor became unusable, and we had to switch back to the more conventional uranium and plutonium-style fuels. It was only natural that the masses blamed the Fatalists for this. There had been rumors of their overt desire for annihilation for years, nothing most of us took seriously, but this new development caused the revisitation of this hypothesis.

The council, a third of which were Fatalists or Fatalist sympathizers, had decreed a full check of reactor inventory be taken, in addition to an investigation into the warehouse logs and those on duty during the supposed times the thefts occurred.

What they got back was exactly what I, what many of us, had grown to fear. Repair equipment and maintenance parts had been taken from dozens of crucial system backups. Those on duty at the sites of these thefts had been what we had grown to expect. It was the Fatalists on duty, in almost all cases, with family and close friends being those in all other instances.

We had all gone to the council after the dissemination of this truth. The group was terrifying, the collective rage was not something which I had ever experienced. The leaders of the Fatalists, in addition to those Fatalists on the council, simply denied all claims as witch-hunts. They claimed they had obviously been set up by the other religions which had grown to fear the ever-expanding Fatalist numbers. Counter to the protests which I was involved in were those of the Fatalists, who had long ago believed they had been unfairly persecuted by the more traditional religious structures.

The council Fatalists were forced to step down, while a larger investigation of their organization was undertaken. This would prove to be the catalyst for the current state of affairs.

It was announced that a full investigation of their closed computer systems and files would be undertaken by secular engineering and computing agents with no strong connections to the Fatalist religion. I was one of those entrusted with this duty. Before I started in my work I sent a message to Hwei-Ru, who had been worried about my safety, to let her know I was doing my best to replace a solution, that I wouldn’t let her down.

That I wouldn’t let you down.

I’m sorry, Hwei-Ru.

I was one of the first in the temple of the Fatalists. Their community had been on lockdown since the announcement of the investigation. Again, it had been the secularist workers, the security crew in this case, who had been assigned to keep guard over the believers. In the temple were computers locked out from the greater network, a rarity given the lack of need for isolated systems. Most of these locked-out computers were systems handed to the religious factions as a show of good faith. These Fatalists knew who I was, as they saw me coming. My parents had long since converted to the Fatalists and, given our estrangement and their interests, had always been astounded and somewhat mystified at my technological competence.

I talked to them for the first time in years, as they begged me to leave them and their kin alone. I wouldn’t and I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. They knew that they couldn’t hide their files from me, and now I know what they must have hidden away.

When I asked about the location of their computers they panicked. I was pushed over, and the security crew were all tackled and held down while some of the followers rushed out into the rear chambers. That was the last time I saw my parents. By the time reinforcements from the security department arrived, it was too late. As we forced our way to the rear of the chambers we saw the computers smashed to nothing. Not comfortable with merely wiping the hard drives, the Fatalists had taken to the computers with hammers and fire. The hard drives were in pieces and there was nothing anybody, even Hwei-Ru with her recovered technology, could do to rebuild them.

This degree of conflict in the Oven was the first since the lockout, and the council was at a loss as to what to do. There were too many adherents of the religion to simply place them under arrest until they could all be investigated, they had been responsible for too many key areas in the operation of the Safehold systems. It was decided the best course of action would be to lock up the leaders, while the followers were merely placed under surveillance. I didn’t think it would be enough.

I had thought of contacting you then, Hwei-Ru, but I was scared. Truly scared, for the first time in my life. Scared of accepting what I saw, and scared of what this could mean for me. For us.

The first disappearances happened just three hours later. Security who had been placed on watch for the reactor and storerooms went missing. In the next hour, the reactor experienced its first unscheduled shutdown.

The backup system came to life for all of thirty minutes, before it too blinked out. The entire Safehold was plunged into lasting darkness, another unprecedented event. In the chaos, it was difficult to gather those in charge. Some of the council were too busy looking after their families, others had vanished. I took it upon myself to investigate the reactor, to see if I could sneak in and check its status, perhaps figure out what the Fatalists had done to force the shutdown.

When I arrived, they were waiting for me. They told me they had locked outside the people who already tried to stop them, and that I would meet the same fate if I attempted to interfere. I couldn’t have stopped them anyway, they were many, and they were armed.

They had built numerous weapons over some period, homemade rifles, machetes, and pistols mostly. They said they didn’t want to fight, that they were here to enable our proper place in the universe.

To my surprise, they let me go. After a few hours of darkness, they reactivated various parts of the backup generator, cutting off all but the most basic functions of the light, heat, and communication systems. Over the loudspeakers, the Fatalists announced they had taken control, and the Residents should gather in the Plaza to learn of their true course.

I was too weary of this being a trap, so I hid in an adjacent room to the Plaza, and listen through the vents. The Fatalists came into the Plaza with their weapons drawn, to shouts of derision and a few attempts at violent confrontation. I counted fourteen shots before the guns fell silent. The Fatalists told of how they would defend themselves, but not openly attack the Residents, how they only wanted a natural form of existence.

Their lead speaker had not a voice which I recognized, though later I learned he was the son of one of the council Fatalists. He told the audience that it was done. He said their plan was complete, and there was nothing anyone could do to restore full functionality to the Safehold. To this effect, he said they would allow investigations of the Safehold equipment, of all the gear and replacement parts that they had been secretly sabotaging for the last decade and a half.

He told divine inspiration had blessed him, of a message straight from god. The Dark Star was a herald, he had told the crowd, a passenger meant to mark the intent of god’s plan. God had told the world that it was time for ascension and the fighting against the will of the lord had persisted long enough.

The worst rumors of their religion, which so many of us had disregarded as gossip, were true.

The main reactor had been shut down permanently, and the backup units had only enough fuel to run for a maximum of a month. After that month, the speaker had said, everyone in the Safehold was going to take their place alongside God.

I couldn’t believe it. Most of us didn’t believe it. Even so, I had to check. I was one of those selected to investigate the claims made by the Fatalists, as I was one of the few engineers qualified to make judgments about the state of the generators and power subsystems. I went about my work while totally numb, with an odd sort of detachment that sticks with me as I write this memorial.

The destruction wrought by the Fatalists had been worse than what I thought them capable of. The reactor had been filled with cesium, which had tainted the walls and ruined the reaction chamber. The wiring had been stripped, and the connectors and circuit boards sprayed with some type of acid. There were components that had been all but immune to time and thus did not have many replacements, that had been utterly destroyed. My investigation of the backup parts showed a staggering degree of thoroughness.

There were large parts of the generator and systems which could be rebuilt, given a few years, but the destruction of most of the backup parts and raw materials have written this off as an impossibility. I was among the engineers who reported to the council on the feasibility of repairing the generator or extending the life of the backup systems. My conclusion was just as the Fatalists; it was done. We were done. There was no coming back from this.

The hope, the delusion of the remaining council, still carried them. They proclaimed to the Residents that we had overcome challenges before, and we would overcome this. I retreated to my quarters. I know enough about history to know what happens when the power goes out. We had enough food to last for a year. A year of heightened violence and increasing desperation as we scurried about in the dark fighting over the diminishing rations.

Without power, we could grow no more.

I knew what would eventually come, should we live long enough to fight off the dark and cold within these walls. I wouldn’t let our people live that life. I didn’t let them die that death.

I don’t expect you, or anyone, to support my actions but, at least, I hope you might understand.

On my way back to my residence I stole an exterior suit. All the air I could carry only lasted for two days. It’s hard to focus now. My supplies are running so low.

I used the commands you gave me, Hwei-Ru, but please don’t blame yourself, blame me. I was the one who hurt these people. You were the one who saved them from a much slower, much worse death.