and see what we can find.’
Bradley led them across the base to Polaris Hall, the communication centre, a blocky building festooned with satellite dishes and aerials. Bradley unlocked the door and they walked in to find the interior silent but warm: the departing soldiers had left the heating on to protect the computer stations and sensitive devices within.
‘Bingo,’ Bradley said as he pointed at a series of computer terminals. ‘We’ve got power here.’
A series of small blinking lights winked at them from what looked to Cody like a bank of supercomputers humming in a room next door. Bradley hit the lights, fluorescent tubes clicking as they flickering into life.
A large map of Russia and Alaska dominated one wall of the room, marked with pins and lines drawn on a protective acrylic sheet covering the map. Clocks above the map tracked time zones across the region.
‘Missile silos in the former Soviet Union,’ Jake guessed as he looked at the map. ‘They must still listen in on them.’
‘All the time,’ Bradley replied as he moved from one computer to another, switching them back on.
The room began to fill with the hum of hard drives as the screens lit up one by one. Cody watched as Bradley finished his sweep of the room and stood back.
‘All of these computers will have access pass codes which I don’t possess,’ he said as he looked at Jake.
‘So what’s the point in starting them up?’
Bradley gestured to a pair of large monitors mounted upon the rear wall of the room.
‘Those two monitors relay electromagnetic signals from the listening station. The signals are crunched by the supercomputers and run through these stations before reaching those screens. Even though we can’t access the stations themselves, the information being detected by the satellite dishes will still automatically pass through and reach the monitors.’
‘Good enough,’ Jake replied as he turned to look at the two screens.
As the computers hummed so the screens both blinked and a graph appeared on each, a time line and a frequency scale a little like a heart monitor in a hospital. Running along the graph was a line that hovered around a mark on the graph calibrated as “zero / background”.
Cody, Jake, Bradley and Sauri waited for the line to pick up as the dishes outside relayed their information.
And waited.
Bradley shook his head. ‘That’s not possible, man.’
‘Where’s the signals?’ Jake asked the soldier.
Bradley shook his head. ‘I’ve been up here on rotation for four months. That screen has always recorded something. There’s always a signal, even if it’s just a bunch of asshole truck-drivers talking over the airwaves. The damned thing’s always alive.’
‘What does background and zero mean?’ Cody asked, already suspecting the answer but unwilling to admit it to himself.
For the first time, Sauri spoke in a clear accent touched with a slight Canadian drawl.
‘Background radiation, from natural processes.’
Jake stared at the screen for a few moments longer and then he turned to Cody.
‘You realise what this means?’
Cody tried to think of something to say but no words came forth. He felt a quiver of apprehension as he looked into Jake McDermott’s eyes and saw a glimmer of something he’d never expected to witness there: fear.
‘There’s nobody out there,’ Jake said. ‘The whole world’s gone silent.’
***
7
The team reconvened in the Alert Five building.
Cody had spent the entire journey back from the base in a stupor, unable to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. First and foremost in his mind was Maria, and close beside her, Danielle. He had not yet been able to find in himself the frantic fear for their safety that must surely come upon him soon, and he realised that it was because he simply could not allow himself to believe what the instruments at Alert were telling him.
The world had fallen silent.
The rest of the team took the news in a similar
Bradley led them across the base to Polaris Hall, the communication centre, a blocky building festooned with satellite dishes and aerials. Bradley unlocked the door and they walked in to find the interior silent but warm: the departing soldiers had left the heating on to protect the computer stations and sensitive devices within.
‘Bingo,’ Bradley said as he pointed at a series of computer terminals. ‘We’ve got power here.’
A series of small blinking lights winked at them from what looked to Cody like a bank of supercomputers humming in a room next door. Bradley hit the lights, fluorescent tubes clicking as they flickering into life.
A large map of Russia and Alaska dominated one wall of the room, marked with pins and lines drawn on a protective acrylic sheet covering the map. Clocks above the map tracked time zones across the region.
‘Missile silos in the former Soviet Union,’ Jake guessed as he looked at the map. ‘They must still listen in on them.’
‘All the time,’ Bradley replied as he moved from one computer to another, switching them back on.
The room began to fill with the hum of hard drives as the screens lit up one by one. Cody watched as Bradley finished his sweep of the room and stood back.
‘All of these computers will have access pass codes which I don’t possess,’ he said as he looked at Jake.
‘So what’s the point in starting them up?’
Bradley gestured to a pair of large monitors mounted upon the rear wall of the room.
‘Those two monitors relay electromagnetic signals from the listening station. The signals are crunched by the supercomputers and run through these stations before reaching those screens. Even though we can’t access the stations themselves, the information being detected by the satellite dishes will still automatically pass through and reach the monitors.’
‘Good enough,’ Jake replied as he turned to look at the two screens.
As the computers hummed so the screens both blinked and a graph appeared on each, a time line and a frequency scale a little like a heart monitor in a hospital. Running along the graph was a line that hovered around a mark on the graph calibrated as “zero / background”.
Cody, Jake, Bradley and Sauri waited for the line to pick up as the dishes outside relayed their information.
And waited.
Bradley shook his head. ‘That’s not possible, man.’
‘Where’s the signals?’ Jake asked the soldier.
Bradley shook his head. ‘I’ve been up here on rotation for four months. That screen has always recorded something. There’s always a signal, even if it’s just a bunch of asshole truck-drivers talking over the airwaves. The damned thing’s always alive.’
‘What does background and zero mean?’ Cody asked, already suspecting the answer but unwilling to admit it to himself.
For the first time, Sauri spoke in a clear accent touched with a slight Canadian drawl.
‘Background radiation, from natural processes.’
Jake stared at the screen for a few moments longer and then he turned to Cody.
‘You realise what this means?’
Cody tried to think of something to say but no words came forth. He felt a quiver of apprehension as he looked into Jake McDermott’s eyes and saw a glimmer of something he’d never expected to witness there: fear.
‘There’s nobody out there,’ Jake said. ‘The whole world’s gone silent.’
***
7
The team reconvened in the Alert Five building.
Cody had spent the entire journey back from the base in a stupor, unable to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. First and foremost in his mind was Maria, and close beside her, Danielle. He had not yet been able to find in himself the frantic fear for their safety that must surely come upon him soon, and he realised that it was because he simply could not allow himself to believe what the instruments at Alert were telling him.
The world had fallen silent.
The rest of the team took the news in a similar
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