Callisto Deception Read online

  Copyright 2017 by John A. Read

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by Troon Harrison

  Cover Art by Steven James Catizone

  Formatting by Kurtis Anstey, Halifax, NS

  Special thanks to Erin Patel, Tiffany Fields, Jennifer Read, and Kurtis Anstey for beta-reading unedited versions of this novel.

  Follow me on social media:

  www.facebook.com/TheMartianConspiracy

  Twitter: @JohnAaronRead

  This book is dedicated to my sons, Oliver and Isaac.

  1

  Marie gazed out the kitchen window at San Francisco Bay. Across the water, Berkeley’s Campanili poked through the morning fog. The scene triggered fond memories of academia, the hustle of students racing to her classes as she prepared to lecture them on genetic anthropology.

  She spread a thick layer of strawberry jam on wheat bread. When she reached for the peanut butter, the knife slipped from her fingers, sketching a red stripe down her Georgetown University sweater. She grabbed a damp cloth, blotting the stain with soap. Marie sighed as she wiped her hands dry on black jeans, trying to decide if she was tired or exhausted, but settled on a lack of mental stimulation. Her kitchen could not compete with the rigor of her field of specialty; investigating and decoding a mass of information regarding human migration and survival, found woven through strands of DNA.

  Looking back at the view, she imagined an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault had been relatively quiet since they moved to California, but thoughts of impending disaster lingered in her mind. She pictured waves sloshing over the tanker ships, ripping them from their moorings, and murky water rising as the Mission District sank into the bay.

  Marie knew her first priority would be Branson, getting him to safety. Her diaper bag already contained a spare set of Branson’s clothes, snacks, and a first aid kit. Was she paranoid? Probably. But an irrational fear of earthquakes was common among migrants from the east coast.

  Branson stood in the adjacent room, immersed in letters and numbers emanating from the holovision. The two-year-old sang along with the formulaic cartoons, yet Marie wondered if he was learning anything at all.

  She blinked, the slow kind of blink that happens when you’d rather be asleep. Thanks to extended maternity leave, her life was repetitive and she wondered if she lived in some sort of simulation indistinguishable from reality; a dream, inside of a dream.

  Her brother, a freeliver, actually lived in a simulation indistinguishable from reality. His body rested in a basement apartment in Schenectady. In his private virtual world, he was a wreck diver. His avatar lived on a rusted dive-boat in the Caribbean, searching for treasure with the legendary John Chatterton, the man who discovered the U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. His virtual existence was a drug, a high from which he never descended. Marie hated him for it, but on days like this, she envied him. The last time she saw him was Thanksgiving when he’d patched his simulation into their holovision, inviting them into his ocean world. Marie had found the simulation so dull, that she had left the room after a brief hello.

  Bringing her thoughts back to reality, she slapped the slices of bread together and cut off the crust.

  Her watch clicked, a quick tap on the wrist, and then read a text message aloud, the voice simulating that of her husband, John.

  “Epic disaster with spacecraft.

  Impact with Earth imminent.

  Get out of SF, drive north.

  Tell no one, just go. I love you.”

  Marie’s tired brain struggled to grasp the magnitude of the message. Her NASA- employed husband was in Los Angeles this morning. He was in mission control for the arrival of a massive supply cruiser from Mars. She stared at the text notification, setting the plate back on the counter. Suddenly she pictured the scene in her mind’s eye, the spacecraft cutting through Earth’s atmosphere, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, its shockwave rippling across America.

  John was right. They had to go.

  Marie touched her wrist, said, “I love you,” and ran into the other room, clapping her hands, the gesture that deactivated the holovision. Looking at Branson, she realized how much she loved him. His comfort animal, a stuffed Washington Capitals’ eagle, dangled from his hand.

  Branson turned to protest the abrupt end to his program but Marie lifted him into her arms. She clutched the squirming toddler and carried him toward the basement door.

  “We’ve got to go, baby. Daddy needs us to go,” she said, trying to quell the tremor in her voice so as not to frighten Branson. His diaper bag rested nearby. She grabbed it, an instinctual reaction to leaving the house.

  A narrow stairway led to the tiny garage below the flat. Marie nudged her shoulder into the wooden, flat panel door. It popped open and she stumbled over a tricycle. Her heart pounded against her ribs and she was sure that Branson felt it, too. Marie fought to control her panic, knowing she would need to appear calm for his sake.

  She set her son down and ripped a tarp off John’s latest project, a 2030’s Dodge Charger SRT-E. The California sun had bleached away the blue paint on the hood, and stuffing leached from faded leather seats. Two power window regulators had jammed and someone had keyed a lengthy scratch into the door, but the car worked. Electric motors were good for millions of kilometers, and John had replaced the original lithium ion battery with a silicon polymer block.

  She opened the rear door, fastening Branson into his seat. Her hands fumbled as she buckled him in. Branson clapped, an action that activated his entertainment system.

  Boxes were piled in front of the car, and Marie kicked them aside, opening the wooden garage door with a rusted handle. Sunlight streamed in and Marie squinted at the white concrete leading to their sloped San Francisco street.

  She clambered into the car, slamming the door twice before it held. The car whined as actuators filled with current; a servo clicked as the charge chord retracted, slithering into its home like a snake. A holomap appeared above the dash and she flicked her fingers apart, and double tapped the California-Oregon border.

  “Confirm route,” the female autopilot said.

  “Confirmed,” Marie answered. “Override local speed limit,” she added, and tapped “accept” on a warning memo that appeared on the dash.

  The car lurched onto the crooked street. It lumbered up the hill, and crested it to merge onto Mission Street. “Come on, come on, come on,” Marie willed the car to move faster. The steering wheel spun counterclockwise as the vehicle cruised onto Van Ness Avenue.

  Marie watched downtown San Francisco though the windows, amazed—even though she knew that news of the impending impact was not out yet—that everything appeared normal. She glanced up at Branson via the rear-seat camera, and wanted to hold him. She wished that John was with them.

  Auto-cars assembled at the next intersection. The Dodge Charger compensated by taking a left on Pine Street, and then a right up Divisidero. It climbed the grade with ease as people on the sidewalk gawked at the 2030’s marvel, harkening back to when humans drove, and millions of people were killed in automobile accidents.

  They passed the Presidio. What was once a sixteenth century Spanish fortress was now a housing project reconstructed for San Fran’s wealthiest residents. From the Presidio, several other non-auto-cars entered the roadway; classics like the SRT, but in much better condition. The cars poured onto the road, passing her as she followed the auto-car protocol. Word must be getting out, Marie reasoned.

  There was a clear stre
tch of road ahead of her, but the SRT’s autopilot had reached its top speed. We need to go faster…

  She deactivated the autopilot and pressed the accelerator. The pressure against her foot, followed by the acceleration, alleviated some anxiety. She merged into the center lane of the Golden Gate Bridge, passing four auto-cars before getting stuck behind a line of slower moving vehicles.

  “C’mon, c’mon!” she yelled.

  Branson seemed contented in his car seat in the back. The Disney movie Mongol Two, the Mongol Prince, played on a holovision in the chair back. He sang along with the music, “Chop chop chop, chop chop chop!”

  “Honey, Mommy’s concentrating,” Marie said, looking at him via the rear-seat camera.

  Branson kept singing, “Chop, chop, chop.”

  Marie repeated the advice John had given her about manual driving. “Don’t trust your vehicle’s collisions’ avoidance system.” Her mirrors empty, she tilted the wheel to the left. An auto-car in her blind spot slammed its brakes to avoid collision. “Duly noted.”

  Several nearby vehicles began weaving through traffic at high speed. On the ridge above Sausalito, the holographic road signs suddenly began to flash with big red arrows.

  “Evacuation in progress,” the car’s stereo said, overriding the audio on Branson’s movie. “This is the Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test.”

  Shit! Marie thought; the order could mean only one thing. The spacecraft was headed for California. It was massive, the size of several oil tankers, carrying ten million tons of construction materials from Mars. The materials originally intended for the construction of Destiny, a rotating space station in geostationary orbit. Now, the spacecraft was a kinetic weapon, traveling over 100 times the speed of sound.

  A male voice on the stereo: “Prepare for seismic activity and air shock. Follow evacuation protocols.”

  With the movie muted, Branson began to cry.

  To their left, a red BMW i5 accelerated, the driver panicking. The vehicle slid through a gap between an auto-car and a white Tesla. The driver misjudged the space, connecting with the two other vehicles. Side view cameras shattered as the Beemer peeled ahead. The Tesla swerved, then stabilized, but the auto-car began to spin, leaving the road and hitting a concussion barrier. Water from yellow impact drums shot into the air.

  A 2030’s pickup truck merged left across two lanes, slamming into the Tesla, shoving it against the median. Black smoke poured from the Tesla’s wheel wells as concrete wore at the tires. The truck peeled away and sped off.

  Marie’s heart pounded and her eyes blurred as panic set in, and she put the car back on autopilot. Around her, the auto-cars synchronized, creating a momentary calm in the vehicular storm. The phone rang and the name ‘John’ appeared on her watch. “Hey,” Marie said, wondering if fear and claustrophobia were apparent in her voice. “How bad is it? There are car accidents everywhere!”

  “It’s bad,” John said, his honesty somehow reassuring, “and we don’t know how bad. The blast radius could be anywhere from eighty to nearly five hundred kilometers, and we expect earthquakes, big ones.”

  “Oh, John, how could this happen!”

  “Let’s just focus on the problem.” John was an expert at solving problems in stressful situations. It’s what he had trained for. Marie’s heart rate slowed, succumbing to the illusion that someone was in control. “Where are you?”

  “Santa Rosa.”

  “Okay, we need to make a decision. You can stay on the highway and risk the drivers, or you can head west into the hills and try to avoid the blast that way.”

  “I’ll think I’ll head into the hills,” Marie said, eager to leave the freeway.

  “When this is over, we may not have working cell phones. San Francisco and Los Angeles will be a mess. If we lose contact, meet me in Las Vegas, at, I don’t know, how about the Bellagio? The mountains should protect Las Vegas. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll do my best, I love you.”

  The call ended and Marie realized this might be the last she’d hear from her husband. She held back tears as she tapped the map icon, running her finger along the route to the California coast.

  The car weaved its way towards the next exit and took it.

  They buzzed along the Russian River, a place where weeks earlier they had rented a canoe. Branson had sat in the middle eating marshmallows, while she and John laughed for hours as the current pushed the canoe down the winding river.

  The emergency broadcast system repeated a recorded message, warning listeners to evacuate. With the movie muted, Branson’s whines intensified to a wail. A countdown to impact reached five minutes.

  Marie felt helpless. She looked out the back window and noticed a bright light, as if the sky had a second sun. The spacecraft entering the atmosphere, she thought, grabbing the armrests and squeezing until her fingernails left permanent dents in the fiber-plastic.

  Marie realized she’d been holding out hope the spacecraft would be diverted. That everything would be fine. That last hope, she’d barely known she had, died with the reentry flames.

  The glow intensified, like a lighthouse beam when fog lifted. Branson stopped crying. Marie looked back and noticed her son squinting and covering his eyes. “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.”

  “Ouhhh!” he said, squeezing his eyes shut until his face wrinkled.

  “I know, baby, I know.” Marie wished she had him in her arms, that she could squeeze him tight and kiss his hair.

  The light faded, and the car shuddered. Marie grabbed the wheel. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure she trusted the autopilot.

  The tree line ended as they neared the coast and the car slowed as it approached a line of vehicles waiting to enter Highway 1. Marie considered the situation, thankful there’d be no falling trees to crush them, or cliffs over which the car could careen.

  The car began to wobble. An earthquake. Marie climbed awkwardly between the two front seats and sat beside her son. Branson’s seat bounced along with the shaking earth. Marie grabbed his armrest to hold it steady, looking Branson in the eye and forcing a smile. “Just a little earthquake, honey.”

  Branson stared back in terrified silence, gripping his eagle by the wing.

  “Happens often. Just part of living in San Francisco, that’s all. Should we sing a song? How about the railroad song?”

  The ground pulsed with shockwaves accompanied by a thunderous sound. Cracks like lightning formed in the pavement. Cars along the road bounced like keys on a piano, as if an invisible pianist was playing jazz chords on the pavement. A nearby marsh bubbled like witch’s brew. As the earth continued to shake, muck from the marsh exploded over several of the cars. Automatic wipers cleared the windshields, while passengers, drenched through open windows, wiped their eyes.

  The rumbling intensified. Pavement shot into the air, raining down on the cars, denting hoods and cracking windshields. Marie lunged back into the front seat, threw the car in reverse, and backed up as debris continued to fall. The rear tires hit a rut and began to spin; the car’s frame rested on the ground. She put the car back in drive, but the wheels spun in place.

  Another aftershock and the car vibrated like a dumbbell in the dryer. Marie scanned the low-lying areas in front of her. Water pooled on the roadway, flowing from cracks in the pavement. Cars were flooded up to their wheel wells and people climbed out, trudging toward higher ground or standing on their vehicles.

  A jet screamed overhead, the Doppler rumble rocking the cars almost as intensely as the quake. A rescue plane? Marie thought. She jumped out and looked up, heart hammering with adrenaline and hope. The Arrowhead Jump-Jet streaked low across the sky.

  Marie waved her arms, sure the gesture was in vain. But she had to try. She kept waving as she climbed up onto the hood. The Arrowhead disappeared into the distance and she jumped down from the car. Water pooled at her feet and she opened the back door, unbuckling Branson, lifting him out of his seat and holding him to he
r chest. Branson reached up, holding onto Marie’s neck, still clutching the stuffed eagle.

  She heard the rumble again, and the Arrowhead returned for another pass. But on this one, it slowed and transitioned to vertical flight. Cowlings opened to reveal four lift-fans. The jet hovered for a moment, and then landed on a muddy plateau near Marie’s car. The door opened. A stairway descended and a woman stood in the doorway. The woman beckoned to Marie like a bus driver shouting at a tardy passenger.

  Marie rushed to the steps of the idling jet with Branson in her arms. They were the first to arrive at the plane and, despite carrying her son, she sprinted up the stairs crying tears of relief.

  “Doctor Orville?” the petite woman said in an Asian accent.

  “Yes?” Marie answered. “How did you—?”

  “Take a seat. Hurry,” said the woman.

  Marie looked around. The plane’s cabin had four of the most luxurious leather chairs she had ever seen. She sat, facing their rescuer.

  The small woman sat too, facing the rear of the plane, and buckled her seatbelt. “There’s a shockwave inbound. If we don’t get airborne, we’re dead.”

  Dozens of people ran toward the jet, sloshing through the muck. But before they reached the stairway, a blast of dirty air knocked them off their feet, carrying them away from the airplane as if swept by an invisible broom.

  The woman tapped a command into a holotablet; the stairs retracted and the door closed.

  “What about them?” Marie said, rising from her chair and pointing outside at the people picking themselves off the ground. “There are children in those cars. You can’t leave them!” A knot formed in the pit of her stomach; she felt the desperation of the parents outside. Part of her wanted to jump out of the jet to help, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Branson’s side.

  “There’s no time,” the woman said, her strange calm heightening Marie’s anxiety. She tapped more commands, and engines roared as the jump-jet rose into the sky. Outside, people shielded their eyes from debris and covered their ears against the noise.