In early spring, the last week of 2051 AA, a group of sixteen Reapers started on a journey to find the Bunker, lost since antiquity. They left from Perlagio, a growing coastal city built on the ruins of what once was Marseille. It was the third mission sent by the church. The first two had failed to either find the location or return alive. These hardy pioneers had little food, poor equipment, no motorized transportation, but fervent motivation.
“Looks like grave markers over there,” young redheaded Brandt said, pointing to a hill profiled against a mountain range in the distance. “I’ll go check it out.” Catelyn, a woman two years older, followed him. The rest of the group sagged to the damp ground, wasted with fatigue. They were clad in heavy wool coats covered with waterproof fabric of various styles and colors from white to bright to black. Four carts loaded with their supplies rested with yokes pointing slightly upward. Each person carried a small backpack containing their personal items. Banks of ice and snow punctuated the surrounding forest. Deer and elk occasionally crossed paths, sometimes fatally as their unwilling sacrifice provided food for the company. The day was getting warmer after a shower of sleet in the morning. Clouds were thinning, and sunlight sifted through the pine and fir trees that seldom accommodated human traffic.
Brandt was a freckle-faced teenager, well fed and muscular, the youngest of the group. His orange coat matched his outgoing personality. Catelyn was an olive-skinned young woman with abundant and wild hair, especially in the primitive conditions without her array of conditioners and gadgets. Like the others, they were both deeply religious, committed to living a life consistent with the Reaper doctrines. Less than ten minutes later, they returned to the bedraggled group of fourteen resting on the ground in late May 1803 AA.
“It’s the group from three years ago,” Catelyn said, panting with effort and excitement. “There are seven graves with their names.” She wore a knee-length white coat and almost knee-high soft shearling boots.
“Their campsite is on the other side of the hill,” Brandt said. “It’s, like, ten minutes to get there. There’s water.”
“Nice work, Bridget,” said Maroche, the leader. “You found the place.” He wore an expensive-looking long gray coat, the only one without waterproofing. A wide-brimmed hat fell low over his dark eyes. His short, black bead lent him a harsh, stern demeanor.
“It only took us, what, almost four weeks?” she replied. Bridget was in her early twenties, a light-haired woman who began the journey heavy. By now, she had lost weight, as had most of them other than Maroche, and had become shapely. She wore green and black and could not always be easily seen in the trees from a distance. She was a civil engineer, a straight A student with a high-paying job in a Saharian international firm. She had taken a sabbatical for the trip to act as the navigator. Her pale yellow-brown eyes could be intense if not mysterious.
“It will be shorter the next time. We marked the dead ends, and you recorded sites on your satellite-positioning computer. That’s more than the previous two parties did,” Maroche said as he put his hand on her once stocky shoulder. He felt firm muscle and bone underneath the coat and had a twinge of desire. “You’ve done well.”
“Thank you, Pastor.”
“In the big picture,” offered Su, a balding middle-aged electrician, “four weeks is nothing. This place has been lost for about six thousand years.”
“If everyone is rested, we should go to the campsite,” Pastor Maroche addressed the group. “We may not want to stay there. It depends on where they searched.”
“If the map they brought back is accurate, we should be able to tell,” Bridget said. “I’ll get it out when we get there.”
By evening, the group had established a campsite about two kilometers from the previous party’s location. A committee of four went over the archaic maps, the information from the two earlier expeditions, and current maps available, derived from aerial or satellite images. The topography was clearly confusing, but the gross features were not very different. They were about halfway between the large lake to the east and the foothills to the west and four kilometers north of the river from the lake. They had to be fairly close.
“How are you with history, Catelyn?” Su asked.
“I’m real good when I have a computer. Why?”
“No reason. Just wanted to talk. This is an area with a lot of history.”
“A long time ago,” said Bab, a thirty-year-old skinny teacher with a long, rectangular face, “they had a big machine that crashed atoms together for subatomic research near here. That was more than eight thousand years ago. The REAP missions were about seventy or eighty years after an epidemic that killed billions of people.”
“We hear that all the time in church,” Catelyn said.
“REAP had nothing to do with this area,” Su said. “Why did they put the spinning electrons here?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“Because they had experts here with the atom crasher,” Bab said.
“When is dinner?” Catelyn asked.
“Probably in an hour or two,” Su said. “We need to find some game. We have eaten more provisions than planned.”
“Are we cooking with wood again?”
“Gotta save the liquid fuel for the generator,” Bab said.
“Hey, Bridget,” Catelyn called. “Come on over!” The orienteering meeting was over, and the trustees were dispersing. Bridget angled toward the trio and was joined by Brandt. “So what’s the verdict?” Catelyn shook her hair as she asked the question.
“We are going to divide up the area into grids and start looking and probing in the morning,” Bridget answered.
“Cool,” said Brandt.
“We are going to camp here?” Catelyn asked.
“This is the place,” she said.
“There are so many rocks!” Catelyn complained.
“Glacier debris,” Bab said. “It will make probing and digging hard.”