The Departure Protocol

Chapter 23

Wared couldn't believe his eyes. He stepped up to the windows and looked up and down the massive vault that spread out in front of them. As lights flickered on further and further down the vault, they revealed column after column of compartments, each occupied by what appeared to be rectangular pods.

"Is this what I think it is?" Wared said. "Are these the Departure Candidates?"

Randee joined Wared by the window. "I think so. It matches what I read upstairs. This is the storage facility."

"These are all of them? All of the departed?" Shea said. "They're actually here, alive?"

Wared sensed emotion in Shea's voice and as he glanced in her direction, he noticed watery eyes.

"Are you ok?"

Shea blinked and quickly wiped her eyes, then nodded. "Yes, of course, I'm fine. I just can't believe that they're all...here."

Wared couldn't help but feel similar emotions. He thought of all the loved ones and friends that had departed over the years, their eyes set on a mission far beyond their planet. They had departed believing they would be joining all of those that had gone before them. Instead, they would fall asleep and never wake up.

"Randee," Shea said with urgency in her voice and put her hand on his arm. "Are they alive?"

"They should be, yes. They're in some sort of cryogenic sleep that preserves them at extremely low temperatures. Which means they're not alive in the sense that we are, breathing and everything. Their lives have been suspended, paused."

"And stuck," Wared added.

Randee nodded. "That's also correct. With no orbital launches, they are all stuck here forever," Randee said and made a sweeping gesture. "They might as well be dead."

"Do you think this is really all of them? I mean, Departures aren't exactly rare. This facility would have to be massive to store all of them indefinitely."

"Honestly, who knows," Randee said. "Personally, I don't see how it's possible to keep so many Candidates in storage for this long and not run out of space. But, I can't say for sure. The protocols don't mention an expiration date, nor is there any mention of overall capacity. I'm sure the information is out there, we just haven't found it yet."

Shea sat down on one of the chairs next to the control panel and sighed. "So now what? What do we do with them? Wake them all up?"

"I wouldn't recommend that," Randee said and shook his head. "If the document is correct, the Departure Protocol was put into place to ensure the survival of this colony, a way to conserve resources. If we wake them all up, what do you think will happen?"

Wared hesitated a moment before he spoke. "The colony wouldn't make it."

"Exactly," Randee said. "Waking them up would kill all of us. We would use up all available resources."

"But we can't leave them like this, can we?" Shea said. "I mean, all these people, stuck here. We have an obligation to them, don't we?"

Randee sighed. "I understand what you're saying, but we have an obligation to those alive as well. Right now, all of these people here are not using the resources we need to survive. Yes, they're not alive in the sense that we are, but by using less resources we still have the option of waking them up in the future while saving ourselves."

Shea looked up at Randee. "What about the orbital launches?"

"What about them?"

"Can they be restarted?"

"Shea, I have no idea," Randee said. "There's a lot we don't know about this facility. For example, we don't know why they stopped the launches in the first place. Was there some sort of problem in orbit? Maybe there's some sort of problem at our final destination? I just don't know. Maybe it's possible, but it's not something that could happen immediately."