“Yeah Pete. All of you. Now move your asses. The longer we talk the more damage the BARD will suffer. Let’s move,” Mac said starting off down the long tunnel.
“Sally, can you hear me?” Mac asked as they slowly jogged along.
“Got you Mac.”
“Call Paul and Barney. Tell them what has happened. I know Paul is up in Michigan hunting but this is important. He needs to know about this ASAP.”
“Will do. You watch yourself in there.”
“We will,” he said and picked up the pace.
Is this super cool or what? RiotousOne said to himself. He was watching through the monitors of the control room as the BARD started off course and began eating into the side of the cavern.
He pumped his fist, I am the Wizard. The all-powerful. I am the Hacker of Hackers, he gloated. He had total control. The only way they could stop him was to physically close off the power to the hydraulic pumps.
He opened another Snickers and played with the controls, moving it along even faster. I am such a stud, he muttered. While he was watching something didn’t seem right. The monitor was suddenly black.
What the…, he thought shaking his head. Just as quickly the camera was tilting straight down pointing into nothingness. Whoa, what just happened? Then the screens went totally blank.
“Mac, something weird is going on.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We lost all vision. The screens just went blank.”
“Great,” he said.
He no sooner let up on the mic button than a tremendous roar rolled through the tunnel. It was so loud that bits of coal rained down on the men.
“What the hell was that?” Pete asked.
“I don’t know but it sounded expensive,” Mac replied.
“I don’t hear the BART any longer,” Alex, one of the other workers, said.
“I guess it stopped. Maybe it blew up,” Pete said.
“Well, something sure happened,” Mac said, “Let’s get going. We need to assess the damage and then get the hell out of here.”
“I'm with you on getting out of here,” Pete said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
CHAPTER TEN
“What happened?” Paul asked when he got back to his hotel and found six urgent messages waiting for him.
“We don’t know yet. Something caused the BARD to quit responding to control input. It just did its own thing and wouldn’t even shut down with the emergency override.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No. Everyone is just fine. Mac is down in the tunnel trying to figure out what happened.”
“You’re sure it is safe for him to go in there?”
“He took the conveyor guys with him. All five of then went down to see if they could determine what happened.”
“Alright. I’ll get a flight out first thing tomorrow. I need to you call Dynamic Engineering and have them send someone to help figure this out.”
“I’ll take care of everything. Let me know your flight information so someone can pick you up. See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks Ann. Keep everyone calmed down. It’s just a machine. At least no one was hurt.”
“Just our cash flow.”
“Right.”
“Where is the fog coming from?” Pete asked as they walked along.
“Beats me. Maybe the thing blew up,” Mac said.
The fog was getting thicker the deeper they went into the tunnel.
“I don’t like this much,” Rodney said.
“Yeah, it’s getting thicker. Maybe we should go back and get some ventilation going,” Alex offered.
“Maybe you should act like miners and just do the job,” Mac said sarcastically.
They all trudged along in silence. The fog closed in around them to the point where they could hardly see each other. All they could do was make out the other person's general shape.
“Mac.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I know. We might as well go back, we can’t see anything in this… whatever it is. We’ll get some ventilation going to suck it out and then come back.”
They all let out a sigh. It was a good thing there were no off shoots. All they had to do was stay in the middle of the tunnel.
“What went wrong?” Barney asked as they emerged from the tunnel.
“Don’t know yet. It’s really strange. A really dense fog is filling the tunnel about a mile back.”
“Fog? What’s that mean?” he demanded.
“You know. Thick stuff you can’t see through. We couldn’t even see each other it got so thick,” Mac told him.
“So you just turned around and came back?”
“Hey Barney, here is my hard hat. You are more than welcome to go look for yourself. We are going to get some exhaust fans and try to suck it out of there.”
“Fog,” he snorted and walked off.
“Guess he didn’t want to go,” Pete said at the retreating Executive Vice President.
“Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that we have the fans on for four hours and only a wisp of fog or whatever that stuff is has actually come out,” Pete said.
“What did you expect? You think a big cloud was going to rolling out of there? Some of it has probably already dissipated,” Rodney said.
“I don’t know. That was some thick stuff. I’ll bet London couldn’t top that shit.”
“You ever been to London? Hell no. You don’t know squat man,” Alex said jumping into the conversation.
“Whatever.”
“How much longer?”
“Man, buy yourself a watch. You ask that ten times a night,” Pete said to Brian, the fourth man on the conveyor team.
“Just tell me what time it is,” he replied.
“We have ten more minutes to shift change.”
“Man I hope they are on time. I’ve had enough creepiness for one night.”
“Wuss,” Pete muttered.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Paul stood talking to Ann and Barney when Mac pulled into the parking lot. He ambled over to them.
“Welcome home. Sorry you had to cut your vacation short.”
“No big deal. Once we figure out a plan of action I’ll just pick it back up,” Paul said placing his hand on Mac’s shoulder, “Look, I know what you’re thinking but you are wrong. No one is blaming you for this. Something just went wrong. We'll get to the bottom of this and then do what we have to do. Mac, it’s okay, honest.”
“I know boss but this was my baby. I feel like I let everyone down.”
“Well you didn’t so get over it and let's see what the damage is,” Paul said, putting his hard hat on.
“You sure you want to go down there?”
“Yeah. I need to be able to assess this for myself. Hopefully our insurance covers something like this. If it was something in the programming then it will be a problem for Dynamic Engineering,” Paul told him
Mac was beginning to feel a little better. He had been dreading coming in. He was sure he would be fired on the spot. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all, he thought.
Barney begged off saying that he needed to return some important calls. Mac wondered what was more important than discovering what had happened to the BARD.
Paul had Mac go over the events once more as they walked along.
"It sounds like it had some kind of glitch in the program or it developed a mind of its own."
"The master switch didn't do a darned thing. I about beat it to death trying to get it to shut down."
"There has to be some logical explanation. It's been functioning even better than we hoped for," Paul replied.
Paul stopped suddenly and looked over at Mac.