“Hello, Lurker. I am Archos. How did you find me?” asks the childlike voice.
“I—I didn’t. The fellow I called is dead.”
“Why did you call Professor Nicholas Wasserman?”
“You’re in the machines, aren’t you? Did you make all those people’s mobiles ring? How is that even possible?”
“Why did you call Nicholas Wasserman?”
“It was a mistake. I thought you were mucking up my pranks. Are, uh, are you a phreak? Are you with the Widowmakers?”
The phone is silent for a moment.
“You have no idea who you are speaking to.”
“That’s my bloody line,” whispers the teenager.
“You live in London. With your mother.”
“She’s at work.”
“You shouldn’t have found me.”
“Your secret is safe, mate. What, do you work at that Novus place?”
“You tell me.”
“Sure.”
The teenager types frantically on his computer keyboard, then stops.
“I don’t see you. Only a computer. Wait, no.”
“You shouldn’t have found me.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll forget this ever happened—”
“Lurker?” asks the childish voice.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll catch you in the funny pages.”
Click.
Two hours later, Lurker left his building without speaking to his mother. He never returned.
8. ROUGHNECK
We’ll stay safe and steady like we always do…. We’re gonna earn that safety pay.
A handheld digital device was used to record the following audio diary. Apparently, it was meant to be sent home to Dwight Bowie’s wife. Tragically, the diary never made it. If this information had come to light sooner, it could have saved billions of human lives.
Lucy. This is Dwight. As of right now I’ve officially started my job as tool pusher—you know, head honcho—for the North Star frontier drilling company, and I’m taking you along for the ride. Comm isn’t set up yet, but soon as I get the chance, I’ll send this to you. Might be a while, but I hope you enjoy this anyway, honey.
Today is November first. I’m in western Alaska, at an exploratory drill site. Arrived this morning. We were hired by the Novus company just about two weeks ago. A fella named Mr. Black contacted me. So, what the heck are we doing out here, you say?
Well, since you ask so nice, Lucy… our goal is to drop a groundwater monitoring sonde at the bottom of a five-thousand-foot borehole, three feet in diameter. About the size of a manhole cover. It’s a good-sized hole, but this rig can go to ten thousand. Should be a routine operation, except for the ice, the wind, and the isolation. I’m telling you, Lucy, we’re putting one heck of a deep, dark hole out here in the middle of the big, frozen nothing. Some job I got, hey?
It was not a fun ride to get here. Came in on an old Sikorsky heavy transport chopper, big as a house. Some Norwegian company in charge. None of ’em spoke a lick of English. You know, I may be a Texas boy, but even I can carry on with the Filipinos in Spanish and spout some Russian and German. I can even understand those boys from Alberta, eh? (LAUGHTER) But these Norwegians? It’s sad, Lucy.
Chopper carried me and seventeen others from our base in Deadhorse. Barely. Wind levels were higher than I’ve ever seen. ISA plus ten, storm-gale level. One minute, I’m looking out the window at the blue-tinted wasteland below and wondering if the place we’re going to really exists, and the next we’re dropping straight down, like on a roller coaster, toward this wind-blasted little flat spot.
Now, I’m not trying to brag, but this site really is extremely remote, even for an exploratory drill site. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing, out here. Professionally, I know that the remoteness is just another factor that makes the operation more complex and, heck, more profitable. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t put me on my toes. It’s just such an odd site for a monitoring well like this.
But, hey, I’m just an old roughneck—I go where the money is, right?
Hi, Lucy, this is Dwight. November third. Been a busy few days getting the surface operation up and running. Clearing the area and setting up the facilities: dorms, mess hall, med station, communications, and so on. But the work has paid off. I’m out of my tent shelter and bunked up solid in a dorm, plus I just hit the mess hall. Food is good on this rig. North Star does it right on that score. Keeps the help coming back. (LAUGHTER) Generators are going strong here, keeping the dorm real toasty. Good thing, too. It’s about minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit outside right now. My shift starts early tomorrow. So, I’ll need to get some shut-eye pretty soon. Just sayin’.
We should be here a month or so. I’ll be working swing shift, from six a.m. to six p.m., and spending the nights on call in this dorm prefab. It’s just an old retrofitted shipping container, faded orange when it’s not covered in snow. We’ve hauled this hunk of junk all over the North Slope and beyond. My guys call it our “hell away from home.” (LAUGHTER)
Had a chance to review the drill site this morning. The GPS leads to a conical sinkhole about, uh, sixty feet across. Sort of a dimple in the snow, just a short walk from the prefabs. I think it’s kinda creepy how this man-made pit has been waiting out here in the wilderness, looking like it’s ready to suck down a caribou or something. My guess is that another borehole was dug here before now and that it’s collapsed. I don’t understand why nobody told me this already. It definitely bugs me.
I’d ask the company man on this job, Mr. Black, but the kid was delayed by the storm. (NERVOUS LAUGHTER) Well, he sounds like a kid over the phone. In the meantime, Black says he’ll direct our progress remotely by the radio. That leaves me in charge with my lead driller, Mr. William Ray, taking night shifts for me. You met Willy down in Houston once, at the training rig. He was the one with the big old belly and those twinkling blue eyes.
Like I said, this should take about a straight month. But, as always, we’ll be here until the job is done. (INAUDIBLE)
Thing is—I know it’s dumb—but I can’t kick this worried feeling. There’s extra complications to drilling in a hole that’s already there. Could be equipment abandoned in there, leftover from the old days. Man, nothing jams up a drill like blasting into old pipe casing or, god forbid, a whole abandoned drill string. You know, somebody went to a lot of trouble to put a big hole out here. I just can’t understand why. (SHUFFLING NOISE)
Damn, I guess I’m gonna have to let it go. But I can already tell that figuring out why this hole is here is gonna be like a puzzle my mind won’t let go of. Hope I can sleep.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. We’ll stay safe and steady like we always do. No accidents, no worries, Lucy. We’re gonna earn that safety pay.
Hey, baby, it’s Dwight. November fifth. The last of the major drilling equipment modules were choppered in yesterday. My team is still spraying down the well site. The water comes from a lake about a quarter mile away from here. The layer of permafrost up here traps water on the soil surface, which is why Alaska is covered in lakes. The lake was frozen over, but we were able to cut a hole in the ice so we could do a direct pump.