Moving Day by Michael Sweeney

The main entrance loomed ahead, large and forbidding. Kile clutch The
satchel tightly and wiped The sweat from his palm on his pant leg. The car
moved slowly down The small tunnel to The door into The facility.
Kile breathed deeply, trying to slow his speeding heart. As the car
came within range of the large metal doors the driver slowed to a crawl.
Kile stared straight ahead, paying no mind to the armed guard who approached
the vehicle.
The guard bent over and rapped on the glass window. Carefully, Kile
reached out and lowered the window.
"May I see your identification please, sir?" the guard requested. Kile
handed the man his pass. The guard took the pass and stood straight to
inspect it. The plastic card bore a picture of Kile and a series of fine
lines. The guard pulled a small black box from his belt and ran it over the
thin card. The box beeped and its monitor glowed green. The guard returned
to card and motioned to the other guards.
"Your cleared, sir. Go on through."
Kile took a deep breath. "Thank you, private."
The guard stepped away from the car as it pulled forward through the
parting doors. Kile had to control his breathing. He had not realized he
had been holding his breath. If he wasn't careful he'd hyper ventilate.
The car drove from the large doors to the building's entrance. When
the vehicle stopped Kile opened the door and stepped out. He held the
satchel firmly. A clink of metal rose from the satchel. Kile glanced down
at the shiny steel of the handcuff securing the satchel to his arm. He
grimaced nervously and started up the main steps. The large doors open
before him and he stepped in to the lobby.
The space before him was enormous. The ceiling rose fifty feet above
him. The far wall was twice that distance.
A scale model of the facility rose high into the air in the middle of it
all. The model was taller than Kile. While Kile had been informed of the
proportions of the place, he was still awed.
He reached into his pocket with his free hand. A handkerchief was
produced and he gingerly mopped his brow. This was not sitting well with
his stomach. He was not used to the whole deal and was beginning to show
The strain.
There was suddenly a man standing before him. Kile jumped slightly
when the man addressed him.
"Minister Kile, I presume?"
Speechless, Kile merely nodded.
"I am Doctor Franje, the administrator of this facility." the Doctor
followed Kile's gaze to The large model. "I see you like our little display..
Nice, eh?"
"Its fantastic. It gigantic. I never dreamed." the Minister gasped,
his tongue finally loosened. The Doctor smiled.
"And soon it will be a reality." The Doctor shifted to face the model.
"A dream of man will be brought to its culmination."
Kile noticed that he'd stopped breathing again and quickly gulped a
lungful of air. He sputtered slightly and coughed. The Doctor turned to
him and frowned slightly.
"Yes, I'm sorry about that. It seems the air reclamation units are
clogging from the dust of drilling. If you want to wear a mask, I can get
you one." He said.
"Yes, please, that would be fine. My lungs have a hard enough time as
it is." The minister choked out.
The Doctor took the Minister by the arm and led him to a reception
desk. He asked the man behind the desk for a visitors mask. The man pulled
a small blue breathing filter from under the desk. Kile pulled the elastic
over his head and the mask fit snugly. Immediately he felt better.
The Doctor thanked the man behind the desk and ordered the doors be
opened. Kile looked over to the large metal doors to the left of the desk.
They did not move. Behind and to the right of the desk the wall slide away
revealing a passageway. Kile was slightly startled. The Doctor walked
toward the opening. Kile followed.
As the two men entered the hall, the door slide closed behind them.
"What's the deal with the fake doors?" Kile said through the mask. The
Doctor slowed slightly.
"Those lead to a different section." The Doctor answered. Kile
frowned, he suspected something else, but remained silent.
"How has the construction come along, as planned?" he asked instead.
"Oh, quite. Even better. We are a week and a half ahead of schedule!"
the Doctor enthused. Kile was struggling to keep up with the Doctors long
strides. He would soon be out of breath. Abruptly The Doctor turned and
put his hand on the wall. A red panel lit up and outlined his hand. The
panel shifted to green and the wall slide aside. Kile was surprised again.
He would have kept going on and on. He would have to insure he did not lose
his guide.
"Don't worry, Minister. If you get lost we have cameras that will find
you." the Doctor commented as he brushed into the new room. The Minister
shivered as he look around for the watching eyes. Of course he could not see
them, but he could feel them. "Well, what do you think?"
The Doctor was standing before a large thing. Kile slowly looked up
and his jaw dropped open.
The proton drive projected two hundred feet into the mountain. There
was another three hundred feet below him.
It was a mass of piping of various sizes and shaped. Occasionally a tank of
some kind projected out. It looked like a plumbers nightmare.
Kile walked slowly over to the edge and peered into the
lighted abyss. It looked quite deep.
"Its huge!"
The Doctor smiled. The tall proton drive's piping glittered and
gleamed in it grandeur.
"Yes, I know. And this is what the Council Terraforming Committee has
been 'dumping' money into."
The Minister was still speechless.
"Come, lets go to my office. I have a nice view. And more importantly,
comfortable chairs."



I have only been with the committee for a short time."
The Doctor was still musing on the Ministers reaction.
"This is, of course, very top secret. I'm well informed that some fake
plague will be invented to clean the colonists off the surface." The doctor
sipped his coffee. "Hopefully, the force created will not damage the domes
to severally." The Doctor smiled.
Kile also drank his coffee. Though he was gulping his. His nerves
were not being easy on him.
"But, if all goes well, the domes won't not be needed, right?"
The Doctor frowned slightly.
"The conquering of Mars has been a long quest of mankind. Originally,
we thought that simply coming here and setting up The domes would be
enough." the Doctor coughed." They were wrong. So they set up the
Terraforming Committee about seventy years ago. It proposed dozens of crazy
ideas. From pumping water from earth to crashing a ice comet into the
planet. Each of these plans were supposed to help revive the dead planet."
The Doctor motioned around him. "This is only the final step in a long
series."
Kile furrowed his brow. He had not come to be lectured. "Doctor, you
evaded the question."
The Doctor smiled and sipped his coffee.
"Hopefully, Minister, it will work. I only know what the computer
simulations tell me."
The Minister frowned again.
"And they say?"
"They say it should work. But as the saying goes, the best laid plans
of mice and men." The Doctor wiggled his index finger in the air and
suddenly plunged it towards the floor. "Boom the commode."
"I'm afraid I don't really know about the plans of mice. But I am
vaguely aware of the plans of the Council. Could you please solidify these
notions?"
The Doctor smiled. He placed his coffee on the desk and pulled the
computer monitor into the Ministers view.
"Since your new, you get the full treatment. Slides and all.
"As you know the Terraforming Committee has been working for many odd
years into transforming the planet Mars into a viable ecosystem. After many
failed attempts it was realized why Mars had died in the first place."
The Doctor stopped.
"You do know about the aboriginal Martians they found, right?"
The Minister nodded.
"Good. Well,
The Doctor went on to explain that the original inhabitants had died
out because of Mars distance from the sun. Due to this distance, they boiled
during the day and froze at night. There have been similar account on earth,
however, not so extreme.
So the council came to the conclusion that Mars itself was the culprit
and have decided to relocate the planet to someplace sunnier.
"Kind of a prolonged vacation. Think the War God will mind?" The
Doctor joked.
"So essentially, the Council believes that if the planet were in a
different orbit, closer to the sun, that it would be reborn?"
"Correct! Now the only problem is a big one. How do you move a
planet?" the Doctor drank some more of his coffee. "You can't just call a
galactic U-Haul."
"I can't even imagine."
The Doctor grunted. "Well, they did, and put me in charge of building
the sucker. Complete with complaining about its getting done before the
Junction."
The Minister gave a confused look. "Junction?"
"Oh, yes. The Solar Junction. A planet is a big thing to go mucking
about with. You can't just pick it up and move it around without thinking
about The consequences." the doctor turned on the computer monitor. The
display jumped to life and showed a graphic of the solar system from
directly over head. "Now, the solar system is in a delicate balance. Upset
that balance in the slightest and bang!" he pushed a key on the monitor and
the simulation Mars went careening of into the sun. Kile's gasped. The
Doctor laughed.
"Of course, at the speeds we're dealing with, that event would take
decades. Other scenarios include the planet spinning to much and
disintegrating. Or flying off out of the solar system forever. A rogue
planet." The Doctor smirked.
"So they worked out the math and built a giant proton drive to push
the planet out of its orbit." Kile surmised.
"Proton Drives. Plural. There are two more. This is just the main one..
The thrust has to be just right or boom. The planet will get pulled apart."
Kile envision the three giant engines tearing the planet. He grimaced..

"Don't worry, these bunkers were built to withstand such and event.
We're stocked up with two years worth of
food. We can even implement a hydroponics plant and extensive recycling, we
could live forever in this tin can. And we have emergency escape craft to
boot."
Kile's gut churned. "Luckily, I will not be present."
The Doctor smiled.
"Don't be to sure."
The Minister looked at the Doctor.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I wouldn't go and make any decisions till I read that dossier."
Kile remembered the attache case cuffed to his wrist.
Quickly he produced a key and unlocked the case. He withdrew a manilla
envelope and pulled out several papers. The Doctor reached out and snatched
them away. Kile almost jumped out of his chair. The Doctor hushed him and
silently read the papers. At the end he raised his eyebrows and whistled.
"Well, Minister, It seemed that the big boys misjudged the moving day..
And it a lucky thing to." He threw the papers into the Ministers fault.
"Cause your gonna get to be present for the galaxies greatest fireworks
display."



The preparation for Moving Day had progressed beautifully. The
colonist were evacuated under the pretense of a space plague. The domes
were all secured and the facilities were all sealed.
The calculations for the Junction had been a week late. Fortunately
the facilities had been ready for a week already and had undergone extensive
testing.
In three hours, earth would be on the almost opposite side of the sun,
allowing the red planet to move without disturbing big blue. At that
critical moment the three giant Proton drives would blow their caps and
scream propulsive forces out into space.
Kile sat in his chair, white knuckled. Due to his recent assignment to
the Terraforming Committee, it had been he who was charged with being
present at ground zero. Meanwhile, the rest of the Council planted their
butts on the moon and waited.
The good Doctor Franje had been quite busy lately, leaving Kile to
ponder his possible death. On several occasions the Minister had voiced his
fear. The Doctor had reassured him that if anything really terrible
happened, they would all be killed instantly and never know. Very
reassuring. Kile reminded himself never to discuss death with Doctor. As
curious as Kile was normally, seemed to feel rather ill any time anyone
tried to explain something technical to him. Basically, he was strapped to
a giant bomb that would explode, hopefully away from him.
Sweat was pouring down his face. He stared ahead at the control room's
lighted panels. The digital clock on the wall slowly clicked down the
minutes. Kile reached out and
grabbed his water cup. He quickly gulped down what was left. He figured he
drank three gallons in the last five hours. The sweat soaked through his
shirt. Kile smiled as he though to the weight he was probably losing.
Suddenly Doctor Franje was in the room. He made his way to the seat in
front of Kile's. He turned and smiled wickedly.
"Ready for a real ride, Minister?"
Kile's stomach flipped inside out.
"Please, call me Kile."
The Doctor smiled even more wickedly. "Okay, Kile!"
The Doctor turned in his seat and fasten his harness. Kile did similarly.
The Doctor, sitting in front of a control board, spoke into a microphone.
"This is the two minute warning. Every one fasten you seat belts and
return your chair to their full upright positions." The Doctor snickered in
a sinister manner. He turned and sneered at Kile again. Kile almost got
sick.
"This is the One minute warning. Better nail it down now kiddos cause
the computer the one in charge now."
Silently Kile prayed that every thing was nailed down, that everything
worked, that he'd get that pony he'd always wanted. The Doctor turned to
Kile.
"Hope you went to the restroom, cause we ain't stoppin'! Ha HA!" The
Doctor turned back and announced the thirty second countdown. Kile prayed.
Ten, please God, Nine, don't let me die, Eight, I really don't what to
die, Seven, dying would not be good, Six, I'm sorry for all the things I
ever did, Five,
"Hold onto you butts!" the Doctor screamed over the raising din of
ignition.
Four, I hate that man! Three, Why me? Two, Oh GOD
One,
"God, I have to piss!"
Ignition.



The planet Mars had finally settled into its new orbit. The water from
the poles was quickly melting, forming vast seas and rivers. The colonists
had returned and begun the clean up and rebuilding. The Terraforming
Committee had announced it findings that the planet Mars would be able to
sustain a viable ecosystem in fifty years. This was cause for a lot of
backslapping and congratulations.
The only setback had been the strange matter regarding the main
facility. After it had finished pushing the planet, it had ripped right out
of the mountain and gone careening off into deepspace.
While the subsequent volcanic reactions were beneficial to the new
mars, the lost men on board were deeply mourned.

But look on the bright side. They'll be the first one to reach Alpha
Centuri.