Ouray, Colorado

The first thing I noticed was my pounding headache, wet face, and whimpering dog noises. I slowly opened my eyes and was greeted with a huge dog head staring at me. As soon as DJ saw me open my eyes, he started jumping around stepping not only on my legs but in a gut-wrenching moment smashed my family jewels.

I grunted in pain not only from the smashed grapes, but my head felt like it would soon explode. “DJ, get off you big bear.” DJ plopped down half on, half off my body and rested his large snout on my chest. The last thing I needed right now was a 150-pound retriever sitting on my chest, but the fact I was alive meant that I wasn’t going to die of asphyxiation today.

“Zeus,” I croaked. “How long have I been out?”

“Asleep?”

I sighed. “Yes.”

“Seven hours forty-three minutes and twenty-four seconds.”

“You know the seconds?”

“Your breathing pattern changed.”

The pounding in my head was too much to deal with right now. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

###

When I woke the second time, DJ was still resting on my chest, and I started to gag on his breath. My head felt a lot better, but the extra weight on my chest and his body heat was starting to drive me insane. “DJ, time to get up boy. You are too big and fat for me to push you. Down.” DJ snorted and blew snot in my face before standing and jumping off my couch. I forced back my gagging as I wiped off my face. “Thanks for the present. Next time keep the snot to yourself.”

I slowly stood and walked towards the hole in the wall and stopped short a couple of feet as I noticed small bars of gold, silver, copper, iron and what I guessed was titanium stacked near the doorway. I also notice piles of other minerals, but it was the precious metals which brought me to a halt. I expected sulfur, salt, and other minerals but all the precious metals had been mined out of these mountains years ago. Or…at least that’s what I thought.

I designed Roknar to replace the mega machinery used in space mining operations throughout the solar system. After breaking down the materials in the rock, Roknar would consolidate and in the case of rare earth metals such as gold and attempt to form them into standard 8x4x4 inch bars. I knew it weighed more than the typical 400 troy ounce bars on earth but shipping in space required more consistently sized bars. This became Earth’s new standard for cargo ships and space elevators, and so I didn’t mess with it.

I bent down and picked up the small bar of gold weighing it by tossing it up and down. I shrugged. I’d say…half a pound of gold. I chuckled at my new found wealth but quickly sobered as I realized I was still buried and I had no idea if my parents were dead or not.

My sobering mood shifted to my next problem as I tried to figure out how far underground I found myself. I walked over the hole in the rock face and peered inside and frowned when I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

“Zeus, connect me to Roknar. Roknar, how deep is this tunnel?”

“Approximately thirty meters, Cayden.”

“100 feet? Don’t answer that.” I rubbed my head as I tried to remember how far the mine entrance was to the edge of the mountain. The road dropped off at maybe 30 feet. I’m guessing, but the mine entrance sits too high on the mountain for these rocks to extend 100 feet. Everything drops off fairly quickly after the road for at least 300 feet.

“Roknar where is the rest of the waste material? 30 yards of dirt should have created a much larger mess than I see in here.”

“Affirmative. Most of the waste material has been deposited outside the tunnel. It was moved after reaching the end of the rock as per your protocol.”

I closed my eyes trying to remember which protocol he was referencing then remembered that I recently played with the idea of hollowing out an asteroid for a possible domicile. Shoot me. I keep thinking about science fiction novels while testing Roknar. Don’t get me wrong. I was glad he extracted the waste or less valuable material outside of my cavern, but I’d forgotten I set that protocol.

To be honest, the APRIL never did this while testing in my virtual workspace. I mentally made a note of this as more proof that UNC was sabotaging my research.

I walked over to my couch and sat back. “Virtual,” I commanded.

I found myself still resting on my virtual couch and walked over to the glass viewport overlooking earth. I needed more information and debated on what my next moves were. It’s obvious that I try to find out if my house survived but based on the amount of rock Roknar had to bore through…I doubt my house would be there. Do I dig straight out of the mountain or angle it? I needed information, and Roknar wasn’t designed to take a look out and give me feedback. It was a mining program, not an AI.

“Zeus, are you able to connect to the Network yet?”

“Negative.”

“Can’t you sense a signal from the hole?”

“Negative. There are no responses from the UNC controllers.”

“Explain.”

“I’m unable to locate their signal.”

I blew out a frustrated sigh. “Can you detect movement from any rescue attempts?”

“Negative.”

“What can you detect?”

“Nothing of note.”

“Try me, Zeus.”

“I detect animal movements but nothing as large as a human.”

“Well, at least we didn’t kill all the animals.”

“Affirmative.”

As much as I liked Zeus, he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. I thought about it and decided I couldn’t know anything unless I walked out there myself. Determined and with a direction to proceed, I sat down on my couch and began programming a possible path for my cave exit. I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t want to build a straight tunnel as my exit. If the mountain was unstable, it could cause too much instability. Well, I suppose I could reinforce it but building a zig-zag tunnel sounded more exciting and…why not?

After a few minutes of programming the parameters into Mining God, Roknar began building my tunnel. “Roknar, give me an estimated time for you to reach the exit point based on the types of material you discovered in your original air tunnel.”

“Approximately, eight hours before the project is completed.”

Jesus, that’s a long time. “Well, DJ, I guess we see about putting our robot back together. Right, boy?”

DJ barked, and I took his reaction as an agreement. The lab was a mess, and I sure as heck didn’t want to clean it up myself.

###

Robbie the robot, yes I named him that based on the old television show, was put back together and cleaning up my cavern within a couple of hours. I had difficulty finding the tools and parts I needed, but since I had nothing but time I suffered through the chore. Robbie didn’t have any smarts. Oh, he knew where I kept things and would put things back in the places I updated him with, but he didn’t talk or respond. I left the controls to Zeus since he knew what I wanted.

I helped Robbie lift some of the larger equipment upright when I heard his servos whine. He would have figured it out eventually, but I was in a hurry to assess the damage. You can’t do an inventory check on what needs fixing when you have crap scattered all over the floor.

I felt DJ place his wet nose on my palm and looked down to see him try to place a tennis ball, recently uncovered, into my palm. Taking the ball from DJ’s mouth and rubbing his head, I tossed the tennis ball off the wall so it would bounce and allow him to chase it around the room. He would knock into things periodically, but Robbie would eventually pick whatever it was back up.

Once my cooler was uncovered, I grabbed me a snack and tried to squelch the growing rumble in my empty stomach. The thought of food made me miss my mother and worry more about their safety. A rock slide big enough to bury my lab under this much debris probably caused untold damage in Ouray. I looked at the pop-up time on my augmented display and sighed. I still had two hours before Roknar was done with the tunnel.

Robbie uncovered a bag of dog food, and I fed DJ which seemed to delight him as much as my snack delighted me. Zeus estimated that we'd been buried for nearly two days. He couldn’t be more exact since his memory was wiped out and restored from my foolish attempt to cheat. His words, not mine. Foolish or not, it worked and Roknar, my mine slave, seems to be doing an outstanding job based on the stacks of precious metal piling up next to the door.

“Zeus.”

“Yes, Caden.”

“I’m confused about the volume of precious metals Roknar is piling up near the door.”

“Explain.”

“I’ve lived in Ouray most of my life, and it’s a well-known fact that we don’t have anywhere near that much gold or silver in these mountains.”

“Researching…You are correct.”

“How can I be correct when I see well over 1,000 troy ounces of gold piled up?”

“Unknown.”

“Unknown, indeed,” I mumbled.

DJ and I played catch for the next two hours while I watched the trickle of materials streaming into the room slowly and then begin forming Earth Standard metal bars. At a quick guess, I watched a fortune of precious metals form into bars along the floor.

“Zeus, when Roknar says he’s complete, have Robbie stack and separate the bars and line them on the North facing wall. If he can find containers have him do something with the loose materials. I’m going to grab something to eat real fast then head out as soon as Roknar says it’s safe to use this tunnel.”

I grabbed some food, and by the time I ate it and washed it down, Roknar said it was safe to leave. I didn’t waste another minute and could smell the forest from beyond the door. The tunnel due to the design was longer the 30 meter, and it took me a few minutes to find the exit.

I stood 300 feet above the valley floor on a cliff face looking out upon an utterly foreign view of Ouray. Well, it looked like the Ouray valley but devoid of buildings and people. I looked up above my head then stuck my head out and fought back an extreme case of vertigo.

I don’t know where I was, but this was not Ouray, and that was no rock slide.