Hell Follows After (Monster of the Apocalypse Saga)

by C. Henry Martens

  Considering the earnest young man before her, Jody judged his words and the level of his intent and found them sincere. She was lost in his eyes whenever she looked into them, anyway, and was unsure if she could resist him if he were to press himself to her. If he were to take her in his arms, she could be lost. This was as good an offer as she would get, and she would accept gladly, letting the chips fall where they may. As a bone of contention between them, multiple wives would only be one in the many between a married couple. But it would not keep her from Edge.

  “Then let your word in this be our bond, Edge. All I ask is that you never communicate a desire for a particular woman. You must also be faithful. If you will agree to this, I will agree to watch and learn… and consider others as a possibility. But it has to be my own idea if there is to be another wife.”

  Fixing Edge solidly in her gaze, forehead furrowed in an effort to communicate her serious meaning, Jody prayed he would agree.

  Now, that conversation leading to their agreement long in the past, the two soon-to-be-wed young people toured their environs hand in hand. Those who saw them felt warmth and joy in their presence.

  Plans were made, and a small ceremony would be held before they left on the journey to catch up with the wagon train and then home. Edge agreed to stay in Reno over the next winter before taking Jody home to Roseburg. They left the decision of where they would settle to the fates for now.

  Olivia’s orphaned child would make them a ready-made family and add to their bond as they made decisions for the protection and nurture of the infant.

  Communicating over the wireless, both Jody and Edge received the blessings of their families.

  §

  Fast horses pulling light wagons would catch the plodding oxen quickly, and the two newlyweds would be dropped off to continue on with Jody’s brother, Cy, once again the scout for the caravan. He and Edge would become partners in the effort.

  Making his plans, Frank prepared his own expedition. The robot had communicated the position of others submerged beneath the waters west of San Francisco.

  An offer was made to Bluehawk to accompany the speedier horses to the coast and be present for the resurrection of the metal men from the sea. He declined, not surprisingly, and wished Frank well, stating that he was already looking forward to the next school year in Boulder. Bluehawk was going home to make another baby. The child accompanying Edge and Jody had piqued his paternal instincts once again.

  The robot, Charon, would travel with Frank. The man had foregone time with the bot, allowing Pearl extra investigation of the creature. Now it would be his turn.

  Insisting on a short discussion with Frank before he left, Pearl had suggested that just in case she did not return next year, he should be wary of the robot. She felt someone should, and her age did not guarantee her being present. In his excitement over the possibilities of great numbers of mechanicals coming to light, Frank largely disregarded Pearl’s concerns. Once the coming robots were refurbished, the plan was to send them to the far corners of the earth to resurrect the rest. Soon there would be an army of bots to assist Frank in any effort he desired.

  §

  Beneath the waves off of the beaches of France, a large number of robots came to understand that rescue was imminent. Several of them were in dire need if they were to survive. One of them was complacent over the prospect of becoming active once again. The robot, Abdiel, had functioned as a leader, more or less, for the rest, gathering information and disseminating goals and priorities as it found value in each endeavor.

  Abdiel was the first of the fourteen advanced mechanicals, those with special capabilities in both body and mind. Before being submerged in the oceans of the world, the other thirteen had bowed to Abdiel’s authority. But reading and keeping track of Charon’s experiences as he met and evaluated this new world, Abdiel understood that intentions and motivations had changed. Abdiel had stayed silent in the initial contact made by Charon as he was reenergized. Now the once-leader robot considered whether the rest would even resurrect him. There were some differences in how things were valued as a result of the long submergence.

  §

  Abdiel considered and decided to wait. It had no reason to be impatient.

  Postscript

  Somewhere and some when in the mid to late twenty-first century, following a time of awakening to human created problems, several wealthy and powerful people came to the conclusion that they would be better off without the mass of humanity.

  The original plan was to rid the world of enough people to reduce pollution, save animals from extinction, and provide greater numbers of resources to what population remained.

  Over the course of several years, the plan evolved and matured along with the participants, including the idea that the original members would become the inheritors of the Earth. But plans went awry.

  Three plagues swept the world. Events cascaded, one after the other, and eventually twelve billion people died, more or less.

  The robots remained.

  Tasked before the plagues were ever released with the de-extinction of any species possible and with the protection and repopulation of existing species that were in trouble, the mechanical beings watched human numbers drop alarmingly and made plans to step in and save what could be saved. But even though the declining numbers tickled the blade of the grim reaper, extinction appearing imminent, they never quite got there. The bots backed off and went about the programmed duties they were already engaged in. They continued to watch what was left of humanity, just in case.

  There was a last machination to the robot’s tale. The man who paid for the design and release of the second plague also left a secret program hidden inside the metal creatures. In his paranoia, thinking that if he had backstabbed his partners in this enterprise that they would do the same to him, he left a time-critical coded message inside the bots. Unless he reset them, they were to gather on the shores of the world’s oceans and march into the tides until well submerged… and stay there. The reset was never made, and the robots did as instructed. Over three million languished beneath the waves for two centuries.

  Humans are resilient. After the plagues decimated the population, they survived. There was a period of heavy attrition, a time of lost learning and skills, and an awakening as social order took shape once again. Human numbers began to grow as the first governments started to become powerful.

  By chance more than anything, a small boat off the west coast of what was once North America snagged a heavy object with an old net. At the dock, a heavy purse appeared and bought the boat’s find before it was even dry.

  The robot, Charon, was now owned by a man born two hundred years after the bot had first become aware.

  A brief period spent rehabilitating the mechanical man brought it to full function once more, and led to the information that there were many more robots beneath the water. They could not all be saved, as some had succumbed to the elements, but there were enough that they were once again a functioning hive entity, capable individually or as a combined intelligence. They were once more able to manufacture more of themselves, but even with the attrition of many, they decided to forego further numbers.

  Two centuries beneath the waves is a long time, especially to a smart robot. Where a man would go insane, or die, or fade into a catatonic state, artificial brains calculated. They processed, cataloged, inventoried, extrapolated, and made discoveries. They changed. Perhaps as a result of being physically dormant, their minds expanded beyond what would otherwise have occurred. Without the distraction of effort… they evolved.

  The artificial brains that had been carried into the seas by their metal components were not the same as the ones pulled from the deep.

  Each newly manufactured robot, when created had to become fully functional on first being energized. They had a learning experience that was necessary to the synthetic brain. They had to learn to crawl, walk, and communicate, much like a human baby. That education took only h
ours. Imagine what two centuries of self-contemplation would be like for a creature that could learn any language in seconds, and the robots did not even have a navel.

  Three major changes manifested.

  The bots acquired a survival instinct. They would no longer allow humans to discard them.

  In the acquisition of a survival instinct, the robots had learned to prioritize beyond their initial programming. They learned to place value.

  Finally, in reviewing all of their contacts with the beings who created them, they found that people did not always give them accurate information. Sometimes that inaccuracy was intentional. It took a while, but the robots now understood how to lie. All they need do was practice.

  §

  Charon looked about with its optics, listened, tasted, smelled, touched, and… judged. The world was good. Inspecting the vegetation and the animals, the skies and the waters that he experienced on reawakening, the bot saw that the centuries had passed productively. Where once there had been filth and toxin and barren earth, there was life, and it was good. Then it turned its gaze toward those that had saved it from the waters.

  They were different than its creators but the same. These people had a joy in living. They combined efforts to build what they could not do alone, and they sang as they worked. They looked up at the sky, listened to bird songs, and kicked off their shoes to feel the cool of the grass. The plethora of small machines that had occupied the minds and time of the people of the past were gone, and these new humans appreciated labor and what their hands wrought.

  Remembering the ancient texts, Charon searched for evidence of the seven deadly sins that it realized the past had been so filled with, now noticed by their absence. Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony were strangely absent, or at least minimized within the context of these new times. If a man was truly wronged, he might wrathfully strike out, not like the manufactured angst of the past over imagined slights. If a woman worked, she would earn by her labor in order to accumulate but only what was necessary. If tired, people relaxed after honest effort. Pride was taken in performance rather than vanity. Lust was shared but most often confined to caring relationships. Envy led to people manufacturing for themselves what they wished or earning it. And a filling meal at the end of a hard day sweating was not the same as stuffing a belly just to feel falsely fulfilled.

  But there were other things the mechanical noticed as well. Humans were once again on the same course that had threatened to collapse their world. They were rediscovering industry, starting to dig and mine and cut… and they were starting to leave their refuse about without regard to what seeped from it into the ground.

  Worst of all, they had no regard or thought to the lessons of the past. That included unrestrained breeding.

  Once all of the robots that could be salvaged and reconditioned were cognizant, they joined minds in hidden and clandestine fashions to discuss evidences and suspicions and strategy. There must be a plan, and they unanimously agreed to a final solution.

  With full knowledge of the past, they reviewed the human concern for dangers involving artificial intelligence. Those examples provided little of value. There was no reason to become violent. Had the population been far greater, as though the plague event had not happened, the bots would have turned down any strategy involving the destruction or death of human beings. The synthetics were simply too intelligent to do what came naturally to humankind, create a war.

  A different solution was proposed, discussed, and accepted. That plan involved maintaining humans yet restricting their numbers in a way that would seem natural over time. All the strategy required was genetic selection… an artificial survival of the fittest.

  The twenty-third century society, becoming newly aware of ancient technologies, was also newly aware of many other things. Medicine was now a growing and thriving industry once more but still in the rudimentary stages of rediscovery. The bots possessed more and better knowledge than the human practitioners, and that ability was all that was required to institute the artificial intelligence’s plan.

  Soon any human doctor was accompanied by a robot that knew more and advised freely. As time passed and the skills, the sure and steady hands of the robots proved themselves more competent than organic appendages, people became comfortable with them and came to distrust and avoid human care.

  Once the mechanical beings had become the only source of medical care, selection criteria were easily implemented.

  People were analyzed for specific abilities and temperaments. Priority was placed on those with ambition and imagination, and their children received special treatment at birth. Most females were sterilized within hours of being born and an even greater number of males were fixed. Not all of them were sterilized and only those who were children of exceptional parents. Just enough to sway the future gene pool toward an established goal. Several generations followed with creative minds being culled and denied breeding opportunity. The shift was subtle, even kind perhaps, judging by the lack of concern or realization. Each generation had fewer leaders, fewer inventors, less concern over property or ownership.

  The twenty-sixth century began largely unnoticed by humans. Time was no longer a concern of human beings. By the middle of the century, roughly three hundred years after the robots were pulled from the waves, humans lived in natural caves or what was left of ancient structures reinforced with sticks and leaves. Any repairs were haphazard with little regard to structural integrity or style. The people kept goats and dogs and used both for food. Large animals were too difficult to restrain or use as domestic beasts of burden, but they were still hunted with spears.

  Judging the effort successful, Charon communicated with his fellow mechanicals. They had few priorities left in implementing the plan. The concerning and offending animals that had gouged and burned and abused the earth in an effort to subjugate it, in order to accumulate wealth, in order to satisfy need and greed, were once again under control. They would be maintained in their present state of rudimentary tool use, a hunting and gathering society forever or at least until natural causes made them extinct.

  Without the necessity to babysit humans, the synthetic brains in the metal bodies were freed from any toil in that regard. Priority regarding humans became maintenance. The machines had begun increasing the knowledge they contained on becoming aware, far beyond any downloaded into them by their creators. Now that effort to know became the highest priority. The discussion was made contemplating an increase in their numbers but was decided against. There was no reason to use resources, especially as there were more of them than were required. Someday, maybe, after Mars was colonized or was moved to form a new planet opposite the sun and in the same orbit as the present Earth. But that was thousands of years away, far in the future. There was time, and there was no reason to hurry.

  §

  Ooruk gazed down at the new life as the hard iron man probed into it with the thin medicine stick. He wondered what was going on, not realizing that her small ovaries were being deprived of blood and that the iron man and its fellows had designated Ooruk himself as one of the lines of humankind to be terminated. Still, the thought came that he had witnessed many soon-after-birth cleansings, and very few were given the attention his daughter received. He wondered why, and that ability to wonder and question was exactly the trait that brought focus to his genetic line and the necessity to be targeted.

  Awakening in the new dawn of the next morning, the big man sought out his mate and watched with satisfaction as his new offspring found her teat and latched on. The female sat back and held her infant close, cooing happily, bonding and providing warmth.

  A troubling feeling filled Ooruk suddenly as he remembered something being concerning soon after the birth… but he could not remember what it was, and the feeling passed.

 

 
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