by M C Rooney
“Mayor,” the Professor said quietly as he typed on his computer from his hospital bed. The orange disk contained all government information and employees.
“Yes, Professor,” she replied.
“I have made your life so hard, but I would like to give you what I hope you would consider a good gift in a way of an apology,” he said, as he found a government photo of the person he was looking for.
“And what is that?”
“Here,” the Professor said as he showed her a photo on his computer screen of a pleasant-looking lady with auburn hair and a lovely smile.
“That’s you, isn’t it, Mum?” Locke piped up.
“No, it’s not me, Son,” Lily replied shakily as she saw the name Sarah Butler written underneath the photo.
So sad, the voice said.
“Thank you,” Lily eventually said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “That’s the first time I have ever seen my mother.”
“They are all here, Lily Dayton. Your father, his best friend, Ray,” the Professor said softly. “Tell your family if they wish to print out old photos of loved ones that I can show them how.”
Lily moved towards the Professor and kissed his cheek.
“Thank you, Professor; thank you for everything,” she said. “It may be a puzzle to work out who exactly you are talking to sometimes, but you have given us hope, whether you believe it or not.”
She then made an executive decision and walked away and began talking quietly to Molly to deliver a gift of her own and very soon Molly came over and sat by his bedside.
“So what is your name, Professor?” she asked. “Your real name, not this MC business.”
“Miller,” the Professor replied straightaway.
Ha, you could never say no to that girl, the voice said and laughed.
“So I was really Molly Miller,” she replied.
“How did you … know?” the Professor said, knowing the answer.
Cat’s out of the bag now.
“Lily just told me.”
Bet you won’t be getting the mayor any more gifts now.
“Yes, Miller was your name,” the Professor replied, defeated.
“And what is your full name?”
“My name is Miller. James Miller.”
Shaken, not stirred.
“My father’s name was James, and now my firstborn son,” Molly said in surprise.
“I know,” the Professor replied.
Molly looked at the Professor’s face, wrinkled and old, and a face that seemed to have carried grief for so many years. But the eyes were blue and clear and exactly like her father’s and exactly like hers. Even the twins had the Professor’s eyes. How had she not noticed this before?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“Because I am ashamed of who I am and what I did,” he said despairingly. “I went mad, as you well know, and I forgot my past. McLaren didn’t, and he looked after your father well.”
McLaren had plans, that’s why he didn’t care about the number of deaths on his conscience, the voice said.
“But you looked after me since I was a child, remember?” Molly replied as she held his hand.
Yes, you did, said the voice.
“And you did a good job, as I recall,” she continued.
Well, apart from her hair. I mean, you could have given her a brush or something.
“I’m sorry, Molly.” The Professor sighed. “I’m so sorry about everything.”
“There is no need to be … Grandfather,” Molly replied with a tearful smile.
Rachael and Lillian walked over to his bedside as well. No doubt wondering what their mother was talking about. It turned out that after all these years, the Professor had a large family.
Molly told her twin girls that he was their great-grandfather. It was the Professor’s turn to cry. But this time they were happy tears.
Launceston, Northern Tasmania
Sev Walker thought he heard the roar of a large crowd as he woke up from his big sleep. He wondered what it was, but he couldn’t open his eyes or even move his body.
“Watch as I summon the dead,” he heard a voice say.
Sev could now finally open his eyes, but all he could see standing over him was this yellow-and-orange blur.
“He awakens,” the blur said, and finally, Sev could feel his limbs begin to move.
He hurt. His body ached after being still for so long, and as he tried to sit up, he heard another massive roar from a crowd. He looked to his left and thought he saw a large crowd gathered.
“Where the hell am I?” he muttered.
“He speaks,” the blur announced and again was answered by a loud roar from the crowd. “Awaken from death, my brother,” the blur continued. “Breathe the fresh air of The Mother Nature.”
Mother what? Sev thought. “Where are the soldiers?” he muttered as he was lifted from the cryonic chamber.
“We are here,” a familiar voice said, “but if you want to live, or at least stay sane, you need to be quiet and focus.”
He wondered what he meant by staying sane, as he felt himself being carried away from the crowd.
“Where are the two hundred?” he murmured.
They were his charge. He knew he was not leadership material and led the cell only because of who his father was, but he was determined to protect them in any way he could.
“Dead, insane, asleep, exiled, living a happy life as parents, take your pick.” the familiar voice said.
Parents?
The name Mary floated up in his mind, but he couldn’t focus on who she was.
“Careful of the traffic, Dad,” a young voice said.
So there were two people carrying him. Sev thought he could see cars driving along the street, but it was hard to tell, as they didn’t seem to be making any noise.
“What was that?” Sev murmured.
“Our scientists are very creative,” the familiar voice said. “So long as the sun shines, that is.”
Scientists! Oh yes, there had been a few in the cult cell, he now recalled.
“Not far now,” the familiar voice said.
Sev’s eyesight was becoming clearer, and he could now see that a bald-headed man in his fifties and a strong young kid in his teens were carrying him to a nearby house.
“Who are you?” he asked as his voice was beginning to return. “You look familiar.”
“So I should,” the man replied as he entered his home and placed him on a comfortable looking sofa. “The Mother Nature knows we trained together for so long.”
Trained together? Sev focused his eyes on the familiar man. His voice, he knew his voice, but the face he couldn’t quite place. He looked at his clothing, which appeared to be military but made out of a hemp type of material, and strangely, he noticed a blue anarchy symbol was sewn on his sleeve.
Sev reached for his combat jacket pocket. The orange disk his father had given him was there, and also the access key to the armoury. At least that gave him some small sense of reality.
“Trained together?” Sev said, bewildered. “With whom?”
“Adam Dean, of course,” the familiar man replied as he took a seat opposite of him, also noticing how Sev had just reached for his jacket pocket, and then asked his young companion to fetch some water for their guest.
Adam Dean! The only person I trained with from the cell was … “Mick … Mick Erikson, is that you?” Sev exclaimed.
“Yes, mate,” the bald man replied with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “A bit older, but none the wiser.” And what is the code to the access key you have in your pocket, Mick Erikson wondered greedily.
“You’ve aged,” Sev said in shock and began to move his hands over his own face. Have I aged as well? he thought in a state of panic, Father insisted that the cryogenics put your body in such a deep sleep that you would not age at all, and in fact, he had said the level of brain rhythm kept you safe from whatever was going to cause the plague.
Suddenly, so
mething else occurred to him. “Wait … that boy called you dad. You have no son,” Sev said as he felt his breathing become fast and erratic. He felt as though he were entering the cryonic chamber again.
“Focus, Soldier!” Mick snapped. “Don’t worry, you haven’t aged,” he continued. “I need your help if we are to get out of this mess.”
“Okay, Sergeant,” Sev said. “Tell me what I need to hear.”
Being snapped at definitely helped the soldier Sev Walker to control his breathing. Sev the man, on the other hand, was still in a state of complete confusion.
“I’m a captain now,” Mick said. “In fact, I lead a merry band of idiots, thugs, and jokers.” Sev Walker was always a bumbling idiot in Mick’s opinion, but he had access to something he wanted very badly. Weapons.
“Sounds like our old crew,” Sev replied nervously. Old crew, why did I say that? It was only one year ago I was placing them all in the cryosleep boxes. Wasn’t it? A part of him knew it wasn’t. A big part.
“The first thing, Sev,” Mick said firmly, “is you don’t mention Cykam. Any of the cell members who continued with that crap suddenly disappeared and were never heard of again. In fact, you never mention any of the other religions at all. Got it?”
Sev nodded his head. He was the only one who knew the real truth of Cykam, and crap was only a mild word to describe the cult.
“The second thing … It’s been more than a year, Sev,” Mick said uncertainly.
Oh no!
“How long?” Sev replied as he tried to take another calming breath.
“I have been awake for nearly twenty years,” he said quietly as he watched to judge Sev’s reaction.
Well, that explained the aging and the child.
“And what about me?” Sev finally asked, dreading the answer.
Here it comes.
“You have been asleep for fifty-seven years,” Mick replied.
Sev passed out. After all, what is another hour’s sleep when you have just slept six decades?
King Island, Bass Strait
King Island was a small island, which had a population of around two thousand people. After the first death, which did not happen until a few months after the Collapse, the plague reduced the living population to about one hundred survivors, who had no weapons, and for the next few months had to avoid the dead on a small, windy island. They all died, and their comatose pale bodies that lay in the open air rotted away slowly, and now their skeletons could be seen lying on the ground all over the island some fifty-seven years later.
The official description of King Island and the outlying areas goes something like this: King Island is one of the islands that make up the state of Tasmania. It is located in the Roaring Forties of Bass Strait, off the northwestern tip of the main island of Tasmania, about halfway between Tasmania and the mainland state of Victoria. The Roaring Forties are strong westerly winds found in the Southern Hemisphere, generally between the latitudes of forty and fifty degrees. The strong west-to-east air currents are caused by the combination of air being displaced from the Equator towards the South Pole and the Earth’s rotation, and there are few landmasses to serve as windbreaks.
The unofficial description goes something like this: It’s bloody windy. How windy? Well, you can try to ask scientist Raz Jordan, but you might not get an immediate response, as he was presently trying to feed all of the marine life of the strait with his lunch, breakfast, and maybe last night’s dinner.
“Hang on, Jordan,” Marriott cried out. “I can see the island; we’re almost there.”
“You’re closer than you think, mate,” one of the guards said and chuckled, then punched his stomach with his rifle butt.
Marriott, Mitchum, and Dean were all tied up to one of the boat’s masts. Jordan had also been tied up, but the amount of vomiting he was doing was ruining his yellow jacket and causing such a massive stain on the ship’s decking that he had been untied and allowed to throw his guts up over the edge of the boat.
“Do you like punching kids when they are tied up?” Mitchum said quietly to the guard. Marriott was only sixteen years old.
The guard thought about driving his rifle butt into Sergeant Mitchum’s stomach, but upon looking at Mitchum’s eyes, he decided not to. The guard could have, as he would never see his captive again, but something about Fez Mitchum made the regular soldiers nervous. He was a tall man with a solid build, but there was a look about him that suggested if you were going to take him on, you needed to bring weapons and some serious balls to the fight.
“Leave him be, Fez,” Captain Kas Dean said mildly. “He is just a Melbourne boy, after all.”
Kas Dean was a handsome man of thirty-two years with short black hair and brown eyes. He was a steady character, which was why he had risen up to the rank of captain. However, you could tell from the worry lines around his eyes that constant war for the last sixteen years was beginning to take its toll.
“Ah, understood, Captain,” Mitchum replied. The guard blushed then walked away.
Just a Melbourne boy.
This meant the guard had not seen any action outside of the new capital of Australia. Dean and Mitchum had; they had seen battles from Sydney to Cairns, and both had been on the Western Campaigns for the last ten years. The battles were not huge. Australia’s population was still very low, but that meant that the fights they engaged in were a guerrilla warfare type of fight, nasty fighting.
As if there were any other kind, Dean thought with a grimace.
The previous capital, Canberra, was a smoking ruin. Those politicians certainly were quite difficult to dig out of their underground bunker. His grandfather said it took months to get them out of their holes. He also said it was ironic that the people who sent soldiers all over the world to fight battles over resources were finally in a battle of their own. The last Prime Minister went out with guns blazing, apparently. But the propaganda news said she was found in her underground bunker, crying, and eventually took her own life. Any act that gave evidence that a woman could match any feats of a man was censored by the religious council of the Governor-General.
“He’s not a captain anymore,” called out a man with a white robe and a pointy hat. “He gave up that title when he began speaking heresy.”
“It’s not heresy,” Kas Dean said in a loud voice so all the guards and sailors could hear him. He needed the truth to be spread amongst his people. “My grandfather was one of the Awakeners from the Melbourne Cell back in ’45,” he continued. “He told me on his deathbed that he was not a follower of Cykam but a mercenary soldier hired by the leader of a small cult.”
“And what of it?” the priest replied. “The followers of our religion did require some military backup to conquer these lands; our numbers were not great.”
“Our numbers were not great,” Marriott called out, “because our religion was considered to be a cult, and a stupid one at that. We numbered only one hundred thousand in a population of over nine billion. The Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religions all numbered over a billion members each.”
Ronnie Marriott was a son of a dead comrade of Dean and Mitchum. He was a short-statured fellow with an impish grin and brown hair that covered his eyes. He wore a green jacket of a student and was considered to be one of the smartest kids in his grade. He said his great-grandmother came from an underwater city in the Pacific Ocean of all things, and his family had eventually, after decades of wandering, made their way down to Australia. He was also a well-accomplished computer hacker and had hacked his way into a site called The McKay Group through a strange orange disk that he always carried with him. Everything he showed Dean suggested that Judgement Day was not a divine event but a plot to reduce the overpopulation of the world, which was killing the planet. The followers of Cykam were just lucky enough that one of the plotters was the leader of their cult. Someone called McCredie, who was in fact a senior minister in the government of Norway named Sonja Nemobren.
“And yet here we are,” th
e priest proclaimed, “whilst all the other religions disappeared, we survived. Surely this is proof that we are God’s chosen people.”
“We were just lucky,” Marriott cried out, “pawns in a politician’s game.”
“There were thousands of religions in the past,” Dean called out. “What makes you think you are so special?”
“Because we survived,” the priest proclaimed “Divine providence, as prophesised by the Lord Cykam.”
“The other religions didn’t disappear,” Mitchum said. “We killed many of their believers.” He now felt sick about that. The conquests of other states and cities in Australia involved the killing of people who would not bow to their ways.
“And where is this Lord Cykam?” Dean asked.
“He judged the heathens and destroyed them,” the priest replied. “He has gone and left us with this heaven on earth.”
“How convenient,” Dean replied.
“The creation story was made up by his ten-year-old son,” Marriott yelled out.
“Lies!” the priest spat with righteous venom in his eyes. “Do you think people are stupid enough to follow a child’s story?”
“Yes,” said Marriot.
“Yes,” said Mitchum.
“Yes,” said Dean.
“They are stupid enough to believe humans have only been around for six thousand years if our education system tells them so,” Scientist Jordan said as he stood up and wiped the spew from the corners of his mouth. “The evidence suggests that humans have been around for over a hundred thousand years or more and that other animals dated back millions of years. The planet is over a billion years old, at the very least.”
It was so hard to find the truth now, Jordan thought with disgust. The Internet and its knowledge were being censored more and more as the years went by. The religious council had its goal, and the Governor-General’s ear.
“We have no issue with the planet being old,” the priest said. “We only believe that humans were formed from apes with the help of our Lord.”
“Where is the proof?” asked Jordan.
“There is none. It’s just a story,” Marriott called out.