After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  I thought of the cryotanks in the military base outside of Perish, how the rotting flesh had crumbled and spilled out onto the floor. I didn't want to even consider the possibility that something similar had happened here.

  “If the transfer fails, then we stay as synthetics,” I said.

  “But what if something happens during the process that damages our neural cores? We'd be condemning the embryos to death as well. There would be no one left to preserve them. We'd lose them all.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbed my face. “I can't even contemplate that.”

  “All I'm saying is, these are all things we need to think about. Okay? We need to plan how we're going to proceed, and we need to be prepared for every eventuality. To be safe, I would even consider raising a generation of embryos before we transfer back. Make sure the humans are self-sustaining to minimise the risk.”

  Waiting months to return to my body was a demoralising scenario, but the possibility of waiting twenty or thirty years, or never returning at all was simply horrifying. To even consider it twisted my insides and made my skin crawl. Grudgingly, however, I had to admit that she was making sense. To rush into a decision would be irresponsible, given what was at stake. I had to act in a more circumspect manner to ensure the right outcome, as painful and as it might be.

  I felt as though my dream was drifting away from me, like an untethered life raft at sea slowly bobbing out of sight, and that I was powerless to stop it. It made me feel empty inside.

  “All right.” I shrugged. “It doesn't seem like I have a choice.”

  She stood and returned to my side, put a hand on my arm in empathy. “I know you can do it, Brant. You have to.”

  She brushed past me and started rattling around with a little gardening fork and a watering can, already returning to her work. I watched her and once again wished I could somehow harness her composure, her focus.

  “Did you ever have moments where you doubted yourself, Arsha?” I said suddenly.

  She paused, straightening her back, studying me thoughtfully as if measuring her response. Then she looked me square in the eye.

  “No.”

  35

  Arsha was busy early the next morning. She made preparations to head out for her rounds, watering, inspecting and cleaning her various plantations. Menial stuff, according to her. I offered to tag along to help out, but she suggested I hang around the workshop to get myself reacquainted with the equipment.

  “You have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, “and not much time to do it. Go through the data on the flip and we’ll talk about it when I get back.” She pointed to the device sitting on the bench nearby as she headed out the door.

  I gathered up the flip as her footsteps receded down the hallway and into the stairwell. With a swipe of my fingers it came to life, glowing softly. Powered by solar charged batteries like the ones I’d used in my flashlight, it was still capable of running autonomously from the defunct Grid in stand-alone mode. The edges of it were discoloured and worn from years of use, and the display was weak, appearing on the verge of cutting out more often than not, but it was readable. In the end that was all that mattered.

  I began to investigate some of the data Arsha had collated over the years. There were pages and pages of statistics on a whole range of topics: soil analysis from a number of locations around the city, daily temperature readings, precipitation. There was data on local freshwater samples as well: chemical composition, microbiological and pathogen content, radiological measurements. Air quality monitoring for radon gas and dust, light filtration. It went on and on.

  This seemed more like the work of ten people, not just one. But that was Arsha. She’d always been driven, always pushing ahead. She knew how to get things done.

  After a few hours of trawling through the flip I decided I needed a rest, so I placed it carefully back on the bench and rubbed at my neck, manipulating it back and forth. Over by the windows I realised that the day was already winding down. I’d been ensconced in Arsha’s data for longer than I thought. Out toward the cemetery a curtain of rain was spreading across the hillside, the sunshower glittering red and gold in the glow of late afternoon. I felt the breeze on my face, caught the scent of ozone and dust stirred up the by the storm. There was something else there too. Smoke, perhaps? The perpetual haze above the city, the legacy of those fires that sprung up so frequently seemed to be caught in the wind, shepherded along by the arrival of the storm.

  I decided to head out for a look around before night fell. Arsha would be back soon, I imagined, and we’d have more to discuss tonight. This would be my last opportunity today to get out and stretch my legs.

  I made my way down the stairwell and passed through the door on the ground floor to see that there were a few spits of rain already tumbling out of the sky and dotting the alleyway. I stepped up into the loading dock and stood with my back to the wall, watching while I decided whether to brave the elements or just go back inside and wait. Most likely a small dose of rain wouldn’t do me any harm, but if it got any heavier it might work its way into the resin and loosen up the patches on my neck and leg. Then I’d have some explaining to do with Arsha.

  As I stood there, I heard the hatch of the dumpster open and close, and rapid footsteps flowing down the alleyway. Arsha appeared in view, in a rush as usual. Instead of stopping at the steel door as I expected, she hastened past it and across to the other side of the alleyway. As of yet she hadn’t noticed me standing here in the gloom of the loading dock.

  I was about to call out to her, but decided to wait and see what she was up to. Rummaging amongst a pile of wooden crates, she pulled out a rag and began to scrub at a dark powdery substance that was coating her hands.

  “Arsha?” I said finally, stepping forward.

  She jumped at the sound of my voice, knocking one of the crates aside as she turned.

  “Shit!” She clutched the rag to her chest, and her eyes looked about ready to pop out of her head. Seeing me, she relaxed and allowed herself a sheepish smile. “Brant. You scared the hell outta me.” She took another moment to calm herself, then added curiously, “What are you doing there?”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking of heading out.”

  “Out? Out where?”

  I looked up into the cloudy sky, considering. “Just out for a walk.”

  She cast a dubious eye to the heavens as she rubbed distractedly at her hands. “Sounds like lousy timing to me,” she said. “Best to stay here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, come on up and we’ll go through some of that data.” She finished up with the rag and tossed it nonchalantly back among the crates, then grabbed my elbow and turned me back toward the door. “Gardening,” she remarked. “Fun, but real messy.” She almost seemed embarrassed by her unsightliness and hid her hands self-consciously in her pockets as she walked. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Up on five she pulled the flip from the bench and handed it over to me as she began going about her routine around the workshop.

  “So, you’ve had time to check it out. What are your thoughts?” she said.

  I made a little noise of appreciation. “There’s so much here, I feel like I could be reading this stuff for weeks.” I looked up at her and said sincerely, “You’ve done an amazing job, Arsha.”

  She kept about her tasks, straightening, checking, adjusting, all without looking at me. “I’ve done what I had to do,” she said evenly.

  “Well, more than that, really. You’ve gone above and beyond any expectation here, I think.”

  “Not above mine.” The flattery seemed lost on her.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “I like what I’m seeing here. It’s promising.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, absently wiping away dust from the oscilloscope with her finger. “There’s still a long way to go, yet.”

  “But the signs are good, right? Just from scanning over your findings today, there seems to be a steady increase in all
the parameters we’re looking for.”

  “It’s getting there. You know I....” She stopped abruptly. “What the hell?” She smoothed the hair back from her face, irritated, and began flicking the switch on a sieve shaker up and down. “Did you do something here? There’s no power to this thing.”

  “What? No, I haven’t touched it.” I got up and walked over to her. “I haven’t touched anything.”

  She moved along to the next instrument and repeated the process, finding the same result. Her eyes widened and she turned to me. “The generators.”

  The implications were immediately evident to both of us. As one we bolted for the inner lab, boots thumping on the concrete, minds racing. The outer door was brushed aside and we pushed on through, forgoing the cleanroom suits in our haste to reach the inside. Arsha, a step in front of me, knelt at the cryotank and began furiously tapping on the access panel. For a moment there was nothing. She looked back over her shoulder at me and for the first time I could see something akin to terror on her face. Then the panel gave off a tiny beep and began to glow softly in the dimness.

  “Thank goodness,” she breathed, rocking back and placing a hand to her forehead. “There’s still power to the cryotank.” She looked up at me. “Generator number two must have failed. Number one is dedicated to the freezer here.” She rapped her knuckles lightly on the cryotank.

  “Then we need to get down there and do something with it.”

  “No,” she said wearily. “Working on those things is a band-aid fix and I’ve been through that too many times already. Believe me, there’s no future in those things. They’ve had their day. We need to look beyond that, to something that’s going to keep us afloat into the future.”

  I considered for a moment. “You mean the solar panels?”

  She nodded. “It’s the only way to be sure. There’s enough up there to run half the damn floor, let alone one little workshop. Once they start charging the bank of power cells, we’ll be in the clear. We’ll have power on tap.”

  “So how do we bring them back online?”

  “I need to get up on the roof,” she said urgently, getting to her feet. “And I’m gonna need you to help me.”

  36

  On level three she’d converted an old office space into another of her storerooms. There were all kinds of hardware, including engine parts, lengths of timber of all shapes and sizes, bags of cement, steel rods, boxes of screws, nails and bolts, a beaten up hand truck and sheets of galvanised steel cladding. I walked amongst it, amazed.

  “You’ve collected half the city here,” I said appreciatively.

  “I come across stuff now and again,” she said, busily picking through a rack of items. “If something looks like it might be useful, I bring it back to one of my safe houses, or to here.” She picked up a length of coiled rope and started pulling it through her fingers, examining it closely.

  “So what do we need?” I said.

  Satisfied that the rope met her standards, she shoved it in my arms and ducked down to sift through a stack of gear under the bench.

  “That rope, for a start.” She located another coil and gave it the same kind of inspection as the first, like a jeweller poring over the glinting facets of a diamond.

  “Okay. So how do we know what the problem with the solar is?” I said.

  “We don’t. And we’ll never find out unless we get up there.” She slung the rope on her shoulder and kept looking, this time finding a tool belt which she began to fasten around her waist.

  “That’s a hell of a long way down from up there.”

  She pulled out a pair of wire cutters and strippers from the tool belt and gave them a once over. “A fall from much lower is probably enough to kill me, so it really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s the two-hundredth floor or the twelfth.” She patted the tools back down in her belt and then pointed past me. “Give me a hand with that.”

  A long aluminium ladder lay against one wall, and despite its considerable size it was relatively lightweight. Arsha tucked it under one arm and led the way toward the hall.

  “That should do, I think,” she said, a note of urgency in her voice. “We need to get going while there’s still light.”

  “Are you sure? We won’t have time to make another trip down if it’s turned out we’ve forgotten something.”

  She considered, adjusting the weight of the ladder under her arm as she glanced back at me.

  “There’s only so much we can fix in the short window of time available to us today. If there’s something major that’s happened up there - if half the roof is gone, for example, it’s going to take weeks to repair - if it’s able to be repaired at all. What I’m hoping is that this is just a wiring problem, something minor that I can remedy in the timeframe we’ve got. At the very least I need to inspect it so that we can plan and gather materials.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “So no point lugging up a whole bunch of gear that we may or may not need. This will do for now.” She whipped her head to the front and began to lead again. “Come on.”

  We entered the stairwell and began to make our way upward, which was somewhat of an awkward process given the length of the ladder. After a few floors we began to adjust the angles on which we manipulated it through the turns, and before long we were humming along far more efficiently. Arsha set a cracking pace, as always, and the floor numbers began to click over with the surety of a metronome.

  I began to tick off little milestones as we ascended. Tenth floor. Twentieth. Thirtieth. It was fortunate that, as synthetics, we didn’t tire quite as quickly as humans did. Our muscles were capable of far more endurance before flagging. Even so, I began to ache from the exertion before long, and had to push myself to keep going.

  We ticked past one-hundred, legs still pumping, ladder digging uncomfortably into my ribs. Some of the doorways that led out of the stairwell were jammed open or ripped apart, which allowed sunlight to penetrate through and light our way. I wondered if Arsha had been the one to damage them in this way as I pictured her moving from floor to floor over the years, picking through what was left of M-Corp and salvaging the most useful items. It must have been a mammoth task, but one that Arsha would have taken in her stride.

  One-fifty. Getting closer. We were now reaching the levels that had once been occupied by the most powerful employees at M-Corp. It was a secretive place, in many ways. Not many of us from the lower levels ever had the chance to see this part of the building since it was off limits, restricted via some tight security controls. These doors had once required two-factor authentication to pass through. That was, at least, before they’d been hacked apart and wrenched open.

  Now we had the run of the place, but there wasn’t much left of it to see.

  More levels went by in a blur, and eventually we reached the top. The door here, too, had been ripped aside, the fancy-looking security panel that had once kept it locked hanging limply on the end of a tangle of wires like a marionette. We carefully drew the ladder out of the stairwell and proceeded across the threshold, laying it on the floor as we inspected the place.

  At one time this panoramic chamber must have been an amazing sight to behold, but now it was nothing more than a rubble-strewn cavity. Frayed cables and electrical fixtures hung from the ceiling, and beyond, shattered windows looked out across the city. The wind whipped around and tugged at my clothing. Arsha went and stood close to the edge, and as I peered out I could see that the storm had already cleared. I walked over to her side, my boots crunching on gravel and shards of broken glass, and together we watched the fading sunlight wash across the ruined landscape below.

  “Were you ever allowed up here?” I said. “In the old days, I mean.”

  “No. I never was.”

  The buildings below shone dully in the aftermath of the storm, their mangled concrete exteriors glossy as if they’d been freshly coated in lacquer. There was no other building to match the height of M-Corp - it looke
d down upon the others like a parent looking upon its tiny children. With the wind buffeting my face I almost experienced the illusion of soaring freely above them, a phantom surveying a dead city that was once its home.

  “I never came up here, either.” I glanced around. “It was a restaurant, wasn’t it? One made just for the company ‘elite’.”

  She shrugged. “I really don’t know. Could have been. Lately, I’ve been coming up here quite a lot though. There’s something magical about this view. To look out and see the extent of what was created is just... breathtaking.”

  I pointed out to the north. “You can even see a Grid spire out there.”

  She shifted her view and nodded. “Yeah. It’s still standing.” As we watched, it almost seemed to pulse with light.

  “Uh....” I began uncertainly.

  “Yeah, you didn’t just imagine that,” she said worriedly. “I’ve seen it do that now and again. I think the Marauders are trying to restart the Grid out there.”

  “But how?”

  “I don't know. And don’t even think of going out there. If we attract their attention, we’re not going to be safe here. They’ll track us down.”

  “But if they restart the Grid, they’ll be able to hook into any old surveillance gear that’s still running. They’ll find us.”

  “Probably, but we don’t have time to worry about it now,” she said. “Let’s get on with this.”

  She began to busy herself with her task, dragging the ladder noisily across the floor and dumping it near the ledge, sending up a cloud of dust. Then she began to loop one of the pieces of rope over the end rung.

  “We’ve got maybe half an hour of sunlight left,” she said. “Hopefully that will be enough time.”

  I paced over to grab the second rope, which was draped across a small, curved silver desk near the wall that might have once served as a reception podium. Curious, I flicked through the drawers and came across a yellow and curled notepad that featured the M-Corp logo on the header, the letter ‘M’ inside a crescent. I picked it up and ran my thumb across the bottom edge, making the pages flutter.