by G E Hathaway
“Noah.” Liam sat up slowly. The Grid Gun vibrated gently in his hand, the telltale light glowing brightly even in the sun.
The sun god flickered the same way Talisa had when she stood outside his Grid house. He stumbled toward them unevenly. With each flicker, his armor faded away until he was just a man again, wearing a tan suit and a trilby hat. “What is happening?” His voice cracked. It no longer boomed and vibrated inside Noah’s head.
Noah climbed to his feet and looked over the edge of the building. Lights were turning on all over the city as the infrastructure gained power, glowing the familiar blue light he knew so well.
“Hal did it. He turned the Grid back on,” he said proudly.
The sun god cocked his head, confused. “Who?”
Noah raised his hands and typed into the air. He felt the familiar gush of air as the digital interface rushed to greet him, and he pulled up a small projection screen. He scrolled through the application, then looked back at the flickering god.
“This is why humans will always fight you,” he said, and pressed a button.
A huge digital interface wrapped over them, masking the sky and the floor and the crushed ceiling, and projected a visual summary of modern civilization. Noah had pulled up an archive of the Grid’s history. The sun god witnessed the first Grid satellite in space, the creation of the first Grid city and the first Grid-powered hospital. He watched babies being born and fields being harvested, people void of all illness and disease. The visuals flashed by faster and faster, morphing the top level of Elysian Field building into a different landscape as the story progressed. Finally it stopped, and the projection disappeared.
“Why would we ever go back to accepting the laws of nature, when we can design our own utopia?” Noah asked.
The sun god’s face twisted into a terrible scowl, and he reached to grab Noah around the throat. A shot rang out, high and shrill, and the sun god jerked back. Liam squeezed the trigger two more times, and white lasers burst from the muzzle. Blood soaked the tan suit. The sun god wavered on his feet. Liam squeezed five more times, and when the sun god smiled, red pooled between his teeth. Still, he did not fall.
“Noah, move,” Liam yelled.
But Noah was ready. He held up his hand and an object rapidly threaded itself together out of thin air, three-dimensionally printing itself with materials manifested straight from the Grid, until a replica of the sun god’s sword appeared in his hand. The blade was impossibly sharp, mathematically shaven down to 30 angstroms thick.
Without hesitation, Noah plunged the sword through the sun god’s chest.
The sun god let out a strangled cry, but he couldn’t fight back. The flickering intensified as the Grid coursed through his body. Up close, his face was frightening. His eyes were filled with yellow light, his mouth twisted in an awful scowl.
“You have done nothing,” he rasped, “except exterminate a race of gods to replace with your own. When will you realize you’ll never be free?”
Then he vanished, blinking out of existence and leaving Noah and Liam alone to stand beneath the shining sun.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Noah felt his weight go out from under him. He dropped the sword and Liam caught him just before he hit the ground
“Don’t touch the blade,” Noah warned him. “It will slice your finger off before you even feel it.”
“Noted.”
They sat in silence, taking in the city. The wind felt pleasant against their skin. Beneath them, the city seemed to buzz with energy again, a presence of the Grid they never realized was there until it was gone.
“We did it,” Noah said.
“You did it,” Liam corrected.
“If we’re being specific, Hal did it.”
“Yeah but you told him to. How did you make that sword?”
“It was the last update we had just before the Grid fell. Transportable three-dimensional printing. I only used a sword to be symbolic. He seems to like swords. Seemed a fitting way for him to go.”
“Yeah, about that. What actually happened to the Grid? All this time the cloud was sending a signal, but the satellites had been turned off?”
Noah tapped against the air again, pulling up his desktop projection. “Hal,” he said, “any messages?”
With the physical desk gone and no other accessories on-site, Hal couldn’t speak. But Noah watched the words appear across his desktop.
“Ten thousand and thirty-five new messages,” he read. “What the hell?”
He tapped the projection, and his inbox opened. They both scanned the subject lines.
“They are all copies of the same message,” Liam said.
Noah felt his stomach drop. “They all came from Elysian Field 1. San Nouveau.”
He opened the the most recent message. The text was short and formal, transmitted earlier that morning, but Noah felt his blood run cold. Then he backtracked and scrolled all the way down his inbox until he reached the time stamp on the first message.
Two years ago on June 18, 3:05 pm.
“They started transmitting right after the Grid fell,” Noah realized.
They had been the only ones offline the entire time.
* * *
Ellie didn’t dare stop, pushing her Charger to the limits in fear that it would run out of gas while she was still in the middle of the desert.
Her hands shook for the first hour, eyes watching the rearview mirror for signs of attack. The clouds had melted away, leaving behind a crystal clear stretch of sky, the rays warm but no longer singeing her skin.
She glanced over her shoulder at the empty backseat, the image of Talisa’s lifeless body burned in the back of her mind.
By the end of the second hour, Ellie felt numb. No longer flush with adrenaline, fatigue began to set in.
The landscape steadily changed. Towering saguaros faded away to dirt and brush as she left behind the sonoran climate and approached the barren stretch of dirt and rock that spread into Nevada and California.
She would come back with help for Noah and Liam. She just needed to cross the border and find the nearest California town.
But what if the Grid really is down everywhere?
She shook her head. She couldn’t afford to doubt herself. She had come too far. If she turned around now, she could be stuck forever.
She had to keep going.
It took Ellie four hours to reach the Arizona/California border. She saw it from a distance, and she was surprised by how pronounced it looked under the blazing sun. A thin white line spread across the landscape, marking the exact edge of demarcation.
She had never traveled to California before, so she didn’t know what to expect. Would there be patrolmen? Would she have to answer questions? She didn’t know how she’d explain everything.
As she approached, the white line became more detailed. It wasn’t perfectly smooth. She could see gaps and bumps in seemingly random places along the horizon. Was it a fence?
Then she got closer, and she recognized the shapes.
It wasn’t a fence. It wasn’t even a line.
Thousands of white GridCars stretched across the land, parked side-by-side exactly where Arizona met California. Tire tracks led away from the freeway, indicating where people had driven into the desert. Car doors hung open, exposing their interiors to the heat.
Ellie stopped the Charger in the middle of the freeway and climbed out onto the road. It was eerily quiet. Her shoes padded loudly on the asphalt as she walked up to the nearest car. She peered inside.
Empty.
She checked the next one. Also empty.
A thick layer of dirt and debris covered the tops of the cars, white paint peeling from the sun. She opened one of the cars to reveal bags of clothes and supplies shoved in the backseat. Medicine kits. Bottles. Another car was full of kitchen supplies. Blankets. Pillows.
These cars were the from the mass exodus two years ago.
>
Something had kept them from crossing the border. The drivers had even tried leaving the road to find an opening in the desert, to no success. They then had to leave their cars and continue on foot, taking only what they could carry with them.
But where to?
She dropped back into her car and turned on the ignition. She looked at the fuel indicator. One-eighth of a tank left. Her confidence was shaken. What had happened to everyone?
There was a small gap in the line of cars just off the freeway. She steered her car into the dirt, carefully avoiding boulders and bushes. The gap was just large enough to fit through.
But what if I don’t? What if my car stops too?
She held her breath-
-And the Charger rolled right through.
Ellie maneuvered onto the freeway and looked back. The GridCars now had the appearance of an artillery line, keeping whatever still lingered in Arizona firmly inside the state.
The sight unnerved her.
I-10 stretched ahead until it faded in the distance. She sat for a long time, staring at the rolling hills in the distance that marked the California landscape. The air shimmered from the heat.
She had come this far.
She shifted the car into drive and pressed on the gas.