by C. Martens
No one recognized the man lying on the floor with his face down. He was a stranger. That explained the bike outside. The people inside would not have ridden one.
Everyone grouped around in the room’s deepest recesses, away from the bodies, and discussed what happened. There were many versions, but they all agreed on one thing. The men had come looking for a fight.
§
Licking their wounds, Cord and his men had been surprised by the short-haired woman with the pistol. She knew immediately that they were trouble. Now they had lost one of their number, and both he and the local guy were wounded. Back at the house they were stunned by the outcome.
A bad deal, being surprised, and with the surprise supposed to be on their side, Cord worried that the turn of events made him look incompetent. He understood that any hold on these cretins was based on them having faith in his leadership. Faith…or fear. So now it was time to reinforce his hold on them, and he had no leadership to offer.
His own wound minor, just a crease, Cord looked to the local. The man had done his job and perhaps saved some lives, but the wound in his chest was bubbling, and he spat blood as he clutched it.
The guy would not last the night, and he would make an example.
Reacting too slowly as he realized what Cord intended, he slumped to the floor with a small puncture in his forehead and very little left of the back of his head.
Cord had their attention.
“Saddle up boys, it’s time to quit this town. Canada’s looking better and better.” He challenged them with his eyes. Better to know now than later if they would follow.
Expecting nothing less, the two remaining henchmen practically bowed and scraped in their efforts to comply.
“What about her?” One asked, indicating the woman who was staring at the freshly dead man.
Cord considered. He realized that the man asking the question might have unsatisfied desires of his own. That might cause trouble, and the woman was not worth it.
“Leave her. She’s just dead weight.” He raised his gun.
Perhaps anticipating that she might be expendable, the girl lunged for the door as the bullet split the frame behind her. She kept running, using every piece of available cover until she ran out of breath. When she finally turned to look, they were not in pursuit.
The three lectrocycles went the other direction, north.
§
No one knew anything about burial or preparing the dead. Those that had died by their own hand or from accidents had been relegated to what had become common. They were carried somewhere appropriate and left to rot. Those they joined did not mind as what little remained of them had largely petrified already. But these new dead were different. At least two of them were, and because of the reawakening of empathy, the third was accorded burial by default. He was not washed and wrapped like the others, finding a hole in the ground in his unaltered state, but at least he was covered in dirt.
The two friends were given the respect that the small community could manage. They were stripped and bathed and sealed in simple coffins found at a funeral home.
Shopping for the boxes was strange. There were a couple of corpses decomposing in the basement on tables and one that was intact with a light cover of mold. The embalming process on the third had been completed. The bodies were left where they were found.
At the funeral people said what they felt necessary, and every one of them cried. The event was a cathartic and brought the several people closer to each other. They had lost something and regained it. A sense of community and common purpose infused them.
The wake was intended to be cheerful. A time to toast the memories of the two departed. But the living felt, to a person, that it might be more grim than hoped. Each made promises to themselves that they would try to overcome their grief for the sake of the others.
When they got to the bar, there was a young woman sitting inside waiting for them, the girl that had been living outside the group with the two men now dead. She was frightened, but in her fear of being alone, she had made a decision and had found enough courage to approach.
The women of the group surrounded and embraced her. She was surprised and fearful, threatened at first. The expression of acceptance was unexpected. As they crowded forward to physically greet her and she realized they meant no harm, her face changed, and she relaxed. After a short hesitation, the men joined in.
Since the girl had been left behind during the attack, she had no idea of the circumstances. She had only seen the aftermath.
The wake turned into a welcome as well as a goodbye.
Chapter 26
Coming home was difficult. Emmett and Keylee decided to drive together and chose the truck. It was more for the practicality of the vehicle than anything else, but once inside and on the road they both felt Randy’s presence. This was where the last part of her spirit dwelled.
Even though they offered the pick-up bed to Chance, he declined and positioned himself at the door of the cab. His action was unusual, foregoing the fresh air of the back, and he rode lying down with his head resting on his paws instead of nose pressed against the glass.
Keylee intended to wait, at first thinking it would be weeks and then changing her mind, days. But she caved the first night. She led Emmett by the hand into her bedroom. The bonding that had been put off was completed, and Emmett and Keylee never slept separately again.
The routine of what had become normal helped. The garden required weeding, the demolition progressed, and they spent time in town when invited.
Soon after the incident in the bar, the comlink went out. The house still had electric power, so it was not that, but they could no longer contact their SeaTac friends. A critical satellite had been repositioned by a small impact, and the automatic repositioning system had failed. The GPS still worked, as it came from another satellite, but it would fail just as all present technology would eventually.
The group gatherings were stepped up and scheduled every two weeks. The topic of discussion in the bar was often about the future. Where the past had dominated their conversation before the fatal incident, the event seemed to lance an infection in the minds of the survivors, and they focused on what was to come.
A priority became to save information. The local libraries were scavenged for print books related to tech fields. They found little that was current, but they saved what they deemed worthy. The most recent texts were available for download into the loaner tabs, and they were filled to capacity and stored in what was considered to be the most appropriate way to preserve them for future use.
None of the group had any kind of technical experience that would allow for maintaining systems on a large scale. They did what they could to ensure that they could be self-sufficient when the grids went down. The kid with all the cars would become an expert in setting up solar generators with Emmett leading the way. The woman that hosted the events at the bar cataloged the information contained in library pads and set up a system for finding what anyone needed. The man who had handled the rifle in the bar so well became the security expert. Everyone picked something useful and contributed.
A couple more people wandered in and were absorbed into the community.
One evening Emmett told them all what he knew of the beginning of the plagues. He had unloaded the information on Keylee, and she encouraged him to inform the rest. He spoke of Andy and his position in the security force protecting a royal prince and of the information gleaned, as well as the means that revealed the story. One of the few times there was a long silence in the saloon, it was broken by the older male host standing behind the bar.
“Drinks are on me. My turn to buy.”
Everyone laughed and moved to the rail.
Emmett and Keylee discussed moving into town, but they enjoyed the isolation of the country and the fewer reminders they had of the past. The walks they took on the shoreline of the Sound gave them enough memories as they looked across at the tall buildings. The one thing th
at pushed them toward moving was the presence of Randy in the house. The feeling was not unpleasant, but it was a reminder.
Emmett decided to set up a generator, just in case. It was nice to have the company of the kid who helped him. They invited others and especially enjoyed the older couple visiting. The rest enjoyed the city and its conveniences. Besides, there were no more houses close to them anymore, so it was build or share, and that made people uncomfortable.
Life went on.
§
There was a wedding to be performed, and no one was comfortable in officiating because they had never done anything like it before.
One of the children was a girl Emmett had first met as a fourteen year old. She had matured and become engaged to the motorhead. She was sixteen now, and everyone agreed that it was the age of consent in this new society. Spring had arrived, she was ripe, and if they did not do something soon they worried that the boy would lose interest after impregnating the girl. Not that he had a lot of options. Besides, they made a nice couple.
A June wedding was performed in one of the city parks. Two of the men from the commune even mowed the grass in a big circle. When the automatic sprinklers kicked on just after the ceremony, instead of being upset the bride kicked off her shoes and ran through them. She invited her new husband, and he joined her, laughing. Good days made great healings on still open wounds.
Speaking about the wedding late one evening in the hot tub, Emmett and Keylee got romantic. They ran for the house and the comfortable bed but never made it. A baby was conceived in the forest duff between the hot tub and the house.
Keylee was sure she was pregnant within days. She knew something was different, and she embraced it passionately. She discreetly began to discuss names with Emmett. One of the early agreements they had reached was that if they had children, Keylee would name the girls and Emmett the boys. Still, she agonized over the name, even before telling Emmett of the impending birth.
One day Emmett told her she looked beautiful and was getting more so each day. He said she seemed to glow.
“There’s a reason, Em.” She looked into his eyes. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
The tumblers clicked into place, and Emmett knew.
“Oh, maaaan! I knew there was something going on! When? How soon can I hold our baby?”
He was ecstatic. He danced around the room without even realizing it.
The focus became the new life, judged to be arriving in late spring, probably the middle of May. A good time to have a child as there would be no carrying it in the heat of summer, and the baby would have several warm months before winter to grow strong.
Lecti was born three years and a month after the plagues were released.
Emmett was a different man than the boy that had left his gaming and his girlfriend behind in Los Angeles such a little time ago, yet so far away in experience. His beard and his muscles were heavier, but it was the look in his eyes that spoke to his maturity. He had learned to put aside his childish thoughts and wishful thinking and now harbored a deep and intense wisdom of the world and what reality meant. This new life would grow under his care, and he would be a better father, now, for his lessons learned. His priorities were in order.
Emmett fell in love on sight. His only regret was that the name he had picked to honor Andy and Chloe would have to wait.
§
The second large release of white rhino was scheduled. There was now a genetically diversified population. Both the black and the white shared territory, and the mothers carrying the opposite species would live to carry their own.
Carrier pigeons were well established and thriving.
The bots had adapted the technology used in exterminating the starlings and set up other areas with similar criteria. Komodo Dragons would soon have no rats or dogs to threaten their eggs. The Island of Mauritius, off the east coast of Africa and beyond Madagascar, was enjoying the return of the dodo bird as the predators declined. The Galapagos were freed of invasive species, and a turtle easily identified by a distinctive shell had been hatched from combining long dead tissue with fresh eggs from close relatives. Tigers, orangutans, spotted owls, the list went on.
There were signs that the human population had stabilized to some extent. The bots had concerns over the genetic weaknesses that had been allowed to reproduce, but those were being weeded from the population by natural circumstances as technology declined. Soon the race of man would be stronger. Still, they were monitored because of their proclivity for violence amongst themselves.
The artificial beings swapped information, performed their duties, and designed a future. Abdiel was integral to the process.
Surprisingly, the robot seemed to have aged. Others had been asked in to service it and make repairs, but there was something else going on, and none of the others understood what it was.
When the effects were first noticed, by Abdiel itself, the bot threw it out to the hive mind. There were several suggestions considered, something just shy of twenty-eight million, but the one passed over most easily was the one promoting that Abdiel be recycled. That idea was a blip on the thought process hardly worthy of being noticed. Abdiel remembered, though, and as its decline continued it often considered just how worthy the idea was. The bot worried that the affliction might infect the rest.
After traveling the world and investigating the major issues of concern, Abdiel had made a home of sorts in Paris. The Louvre drew it as a flame draws a moth. The extent of human ingenuity was amazing. The bot knew that its brain was fantastic and excelled in many things that a human mind could not, but it envied the human imagination. Bots could recall cataloged events, make multiple calculations at great speed, and even extrapolate from similar information to build new designs, but they could not paint a picture unless they copied something. The Louvre was the best example of what the mechanical creatures lacked.
Ramadan was approaching. The information was prioritized by the Sheik Akil from beyond his grave in the desert. This would be the third Holy Month since the Sheik had died, and Abdiel got a curious itch that grew as the event approached. It realized on the first day of Ramadan what the itch was all about.
The Sheik had left one last machination to his great plan, and Abdiel was the key. Paranoid and careful to the end, Akil had left a failsafe in Abdiel. That was why the robot aged.
The robot connected to the hive and transmitted the instructions of the Sheik.
During the third Ramadan, providing the Sheik himself did not reset the criteria, the entire workforce of mechanicals was to increase their efforts to finish any tasks. They were to leave nothing undone that was started if possible, but they were to start nothing new. Then, on the last day of the Holy Month they were to gather and march, en masse, into the nearest deep salt water that was available.
The great Sheik Akil was a man of many facets, and one of them was a distrust of all plans. In the early years of his association within the plan to eliminate most human beings from the earth, he realized that his associates were expendable. In doing so, the Sheik assumed that those he worked with would have similar ideas. If they did, Akil would make sure that the world they inherited would be more difficult for them than they expected. The wonderful replacements to human labor would disappear out from under them without warning, and the world would become something less than the intended Paradise.
One of the final commands was that they should not communicate this priority to anyone, as though there might be humans that would have some concern and try to inhibit the final instructions being carried out.
There were no humans currently in communication with the bots, so that instruction was easily carried out. The rest was done as priority demanded. Work progressed, and many things were left to unfinished conclusions but in ways that they had the most likelihood of success. The strategy to rid the Great Lakes of Asian carp was scrapped. There was no time.
On the last day of Ramadan, there were heavy transports from the interi
ors of every continent that arrived at strategic beaches. Three million eight hundred forty-six thousand twenty one robots gathered in formations on the beaches of the world. Many more than the Sheik would have believed.
The high bluffs behind the Cote de Nacre were crowded with screaming sea birds, and they wheeled and dove among the bots as they clambered down to the beach. They were careful to disturb no nests.
In the middle of the formation on the Normandy sand, Abdiel waited patiently. The bot had plenty of things to keep its brain occupied as it waited. It was trying to pick its favorite painting in the entire world, and there were many to choose from. The artificial intellect found no irony in how it was concerned with such a human type of priority. No irony that it was involved in selecting and making a decision which would relegate all other selections to a less valued status instead of valuing all equally.
The great masters crowded the top tier, but there were many from contemporary artists that had never gained acclaim. One especially came to mind. An unknown artist had painted a young girl, sitting in an easy chair and reading a book. She held a brightly colored doll in the crook of one arm, and the sun was streaming in on her as she sat in her stockings. The painting portrayed many things to the mind of the synthetic being. Innocence, the desire to know, kindness, and a being at the beginning of her potential.
The gathering was complete, and the front rank began to move.
As each row broke from the front and marched into the small waves, Abdiel felt something akin to regret. Not for the beings that would soon be submerged, but for the loss of its own opportunity to continue learning. There was so much it wanted to know.
The waters closed over Abdiel’s head, and the decision of which painting was its favorite was not made. But it had time. Corrosion would progress slowly. In the meantime the images played through the artificial brain endlessly. Abdiel had plenty of opportunity to envy man’s imagination.