Excelsior

by Jasper T. Scott

  As an afterthought, Alexander read the time and date on the watch—just in case something went wrong and he ended up waking up after years rather than months. The hands of the watch pointed to 1:10 and the date read Mar|9|90. Alexander marked the date and time on the calendar in his comm band, then he counted 70 days ahead. If everything went according to plan he’d be waking up in the Wonderland System on May 18th, 2790, although from Earth’s perspective more than a year would have passed.

  Alexander shut the watch and finished undressing. He wrapped his comm band and pocket watch inside his uniform and pressure suit for padding and then stuffed the bulky bundle into the middle compartment of his locker. He clipped his helmet to the rack above that, and then stowed his gloves and boots at the bottom. Now completely naked, Alexander stood hugging his shoulders and shivering as he waited for Doctor Crespin to assist him. Peripherally, Alexander noted that Seth Ryder was standing to one side of him, and McAdams to the other. Alexander deliberately kept his eyes glued to the hatch in front of him, but he noticed that Seth was taking full advantage of the situation to ogle the female members of the crew.

  Alexander frowned and called out, “Eyes to the fore, people.”

  Seth turned to him with a grin. “We’re all adults here, Captain.”

  “Most of us, anyway,” Alexander muttered, sending Seth a narrow-eyed look.

  “What if we don’t wake up? You want the last thing you see to be my junk?”

  That brief mention caused Alexander to notice said junk. He grimaced and looked away.

  Seth chuckled. “Didn’t think so.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, the view’s not so bad from where I’m standing…”

  Alexander’s eyes darted left to see who was talking, but his ears had already identified her as McAdams. She was facing him, likewise naked, but unashamed of that fact. Of course, as a gener, it wasn’t as though she had anything to be ashamed about. She was perfect. Her eyes met his and she smiled at his involuntary scrutiny, as if admonishing him for rejecting her last night. You should see my wife, he thought, and looked away.

  At least he no longer ran the risk that Seth Ryder’s junk would be the last thing he’d ever see.

  “Ready, Captain?” Doctor Crespin asked, walking up beside him.

  Alexander nodded and gave an involuntary shiver while he waited for the doctor to configure his G-tank. A moment later the hatch slid open and bright lights snapped on inside the tank.

  “Would you like any help, sir?”

  Alexander shook his head. He’d had plenty of practice with the tanks while training for Operation Alice. “I’ll be fine, thank you, doctor.” He walked inside and turned to see Doctor Crespin salute him.

  “See you on the other side,” the doctor said, and then he triggered the hatch shut. The door slid back into its frame with a boom that echoed loudly in the confined space.

  Alexander turned and walked toward the harness in the middle of the tank where he quickly strapped himself in and began attaching umbilicals. He gagged on the tracheal tube, but didn’t throw up thanks to his training. That done, he attached the nutrient line and the relief tubes. He winced as he inserted the rear one, but the tracheal tube was the least comfortable. He couldn’t even swallow properly anymore.

  The tank detected he was ready, and warm water began streaming in around his feet. Technically it wasn’t pure H2O, but a balanced solution that had been carefully adjusted to match his body’s density. The lights inside the tank dimmed, and Alexander felt himself growing drowsy. His nutrient line must already be delivering the coma-inducing drugs.

  The tank filled up quickly, and soon Alexander began to float. Then a tone sounded, and a green light went on beside the valve in his tracheal tube. It opened up and the ventilator began pumping an oxygen-rich perfluorocarbon into his lungs, replacing all of the air. His body’s density quickly became equivalent to that of the liquid in the tank, and he stopped floating. The ventilator made whooshing and swishing sounds as it pumped the perfluorocarbon in and out of his lungs.

  Going from active air breathing to assisted liquid breathing was disconcerting, but drugged as he was, Alexander took it all in his stride. The lights inside the tank grew gradually dimmer, and Alexander’s head lolled. His eyes began closing of their own accord as the water rose over his nose and then slipped over his retinae, blurring his view of the inside of the tank.

  Alexander shut his eyes and pictured Catalina’s smiling face. He smiled back, and his mind drifted away on a sea of drugs and warm, enveloping water.

  Crespin was right with his analogy. This must be exactly what it felt like to be a baby in its mother’s womb. No worries, no nagging physical needs, nothing to do but sleep and dream… Sleep and dream…

  *

  Maximilian Carter awoke to find himself hanging from his harness. All the liquid had already drained from his tank, and his skin was dry. He suffered a momentary panic attack when he saw the tubes trailing from his body.

  Then he remembered where he was and why.

  Reaching up carefully, Max withdrew his tracheal tube. Then he removed his nutrient line and relief tubes. Finally, he unstrapped from his harness. Free once more, he walked up to the hatch inside the tank and waved the door open. Cold air rushed into the tank and he shivered, cursing under his breath. He hurried out and opened the locker beside his tank to remove his clothes and his pressure suit.

  Once dressed, Max began walking in a circle around the room, checking the other G-tanks to make sure that everyone else was still locked inside their tanks and sleeping.

  They were all perfectly oblivious. Max smiled.

  Chapter 12

  One Month Later, April 6th, 2790

  (Earth’s Frame of Reference)

  Catalina’s eyes sprang open. It was dark. Morning? Night? She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t sleepy anymore. She checked her comm band. The holo display above the device bathed the room in a cold blue light. It was 11:00 AM.

  Skitter skitter skitter.

  She sat up, and the lights came on overhead. They’d sensed she was awake. Looking for the source of sound, Caty’s eyes fell on a pile of discarded cans of food in the far corner of the room. A pair of cockroaches were busy crawling over them. Caty shivered.

  Mystery solved. The cockroaches must have already been inside when she locked the door. Now they were all stuck with each other. Just me and my pets. Here roachy roachy…

  Caty smiled wryly. Of all the things she and Alexander had thought to stock the basement with, somehow a garbage can and garbage bags had escaped their list of important survival items. There was plenty of bug spray to make up for it, but unfortunately, nothing kills a cockroach.

  Skitter skitter skitter.

  A cockroach the size of a mouse went racing toward the pile of cans and the other two fled for their lives. Caty had a brief vision of cockroaches crawling through the ruins of LA, their antennae dancing over the rubble, whole clouds of them flying across the Earth like a plague of locusts…

  She shivered again.

  Caty swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat blinking the sleep from her eyes. Her basement bunker was a mess. Dirty clothes lay on the floor in heaps, and the air was filled with the fragrant aroma of rotting garbage. No wonder the roaches were flourishing. They thought she was one of them.

  First order of business—go check the generator and the Geiger counter. She’d been checking the radiation levels on the surface religiously every morning. Technically, it had been safe to leave for weeks already, but safe and healthy were two different things. Caty stumbled through the cluttered shelter, kicking empty cans of food and dirty laundry aside along the way.

  The digital display of her Geiger counter read 110 CPM and 0.066 mSv/hr. Somewhere Caty remembered reading that anything over 100 counts per minute (CPM) was considered bad and that average annual exposure for an adult (before the nukes had started flying) was around six milliSieverts (mSv).

  Caty consulted the calc
ulator on her comm band and found that it would take her a hundred hours, or about four days, at 0.066 milliSieverts per hour to be exposed to the annual average.

  A whole year’s worth of radiation in less than a week. It sounded worse than it was. Radiation sickness would only take hold at over seven or eight hundred mSv, which according to her calculations would require more than 10,000 hours of exposure at current levels. Due to the rate of decay it would be impossible for her to get radiation sickness at this point.

  All of which meant one thing: it was time to go. She had already spent a month in her basement, and she had one more month of food and drinking water. The generator was running low on fuel, and pretty soon she would run out of air if she didn’t at least open the door.

  Besides, she had to be realistic.

  With an unknown number of cities lying in ruins and potentially tens or hundreds of millions missing and presumed dead, she couldn’t wait for a rescue to come to her. Even if rescue workers were searching LA for survivors, it was doubtful that they’d find her. She was just one of millions of other missing faces.

  Catalina turned from the Geiger counter and got dressed. That done, she fetched one of Alexander’s old navy rucksacks and began stuffing it full of critical supplies. Knife, flashlight, sleeping bag, first aid kit, compass, portable Geiger counter, matches, cans of food, water…

  Water was heavy.

  She needed two liters per day. With activity maybe more. Water on the surface would probably be contaminated, and LA was surrounded by desert. She could carry around eight liters along with everything else, but even that would be a struggle. That meant she could survive for four days. Hopefully she’d find help or a source of clean drinking water before she turned to radioactive dust.

  Grimacing, Caty finished packing. She added two extra pairs of clothes from the rumpled mess inside the basement wardrobe. Her eyes fell on the Beretta sitting on the nightstand beside her bed. She reached with a trembling hand for the pistol. Her hand closed around cold steel. The weapon had a comforting but alien weight. She saw a holoframe with pictures of her and Alexander on the nightstand and she grabbed that, too. She checked the safety on her Beretta and then zipped it in one of the outer pockets of her rucksack.

  All packed. Caty slung the pack over her shoulders and stumbled under the weight. She managed to steady herself by leaning forward, but she was beginning to fear she’d make slow progress with such a heavy burden on her back. Not to mention the straps were going to chafe her shoulders raw.

  Catalina turned in a slow circle, taking in the state of her shelter. She went to the generator and set the auto-off to 10 minutes. That was it. She was ready.

  When Catalina arrived at the door. Her hand paused on the handle, her palm slick with sweat, her entire body trembling with fear. What if she was the only one left?

  She turned the handle. The door groaned, and the hinges squealed. A crack of sunlight appeared, blinding in its intensity. She opened the door further and squinted against the glare, her eyes watering from a month of living in a windowless basement. The air was cool, but reeking with smoke. Caty coughed and sneezed at the same time. She blinked her eyes wide and forced herself to look into the light. She saw a nest of wooden beams and other debris lying at the top of the stairs, but she spied a hole big enough to crawl out.

  “Hello!” she tried, coughing again.

  No answer. Wind whistled down the stairs. Caty started climbing. Soon she was forced to crawl on her hands and knees because of all the debris. Her pack caught on something and she removed it, dragging it behind her instead. Caty reached the hole in the debris and struggled through. Her back brushed an exposed nail and a stinging pain erupted where it had scratched her. She winced and bit her lip, tears coming to her eyes.

  That’s what the first aid kit is for.

  Caty crawled out into daylight, dragging her pack after her. She found herself at the top of the stairs, her head poking out just above a big pile of debris that used to be her house. The sky was clogged with smoke, turning the sun into a hazy red-orange ball. Everything as far as she could see was a crazy rat’s nest of ruins. Fat black ashes fell like snowflakes. The silence was desolate and terrifying. A wind thundered by. Charred debris and ashes rolled like tumbleweed in the street. She couldn’t see anyone walking through the ruins. Catalina felt a sharp stab of panic, and she swayed dizzily on her feet. She was the only survivor. This was it. The end of the world.

  Then a bird chirped and flitted by overhead. Catalina watched it, her eyes wide and mouth agape, as if she’d never seen a bird before in her life.

  If birds could still survive out here then so could she.

  It took a lot of effort to climb out above the debris, but eventually Caty found herself standing on the street in front of her home. The streets were strewn with debris, too, but they were easier to negotiate and still mostly intact under all the rubble.

  Another bird flew by, chirping out a cheerful song. Catalina turned to follow it and withdrew the compass from her bag, trying to track its course. No doubt it was looking for the same things she was—water, food, shelter.

  The bird was headed northeast.

  Caty nodded to herself. Northeast it was.

  Chapter 13

  Four Days Later - April 10th, 2790

  (Earth’s Frame of Reference)

  Catalina tapped the bottom of her water bottle, trying to knock out the last stubborn drops, but nothing came out. She lowered the bottle from her lips, frowned, and scanned the landscape. She was far enough from the ruins of LA that she’d begun to encounter skeletal forests of burned and blackened trees rather than mountains of rubble, but she had yet to find a river or lake. At this point she’d settle for a dirty puddle. She’d run out of water more than six hours ago, and she’d been rationing herself for the past two days, so she was already dehydrated.

  Her thoughts did a lazy dance in her head, going in nonsensical circles.

  Caty stumbled out of the trees onto something firm and hard. She blinked bleary sleep-deprived eyes and stared at the ground under her feet for a long moment, wondering what it was. Then she recognized it.

  A road. Roads lead to civilization.

  This was exactly what she needed. Maybe she’d wind up at a fueling station. Or a town sitting outside LA’s blast radius.

  They had to have water there, right?

  Caty stumbled along, forcing one foot in front of the other. A long time passed. She began to see the blacktop as a giant slithering snake. It went on and on without end, and soon she could almost see it slither. A snake. A woman. Cast out of paradise, waiting for Death to find her. The garden of Eden came to mind.

  Was this the road to hell? Caty looked at the flanking rows of blackened trees and she recalled all the rubble and ruins where she’d come from—everything dead and gone. The road wasn’t leading her to hell. She was already there.

  Her eyes began to itch, and Caty coughed weakly. She wondered if it was the smoke that made her eyes itch, or if it was the persistent lump in her throat. Lately, whenever she felt like crying, the tears refused to come; instead her eyes would itch like they were two giant mosquito bites. It was all she could do not to scratch them out of her head.

  Alexander had left her. He’d promised to stay with her forever, to save her! Where was he now when she needed him the most? Her thoughts took a dark turn, whispering to her about where he must be, but she refused to accept it. No, she shook her head. He’s on his way to some far off world, and it’ll be ten years before he comes back!

  He knew. He ran away on purpose.

  Maybe he hadn’t been assigned to Operation Alice. Maybe he’d volunteered. He ran with his tail between his legs and left me here to die! Coward!

  Catalina’s knees buckled and she hit the asphalt with a numb jolt. Her mouth was so dry… her head so thick. How much longer till she died of thirst? Caty turned her head back and forth, scanning the trees for some shimmer of water, but all was ash and dust.


  Then she saw something. Green, white, red—a sign. A big fat seven in a clearing on the side of the road, not far from where she sat.

  It was a mirage. It had to be.

  Catalina sat for long seconds, waiting for the mirage to disappear, but it didn’t even shimmer. She blinked. It was real. A Seven Eleven. Not the ruins of one, but a real, in-tact store, and what looked like a fueling station, too.