by H C Edwards
Did Shai tell Hannah everything would be all right? Did she tell her Daddy would be there soon?
My god…Hannah…
Trey looked down at his hands, not knowing how he was suddenly standing on solid ground.
He could picture his wife holding their daughter tightly against her chest. It was so real in his mind, because he knew it for what happened. He knew Shai like he knew himself…and at the end she wouldn’t have fallen apart.
She would have held their daughter close. She would have sang to Hannah-
Little Bear Little Bear snuggle deep
She would have kissed her between verses as they did when they were at home in bed-
Kisses and sweets all through your dreams
She would have stroked her hair-
Little Bear Little Bear go to sleep
“Oh god…”
Tickles and giggles and silly feet
An orange-yellowish light began to glow around Trey, reflecting off the surfaces of the half demolished buildings and the clouds of dust that billowed here and there. Steam rose from his hands, his arms, all around. There was the sound of something impossibly large breathing directly behind him. He could feel it licking his back, tongue dripping acid across his shoulder blades.
At that moment he heard that deep resonating tone go off inside his skull, the familiar baritone pitchfork sound that was more felt than heard. It snapped him back to his senses.
The Cloud…
Trey felt a faint glimmer of hope right before the full heat of the fire slammed into him and knocked him off his feet, before his skin blistered and peeled from his back and the fluids inside of his organs boiled and exploded.
Hannah-
When he woke it was still with that faint glimmer of hope. He’d had this dream before. It was always different, sometimes in little ways and sometimes in big ways. Every once in a while he arrived at the bunker in time but that tended to leave him with a feeling of bitterness upon waking, and he didn’t much care for that version of the dream.
He lost track how many years it had been since that night. The world had changed drastically since then. It was not the same place it used to be. There was no more war, no sides or factions looking for power or control over the masses. It wasn’t a utopia but it was a shit ton better than mankind has ever been, and improving with each day. Maybe a lot of that had to do with the fact that ninety-nine percent of the human population was gone and the rest struggling just to procreate. Maybe a lot more had to do with the Cloud, and the promise of everlasting life.
Either way, Trey was certain that Shai and Hannah would have been happy here. Or most importantly, they would have been safe.
“You have a message,” a voice said from his wrist.
“Always,” Trey responded and tapped the face of his watch.
A four inch squared projection of Councilman Talbot’s face appeared in all its stern gruffness. The man was ancient, with wrinkles like spider webs adorning his long sallow face, white hair on his near pointed dome cropped close like Trey’s.
At one time in his life Councilman Talbot had been a marine and certain habits die hard, even at the age of a hundred and forty-three years. But despite the fact that he was the oldest living human in Akropolis, he carried himself with the stalwart air of a man half a century younger.
When he spoke, his voice was steel and his eyes were alight with the fire of fervent belief in all that he did. It was this sort of obsession mixed with discipline that had inspired countless others in the corps.
But those days were long gone now. The Corps had been phased out just over a hundred years ago and what had replaced them was the Akropolis Security Force. Marines were no longer needed, as war had become obsolete.
General Talbot had been given the title of Councilmen after the Corp was disbanded and was the only, and obviously, last of the old regime appointed to help govern their sanctuary.
He had a knack for it and while he always put the citizens of Akropolis first, he still thought and acted like a soldier. It was probably why Trey and he got along so well. Both were remnants of a past that the world was attempting to forget. It made them outsiders in their own way but forged a bond between the two that was like the days of old.
“Major, I’d like a word with you in the council chambers,” the recorded message from his watch projected.
Curt and without frills. Every action or word spoken was the same.
Trey swung his feet off the cot and stood. Though he was accorded certain luxuries per his standing he preferred the aesthetics. His quarters were a perfect ten by ten with an extended shower and toilet. His iron grey walls were adorned with nothing but a single physical photo, a snapshot of Shai and Hannah smiling at the camera.
He kissed the tips of his first two fingers and planted them on the photo.
“See you soon,” he said then stood in front of the wall that faced the head of his bunk.
A single light touch from his forefinger on the penny sized circular indentation in the wall slid open the panels that revealed his closet. He was about to grab his suit but opted for his security uniform instead.
It was a dark blue hue, patterned after the marine dress blues, except it was constructed of a synthetic titanium polymer thread that spread the shock of impact throughout all fourteen million fibers weaved into its pattern.
A single yellow and red arrowhead patch on his sleeve with a single star in the middle was the only remnant of his days as a soldier. When the Corps was disbanded he was promoted to Major as a commissioned officer by the council, an honorary title, but he always thought of himself as Sergeant Major, and he would wear the pin until the day he was gone from this earth permanently…if that ever happened.
Trey did a quick inspection in the mirror and then faced the door, waving a hand in front of the sensor to open it.
He stepped across the threshold and did a cursory glance to his left and right down the curved corridors. The ASF’s quarters housed all the single security guards in Akropolis, which were quite a few since marriage required a lengthy application and testing process. Men would be born and live and die without the chance to father a single child; the same for the women.
As it were there were but a handful of ASF guards that were considered ‘young’ or below the age of forty. About a third was courting sixty and above (though anti-aging drugs kept youth intact or at least slowed it considerably) and the rest had been revived long ago and were ageless as the majority of the human population.
QUBITS, as Trey was, as they would eventually all be one day despite the best efforts of the council to court new breeders from other sanctuaries.
And what then?
Trey wondered what it would be like when the last human died and was revived by the Quantum Cloud, when the entire human race was composed of biomechanical androids and no new consciousness would ever be born on the earth again.
Would that be the day that the heavens opened up and the ascent would begin? Would God finally have pity on them all and end it?
Trey hoped so, though such thinking was considered pointless. Religion was not a mass practice anymore, and while there was a decent population that still adhered to certain beliefs, it was not a commonality in Akropolis. Why consider an afterlife when death was no longer an absolute?
“Sir,” a guard nodded as he passed by.
Trey had to think hard but believed his name was Perkins, one of the newly revived. He died from an accident about twenty years ago when a transport he was in malfunctioned as it pulled into a charging port and blew him to pieces.
He’d had years to learn almost all of the guards’ names and would have many more to learn the rest.
“Perkins,” he said.
The guard stopped and turned around. His skin glistened and was wrinkle free except for a few purposefully included slight lines around the mouth.
“Sir?”
For the life of him, Trey didn’t know why he had stopped the agent. Perhap
s it was to test his knowledge of the man’s name or maybe because for some reason he was feeling lonely.
There was an uncomfortable silence in which Trey realized that it was stretching out too long.
“Are you coming off shift?”
“Yes, Sir,” Perkins replied, his eyebrows coming together to produce a single line across his forehead.
“Submit your report yet?”
“Of course,” he replied again, this time dropping the obligatory ‘Sir’.
“Thank you,” Trey said, then turned and started to walk down the curved corridor before he could see the man’s quizzical expression deepen into something else.
Trey continued along the near deserted corridor. Every once in a while someone would pass by and give him a nod. They all acknowledged him, even if they didn’t each other. After all, he was the first of them, and while awe had passed them by a long time ago they still saw him as the original QUBIT, with rumors that he was the oldest consciousness in Akropolis.
He knew it wasn’t the exact truth but neither did he care. There were days where he felt ancient and tired and there were days where he was able to face a full day of duty without thinking about it at all.
God willing, someday it will all come crashing down around us and I’ll be with them again.
This singular thought kept him going all these years.
Trey came to the elevator and took it to the lobby.
A few seconds later the door opened and here the aesthetics of the building briefly relented. Whereas the upper floors were barren grey shiny corridors with intermittent doors and barely a window to spare, the lobby floors were a marble the color of the Wall that encircled their sanctuary, and windows everywhere from floor to ceiling so that the outside world could look in and they could look out.
The windows, of course, were palladium enriched glass. A bomb could go off right by one of them and might only vibrate the material, not that anyone had even seen a bomb in over a century.
In the lobby was a single circular front desk manned by two people who monitored the doors. Every building and piece of furniture was modeled after the original design of Akropolis, meaning most buildings in the inner circle were all spherical or half spheres. From above, the entire sanctuary looked like concentric circles with interconnecting straight lines like the spokes of an old wagon wheel. These were the byways to get to the wall or other parts of the city. And at the center of it was the Administration Building, also known as The Pantheon, though administration was only one of the things that went on in that building.
Even from the lobby, Trey could see the giant turquoise domed structure rising up into the sky, twinkling in the light of day, the tallest structure in all of Akropolis. All roads led to the The Pantheon, the hub of their settlement, the heart of their city.
“Stevens, Raleigh,” Trey acknowledged the two female guards manning the desk as he walked towards the giant glass doors.
“Sir,” they both simultaneously replied, stoic as always.
One of them signaled the door and the glass slid open long enough for him to walk through before closing behind him.
He took a moment once outside and breathed the air. There was always a faint breeze, sometimes turning into a gust. It was all artificial, as the Wall prevented any true breeze, but the generators were programmed with random algorithms to synthesize what it would truly be like had they resided in the Old World. The weather was something else. Trey was no scientist but he knew that the electromagnetic field that encased Akropolis also allowed the manipulation of weather patterns. It had something to do with the giant antenna extending from the oculus of The Pantheon and the earthbound satellites situated at intervals at the top of the Wall that surrounded the sanctuary. Somehow they created the invisible dome that made life in Akropolis possible and protected them from the irradiated world around them.
The Pantheon loomed over him as he headed down the wide steps of the ASF building. Security transports were situated all along the curved street, ported in their recharging hubs.
Guards were coming and going. It was always hustle and bustle for them, though the actual security they provided was more rescue and problem solving than anything else.
Crime, any crime, was nearly a thing of the past. QUBITS had no need of it. Once they shook off their earthly bonds and the Quantum Cloud transferred their updated consciousness, they seemed to lose the part of them that leaned towards violence. There was still happiness and joy, kindness and gentleness, frustration and anger, passion and humor, but there just didn’t seem to be a need for violence when their greatest enemy, time, had been subdued. Rather, what replaced it was a stronger sense of curiosity, a drive to do better or to create more. In ways, the QUBITS had achieved what humankind had strived for all these millennia.
But then there were the breeders, the minority population of humans, and here the ASF spent the most of their efforts in policing, though even with this group actual physical violence to the point of real harm was extremely rare.
Those who brought permanent harm upon another human were given the harshest of sentences…from the moment of the crime they were cut off from the Quantum Cloud until they passed of natural causes. In this way, when they were revived they were who they were before the actual crime, and all the memories that they had made after, whether they lived for another hundred years; none of it would be passed onto their QUBITS. All those memories gone as if they’d never happened.
Such a fate was unthinkable; a whole life wiped out and forgotten. It was the reason there hadn’t been a crime of this magnitude since the early days of Akropolis.
Lesser crimes brought upon lesser sentences with the usual ‘time wipes’, and though these were horrifying as well (the criminals in shock that they actually committed a crime deemed worthy of one) the blank space in their memories served as a reminder to follow the word of the law passed on by the council.
Trey went to the first empty security transport after acknowledging a few more nods with his fellow guards. He put his hand to the window and waited as it processed his biometric readings.
He hated the egg-shaped transports. He missed cars, though he was only one of the very few left in Akropolis who remembered what it was like to operate one, though he did recall a breeder getting the chance a few years back. From what he remembered it resulted in disastrous consequences.
The door to the transport finally opened and Trey hopped in, beating the AI voice to the punch.
“Take me to The Pantheon, East entrance,” he said.
“Affirmative,” the male-like computer voice replied.
He left the circular parking lot via one of two access roads. Once on one of the cross streets the speed quickened exponentially. Here, close to the hub and past the residential areas, the streets were actual widened freeways teeming with transports bustling back and forth, gliding quickly from lane to lane like giant bumblebees. And the ASF transports moved twice as fast. Public opinion showed that citizens felt assured knowing that guards could arrive for a situation at twice the speed as was considered normal.
Most people tended to work on their virtual pads or read or converse with one another on transport trips but Trey preferred to just watch as the new world went by. He was still one of the few that had seen the last vestiges of the old one before it was gone and it somehow kept everything in perspective to study this one and know just what he was protecting.
The guards’ quarters were situated in the central ring between what was known as the Waste Belt and the Mid-Zone. The Waste Belt contained the recycling plants that made certain no bit of material in the city was truly ‘waste’, and the Mid-Zone was a residential area replete with parks and schools.
The freeways, once past the waste belt, rose quickly a hundred feet into the air so that as he passed by the Mid-Zone, Trey could look out and down and see all the homes of those that worked in the Inner Circle, ranging from relatively picturesque colonial houses to conjoined condos and then high-rise
apartments, the closer he got to the hub. Even though this new world was different from the old, class still seemed to be evident in certain ways.
Once past the Mid-Zone came the finest view in all of Akropolis, a place that still captured a micro-fraction of the beauty that once existed.
The Bay.
Here was a water belt that stretched the entire circumference of the city, dotted with various sandy beaches and harbors, peninsulas and lagoons. At any point and time you could look down at The Bay from the freeways and see families swimming in the salt waters or lounging on the beaches, kayakers going up and down the belt, passed by the occasional canoe or paddle boat.
There was about every beach or water recreational activity going on except anything deemed reasonably unsafe…and for some reason there were no boats of any kind. Trey wasn’t sure why but whenever he passed through The Bay he always looked hard for the sight of one, especially a sailboat, as if some day it would suddenly appear. As a young man he had dreamt of sailing the oceans and seas, long before the Marines and war and the end of all things. Even after all these years he still hoped to see one gracing the waters.
The Bay was gone all too quickly as Trey passed to the Inner Circle. Here were all the giant buildings that housed the enormous 3D printing machines as well as the architects and engineers that continued to create the plans that improved life in Akropolis.
These buildings had been designed to be pleasing to the eye, rather like works of art than functional ‘factories’. All sorts of geometrical shapes abounded in the structure of the buildings and some which defied any sort of reason but still were inspiring to look upon. These buildings showcased the engineers and architects dreams for what Akropolis might someday look like as a whole.
And finally, there it was…The Pantheon.
It was the hub of the city, the pinnacle of their achievements in this most envious of sanctuaries, and the most awe inspiring building that deservedly earned its name from ancient lore.
The Pantheon was both a symbol and the most crucial functioning part of Akropolis. Without it there would be no safety from the dangers of their decrepit atmosphere, no Quantum Cloud to house the millions of profiles that were the backups for human consciousness, no labs or production facilities to improve and create the QUBITS, which were most likely going to be the next evolutionary stage of the human race. The most brilliant minds in this now depleted world worked within those walls. But it was deep beneath the floors of the Pantheon where the life’s blood of Akropolis existed; the aquifer and artificial growing fields that produced the necessary sustenance still needed by humans and QUBITs to survive.