Absolute Knowledge Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Drew Cordell

  “Are we waiting for them to come back?” Mary asked, breaking the silence and pulling everyone from their thoughts.

  “Might as well,” Gerald said. “I don’t think we should split the party, not in a place like this.”

  “I’m not the biggest fan of this place either,” Christopher agreed. “Doesn’t mean we can’t check out these buildings here on the docks before we go looking for this lab, though. I’m just hoping Jasper doesn’t put the fish they catch through his machine before we have the opportunity to eat our fill.”

  “Ha, I told him not to. I’ve put you all through enough hell these past few days. We’ll be eating well today,” Jennifer said.

  “Dibs on any ancient tech we find,” Gerald called out.

  “Duke that one out with Christopher and Agatha. I’m keeping any medical stuff we find that’s still usable, though I’ll probably have to use it to save your asses anyway.”

  Christopher laughed. “I’d like to think I’m pretty good at not getting shot. I don’t know, Gerald, we might quarrel if there is something good for the taking.”

  Of the group, Christopher was the most decked out in gear. From his build it didn’t seem like he would be able to carry so much weight without showing even a little discomfort, but he was pulling it off with apparent ease, even with a 10-pound rocket launcher strapped across the back of his pack.

  We walked through one of the buildings with the entire group, moving through the empty rooms with careful steps. The concrete in one of the rooms on the second floor had caved in completely, casting a web of deep cracks through the entire upper floor. Three more buildings yielded nothing at all.

  In the fifth building, Agatha found an old metal can that was still sealed. She dusted off the side and displayed her rusted treasure to the group. The label was damaged, but the print was clear and was in English. ‘Bean #2’ it said. Curiosity getting the better of her, she drew a sharp, utilitarian knife from her sturdy belt. She plunged the triangular tip of the blade into the top of the can and cut in a circular pattern to remove the lid. The can hissed as she punctured it, and she gagged in revulsion as the pungent odor of rot and decay filled the room which now seemed much smaller. She discarded the can and did her best to cover the decaying contents. I pinched my nose closed, trying to hold my breath.

  “Gah, that’s so gross,” Christopher whined.

  “That has been here for a long time,” Jennifer commented, apparently not as bothered as the rest of us by the last remnants of the foul stench as it bled out of the room.

  “Well, we’re not going to find any rations here. Unless someone is feeling particularly excited to eat some bean number two,” Gerald said.

  “I’d hate to know what bean number three smells like,” Christopher added.

  Something crunched in another room in the building, and we raised our weapons again, conversation ceasing as we listened.

  “Hello? Grez?” Agatha called out. There was no response. We moved slowly through the building, carefully positioning our deliberate steps to avoid making noise. There was nothing in the building. No sign that anything other than our group had stepped through the dust-coated floors. Still, everyone had heard the crunch. It wasn’t imagined.

  “Weird,” Mary said.

  “Probably just something we disturbed falling from the ceiling,” Gerald reasoned.

  “Back there on the boat… has that happened before?” Mary asked.

  Christopher’s expression softened, but his reply was terse. “It has. Best not talk about it.” The subject matter was closed. Grez called from the entrance of the building. “Find anything?”

  “If you count a can of decomposed beans, sure,” Agatha said as we walked onto the street.

  Grez raised an eyebrow. “It was sealed still when you found it?”

  “Airtight,” Agatha responded. “We’re not likely to find any edible food here. I think this city has been abandoned for a long time. If it weren’t for all the decomposing trash, I wouldn’t have thought this place was ever inhabited. All the buildings we went through were empty. No skeletons, no furniture, no anything. It’s almost as if these buildings were emptied after the fact.”

  It was difficult to read Grez’s expression. He looked hopeful to find something good in the ruins of the city, but also seemed to still be upset from either what had happened earlier or maybe his private conversation with Violet. He started talking, and his face returned to its resting position of being completely unreadable. “There wasn’t anything in the building we were in either. Maybe we’ll find things as we move through the streets. I don’t want to bother with the residences. Let’s look for store signs or warehouses as we move through. We might have several hours to explore, but we’re only going to scratch the surface by the time the Bob and Jasper are done fishing enough food for our return journey.”

  “They have to process it, too,” Christopher grumbled.

  Grez grimaced. Even with the equipment, it was a long, slow process. We had learned that the hard way coming here, and everyone had taken at least one grueling shift processing the excess fish and eel we retrieved before we were unable to catch anything in the Maze.

  The processor was a piece of technology hacked together by Jasper and his robotic companions. It had a lot of moving parts, a lot of different software modules, and a lot that could and did go wrong during the process. Jasper wasn’t exactly eager to provide tech support on his machine when problems came up since he was steering his boat for the most part. Bob tried to be helpful, but his instructions were so convoluted that the work in progress fish either had to be recycled and “twice-preserved” or cooked over an open flame and eaten right away.

  The worst part was that the processor produced a final product which was only marginally above the minimum standards of being edible. The fish was too salty and dry to the point it was comparable to chewing on a stubborn piece of cardboard. Grez hadn’t shied away from voicing his opinion on Jasper’s engineering and the meals it produced. Jennifer made sure we didn’t dip into the sealed rations until all the preserved fish had been eaten. With the potential sensitivity of our food supply, nothing could go to waste, but with some reluctance and a general sense of dread, we had made it through all the preserved fish we caught along the journey.

  “We’re eating all the damn fish we can fry tonight. I do not plan on eating that preserved fish until our return trip,” Grez said. “Enough about Jasper’s third-rate machine and fourth-rate food. Let’s try to find something good to take back with us before we look for the lab.”

  We moved through the streets, quickly making our way through buildings of interest which were all empty. After an hour of nothing, the mood of the exploration party was degrading. The city was empty to the point of seeming artificial. Grez was in a foul mood but had a stubborn determination to find something of value.

  “I need a word with Jake and Mary,” Violet declared eventually.

  Grez turned and raised an eyebrow. “About?”

  “About something that doesn’t concern you,” she shot before walking with us to one of the unsearched residential buildings. Grez didn’t reject or question her further. Mary and I reluctantly followed Violet as she shouldered her way into someone’s old home, the heavy door screeching in protest as it pivoted on rusty hinges.

  “I meant what I said,” Violet started as soon as she closed us in for more privacy. She kept talking, but I didn’t hear her words. Something in the back of the home caught my eye. It was barely illuminated by my flashlight beam, but the shape of a human was indistinguishable. My light caught the object, and I staggered back on now shaky legs.

  Sunken ivory eye sockets on a skeleton cast a crooked, dark glare at me. The clothes of the skeleton were decomposing, but the jacket wasn’t. It was a Runner’s jacket, and the emblem of the Champions of Liberty was visible on the side.

  Mary and Violet saw what I was looking at, and Violet looked like she wanted to yell out for help but quickly regained
control, cursing quietly and drawing her knives, holding them at the ready. If she wanted to, Mary and I would be dead in seconds. “Drop your guns.”

  “Violet take it easy; we’re putting them down.” I set my gun on the ground, and Mary did the same. I needed to keep Violet calm, to try to explain something I didn’t and couldn’t understand. “Violet, we don’t know how this is here, and we have nothing to do with this.”

  “What the hell does this mean?” she demanded.

  I was at a loss for words, stumbling at trying to comprehend exactly how what we were seeing was possible. The Champions didn’t know about this place, about the Maze, about the fact that there was a way out of New York. Unless they were hiding things from us. It didn’t make sense. But the ghost of my father had sent me here. He was with the Champions before his death.

  “Let’s get a better look,” I suggested, trying to stay calm and control my frantic mind.

  “No. Don’t take another step. I’m getting the others; they need to see this,” she said, reaching for her commlink.

  “Violet, wait,” Mary pleaded.

  Violet hesitated for just a moment, but it was enough for Mary to speak.

  “I promise you we have nothing to do with this. I don’t know how this is possible either. Please. If you tell your father, he’s going to kill Marwin or Jake and me. Maybe all of us. You said you were with us. This isn’t a trap and we have nothing to do with this, even if we can’t explain it.”

  “No. How is this here? You wanted us to come here, and I wasn’t supposed to see this. What’s really waiting for us in the lab?”

  “We don’t know. Look at the body, look at the clothes,” Mary reasoned. “This body has been here for a very long time, longer than Jake and I have been alive. We were also taken unexpectedly from Olympus and held captive. There is no way we could have planned this.”

  The logic was there, and Violet seemed to see it too. She lowered her hand from the commlink. “What if there are more and my father finds one? What then?”

  “Then there’s nothing we can do,” I said. “For now, this situation is under our control. We can keep this between us and keep the peace. You said you wanted to help us beat the Omniscience Engine so do that. Help us by staying quiet.”

  Violet bit her lower lip, stuck in internal conflict. “Look me in the eyes and promise me you don’t have anything to do with this.”

  “I promise you,” Mary said, meeting her eyes.

  Something resonated with Violet, and she sheathed her knives. “No sudden movements. We can inspect it because somehow I believe you.”

  We made our way over to the skeleton. On closer look, the emblem on the jacket had slight variations from the emblem we used in New York. It was a lot older, but there was no doubt it was a Champion jacket. The leather was cracked and doomed, and so was the Artemis Link. The display on the wristband was fragmented and coated in dust and crusted salt, rusted irreversibly from within. There would be no interfacing with the tech—not now, not ever. The secrets of this corpse were gone.

  The gun on the hip holster of the skeleton wasn’t doing much better than the rest. With some effort, Violet worked the jammed magazine out of the weapon to reveal corroded bullets. It wasn’t an energy weapon, and I hadn’t ever seen a model of gun like the one I was seeing here. It had no visible branding, and no way to identify who or what had manufactured it. The person’s backpack was empty, but I fished an identification card from Vermont out of the skeleton’s pocket. I had heard of similar plastic cards in New York back before identification and personal data was all digitized. The ID card horrified me.

  Kira Hollins, Citizen

  DOB: 2/27/2244

  ID: VaR-4G8F1Z0872b

  The Great Country of Vermont

  Tier 3, District 68, Block 57, Unit 6A, Residency 3491

  We are a single light in a dark world. Only you can help us achieve Absolute Knowledge!

  I passed the card around for the others to look at. My breath was shallow, and I had a hollow feeling in my chest. Chaotic thoughts were colliding in my head, crashing together in waves of sick recognition. Things were starting to unravel. New York wasn’t alone. It never had been. The Champions weren’t just in New York either. They were here, and they were probably in every country that was the “only country in the world.”

  Mary was as pale and silent as me as she undoubtedly came to the same grim realizations.

  If the card was correct, Kira Hollins was born almost 100 years in the future from the current year. She lived and died serving the Champions of Liberty, or whatever they were called in Vermont. Her technology wasn’t as advanced as ours, but it was Champions tech through and through. Kira had access to the predecessor of the modern version of Artemis I knew; she had the same gear, and she served the same leaders.

  “What does this mean?” Violet asked.

  “The Absolute Knowledge project was never just in New York. If this is real, then we were never alone, only isolated. It also means that the Champions of Liberty aren’t unique either. The year though, that makes no sense.”

  I got a better look at the card and saw no reason to expect that it was any younger than its gruesome owner. The plastic was chipping at the edges and yellowed from age.

  “It can be one of two things,” Mary added. “It means that different cells of the Champions of Liberty either used to collaborate before something really bad happened here, or it means the same thing that created the Omniscience Engine and engineered society also created the Champions.”

  Mary was right. If the date of birth on Kira Hollin’s card was correct, it meant each country was living in a different year, that the true year of Earth was lost and buried under lies like everything else.

  “What if the Omniscience Engine controls the leaders of the Champions and you don’t know it? What are we fighting for then?” Violet demanded.

  “I can’t believe that,” I said. “I know and trust the Council with my life.”

  “But the Docks. I don’t want to keep pulling the scab off of old wounds, but what if your leaders knowingly sent all of those people to their deaths? A sort of culling to push the agenda of a more drastic plan which never would have been supported before when you were all better off.”

  A spark of anger flashed in my heart, but it wasn’t the time to lose my temper or get mad at Violet for bringing up some very valid concerns. “I can’t believe that. Some of our leaders fought with us at that battle. Marwin was there fighting on a different front. The man who saved my life more than once, Edgar, was also with him. They knew the risks, and they could have easily been killed themselves.”

  “But they’re still alive while so many others are dead,” she countered.

  I didn’t want to think of the painful memories. I lived through the battle first hand. My friends died because I couldn’t save them. “I can’t believe that. Believing it would mean my friends died for nothing—that nothing I have done or would do would ever matter in the grand scope of things. My friends died because I couldn’t save them. I tried and failed.”

  “I can’t and won’t believe what I’ve committed my life to is a lie like everything else,” Mary said.

  Violet looked almost as upset as us, but for different reasons. “Because you couldn’t save your friends or because it was impossible to save them?”

  I took a deep breath before answering. “Because I couldn’t save them.”

  Violet was about to press the matter, but Mary interrupted. “Violet, we aren’t willing or able to accept that’s what happened. I’m not sure you understand just how much we’ve lost.”

  Violet dropped the argument. “But even if we beat the Omniscience Engine in New York, what if other Omniscience Engines are still running in other countries and decide to come after us?”

  I considered it. “There’s only one Omniscience Engine. Why repeat the same process multiple times? Why not just pool all the resources together to accomplish the goal faster?”

&nb
sp; Mary’s eyes widened. “Because it’s an experiment and the goal was never real or at least isn’t what we thought it was. I don’t think the Omniscience Engine is looking to establish Absolute Knowledge directly. I think they’re looking for the tool they need to discover it. Something that apparently can’t be found by pooling together the resources of its isolated systems.”

  I removed my knife and cut the Champion patch from Kira’s jacket. It was holding up better than the leather of her jacket. I pocketed it before sheathing my knife.

  The front door to the home screeched open. “Violet? Everything all right? You’re not responding on comms,” Grez shouted. My heart hammered in my chest as I waited for Violet to make her decision. This was no longer under my control.

  Violet hesitated for a second, grasping the plastic identification card she held, the last remnant of Kira Hollins’ life. She took a deep breath, as if she was about to yell out for help, to reveal what we had found. Then she exhaled and reached up to her face with the other hand. Her fingers traced the now bruised skin of her cheek where she’d been hit, and her facial expression hardened. She handed the identification card back to Mary. “I’m fine. Give us some privacy and we’ll be out in a second.”

  “We need to keep moving. I want to cover as much ground as possible before we have to go back to the boats. There has got to be something here,” Grez called.

  “Thank you,” I said as we moved, picking up our handguns from the floor.

  Violet shrugged. “I can’t guarantee I will be able to protect you if he finds more bodies like this, but for now I’m with you.”

  Mary pocketed Kira’s identification card, and we walked out of the house. My thoughts were frantic, and I was starting to question everything I believed. We needed answers, but I doubted Marwin would have them.

  “I take it you still haven’t found anything?” Violet asked her father.

  Grez shook his head, clutching his heavy assault rifle. “Empty as everything else. Anything in that house?” he asked, leveling his gaze with Violet and sweeping it over the rest of us.

  “Nope,” Violet said, executing the lie with surprising proficiency. Grez apparently saw no reason to question it and we continued our search through the city, leaving the skeleton behind.