It was all so confusing and interesting. John couldn’t wait until he found himself back inside a lab, studying this stuff until the early hours of the day.
As the sun began to set, a cool breeze made the walk more reasonable. John walked up to Oleksii and picked up one of the black cubes from the wheel barrel. He studied the empty cubes inside it. Oleksii looked at him and sighed. The MIT scientist wanted to talk. “What do you think?” Oleksii said.
“It looks to be some sort of alien computer,” John said.
“I can see that. I mean, where do you think the alien was? Why didn’t we find a body? I was expecting to find something driving that AOJ. Instead all we found is alien computer tech.”
John considered Oleksii’s question. Since the alien ships arrived he had been thinking about the Fermi Paradox, about the unlikely hood, mathematically, that an alien civilization would ever come to our solar system. If they existed, Enrico Fermi theorized, they would have already been here. Since they weren’t here, Fermi theorized that they, most likely, were incapable of existing. But aliens did exist and they were here. The whole world knew that now. Enrico Fermi was wrong.
Still, John considered the paradox and all of its implications. One of the strongest arguments in favor of Fermi’s Paradox came from Frank Tipler. His main argument in favor of the paradox, was that due to the lack of von Nuemann probes, extraterrestrial intelligences did not exist. The von Nuemann probe was named after the Hungarian-American mathematician and physcist John von Nuemann. He imagined machines, or ‘universal assemblers’, who self-replicated themselves throughout the galaxy by harvesting materials found on planets or moons. They’d travel from star to star or planet to planet, harvest the necessary elements, and recreate themselves. They’d then fly off to the next system or planet. This cycle would repeat until they reached every star system in the galaxy. It would only take a couple million years. Not so long in space time. Essentially, von Nuemann probes were self-automated, self-replicating space vehicles. Tipler believed that since these devices were no where to be found, intelligent life outside of our solar system, outside of out planet, must not exist. He believed this to be the emphatic proof that Enrico Fermi was correct in theorizing that alien civilizations were mathematically incapable of existing. But maybe Tipler just needed to wait a little longer? Maybe these ships were von Nuemann probes? Maybe they were here to harvest Earth’s natural resources and replicate themselves and then fly to the next star system? Perhaps there was no alien inside the ship? Perhaps the ship was driven by an internal AI? Much like the AIs that direct and control self-driving automobiles. Were these alien motherships and the AOJs that flew outside them just von Nuemann probes? Of course, he didn’t have any proof. All he had was a theory and no dead alien carcasses.
“Maybe there are no aliens inside any of the ships?” he said to Oleksii.
Oleksii hadn’t considered this. His mind raced. “You mean, these things could be…” His voice trailed off.
“Von Nuemann probes?” John offered.
“Yes!”
“I do,” John said. “They might very well be. It will take time for us to figure it all out. For us to study them. For us to know, what is inside. I doubt we will live long enough to ever know for certain.”
“Unbelievable,” Oleksii said.
“No,” corrected John. “Unlikely. But that’s not what bothers me. I’m more interested in how they work, in what powers them.”
Oleksii’s mind felt blown wide open. He didn’t have anything else to say to John, but it didn’t matter. The MIT professor had wandered off to someone else. John looked like a curious school boy who couldn’t keep still. Oleksii laughed.
The group of Mission Control survivors continued to march through the Mojave desert until they spotted the building they were looking for. Ethan was the first to spot it. It’s steel roof reflecting the light from the setting sun. It wasn’t hard to miss.
They made their way to it. They were in desperate need of supplies and medicine. Wherever they’d head next, they’d need help. They weren’t going to last long.
Chapter 15
Dirk Glimsey unzipped his pants. A stream of piss pooled on the ground beside his piece-of-shit trailer he’d called home for twenty years. He let out a big yawn. He didn’t sleep last night. God damn alien invasion. He glued himself to the TV until the networks pulled the plug on the broadcast. Now the only thing that played was an emergency broadcast from the President on loop. The President’s message made him laugh:
“This is the President of The United States of America. There has been an unprecedented attack on our country from a foreign threat not of this world. Earlier today, alien ships arrived to our planet. We tried to establish communications with them, they were not receptive. They have since launched attacks all over the world. We ask that you stay as far away from their ships as possible. If your city has been visited, evacuate immediately. We will be launching coordinated attacks with other countries over the next several hours. May god have mercy on us all.”
“I knew it,” he said. “I’ve known it all these years! God damn!” He shook himself, zipped up his pants and walked back into his trailer.
The TV was still on. The President’s emergency broadcast was playing on loop. It had been the whole night. Because of that, he had to keep updated by looking at his phone. People all over were sharing footage of the invasion as it happened. Dirk was glued to his phone the whole night. He didn’t sleep much. Images of levelled skyscrapers, video of soldiers getting vaporized by plasma bursts, and the written accounts of the devastation within each city was a lot to take. This was the moment Dirk had been prepping his whole life for.
The whole morning had been spent in his bunker, which was under his trailer. He pulled out all the guns and ammo he’d need. He knew it wouldn’t be enough. He then brought out his chemistry set; a collection of bomb making materials he’d traded for. After he’d packed all the food that was in his fridge, he’d head north. The alien ships only appeared over major cities, so he figured that if he made his way to Wyoming or some place cold, he’d be safe for a while.
He sat down at his small kitchen table and pulled out a sheet of paper. He’d been keeping track of everything. He looked at his list: shotgun x 1, rifle x 1, pistol x 3, ammo x 456, tnt materials x 23. He’d need to add whatever food he had to the list. As long as he kept organized, he’d be alright. At least, that’s what he told himself.
He’d leave his trailer in a couple hours. The last thing he’d have to do before leaving was destroy the sign that he planted by the highway. The sign invited travellers who made their way into Las Vegas to make a stop by his place before heading into the city. His main source of income was selling out of towners cheap moonshine he distilled in a small barrel by the trailer. When they didn’t have money, he’d take supplies or whatever else they had. That’s how he got the guns, ammo and tnt making supplies.
He got to work in his trailer and checked his fridge and cupboards. He added what he found to the list: Beans x 12, soda x 6, bottles of water x 1, moonshine flask x 12. He’d need to find more food soon. His hope was that he could make it to a few towns outside the city limits before they were destroyed. He’d have to leave quick.
He made his way outside and walked toward the highway. He brought a pack of matches and some gasoline. He’d burn the sign down.
He was about a mile from his house when he had to turn around. He saw a group of strange looking men and woman walking through the desert. He pulled out his binoculars. They were coming from Las Vegas. There was about thirty of them. One of them was pushing a wheelbarrow full of strange metal parts.
“What the hell?”
Chapter 16
A day had passed since they arrived at the campground. Before heading with Quinton and his wife to the hunting cabins, Sandra and her kids hung back and decided to give her parents more time. While they waited, more survivors from Atlanta showed up. Most survivors had their own plans on
how to deal with the apocalypse, but those that didn’t, Sandra told them how to get to the cabins, and that’s where they went. The more people at the cabins, the better.
The longer she waited for her parents, the clearer it became that they were gone. Sandra didn’t want to leave the parking lot, she didn’t want to give up hope, but she also knew that this was an important lesson to teach her kids. It was important to know when to move on. She’d pass on the lessons from her parents to her children. She’d do her best. That’s all she could do.
Her father was the first person to teach her how to shoot a gun. He was a survivalist first. He had a bunker built under their house, just in case. He regularly checked to make sure that it was stocked. He was prepared for the end of the world. He was prepared for anything. Most of their neighbours thought he was crazy, especially in this advanced age. They called him ‘Wacky Old Mr. Connor.’ When Sandra was young, she heard one of her peers call her father that, she punched the young boy in the face. She was suspended from school for three days for that incident. Her father “punished” her for the fight by taking her hunting. That was back when it was still legal to shoot and kill. They’d go on several hunting trips through the years. He taught her how to skin and cure fresh meat. Sandra thought it was normal when she described it all to her high school friends what she had been up to on the weekend. They all looked at her like she was crazy. They whispered behind her back that she was just as crazy as her old man, although no one dared say it to her face. Not after the incident from her elementary school years. When the laws changed, making the killing of wild animals, even in the name of sport, illegal, her father stopped. He was a burly man, with a thick beard, but he wasn’t a rebel. He followed the rules and toed the line. If only he’d made it from Atlanta, he would have been exactly the kind of man the survivors needed. It seemed like his whole life he was waiting for civilization to collapse, for something catastrophic to happen. That’s what attracted Sandra to Keith, her dead husband. He reminded her of her father. He wasn’t a survivalist to the same degree, but he was always prepared for things to go wrong. Now they were both dead. Two men who were always ready for the worst.
Her mother was different than her father, but a survivor all the same. While she never went hunting with her daughter or her husband, she did instill in Sandra a love for history, a love for knowledge. If it weren’t for her mother, she’d never have pursued the studying of history as a career. She owed them both a great deal.
Now she had to instill some wisdom into her children. She’d spent her whole life teaching them, to the best of her abilities, how to survive on their own out in the wild. It seemed silly. But, as her deceased husband always reminded her, “Plan for worst, hope for the best.”
She turned away from the road leading out of the campground. It was time to get to work. It was what her parents would have wanted. It was what Keith would have wanted.
She looked at her two children. Claire looked like her. Long brown hair and pronounced cheekbones. Bobby was the spitting image of his father. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, and a devilish smirk that he couldn’t seem to wipe from his face, even during the end of the world.
Bobby read his mother’s expression and understood that it meant his grandparents were never coming back. He was only nine years old, but the last few days he had grown strong. He didn’t cry. He hugged his mother.
They walked to the cabins that had protected Claire a few days earlier from the wild bear and met with the other survivors.
There were seventeen of them now. People from all walks of life. Some from wealth, some from poverty. Material things wouldn’t matter much in this new world. All that mattered was how long you could survive and what you could do to help.
Quinton had kept everyone busy while Sandra waited for her parents. None of the other survivors knew how to hunt, so he taught them all how to fire a gun. He was the only survivor to have any weapons besides Sandra. But she didn’t have anything as capable as he did. All she had was a crossbow. He had four rifles and two handguns. Once a few of the survivors felt comfortable with the weapons, he explained to them that they would also need to learn how to hunt, skin, and cook meat. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have any food.
When Sandra walked into the camp, she was happy to see a couple squirrels and rabbits on skillets, roasting over a fire. Quinton was the defacto leader, and it made her happy. He was odd, but he knew how to get things done. She could forgive his strange habits, if he kept her and her children alive.
One of the survivors in a cabin had a ham radio with him and was trying to communicate with others in the area. He hadn’t heard from anyone yet. Sandra smiled at the futile attempt to bring more to the campground. This might work. They might be able to survive a few years out here. She was starting to feel optimistic. Cell phones stopped working late into the night of the invasion. No one had any access to GPS signals and the automated drones that usually crisscrossed the air above the national park weren’t flying. A ham radio might be the best chance they had at reaching anybody.
Quinton acknowledged Sandra as she walked back to the camp. The cabins, which had looked derelict only a few days earlier, were starting to look livable. Holes in the roofs were being repaired, and windows that were broken were being covered up. “My parents didn’t make it,” she announced.
Quinton walked up to her, but addressed the whole community. “It’s alright, Sandra. We all have been through hell. Wherever your parents are now, they are in a better place. We can trust in the higher being above us. They are in a better place. A much better place. And this all happens for a reason. Yes, it all happens for a reason.”
The rest of the survivors bowed their heads.
He spoke like a preacher and a car salesman combined into one. Having only known Quinton for a few days, that was a part of Quinton’s personality that Sandra found peculiar. It seemed like he was trying to brainwash you.
“Thanks,” Sandra said.
Quinton looked at her with his aquamarine eyes. He looked at her with an intensity she hadn’t seen before. “Miss Connor, having me as the only ‘real’ hunter in this camp, made the last hunt difficult. It would be an honor, if you could join me on tonights hunt, an absolute honor. Perhaps, it would give you an outlet to get over the loss of your dear parents.”
“Uh, sure,” said Sandra.
Quinton was weirding her out, but if her and her children wanted to survive, they would need to play along. At least, for now.
Chapter 17
It’d been smooth sailing since they’d left the mall. No motherships. No AOJs. In fact, it was too easy. It made Rick feel nervous. Where the fuck were the aliens? You could still see the motherships on the horizon, resting over the city center, but they hadn’t moved. The smaller ships were no where to be seen. While he was thankful he had enough time to drive out of the city, he knew it was only a matter of time before he’d run into the AOJs again. For the first time in two days, things had gone his way. He didn’t like it.
Before they left the mall, Rick finished fixing up the van. It’s eco-neg engine had seen better days but it would hold. If it got them to the Nevada border than that’s all he’d ask for. There was a car dealership at the Nevada border, Rick saw it as he was driving into Los Angeles. They could hack into one of the cars there. They just had to get there.
During their final check of the mall, Jose, Manuel and Patricia had found plenty of supplies. They raided a pharmacy store, where they found enough pain killers to last them a life time. The weapon shop had already been cleared out, but they did manage to find a few boxes of ammunition. Jose found a samarai sword in a comic book store. Why he was in a comic book store, Rick didn’t want to know. He was going to make Jose leave it, but decided against it. A weapon was a weapon.
Aside from the pain killers, ammunition and the sword, they found a few bottles of beer, six bottles of vodka and only one bottle of whiskey. This depressed Rick, but it’d have to do. Aside from drink, the
y didn’t find much food. But they did manage to fix that when they got to the outskirts of the city. There was a grocery store there. There was also a group of survivors.
When they met the other survivors in the grocery store, all agreed that it would be best to travel together. After they finished gathering supplies, Rick told the others what his plans were. He told them that he worked with SpaceForce and could get them access to Mission Control. He said that the military would be able to protect them. When the other survivors heard this, Rick could see their faces light up with hope. He got a little nervous when he saw that.
The survivors joined up with Rick, Patricia, Jose and Manuel and they all made their way to Las Vegas. They all figured their chances of survival were better with the military than they were by themselves. They travelled in one long line comprised of three vans, one camper and one station wagon toward the city.
The new members of their group were people from all over Los Angeles county. Many of them were from the city itself. Like Rick, Patricia, Jose and Manuel, they’d each had some run ins with AOJs. A few of them had also had some run ins with some hostile humans. Not all of humanity was going to work together and fight on the same side during this new war. One survivors run in with a hostile human group caught Rick off guard. Tuck McGregor introduced himself as an ex-truck driver. He and has wife lived on a campground outside of San Bernardino. He wore a red and white trucker hat and had a thick burly mustache. His wife was a stout woman with long blonde hair. She wore green cowboy boots and smoked cigarettes like they were going out of style. Tuck told Rick how he and his wife were attacked in their campground by a group of six people dressed in black hoodies and wearing balaclavas. They showed up with shotguns and uzis and demanded that all the campers at the park empty their pockets and fridges. Tuck said they seemed young and he wasn’t in the mood for some punk ass kids to bully him out of his supplies. He gave the looters everything they could see. What they didn’t see was the chest Tuck had hidden under his trailer. In the chest was some food, sixteen shotguns, four rifles, and more ammunition than a brigade would need. As the looters were about to leave the camp, he gave some of his weapons to the campers who’d been robbed. They stuck up the young hooligans and got their supplies back. They also took the looters weapons. Punk ass kids didn’t need the weapons if they weren’t going to use them for good.
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