After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set

by Charlie Dalton

  “What charges?” Donny said. “You mean, explosives?”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Beck said. “If I can cause a rock slide, I might be able to get the mountain to slide down over the hole and cover it up. At the moment, it’s the City’s one Achilles’ heel.”

  “When the time comes, I’ll do it,” Donny said. “I can plant them faster and outrun the Rages if they chase me.”

  “Are you sure?” Dr. Beck said. “It’ll be very risky.”

  “Yes,” Donny said. “Until then, we wait and pray they head away naturally by themselves.”

  Please chances.

  15.

  THE NEXT day, the gang were back in the cinema. Jamie was filled both with excited expectation and fear. Lucy had planted a seed in him and it was beginning to take root. He wasn’t sure which emotion best suited the situation, but he had to come here, had to learn and listen to what Dr. Beck had to say.

  The lights went out and the screen turned on.

  “This City was not built with advanced warning of the meteorites,” Dr. Beck said. “The meteorites came suddenly, out of a beautiful day. Governments utilized the bomb shelters they’d built during the Second World War and Cold War eras. They built secret military facilities like this one all over the continental United States. Every advanced country did the same.

  “The theory used to be that if aggressive nations waged war, they needed to protect their leaders. Someone always needs to lead. There were rumours of their existence, of course, but never any real evidence. It’s near impossible to hide the truth. All you can do is confuse the media outlets and sway opinion with counter theories.

  “Some of the bases were even built right in the public eye. Sometimes the best places to hide were where no one expected you to build. The City we stand in now is one of the largest and greatest of all Cities. It was built to cater to thousands of scientists, to live underground in isolation for decades, entirely self-sustaining. Perfect for the work we had to do. We had one single goal. Every effort was made for the creation of a single part of a giant whole.”

  “Wait,” Fatty said. “Back up. I missed a bit. What single part? What did you make?”

  “For that, we take a little tour,” Dr. Beck said.

  16.

  JAMIE WAS a little sad to leave the cinema. He couldn’t wait to one day watch his very first movie. His father often told him the stories—as best he could remember, in any case. At times, Jamie was left scratching his head, confused by an isolated plot point that made no logical sense.

  Still, he enjoyed watching his father’s performance, altering his voice and acting out the parts. He was not exactly the best actor. Occasionally, travelling entertainers came to their commune, performing the same movies, but to a much higher standard.

  The older inhabitants always laughed a lot harder at the plays than the ones born in the commune. The commune always paid them a tribute with a good meal and beer. More than they could afford, really. But it was worth it to see the smiles on the commune members’ faces, for them to forget about their hostile environment for a while.

  Lucy was very quiet as Dr. Beck led them through the maze-like corridors. They all were. They were still processing the information from the day before. The history lesson of where they came from, what their species had achieved in a breathtakingly short period of time.

  Jamie got the feeling they had really only scratched the surface. They could have spent their entire lives studying the history of their species and still wouldn’t be any closer to understanding what it really meant to be human.

  But maybe he was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the past didn’t even really matter. Maybe it was the future that was important. That was why Dr. Beck was giving them this information, wasn’t it? Hope for the future? If they were going to be wiped out anyway, why bother educating young minds?

  Dr. Beck flashed his pass over a scanner. A pair of doors slid open. Electricity. It would take Jamie a while to get used to that.

  “This is our lab,” Dr. Beck said, holding one arm out wide.

  Jamie got the impression he would have held both arms out if he didn’t need to hold onto his walking stick.

  “This is where the magic happens,” he said.

  “I thought it was science, not magic?” Donny said.

  “A figure of speech,” Dr. Beck said. “This is where we do things that no one else on Earth can.”

  It didn’t look like much. Similar to the rest of the City. Infused with the same ultra-modern aesthetic. Shiny glass tables and windows looking out on a vista that. . .

  Except they weren’t windows. They couldn’t be. Not when they resided inside the heart of a mountain. They showed a peaceful setting with blue skies, fluffy white clouds and birds fluttering by. Jamie tapped the screen where a few of the pixels weren’t working.

  “It’s fake,” Dr. Beck said. “People felt a lot less claustrophobic after we installed these screens. Productivity and a general sense of wellbeing improved dramatically. Real windows would have been better but it might have looked a little conspicuous, windows right there in a mountainside.

  “You see, we needed to hide, to keep away from what was happening outside. The Fall had taken its toll on us all. We were sad because we’d lost loved ones. The attempted eradication of your species is never likely to give you the best shot of happiness in the world. We needed to focus on the task in hand. But even that proved difficult.

  “We had to put drugs in the workers’ drinks to stimulate them into a more carefree attitude, into not worrying too much about the outside world. To focus on the job. It was not a fun experience. But it needed to be done.

  “Just as the Rage ranks were swelling, and the Earth was succumbing to their vice-like grip, but before the Bugs had commandeered our satellites, we held a conference between the leaders of the most developed nations in the world. We came up with a plan.

  “To work together on a project unlike anything ever seen before. With the Bug craft parked right outside our front door, there could be no denying their plan: to eradicate the human race from the face of the Earth. We couldn’t let that happen. At least, not without a fight.

  “Each country was tasked with developing a single part of the greatest project ever conceived. A way for us to defeat the Bugs before they could eradicate us. We were fully aware the Bugs would take down our communications equipment. It would be communication blackout from that point on. We had to concentrate on our part of the warship exclusively. We defined the dates we would finish, when each project would liftoff and join together on the dark side of the moon.

  “We couldn’t take the chance the Bugs might be watching us, looking for communications. It would give the Cities away. We were left with no lines of communication, complete isolation to create each of our projects.”

  “What was everyone working towards?” Fatty said.

  “A ship,” Dr. Beck said. “One to rival the Bugs’ own warship.”

  “To fight them?” Lucy said.

  “To destroy them,” Dr. Beck said. “It’s the only way to stop them for good.”

  “How do you know the other Cities succeeded with their projects?” Donny said.

  “We don’t,” Dr. Beck said.

  “What if one of the other Cities failed to launch?” Donny said.

  “Then we would never know it,” Dr. Beck said. “We had to be successful in our mission or the human race was finished. That’s incentive enough, don’t you think? We had a failsafe. Even if some Cities were unsuccessful, those that were successful can be operated individually. It means that even if we couldn’t get the pieces to fit together, we could later engineer them so they would. The most important part was getting them built and in orbit around the moon.”

  “What were you working on here?” Jamie said.

  “We were charged with building the processing system,” Dr. Beck said with some pride. “The brain of the entire warship. The central nervous system that tied everything togeth
er. It was by far the most difficult part of the entire process. In fact, it proved to be a greater challenge than even we had anticipated.

  “We were coming up short when we designed our supercomputers. It turns out there’s a missing component when it comes to bringing the systems together. There’s a need not only for the system to compute information at a phenomenal rate, but to empathize and strategize, to consider the enemy the same way a human mind might.”

  Looking around, Jamie found that hard to believe—that people as advanced as the ones here could find anything impossible.

  “After years of work, we found we were still a long way off our goals,” Dr. Beck said. “It isn’t enough for our system to simply process systems. It also had to think for itself, to come up with strategies of war and overcome our enemy. We had to have a system that could think on its feet. We still know very little about our enemy. You have to be extremely flexible to defeat an unknown aggressor.”

  “You’re saying you failed to come up with the solution?” Donny said. “That there’s nothing in charge of whatever sort of ship you’re building in space?” He threw up his hands. “Well, that’s just great.”

  “We did come up with a solution,” Dr. Beck said. “A bridge between the technology we had and the technology we needed. It turned out to be far simpler than we thought. With just a sliver of the time remaining before the launch, we began down another avenue.”

  Dr. Beck used his security pass two more times before they got to the room he was looking for. Large glass tanks lined the walls, each big enough to hold a fully-grown man lying down. They were empty.

  “What have you been cooking up in here?” Donny said.

  “This isn’t where you’ve been making the mashed potatoes, is it?” Fatty said with a look of horror. “I knew this place was too good to be true. It has an unsanitary kitchen, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Dr. Beck said with a chuckle.

  “What would you need these pods for if you’re making computers?” Donny said.

  Jamie felt an unwelcome sensation in the pit of his stomach like he’d eaten something that had been laying in the sun too long. His belly turned. He got a horrible feeling he wasn’t going to like what Dr. Beck was about to say.

  Lucy had become still too, focusing not on what Dr. Beck was saying, but on one of the tanks along the wall. She was paler than usual.

  “The first few incarnations were unmitigated failures,” Dr. Beck said. “We simply couldn’t get the two systems to work together as one. One system was the human mind, the other represented the software systems the mind would join with after docking with the ship in orbit.

  “No matter what we tried, they simply wouldn’t cooperate. Like we had two jigsaw pieces that simply would not fit together. And they should have. There was nothing stopping them from working together. And then we made the discovery we so desperately needed.

  “They were competing, each trying to take charge, fighting one another. If we were to use them both to the best of their abilities, they were going to have to learn to work together. One had to be subordinate to the other. The discussion took many hours, but we finally came to a decision. Which would dominate? The emotional nature of the human mind or the purely analytical nature of the computer system?

  “It was decided that, as it was humanity’s future on the line, so it ought to be a human entity that made the big decisions.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Donny said. “You’re saying you combined your computer system with a person?”

  “A biological entity, yes,” Dr. Beck said.

  “That has to break some kind of international law,” Donny said.

  “We’re at war,” Dr. Beck said. “The rules remain at the door until after the victor has been crowned. Until then, we’ll use every option available to us. Do you think our enemy cares about our code of ethics when they unleashed the Rage virus on us?”

  “Wait,” Fatty said. “I saw the movies earlier. The technology you’re saying the Cities developed looks far beyond what we were capable of even up to the Fall. I didn’t see any advanced human spaceships in the cinema.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Beck said. “Very observant.”

  “Then how are we supposed to build this powerful warship in space?” Fatty said.

  “We had a little help,” Dr. Beck said. “We needed to advance quickly. That meant sharing everything we had with our enemies. Old grievances were put aside and forgotten. I don’t for a second believe every nation shared all their technological secrets with one another. Some would want domination over the rest of the human race should we be victorious. But they shared enough.”

  “And that was enough?” Fatty said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said.

  He hesitated. Unsure whether or not to continue.

  “I didn’t expect to share everything with you today,” he said. “Or that you even needed to know all these details. But seeing as the topic has come up. . . The truth is, it wasn’t from us that we developed the key pieces of technology. We borrowed them from elsewhere. From the most surprising of sources. From the Bugs themselves.”

  17.

  “THE BUGS?” Jamie said. “They just gave you their technology? For us to beat them?”

  He knew it was wrong the moment the words were out of his mouth. He’d seen these Bug creatures. He couldn’t bring himself to believe there was a single one that had developed conscience enough to aid an innocent alien race his fellow brethren were mercilessly eradicating.

  “Of course not,” Dr. Beck said. “Some years ago, when I was a youngster—yes, hard to believe isn’t it? That I was once a young whippersnapper like you—stories circulated of a spaceship from an alien race. Roswell of New Mexico. It was quite a scandal. I was young enough to have fallen for it. Hook, line, and sinker. My friends and I used to play games on the girls, scaring them with our wild imaginations about what the aliens might look like. They were simpler times.”

  A sad smile turned his eyes sour.

  “It was only after the Rage virus, when I was permitted into Area 51, that I discovered the truth,” he said. “The stories we told to frighten each other weren’t entirely inaccurate. We were fortunate enough to have discovered the Bug spacecraft. Since then, we’ve been backward engineering everything we could from it. Every secret we extracted from it, every morsel of knowledge, we handed to our new international allies. A gift. Perhaps our only chance of defeating these monsters. We couldn’t afford to keep one another at arm’s length any longer.

  “If only we’d thought to bridge those gaps years earlier. We might have developed so much faster. But there’s no use in crying over spilt milk, I suppose. My mother was always fond of saying that. Strange, considering she never used to say it over spilt milk. Comes with spending your formative years growing up on a dairy farm, I guess.”

  He shrugged at his own private joke.

  “It turns out the Bugs have been observing our species for longer than we care to admit,” he said. “They came to research us, learn about our cultures and peoples. No doubt they did so using the very same method to infiltrate your ranks. They take someone’s skin and hijack their body. We also have evidence to suggest this is not the first time they’ve attempted to destroy us. It is merely their latest, and most successful, attempt.

  “There are many theories about how they might have gone about it in the past. Most likely, they used our fears against us. We suspect they were responsible for Hitler’s rise to power, ensuring the Germans developed the necessary rocket technology for their next plan, should Hitler fail. Which he did. It gave birth to their next project of secret extermination. Nuclear weapons. During the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. What they busied themselves with during the interim years I can only speculate. We have so many questions left unanswered. Not least of all why they decided to torture us with the Rage virus as opposed to some kind of ray gun.”

  “You mentioned you were successful in devel
oping the central control system,” Donny said. “What happened to it?”

  “You’re referring to Mother,” Dr. Beck said. “That’s the name we gave our processing system. We were about to launch, send her into space, to meet up with the rest of the ship, but then the Rages came. They tore through our defenses and sabotaged the mission. I can only assume the Bugs had learned of us somehow. Maybe one of the other Cities tried to contact us? Or we were seeping a signal of some sort the whole time? I don’t know the reason. But whatever it was, it gave us away. They got in and ripped us to pieces.”

  “What happened to the rocket?” Donny said.

  “We launched it,” Dr. Beck said.

  Jamie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Fatty said. “If a rocket were to launch, we would have heard it. The commune isn’t far from here.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Dr. Beck said. “We developed cloaking technology to ensure there was no sign whatsoever of it taking off. We couldn’t let the Bugs know we were launching. It was too important.”

  “But they discovered what you were up to anyway,” Donny said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said, hanging his head. He ran his hands through his sparse hair. “All that hard work, all that effort. For nothing.”

  “But you said you launched the rocket,” Jamie said. “Mother is up there now, fighting for us?”

  Dr. Beck’s eyes moved to the side. Uncomfortable with the truth.

  “Was the Mother program onboard?” Donny said.

  Dr. Beck only stared into space, gnawing on his fingernails.

  “Doctor?” Donny said in a gentle voice. “Was the Mother program onboard the rocket you launched?”

  “No,” Dr. Beck said. “The Rages attacked just when we were prepping her.”

  “The rocket made it into space?” Fatty said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Beck said. “But with no Mother onboard, it’s a fruitless exercise.”