Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

“This morning, later. House of the Sky. You bring the Hightec. What is it?” I asked, hoping it was an orbital cannon or anti-gravity, but I knew we hadn’t gotten that far after I went to sleep. At best, I expected a laptop or even an abandoned phone.

  The Lady opened a small box she withdrew from a side table. “These.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed. In her hand were five external drives, small black objects with an embossed label I didn’t recognize. It was tech from past my time but still recognizable as a drive. It meant data, and a lot of it. Since any information was good, this was even better. In her hand, she held my future and her past, even if it was bullshit blogs or chat room backups. Drives were searchable, and that meant someone, somewhere had mentioned things that I needed to know. That the Lady needed to know.

  The drives might be good. They might be corrupted. None of it mattered unless I could—

  “They fit in this, correct?” she said, adding a small, unknown kind of laptop to the stack.

  I barely breathed. It was just beyond hand-sized, black, and had a flexible screen that was well beyond anything I’d seen. “Yes, they do.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Lady, you’ve hit the jackpot.”

  “Jackpot? Is that what you call it?” Her eyes drifted over my crotch, which stirred at her gaze as surely as if it had been her hand. Dangerous.

  My laugh broke free before I could stop myself. “No. That’s for later. A jackpot is a victory while gambling.”

  “We’re not gambling, Jack. We’re looking for something, and I think it’s here. Don’t you?” she asked me.

  “I’d bet on it. Bring them to me, quietly. I assume you have no means to power them, and that’s why you haven’t been able to use any of it?” If she couldn’t get solar cells, then that only left one way for me to do it. Brute force. It looked like Wetterick was about to have another very bad day.

  “I concluded the deal for this Hightec just last night. Your addition to the post changed things, you might say.” She grinned. It was a young moment on her, and I liked it.

  “Did the gentleman survive his negotiations?” I asked.

  “Barely. Older fellow; he required the special attention of my best girls. I’m sure he’s fine now.” Her eyes said he would never forget the girls, just as she would never forget the deal.

  “And you’re their queen,” I said, earning a flirtatious smile from the Lady.

  “I see you’re capable of calculations as well. I am their queen, sister, and mother. I’m many things to them, including the woman who trained them in pleasing men, but none of that will matter if I’m dead. I need your help, and I’m willing to help you, Jack.”

  “I need your help too,” I said.

  “Can you be specific, or are we still negotiating?” she asked me. It was only half-playful.

  “We’re always negotiating, but I can be extremely specific. I’m going to need weapons, and not the kind that cut. I need guns, ammunition, and a source for gunpowder. I know they exist because guns would be relics without them, and that means some caravans trade war stuff. You deal in information. Along with the Hightec we’re going to crack, the cult we will smash, and anyone else in our way, I have to build a squad. Then I’ll build an army, and maybe then, we can be safe.”

  “Safe,” she said in a dreamy tone. “There’s a word I haven’t said in a while. I didn’t dare.” She shook her head as if waking. “Ask Lasser about powering the Hightec. He might have something hidden away. He’s a resourceful man and known to save things for later.”

  “I will.” I stood, placing my glass on the table with care. “Thank you for the drink, Lady. I’ll see you when the sun’s up.”

  “You won’t see me at all, Jack. Not until I’m standing next to you,” she said coyly. Her disguises must be excellent, but she forgot one detail.

  I leaned close as if to kiss her, and she didn’t pull away. “Roses on the wind. I’ll know when you’re coming.”

  Her laugh rang through the house. “If that happens, you’ll hear it first.”

  16

  Breakfast was warm bread from an unseen oven, the crust heavy with oil and salt. There was coffee, and water, and berries that seemed sour until you chewed them, when they burst into a flavor between sweet and bitter. After a handful, I found myself full, sipping coffee with my legs crossed as I watched the post wake up outside the open doors.

  “The Lady will be here soon, Lasser,” I remarked, watching him for any reaction. I suspected he knew much more than he let on, which was considerable.

  “She came here in the night? Risky, given her position and Wetterick’s grudge. No doubt he’s plotting your demise even as we drink our coffee,” he said.

  Mira grunted, smearing berries on bread without looking up. “Jack went to her. He was gone before dawn. I knew she’d send for him sooner than later.”

  “You’re not the jealous type, Mira?” Lasser teased.

  “I’m not jealous, and I have a nose. He smelled like whiskey and talk, not the Lady’s bed,” she said before finishing her bread.

  “I wasn’t aware you knew what her bed smelled like. Dirty girl,” I told her, and she smiled before pouring more coffee.

  “Roses. Everything in that house smells like roses if you can stand it.” She shuddered then smiled again. “Not for me. I prefer the open desert, clean air.”

  “You don’t like it here?” I asked her, waving around at our surroundings.

  “Sure, but you smell like the desert, and the air in here smells like the sky. Much better than roses and old men grunting away to spill their seed and their secrets.” Mira was as practical as she was beautiful, a combination that made her even more likeable in my eyes.

  “Speaking of secrets. Lasser, do you have access to a solar panel?” I asked him, changing the topic from thoughts of wrinkled men in the nude. Some things are best left alone.

  “I have one, but it’s broken, or at least broken to me. You’re welcome to look at it and see if it’s of use,” he said. He pointed down a hall I hadn’t seen before. “Storeroom. Down there, I’ll open it and you’re welcome to use anything inside.”

  “Anything?” I asked him.

  He understood my intent. “There aren’t any guns, but if there were, you would be most welcome. I save things taken as payment, and over the years, my collection has grown. I confess that many of the items are beyond my understanding, but the Empty is a place of mysteries, and many of them find their way here.”

  “Mind if I take a look now?” I asked. I was eager to start and wanted to assess the inventory without prying eyes. Namely, the Lady.

  “Be my guest, please.” Lasser handed over a key fashioned from what looked like iron. The surface was pitted with age, and there were only three teeth. “Second to last door. There’s a window, but there are bars on it. Throw the shutters open for light, but no torches inside if you please. There are things inside that might find fire to be disagreeable.” His brows lifted as he pointed, and I stood, ready to see what I had to work with.

  Mira rose to her feet. “I’m coming too. There might be things he won’t recognize.”

  “As you wish,” Lasser said agreeably. His plans were for coffee and contemplation rather than pawing through a storeroom of broken artifacts.

  We walked down the hall together, feet echoing on the cool tile. When we reached the door, I noticed there was dust on the handle. That was a good sign. I liked forgotten things. It meant they hadn’t been ruined by the hand of man.

  The lock opened slowly with a series of muffled clicks as the tumblers moved. I pushed the heavy door open to reveal a room in deep gloom. Thin lines of light pierced the heavy shutter, enhanced by vertical bars placed closely together, running from top to sill on the narrow window. A smell of age and dust crept out in the swirling air, making Mira sneeze with explosive force.

  “Sorry,” she said, wiping her nose while her eyes watered. “Dusty in here.”

  “And old.” I appraised the room. It wa
s five meters by six meters, with a tall ceiling and heavy shelves filled with darkened shapes. “Light first. Then we investigate.”

  “I’ll get the shutters,” Mira said, moving to the window through a maze of stacked items. Some were covered in cloth, others left to collect dust in the still air. I couldn’t see much of anything, but based on size alone, there was a huge collection of things that might be useful. Lasser’s collection was far superior to the backbreaking work of being a scavenger. “Anything we should find first?”

  “Solar panels. The fans that Wetterick’s scribe used to power his computer? I need them. We need power for tech, and we need it to be mobile,” I said.

  She was already rummaging through the room on her way to the outer wall but stopped when she got to the window. There were two heavy bolts thrown into locks, keeping the shutter closed outside the bars. Reaching through, Mira grunted with effort to release the bolts, frozen from disuse. “Tough to move.”

  “Let me try,” I said. I reached past her, grabbing the first bolt and breaking it free with a squeaky snap. For my new muscles, the rusted metal was no problem. “Next.” The second came free with less effort, and Mira pushed the shutters open to let light and wind inside with a welcome rush. “Lasser’s been busy,” I remarked, looking over the contents of a room that looked like a medieval weapons collector and tech nerd shared an apartment.

  “This is unexpected,” Mira said.

  We were frozen in place, staring at the shelves of items that made no sense together and even less by themselves. I picked up a broken sword, the hilt melted by something like acid, pitted with dots and reeking of chemicals. I wiped my hands out of habit, leaving the broken weapon behind to examine the screen of a phone, whole but darkened from disconnection to any power source. “Plenty of tech here, just in fragments. I can do things with what’s here, but we need power.”

  “What about this?” Mira asked. She held up a triangle of glass, backed by circuitry.

  “Let me see,” I said, taking the glass to examine it. “Might be another kind of screen, but I can’t tell shit about it without juice.” I ground my teeth in frustration, peering into a wooden box filled with broken plastic housing from a glorified kitchen mixer.

  “Keep looking. Lots to see,” Mira said in her usual good cheer. She kept lifting, shaking, and moving things from table to table, even waving a thick sword around with practiced form. “Good steel here too.”

  “I wish Lasser had a stash of guns he’d forgotten.” I kicked softly at a box, doing little more than banging the hell out of my toe. A rattle caught my ear. I kicked again, but just enough to move the box.

  Something shook inside. “Mira, let’s open this.”

  She cleared off a space on the nearest table, shoving aside a stack of rigid animal skins that broke into fragments. After grinning at me, she pointed to the open area. “Put it there. Fah. Dead animals.”

  “Old dead animals have their place, just not here. Lend me your knife?” I asked her, holding my hand out. She dropped a small folding knife into my palm and I slit the thin box open, marveling that it was intact at all. “Like balsa wood but glued down.” The lid shattered under my blade, revealing two rows of black objects on their sides, edges up and packed in styrofoam. A packing list on paper was yellowed and curled, its ink faded to near oblivion.

  “Chinese,” I said, looking over the remaining characters.

  “What’s that?” Mira stared at the list, her brow furrowed.

  “A language from my time. A country too, with over a billion people.” Even as I said the words, I knew that whatever was left of China, it wasn’t a billion people. It might not even be a memory, let alone a culture or a language. For the hundredth time, I wondered just when the hell I was.

  “What are those things?” Mira asked. She plucked one from the packing, turning it to flash in the light.

  I picked up a pair of items, and the future—and my own past—came swimming into my mind as I saw what was on the front of them.

  “Holy shit. Calculators.” I laughed. Of all the things to survive and be squirreled away by the owner of a post-apocalyptic hotel, it would be solar-powered calculators from China that could unlock my memory.

  “How many—okay, good,” I said, flicking my fingers over the rows to count them. There were four rows, not two, layered evenly and all pristine, kept away from the elements by luck and wood that was thin enough to shatter with a light touch. “Forty-eight.” I eyeballed the little solar panel on the front, adding the area together. “We’ve got enough panel here to generate a low-voltage system. I need cables, Mira. Do you know what they are?”

  “We use them, yes. Any special kind?” She spoke while searching, moving through case after case of discarded tech, raising a further cloud of dust in the sunbeams that split the air. “Like this?” She held up a bundle of coils, no two alike in length or design.

  “Perfect. Grab it. See that gray metal box? Get it too and any screwdrivers or tools you see. We’ll do this in our room. I need light and fresh air.”

  “And no dead animals,” Mira added.

  “Right. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a little engineering to do before Lady Silk shows up.”

  “What’s engineering?” Mira asked as we bustled out of the storeroom, our prizes in hand.

  “It’s where smart people fix the ideas of a genius so that they work,” I told her.

  “Sounds like the genius needs a day or two in the Empty to show them what life is really like.” Her lips thinned into a line. I could tell she had some experience with people telling her what should work instead of what actually worked.

  “I was a Marine. I hear you,” I said, locking the door behind us.

  “What’s a Marine?” she asked.

  “Long story. Remember our friend Hardhead? Imagine if you crossed him with an angry soldier. Well, you’re getting close.”

  17

  We worked quickly on the roof, which was open and sunny as opposed to the cooler interior of the house. Lasser kept the staff away, and Mira proved to have deft hands when it came to removing the small solar panels, laying them end to end in a glittering display of what looked like a mirror. The ability to create power—even in small amounts—was nothing short of miraculous, given the conditions around us, and I was thankful for the chance to get some answers.

  I didn’t expect to like them, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I was alive, awake, and remade by technology I didn’t fully understand. I suspected that the tube and ‘bots weren’t fully understood by the very people who used them on me, which would explain why so much of the world was a flyblown shithole instead of a technological paradise. I used to read books about what would happen after the world ended from some disaster, and the authors always thought that no matter how bad things got, civilization would always find a way to come back.

  They weren’t just wrong, they were naïve.

  I’ve seen how low humans can go during a war, let alone the end of the earth, and cute little villages with a blacksmith were heaven compared to the reality of what rose up from the ashes of a conflict that left humans fighting and dying over scraps of bread or a swallow of water. The Empty was a howling waste, filled with creatures that were unnatural.

  The same could be said of the people and their beasts.

  Looking down on the busy street, I saw the sloped shoulders of several ogres, their pelts gleaming in the sun as they dragged wagons and carts and even a kind of chariot back and forth at their master’s whims. They were three feet taller than me, muscled like superheroes, and stronger than any animal I’d ever seen, but there was something about them that set my warning bells ringing, like a distant threat I couldn’t quite explain.

  I broke away from staring at the street and focused on linking the solar panels together. Mira scraped together enough cold solder and wire to connect everything we had, but to perfect the array, I’d have to get creative. The sun was constant in the Empty, but that didn’t m
ean I could get sloppy.

  “The sun’s too hot to allow this anywhere near the drives and laptop we’ll be using, but our cord is short enough that we can’t run it through the roof. That means we’re going to need a small shelter up here, and we’ll have to work in the early morning and dusk, maybe, so that we don’t cook off the computer. Too damned hot to let it roast just because we need answers,” I told her.

  “She’s on her way,” Mira said.

  I cut my eyes toward the Lady’s house and saw nothing at first, then my eyes settled on a trader, flailing the air with a whip and shouting like a wild drunk. He had a filthy beard and torn robe, his feet bare and dirty, staggering forward in a series of lurching steps that made everyone get the hell out of his way.

  “She’s good,” I admitted, knowing that the trader would smell like roses underneath the excellent disguise.

  “It’s her hips,” Mira said, a slight smile curving her lips. “She can swagger, but she’s too graceful, even playing the drunk.”

  After a moment of watching, I saw she was right. Even under the character, the Lady was still there, but the whip and shouted curses kept anyone curious well away.

  “Mind letting her in when she staggers to the door? I’ll have these connected and run the cable. We’ll have an hour or two before it gets too hot, and maybe, I’ll have some answers.”

  Mira touched me on the shoulder as she left, not with jealousy but assurance. It was the kind of thing only confidence can create, and I watched her go to the descending stairs, my thoughts flashing forward to when we would be in bed later that night. Despite being in a future of ruins, some things had actually gotten better.

  I snapped together the remaining connections while listening for Mira and Lady Silk to come up to the roof, and after a moment of silence, heard them both talking in friendly tones. That was good. I didn’t need bullshit rivalries of any kind when there were plenty of legitimate threats from people—and creatures—that would kill me without a second thought.