Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  “Pterosaur, we called them, or rather scientists did, but not really. It’s not a natural creature, at least not in my time. Or yours, either, given the reaction?” I asked Mira.

  “Never seen one, but then again, we’ve never had a forest here. The Empty has been dead for a long time,” she said.

  “If you plant it, they will come,” I mused, thinking that I’d made a mistake in assuming everyone who showed up to the Oasis would be friendly. The flying lizard with an attitude proved that theory wrong. “How long had it been overhead, Derin?”

  “Not long. Spotted us just south of the last rocky outcroppings. You know the ones east of the path?” Derin said, taking my offered hand.

  “So a southern critter. Good to know. Seems like the kind of thing that would live along coasts for some reason, but I’m not sure. Scoot, you okay?” I asked her.

  “I’m okay. Ogres are sad,” she said, her face wrinkled with concern.

  “Do they grieve like we do?” I said.

  “Sort of. It’s slower for them—everything is—but we’ll bury the big guy and let the others wander around in the forest, if that’s okay?” Derin asked.

  “Fine with us. There’s water, and we can feed them if necessary,” I said, as Scoot urged the remaining ogres forward, their mournful groans sounding like a funeral dirge. “What’s in the wagon?”

  “A forge. An anvil. Everything I have, and everything you need. How’s that for starters?” he asked, smiling broadly.

  “You are a welcome sight, friend. Glad you took me up on that offer. Wetterick getting out of hand?” I asked.

  “He’ll lose control of the post in three months. The Hannahs hold control over Silk’s place, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up here, too. They were rounding up wagons as we left, but we couldn’t wait for them. The post is done. Kassos sent traders to clean us out, and I knew what was coming next. Packed up in the dark and made off without a word. It was the only way to get free without Wetterick trying to take a cut. Or all of it. You’ll see,” Derin said.

  “Armor?” I asked.

  “And weapons, but a lot of materials, too. I remember what you said, Jack, and I know you need me. I need you too, and so does Scoot. All we want is a chance,” he said.

  “You have it, and more. Welcome to the Free Oasis,” I told him, waving my arm to indicate his new home.

  “Smells good. You cooking?” Derin asked.

  “A pig the size of a house. If you’re hungry, you’ve come to the right place. Pick a spot for your forge, and we’ll start dropping the heavy stuff now. We’re planting this afternoon, but you come first,” I told him.

  “Pork and freedom. It’s like a story made real,” Derin said with a laugh. “I have a suggestion about the forge?”

  “It’s your field of expertise. Tell me,” I said.

  “It should be away from where Scoot and I will live, and away from everyone else, too. Lots of heat and noise, you know,” Derin said.

  “Let’s pick the spot. We can use your shop as the heart of our official crafter’s district, and plan for growth around it. You’ll need access to water, right?” I asked him.

  “Water, sand. A safe place for cooling racks would be good, and a roof. I don’t necessarily need walls, but out here any wind would be welcome,” he said.

  “Then follow me. I’ve got an idea.” I led him, along with everyone else, to an outer location, free from the trees and in open air. It was on the eastern side of the Oasis, closer to the place we would make our second habitat.

  When we arrived, he looked around, curious but uncertain. “Why here?”

  “We’re sinking a well over there, and then we’re going to build a wall. This will be a defensible position, but also livable. We’re not building a prison. You can put your shop here, and we’ll expand north and south from your place to make a row of crafters. There are three channels here, and plenty of water. It will work,” I said.

  “It will. Mind if I sketch an outline?” he asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Scoot? Opposite side mark our lines,” he told his daughter, who marched across the sand across from him. They stepped off a circle, then a square attached to it. “The forge will go here. The rest is our shop, and access for everyone else. I’ll put a low wall for safety. Is there stone nearby?”

  “More than we can ever use. There are a dozen outcroppings in a half klick, and that’s not using any of the ruins that I know are nearby,” I told him.

  “Then this is the place.” He approached and shook my hand with a wide smile. “Thank you for this, Jack. It’s a new beginning.”

  I looked back to where the pterosaur had fallen, my thoughts going dark. “For all of us,” I said.

  4

  “Shh,” Silk said, her leg slipping over mine, hands working down the muscles of my stomach.

  “Hey,” I whispered. There were only stars above, flaring to life through the light movement of leaves. The fire was gone, light snores coming from everyone around it. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  She kissed me, hard, then lowered herself onto me, riding in a soft rhythm. At the top of each stroke, she would hesitate, like a rollercoaster, then plunge down smoothly, waiting, watching. Her eyes were bright, her hands warm on my chest.

  We moved together in complete silence until I felt the beginning of her crest, a wave of motion that sent her eyes into a flutter. “Timing is everything,” I whispered, letting go while trying hard not to make any noise.

  Her breasts pushed into me, heavy and slick with sweat. It was a cool night, and our bodies radiated heat even as she edged to one side, but I wasn’t done with her. I put a firm hand on her hip, entering her again from the side, and we locked together, barely moving. Despite her pleasure, she was troubled. Silk was many things, but with me, she was no liar.

  “What is it?” I asked, moving inside her at a glacial pace.

  “The Hannahs will be here soon, and I don’t want to share. I have—” She pushed against me, hot with need. “—Mira in my life, but she loves you and she’s not—”

  “Trained to extract money and secrets from men with her golden kitty?” I asked, smiling.

  “Kitty. There’s a word I didn’t expect to hear in The Empty, but yes.” She adjusted, clamping down on my entire length. “They’re not the only ones trained to please.”

  “They’re welcome here, but do you even know if they’re on the way?”

  “Hannah is smart. Hannah Too is even smarter. They’ll be here, if they don’t get taken by the desert,” she said, her voice thick with lust.

  I felt myself begin to lose control under the force of her motion, speeding up as care and caution fell by the wayside. We were both close again, and secrets were for people who weren’t us. “Then they can live here in peace. I won’t turn them away because of their talents. We need talent.”

  “You have my talent to spare. And Mira’s.” Her tongue flashed over my lips, warm and elusive.

  “And you have mine,” I said, raising the pressure on her hip. I slid further in, the angle pure connection as we both reached an unspoken agreement about the moment, the future, and other things. Shaking, she kissed me, and I kissed her back.

  Building a world was hard. It would be easier with Silk, and I told her without saying a thing.

  When the sun rose, I was already up, washed, and waiting to greet the day’s work. Derin and Lasser joined me at the eastern edge of the oasis, and after a few moments, I heard the tumult of Natif and the Harlings bringing the fire back from coals.

  “Where are your women?” Derin asked.

  My women. I paused at the phrase, then realized it was true. I had a commitment just as real as anything that existed in my time; perhaps even more serious because their lives depended on me. “If I know them, they’re doing pre-dawn hunting. Mira saw snake tracks, and even though we have plenty of pork, she’s got a plan for using their hides to make shoes and such.”

  “Snakes? Ho
w big?” Derin asked.

  “Three meters and up. Big enough to eat, and big enough to kill if they bite. Their hide is tough and water-resistant. It’s time we took more from The Empty than it takes from us,” I said.

  Mira called out across the dunes.

  “Seems you’re right,” Lasser said.

  She carried a swinging shape that could only be a huge rattler, the inert form looped twice over her shoulder.

  “A successful hunt, and before the sun’s even up. I think you’ve got the right people here, Jack,” Derin said. “Which reminds me. Today, I begin my work, and that snake will come in handy. Every scrap of skin you find or provide will go to armor, belts, shoes, and other things we need. I can work with many different materials, but I’m not even certain what we have on hand.”

  “Everything we kill, we skin. All skins go to you, and Natif and Scoot can be assigned to your forge as a work detail. You okay with them?” I asked, more for his opinion of Natif.

  “More than okay. Are you sure Natif isn’t better used somewhere else? The kid’s smart. He would make an excellent . . . well, anything, really, and Scoot and I are already a team,” Derin said, shrugging.

  “Fair enough. Would it be okay if he dropped in on a casual basis? I need no less than three people to know a skill. We need backups to backups if we’re going to thrive out here,” I said.

  “You mean survive?” Derin asked.

  “Nope. Thrive. I don’t want us scraping by. We’re going to build something permanent, not a settlement that can dry up and blow away after a single bad harvest. We’re going all in on this place, Derin. Roads. A government, fair but small, and an end to this lawless bullshit that Wetterick seems to think is civilized. I won’t tolerate that kind of thing, and my people won’t either. We’re going to be free. We’re going to bring the best parts of my world back, even if it means reshaping this flyblown desert one square meter at a time,” I said.

  Derin grunted, pleased at my intentions. “That’s a lot for one lifetime, Jack.”

  “I’ve got more than a lifetime to work. The ‘bots in my blood—I expect to be here for a while. How long, I don’t know, but I survived 2000 years in a metal coffin, and it’s better that I start planning for a long life now, if I can avoid getting killed.” I shook my head, thinking of the amount of work that lay ahead.

  “Sounds lonely,” Derin said.

  “It might be. I have Mira and Silk now, and everyone else to care for. I think it’s mutual, but I understand what you mean. While my people get old, I won’t, at least not at the same rate. That’s going to be hard for everyone,” I admitted.

  “At least you’re aware of it.” He stretched his huge shoulders and smiled. “Time to do some lifting. Does your sense of duty stop you from grunt work?”

  “Not at all. I was always good at breaking things,” I told him.

  “You better not. This is how we arm for the future,” he said, waving me toward his wagon. When we arrived, he opened the back doors to reveal an orderly space packed to the roof with gear.

  “Did you bring the whole post with you?” I asked.

  “Seems like it. Tools and the forge, things we can’t replicate without help—or a working forge. We’ll be self-sufficient once this is up and running, if we can find materials,” he said, hefting a large stone block. It was numbered, and I saw he had every piece of the forge in order for easy reassembly. Smart. I grabbed a pair of blocks in sequence and followed him, placing them where he wanted. In a few minutes, the forge began to take shape, leaning inward as the stones got incrementally smaller.

  “Not today, but down the road we’re going to need an identity as a people, a place,” I said, handing him a bundle of metal rods. He began sliding them into small holes, and I saw they were support struts for a rack of some kind.

  “A uniform?” he asked.

  “More an identifying item, like a color, or a shape, something like that. My nation’s colors were red, white, and blue, but I don’t know if those are easy to produce. We already have a flag, and the stars would be easy to make. As to the blue background, I don’t know.” I kicked at the gravel, making a groove where his security wall would rise once we began bringing in outside material.

  “Why have an—what did you call it? An identity?” Derin asked. He was confused by the concept, and I realized that statehood was an alien concept.

  “Because people want to belong, and we will eventually grow beyond a simple group with common interests. To be honest, those interests are mine, for now, but in the future we’re going to be a functioning state, with some of the problems that come about from that. Mostly it’s just a numbers game, and not everyone who comes here will work out. Those who don’t will have to go, but I don’t think it’s going to be as great an issue as it was in my time,” I said.

  “Why? People are still people, right?” Derin asked. He was sorting an array of hammers that looked like he’d gone to Thor’s yard sale.

  “They are, but The Empty made them hard. It made people—it took the soft edges away, and what’s left are the kind of people who fought a flying dragon without asking why, they just did it because the alternative was to be eaten. Those are the kind of people I need to rebuild. We can make life good again, Derin. Good for you, but more importantly, a world that Scoot can live in without as much fear for her survival.”

  “I’d like that,” Derin said, squinting up into the sun. “Did your people really go to the stars?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I haven’t made it through all the drives that Silk saved. There’s a lot of history to cover, but since my upgrades were part of a plan to send people to the stars, I don’t think it happened. I think the virus happened first, and shot that dream to shit,” I said. “There’s a lot more of my world left than meets the eye. We found messages down under in the hallways, and they tell of things that could be the difference between life and death for us. Things like a power plant, much larger than what we’ve built here, and a lot more sites where tech might have survived. Based on that alone, I’ll be going out into The Empty whenever I can, because our job isn’t just here. It’s out there, too.”

  “A power plant would change this world forever. I wonder if it could make enough energy to send us to the stars, even all these years after the virus. That would go a long way toward me forgiving your people for leaving me with this as my home,” he said, waving at the vast Empty around us.

  “I know we were close to freedom. Real freedom, but like I said, the virus torched that hope,” I spat.

  “Keeping people on a world where they feared their leaders. I didn’t understand how cruel your world could be, but now I do,” Derin said, his eyes dark with anger.

  “Why would you think we hated our leaders?” I asked him.

  “I saw the way you looked at Wetterick. I know a man who sees something he knows. You recognized his cruelty, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “True. Didn’t know it was that obvious, but, yeah. Our leaders were—I think I’m glad I woke up here, Derin. We have a chance to reboot the planet, and we can start right here, at your forge. You don’t know how glad I am that you’re here,” I told him.

  “Yes, I do. I’ve seen you fight, more or less, and I think that while you may be very good at building things for a while, you will have to break them, too. That means I’ll be quite busy,” he said, laughing as he threw a timber over his shoulder. He was incredibly strong, and I grunted when I grabbed a similar timber to carry the pair with him. He put them down a few feet apart. They would be the foundation for a raised platform, and with each passing minute, his work area began to take shape.

  “I plan on breaking only the things that fight back against a free world. Other than that, I think this place has seen enough violence,” I said.

  “You have a gift for it, Jack. Don’t hold back just because the stones are tired of blood. There are slaves, and pain, and all of it might have to come down before you can build it up. I know. I
make things, remember?” His smile was easy, but the truth he’d spoken was bitter. I thanked him and moved off, mired in my own thoughts of what was next.

  Silk was waiting, a slow smile on her lips as she watched me move from tree to tree. “Are you stalking me?”

  “Now why would I do that?” I asked her. I could feel my smile return despite the conversation with Derin. Silk was beautiful in ways the world didn’t deserve, just like Mira, and I knew that at the core of my purpose was finding a way to protect them from whatever lay outside the edge of our little Eden.

  “Good answer. Are we planting today?” she asked. Her eyes were brilliant in the sun.

  “We are. About forty, I’d say. I think we come out to around Derin’s location, should give him shade in a couple years, and we can leave a space for him to expand. Like a living border,” I said.

  “I like that we have a future. I’ll rally the troops and start,” she said, walking away to find Scoot and Natif and whoever else could be corralled for digging.

  That left me alone, looking to the east, my thoughts sifting through possible outcomes of each action I considered. “The Hannahs,” I found myself mumbling. I knew they were on the way because I’d seen their intelligence, and smart people knew to leave a collapsing empire like Wetterick’s little fiefdom.

  That meant they were out there, somewhere, and a greeting party made good sense. I could go alone, but in The Empty, that was dumb, even for someone like me. Better to take Mira and hedge my bets. Her desert instincts were excellent, and she hated planting trees.

  “Mira,” I called, seeing her bent over a small hole in the ground, her glare of disgust nearly physical as the walls collapsed. “Feel like a walk in the sand?”

  She threw her shovel down next to Natif, who laughed with good nature at her frustration. “At this point, I’d rather go fight one of those giant pigs. I hate farming.”

  “It’s not farming. It’s digging little holes,” Natif replied, helpfully. His grin was wicked as he hollowed out a hole with minimal effort, dropping a young oak in and pushing the dirt back.