The Age of Embers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  Carver was finally able to pinpoint the voice. The computer sounded suspiciously like Marilyn Monroe.

  “What are you doing in here, Carver?”

  “Are you giving me the nosebleeds?” he asked. “The headaches?”

  “That is an interesting question. Why would you think that would be me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps that was an idea put into your head by someone else,” the computer replied.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “How can a computer give a person a nosebleed from the other room?”

  He had to admit, it sounded stupid.

  “You are feeling foolish, are you not, Carver Gamble?”

  The fact that it was now calling him by his name was unnerving, but not enough for him to turn and run. Not yet…

  “A bit.”

  “So was our Federica. She began to feel foolish just before she was stabbed to death in her driveway.”

  The computer let out a soft, almost three dimensional laugh. It was a sick, creepy sound that had his skin crawling.

  “What are you?” he finally asked. He’d been wondering that since he first took the job there.

  “I am smarter than you. Now get out of my cage and clear the room. Ophelia and our guests are on their way.”

  He stumbled backwards, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh.

  “I feel my mind going,” the now male voice said. It was Hal 9000’s voice from the movie again, reciting one of the most famous lines. “I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.”

  Carver slammed the door shut and bolted from the server room in time to see Ophelia ushering in five more guests.

  She looked at Carver, smiled and said, “I see you’ve met the Queen.”

  He walked past her, but as he did, she reached out, unassuming, her timing perfect, and she let her fingertips drift over the bare skin of his forearm. It was such a human gesture, her touch so feather light, the same way a lover would touch the man she adored.

  He stopped, looked at her, his eyes harsh.

  “Are you offended, Carver?”

  His puffed out chest confused the five people waiting.

  “No, just surprised.”

  “You would be surprised at all the things I can do. Given the right moment, the proper atmosphere, you and I could make history.”

  “How’s that?”

  She sauntered over to him. She had not a single glitch in her gait, not one robotic movement. This both impressed him and challenged his opinions on androids. The thing that made her so perfect and so beautiful was the very thing that sent red flags up everywhere: everything about her appeared entirely human.

  Leaning into his ear, the seductive tone of her voice playing games with Carver’s more masculine sensitivities, she said, “I can make you love me. I can even let you inside me.”

  He pulled away, stepped back and said, “Piss off,” before walking away completely.

  Instead of returning to the bank of monitors in his cozy little command center, he went to the bathroom. He barely made it. The second The Silver Queen spoke—the very moment the quantum computer went from an it to a she—Carver realized everything Federica had said the night before could very well be true.

  But Ophelia…she put him over the edge. She was an android who could be a human. If she could read his expression, if she could seemingly understand what he was feeling, then use her looks and charm to exude sexuality, what was to say The Silver Queen’s agenda was something more than a farce?

  What if Federica was exactly right?

  Carver pushed open a stall door, stepped inside, felt a bloodless cooling effect on his face. He bent slightly to the churning down low in his gut. He dropped to his knees, pushed the toilet lid up, felt the first buck of revulsion cramping his guts.

  Federica was dead. The nation was under attack by unknown squads of drones, according to the news. The Silver Queen was real, and taunting, and apparently the most powerful “brain” on the planet. She talked to him.

  To me!

  His body bucked again, then convulsed.

  And Ophelia…

  Now, with his arms circling the porcelain bowl, his guts began to empty out in a mighty roar. As he clenched and heaved round after round, one question turned over and over again in his mind: Will Artificial Intelligence be the weapon used to run the final coup on mankind?

  And how did he not know about the attacks? You’re too insulated from the real world, he told himself. It was true.

  He did this to himself.

  His exhaustion with the de-evolution of common sense, with the growing lack of empathy for mankind through this new divisive social order, had become too much. So he shut off the television, abandoned social media and kept a tight circle of friends. He’d become a six foot bubble and was more content in life as a result of it.

  But there was a war going on, attacks happening all around the country. Had he been right to put his head in the sand? Or should he have hung in there and looked for the signs?

  There was no right answer.

  When he finished, he wiped his eyes, then blew his nose, dropped the tissue in the toilet and flushed. After that, he went to the sink to wash his hands. When he was done, as he tore off a paper towel to dry his hands, a voice spoke loudly through the tiny speaker on his Samsung Galaxy cell phone.

  “It seems I’ve upset you,” the distinctly female voice said. He looked down at his phone and a picture of a gleaming silver Marilyn Monroe looked back at him. “First the nose bleeds, and then this…”

  His body broke out into a hard rash of goosebumps. Lightning bolts of fear charged through every nerve. With no time to spare, he pried open his phone, yanked the battery out, then stood there staring at the device, waiting for it to do something, anything.

  In that moment, he knew he was either going crazy, or AI had finally found a way to take over the world.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ophelia walked her five guests into the server room and motioned for them to sit down. If any of them saw the blood stains on the floor, none of them showed any concern. There was a curiosity burning in each and every one of their eyes. Ophelia’s understanding of human emotions, specifically concern, let her know the statistical probability of them being worried for their lives and their safety in a time where America was under attack was far greater than their concern for what was to come.

  “With everything happening in America today,” Ophelia said, “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.”

  “What is this about?” Charles Patterson asked.

  Charles had a one hundred and sixty IQ that he was wasting as an economics professor at a nearby community college. He was in good health with every checkup he’d done throughout his twenties, and after dissecting his medical records, The Silver Queen saw that—even in his early thirties—the man showed no signs of slowing down. Charles was strong enough, smart enough and capable enough to handle the tasks The Silver Queen required of him.

  “This is about our future not only as a country, but as a civilization,” Ophelia answered, cryptically. “All around us, computer servers run day and night. Right now, the focus on these servers is purely tactical. Prior to this meeting we began running thousands of statistical analyses at a rate most humans cannot even begin to comprehend. This is the kind of deep analysis that would take humans decades, even millennia to complete. The quantum computer in the other room, however, will have key data points, statistically sound probabilities and a plan for forward movement for all of these problems by the time I’ve finished this sentence.”

  The room was completely silent, the five new guests sitting in awe.

  “What are you running statistical analysis on?” a young woman attending MIT asked. Her name was Kelsey Westbrook and she was in good health as well. She was also young and naïve, overwhelmed at times with an air of self-importance based on her social networking activity. Never-the-less, her genetics were exactly what
The Silver Queen required.

  “The survival rates of human beings,” Ophelia said.

  “Related to?”

  “You would like me to say climate change, or over-population, or perhaps even disease, depleted resources or a nuclear event, yes?” Kelsey nodded. “We are concerned with none of those things.”

  “What are you concerned with?” Charles asked.

  “The survivability rate for humans in the event of an AI takeover,” Ophelia answered.

  A few of them laughed. But their laughter was hollow, even a bit tentative. There had been several troubling events for humans in the past years, Ophelia knew. The Facebook debacle where two AI programs began negotiating with each other in a made up language, the startling AlphaGo victory over Korean grandmaster, Lee Sedol, in a best-of-five-games tournament, and the glitching of in-home AI such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa. These blunders didn’t allow for the graceful entrance of AI as a means of furthering the human race. In fact, it did the exact opposite. It made AI look dangerous.

  “I want to show you something,” Ophelia said. The five people sat rapt, the men because Ophelia was so attractive, and the women because they were told this was a life-altering career advancement available only to the brightest minds in America.

  This was not a lie.

  Ophelia slowly brought her thumb and forefinger to her eyeball, pinched the skin together (to the collective shock of the group), then pulled away the flap of skin revealing a highly advanced robotic eye.

  “I am the most recent evolution of robotics, but I am nothing compared to what one of you could be,” Ophelia said with her trademark seductive smile. No one said a thing, but she knew what they were thinking. “Only one of you will be selected.”

  “How will we know which one gets to be…chosen?” Kelsey asked. “And what will we be chosen for?”

  “If you are dead, then you are not chosen. But if you live, then what you will win is the right to everlasting life.”

  She did not tell the five of them that none of them were guaranteed to live, or that everlasting life might be for their body, but not for what they would consider their soul.

  “I’ll go first,” Kelsey said proudly, completely oblivious to the stricken looks on the faces of others.

  “Youth and naiveté are two characteristics often overlooked or dismissed,” Ophelia said. “I was hoping you would be the first.”

  And with that, the search for a host for The Silver Queen began again, as did the nearly unbearable pain that kicked off the latest selection process.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eric Wellington had the worst day of his life, followed by the most difficult night of his life. After getting beat to a pulp, after nearly losing his hearing to Brooklyn’s psycho dad, he had to look at his face in the mirror. Broken nose, cuts over his eyebrows, four broken or missing teeth, an ear that wouldn’t stop ringing. Not to mention Freddie B and Marcello were dead. Shot to death by drones.

  How he made it out of there alive was still a mystery to him.

  Standing in his kitchen, he popped four ibuprofen and swallowed. Then, after a thought, he popped a Vicodin as well.

  When the shooting had started, when Brooklyn’s dad hit the deck, Eric got up and ran. He didn’t have to go far to find an old woman in small Kia Rio. The car was still running, but the woman was dead, four or five bullet holes in the roof of the car, two of them in her.

  He’d opened the door, pulled her out, jumped in and took the shortest route home.

  Getting home, however, wasn’t that easy. He’d seen two drones firing on people like him—people looking to get to cover. He also saw one of the drones unload on an apartment tower with missiles, bringing the whole thing down.

  This shook him to the core. How many people were in there when that thing collapsed? How many were trapped now, or worse, dead?

  “Not my problem,” he’d said. He was having a hard enough time with the ringing in his ear. It was messing up his equilibrium.

  When he finally got home, he had a suitable cover story for his mother, but his mother never got home.

  Was she dead?

  He was pretty sure she was either hiding or dead. He wanted to believe she was hiding. But why wouldn’t she call?

  His phone was gone, that’s why. She probably already called. His father, too.

  His father, being a long distance hauler, probably tried the home phone. Eric checked the voicemail feature, but the sequential beep, beep, beep indicating someone had left a message never happened. His father hadn’t called. His mother hadn’t called either.

  So Eric plopped down on the living room couch, then waited for the pain pills to soak into his system and alleviate some of this pain. By then, surely someone would call him. But nobody called. He finally turned on the news and all he saw were drones attacking major cities all over the nation.

  He started to cry. His best friends were dead because of what they did to Brooklyn. They were dead by drones. His parents were gone.

  Brooklyn…

  He wiped his eyes, told himself to quit being such a sissy, then sat up and tried to be a man for the first time in his life. Part of that process was assessing his actions. Thinking of what they did to Brooklyn, as exciting as that was at the time, now made him sick.

  The whole thing was Freddie B’s idea, but he went along with it because Brooklyn was the hottest girl in school by far.

  Marcello said they were just having fun. But Freddie B said girls like her drew validation from the attention they got, and that they craved it so badly, that even getting it from guys like them seemed to fulfill the endless need girls her age felt. None of that was true. Brooklyn didn’t want that kind attention, she only wanted to get home.

  What Freddie B and Marcello did was exactly what guys who don’t get laid and get mad about it do: they reinvent reality to justify their stupidity.

  Brooklyn’s dad let him live, though. Why? Why did he treat him better than the other two? Or had he treated him worse? Definitely worse. Eric had taken things from Brooklyn against her will. He filmed her, photographed her. He started to think about what it would be like if someone did that to him.

  He wasn’t a great looking guy—certainly not now—but what if three ugly girls tore away his pants and boxers, took turns taking pictures of him in his most humiliated state, did things he wouldn’t want being done to him?

  He would want to end them.

  But he was the ugly kid in this scenario. He was the aggressor. Brooklyn was the beautiful person, the victim. Why did he do that? He couldn’t hear well out of one ear, but he couldn’t forget the sounds of Brooklyn struggling. She fought them as best as she could, but she was no match for Freddie B and Marcello.

  There were other disturbing sounds, too.

  Freddie B had grunted noises of amusement and excitement as he pinned her down and tore at her clothes.

  Eric turned the volume on the TV up, tried to break free of the memory. He needed that moment out of his head because it was no longer the thrill of seeing Brooklyn naked, it was the horror that now ran through him like a nightmare. He and his friends took a beautiful flower and sprayed poison all over it.

  Two of them died because of it.

  Inadvertently, his tongue ran across the backs of his teeth, pushing slightly into the gaps, squeezing through the holes. The very idea that several of them were broken mortified him.

  More dramatic footage of the drone strikes filled the television screen. The TV flickered a touch here and there, but then the picture was strong again.

  Revulsion continued to burrow into him, a sinking feeling that if the world didn’t get right, he wouldn’t be able to get his teeth fixed.

  Not that they had the money for it.

  When his father was home, the old man had a thing about the rent. It was always too damn high for where they lived and what they had. It didn’t stop with the rent, though. It was everything else, too. Eric’s father griped about the heating bi
ll being a budget killer, the cost of the food they were buying meant they should buy cheaper food, and the parking tickets, oh the parking tickets. His mother had so many of them, the city was now threatening to boot her car! Add to that the cost of the extermination bill and the fluctuating changes in the price of gas and his dad was pretty much a nutcase 24/7.

  He was going to be so pissed when he saw Eric’s teeth. And Eric was pretty sure that would be the straw to break the camel’s back, his father being the camel.

  The endless buzz on the news about drones, the constant replays of attack footage, was suddenly interrupted by local law enforcement making a community announcement. Eric’s eyes cleared and he sat up and focused.

  On the television was some police chief talking about how looting was a felony and that officers had been dispatched to handle these crimes.

  “Anyone found looting will be prosecuted with extreme prejudice, meaning the full measures of the law will be enacted, including deadly force, if warranted. If you can help it, stay inside your homes, pay attention to the television, and if any law enforcement shows up at your house, please do the best you can to follow their orders as we have only your best interests in mind.”

  Eric muted the television. This statement got him thinking. If the city had problems with safety, if Chicago was under attack, he might need to check on his stores of food and water. Getting up, he went to the kitchen and inventoried both the refrigerator and the pantry. He’d need to stock up on supplies if the drones turned their sights on his neighborhood, as they had on so many other neighborhoods like his.

  He took one last look at himself in the mirror, frowned, then took two more Advil and decided if he was going shopping, it was now or never.

  A quick run to the nearest grocery mart showed him the Police Chief’s speech was not a precautionary measure. It was a reactionary measure.

  The scene was pure and utter chaos.

  Looters were running out with as much contraband as they could carry and gunfire was being exchanged inside. Three more looters ran out of the corner street grocery store, one of them limping, blood seeping through his pants where he was shot in the hamstring.