by Steve Alten
My family’s suburban neighborhood had long since been abandoned. Our house stood alone among burnt-out foundations on a cul-de-sac. I had cleared the surrounding terrain to expose anyone who approached. Every window was bricked up, the house and matching eight-foot wall that surrounded the backyard’s concealed acreage painted to appear like charred cinder.
The lawn was covered in sheets of metal — hundreds of car trunks and engine hoods, planted flat into the grass and welded into a giant jigsaw puzzle. Climbing off the motorcycle, I instructed the beautiful huntress to follow precisely in my footsteps, my night-vision glasses revealing a preset path that turned and twisted to tall shrubs that camouflaged a subterranean side entrance. Once we were inside the house, I bolted the steel door behind the woman, shocking her by turning on the lights.
“You have electricity? How?”
“While other people were searching for food and water, I was busy collecting car batteries and solar panels.”
“And car hoods. What’s that all about?”
“Security. Step onto my property and you get zapped with ten thousand volts of electricity. By the way, my name’s Eisenbraun, Robert Eisenbraun. Most people used to call me Ike.”
“Andria Saxon.” Dropping the deer carcass on the floor, she roamed the house, taking inventory. “Air-conditioning … a working refrigerator and stove — pretty impressive, Eisenbrain. What else do you have here?”
“A running shower and soap for starters. And it’s Eisenbraun.”
“Tell you what, I’ll handle the brawn, you handle the brains and maybe we’ll manage to survive this mess.”
2
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
— JOSEPH STALIN
“You make love like a freshman.”
“And you make love like a woman breaking in a wild stallion.”
We had lived together in my parents’ home for three weeks, sleeping in separate bedrooms, which we kept bolted from the inside. She taught me how to target shoot from tree limbs while I educated her on how everything worked in our shared fortress, but we rarely engaged in conversation about our lives before the Die-Off.
And then late this afternoon, she turned to me while we picked apples in the orchard and kissed me.
Within minutes we were in bed, naked and entwined; the two of us entering an exciting new world.
When we were done, Andria climbed off and lay beside me, the flesh on her tan back and buttocks sporting a series of scars. “Scratch.”
I accepted my duties, restricting the urge to hug her from behind lest she crush my windpipe with an elbow to the throat.
“You may have noticed that I have control issues, Eisenbraun. I guess it comes from being on my own since I was fifteen. A little lower. Now harder, use your nails.… God, that’s good. So what’s your story? How’d you learn to do all this?”
“I studied a lot. You know … lack of a social life.”
“Funny, I pegged you as a jock. How tall are you? Six foot five? Maybe two-twenty? Bet you played basketball.”
“Track and field. Mom was a natural athlete, I inherited her foot speed. Did some long jump and the hundred meters in high school until the varsity football coach forced me to try out as a receiver. I couldn’t catch a cold, let alone a football. ‘Stone hands Eisenbraun,’ they called me on the field, ‘Jew bastard’ off it. Things changed after they switched me to free safety and found out the Jew liked to hit.”
“Chip on your shoulder, huh? That makes us kindred spirits. Did you play ball in college?”
“I wanted to, but the Pentagon ordered me not to play. Guess they were afraid of concussions damaging the old noggin.”
“The Pentagon?”
“My uncle was a general, a bigwig with DARPA. When I was fourteen I created an algorithm for a video game that ended up being used to train gamers to fly military drones. Three years later my uncle was placed in charge of a top-secret initiative, called Omega. I left school during my sophomore year in college to work with his team.”
God, I was blathering like a little girl.
“And?”
“And it’s top secret. Now you tell. Where are you from? Who taught you to hunt?”
“I’m part Seminole, and don’t change the subject. Tell me about Omega. And no bullshit about it being top secret. The world’s in the shitter because of assholes like your uncle.”
“My uncle wasn’t an asshole and Omega wasn’t a weapon. It was actually an initiative that could have averted the Die-Off. The Omega Project was a $750 billion energy program, seeded in secrecy by the Pentagon during the Obama years to replace fossil fuels with fusion energy.”
“Just what the world needs, more nuclear waste.”
“No, no, that’s fission. Fusion is clean energy that’s released when two hydrogen atoms are merged together. The technology’s biggest challenge was that the sunlike temperatures required to generate a chain reaction also released neutrino particles which destroyed the reactor’s vessel. The solution to the problem required fusing deuterium with helium-3, which stabilized the process.”
“English, Eisenbraun.”
“To stabilize fusion required helium-3, an element that originates from the sun. The problem was that only a few cups worth of helium-3 ever reaches our planet thanks to Earth’s dense atmosphere. The moon, however, possesses over a million metric tons of the stuff, enough to generate energy for the next thousand years.”
“So, Omega was a secret mission to mine helium-3 from the moon?”
“Exactly.”
“But you mentioned the Pentagon. Why involve those warmongers?”
“First, because the dysfunctional assholes in Congress would never have considered funding such a radical energy plan at a time when politics was focused on unemployment, even though the program created a lot of jobs. Second, because the Pentagon not only had access to the money, they also had the ability to operate the program in secrecy without congressional oversight. Still, the scientific challenges were considerable, requiring NASA to design new lunar shuttles to transport the helium-3, plus a habitat that could safely house a mining crew — don’t forget, each astronaut required large supplies of food, water, and oxygen.”
“I thought there’s water on the moon — scratch my butt.”
“There’s ice, so yes, there’s water. There’s also moon dust, which became a major challenge. Moon dust particles act like glass shards, making them a constant threat to the astronauts’ skin and eyes. There’s also limits on what the human body can endure, especially when it comes to long-term exposure to gravitational forces one-sixth that of Earth. Between the health concerns and the costs — about a million dollars per astronaut per day — my uncle decided to go in a different direction … drones.”
“Drones?” She rolled over, positioning her head on my chest — her right hand casually stroking my penis. “Keep talking.”
“By, uh … drones, I meant replacing the lunar astronauts with mining equipment that could be remotely operated back here on Earth. All that was needed to do the job was a supercomputer to operate the drones. The way my uncle figured it, if a computer could remotely operate everything from a passenger jet to a surgical appendage performing brain surgery, then why not a mining operation on the moon? That was the reason my uncle recruited me for Omega, to join the best and brightest scientists in designing and engineering GOLEM.”
“What’s GOLEM?”
I sucked in a breath as her lips kissed my stomach. “GOLEM? It’s an acronym that stood for ‘Geological Offsite Lunar Excavation Machine.’ Whoever made it up stole it from a Bible story about a soulless being, created by man, to serve his needs. See, GOLEM wasn’t going to just be a supercomputer, it was going to be the ultimate in artificial intelligence — a machine that could think and adapt in order to control complex multilayered tasks a quarter of a million miles away.”
I closed my eyes, willing her mouth to venture lower.
She stopped.
“Keep talking, Eisenbraun. How did a young track-and-field nerd like you get involved with GOLEM?”
“My uncle was confident I could resolve the computer’s design flaws, so he assigned me to work under GOLEM’s director, Monique DeFriend, the former head of CSAIL, a prestigious artificial intelligence lab. She buried me in menial tasks, until I submitted a design for GOLEM’s DNA matrix that blew everyone away. Two days later she placed me in charge of GOLEM’s programming. I had just turned twenty.”
“Nice. So what happened?”
“What happened? The GDO happened. The world went to hell.”
Andria released me, her mood darkening. “Who are you to complain? You survived, Eisenbraun. You, with your solar panels and water filters and lake water. I didn’t have seeds and canned goods; I didn’t have a backyard filled with fruit trees.”
“You also didn’t have starving anti-Semites as neighbors. When the government collapsed, my parents preached secrecy to my younger sisters—‘If the neighbors find out we have food, they’ll take first and ask for handouts later,’ but it’s hard for teens not to want to help when their friends are literally starving to death.
“I was on my way home from the chaos in Washington the day our neighbors struck. My parents and sisters were butchered for three bags of brown rice and a bushel of apples. The rest of our supplies were still hidden in the garage attic.”
“I’m sorry.” She lay back down, her hand draped across my chest. “After they murdered your family … what did you do?”
“First I buried my family behind the orchard wall. Then I used the rest of our gasoline to burn down the murderers’ homes while they slept. I’ve been alone here ever since.”
“You’re an angry little bastard, Eisenbraun, but you’re no longer alone.”
She climbed on top of me and kissed me, her tongue harsh as it probed my mouth, her hand stroking my loins until I entered her again.
3
There is love of course. And then there’s life, its enemy.
— JEAN ANOUILH
SIX MONTHS LATER …
The August sunrise lit the sheer gray vertical cliff face into a canvas of gold, causing my heart to race. “Andie, I really don’t feel good about this.”
“You’ll feel better once we get started.”
“I don’t want to get started. When you said you knew how to cure my night terrors, I thought we were going for a hike.”
“We are going for a hike — straight up to the summit.”
“Without ropes and harnesses? This is crazy.”
“It’s not crazy, it’s called ‘free soloing,’ and you can do it.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You have the physical strength, what you’re lacking is the psychological control needed to stay on the wall. It’s all about learning to control your fears through Buddha breathing — in through your nostrils, filling the belly, then slowly exhaling through your mouth. Commit to the climb. Focus your fingertips on the rock; be light like a spider monkey. And whatever you do, Ike, keep looking up.”
* * *
Andria and I had been living together just over five months when I began suffering severe anxiety attacks. She had kidded me about feeling the pressures of being domesticated, and in a way she was right. Worrying about my own survival had been far different than protecting the woman I loved from the murderous gangs that roamed the countryside.
Fear entered my dreams in the form of night terrors. Ghoulish men would break into our home, the faceless demons raping and torturing Andria as they pinned me down and forced me to watch. Each night terror ended with her death, followed by my bloodcurdling scream.
Things grew so bad that we had to sleep in separate bedrooms again.
When my anxiety grew into a severe depression, Andria decided we needed a change of scenery. Claiming she knew the perfect mountain hideaway that would be free of the sociopaths, we packed supplies and rode all night on my battery-powered motorcycle, arriving just before dawn at the foot of Buzzard Rock, a 1,145-foot-high mountain located in Loudoun County, Virginia.
As she pointed out our route, I felt the blood drain from my face. “Relax, Ike, I’ve climbed this face a dozen times. I’ll go first, do what I do and you’ll be fine. And remember—”
“I know, I know … keep looking up.”
We began our ascent. I carefully measured the first fifty handholds, my body trembling in fear as I learned to balance myself on a rock wall. After a while my fingers, hands, and feet became fleshlike pinions, adhering me to the cliff face. I learned to cleave to inch-wide grooves between the slabs of slate; the toes of my running shoes sought the tiniest of perches to bear my weight as I flattened my body to the unforgiving mountain.
Ten feet turned into fifty; fifty became a hundred, each arm length accompanied by controlled breathing and the occasional “I’m okay” in reply to Andie’s query. We paused, poised on a three-foot ledge 372 feet above our starting point that offered us a treetop view and a place where we could rest and eat.
I bit into a ripe pear, my body tired, my muscles taut. “Andie, this was an amazing workout, but I’m shot and we still have to climb back down. Seriously, I never thought I’d make it ten feet, let alone this high.”
She was lathered in sweat, her high cheekbones darkly tanned, accentuating her heritage. “We’re going all the way, Ike. Trust me, the hardest part is over. From here on up it’s a cinch.”
I trusted her.
Foolish, foolish man.
The next few hours of climbing were slightly easier as the cliff face was shredded in three-inch cracks that helped get us to another perch just below nine hundred feet.
I pointed to a rusted pinion embedded in the rock. “Pussies.”
Andie smiled, tearing into an apple. “You’re the man, Eisenbraun. When we get up to the summit, I’m going to fuck your brains out.”
I glanced up. The good news was the appearance of dry-rotted roots sticking out of the cliff face. The bad news was a five-foot curl of rock that protected the summit like a protruding lower lip. “How do we get around that ledge?”
“I’ll show you when we get up there. Ready? I’m getting really horny.”
We started out again, my fingers by now raw and blistered, the sweat on my palms becoming a new threat as the midday sun beat down upon us. The roots were a mixed blessing, offering us handholds we could grip — along with palms full of splinters.
And then we arrived at our final perch, the two of us staring at a ceiling of rock that jutted five feet out over our heads.
Andria pointed to a series of roots along the outer lip. “This will sound scary, but what we have to do is lean out and grab on to that root, then invert and blindly work our feet and legs up and over the ledge.”
“You’re insane. I’m so tired I can barely hold on.”
“Which is why we have to reach the summit, so we can rest and climb down tomorrow.”
“And just how are we going to get down?”
She flashed me her shit-eating grin. “We’ll take the trail.”
Anger shook me as I cursed my companion to exhaustion. I felt utterly helpless, my existence forced into a do-or-die situation that was as frustrating to fathom as it was insane — as insane as what had happened to my family and the rest of the world, as insane as the psychopaths that roamed the countryside and haunted my dreams — only this time I had a choice. This time I could save my life or at least die with some dignity.
“Embrace the fear, Ike. Use it to focus your strength.”
“Okay, Andie, but I’m going first.”
“That’s not a good idea. I’ve done this before—”
“Bullshit. You’ve never climbed this mountain; if you had you wouldn’t have taken us up this route. I knew it back on the last perch when I saw your face. You realized you had screwed up, but as usual you tried to wing it … control the moment. You’re right about one thing though, if we don’t get over that summit now, we’ll nev
er make it down, not in the dark. So we’ll give it a try, only I’m going first. Not because you’re a woman or some other bullshit sense of male chivalry, but because I love you and I just … I just couldn’t bear to watch you fall.”
Tears flooded her eyes, marking the first time she had shown me any real vulnerability. Reaching carefully into her backpack, she removed a twenty-foot length of nylon rope. “Tie off,” she said, securing one end around her own waist, handing me the other. “When you reach the summit you can pull me up. If something happens, then we’ll die together.” She leaned over and kissed me. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved, Eisenbraun. Don’t fuck this up.”
I looped the rope tightly around my waist while drawing deep breaths into my gut, summoning every reserve of strength I had left. For the first time since we began the climb I felt truly alive, knowing in my heart that no matter what else happened to me in the days or weeks or years ahead, that right here, right now there was no possible way I was going to allow myself to fail.
4
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
— MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
A die-off provokes a different kind of fear than a war or a natural disaster. In war there is a common enemy; in a tsunami, earthquake, or hurricane there is a common bond among humans to aid those in need.
In a die-off, death is a game of musical chairs that begins as an innocuous boil. An occasional power outage evolves into rolling blackouts, followed by assurances from government officials that oil reserves will last another thirty years, even as prices spike and the lines at your local gas station stretch for miles. The grocery store becomes a battle front as every nonperishable left on the shelf is fought over in hand-to-hand combat and customers with loaded carts, refusing to risk their precious bounty, charge out the doors without paying. These scenarios degenerate into civil disorder and mandatory curfews, the protests and street violence that follow unleashing the military.
