by Mike Kraus
“David! Hurry up!” Leaning out the back door, David finished releasing the catch on the coupling between the locomotive and the boxcars. The heavily laden cars quickly fell behind the locomotive which surged forward, freed of its encumbrances. Already a fair distance away from the tower, David gave it a final look before pulling himself back into the train. He slammed the door shut and ran to the controls, pushing the throttle beyond its maximum. He shook his head as he watched their speed slowly increase. “I don’t know, Marcus. I don’t think we’re going fast enough.”
Marcus grabbed David’s arm and pulled him to the floor. Sitting in a space between control stations, Marcus and David waited breathlessly for what they knew would come next. Seconds ticked past as the train roared along the track, the engine wailing in protest of the excessive speed it was being forced to achieve. As Marcus took a breath, he sensed the first detonation before he saw or felt it. Looking back on it later, it was hard for him to describe, except to say that the air felt “funny” a mere instant before hell arrived.
Sheltering their eyes from the blast, David and Marcus crouched low in the locomotive as it barreled down the tracks. Marcus kept Sam clutched to his chest as he hoped that they were far enough beyond the blast wave to keep from being subjected to its devastation. Thunder rumbled in the distance, growing louder as the forces from the explosion tore through the earth and sky, screaming at the heavens and tearing the dirt asunder. The train bucked and wobbled on the tracks but did not fall as it raced forward, carrying the survivors away from the desolation and back into the world that had been reborn as a result of it.
For the briefest moment, a small fraction of the Earth’s surface once again shone brighter than the sun in the sky above. Overpowering all other sources of light, the twelve surviving missiles detonated at their assigned locations: five in the upper atmosphere and seven at various points on and around the tower. While the AI managed to disable a few of the missiles in flight, the combination of the remaining direct blasts and high-altitude electromagnetic pulses decimated the swarms of nanobots, most of which had left the shelter of the nexus tower in an attempt to intercept and destroy the incoming missiles.
Cleansing fire flowed through the structure, melting the carefully constructed metals down to slag and tearing into the center chambers where nanobot swarms attempted to hide and protect themselves from both the electromagnetic waves and the explosions. The combination of the two broke down all protective barriers, destroying the nanobots as they themselves had destroyed their creators. Deep below ground, hundreds of thousands of creatures were eliminated, cut down in the midst of their processing as they worked toward the next step in the evolution of the AI. The ground shrieked, water vaporized and the land was bleached clean, leaving a fresh layer of ash and destruction in place of the tower that had stood mere moments prior.
The fires that had signaled the end of the world, decimated the population and brought humanity to its knees now proclaimed the world’s salvation, their energies tearing the heart from the swarm, rending the molecules from its members and spreading the raw components of the nanobots to the winds. From her vantage point halfway up the tower, Rachel’s eyes grew bright from the light of the first explosions, just seconds before she—like the swarms next to her and the building she was in—was incinerated by the second wave of missiles. As Rachel’s body was turned to vapor, she felt a warmth envelope her. Not one that was uncomfortable, but one that was welcoming and familiar, like the smell of a spring day and the aroma of a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
Rachel opened her eyes, looking for the source of the warmth as time slowed to a standstill. Blinking in the brightness in front of her, she held a hand in front of her face, stepping forward timidly as she struggled to see what was happening. She tried to speak, but words refused to form in her throat and her mouth remained closed, though this fact did not panic or surprise her, as much as it should have. Rachel took another step, her eyes adjusting more to the light, making out a pair of shadows standing before her, their silhouettes coalescing into figures with faces familiar from dreams of a past life. They did not speak as she approached them, holding her hands out to grasp theirs, slow smiles spreading across their faces as they were reunited once again.
Epilogue
2:45 PM, April 27, 2041
“Three years ago today, we killed the swarm.”
Eyes both young and old looked up at the man who spoke to them, watching as he slowly walked in front of them, pacing back and forth.
“The head of the beast was swiftly crushed under humanity’s boot and the monster we created was dealt a fatal blow.”
The man stopped pacing and looked out at the crowd, silently marveling at how it had grown in just three short years. The distant roar of an engine made him pause and look down the hill, watching as a vehicle slowly made its way up to where the crowd was gathered. It stopped a few hundred feet from the summit and three individuals climbed out and walked toward the hill, moving slowly as they held each other’s hands, smiling and talking amongst themselves.
Addressing the crowd again, the man continued to speak and pace the ground in front of them.
“Today we gather together, as we have done on this day for the past two years, and as we will do until our memory of these events has been stripped from our culture. We gather to honor and remember the fallen. We remember not just those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, but also those who died not knowing what was to come.”
In the distance, at the foot of the hill where the crowd was gathered, a crystalline river flowed smoothly out to the distant sea. A light breeze was in the air, taking the edge off of the heat of the sun radiating down through a blue sky. Green and yellow grass gently swayed in the breeze, growing flat in the fields before rising sharply on the hill. The three individuals continued to climb the hill, slowly making their way up the steep, unnatural edges and turns.
“It is our duty to remember the sacrifices made on this battlefield we call home. To cherish the memory of the fallen, to recognize the mistakes of the past, and to remind ourselves to stand united into the future.”
The three individuals hung back a few feet from the people in front of them, not wanting to disrupt the speech by joining with the others. As the man in front continued to speak, he locked eyes with the three and smiled, his voice growing stronger as he saw who they were.
“In the cold, dark night, when our humanity was nearly snuffed out, we planted our feet on the ground against the coming storm and we said no.” The crowd began to stir as the man became more animated. “The tide broke against our chests like water on the rocks, dousing us, flooding us, threatening to topple us under the wake to be ever lost to the darkness below but still, we said no!” A cheer arose, spreading through the crowd.
“We have been beaten, bruised and bloodied but today we stand tall, rising from our own ashes like a phoenix and proudly proclaiming with every breath of every minute and every hour, no!
“Never again will we allow ourselves to become so tightly ensnared in our own hubris that we forget who we are and what we stand for. And should that day come again, when the memories of these days have long passed into the realm of myth and legend, we can find comfort in the fact that we shall rise up again and say firmly, with conviction in our hearts… no.”
As the crowd erupted in cheers, the man smiled at them, waiting for calm to take hold once again before continuing. As he spoke, his voice changed, becoming more somber. The crowd’s behavior changed as well as all talking ceased and all movement was halted.
“To remember the life of one person against the backdrop of the most cataclysmic event in the entirety of our history may seem to some to diminish the deeds performed by so many others and the losses suffered by us all.” The man licked his lips and closed his eyes, straining to keep his voice steady and unwavering as he continued. “But to allow this particular sacrifice to go unnamed would, as I know the majority of us would agree, be a travesty.
The man’s speech stretched on for several minutes more, though the three individuals who had arrived late slipped through the crowd as he spoke, making their way to a meadow surrounded by young saplings that had been planted several months prior. Located a short distance from where the throngs had assembled, the meadow was sheltered by a gentle hill, and the man’s voice soon became distant and blurred. In the center of the grass, a small stone was erected. Plain and unassuming, it bore merely a name and nothing else.
“They still haven’t put up a proper monument.” Marcus growled, standing with Leonard and Nancy next to him.
“She wouldn’t have wanted it.” Leonard patted Marcus on the back. “You know that.”
“Still.”
The brief exchange was followed by silence as the three held hands, watching the grave in front of them in silence, each contemplating something different. The sound of footsteps on dried leaves combined with loud barks made them turn and they smiled at the man who had been speaking to the crowd. Beside him, trotting with a slight limp, came a familiar face, and one that made Marcus break out in a full grin as he knelt down, arms outstretched as Sam bounded toward him, overcome with a burst of energy at the sight.
“My friends.” The man walking with Sam spoke warmly, smiling as he opened his arms. “I thought, for a moment, that you weren’t going to make it.”
Marcus was the first to embrace the man in a hug, squeezing him tightly as he laughed. “David, you know we wouldn’t miss the anniversary.”
Leonard laughed and hugged David next. “Not even if the damned Russians got drunk and steered us in the wrong direction for three days!”
“Well now,” Nancy said, as she embraced David, “it wasn’t entirely their fault. You were the one who gave them the liquor.”
David smiled broadly and laughed, shaking his head as tears of happiness filled his eyes. “It’s so good to see you again, my friends.”
The four reunited comrades stood together, sharing stories of their time apart for a full hour. Three years was a short amount of time, but it had been enough to start to rebuild. The risk that the nanobots had taken on by joining together to form a more potent intelligence had proved to be their ultimate undoing, and the destruction of their nexus had spelled certain doom, even for the few swarms that were still wandering through the world. Cut off from the nexus, they quickly perished, having given up their distributed intelligence for a connection to the single mind that was no longer a part of the world. Hundreds of thousands of the creatures still existed after the blast, though their lifespan was not much longer than that of the surviving swarms. With no purpose driving their actions, the creatures quickly perished as the nanobots that controlled them and kept them alive became nonfunctional.
The reasons behind the globe-encircling cloud cover remained a mystery, though shortly after the destruction of the tower, David speculated in private to Marcus that it was part of a terraforming project intended to reshape the face of the earth once the AI had completed its “evolution.” With the destruction of the tower came the lifting of the clouds that encircled the planet, both literal and metaphorical. Those who had been lucky enough to either avoid the swarms or possess the right DNA sequences to be ignored by them slowly began to search out other survivors, surprised at both how many and how few there had been. Cities had been fractured apart, leaving splinters of communities and families alive who crawled from the rubble, peeking gingerly out from their concealments as they tenderly explored the new planet they had been deposited on, with all of its terrifying and wondrous changes.
Leading the charge to reunite survivors in the Americas was Marcus, who together with David had worked for a full year to locate individuals and bring them together, building up a new city in the southern portion of the country, not far from where the nexus had once stood. Once a symbol for the ultimate defeat of mankind, the miles of irradiated soil surrounding the rubble of the tower became a monument to the defeat of the creatures who had utilized the same technology in an attempt to snuff out humanity itself. After reuniting with Marcus and meeting David in person for the first time, Leonard and Nancy rejoined Commander Krylov on the Arkhangelsk. Together they sailed for the Russian mainland, spending several months searching for and gathering survivors from the rubble of the cities.
After a large enough community had formed along the Gulf Coast to become self-sustaining, Marcus had joined Leonard and Nancy aboard the Arkhangelsk, setting off on the first of multiple three-month voyages. Criss-crossing the globe, the group worked feverishly to rescue any survivors they encountered. Most of those who had survived had been civilian, though there were the occasional small military vessels that had been spared the wrath of the nanobots due to their age or paperwork mix-ups that had prevented them from being listed in central databases. The majority of vessels had been unfortunate enough to be listed in military and civilian databases, which the nanobots had scoured and used to their advantage. Any ships on the surface had been immediately destroyed, while those that were underwater were recalled to the surface through forged communications and were quickly torn apart. Little remained of the world of the past, but that which did was gathered, refined, and reused as a platform for future progress.
Much had been accomplished in only three years, but the four friends standing together knew better than any others how much work still remained. Vowing to not rest until every inch of the globe had been combed for any who had survived the destruction, the work had been ceaseless and not without its fair share of stresses and failures. Through all the destruction, torment, and grief brought about by the swarms and those who had created them, the pain they caused continued to slowly fade into the past. As hope was restored and the world continued to heal, the memories of the events were not forgotten. Strength and courage, tested by fire, was found in abundance and carried forward, a steady foundation for the future to come.
Coming Fall 2013
A secret guarded deep in the folds of the Rocky Mountains has been unleashed on the small town of Cold Springs. Guarded for nearly a millennium by two groups joined together from opposite corners of the earth, the seal has been broken and darkness threatens to swallow the world. Written by best-selling author Mike Kraus, creator of the acclaimed Final Dawn saga, Cold Springs is a standalone novel that tells the story of a small Colorado town beset by a dark and mysterious power whose origins stretch back well over a thousand years. Join Dr. Judith Grimsley, Professor George Buckner and Deputy Allen Petersen as they struggle against a force that cannot be fought through conventional means in this fast-paced, no holds barred thriller.
