by Grant Pies
“If you were at Point Nemo, the beauty is that no matter which direction you travel you are heading to a better spot. With each paddle, every backstroke and splash in the water, you are leaving the remoteness of Point Nemo and heading toward civilization. It represents the worst position a person can be in to start with, and the only comforting thought is that it can only get better. If you find yourself in a point so desolate and remote, you have nothing to lose.”
“Right now, you, me, Red and Hamilton, we are all in the worst position in time that we possibly could reach. Any time before this or after this is an improvement. In the past is civilization as we knew it. In the future will be some sort of civilization. Good or bad, we are here. Some of us deserve to be here; others don’t. But we will collectively re-create civilization in one form or another. Look at Australia. Governments can form out of a penal colony. Traditions are created, and normal human interaction will continue in the future.”
“So when we find this vault, we know that wherever we go from here is an improvement.” My dad finished his sentence and immediately stomped on the ground. A loud thud of metal sounded underneath the dirt. Ellis looked up at me and smiled for the first time since I first met him here in New Alcatraz; now he looked most like my father.
It was as if he knew where the vault entrance had been the entire time. Maybe he knew and deep down he had his own feelings of jamais vu; maybe he knew what had come before this. And maybe he knew what will come after, just as I did. Maybe my dad was right that we are born, we live, and we die, but not necessarily in that order. Maybe he knew who I was, or at least had a feeling that we were connected. Something that pushed him forward and pulled him back. Maybe he knew he had just offered me his first piece of fatherly advice.
UNIT 5987D V.
FEDERATED NORTH AMERICA
CASE NO. 2070FN99823
(Cross-Examination of Defense Witness Unit 5987D by Prosecutor Klipton)
Prosecutor Klipton: Unit 5987D, as an in home android, it is your responsibility to keep track of essential supplies and grocery items in the house, correct.
A: Yes.
Q: In fact, you are programmed to take a daily inventory of all items in the home, and acquire any supplies that have dropped below a given level?
A: Yes.
Q: This inventory includes groceries, cleaning supplies, first aid supplies, etc.?
A: Yes.
Q: It also includes any medicines that your owner was taking correct?
A: Yes.
Q: So at any given time, you were aware of what medications Pierson had in the home and in what amounts?
A: Yes.
Q: It is true that you were also tasked with taking care of your owner, correct?
A: Yes, that was one of my purposes.
Q: Isn’t part of taking care of someone ensuring that they are given the correct medication at the correct time?
A: Yes, I suppose, but -
Q: But isn’t it true that you did not give Pierson the prescription drugs his doctor ordered him to take?
A: No, I did not give him those medicines -
Q: And at the time of his death Pierson had several bottles, hang on one moment…he had four bottles of prescription drugs that were all full, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: There was a bottle of Trivexis, with 26 out of 26 pills still in the bottle, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: A bottle of Lexipril, 12 out of 12 pills remaining?
A: Yes.
Q: Eloxazole, 14 out of 14 pills remaining?
A: Yes.
Q: And Zalcan, 20 out of 20 pills remaining?
A: Yes.
Q: And just to be clear, all four of these prescriptions were at least over 4 months old at the time of Pierson’s death, right?
A: Yes.
Q: With the oldest prescription being eight months old?
A: Yes.
Q: And isn’t it true that, if the doctor’s orders were followed, all of these pill bottles would have been empty at the time of Pierson’s death?
A: Yes.
Q: There were no people around when he passed, correct?
A: No, I was there.
Q: But there were no humans there when he died?
A: No, no humans.
Q: So there is no one that can corroborate your story that Pierson died of whatever illness he was suffering from.
A: No, but there is the coroner’s report.
Prosecutor Klipton: Yes, I will get to the coroner’s report, but first I would like to talk about Pierson’s time of death.
CHAPTER 48
2067
DENVER, CO
Ellis took two more survey trips into the future over the next month. Each time jumping one hundred years further into the future. First to 3165. Then 3265. Over the next two hundred years Denver showed signs of deterioration. A thick yellowish smog hung over the city, and the buildings disappeared into the dark clouds above. It was hot but not sunny. Small drones and personal aircrafts shot through the city skies. From a distance, it looked chaotic and frantic, like an anthill that had just toppled over. For the first time as a surveyor, Ellis felt uneasy in this time. Denver no longer shared a resemblance to his own time; it was wholly unfamiliar.
Ellis travelled to his three points, pressing the button on his tiny device twice at each point. Once for air measurement and once for soil measurement. He did this in three locations. Six readings total.
Another city had sprouted up near Denver, and he now stood between the two cities that surely would merge together long before his next survey trip. Ellis took note of this so the scientists could alter his entry point for the next survey. They never told him what would happen if he jumped into the middle of a solid object. Surely nothing good, he guessed.
The land between the cities was desolate. Where there used to be suburbs there was sand and rocks, and the humans had receded into each city and built upward toward the sun. The population was like a puddle of water and the city center was a sponge, pulling everyone in until anything outside of the city was empty and forgotten. Ellis saw some wildlife in the distance; small wolves or coyotes perhaps. A glass pyramid structure larger than any building Ellis had ever seen spanned several city blocks. Inside were multiple high rise buildings. A glass city within a city.
The air felt thinner and the ground felt soft, like stepping in fresh snow; like it could give way under his feet and he would fall all the way through the earth. In the distance, he saw two men walking towards each other along a remnant of an old highway in the desert between Denver and the ‘new’ city to the east. One of the men’s clothes were tattered. The other man wore a dark poncho and a scarf wrapped around his face. They both walked slow and held their hands in front of their eyes as wind kicked up swirls of sand and gravel around them.
The man in the poncho pulled a single cart behind him. Buzzards circled above. If Ellis was discovered, he was to take the pill they provided him before each trip. The pill that dissolved organs and melted skin from the inside out. So Ellis hid behind a large rock and kept his distance. The man in the poncho struggled to pull the cart through the soft sand. He leaned forward as he walked, dragging the heavy cart behind him.
After several minutes, the men met each other in the desert. The man’s poncho was lightweight and easily blown back by the wind to reveal a pistol strapped to his belt; he didn’t try to hide his weapon. The cart the man pulled was constructed of wood and metal rivets. It looked like an antique, especially this far into the future, as if a stiff wind could blow it to pieces. Whatever was in the cart was covered by a large tattered tarp. The two men exchanged a cold skeptical greeting.
Ellis could not hear what they said. The man in tattered clothing pointed at the wooden cart, while the man with the poncho and gun stood stoically in front of his cart, shaking his head ‘no’ every few seconds. He slowly moved his poncho further out of the way, placing one hand on the pistol and flinging his other hand in the air sig
naling the man in the tattered clothes to turn around and go away.
The unarmed man made a desperate attempt to reach the cart, but his feet sunk into the sand. The man with the gun pivoted his body, and, in one fluid motion, drew his pistol and shot the other man. A quiet ‘pop’ rang out. The bullet exited the man’s chest violently and ripped through his clothing and skin underneath. He fell to the ground and twitched for only a brief moment before lying still in the sand.
The man in the poncho holstered his pistol calmly, and grabbed the dead man’s wrists. He dragged him to the cart and untied the large tarp to reveal more bodies, some whole, some not.
The man in the poncho leaned the dead man’s head and chest on the back of the cart, grabbed his feet, and flung the rest of him onto the cart. A buzzard swooped down and pecked at one of the rotting bodies. The man in the poncho clapped his hands at the bird to scare him away, and then tied the tarp back down, concealing the pile of bodies.
He grabbed the front of the cart and slowly continued on his way. Ellis stayed hidden behind the rock until the man had disappeared and the wind covered the man’s tracks in the sand. Ellis slowly made his way back to his marked entry point. He quickly pushed the return button on his device. No deep breath of air to hold in his lungs and bring back with him. He didn’t want to take anything back from this future.
CHAPTER 49
2068
DENVER, CO
Back at his cell, Ellis laid on his bed with his arms stretched behind his head. His last trip to the future made him question if his trips were pointless. Could humans be saved? Should they be saved? Maybe humans were destined to kill themselves off and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Maybe each species has a time to occupy the earth, and the death of all humans would make way for something better.
Maybe every species thinks they will collectively be the one species to see the end of our earth. Maybe the Irish Elk thought they would see the world end, or the straight tusked elephant thought they would outlive all other species and walk the earth as it crumbled under their feet. Maybe the pig-footed bandicoot, the dodo bird, and the Tasmanian Tiger all thought they would be the species that lived through eras of climate change and continental shifts, and live to see the earth eaten up by the expanding sun.
Project Oracle was our way of ensuring that humans would be that species; but it was pointless. After what he saw in the future, Ellis needed no further proof. No amount of soil and air samples will change that. People are the problem.
Smooth rocks lay in the clear waters of William Bay, Australia on the screen outside of Ellis’ cell. Waves washed gently against the rocks, and, in the far distance, sea gulls squawked off the coast. A doctor, and the female agent that Ellis had seen before, strolled down the hall and made their way to Ellis’ cell. She walked a short distance behind the doctor, as an escort or bodyguard.
The doctor approached the glass cell wall and reviewed the various readings and measurements stored in the cell’s computer. While he did this, Ellis sat up and watched the female agent. She looked back at him. He let a tiny smirk stretch over his face and made a slight waving motion toward her. Surprisingly, she smiled back at Ellis and nodded her head at him.
Their eyes locked as if they were both wondering about the other. The female agent stood in front of the turquoise water of William Bay, and for a moment Ellis imagined they were both there. He didn’t know her, but, even through the aluminosilicate glass he felt that they were supposed to meet. More; they were destined to be together. In this time or another, Ellis knew he would see her outside of this facility one day. The doctor finished his upload of Ellis’ vital information and started down the hallway. The agent lingered in front of his cell until the doctor was four steps ahead of her. She finally turned to follow the doctor, but, just before she was too far down the hall and out of Ellis’ view, she turned slightly and waved to him.
CHAPTER 50
2068
DENVER, CO
It was two weeks since his last survey trip when the Ministry let Ellis leave. They told him to report back in one week. Ellis made his way back to the empty bar where he first met Beckett and sat at the bar, nursing a warm beer. The bar had slightly more people than last time, but not nearly enough to make the place seem full. The door to the bar opened, and Ellis turned to see Beckett standing in the doorway. He motioned to Beckett as if he were in a crowded bar that required him to flag down his companion.
Beckett approached the bar and pulled out the stool next to Ellis. “Buenos Aires is going to shit,” he said as he sat and waved his hand at the bartender for a beer. He let out a sigh. “That earthquake really did them in. You would think they could recover in the next two hundred years, but so far it’s only getting worse. I think they will redirect me to another location if things keep up this way. There are geysers spouting off and shooting God knows what into the air. The only thing scarcer than the plant life is the wildlife. The buildings are all but gone, and it looks like smaller earthquakes have hit the city pretty frequently. The people that survived must have just left, and there was the skeleton of a huge airplane crashed in the middle of the rubble of the city. I mean huge!” He said as he gestured with his hands before he realized that was pointless.
“The smell is God awful too; a mix of sulfur and tar that burns your nose. On my last trip, I didn’t even go to the three spots to take my recordings. I just pressed that button six times and got the hell out of there.” Conditioned by his normal surroundings, he said the last part in a quieter tone as if the scientists were still listening. “Hopefully they realize that there is no point in sending me there anymore, and they reassign me to Australia or North America. The surveyors assigned to Cairo or Mumbai are probably dying to get reassigned! I mean those places are bad enough in our own time. I can’t imagine them one thousand years in the future.” Beckett took a gulp of his beer and asked how Denver was.
“It’s hotter.” Ellis said. “Dryer than it is now; if you can imagine that.”
“No shit?” Beckett replied.
Ellis thought about his next question before asking. “Have you ever encountered any humans on a trip?”
“Humans? Nah. They all pretty much fled after the quake, so after twenty six sixty-five there have been no signs of human life. They drop me in the jungle up on a mountain overlooking the city. So I am not in the middle of things. Why? Did you see some people?”
Ellis just stared at the wall behind the bar and shook his head. There was no sense in getting into what he had seen. There was nothing he could do about it now.
“So,” Becket said as he slapped Ellis on the back. “You ready to head to Ashton?” Beckett stood from his stool and drank the rest of his beer in one swig. Ellis hesitated, only for a second. He agreed to travel thousands of years into the future with less thought than he gave the road trip with Beckett to Ashton. It seemed more of an inconvenience than anything else. But something tugged inside of him, like the trip would benefit him in some way, or do him some good. Ellis stood from his stool and nodded his head.
“Let’s go.” He said.
Beckett’s car was surprisingly clean with no garbage on the floor, and nothing in the back seat. The exterior was also cleaner than a car in Denver should be. They started their trip at night. Beckett said he liked driving in the dark. It relaxed him.
“So where are you from?” Beckett asked Ellis.
“Wyoming.” Ellis replied.
“Ah a prairie kid, eh? We’ll drive through your home state then? Texas for me.” Beckett said without being asked. “Well, really Louisiana, but we had to leave before the whole state fell into the ocean. That was right after I was born.”
The road hummed under the car and more stars shone in the sky the further they drove away from the city. “So what’s in Ashton?” Ellis asked.
“I thought you’d never ask!” Beckett said jovially, but then stayed quiet for a few moments. He then answered Ellis’ question with his own. “Why d
id you sign up with the Ministry?” He asked and looked over, waiting for an answer.
“I guess it was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Ellis answered. “It’s like being the first astronaut or an explorer of a new land. I would have the chance to see the future. I couldn’t pass that up.”
“So you see us as explorers. Like Sir Francis Drake, Magellan, Marco Polo, Columbus?” Beckett said in an understanding tone. Ellis nodded his head in agreement. “Except it’s kind of the opposite, isn’t it?” said Beckett as his tone changed to one of skepticism. Ellis stopped nodding and tried to grasp what Beckett had said. “You see, the explorers of the past were looking for a new beginning. A way to expand their world. The Ministry doesn’t want us to travel to the future to find a new beginning for humanity; they want us to find the end of it.” Beckett drove through back roads that cut through rural areas, avoiding the major highways and interstates.
“The most famous explorers had to beg their government to let them go on expeditions. Ferdinand Magellan asked the King of Portugal for permission to explore the Spice Islands in the Far East, but the King refused him to go. Christopher Columbus begged...on his hands and knees...the Spanish Court, King Henry VII of England, and King Charles VIII of France to let him sail to the new world, but they all denied him passage.” Beckett counted with his fingers with each example. “Herman Cortes travelled to Mexico against the commands of politicians. He stole the ships and supplies, and he burnt – “
“Okay, okay. So what’s the point?” Ellis interrupted.
“All of these explorers begged and pleaded with their government to let them travel to new worlds. They had to convince them of the benefits of their travels; they were true explorers. Governments only approve expeditions if there is something in it for them. The Ministry came to you, didn’t they?” Ellis nodded his head affirmatively.
