by P. F. White
Bryan laughed again.
“You've totally been hitting up the video library haven't you?” he said as he took a long drag. He then attempted to blow smoke rings to very little success.
“Maybe,” said Hank mischievously. He took a long hit and then began to cough. “Oh god my lungs...”
Bryan got him a new soda, and he took a grateful sip of it.
“Sorry. I noticed the harshness there too. Take some nice slow breaths, take a drink, take it easy-”
“Yeah,” Hank coughed some more, “I've been hitting up the library...wanted to see how the...”
Bryan finished for him as he devolved into coughing some more.
“You wanted to see how the movies handled it huh? The apocalypse, I mean...”
He shook his head again. He seemed to do that a lot these days, as if he were living in a perpetual state of disbelief. A lot of the people here were only now fully starting to realize they were in it for the long haul. They were only now coming to terms with the fact that this was, most likely, going to be the majority of their lives. This building was it for them. It was a scary thought.
“Naw,” said Hank. He took a much lighter puff of the joint and blew a very lopsided smoke ring, “I didn't give a damn about the apocalypse itself. Christ. We've already seen how that turned out...”
Bryan shrugged.
“Weird.”
“Very. But what I meant was that what I want to know is how the survivors manage. I've already read a lot of the supposedly real accounts of survival, but most of those people get rescued at some point. It's pretty much impossible to find any real life accounts of people surviving the end of civilization itself. So I've been watching what Hollywood had to say on the subject.”
Bryan nodded thoughtfully.
“I guess that makes sense...though I bet you are having a hard time getting anyone to watch them with you, huh?”
“Yeah,” Hank passed the joint, “No one really wants to sit down and watch a fake apocalypse these days...”
Bryan nodded again and slowly took another drag. The giant ape like things outside had crawled up the barrier and were out of their sight for now. They probably wouldn't be back anytime soon. There wasn't anything good to eat in the parking-lot.
Without the prevalent fog the whole world looked different now. Hank could look out now and see the ruined skyline in the distance. A few of the buildings had fallen, some were simply gone, but most were more or less intact. He knew that, given time, they would decay and become towering ruins, but for now...well...for now he just sat and admired them.
Humanity wasn't done, not by a long shot. He knew that and furthermore: it gave him a sense of pride.
# # #
“Holy shit!” said Claire in excitement.
“Who said that?” came the crystal clear voice on the other end of the line. Then there was a slight burst of static. Claire clapped her hands over her mouth, but couldn't resist grinning from ear to ear. Sven smiled at her, but the lead technician of the hardwire communications lab frowned in utter seriousness.
“No one important,” he said into the Mic, “I'm still getting a little interference on the line. Not much, but we might have to send some more pulses through the wire just to be safe. I wouldn't want any data corrupted.”
“Roger that,” said the voice on the other end, “I'm getting that here too. May call off coms for another minute and run the pulses again?”
“Affirmative on that,” said the lead tech, “Starting pulses in five.”
He waited a few seconds to make sure the man on the other end got off the line and then he nodded for Sven to run the pulse generator again.
They had finally gotten the hardwired inter-tower network back online. It had been a frustrating experience, and one that at first led them to presume the worst about the fate of the other towers. When they had first attempted to start up the buried and supposedly nearly indestructible cables that ran between the various towers around the globe, all they had gotten was static. Their own tower only had access to two others via this direct hard-line. They had access to the tower in France, and the tower on the west coast of the US. From there they were expected to be able to relay messages and data to the other towers...as long as the connection was still secure enough to transmit.
When nearly half of the towers population had crowded downstairs to listen to that historic first contact with the supposedly surviving members of the other towers they had all been very disappointed. Thankfully, Sven had been drafted into a secret committee to design data pulses to be directed to combat a very basic problem that most people didn't believe was even possible with the advanced technology of the cables themselves.
One of the engineers listening to that initial transmission thought that a tiny bit of moisture had somehow gotten into the cable, most likely while it was being laid as that part of the project had involved the most outside contact. It wouldn't take much: maybe a few drops and the transmission would degenerate from there. While almost no one thought such a scenario was completely unlikely, the almost perfect workings of their technology to date had led to a certain incredulity at the suggestion. Someone else had then supposed that the moisture, or even rust, could be eliminated by sending the right data pulses along the length of the cable.
Most people called that engineer crazy at first. They cited the way in which the cables had been made in clean rooms, how they had been laid under very careful rules, and the very specific reasons why they were designed impervious to moisture, even if the worst had happened to them. The first engineer had just shrugged and claimed that, to him at least, the transmission just sounded like moisture related static.
Sven had been among the few that agreed. Together, along with nearly thirty others, they had constructed a working prototype for transmitting data pulses to clear the pipe. Not many had thought it would work. Claire had, but she was biased and not many took her seriously because of her age. Now, here the signal was as clear as could be. Some tiny piece of rust or water along thousands of miles of cable had been cleared out and fixed by nothing more substantial than light. It was a historic day for science...at least to a very minor extent.
“Hows that, do you copy West Coast tower?” asked the technician in charge after the pulse machine had been run again.
“Loud and clear,” said the man on the other end, “How's the weather over there?”
The lead technician frowned. He was evidently a very serious man and did not feel that such questions were appropriate for the first official communication between his tower and the West Coast branch.
“It's adequate,” he replied, “The fog has been reduced to almost null and-”
“Fog? Was that a problem out there? I'm not sure I heard you correctly. Come again?”
The technician frowned ever deeper. Some of those on the other end were speaking to the man at the Mic, you could hear bits and pieces coming over but nothing clear. Whoever he was, he jealously guarded his post.
“Yes fog,” said the technician in charge, “We had an inordinate amount of-”
“Put the hot chick on!” called someone from the other end, “The one that said Holy Shit! She sounds cute!”
The technician glared at Claire, but she only smiled back at him.
“I don't think-”
“I'm sorry East Coast tower but I'm being out-voted here,” said the man on the Mic. There was some laughing and random noise, “They say they want to talk to the cute girl so, uh, you had better at least make a cute voice and pretend or something...”
The technician glared again but Claire held out her hand for the Mic. Begrudgingly he handed it over to her.
“Keep it professional,” he growled at her. She only nodded.
“This is the cute girl,” said Claire as she smiled, “Who am I talking to?”
“Well hi there cutie!” said someone from the other line. There was a lot of laughing. “How the hell did you get into the com lab? What are you like fourte
en?”
“Sixteen,” said Claire, “And my boyfriend let me in on the project.”
There were some groans at that from the other end, but Sven sat up a bit. He looked proud and was smiling his big goofy smile at anyone who would look.
“Maaan...” said someone from the other end, “Here we don't hardly have enough females and over there they even got so many young hotties they are getting into the com lab!”
Claire raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Are you guys a sausage fest over there or something?” she asked. One of the technicians in the com-room laughed at that, but the lead tech frowned at him and he tried to pretend it was a cough.
“We sure are!” said the lead fellow on the other end, “Got something like eight hundred guys to a little under three hundred women! Nearly every one of those is already married too, so good luck for us single fellas. I think before long we are all going to turn gay!”
Someone shouted something like: speak for yourself girlfriend, but it was drowned out in laughter. They certainly didn't sound like they were in distress, and the easy joviality of the place was actually doing wonders to put the occupants of the East-Coast tower at ease. Before the day was out, thought Claire, this conversation is going to be repeated all over the tower.
“That seems like your corporate plan was faulty at a basic level,” said Claire.
“Tell me about it,” said the man on the other end, “They tried to get more female hires, but the great state of California-” someone else shouted something vulgar, “said that we couldn't specifically seek out more women for our office. There was a few lawsuits and a big stink raised so eventually we had to just adjust our door parameters to allow for all single females to be admitted. It was a compromise of necessity- no one really wanted to be stuck here their whole life without at least the possibility of a long term partner. Turns out that didn't go so well though...”
His voice had dropped a little and Claire picked up on the change in tone.
“Do you want to tell me what that means or should I guess?” asked Claire as sweet as she could. There was some laughing on the other end but it was a little muted. Evidently this subject was a bit more serious.
“Well...Jesus, I guess there is no point in glossing over the gory details anymore. We were doing okay until we tried to let in some survivors and two of them were already...well they had been bitten you know...”
Claire's eyes shot open.
“No way!” she said in disbelief.
“Yep. Way. Very very way....there are honest to god motherfucking zombies out here...”
Claire didn't know what to say for a second, then something clicked into place and she asked:
“Classic Romero style or modern and fast?”
“Slow, thank god, but still a damn pain in the neck. From what I understand they aren't as big a problem as some of the other things going on around the world- at least you can shoot a zombie you know? But they still took down a lot of our guys here. We had to seal off the lower section entirely and take it back floor by floor. It took about a week and we lost about ten people doing it but, well, that's just how it is. The apocalypse is bound to have casualties after all. Now at least we have everything mostly in hand. The ratio still sucks though...”
Claire nodded in sympathy, then realized the nod wouldn't come across the feed. She couldn't believe her ears: Zombies? It made her suddenly wonder what else there was lurking out in the world? What else had been brought here to wreak havoc in the world?
“That sucks,” was all she said.
“Totally,” agreed the man on the other end, before asking: “But what's this about fog?”
“Oh yeah,” said Claire, “Well here we have had a...well kind of a Call of Cthulhu type vibe for awhile. Lots of cosmic horrors, creeping mist that smells like fish, that sort of thing, you know?”
The man seemed to take a moment about that. There was some more talking, but they couldn't make out any of it. Evidently people were having just as hard a time with that information as she had had with the idea of zombies. Claire honestly didn't know which she would prefer to deal with...though, as the man had said, at least zombies were usually pretty easy to take down.
“That sucks,” is what the man eventually said to her.
“Totally,” agreed Claire.
“I think you should give me the Mic back now,” whispered the tech, “this is going nowhere.” Claire just ignored him. She concentrated on her questions instead.
“What about the other towers?” she asked, “Has there been any other-”
“Oh wow,” said the guy on the other end, “You really don't know do you? Man. Be prepared to have your mind blown little girl.”
“I'm not a little girl my friend,” said Claire. She smiled broadly and looked at Sven, “My name is Claire and I'm a woman. So please: tell me everything.”
Chapter Twelve:
The lead com technician swallowed his nerves and knocked on the Fletcher residence door again. He looked down the hallway, there was no one there. He looked again to be sure. He felt nervous. Mr. Fletcher was a big man. Mr. Fletcher could hurt him if he wanted to. The technician didn't like to think about that, but he also felt he had a legitimate grievance so-
The door opened. Hank Fletcher was standing there, wearing a set of pajamas he had obviously had sewn from the material production lab. They were even monogrammed. He looked friendly enough. Big, but still friendly.
“Uh,” said the Technician. He shut his mouth. Damn it, he thought, this shouldn't be so hard!
“Phil right!” said Hank with a snap of his fingers. He smiled warmly at the technician, whose name was indeed Phil.
“Uh, that's right. Can I come in Mr. Fletcher? I have something to discuss with you.”
“By all means,” said Hank. He opened the door further and moved aside to let Phil inside. Phil moved quickly, with purpose. Hank could already tell the man was agitated about something. He smiled warmly at him again, trying to get the man to relax a little. Often he found that situations could be slightly diffused just by not taking them completely seriously.
“Can I get you something to drink or-”
“No thanks,” said Phil a little too quickly. He sat down and folded his hands nervously. He tried to breathe normally, but his heart was racing. Then Claire walked into the room, she had a little satchel over her shoulder. She stopped when she saw Phil, the whole incident in the com-room flooding back to her face in a second. Evidently Hank saw the look she gave.
“Oh I see,” said Hank with a little laugh, “I think maybe you should sit down too Claire.”
“But dad-”
“No butts. Let's see what this nice man has to say,” Hank replied. His voice was firm with his daughter. He sat down opposite Phil and motioned for Claire to sit. She folded her arms and slumped into a chair, looking both put out and very upset at whatever was going to come.
“So,” said Hank, “What exactly did my daughter do?”
Phil swallowed. He glanced at Claire, who seemed almost to seethe with hatred for him. He glanced back at Hank.
“I- uh,”
“You sure you don't need that drink?” teased Hank.
“Dad, he's just going to tell you-”
“Quiet please dear. I want to hear Mr. Phil talk,” said Hank. Claire shut up and somehow looked even more pissed off than before.
“Well Mr. Fletcher-”
“Call me Hank please,” said Hank.
Phil swallowed again.
“Well Hank, I wanted to tell you that your daughter disrupted a highly important conversation between this tower and the West Coast Tower. A communication that is certain to- well maybe not certain- but will probably go down in history as-”
“How did she disrupt it? If you don't mind my asking.”
“Oh. She- that is-”
“I'm sorry I interrupted you. It's a bad habit I have. Please continue.”
“It's okay. I just- that is.”<
br />
Phil swallowed again and started over.
“I'm officially in charge of the communications room,” he said. Why the hell did I say that, he thought, obviously the man already knows that.
“I know that,” said Hank, “It's a powerful responsibility. I wonder: before the lines were fixed, what were you doing down there? Just out of curiosity.”
“Oh,” Phil thought for a moment, “Well that's actually kind of interesting. Before the whole com thing with the other towers we were primarily engaged in a catalog and sort process for the Internet.”
Hank made a face.
