Her normal working clothes.
Today was not a normal working day.
She didn’t like the feeling of being sick, of feeling helpless in any situation. She had learned to always be in top shape and never feel helpless on her home planet a few hundred years before, when as a young woman she had needed to become a survivor.
And she had.
Now she was here to try to help the survivors below.
She needed to pull herself together.
She turned and instead of looking at the large screen panning over the streets of death, she just stared out the huge wall of viewport that covered one side of the big room.
The beautiful planet drifted below, whites and blues swirling over the large oceans. It seemed so calm and peaceful and reminded her a lot of her home world. Looking at the planet through the wall-sized viewport, you could never tell the billions of humans who had thrived on that beautiful planet were now dead. Only a few million survivors remained.
She forced herself to take a few deep breaths to calm herself.
There were almost a thousand humans on this huge spaceship called Star Conscious that now orbited the planet. The crew and people like her on board were from over four hundred planets in three different galaxies near the Milky Way. Her home planet was in the Lesser Maganelic cluster of stars.
Everyone on this ship was a Seeder, part of an ancient organization of humans that seeded human culture on all Earth-like planets and then helped the human cultures survive and mature.
The planet below had been seeded.
She had been recruited to be a Seeder off her home world when she was twenty-five and now a few hundred years later she still looked the same, since once a person became a Seeder, all aging and disease was cured from the body.
The Milky Way had been completely seeded and the front edge of the Seeders had moved on to the Andromeda Galaxy and its surrounding satellite galaxies before she had become a Seeder. She had joined in with the social services branch and in two hundred years had been embedded on nine different worlds at different levels of development to help move the culture of that planet forward.
The planet below had been seeded in the third sector, so it was in the early space-age period of growth, one of the most dangerous periods for any culture. Only the humans on the planet below would now have to start over and build again.
She had no idea how long it would take them to get back to where they had been in development. Or if they ever would.
The mission below would be her tenth, and so far the most challenging. She had no idea how to help survivors just live and start to rebuild a civilization taken from them without warning in an instant.
The Seeders, even with all their ships and skills, hadn’t been able to do anything to help rescue the billions of humans on the planet below from instant death, but they could rescue and help the survivors.
The Star Conscious had just arrived in orbit less than ten minutes ago, right after the first big death pulse. If that pulse would have been allowed to hit this ship, some inside would have died as well.
The Seeders who had been embedded on the planet below had escaped on one ship and would be returning to also help with the survivors.
Helping the survivors was why she was here. She and at least a thousand others covering the planet were going to help the survivors move forward as fast as possible, start to rebuild over the next twenty or thirty years.
But first they had to rescue as many as they could of the survivors from a second coming disaster. This planet wasn’t going to be struck with just one electromagnetic deadly pulse, but two, the second one coming in just ten days.
Right now, from another more advanced part of the Milky Way Galaxy, ships were speeding here to try to pull off the planet the almost two million survivors and move them out of harm’s way when the second huge pulse washed over the planet.
Then they would put everyone back to start the rebuilding process.
All of those ships from the Milky Way Sector One had Seeders embedded secretly in the crews. Every planet eventually discovered that they had been seeded at a distant time in their past, but the common knowledge was that the Seeders were long gone. In reality, Seeders were everywhere, secretly helping every culture advance and survive. Only the main wave of Seeder ships had moved on out of the Milky Way.
This ship was only one of four completely Seeder-run ships on this rescue mission.
She looked around. The large room looked like it could hold a banquet with a hundred tables. It had lights recessed in the ceiling and tan walls. In ten days this room would be full of at least three hundred survivors from below.
And thousands and thousands of other rooms like it on this ship and a thousand other ships would be full as well.
Staring out at the beautiful blue planet below, she just hoped enough of the other ships would make it in time to save every survivor from the second pulse.
CHAPTER THREE
BENNY HEADED DOWNTOWN along Lexington, stepping over and around the dead bodies on the sidewalks. He thought these sidewalks used to be crowded when people were alive. When the same people were sprawled all over the place, not moving, the sidewalks got even smaller.
A number of places he had had to walk out in the street to get around cars smashed up on the sidewalk. And in two places he had to actually climb over the hood of a car to even get up the street.
Most everyone had either their business clothes on, or summer clothes, so there was a lot of skin showing.
A lot of very dead skin.
He kept staring up at the buildings around him, looking for movement in any window.
Nothing.
Thank heavens the day hadn’t turned hot.
Down a dozen blocks, he saw a few more people gathered near the entrance of the subway, looking terrified and very panicked, but at least this group had gotten over the desire to flee back into the tunnels. More than likely this was their second time to the surface.
Benny crossed the street, giving them a friendly wave as he went toward them. “Anyone have any idea what happened?”
All four of them, including a nice-looking young thing with blonde hair and a light blue backpack over her shoulder, shook their heads no.
One guy held up his cell phone. He looked to be about five years older than Benny and had more hair than any guy should ever wear in his mid-thirties. It was tied back into a ponytail.
“Phones are working, but no one is answering anything,” he said. “Anywhere.”
The guy stressed the word “anywhere.”
The guy seemed to be the one who was in charge of the little group. Besides the college-age girl, there were two boys about the same college age, all looking stunned. More than likely this had been some sort of field trip for a class and the older, long-haired guy was the professor.
The guy again stressed the word “anywhere,” more than Benny wanted him to.
The other three nodded, all holding their cell phones as if they were lifelines. After walking a dozen blocks, Benny was starting to get the idea that no one was going to toss any of them a lifeline.
“Anyone try tuning in a radio?” Benny asked, something he kicked himself for not doing at once back at the office. He clearly wasn’t thinking as well as he seemed to think he was.
That wasn’t a good sign and he needed to make sure he was extra careful.
The guy nodded. “Nothing. The internet is still working, so is Facebook and Twitter, but not one new post from anyone, anywhere in the world, that we can tell. We are searching. And no one, including any of our family across the country, is answering any of us.”
Benny made himself take a deep breath and push back the panic from that thought. He figured this might have been citywide, not worldwide.
That thought threatened to crack his cold, hard shell and he pushed it back down.
What the hell had happened?
He took another deep breath, then asked the same question again out loud.
“What the hell happened?”
“Are they all dead?” the young college-age girl asked, the look of panic in her blue eyes.
Benny had seen that look a number of times in soldiers’ eyes in Iraq. She was about to flip and he wanted no part of that.
“They might be,” Benny said. “I’d head off the island, get away from the city.”
The professor-guy nodded.
“We can’t drive and the subways aren’t working,” the girl said, her voice higher than a moment ago.
She was very close to going into complete panic.
The guy who seemed in charge of his little group said softly, “Let’s walk.”
He turned them toward the river. They stumbled in the direction he got them started in.
Then he looked back at Benny. “You coming?”
“Got to check on a few people first,” Benny said.
He had no one to check on, but it was an easy lie to get out of going with them.
“We’ll head south if you want to join us,” the long-haired guy said.
“Thanks,” Benny said to him. “I might.”
Benny reached into his wallet and handed the guy his card. “Cell phone number. Call me if you hear anything or end up back this way if the phones are still working.”
Benny had no intention at that moment of joining anyone, but better to leave the options open. At least this group seemed to be holding together, except for the girl.
The older guy nodded and tucked Benny’s card into a pocket. “Good luck,” the older guy said and followed his little flock.
Benny was starting to think it was the human race that needed the luck now. No one online, no emergency declared, and no announcements coming across any emergency bands or over the radio.
From anywhere on the planet.
Benny had a hunch that no help was coming. That group could walk all the way to Florida and never find help, other than other survivors.
Benny stood and looked around at all the death surrounding him. He had a hunch the human race had just bought the farm in a really big way.
Clearly being down in the subway had saved a number of people, and him being in his vault had saved him from whatever killed all these people.
It hadn’t been gas and it hadn’t been an attack. That much was clear. He had read an article last month about some huge burst of energy that might take out the entire planet coming from some other sun. Maybe something like that had happened without warning.
Or maybe this had been an alien attack.
That thought made him smile. He had clearly watched far too many late-night movies. Maggie really liked those old bug-eyed monster movies. He had really liked when she sat on his couch watching television, giving him occasional glimpses of those wonderful white panties. It had been a fair trade.
He was fairly certain he was never going to know the answer to the question of what happened. And to be honest, he didn’t much care. What he did care about was staying alive now that he had drawn the lucky straw.
He headed toward Broadway along 42nd Street, working his way among the bodies.
A number of dogs, still attached to their leashes were dead as well, but he caught a glimpse of a few cats still moving. So whatever had killed the humans had spared the cats. Strange.
Near some garbage cans he also saw a number of dead rats. Thankfully he wasn’t going to have to deal with those.
He kept walking, just looking at everything, trying to get himself calmed down, if that was even slightly possible.
What was really creepy about the bodies was the lack of blood. All the bodies he had seen in the past had become bodies because of holes that let out a lot of blood. No one sprawled on the sidewalk had any more than a bump on the head or a slight bloody face from hitting their nose when they fell.
He wandered all the way over to Broadway, seeing only a few survivors picking their way through the streets of dead. He didn’t talk with any of them, but instead turned and went up Broadway.
He had no idea why. He just needed to explore, see the city he loved totally dead, help the reality sink in completely.
Finally, a couple hours later, as the sun was starting to set, he found himself back at his loan company on Lexington.
It had been a nice little business, funded by investors to help those on the streets that needed help to get by with short-term, interest-free loans. He had felt good running the little shop, helping out people, and Madge had been fantastic at getting the business grants and donors to keep everything going.
He went into his little business and pulled both Madge and Maggie out onto the sidewalk and sat them with their backs against the front of the business, like they were looking out over the street on a cool summer’s evening. He smoothed down Maggie’s dress so her white panties didn’t show.
He had been around enough dead bodies to know that in short order they would start smelling. No point in having Marge and Maggie smell up his office.
He stood on the sidewalk and looked in both directions, suddenly realizing something that was very obvious. This entire city was going to be one stinking mess quicker than he wanted to think about. It was scheduled to not get hot for a week, which would help a little.
But not that much.
He had smelled his share of three-or-four-day-dead human bodies and didn’t much care for it.
Yet in a city full of the dead, where could he go?
Where could he go in a world full of dead?
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER TALKING WITH the others for an hour or so, Gina had gone back to her apartment on the ship and the office in her apartment.
The apartment seemed, for the first time in a while, empty. She wished she had someone to talk with, to share all this with, but she didn’t. In two hundred years, she had only had a dozen relationships, all fairly long-term, but none of them had really been right for her.
And none of them had been with other Seeders, so after a few years, since she didn’t age, she had always moved on.
So now she lived alone and seldom dated. Being embedded in less-advanced cultures for a decade or two per mission sort of kept the possibility of relationships down. And she had gotten used to that fact.
Most of the time, she actually liked it that way.
Helping others was worth it to her. That was her passion and what had made her sign up for this job. She sure didn’t need the money anymore, since she hadn’t spent hardly anything besides apartment costs in the last few hundred years.
But she didn’t do this for the money. She did this as a calling, to help people improve themselves.
But on days like today, having someone close would have been nice.
She had the lights come up to just under bright and brought up some lively dance music as background to lighten her mood.
Her apartment was comfortable, with a small living room furnished in what she liked to call graduate school comfort. Huge overstuffed chairs, a long, deep couch, and a coffee table stacked high with reading material and files. One wall of the living room was a large screen, the other walls were covered in various cultures’ art she had liked from her different missions.
She mostly used the living room for reading or watching movies she had collected from different planets. The apartment also had a nice kitchen where she cooked basic meals and a small bedroom. Another room off to one side of the living room functioned as her office.
The walls of her office were also decorated with pictures and art from various planets.
And some images of people, of children, families, she had helped along the way.
The apartment felt a lot like the one she had lived in while going to college on her home world to get her degrees in social science. But that apartment had been in a six-story building just down the hill from the university while this apartment was on a massive starship.
She had been on board the Star Conscious now for six months and the ship would remain in orbit being a support for all the em
bedded Seeders going into the planet below. She was glad of that, since that way she could come and go from this apartment when she wanted over the next ten years.
That would help her stay level, she knew, during the coming mission.
She now sat in her office, using a grid system over the island covered by the massive city below. That was her area, that island, and all the survivors on it.
That room she had been in as the ship first arrived in orbit would hold most of the survivors from that island city that the locals called Manhattan. But before the rest of the ships got here, she needed to track and make sure she knew where every person on the island was, so no one got missed.
She would put a tracker on each person in the Star Conscious computer for the extraction moment. The tracker was nothing more than a recording of each person’s biometric signature and general location. The computer would do the rest in tracking them.
Right now, as the evening started to settle over the dead city on the surface and the automatic lights came on, most of the survivors had settled down. Only a few were still moving around, so it was easier for her to start tagging the survivors.
Her equipment in her office could allow her to zoom right in on each person, so close she could see facial expressions and often read their lips as to what they were saying.
She didn’t think she would need to get in that close on any of the survivors. At least not this soon after the disaster. She just needed to start putting tracking on them, putting their biometric signatures into the computer so that they would not be missed.
She knew she was in for a long night.
The idea that she might miss someone just scared her to death.
An idea of what dreams she might have if she tried to sleep scared her even more.
CHAPTER FIVE
Smith's Monthly #11 Page 10
