Forced Conversion

by Donald J. Bingle

  “What are you doing that for?” he asked her.

  “A pile of wood tends to get noticed, even from a distance. Logs strewn about the weeds and trees don’t.”

  He looked at her with agreement, but without understanding.

  “You haven’t been chased . . . hunted . . . ever, have you?” she said matter-of-factly, without the acid, bitter accusation that he knew could have tinged her voice.

  “No, I haven’t,” he replied softly, as he took to hefting the logs into the woods from the truck bed. “I’ve only hunted,” he whispered to himself as he completed his work and secured the scanner beneath the remaining logs. “And I’ve never even liked that.”

  * * * * *

  The ancient SolarFord started up surprisingly well and the two of them decided that it had sufficient charge to make the brief trip back uphill to fetch some meat. Maria worked on packing the meat and snow while Derek studied the maps from the glove compartment. When she got back into the cab, he handed the maps to her.

  “I can’t navigate, if I don’t know where we’re going,” she said, taking the maps.

  He hesitated a moment before replying. “South, but back east first, so we’re traveling on the plains as much as possible. It will extend our range.”

  Maria glanced at the map. “So, south to I-70, then into Denver and south on I-25?”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, I-70 might not be safe from either of our factions. We’ll move east along the back roads, through Nederlander and towards Boulder, then south on 93, for now.”

  He was probably right about I-70. The Believers would certainly kill or imprison Derek if they had the chance. Yet she couldn’t help but feel that Derek was somehow testing her, using her suggestions and replies to gauge her knowledge or her trustworthiness. It perturbed her. Sure, she was keeping secrets. She would never reveal the location of Sanctuary. But, confound it, so was he. They both knew that. But he couldn’t let it be. Why did he pick at the scab of distrust between them by his conversation, rather than letting it heal?

  “You’re driving,” she replied simply. Derek re-started the truck and they were off on their journey into the unknown.

  * * * * *

  The door to Sanctuary opened up onto the badlands of hell. Drifted soot and ash gathered in the lees of charcoaled logs, harboring the still-hot embers from the firestorm against the now-cool breeze blowing across the devastated valley. Here and there, clumps of forest fuel still burned even days after the main conflagration had passed. No chirping bird or buzzing insect intruded upon the tableau of emptiness and destruction.

  General Antonio Fontana surveyed the depressing scene with a methodical, steely gaze. No tear moistened his cheek as he made a slow, 360-degree assessment of their military and survival situation. When the door had first been opened, he had quickly detailed several patrols to search for Maria, but he had no real hope that she had survived the fire. It had been pure foolishness that had driven her to scoot out the door at the last second and she had assuredly paid for her lack of judgment with her life, but, blessedly, not with her soul.

  Whether they found her burnt body or not, there would be a brief service and prayers for her in the morning.

  The service would have to be brief, because Fontana didn’t like what he saw, not in the least. The entire valley had been consumed, leaving no vegetation shielding the mine entrance, no cover for the trails used by Believers as they came and went from their refuge, and no food or game to support the population hidden away beneath the mountainside. The vista on the other side of the ridge, where their air-holes and secondary and emergency exits were located, was reported to be no different. Their hideaway lay naked and exposed to the photographic and infrared equipment of the blasted ConFoe satellites.

  In some ways he was surprised that the ConFoes had not already fallen upon them in force. The squad that had set this blaze had had plenty of time to report in and the cool air exhaled from the mine’s air vents as part of the underground warren’s natural “breathing” process would show up like brightly colored balloons against a clear blue sky on a tasked satellite’s output scans.

  Worse yet, nature, itself, posed an even greater threat than their heathen enemies. The first serious rain would wash a thick, hideous slurry of mud and water and ash down the denuded mountainsides in a torrent. Half-burned logs would clog the waterways and the frustrated liquid would permeate any avenue it could find in its gravity-induced search for a lower resting place.

  Sanctuary could be well-sealed against ConFoe invaders, but it was far from watertight. The floodwaters would empty into the mine, rushing toward the safe-places for the women and children, destroying their hope for the future. The sky was clear at the moment, but that would not last indefinitely. They did not have long.

  He started to think to himself that they had been lucky so far, but he knew that luck had nothing to do with it. God was watching out for them, protecting the Believers, but giving them a sign that hiding from their tormentors was no longer His will.

  Circumstance and desire conspired to reveal God’s will. It was time to implement the Plan.

  The Plan had been conceived during the long, dark times deep in the bowels of Sanctuary when the military and religious leaders pondered the issues of the survival of the Believers and their place in this final battle between the forces of good and evil. It was, of course, holy writ that the forces of evil, the ConFoes, could not, would not, be victorious in the end over the forces of the righteous. But the Believers’ teachings also warned that there would be terrible, dark times before the final victory and that the final victory would not come from a miraculous, heavenly bolt from God’s right hand, but from the pain and death and misery of a final battle between the Believers and the ConFoes.

  Accordingly, they had thought long and hard about that eventuality in their secret Sanctuary—not only about the tactics of the situation and the training of recruits, but about what event, what circumstance could possibly be the final, strategic showdown between the warring forces left on this world.

  Clearly, the battle would need to be one that raged over ultimate objectives of the warring factions, not subsidiary matters or tactical targets. That made it simple.

  What was the ultimate objective, the unholy purpose of the ConFoes? Not the elimination of all of mankind—that was merely a means to an end. The ConFoes existed to protect the computer universes from intentional or unintentional destruction by mankind.

  Eliminate the computers and you eliminate the purpose for the ConFoes’ foul existence. As an added bonus, the annihilation of the computers and the multitude of foul, unholy, and artificial virtual worlds they contained, would free billions of souls from limbo and send them back to God where they belonged.

  And so, deep in their carved-out caverns, the leaders of Sanctuary had pondered long and hard on the same questions that had faced the leaders of the world’s governments many years before. Where could the computers that housed mankind be hidden and how would they be protected from destruction? There was a scientific logic to answering that question, a scientific logic that had been investigated publicly in the United States years before, when the government was trying to determine where to store safely the nuclear waste it had accumulated over the decades.

  The location had to be geologically stable—not prone to earthquake or volcanic activity. It had to be dry—flowing and dripping water are difficult to contain and predict and can be terribly destructive. It had to be remote—too many people nearby caused too many variables, too many witnesses to construction, and increased risks. And, finally and most importantly, it had to be defensible, from terrorists . . . or holy warriors.

  A variety of salt domes in Utah and Texas fit the criteria and had been investigated thoroughly by the government. In the end, they had not been used because the government decided that the heat generated by the nuclear waste was better contained inside the barren mesa of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. After more than a
decade of lawsuits and wrangling and a few more years for structural modifications and enhancements, the special trucks and railcars carrying impregnable stainless steel canisters of all sorts of nuclear waste had trundled ceaselessly out into the desert and into the confines of that place.

  That left the various salt mines available for the computers. It was only a question of figuring out which one and coming up with a tactical plan to take it with a light infantry force.

  The Believers had not been alone in their planning. Their intermittent contacts with other mals revealed that at least the more organized and militant among them had gone through the same thought process. Most of those other mals, of course, did not share the religious rescue aspects of the benefits of the Plan, but many had indicated that, if the time came that it was clear the ConFoes could not otherwise be defeated, they would join in on a last-ditch effort to save what remained of humanity.

  The Believers did not bother to attempt to bring the warlords and gangs that dominated the urban areas into the circle of allies. Their reputation for violence and chaos was unparalleled even by the ConFoes; they could not be trusted. The Believers interacted with them only through individual envoys that disguised their affiliation and traveled to the cities in search of rare equipment or replacement parts to scavenge or obtain by trade.

  Tonight, Fontana would go deep within Sanctuary and urge that the Army of the Believers march on the most likely of the salt-dome repositories, while the women and children sought refuge in other less desirable, but now less dangerous and exposed, mines elsewhere in the Colorado Rockies.

  His panoramic survey of the area and his thought process both complete, Fontana turned back into the coolness of the mine. He quickly dispatched messengers to those clusters of other mals that shared the Plan and could be trusted, setting up a meeting in a safe, neutral location where the forest still stood for the following night. He also sent an operative into Denver to glean whatever intelligence or equipment she could in the next few days.

  The spy, Kelly Joy Lanigan, was quick, confident, and apparently able to fast-talk her way into and out of any situation. She hadn’t been to Denver now for many, many months, but she had done an admirable job on prior missions. She set off at once on a salvaged mountain bike, promising to return within forty-eight hours with whatever she could find.

  Fontana went to his “room” in the mine and pulled out his worn copy of the Bible, the gilt-edged pages gleaming dully in the dim light. He fingered it open to the back, to the chapter of Revelations. Deep in his soul, he knew that it described the battle that lay ahead for his forces.

  He just had to figure out what it meant in terms of his battle plan.

  * * * * *

  Hank shut the thick operating manual with resignation. His battle was over; he could do nothing more meaningful with the equipment and manpower he had left. He and Ali would begin to mothball what was left, so it would be preserved against that future day when the search was once again taken up.

  He had failed. His life, his work, had come to naught. But the scientist in him stubbornly continued to catalogue what he had done, what he had attempted, and to see to it that the equipment was left in proper order for the next to come.

  The search for truth never ended when it came to science. It was just delayed, put off by society for awhile. These impediments to the march of knowledge alternated from time to time. Sometimes it was the ignorant, other times the fundamentalists, the bean-counters, the apathetic, or the narcissistic. None of them felt that science was truly important and, when they held sway, the world would enter another dark age of stagnation and superstition, from which it would eventually emerge in a renaissance of activity and growth and insight.

  The world had entered a dark age. The last candle had been put out and now he was cursing the darkness.

  Hank had no guaranty that the world would ever emerge from this dark age, darker than any night the world had ever known, but he had to act as though it would, else his depression would surely overwhelm him.

  As he worked methodically, he imagined some band of future explorers or scientists coming upon his treasure trove of information, like an Away Team from the quaint old Star Trek vids. They would remark to one another about how advanced the civilization had been and how the data would benefit all benevolent and peaceful peoples.

  “Live long and prosper, my friends,” he murmured as he continued to format the last run he and Ali had processed.

  “Live long and prosper.”

  Chapter 15

  Maria shivered in the warm truck as it hummed efficiently down Route 93 south of Boulder toward Golden.

  Conversation had lapsed as the routine of travel set in for them and the sunny day progressed. Parts of the trip had been breathtakingly beautiful, but now they were down on the plain, hugging too closely to the eastern edge of the first foothills to have any view of the mountains themselves, with nothing but dusty flats and dirty brown scrub plants and weeds between the scattered remnants of what was once civilization.

  “I can roll up the window if you’re cold,” volunteered Derek, confused by Maria’s shiver.

  “It’s not that,” replied Maria, opening her window a tad more to alleviate the heat from the sunlight streaming into the cab through the south-facing windshield. She nodded to her left. “That place just gives me the creeps.”

  Derek looked over toward the dilapidated wooden sign that had once identified the Rocky Flats facility—the place where the military had constructed nuclear weapons triggers many years ago, when nations had actually fought over real estate and resources and ideology.

  He shrugged his shoulders as he continued driving, his left hand on the wheel with his left elbow resting on the frame of the open window and his right arm outstretched, resting on the back of the passenger seat.

  “It’s perfectly safe. They cleaned it up years ago. Sent the high-level radioactive waste out to Yucca Mountain.”

  Maria stared sullenly at the sign, apparently unconvinced. She couldn’t tell him of her fear of radiation. She couldn’t tell him how, living in a mine, the Believers constantly tested for levels of radon exposure—natural radiation in the ground that could be quite damaging in poorly ventilated areas. The radon could be lethal and needed to be guarded against, lest the Believers unwittingly accomplish the ConFoe’s genocidal task for them.

  “Look,” said Derek, reassuringly, “you’ll see in a minute. They built big, nice houses almost up to the edge of the property. They wouldn’t do that if it was dangerous.”

  She looked at him, incredulous.

  “What kind of training did they give you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you brainwashed?”

  “Huh?” repeated Derek.

  “You actually seem to believe that the government would never lie to you, that they wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t in your best interest.”

  “Why would they?”

  “Government is just people. Imperfect, selfish, ignorant, greedy, and power-hungry people. How can you have spent . . . What is it, years? . . . with the ConFoes and believe that government is beneficent?”

  * * * * *

  Derek was stung by the vehemence of her question and ashamed of what he knew of ConFoe atrocities. He drove on in silence for a few moments.

  “Look, the ConFoes . . . well, they have done some pretty horrible things, I won’t deny that. But I told you what the reason was and you can’t deny that it makes sense. Change . . . change is always messy . . .”

  “Messy?” Maria interrupted forcefully. “Messy? You think genocide is messy?” She glared at him. “You probably just wash your hands before you sit down to dinner.”

  Derek didn’t get the reference, but he understood the meaning of her remarks.

  “Okay, violent and . . . sometimes terrible, but mankind is evolving, not just to a better reality, but to a different mindset.”

  Maria’s brow furrowed and her eyebrows tilted inward. “How .
. . you tell me how mankind’s mindset is improved by forcing people to live an artificial existence separated from God.”

  Derek folded in his right arm and put both hands on the steering wheel, slightly opening his palms to gesture as he responded. “Look, I’m not going to argue theology with you. All I know is that in a world where resources are unlimited and nobody can get hurt or killed and everybody can be happy without bothering everybody else, I just don’t see how power and money and government and all that are necessary anymore, or at least significant motivators of human activity.”

  Maria’s delay in responding suggested she realized he had a point, but was not willing to concede. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know. Selfishness has no bounds. Besides, inertia is a powerful force, even when it comes to mindset.”

  Derek nodded, pleased to note that their discussion was becoming less heated. “I mean, sure, you’re right. There will be some inertia, but eventually when the unlimited potential of the virtual world sinks in, everyone will just gravitate to doing their own thing—thinking great thoughts, creating great art, living an idyllic life.” He let his enthusiasm run away with him without thinking. “It’ll be heaven.”

  The barrier between them slammed shut again, as Maria turned to look out the right window at the sun peeking at them from the crest of the first foothills. “No,” she said, sadly. “It will never be heaven.”

  * * * * *

  Kelly finally rested a moment in relief when she reached the eastern edge of the burned-out area and was once more under cover of the trees for her journey. But after a quick sip of water from her ancient sports bottle, she pedaled rapidly on. It was a long trek into the city and back out. She didn’t have much time and she needed to spend as much of it as possible actually in the city to accomplish anything.

  She mostly avoided the old roads, sticking to the hiking trails and bike paths that meandered through the foothills northwest of Denver. She had an old pair of birding binoculars and decided to ride to the crest of Lookout Mountain to reconnoiter. The hill—the first foothill west of the city when you headed out into the mountains on the interstate—had a good view of the city and the surrounding plains. She wanted to take a quick look while it was still light, before heading in.