Clio and Cy: The Apocalypse

by Christopher Lee

  “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can

  and no one may.

  We ourselves must walk the path.”

  ― Gautama Buddha

  South Carolina:

  RMB Jackson:

  “When do you think Dad will come home?”

  Her mother looked away, unsure why she was so emotional from the question. “Soon, you beautiful creature you… soon,” she answered after composing herself, looking at her daughter, flashing a smile. “Very soon.”

  Asking the question as if she sensed he was gone, twelve-year-old Clio felt emotional too. She and her mother had gotten used to their father being gone, fighting in the war since it started seven years ago. While living through the end times, they were settled with his absence as much as any mother and daughter could be. But for some reason, today just didn’t feel right.

  They lived on RMB (Resistance Military Base) Jackson in South Carolina. Thanks to the Marines that came to their aid from Camp Lejeune, it was one of two major strongholds. RMB Pendleton in California was the other. The West was stronger than the East, but it was still safe on RMB Jackson, or so they thought. Still, they dearly missed their elite soldier man. With her dad around, things were different; it felt safer. When she could hear his voice, Clio was truly home.

  Physically, Clio was a young girl, but the war had spun the hands on her psychological clock. Seven years turned the people who lived through them, into – realists. The war forced survivors to grow up; chronological age was put aside whether they liked it or not. In their attempts to stay sane, humans had to get with the program, especially after witnessing all the war had to offer.

  The robots ripped human flesh to shreds. Ker blasted people into vapor mist. And now there were rumors of worse things roaming the countryside, evil things. Sightings of cannibalistic creatures were being reported with chilling regularity.

  Unknown to Clio, her life was about to change forever.

  Her world suddenly shattered from the deafening noise that rocked the RMB. Sirens announced a state of emergency.

  Defcon 1 had arrived:

  The RMB’s alarm blared from overhead speakers like a whaling trumpet. It shredded Clio’s tympanic membranes with piercing sound while she covered her ears.

  “Mom… what’s happening?” Clio asked while cupping her palms tightly to the sides of her head.

  “Honey, run. Get down in the shelter Clio, now! Go!”

  “Come with me Mom… I don’t wan…”

  “Go! Now! I’ll come down right behind you… I need to grab a few things. Go Clio!”

  Clio ran down a staircase and came out to a block wall that encased a massive door. She slid to a stop and punched a code on the touch panel, realizing why her dad pounded the combination into her head. Guided from her subconscious, she couldn’t hear herself think while her fingertip worked the numbers. While the battle raged above, the entrance began to open. “ZZZzztss…” The Kevlar door disappeared inside the wall revealing the shelter.

  Straddling the threshold, Clio slipped halfway through the entrance and looked up the staircase, shouting. “Mom! Come on!”

  “Go…” her mother called back in a faint echo. “Go… lock it! I’m on my way in a second… I love you… trust me.”

  Clio committed to enter the vault and spun her back toward the inside. Withdrawing, she shuffled backward tripping the sensor - the door shut behind her. “ZZZzztss.” It closed air tight, ending with a vacuum noise after sealing her in. “Shhp.”

  The lights cut off and blackness engulfed the room, then fear, as she stood frozen. Disoriented, Clio began to panic, until “click, click, click,” the emergency backups illuminated.

  She felt the world rumbling above while things were crashing in vibrations through the thick walls of the shelter vault. I must be dreaming, this can’t be real, she prayed. Her nightmare had come true. The RMB was under attack. Clio tried to lie to herself, but herself wouldn’t let her get away with such deception. She couldn’t deny it, the Ker were here and the base was under siege… she knew it was true.

  Mommy…. Please be ok Mommy… please don’t leave me. Please! Please Mommy! What are you waiting for? Come on! Get down here now Mommy! Please!

  Her mother didn’t come. Clio waited... Her mom was just beyond that door; she had to be. At any minute, Clio waited for her mother’s beautiful face to burst inside the vault. She played the scene over and over until her mind played tricks. Envisioning blood dripping from her pores, Clio felt her sweat rolling down her skin. Asking for tender mercy, Clio prayed, take this burden from me.

  Day One:

  No one answered. No one came.

  Three hours and twenty-one minutes after her entry:

  Like a python, the confines of the room constricted the insides of her flesh. The shelter became a tomb of empty hopelessness. Silence fell. Clio realized that the battle was no longer raging above her.

  It was quiet.

  Time to be brave… She had to open the door and peek. Mustering as much courage as her twelve-year-old soul could conjure, she walked slowly toward the door. She punched the code. “Wwrrrmmm,” the door strained like a stuck blender but didn’t open. What’s wrong, she thought? Punching the code again... The door buzzed but didn’t move. It’s not working. Clio thrust her fingertip on each code number in a third attempt. “Wwrrrmmm…”

  The door remained shut and she panicked. What am I going to do?

  Immediately Clio’s thoughts ran to the food and water stored in the shelter. In between her survival thoughts, Clio’s mind ran to her mother. Why is she not here? Is she alive? Oh my god my Mommy…

  Day Two:

  Clio awoke, not remembering passing out on the flimsy army cot. She thought of her father, wishing he would burst through the door with her mother, saving the day.

  They didn’t. No one came.

  She spent day two falling asleep and waking in terror. Clio performed the same exercise over and over. Falling asleep… waking… each dream faded away as she sat up. Every time Clio’s eyes opened she was smacked and sobered by the penetrating dissonance of her reality.

  Unsure of the hour, day two ended as Clio fell asleep guided by her internal settings of habit. Tossing on the cot, she dreamed horrible things.

  “One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”

  ― Emily Dickinson

  Day Three:

  Clio awoke. The third day drifted by in the twelve-year-old-little-girl’s panic and madness. Something had to change. I can’t just sit here, she thought. Clio did what any trapped animal would do; she took action. Exploring every inch of the vault, the girl began digging, sniffing and scratching.

  Clio remembered her father squatting and tinkering near a particular spot on the wall once. It was after they’d first moved to the RMB and she vaguely remembered him in that place, maybe more than once. Over there, she recalled, walking toward the industrial cabinet that covered the wall.

  Slipping her finger’s behind the metal cabinet, Clio attempted to move it. Good god this is heavy. “Ghhh,” she grunted and pulled on the cabinet. Pausing, she reset to gain better footing. Clio toe-kicked a pile of flak jackets to the side and cleared a spot. She braced her heal against the base of the wall and pulled on the metal organizer. After momentum swung in her favor, the cabinet slowly slid away from the block partition…

  Food supplies, first aid, cans, and things in heavy duty, airtight containers filled the shelves inside the metal organizer. Clio looked around, breathing hard from her efforts and realized how many things were inside the vault around her. Dad knew how to prepare for a rainy day. Turning, she moved closer to the wall where the cabinet had been.

  The dust cleared and a small door sat flush in the cinderblocks. After moving closer, Clio noticed a digital panel, same kind as on the front entrance, she thought while her pulse quickened. Her circulation coursed, feeling as though it would pound her unconscious.

  Shaking violently, she reached for the touch-
pad. The door leads somewhere… outside maybe? She was sure of it. Just need to calm down to open it.

  Clio backed off and drew in a deep breath. Calm down, she thought, slowly breathing in and out. Using a simple trick her dad taught her, she counted to ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… now steady enough, she went for it again.

  Realizing the filthy touch-pad was too difficult to read; she reared her head back and blew on the numbers. “Fwww.”

  The dust cloud mushroomed off the wall. Clio turned away coughing and waving her hands through the air. Nose tickled and body gripped, she was suspended against her will. “Haachuu!” Again, she froze like a mannequin. “Haachuu!” Clio’s motor control returned and she wiped her mouth and nose on her sleeve. Now I’m ready… Leaning in, Clio reached toward the panel.

  Electrical currents came alive inside the wall after she typed the code. “Shhhp.” The hatch opened and swung out like a hinged safe door. It’s a cave…she thought. Clio stared down the dark hole and felt a cool draft blowing out. Her nervous system electrified with danger. Don’t go in there… Air filled her nostrils with dampness and fear. Shadowed indefiniteness sent cold chills up her spine. Come in here Clio, she heard an evil voice whisper. Nope.

  The girl yanked the door until it was flush and typed the code, locking it. “Shhhp.” Not ready for that… can’t go down there yet…

  Clio rummaged through the entire vault and searched for useful items she intended to take with her. After putting things in and taking them out of a small military rucksack, she narrowed it down to the winners. Other packs were bigger than she. The twelve-year-old grabbed water, food, flashlight, and the photon pistol that her dad trained her to use.

  CHAPTER 5 - GOOD LORD

  “A structure of astounding elegance, a ladder delicately twisting into a double helix, packing into one, efficient strand all the information to create a living being. No molecule in history has been more controversial.”

  -G. Santis, Cyprus

  For his next design, Dr. Pavlov schemed and created using what he’d stolen from a fellow scientist. A good man, Molecular Physicist and Geneticist, Dr. Marcus Pressfield, was the leading mind in his field.

  Several years back, Dr. Pressfield and Dr. Pavlov were colleagues and worked together on defense contracts. Long before the war started, Seth slowly mined Marcus’s work, piece-by-piece, cloaked in secrecy, smuggling genetic formulas like blood diamonds for his devious desires. Dr. Pavlov was a thief, no different than the government. Karma is a patient bitch.

  Dr. Pressfield never enjoyed working with the strange man, other than marveling at his intelligence; Dr. Pavlov gave Marcus the creeps. And so did his wife. “Goddamn monkeys,” he’d always hear her mumbling, giving everyone the stink eye.

  Some things are better left un-invented and undiscovered, like the atomic bomb, or anthrax, or the Hearth Virus that killed millions in 2384, spreading for almost two years before containment. And like those examples, in the care of the wrong mind, so were Dr. Pressfield’s genetic discoveries, better left to ignorant bliss.

  Dr. Pressfield was a wise and just man, but so was Albert Einstein. The latter helped invent the atomic bomb, and, the former, something maybe far worse. In the wrong hands, Dr. Pressfield’s genetic discoveries could be grown and created, guided to their evil side. After the war started, Seth Pavlov mixed his stolen goods into a horrible recipe. Opening Pandora’s Box and aiming DNA strands toward obliteration, Dr. Pavlov released nightmares – living –breathing creatures of pure horror.

  With his wife dead and his mind having slipped into the corners of darkness, he conspired. Even with the “how to books” the “recipes” and the “go-byes,” it still took Seth Pavlov significant time and substantial effort to perfect the ideas he’d hijacked from Dr. Pressfield. But eventually, he figured it out… building humanoids from hell.

  Dr. Pavlov gave birth to a new race of creature. The mad scientist created two things at the opposite side of the spectrum from one another. Complementing the high tech Ker, he grew bloodthirsty demon creatures that harkened to a land that time had forgotten.

  Crossed with human and predatory animal DNA, they were mostly void of higher brain function, but not all. The demonic humanoids were smarter than any pure beast, and along with the Ker, he set them loose on the war-torn world.

  Ker strived against primitive flesh eaters to win a game. Competing for the title of Ultimate Killer, both creations stacked a rising death toll. Using their innate God given talents, two sides of the same coin, each piled the bodies high.

  Until the world realized they existed, Dr. Pressfield was unaware his work had been hijacked. Marcus Pressfield knew it the second he saw one captured on film. Hanging his head, he prayed for forgiveness, feeling sick at what his mind produced. The flesh eating humanoids were introduced as top of the food chain predators. A flash of pride entered him too, which made him disgusted at his pathetic vanity, wishing he could tear it out. The monsters that now roamed the planet were, in part, his fault.

  Dr. Pressfield couldn’t dwell on Pandora’s Box; it was already open. He could only focus on how to close it and continued to concentrate on his good work. Ironically, he’d have to use the same technology to create something, with respect to evil, that resided at the opposite end of the spectrum. Wonderful and new – it was something that was still secret, he hoped.

  Dr. Marcus Pressfield toiled under a labor of love. He had plenty of it in his heart, careful now at what he was crafting. Especially after being the father of real live boogiemen. He wasn’t the one who created the demonic humanoids, but if he could, it was his responsibility to rewrite history. Those secrets, his work, it all should have been guarded like the Hot Gates. Nothing should have slipped by; his vigilance failed the world, and now, despite his intentions, that genetic technology was roaming the land in demonic bloodthirsty flesh.

  Be careful… as much as he held that emotion in his heart, his new creation was already alive. His cyborg was complete. He couldn’t go back and undo things. Could he? Yes, he could destroy S.C.I. (Superior Cybernetic Intelligence) and burn its very existence. It was an unthinkable idea. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy this new creation, this being of synthetic materials fused with human flesh.

  Subconsciously, Marcus knew SCI might be the only thing that could stand in the gap. This cybernetic thing, this super advanced machine that appeared as a young man, could be man’s last hope for survival. The flame was flickering delicately on human kind; the earth was overrun with Ker. Flesh-eating humanoids were beginning to multiply. Every military force on earth had been burned to rubble; only small, disbanded resistance fighters remained. His cyborg and the lone Resistance were the only chance the world had left at survival.

  Dr. Pressfield wasn’t sure how much one cyborg could accomplish though. How much good could a single perfect creation do? One cyborg and the tiny pockets of rag-tag freedom fighters were all that was left. If those last remaining strongholds fell, if the world’s sparse Resistance lost, monsters and machines would hold the only memory of our existence.

  Seth Pavlov would be the last remaining trace of mankind. Fitting, since he was the one who started the beginning of the end. The worst example of what we are, possessing the worst in us, would be the last human on the face of the earth.

  Dr. Pavlov would watch the last lights of humanity smolder up and trail out in a gray smoke. Pavlov dreamed, wishing on a darkness star. If God existed, he’d watch from above and see the blue ball, turning, with metal and monsters wandering over its face, aimlessly traveling to nowhere. The end was nigh. The world was arching up, settling as slow ash, falling with the flakes of its dead.

  SCI, pronounced Cy, was made with goodness. In old earth, Cy could be a boy’s name or girl’s name, meaning Master or Lord. Before the war started, Dr. Pressfield’s intention of creating Cy was to revolutionize the world. Heal the sick. Cure cancer. Cripple paralysis. Bringing merciful powers to the shores of mankind in healin
g reality; that was his dream. Marcus Pressfield always intended his work to point that direction, for goodness sake. Unlike Pavlov’s machine driven QAI, Cy was distinctly human in thought, without all the neurotic hang-ups.

  His intelligence was overseen by a halo of higher-brain order and underneath, emotions coursed inside. The amount of which was unknown to Dr. Marcus Pressfield, yet to be discovered. With the deepest river of feelings, Cy was capable of love; he was capable of compassion, empathy and boundless forgiveness.

  Cy wasn’t capable of hate, jealously, malice or anything sinister that had evolved with man from out of the mud. More than not capable of such things, they weren’t part of him.

  Humans identify with all the bad behavior in others, because all humans do bad things. We all have badness in us - unlike Cy. His advanced design allowed him to be aware when humans did bad things, while never personally partaking in such deeds. But that was in his metal parts, his processors, not his mammalian derived flesh. Cy’s personal boundaries had finally arrived at, and achieved, what the ancient religious books worshipped – perfection.

  His wisdom, if not his knowledge, was one hundred percent perfection. Strength in his personal boundary allowed Cy to realize what he could control and not control. Cy was incapable of doing the wrong thing after assessing what was right – unlike humans who know what the correct action is but still follow the wrong path. Although invisible, he knew boundaries were the most powerful force humans controlled, whether they opted to control them or not.

  His emotions would never be absent for the misfortunes of others, whether caused by their own doing, or from an outside force. He knew the answers to the questions that almost every human since the rise has asked. Why am I here? How do I become happy? Why am I always so angry… sad? Why am I so afraid all of the time? Why do I fear failing… success? He would have made the greatest psychiatrist in the world. Unrivaled wisdom and unfailing compassion – that’s how Cy was born. That’s how he was made.

  With his super-computer brain, housed in love and steeped in wisdom, this half man, half machine could unlock the secrets of the universe for anyone that asked. So far though, he’d only had contact with one person, his creator, Dr. Pressfield. Cy was able to describe maps leading a person from anger to nurturing wellbeing, plotting a course step by step. Cy could do the unthinkable. He could draw the invisible science of psychology. Dr. Pressfield didn’t instill these gifts in his cyborg directly; rather, they were just there. Seamlessly fused together, working as a symbiotic organism.