Future Reborn

by Daniel Pierce

  I thought of my blood and decided to roll the dice. “I don’t need a mask. Neither do you, but I’d wear the goggles. This is clean air, I can tell you that. Leave the masks off and breathe free, but I won’t wear one. Not here.”

  “We don’t have one for you,” Bel said. Her statement wasn’t cruel, just truthful. I got the feeling that was a lot of what passed for life in this new world. They both left their masks off, but close at hand.

  “That works, then.” I pointed to the pile of bricks outside the walls. “I have an idea about that pile over there, and the rest of this place, too. You found me right here, and the tube was buried, right?”

  “Buried deep,” Mira admitted.

  “Then this place is—I know this place. I know all around here, too, as long as the earth hasn’t moved while I was taking my nap,” I said. I didn’t trust much around me, but I knew my sense of direction hadn’t gone away. “When you dig things up, what do you do with them?”

  “Trade them, mostly,” she answered. “If we find something we can use, we’ll put it to work. The town has a trading hub where scavengers can offload goods, and then anything that’s useful can be sold in the square. No tech, just useful things, like blades, or metal. Why are you asking?”

  Her eyes shined brilliantly in the sun, like fresh cut emeralds, and I wondered if there were other women like her in the trading post. Oversleeping through the end of the world might not be all bad if women looked like them.

  I scuffed at the ground, prying up the remnants of a wide, flat turtle shell. It was sun-bleached and brittle, but it would do for what I had in mind. “Do you have something to write with?” I asked.

  Bel handed me a stick of charcoal, wrapped in thin leather. “Use this if you’re mapping.” She understood my meaning and settled back to watch. Mira did the same, waiting to see what I was going to draw.

  “We are here,” I scrawled a star in the center of the shell, then began making a series of lines and marks in an expanding map. It was crude but effective, despite being drawn from my memory. “This half of the clinic is supplies. We should dig there. Here are some other buildings that might be useful, but there’s no way we can dig through all of this in one trip. I know this place, know these streets—”

  “Streets?” Mira asked, looking around at the howling wastes.

  “Underneath us, yes. There’s a city here, and I can show you where to dig and why, if you explain what it is we want to sell,” I said.

  “What we want to sell? We’re partners?” Bel asked. There was a hint of challenge in her voice as Mira merely watched.

  “We are unless you want to waste your lives digging up old tires and trash. I’ll show you where to dig, and I’ll help with the digging. This is my city. This was my life. If I understand this world, I’ll make us rich, but you have to consider me a partner. I’m nobody’s shovel donkey.”

  “What’s a donkey?” Mira asked.

  “Stubborn animal, a beast of burden. In my time, it was also called an ass. You can ride it, too," I told them.

  Mira’s laugh was musical. “You can still ride an ass in this time, too, but it might cost you if you go to the trading post.”

  “Unless you can find a free ride,” Bel added.

  I let a handful of sand run through my fingers, watching it blow away in the growing wind. “I don’t pay for rides. Never did, and I won’t be thawed out just so I can dig in the desert to support my next ride.” I felt my grin fade as Mira appraised me, looking at my arms and chest with a raw, unfiltered hunger.

  “I didn’t say everyone had to pay. Sometimes you get to ride for free, if you can find the treasure,” Mira said.

  I scored the shell, never taking my eyes from every inch of Mira’s lush body. She was long in the leg, sculpted everywhere, with a round ass and breasts that stood up and out like they regarded gravity as a charming suggestion. I watched her full lips, letting my gaze roam across the shape of her face when I wasn’t taken in by the perfection of her green eyes. “X marks the spot. Let’s dig, and you can tell me about your treasure.”

  “Treasure looks better in the moonlight. For now, we dig,” Mira said, standing and brushing sand from her pants. “Where first?”

  “The second half of the clinic, just over here. That’s where the doctor’s office was, and if this clinic is like any other navy facility, then there will be a safe,” I said.

  “Navy?” Bel asked, already holding a metal shovel. It was wide and well-made, with a handle wrapped in leather. Mira had two shovels of the same design, handing me one with a broad ring at the end. It was perfect for excavating sand. I guess they knew their business.

  “My country had a huge navy of warships, sailors, soldiers, and pilots, too. Our navy spanned the world, but this building was a research clinic; a place where they tested new ideas.” I sank the shovel into the ground. The blade went deep, cracking layers of impacted sand with ease. “I was one of those new ideas.”

  “You won’t need a ship here,” Bel said, following suit. She wasn’t much of a talker, but she worked. Mira did the same, and in seconds, we were making fast progress in what had been Marsten’s office. I hoped I found the fucker’s bones, so I could spit on them but kept that little sentiment to myself. I was in a future desert with two beautiful women and few answers. There was no reason to let a pointless grudge scare them.

  “Are there ships? Not here, but anywhere?” I asked. I expected to get tired but didn’t. If anything, I was accelerating after a minute of digging, my muscles barely registering the effort. Mira watched me, leaning on her shovel with her perfect chest heaving after our first burst of intense effort. If she was gassed, I should be too, but I wasn’t. I filed that away, knowing that I wasn’t the same man who’d gone to sleep in the distant past, only to wake up and find the world died while I was hidden away in a forgotten military clinic.

  Bel took a break, stretching with a groan. “Too much digging. Long trip.”

  “How long have you been out here?” I asked, still turning rocky soil as I spoke.

  “Two moons this week. We’ve had shit luck,” Mira said.

  My shovel hit something, and I knelt to sweep the grit away. It was the edge of a wall, with a metal rim jutting out about an inch. Even at this angle, I recognized it instantly. A wall safe. Just the kind of place Marsten would keep the good stuff if he were using any kind of security protocols at all.

  I took a final swipe with my shovel, clearing the entire safe to gleam in the sun. “Your luck just changed.”

  “What is it?” Mira asked. She knelt next to Bel, both turning their heads to get a better look at the bland metal object.

  “A safe. Place to hide things, and now I just need to get in,” I said, considering the problem. There was no power, and it was a mechanical and electric lock. “Show me your tools.”

  Mira unrolled an impressive array of metal tools, stored in oiled hide. Some were old, some new, and a few made of other things, but they were all well-cared for and free of rust. I picked a cold chisel and an engineer’s hammer, the heavy metal head swinging easy in my hand. “Sometimes, every problem really is a nail,” I told them.

  “Big nail,” Bel said.

  “That’s why I picked a big hammer.” I didn’t tell them to shield their eyes because they wore goggles, but I did wave them clear.

  The hammer nearly whistled in my hands, striking the chisel hard enough that it drove the point in and through the metal lip, sending sparks and metal shavings flying up in a bright flare. The smell of burned metal filled my lungs for a second, making me cough as part of the exposed wall collapsed ten feet away from the shockwave of my strike.

  “Holy shit,” I said in the silence.

  Mira looked at the hammer like it was a snake. “Well, that’s new.” Bel said nothing, but looked at the metal gash where the chisel had been.

  I shook my hand, letting the tingle die. I was a decent athlete, with decent strength before. I was not Thor in another life, bu
t I may as well have been throwing Mjolnir because the metal ripped under my blow like I was using a cutting torch. “Holy shit,” I said again because it seemed appropriate.

  “Yes. Holy shit,” Bel agreed, smiling.

  Mira picked another chisel, handing it over with hesitation. “Try not to melt this one?”

  “I think the chisel is inside the safe, but I get your point. I’ll go at an angle,” I told them. When I lifted the hammer again, both women edged back without thinking. “Clear,” I said like I was detonating a bomb.

  It was a bomb, of sorts. My second strike was harder than the first, and at a better angle. I sheared the entire safe face off in two pieces to reveal the interior shelves.

  Even in the sun, I could see a winking blue light.

  “Told you our luck was changing.” I reached for the contents and began handing them to Mira. There were three metal containers, flat and shaped like notebooks. I saw them before but never needed to protect anything, so I was careful as I placed them in her outstretched hands. She took them with a delicacy I didn’t know possible, clearing a flat rock to look them over with Bel. “One more thing. Is this the same blue light you saw in the tube?”

  “Same. It was a small light, on the panel before we got you out. It went out after we tried to pry the lid. It’s the same color, only brighter.”

  I reached in for the last object and held it up to the light. “Mira.”

  “Yes?”

  “Does anyone still use tech? At all?” I asked, never letting my eyes move from what I held.

  “In the city. Even a little in the trading post, and a few people use the sunfans, still,” she said.

  “Sunfan?” I looked at her, unsure of the term.

  “We have some on the cart. They fold out to drink light and can heat water, start a fire, even make old Hightec work again if they have enough time to charge. They break easily, and we don’t find many that still work. Very rare,” Mira said.

  “Are they shiny? Like silver?” I asked. The object in my hand pulsed once again, a tiny blue light radiating from a port on the side.

  “Yes, like glass, but very thin. As I said, hard to preserve, even for us, and we’re careful,” Mira said.

  “Do the sunfans have cords?” I asked.

  “Some do,” Bel said, watching the thing in my hand as it lit up again. It was black and unremarkable. A square that fit in my palm, but I suspected it was more important than we could imagine.

  “Bring me one. Or two, if they can network. Can they be attached to each other?” I asked.

  “They can,” Mira said as Bel moved off. “Bring the cleaner, too.”

  Bel moved with a furtive air, and I realized they’d been hiding their loot in plain sight. She pulled back a painted cloth, the pattern identical to everything around us. The cart was less than twenty feet away, in the middle of the ruins. She smiled when I nodded in approval at their stealth.

  After rummaging carefully, she brought a leather tube, like an old map case. When Bel saw me looking, she held it up for inspection. “Keeps the fans safe. We pack them in silkweed.”

  “How many do you have?” I asked. Mira unrolled the silvery panels in careful motions as Bel swept away sand from a flat piece of concrete, its surface pitted from wind.

  “Four that are whole. One half that works a bit. They’re rare like I said, but they don’t seem to wear out,” Mira told me as she connected the solar panels with short black cords. “We find these cords everywhere. I think all of your machines used them.”

  “Pretty much,” I agreed. They were thicker USB cables, clearly designed after I went down for my nap. I wondered how long the world had gone on before falling to shit. Judging by the solar panels, it couldn’t have been much. “How long do they take to charge the Hightec?”

  “At this time of day? Not long. You could cook a meal and have a full charge by the time you’re done eating,” Mira said.

  “Fast.” I nodded in approval as Bel completed the chain. “Connecting now. We’ll charge this and see what happens.”

  “What is it?” Mira asked.

  I considered my answer. It wouldn’t do to weigh them down with tech that had been dead for who knew how long, so I gave the simplest definition possible. “A memory core. It’s probably all of the data for whatever project I was a part of.”

  “Data?” Bel asked.

  “Facts. Stories. Records,” I said.

  “Info,” Bel confirmed.

  “Good to know some old terms are still around, but, yeah. Info works.” I made the connection and listened for the click, but instead, there was a magnetic tug. The blue light began to pulse steadily, rather than an occasional flash. “It’s charging. Now, we’re going to need a way to read it. I don’t suppose you have a laptop?”

  “You mean a paycee?” Mira asked.

  “Close enough. Do they still exist anywhere?” I was hopeful, but not overly. It was a shitstorm of a world, judging by the ruins.

  “In the city. In the trading post, too, but the owners don’t share,” Mira said.

  I thought about the trading post and what would happen when we got there. There was no turning back the clock for me, so it made sense to plan every move in advance. “Who runs the post?”

  “Wetterick. He’s a thief, but he has men to do his bidding, so we take what he gives,” Mira spat.

  “This Wetterick has a working—a paycee? Does he use it?” I asked.

  The memory core chirped, blinking twice before returning to a steady blue glow. After checking the fans, Bel answered. “He has a lot of tech, but uses it for himself, not the people. Many of them are hungry. I don’t know if he can feed them with the Hightec, but he doesn’t even try.” It was Bel’s longest speech, each word dripping with disgust.

  I hated Wetterick before I’d ever met him, but in a way, I already had. Warlords are all the same. They climb to the top of a tribe and feast on it like a carcass, handing out favors and rewards while getting fatter and richer with each passing day. In the Marines, we saw petty assholes running their people into the dust over a new car, a palace, women, gold, or all of it. The seed of an idea took root in my mind, and I knew that my next move would be to meet Wetterick and see just how stable his crown really was.

  I was in the future. I had no past and no life, but I had strength and a need to find my place. The trading post was an obvious step, and I had the advantage of knowing technology at a level that most people could only dream of if my assessment of this new world was right.

  When Mira unwrapped her mask and smiled at me, I knew I also had something else.

  “We’ll let this charge and go directly east about fifty yards,” I announced.

  “What’s a yard?” Bel asked.

  “A long step. Just over there,” I pointed with my chin at a small outcropping of battered stone.

  “You remember something worth our shovels?” Mira asked, but she was already moving.

  “I do.” I thought back to my last day in the past, letting memory come back as I walked my earlier path. “Just here. Let’s dig.”

  I set to the task with hard blows at the rocky crust. The top layer shattered, and I threw huge sheets of sandstone away. The work felt good, but my muscles felt even better as they worked like pistons. It was time to take my new body out for a test drive, so I cleared a hole into the softer sand and dug, waving the sisters away when they approached.

  I went at the sand like I was a worm on Arrakis, hurling dirt into the air and only stopping to pry out random sections of rock.

  “Water,” I said, not stopping to look up from the hole. It was five feet deep and growing. Bel handed me a skin, and I drank deeply. “Thanks.” I turned back to the task as the sun hammered me, but I didn’t care. At the bottom of this hole could be answers, or money, or both, and I had the body to do the job.

  After fifteen minutes of maniacal digging, I hit a wall. Not my body, just my shovel.

  “It’s here.” I stopped, watching as some
rebellious sand spilled down the edge of the pit. At the bottom, a gray block wall squatted, the paint scoured away by time.

  “What was this place?” Mira asked.

  I kicked at a rock, probing with my shovel. I could see the entrance, so I knew my guess had been close. “A veterinarian. Animal doctor.”

  “A herder?” Mira asked.

  “Close enough. They fixed sick animals, mostly small ones like dogs and cats. Even the occasional turtle. Like that shell I drew on?”

  “Hardback. Tough animals, but friendly. One of the only friendly things out here,” Mira said. “Why dig here, though?”

  “I’m hoping they still have supplies that we can use. The medicine and bandages will be long dead, but there are tools we could sell, or keep. It depends on what’s available.”

  Two hours later the sun blazed overhead at high noon, but I still didn’t care. We hadn’t found one useful thing.

  We found dozens.

  Scalpels, retractors, forceps, and scissors were all perfectly preserved in cases, as well as needles and other small wares that would have good trade value. I explained the items I knew, guessed at the ones I didn’t and kept a running tally as Bel and Mira wrapped each tool in cloth or leather to protect them from the grit and wind.

  “What is this thing?” Mira asked, waving a tool that looked like a curved nutcracker.

  I winced, taking it from her hands with a kind of fearful respect. “This is for—you know the word castration?”

  “Castration?” Mira repeated. Bel mouthed the word silently, but neither knew what it meant.

  “It means to cut off a male’s balls,” I said. So, it was a nutcracker, after all, just a surgical version. “They can’t make a baby—baby whatever. Cows, cats, dogs.”

  Mira and Bel looked like I’d pissed in their coffee. Their horror was so intense, Bel turned and covered her mouth.

  Mira spoke first. “What kind of people would do such a thing?”

  “You mean castrate something? I guess we did it for population control.” I decided not to mention vasectomies. That seemed like a bridge too far.

  “But why?” Bel asked.