“Mind if I take a look now?” I asked. I was eager to start and wanted to assess the inventory without prying eyes. Namely, the Lady.
“Be my guest, please.” Lasser handed over a key fashioned from what looked like iron. The surface was pitted with age, and there were only three teeth. “Second to last door. There’s a window, but there are bars on it. Throw the shutters open for light, but no torches inside if you please. There are things inside that might find fire to be disagreeable.” His brows lifted as he pointed, and I stood, ready to see what I had to work with.
Mira rose to her feet. “I’m coming too. There might be things he won’t recognize.”
“As you wish,” Lasser said agreeably. His plans were for coffee and contemplation rather than pawing through a storeroom of broken artifacts.
We walked down the hall together, feet echoing on the cool tile. When we reached the door, I noticed there was dust on the handle. That was a good sign. I liked forgotten things. It meant they hadn’t been ruined by the hand of man.
The lock opened slowly, with a series of muffled clicks as the tumblers moved. I pushed the heavy door open to reveal a room in deep gloom. Thin lines of light pierced the heavy shutter, enhanced by vertical bars place closely together, running from top to sill on the narrow window. A smell of age and dust crept out in the swirling air, making Mira sneeze with explosive force.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping her nose while her eyes watered. “Dusty in here.”
“And old.” I appraised the room. It was five meters by six meters, with a tall ceiling and heavy shelves filled with darkened shapes. “Light first. Then we investigate.”
“I’ll get the shutters,” Mira said, moving to the window through a maze of stacked items. Some were covered in cloth, others left to collect dust in the still air. I couldn’t see much of anything but based on size alone there was a huge collection of things that might be useful. Lasser’s collection was far superior to the backbreaking work of being a scavenger. “Anything we should find first?”
“Solar panels. The fans that Wetterick’s scribe used to power his computer? I need them. We need power for tech, and we need it to be mobile. They might be in sections, or in squares, like mirrors,” I said.
She was already rummaging through the room on her way to the outer wall but stopped when she got to the window. There were two heavy bolts thrown into locks, keeping the shutter closed outside the bars. Reaching through, Mira grunted with effort to release the bolts, frozen from disuse. “Tough to move.”
“Let me try,” I said. I reached past her, grabbing the first bolt and breaking it free with a squeaky snap. For my new muscles, the rusted metal was no problem. “Next.” The second came free with less effort, and Mira pushed the shutters open to let light and wind inside with a welcome rush. “Lasser’s been busy,” I remarked, looking over the contents of a room that looked like a medieval weapon collector and tech nerd shared an apartment.
“This is unexpected,” Mira said.
We were frozen in place, staring at the shelves of items that made no sense together and even less by themselves. I picked up a broken sword, the hilt melted by something like acid, pitted with dots and reeking of chemicals. I wiped my hands out of habit, leaving the broken weapon behind to examine the screen of a phone, whole but darkened from disconnection to any power source. “Plenty of tech here, just in fragments. I can do things with what’s here, but we need power.”
“What about this?” Mira asked. She held up a triangle of glass, backed by circuitry.
“Let me see,” I said, taking the glass to examine it. “Might be another kind of screen, but I can’t tell shit about it without juice.” I ground my teeth in frustration, peering into a wooden box filled with broken plastic housing from a glorified kitchen mixer.
“Keep looking. Lots to see,” Mira said in her usual good cheer. She kept lifting, shaking, and moving things from table to table, even waving a thick sword around with practiced form. “Good steel here, too.”
“I wish Lasser had a stash of guns he’d forgotten.” I kicked softly at a box, doing little more than banging the hell out of my toe. A rattle caught my ear. I kicked again, but just enough to move the box.
Something shook inside. “Mira. Let’s open this.”
She cleared off a space on the nearest table, shoving aside a stack of rigid animal skins that broke into fragments. After a grin toward me, she pointed to the open area. “Put it there. Fah. Dead animals.”
“Old dead animals have their place, just not here. Lend me your knife?” I asked her, holding my hand out. She dropped a small folding knife into my palm and I slit the thin box open, marveling that it was intact at all. “Like balsa wood but glued down.” The lid shattered under my blade, revealing two rows of black objects on their sides, edge up and packed in styrofoam. A packing list on paper was yellowed and curled, its ink faded to near oblivion.
“Chinese,” I said, looking over the remaining characters.
“What’s that?” Mira stared at the list, her brow furrowed.
“A language from my time. A country, too, with over a billion people.” Even as I said the words, I knew that whatever was left of China, it wasn’t a billion people. It might not even be a memory, let alone a culture or a language. For the hundredth time, I wondered just when the hell I was.
“What are those things?” Mira asked. She plucked one form the packing, turning it to flash in the light.
I picked up a pair of items, and the future—and my own past—came swimming into my mind as I saw what was on the front of them.
“Holy shit. Calculators,” I laughed. Of all the things to survive and be squirreled away by the owner of a post-apocalyptic hotel, it would be solar powered calculators from China that could unlock my memory.
“How many—okay, good,” I said, flicking my fingers over the rows to count them. There were four rows, not two, layered evenly and all pristine, kept away from the elements by luck and wood that was thin enough to shatter with a light touch. “Forty-eight.” I eyeballed the little solar panel on the front, adding the area together. “We’ve got enough panel here to generate a low-voltage system. I need cables, Mira. Do you know what they are?”
“We use them, yes. Any special kind?” She spoke while searching, moving through case after case of discarded tech, raising a further cloud of dust in the sunbeams that split the air. “Like this?” She held up a bundle of coils, no two alike in length or design.
“Perfect, Grab it. See that gray metal box? Get it, too and any screwdrivers or tools you see. We’ll do this in our room. I need light and fresh air.”
“And no dead animals,” Mira said.
“Right. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a little engineering to do before Lady Silk shows up.”
“What’s engineering?” Mira asked as we bustled out of the storeroom, our prizes in hand.
“It’s where smart people fix the ideas of a genius so that they work,” I told her.
“Sounds like the genius needs a day or two in the Empty to show them what life is really like.” Her lips thinned into a line. I could tell she had some experience with people telling her what should work instead of what actually worked.
“I was a Marine. I hear you,” I said, locking the door behind us.
“What’s a Marine?” she asked.
“Long story. Remember our friend Hardhead? Imagine if you crossed him with an angry soldier. Well, you’re getting close.”
17
We worked quickly on the roof, which was open and sunny as opposed to the cooler interior of the house. Lasser kept the staff away, and Mira proved to have deft hands when it came to removing the small solar panels, laying them end to end in a glittering display of what looked to me like pure freedom. The ability to create power—even in small amounts—was nothing short of miraculous, given the conditions around us, and I was thankful for the chance to get some answers.
I didn’t expect to like them, but that wouldn’t
change the fact that I was alive, awake, and remade by technology I didn’t fully understand. I suspected that the tube and ‘bots weren’t fully understood by the very people who used them on me, which would explain why so much of the world was a flyblown shithole instead of a technological paradise. I used to read books about what would happen after the world ended from some disaster, and the authors always thought that no matter how bad things got, civilization would always find a way to come back.
They weren’t just wrong, they were naïve.
I’ve seen how low humans can go during a war, let alone the end of the earth, and cute little villages with a blacksmith were heaven compared to the reality of what rose up from the ashes of a conflict that left humans fighting and dying over scraps of bread or a swallow of water. The Empty was a howling waste, filled with creatures that were unnatural.
The same could be said of the people and their beasts.
Looking down on the busy street, I saw the sloped shoulders of several ogres, their pelts gleaming in the sun as they dragged wagons and carts and even a kind of chariot back and forth at their master’s whims. They were three feet taller than me, muscled like superheroes, and stronger than any animal I’d ever seen, but there was something about them that set my warning bells ringing, like a distant threat I couldn’t quite explain.
I broke away from staring at the street and began lining the solar panels together. Mira scraped together enough cold solder and wire to connect everything we had, but to perfect the array, I’d have to get creative. The sun was constant in the Empty, but that didn’t mean I could get sloppy.
“The sun’s too hot to allow this anywhere near the drives and laptop we’ll be using, but our cord is short enough that we can’t run it through the roof. That means we’re going to need a small shelter up here, and we’ll have to work in the early morning and dusk, maybe, so that we don’t cook off the computer. Too damned hot to let it roast just because we need answers,” I told her.
“She’s on her way,” Mira said.
I cut my eyes toward the Lady’s house, and saw nothing at first, then my eyes settled on a trader, flailing the air with a whip and shouting like a wild drunk. He had a filthy beard and torn robe, his feet bare and dirty, staggering forward in a series of lurching steps that made everyone get the hell out of his way.
“She’s good,” I admitted, knowing that the trader would smell like roses underneath the excellent disguise.
“It’s her hips,” Mira said, a slight smile curving her lips. “She can swagger, but she’s too graceful, even playing the drunk.”
After a moment of watching, I saw she was right. Even under the character, the Lady was still there, but the whip and shouted curses kept anyone curious well away.
“Mind letting her in when she staggers to the door? I’ll have these connected and run the cable. We’ll have an hour or two before it gets too hot, and maybe, I’ll have some answers.”
Mira touched me on the shoulder as she left, not with jealousy but assurance. It was the kind of thing only confidence can create, and I watched her go to the descending stairs, my thoughts flashing forward to when we would be in bed later that night. Despite being in a future of ruins, some things had actually gotten better.
I snapped together the remaining connections while listening for Mira and Lady Silk to come up to the roof, and after a moment of silence, heard them both talking in friendly tones. That was good. I didn’t need bullshit rivalries of any kind when there were plenty of legitimate threats from people—and creatures—that would kill me without a second thought.
“Lady Silk. You seem to have grown a beard overnight,” I said over my shoulder, smiling down at my work.
“Mister Bowman, you should know that we women have two faces. The one we show you to gain your interest, and the one you see after we know we’ve got you hooked,” came her laughing reply.
Looking back at her, I watched her remove various items of her disguise, handing some to Mira, who watched in amazement as the Lady emerged from beneath a grimy, stinking herdsman. When she was done, only the Lady stood there, wearing a simple white dress and no shoes, her small feet still filthy, like a child of the streets.
“Better. I do hate that disguise, but it’s useful for day traveling,” she said, smiling at Mira and approaching my collection of solar panels and various tools. She gave a low whistle. “You weren’t lying. This is your field of work?”
“Among others,” I told her, choosing my words carefully. I trusted her, but I didn’t know how much. That would come later. “I’m apparently a monster killer and handy with a shovel, too. You might say I was made for this world.”
“He is,” Mira said, winking.
Lady Silk lifted her chin, considering the distant caravans that plowed through the sand in every direction. “I’m glad to hear it. You’ll find that all manner of skills are needed here, especially since you’ve chosen to make Wetterick into an enemy.” When I made to protest, she waved me off. “I don’t think you should fear him, Jack. He’s a bully and a coward, but the world you create without him will have need of someone in charge.”
“Someone like you?” I asked her, putting down the cloth I was using to wipe the panels clean.
“Not like me. And not me. I want no part of commanding this post, Jack, and you know it,” the Lady answered. Now that I could see her in the sun, she was even more stunning than the night before. Even dirtied up, her skin was pale perfection, making her green eyes leap from a face that was sculpted by the hand of an artist. She folded her legs and sat, fully at ease, black hair moving in the wind and watching me as we both did the math of conquest in our head.
I considered her an ally, enemy, and lover while she did the same, both concluding that we needed more information before reaching a decision. We did this in seconds; she because that was her nature and me because my ‘bots let my thoughts move at speeds I’d never know before. I was smart but my intellect had been limited to computers and systems and the Marines. Now, my mind showed me angles, and I found that given time to think, I could see around corners and make decisions based on what might happen next.
Like just then.
Ignoring her parry of my question about leading the post, she held out the laptop.
“You’ll need this first?”
“Thank you. We’ve got,” I peered up at the sun, now rising in a punishing arc above the post, “about an hour before we have to get the components out of the heat. I’ll see what I can find on the first drive. We’ll need to mark them so that I can catalog anything we find.”
After a quick scoring with the point of a knife, we had five drives, labeled in order and ready to shucked like oysters. I needed their secrets, and time was of the essence.
“Here we go.” I connected the laptop to my little solar array, watching the power indicator with fevered intent.
Nothing happened.
“Are you fucking—wait.” Rubbing my hand over my face, I took a breath, letting the air calm me. “Mira, check the cable. Always check the cable.”
She pushed the connector with an audible click, and the small green light on the side of the laptop came to life, a winking eye of civilization in a million acres of sand.
“It’s alive,” I said, feeling rather like Dr. Frankenstein, but without the collection of body parts.
“You’re serious? That easily?” Lady Silk asked. She looked at me in awe, which told me a lot about how tough it was to preserve and use technology from a time when people like me thought it was disposable.
“That easily, and once the solar array kicks the battery in the ass, we’ll have enough juice to unplug and go inside for a few minutes after we leave the heat. The way I figure. I’ve got around an hour of time each day for us to discover the secrets of your world. And mine.” I added.
Mira was silent, as was Lady Silk. The possibilities of what we could learn tumbled through their thoughts, but one question dominated mine, and that would be the first thing I
looked for.
What happened to the world?
18
The laptop had a manufacture date of June 2033. I felt a growing sense of unease like I was looking through the windows of a funeral home, but my entire world was in a casket with crying people milling around, unsure what to do with their hands.
“Lady. I’m ready for the first drive,” I said. She held one of the black wedges to me, a mixture of dread and respect on her face as she watched me hook the system together. The laptop growled, then beeped, and then settled into a low whirr.
So far, so good.
Lasser, Mira, and the Lady crowded around me, so I thought it best to ask a question before I went digging in the past. “Are you going to share anything I find with the outside world?” It was a reasonable request. Information like this wasn’t meant for people who were barely subsisting, and it would be best if the residents of Kassos never even knew I had a working computer. I’d seen villages burned over something as trivial as a functioning radio or clean water, let alone a main line to the deep past and all the information it could offer. Secrecy was best.
Lady Silk and Lasser both understood for practical reasons, Mira because she knew how the Empty worked. All three nodded with murmured assent.
“Good. Let’s see what we have, then.” I opened a drive file to reveal a line of folder icons, all empty. “Next, Lady.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, handing over the second drive.
“Empty. Never used, and no data. Like a husk. It’s still useful if we ever rebuild civilization,” I said. Even saying that out loud felt oddly optimistic, but I had to start somewhere.
“Try this one.” She handed the second drive over after giving it a kiss. “For good luck.”
I linked the drive and waited, hearing the familiar whirr of activity that sent a chill up my arms. The screen flooded with files, unfurling like flags that filled row after row, spilling down the screen in a digital tumble. “Your kiss worked. Must be lucky.”
Future Reborn Page 12
