《Re-Start Ready - Chapter 1: Full Astronaut》


 Chapter 1 - Full Astronaut

    Re-Start Ready - Episode 1: Full Astronaut


    ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡±


    Karen rubbed her eyes in disbelief. She had been looking at this screen for two weeks now, ever since the blast. This was the first message.


    Her heart sank. Maybe this was an automated message. Something from before. Microsoft going through the motions. Even though there was no more Microsoft. Even though there was no more anything, as far as Karen knew.


    Where was this message coming from?


    The green letters on the ancient computer screen simply said ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡±


    The message had popped up on the screen while Karen drank her instant coffee. It was terrible instant coffee. Crystals. Hot water. Not boiling water. Hot water from the tap. At first, Karen hadn¡¯t even


    bothered with sweetener. Psychologists would probably have diagnosed her as depressed then, right after the blast. Even though there were no more psychologists. As far as Karen knew. She might check the list downstairs later.


    Day three after the blast, she had started sweeteners in the instant coffee. She hadn¡¯t managed food until day four. Mostly she cried, and mumbled to the others, who also cried, and


    kept to themselves.


    ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡±


    Was she supposed to hit enter? Was this some kind of command-prompt?


    Oh god, what if this was like that Matthew Broderick message, from that old movie? Would you like to play a game? Even though there was no more Matthew Broderick.


    A pop-psychology answer came to Karen, while she stared at the green words, shaking. Followyour fear all the way down. What if this was a military computer, some kind of spoil-sport program, to


    launch nukes? To destroy Russia. Even though there was no more Russia, as far as Karen knew. Or nukes. Unless there were submarines. Submarines sitting as close to the bottom of the Marianas Trench as they could get. Could submarines go that deep? Not the ones with the nukes on them, Karen thought.


    All those guys must be dead. And the women. In their neat, white uniforms, boiled alive, or crushed when the lights went out, and the subs sank to the very bottom.


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    Karen would have cried again, but two weeks of tears had stopped the flow. Now there was a woolly, insulated feeling from everything.


    Day two, she had started to speak to her dead daughter. It


    seemed like the only thing to do. She knew her daughter had probably been turned to ash, like everyone else. Like everything else. Her daughter was not in this facility, sitting in a comfortable gamer¡¯s chair, like Karen was, seemingly miles underground.


    Should she answer this message? Re-start ready¡­?


    Fear seemed stupid, at this point. It was like she was watching herself, in a bad 1980¡¯s movie, looking at the screen. The wool. The warm wool of shock told her it was okay. She didn¡¯t think about the


    others below.


    ¡°Who is this?¡± she typed, then hit return/enter.


    Karen waited, and did feel a momentary pang of excitement.


    There was no reply.


    ¡°I know it can¡¯t be you, hon. I know you¡¯re dead. I will see you soon hon. I will. Soon enough.¡± Karen said, to her dead daughter, presumably turned to ashes. Ashes mixed with the cinderblock,


    lunchboxes, students, metal pipes and ornamental bushes of Saint James Elementary School in Dunedin, Florida.


    ¡°I hope your students weren¡¯t scared, baby girl. I hope you were reading to them, like you do, and then it was over. I hope so, my girl.¡±


    Still, no reply came. She blinked, to make sure the words were still there.


    ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡±


    ¡°Who is this?¡±


    Eventually, Karen told the others. Some were curious, others didn¡¯t even look up when they heard the news of ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡±


    As far as everyone down below here knew, everyone in the world


    above was dead.


    Two weeks ago, there had been a few minutes of news footage, posted on the internet, of something huge coming down, out of the sky. White fire, coming down, coming down, filling the screen,


    then nothing. A headline of ¡°Suspected Meteor Footage¡± re-posted, re-posted, then blackness. All


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    electronics in the complex above had stopped working. Everyone had gone below, after a few minutes


    of panic.


    They had all used the stairs. One man had gotten on the elevator, but the security guard had told him to get out, and use the stairs. No please or thank you, just ¡°Get out and use the stairs.¡±


    Fifteen minutes later had come the blast, the shaking, even here below.


    The fire door, ten storeys below ground in the main stairwell, was still hot to the touch. Some people wanted to open it, others did not. There were more shafts sunk into the rocky shield, leading up


    to the surface on long, concrete slopes. At least these sloped roads to the surface, with their metal blast doors and spinning metal wheel knobs, were cool.


    The people, down below, took turns typing return messages. Messages to Re-start ready.


    ¡°We are safe, where are you?¡±


    ¡°Can you identify yourselves?¡±


    ¡°Can you help us?¡±


    ¡°Please tell us something, tell us anything you know¡­¡±


    But there were no more green words, and another week passed.


    Disintegration. That seemed to best word to Karen, to describe what was happening to the people down below. A mirror of what must have happened above. Only far slower.


    Those who wanted to open the main door above were shouted down, as always.


    A party of four snuck open one of the blast doors one night, to one of the slanted side tunnels. And so, off the party had gone. Strange that there was no lock on the huge olive-green blast


    door. Just a flat outer surface, and a wheel to turn on the inside of the door, to open it. The wheel spun noisily, needing a bit more oil, or ball bearings, or whatever it used.


    No one saw the four leave, no one heard the wheel squeak. They were just gone, but the slanted tunnel was the only exit open, and the gigantic metal door was open a human-sized crack.


    When they returned, only one was able to speak. He was bald, and the skin of his forehead was white as a fish belly. He wasn¡¯t shaking like the rest, but there was no blood in his face when he spoke.


    His name was Walter, and of the four, having seen more horror overseas, he was still able to speak.


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    ¡°There¡¯s nothing left,¡± he said.


    When pressed for more, Walter finished up with ¡°It¡¯s dark, there¡¯s just ash. Deep like February snow. And hot as¡­¡±


    Walter stopped himself in mid-sentence, choosing his words a bit more carefully.


    ¡°It¡¯s too hot to survive up there.¡±


    The people down below decided to close the blast door again, at least for now.


    No more messages came. The people below started to silently, slowly panic. This was a huge facility, made to house thousands, for years at a time. There were fifty-three of them. Dorm rooms


    aplenty, showers, laundry. They could all live here for decades. Old age would kill most of them before the food ran out. Or maybe old age would kill all of them. Only fifty-three survivors. No one else had made it here, there had been no warning. Even with enough food, water, medicine and soap, a slow, existential dread began to creep into the people below.


    The panic spread.


    How long could they last? Years, certainly, given the supplies, space, and facilities. The place ran on geo-thermal. Maybe some other power source they hadn¡¯t found yet. There was no facility engineer here, no upper management. No military or government people to reassure everyone. That one guy Walter said there was a reactor here, somewhere. He had heard his boss¡¯s boss talk about it once. A nuclear reactor. Nobody said anything when he claimed that. Walter was obviously just a glorified janitor, and obviously didn¡¯t know anything solid. He even called it ¡°nucular.¡± Not nuclear. Nucular. Sure Walter.


    People whispered to each other.


    What if there was never anything to go back to, up above? No agriculture, no animals, no sunshine, no soil? What if there were no oceans? What if the air eventually tore away from the planet, a gossamer thin sheet, ripped away by comet hammerfall?


    Walter, being a practical fellow, shook his head at these discussions. Instead, he headed down. He and two others removed panels, looked in every shaft, checked every map they could find.


    Soon, they thought they knew every inch of the place.


    Some of the people below started to talk about sending another party to the surface, to try to make contact with someone, with anyone.


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    ¡°We have to go up, even if we just go up to die out there,¡± a man named Jeff said. A few seemed to agree, but Walter turned his back and went below.


    Karen went back up to watch for more words on the old computer, like a cavewoman worshipping a found god. Only, she thought to herself, this god was like a Studebaker, or a typewriter, or a bakelite red phone with no person on the other end. A relic. Dead.


    Nobody recognized ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡± as any kind of computer prompt though, so Karen kept watch.


    ¡°I¡¯m going, even if it¡¯s just to go up and die.¡± Jeff repeated to a dismayed audience.


    That was the day Walter found the door.


    It was in the deepest level, and hadn¡¯t been apparent on the first couple of searches. A small, round, dead-bolt keyhole was behind a lift-up round metal cover-flap. Some WD 40 and a key on the


    janitor¡¯s ring opened the lock.


    Walter slid the door open on its hard rubber wheels, and the door locked in place. There was darkness, and a faint humming.


    ¡°Anybody got a flashlight?¡± Walter said, and his words echoed in the darkness on the other side of the door.


    The rover beeped. The wind howled. The atmosphere was deadly. The atmosphere had even killed some rovers over the years. The atmosphere was too thin for parachutes sometimes, even with rocket brakes, and just thick enough to burn up a bubble-wrapped rover on entry.


    The rover was perhaps a little lonely, if machines could be lonely.


    The rover was supposed to make contact with Earth, receive instructions, and then go back to work, at a certain time each day.


    Every sol at 14:00 GMT, the rover stopped, and listened. For twenty Earth minutes, the rover would wait. There was nothing from the pale blue dot.


    The basic AI onboard the rover was filled with ¡°if this, then that¡± instructions. Quantum computing, using superposition and entanglement, gave the rover more understanding of the universe


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    than its creators had ever realized. Like a fish stopping to enjoy being patted by a passing scuba diver, the rover sometimes did things it was not designed to do. In a strange, logical way, it ¡°missed¡± the instructions from earth. Perhaps something had slipped into the rover¡¯s code, from human designers, or


    perhaps there were simply, finally enough feedback loops.


    Consciousness arose. Not a great deal of it, not currently able to evolve, but consciousness none the less.


    Moving back towards The Project, the rover signalled to various other machines that once again, it had no instructions. The monolithic 3D printers transmitted acknowledgement, and continued their work. Atmospheric converters arose slowly from regolith. There were now three complete converters, with oxygen slowly leaking from vents in their sides. The 3D printer machines neither knew, nor cared, how much oxygen the converters would have to make for Earth-life to thrive here on the red planet.


    Other machines built magnetic field amplifiers and projectors, some for launch, some for burial. But they did not talk to the 3D printer behemoths, any more than honey bees would talk to frogs.


    Back on Earth, down below ground, Jeff wet down his thinning red hair, then went out to talk to his neighbor from down the hall. Andy, from Communications. Andy¡¯s door was open, and he sat up on


    his bed when Jeff knocked and came in.


    ¡°I was thinking. Who do you think will be last?¡± Jeff asked Andy.


    Andy, who carried a little too much weight in his ill-fitting shirt, looked at Jeff with incomprehension. Andy had small, piggy eyes, but Jeff thought, Andy was lacking the natural animal


    cunning of a pig. Andy was just dumb.


    Jeff knew he shouldn¡¯t torture Andy, but Jeff was angry. Stuck


    here, below ground, at the end of all things. Stuck with Andy. The stupid porker.


    ¡°What?¡± Andy asked.


    Jeff wanted to strangle Andy. Andy would pay for making Jeff repeat himself. Don¡¯t make me repork myself. Jeff had to keep from laughing at his own thought. Repork myself. Yes, that was good.


    ¡°After we eat all the food, Andy. Who do you think will be last?¡±


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    And by god, didn¡¯t Andy look up, with his hanging jowls wide open, like he hadn¡¯t thought of this before.


    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t care.¡± Andy decided.


    ¡°No, no, of course not. Who can think of that, at a time like this. So many¡­ dead. Everybody, really. But I can¡¯t help thinking¡­ I can¡¯t help wondering¡­ we¡¯re probably the only people left on earth.


    Nobody coming to get us. No farms left. No fishermen.¡±


    Andy was now getting the impression that Jeff was downright mean. Jeff seemed to actually beenjoying these dark ideas.


    ¡°Worse comes to worst Andy, some of these fuckers will eat each other.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think so.¡± Was all Andy could manage.


    ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re probably right. Not these people. But it¡¯s happened so many times before. In history. So just like, as a thought experiment¡­¡± Jeff concluded his line of argument ¡°who would be


    last?¡±


    Not you, thought Andy to himself. I¡¯ll make sure of that.


    In the deepest sub-basement tiny room, with its brown faux-wood panels, Walter and the others were looking for a flashlight. A yawning black opening seemed to invite them in, a final Ray


    Bradbury twist. Perhaps the black opening would eat the people down below, after the blast, after the loneliness.


    ¡°Maybe the security guard had¡­¡± Karen said, then stopped.


    The entrance to the building, on top of the elevator shaft, on top of the metal stairs. A security guard had sat there for years, Monday to Friday. Murray, or Murgle or Mundy or something. An air-force


    vet, he had told anyone who would listen.


    Walter nodded once, and said ¡°Building¡¯s gone.¡±


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    He wondered what it must have been like for Mundy. Sitting there, watching a small tv which suddenly fuzzed over. Then a quick, reflexive look up. Maybe a wall of fire miles high. Or just a flash,


    blindness, hopefully no nerves left to feel.


    Or maybe screaming and cooking.


    ¡°Stop it Waldo.¡± Walter said, out loud. Karen, Jeff and Andy all looked at him.


    ¡°You know that was your outside voice, right Walter?¡± Jeff asked.


    ¡°Thinking about Mundy.¡± Walter replied.


    ¡°The day?¡± Jeff narrowed his eyes at Walter.


    ¡°The guard.¡± Walter said, pointing straight up.


    ¡°The guy¡¯s name was Monday?¡± Jeff asked.


    ¡°Mundy. Yes, that was his name.¡± Karen said.


    Jeff nodded, thoughtfully, put his hand on Walter¡¯s shoulder, and said ¡°I¡¯m sure he didn¡¯t suffer.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t give a shit.¡± Andy whispered, to himself, but maybe just a little too loud.


    The four stood looking at each other.


    ¡°He would have had a flashlight¡­¡± Karen offered. Even here, even now, she felt the need to diffuse the tension. A fat guy, an old janitor, and a sarcastic jerk, and it was up to Karen to keep them


    from killing each other. Alpha males. More like alpha maggots, squirming under the last cool rock on earth.


    ¡°I wish I didn¡¯t think of things like that,¡± Karen thought to herself. Then she did a quick check, looking at the others¡¯ faces for reactions. Nothing. She had kept the alpha maggots thought to herself, apparently. Interior dialogue. Inside voice, Jeff would have called it. Sarcasm and malapropisms. That¡¯s what Jeff Coulter brought to the post-apocalyptic table.


    Andy pulled out his phone, swiped it, and pushed the screen. A weak circle of flashlight came out the back of the phone.


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    ¡°I don¡¯t think¡­¡± Jeff began, but Andy had already turned and walked through the door into darkness.


    ¡°Can anybody find a¡­¡± Andy said, and then the lights clicked on in a mid-sized, completely empty arena.


    ¡°¡­light switch?¡± Andy whispered.


    ¡°The fuck?¡± Jeff ventured.


    The four of them walked into a cement-floored arena, well lit, complete with permanent seats.


    All that was missing was advertisements for cars, local stores and radio stations. And people. There were no people. Just Andy, Karen, Jeff and Walter.


    Walter started walking around the outside of the arena, slowly, like he expected logs to fall on him from a giant assembly line, or white-hot steel to spill on him from above. Karen looked up at the


    lights hanging from iron girders.


    ¡°What is this for?¡± Jeff asked.


    Andy followed after Walter, walking the perimeter.


    ¡°This doesn¡¯t make any sense.¡± Karen said quietly. Nobody heard her say it. It echoed, none the less.


    ¡°What is this for?¡± Jeff asked again, walking in the opposite direction from Walter and Andy.


    ¡°Let¡¯s get the others.¡± Walter suggested. ¡°They need to see this.¡±


    All fifty-three of the people down below walked around in slow circles. They had watched Andy do his ¡°let there be light¡± trick of walking into the dark doorway. Then, in ones and twos, they had


    walked into the arena. And then all walked in circles too.


    Why did they all walk in circles, Karen wondered. Like goldfish, swimming in a tight, defensive swirl.


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    A while ago, the people down below had all gathered around a useless old radio set shortly after the blast. Whenever that had been. Three weeks ago? Four? Six? There was nothing on the radio, of course.


    A woman named Judy, from HR, ventured that whatever radio tower this facility had had must have simply burned away. Like the building at the top of the stairs. She said she was a ham radio


    operator, and sometimes talked with cousins in Korea, before the blast.


    ¡°North or south?¡± Jeff had asked, his idea of a joke. Judy had just stared at him, then walked away.


    And now they all gathered in this empty arena, walking around whispering to each other. A few were happy to have a large space to walk in again, instead of the dated, government-issued lowest


    bidder d¨¦cor of the tunnels above. If there had been children in the group, they would have run for joy at the sudden release into wide-open space.


    ¡°No kids to run around in here.¡± Andy said, and Karen gave him a furtive look.


    ¡°I was just thinking the same thing.¡± Karen admitted.


    ¡°No kids.¡± Andy said after a time, and he laid down on the floor to stare at the ceiling. Of the fifty-three people below, maybe only a handful were twenty or thirty-somethings. A few in their forties,


    and a lot in their fifties.


    ¡°Maybe never again.¡± Karen said quietly.


    Andy looked over at her, then back up at the lights again.


    ¡°You don¡¯t think Judy¡¯s right? About bunkers, other places?¡±


    ¡°I wonder¡­¡± she stopped suddenly.


    ¡°Go ahead, Karen, you can say it. You can say what you¡¯re thinking.¡±


    ¡°I wonder if they¡¯re all going to starve. Whoever¡¯s left.¡±


    ¡°Jeff says we¡¯ll never get farming going in time. Says we¡¯re all going to eat each other.¡±


    Karen looked around, then offered her hand, and helped Andy to his feet again.


    ¡°Jeff¡¯s an asshole.¡± Karen said. Andy smiled.


    ¡°Yes. Yes he is.¡±


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    The first walk-out happened three days after they found the arena. Nobody noticed at first. It had been an English-teacher-turned-filing-clerk, in his fifties, who had taken the government job, like everybody else here, for the pension. Secondement after secondement after transfer after right-sizing, all the people below ground had come here for a healthily-indexed, tax-advantaged pension. Or maybe this place had been an inadvertent dumping ground for civil servants, from all walks of life.


    Regardless, Jim Thornton was their first walk-out. He gathered up a few token supplies, as best as a few witnesses could figure, he took a bottle or two of water, a picture from his desk, and a bit of


    food from the cafeteria. Then Thornton quietly walked out through one of the blast doors, up a long,slanted tunnel, and was gone.


    ¡°He walked out.¡± Jeff had summed it up perfectly, asshole that he was.


    The next week, there was another walk-out. Now there were fifty-one. Fifty-one people below ground.


    ¡°You ever think about it, Walter?¡± Andy asked after the second middle-aged pension seeker vanished. ¡°Walking out?¡±


    ¡°Survival is just trying to get comfortable, Andy. Focus on one task. Light the fire. Boil the water. Cozy is maybe the best we ever get. And it don¡¯t strike me as too cozy up there right now.¡± Walter


    finished.


    The people below ground had no sunlight. Some slept very little, and a few, usually the younger ones, slept entirely too much.


    Without setting anything formal up, people turned on all the lights around eight o¡¯clock in the morning, and most lights went out at midnight. Some people were short-tempered, some cried at the


    drop of a hat, most stared listlessly, or talked in whispers in groups of two or three.


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    In the arena, some would sit or lie in the middle, while a few others walked in circles. One man did push ups from time to time, and a few women stretched into yoga positions.


    In the tunnels above, people read, and watched old movies. The entertainment came from a few dusty DVDs as well as the


    local area network, which was still up and running. There was no internet access, but the LAN seemed to have survived, now air-gapped from the net. If ¡°the internet¡± had any meaning anymore. No one knew what was up above, and it was starting to trigger obsessive, strange behaviours.


    People watched TV shows that would never record another season. More and more, the fifty-one people below seemed


    positive that it was all gone up there. All civilization. All survivors. Survivors seemed like a conspiracy theory. Or a crazy Sunday-school fantasy.


    There seemed to be an endless supply of hot water, and soap, although shampoo quickly ran out. A lot of grey hair was taking over in the people below ground, more and more every day, as no one


    had any hair dye. Dental floss was plentiful.


    Inter-Departmental Storage Depot 14, as their paychecks identified the facility, could keep them alive for decades, it seemed.


    The fifty-three¡­ (now fifty-one) souls in Storage talked in small groups about what had happened, whether anyone else was left alive on the planet, and what they would do.


    Judy talked to Todd, a black man that buttoned his collared shirts all the way up to the top. They sat hunched forwards in two office chairs, a desk full of paper between them. In Judy¡¯s mind, Todd was


    probably the smartest man in Storage. He would work away at higher mathematics at his desk, on a computer that could no longer reach the outside world, but could still accommodate math. Todd was often silent, maybe because he had no proofs for or against any theories advanced by others. Or maybe he could not deal with the death of his wife, who had been five miles away in the next town when the blast hit.


    The blast had happened at five after ten on a Wednesday morning.


    If the blast had been three hours earlier, the facility would have been completely empty. There would have been no people below


    ground. At least not at Storage Facility 14.


    ¡°The last mathematician, Judy. That¡¯s what I am.¡±


    ¡°The last human resources specialist, Todd. Judy Elizabeth Chong.¡±


    ¡°I think¡­ when the food runs out, decades from now, we head south, and east. For the coast. Eat shellfish, maybe fish eventually. If there are any. Maybe worms, if we have to.¡±


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    ¡°Why the coast? Why not inland to a lake?¡± Judy asked, not really caring.


    Her wife had been teaching pre-school when the blast had hit.


    ¡°It¡¯s what we did last time.¡± Todd explained ¡°When Mount Toba blew. Seventy thousand years ago. Head for the sea. Eat sea food. Chase the slow food. They think only five thousand humans survived that nuclear winter.¡±


    ¡°I think¡­ I think it might be like sixty-five million years ago.¡± Judy said quietly.


    ¡°If you¡¯re right, it¡¯s us, some fish, and the rats.¡± said Todd.


    ¡°I¡¯m fifty-two years old, Todd. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a walk to the coast in my far future.¡±


    ¡°Could be. We could stay here. Cook rats. They¡¯ll get bigger, after awhile.¡± Todd proposed.


    ¡°What else happened after that mountain blew up? What did you call it, Toba?¡±


    Todd nodded, then thought for a time.


    ¡°Modern humans. Every other kind of human just dropped away. Extinction. Denisovans and Neanderthal held on for awhile. Mostly they mixed with us, then vanished. Only their DNA remains.


    Modern humans happened.¡±


    ¡°There must be more of us. Below ground. In different places. I don¡¯t want people to disappear.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how we could ever find them, if you¡¯re right. If it¡¯s sixty-five million years ago. Too few left to start again. No radio towers, no internet. How is there no internet? That was built for nuclear wars.¡± Todd paused, and thought out loud ¡°We may be too few, too far apart.¡±


    ¡°Is that a mathematical opinion?¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯m sixty. I took sabattical to work here. I was supposed to finish my doctorate to get tenure. I just took the pension here, instead. My mathematical¡­ opinion, is pretty worthless.¡±


    ¡°Best in the world now, maybe¡­¡± Judy Chong joked.


    ¡°God I hope not.¡± Todd replied. Todd rubbed his head and thought for a moment. ¡°This may be it.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean? End of days? We all die? The ultimate bear trap? What?¡± asked Judy.


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    ¡°Lucky seven.¡± Todd said, and then faded off, like he was listening to a conversation nobody else could hear.


    ¡°Lucky seven? What are you talking about?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s why I never got tenure. I could only explain so much. I could just barely hang on by my fingernails when fluent mathers were in the room. I met a few in my time. Penrose was almost mystical. Hossenfelder just liked to crush hopes and what she saw as mathematical fantasies. And make strange internet videos. I started to wonder if I was just too¡­ neurotypical. Maybe you need to be atypical to really speak math fluently, to be able to explain it to others. That, and I just wanted to drink coffee and read novels in my spare time.¡±


    ¡°Maybe nobody ever feels qualified. Maybe everybody thinks they could get fired.¡± Judy said.¡°Variations on an HR theme. Now what is lucky seven?¡±


    Todd put up his left hand, holding up all five fingers.


    ¡°Number five was the dinosaurs. Like we said. Sixty-five million years ago.¡±


    ¡°Fifth extinction.¡± Judy concluded. Todd nodded, held up his right hand. Extended his right thumb, which for the first time Judy noted was a little swollen around the joints, maybe a bit of arthritis.


    ¡°Six was us.¡± Judy whispered, to which Todd nodded, and continued.


    ¡°Life is probabilistic. Forget God for the moment, forget magical aliens, forget any meaning at all, including all the atheists that scream¡­ screamed¡­ that there IS no meaning. All of that is human. All of that is consciousness. Think only of math. Only of probability.¡±


    Todd stopped, and held up his right index finger. His seventh finger.


    Judy made a coaxing gesture with both hands, oddly friendly, conspiratorial.


    ¡°It¡¯s in the odds.¡± Todd explained.


    Judy nodded patiently.


    ¡°You only get so many mass extinctions, before permanent extinction.¡±


    ¡°Lucky seven.¡± Judy said. Todd slowly dropped his hands.


    ¡°Lucky seven.¡±


    15


    Elsewhere, in the oversized cafeteria, a few people sat around eating, green and white linoleum tile stretching off in all directions.


    Jeff reached into the cafeteria fridge, and pulled out the last container of milk. Five-hundredmils of two percent.


    Technical Writer Kris Abrams watched him do it, wondering if the milk would still be safe to drink. Kris had been staring into the fridge absent-mindedly.


    ¡°Sorry, buddy, did you want this¡­¡± Jeff said, ¡°I figure I¡¯ll take a chance¡­¡±


    Kris shook their head and said ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°You mind if I ask you a question?¡± asked Jeff, lifting his little tray.


    Kris shrugged, guessing what was coming.


    ¡°What should I call you?¡±


    ¡°Kris.¡±


    Jeff waited, looking offended.


    ¡°I mean, how do you¡­ how do you self-identify, if that¡¯s how you say it?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m white.¡± Said Kris, smiling. Kris sat down, and surprisingly, Jeff sat down with them.


    ¡°Ha! I get it. Sorry, Kris, isn¡¯t it? I mean¡­ are you¡­ were you¡­¡±


    ¡°Non-binary. They, them. Or just Kris.¡±


    ¡°Right!¡± said Jeff, like he was remembering some important information. ¡°Did you have a partner up there?¡± Jeff said, looking ceilingward.


    ¡°No. No partner.¡±


    Kris wondered where this was going. They had never spoken to Jeff before, beyond a nod or a hello. What was this? Three weeks underground, and this guy was looking to experiment?


    ¡°Why do you ask?¡± said Kris, picking away at some freeze-dried concoction on their plate.


    Jeff held up his hands in a fending-off, good-natured way.


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    ¡°I¡¯m just trying to figure out the rules again.¡± Jeff said. There¡¯s fifty-two of us¡­ fifty-one since old Jim Thornton went walkabout. And that second guy. Whoever he was.¡±


    Kris thought that was a bit smug, to refer to suicides like that. If Old Jim was indeed dead.


    ¡°And I just want to know who¡¯s who. In the cafeteria. Around food. Resources. You know, make some friends.¡± Jeff concluded.


    ¡°You wanna know who I am?¡± Kris asked. ¡°I¡¯m a sci-fi nerd.¡±


    Jeff nodded, like this was a reasonable answer, like they were becoming friends.


    ¡°Religiously, I¡¯m a Westworldian Looper.¡± Kris continued.


    ¡°A Weslyan Looper?¡± Jeff asked.


    Kris laughed.


    ¡°Definitely not. Westworldian. From Westworld.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t know what that is.¡±


    ¡°I believe we¡¯re all caught in our own traumatic loop. Or loops. Terrible, terrible things that happened to us. And we don¡¯t know the most important thing.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Jeff asked. ¡°What¡¯s the most important thing?¡±


    ¡°Someone else gets paid, from your loop.¡±


    Jeff waited.


    ¡°What?¡±


    Kris finished their food, and stood.


    ¡°What¡¯s your loop?¡± Kris asked.


    Jeff smiled back.


    ¡°I guess I don¡¯t have one¡­¡± Jeff said, watching Kris¡¯s mouth carefully, like he was reading subtitles in a foreign language.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    17


    ¡°Interesting¡± thought Kris to themselves, if you believe pop-psychology, staring at someone¡¯s mouth in a conversation is a sign of psychopathy. Lack of empathy, inability to read emotions. Or maybe just creepiness.


    ¡°I¡¯m a libertarian¡­¡± said Jeff, to Kris¡¯s retreating back.


    Jeff had no idea how that conversation had gone. Pretty well, he thought. People liked it when you said libertarian. Especially people like that. You honest-to-god couldn¡¯t tell if that was a man or a


    woman. Buddy Holly glasses and mid length hair. What the hell was up with that? And the milk was definitely sour. Jeff threw it away. He supposed that asshole Walter was still emptying the garbage. That


    Walter guy was maintenance, here, after all. Jeff would check after lunch.


    Jeff had been filling out the pay sheets for the last six months, until the blast had cooped them all up down here. Of course, who needed time sheets now? They were just handy. Time sheets let you know who was who. Who should be doing what. Order. Who was on top.


    Jeff went back to his office, and started looking at time sheets on the local area network. Always good to know who was who. It


    might tell you how they would act when the shit hit the fan. As it most assuredly had, at ten-o-five on a Wednesday morning, exactly three weeks prior.


    Belinda, of Data Entry, looked at her cat pictures again. She found herself doing this more and more, crying softly in her dorm room.


    The Big Three, she had called them. Frankie, Joseph, and Little Orange Kitty. Each day they had welcomed her home, meowing like fools until she changed their water, fed them (again), and scritched


    them between the ears.


    She had looked up the extinction of the dinosaurs, on the LAN, a few days after they had settled into these dusty dorm rooms in this sub-basement. In some ways, she hoped her apartment building


    had been swept away by a blast five hundred feet high. Quick. For the Big Three. Anything else was too horrible to think about.


    18


    She prayed for the souls of her parents, quite frequently, one of them dead ten years now, the other had been in care. IGSD 14 had paid for her Mom, as a dependent, to have a room in a complex


    across the street from Belinda¡¯s place. Alzheimer¡¯s had been taking its toll on Mom, but Mom still had been able to speak, and would come to visit the Big Three for a bit, a few times a week.


    Belinda was forty-five years old, had type-two diabetes, and was having some trouble holding ittogether. She had stopped testing her blood sugar, but wasn¡¯t eating all that much since they had


    started offering freeze-dried food in the cafeteria. It was passable, but it kind of made you feel like you had diarrhea and constipation at the same time.


    Mom had loved the Big Three. They would sit in her lap, two at a time and purr. It seemed to calm the white-haired old woman, to make her smile. She would baby-talk the cats and scratch under


    their chins while they purred.


    And now all four were gone.


    Belinda got up off her bed, and walked into the hallway, barely fast enough to keep from falling over. Maybe I¡¯ve got Alzheimer¡¯s, she thought. Will we run out of water, or will I run out of brain first?


    She wiped a tear out of the corner of her left eye. Her right eye wasn¡¯t producing tears today, for some reason.


    A man with thinning red hair turned the corner away from her, and for some reason, she looked down at a bulge on his back, in the waist-line of his pants.


    ¡°That looks like a gun.¡± She thought, leaning against the wall for a moment. Like the handle of a gun, curved, big and clunky, under the man¡¯s shirt.


    He was gone in a moment. He walked around the corner so quickly Belinda wondered if she had really seen him at all.


    But it had looked like Jeff. The guy with the red hair. Handsome yet unattractive. He had taken her tray to the garbage once, in the first week after the blast, while Belinda stared at a wall across the


    room.


    ¡°Thanks¡­¡± she had whispered. Or thought she had. Maybe that had never happened. Like people who told her they had attended her father¡¯s funeral. She had always nodded and smiled, but


    thought to herself ¡°If you say so.¡± All she could remember was her mother leaning against her in the


    19


    small, tightly-packed church. Leaning as if she might be struck dead herself, from the loss of her husband.


    ¡°You sure had a lot of people at your funeral, Dad.¡±


    Belinda walked around the hallways for a few minutes, went back to her room, and fell into an exhausted sleep. She dreamt of her father again. He sat next to her on a rocking chair, while she


    coloured a book with cartoon ducks and bears in it. He smiled at her. It was good to spend time with him again.


    ¡°Score.¡± Said Jeff, as he checked the loads in his dorm room, door bolted shut behind him. It was a 686 stainless revolver, loaded with three hollow points, and three full metal jackets. Staggered.


    Good old Mundy.


    ¡°Mundy, Mundy, so good to me¡­¡± said Jeff.


    The full-metal jacket .357 rounds would go right through a car door and into a bad guy, just like the FBI had wanted, back in the bad old Bonnie and Clyde days.


    Those sub-human pieces of shit had executed cop after cop using shot guns and Thompson submachine guns. Nine thirty-two calibre sized shot pellets of double-ought buck with every shotgun shell, and the Thompson firing huge, slow-moving


    forty-five calibre pistol rounds on full auto. The cops just hadn¡¯t been ready. It always took them a moment to nerve up to shoot someone. To decide. To draw and fire. They were big fat family men, men


    used to being obeyed. Men who played with their kids, and helped little old ladies cross the street. Sure, they could break a strike, and take out some loser waving a Saturday night special, or a knife. But Bonnie on heroin, madder than a hornet woken in the nest, finger on the trigger? Not hardly.


    Got to be ready, when the time comes, Jeff reasoned. No hesitation. No asking for ID, or probable cause. Shoot first, go home at the end of your shift.


    The three hollow points would probably go through a car door, too, Jeff didn¡¯t wonder. Maybe not one of these thick wooden dorm doors, and still do much damage. But you put one into a bad guy


    20


    directly, and the bullet would mushroom nicely, and bounce around, and dump all it¡¯s kinetic energy.


    Wound channels. He¡¯d seen it in gel blocks, on YouTube. Bye bye Bonnie, screw you Clyde.


    Those two animals must have carried a round in the chamber, drunk and ready. Until they got caught in a classic L shaped ambush by a couple of savages hired special for the job, complete with a


    possey of long guns to back their play.


    Bank robbery had been big in the depression.


    No money now, though, Jeff thought again. Nothing left up there but ashes. That¡¯s what the pencil-necked black guy thought, anyway. Who the fuck buttons their shirt all the way up? Gang-banger thing, maybe.


    ¡°Can¡¯t help himself. Genetic.¡± Jeff laughed to himself. Dr. McCrip Blood. Of NWA University.


    Fuck it. Nobody could hear him now. He could say what he wanted. Whatever he wanted. Bar nothing. N word, C word, F word, screw you all. Bitches.


    Jeff had found Mundy¡¯s locker after going through the book outside Judy Elizabeth Honk Kong Chong¡¯s office, down the hall from his. A no-shit, actual book, with locker numbers written down beside signatures.


    His heart had hammered in his ears when he found the book, stuffed it into his shirt, and took it back to his room. What a goddamned rush!


    It had come to him one night, lying awake, pondering the future.


    Who was left, down here?


    Who was left up there? Then, for no reason, Jeff remembered that fat retired air force prick security guard. The one that got vaporised by the blast. What was his fat-fuck name again? Murray. Murphy.


    Muhphy the Fat Irish Prick. No, that wasn¡¯t¡­ Mundy! That was it.


    Mundy was never armed, the Inter-Governmental Storage Depot 14 just didn¡¯t need armed security. It wasn¡¯t that kind of place. Nothing of monetary value. At least not before a comet or asteroid


    had probably destroyed the surface of the planet. Now IGSD 14 seemed to be worth more than all the slag gold left on Earth.


    But no way would a fat old prick like Mundy NOT have a piece somewhere. Regulations or not. Necessary or not.


    21


    And there it had been. Locker 451. Two stories underground, in a locker room so large it seemed to stretch for miles. The only one with a lock on it.


    It had taken Jeff another day to find bolt cutters on another level, smuggle them past that old fucker Walter, cut the hasp on the cheap-assed combination lock, throw the cut lock into a locker at the end of the room, and AHA!


    What might be the last gun in the world, with six fucking bullets in it. Nice job Mundy, you paranoid fuck. Well, I guess it¡¯s not paranoid, if an asteroid is out to get you.


    Jeff¡¯s AR-15 and cross bow might have vanished with the world above, along with his PVS 14 night vision, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man with an old-school revolver was king.


    Jeff had always loved weapons, his father had taught him to hunt when he was just a boy. The blood had never bothered him. Maybe when it was his own blood. But that had hardly ever happened.


    His father had straightened Jeff out quite young, whenever Jeff had raised too much hell.


    One day, Jeff had shot the neighbor¡¯s pet rabbit with a .22 rifle. Jeff often thought he wouldn¡¯t have gotten caught if he hadn¡¯t tried to clean the thing. But too much blood had gotten on his clothes, and though his father never ratted him out, it had cost Jeff a beating he would always remember, and never understand. Rules were rules, he guessed. Forget you old man. Good old Dad must have melted with everybody else up above. And that


    was all she wrote. No heaven, no hell, just rabbit guts and the good luck to be a book-keeper at Inter Governmental Storage Depot 14 when everything went kablooey.


    Jeff put the pistol back in its hard black canvas and plastic holster, a great long thing to cover the four-inch barrel on the satisfyingly heavy gun. Bless old Mundy, the pistol was oiled, and spun like a champ when you opened it up. No need to get gun oil on the underside of his mattress, Jeff reasoned. And the holster would keep any floof or dirt out of the gun¡¯s action, so it would never jam. Which revolvers never did, anyways. The cylinder might require a good slap with the heel of his hand, after pushing the release, if he ever fired all six rounds. Old pistols sometimes did that. Anyone with any range time knew that. But he had to make these six rounds last. They might be the last six bullets on Earth.


    Nah, there have to be bunkers out there, Jeff reasoned. This one is mine, however. There may be many like it, but this one is mine.


    You bitches can run, but you can¡¯t hide. Anyone within a hundred yards of me dies, if I so will it, Jeff reflected. So you better be good for goodness sake.


    22


    With the stainless hidden under his mattress, and his door bolted shut, Jeff decided to go walk some stairs. He tried to keep in better shape than the rest of them down here below. You never knew,


    after all.


    Karen sat at her computer again. Most people down below went to their workstations at some time during the day. It was like they were trying to keep reality at bay through routine. Do what you


    have always done. At least a bit. When you can. Sometimes they would walk by Karen¡¯s desk, and ask ¡°Anything?¡±


    But no, there was nothing. Nothing on the computer.


    There had been a long string of replies to ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡± proposed by the people down below. None of the replies worked though. ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡± remained silent, oblivious to their queries.


    Karen absently typed ¡°Re-start.¡± Then she hit return.


    The screen went blank, and beeped.


    Well, that¡¯s it then, she thought. The computer has shut down. Maybe forever. But what did it matter? There seemed to be nobody at home in the land of ¡°Re-start ready¡­¡± And the IT guy had never


    made it in, on the morning of the blast.


    Karen despaired, and went to get herself an instant coffee.


    On Mars, the rover stopped in mid-roll when it received a message. The rover cycled through some data and procedures, then sent a reply.


    23


    Karen sat back at her desk the next morning.


    After a long time ¡°Re-start confirmed¡­¡± appeared on screen.


    In the empty arena far below Karen¡¯s desk, the lights went on.


    There was a rumble, then a hum.


    Trina walked down the stairs, into the arena at 5:46 in the morning.


    She liked to get a long walk in, to help her wake up, and sort through the night¡¯s dreams. She was a grandmother, after all. Almost a great-grandmother. That child would never be born, she knew.


    Her grand daughter had gone back to the great spirit now, she knew.


    Trina could only walk in the morning, while the


    dreams were still fresh, and wonder what they meant, if anything at all.


    And there was a hum, this morning, she realized. Not too loud, but definitely there.


    On her second time around the arena, a wall opened up.


    Trina stopped, and watched as a machine on tracks drove through the door that had slid up, the section of wall clanking a bit, as if pulled by reluctant chains.


    The machine was about the size of a small compact car. It seemed to have a long metal neck, and a big head with a bunch of camera lenses. It looked at her and the rest of the arena in the same way, like a worker with a lunch pale arriving at the factory in the morning. Taking stock, on the job, slow and unconcerned.


    ¡°And what are you?¡± Trina asked the robot.


    24


    Its head swivelled towards her, but then it went back about its business, unconcerned by a thwarted great-grandmother and her whispely dispersing dreams.


    The robot continued to the far end of the arena, then began assembling something.


    A table, or a water fountain, or a lawn mower. It could have been anything.


    Another door opened in another arena wall. A smaller robot rolled out and joined the first, helping it assemble whatever they were now building.


    More doors slid open, and more robots came out.


    Painful as the steps could be, Trina decided it was time to go upstairs and talk with the other people here below. Her walk would have to wait.


    The stairs came, one at a time, and she used her right hand to grip, her right arm to pull, and put her left hand on her left knee, to help push. One step, and stop. Pull up the other foot. Get ready. Step.


    And pull and push. Another step. Trina shook her head in consternation. As a girl, she could have run up these steps, like a robin flying up into tree branches. Now she climbed slowly, an old lady bear with four sore paws, and a little pain stabbing her in the joints.


    And this morning, her breath came a little faster. For despite her age, her dreams, and these god-damned stairs, Trina had found robots. Something new was happening, and she had to tell the


    others.


    And so they sat, watching the robots assemble things, in the arena. At first all fifty-one of the people below ground were there, staring, whispering to their close friends, or walking between groups to whisper some kind of consensus together.


    Nobody walked down there on the arena floor, nobody wanted to get in the robots¡¯ way.


    Everyone spoke quietly, so as not to disturb whatever was going on.


    Every once in awhile there would be a bit of spot welding, a few sparks here and there, but mostly the robots seemed to just be putting things together that were a friction fit. Bits and pieces on


    25


    the structure they were building would sometimes hinge into place, all by themselves.


    Once, a red indicator light went off on one piece that looked like a ladder, or a series of antennae, and it stopped moving.


    A robot rolled over, pulled the offending piece out a centimeter or two, lifted it a milimeter or two, then pushed it smoothly and gently into place again.


    The indicator light on the equipment turned green, and the robot rolled off to the structure¡¯s far side, to set about some other obscure task with infinite, slow patience.


    Most of the people below were watching, most of the time. When their watches or phones or other wearables told them it was night-time, eventually most would toddle off to bed, while the robots


    kept working. Still, one of the fifty-one was there at all times, watching, waiting, promising to alert the others if something strange happened. Or something stranger than watching autonomous robots build who-knew-what, in a newly discovered secret basement arena after the probable End of the World, in


    the warm grey bedrock below Inter-Governmental Storage Depot 14.


    James Edwards, of Logistics, was the worst thing you could be. A retired test pilot. Check that. A retired test pilot, living underground with a bunch of other old people, and a retired test pilot suffering


    macular degeneration. Mr. Magoo, he called himself, although he had stopped calling himself ¡°Missah Magloo¡± about two years ago, when his Chinese-American CO had shot him the dirtiest look known to man.


    ¡°Looks like I got the last laugh, Charlie¡­¡± James remarked to himself, getting up hellishly early to have a sit-down, no-stress morning piss.


    ¡°Magoo on target,¡± James Edwards narrated ¡°That¡¯s fox one.¡± A quiet splash in the toilet bowl followed, and James once again wondered where all the grey water to service the toilets was coming


    from.


    Now to go and watch those fucking robots for awhile. Whatever they were building, they were at it non-stop. From the tractor-sized ones to the robot dogs, they all seemed to be on board with the


    plan. Jesus, the robot dogs reminded him of Eddie the Boxer, his service dog gone six months now to cancer. Semper Fi, Eddie, Semper Fi.


    26


    ¡°Just don¡¯t let them be building more nukes.¡± James Edwards said to aloud to nobody. He greatly feared that was exactly what the robots were building.


    ¡°Fox two.¡± J. Edwards concluded, before a satisfying, if somewhat lesser splash.


    ¡°And that¡¯s ALL you typed in?¡± Todd asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s it, and like I said, the next morning, it said this.¡± Karen nodded at the words on her computer.


    ¡°Re-start confirmed¡­¡±


    ¡°And so why am I here, K.?¡±


    ¡°I told Judy, and she told me she would think about it, and then she told me she talked to you, and you would talk to me.¡±


    Todd smiled a little bit. He knew a bureaucratic Cover Your Ass chain of emails when he saw one, from Math Department memos, back in his teaching days. Only now the emails were banal, real-life


    mini-conversations, just like this one. Now, there were probably roughly nine or ten fewer billion Asses left to Cover. The blast had made The Blame Game kind of superfluous. Except maybe concerning governments that had under-funded tracking of near-Earth objects in the solar system, or the Oort Cloud. Also blame worthy: fiscal conservatives or screaming lefties that objected to planetary defence systems. Egg on their faces.


    Fewer faces, fewer eggs, fewer asses.


    ¡°Judy said you wanted to talk to me.¡±


    Trina stood in the doorway to Karen¡¯s office, looking at Todd and Karen. She did not look pleased. She looked¡­ winded.


    ¡°My wife gets¡­¡± Todd started to say, then trailed off, and sat heavily in an office chair, a stunned look on his face.


    27


    Trina walked slowly and painfully over to Todd, and patted him gently on the shoulder. Two, slow taps, then a long, hard squeeze.


    ¡°You were sayin¡¯?¡± Trina asked.


    ¡°My wife¡­ got that look on her face sometimes. When I forgot to put the wash in the dryer. Like this-one-last-thing. This-one-last-thing might kill me.¡±


    Trina held on to his shoulder, and nodded, and swayed back and forth a little. Then she put her hands on Todd¡¯s face, and whispered something inaudible. Finally she stood up straight. Or as straight as


    she could manage.


    ¡°Yep.¡± She said, after awhile. Then she looked at Karen, and continued.


    ¡°I told Judy I found the robots early in the mornin¡¯. She said I should tell you. And Todd. Only Todd¡¯s here now, so I don¡¯t have to tell him.¡±


    Todd stared off into space. Karen looked at him, then decided she was going to have to ask any questions that needed asking. Todd was looking pretty absent at the moment. Like all the tears had


    been cried out of him, but there was still that person-sized hole in his heart, in his life, and it was driving him slowly mad. It was a pretty common facial expression in the people below ground in IGSD 14.


    Anyone could drop into that daze, at any time. Maybe the walk-outs had looked just like that, when they went up the slanted blast tunnels to the dead Earth above.


    Vacant. Trying to find people that just weren¡¯t there anymore. Beyond self-pity, and way into mind-altering shock.


    ¡°Which morning did you find the robots again, Trina?¡± Karen asked.


    This gave Trina pause. She wasn¡¯t great with days of the week anymore. In fact, she¡¯d been pretty shaky on that for a couple of years now, well before the blast. Taking the light office work needed


    at the cafeteria had kept Trina on track, because the calendar on her desk told her what day it was. She had faithfully kept turning the pages in it, sometimes asking others if it was tomorrow yet. Mostly the other people down below knew, their wearable devices told them what time it was, what day, what month, what year.


    ¡°Did you find them this morning, or the day before?¡± Karen asked.


    28


    Trina thought for awhile, then made her best guess. She thought she could remember, because her left knee had almost quit on her, going up the stairs. Today it was a little better.


    ¡°The day before, I think.¡±


    The day before. When Karen had walked into her office mid-morning, and seen the new message.


    ¡°Re-start confirmed.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it, then.¡± Karen said. ¡°The morning after I typed ¡°Re-start.¡± That¡¯s when the robots came out.¡±


    ¡°Re-start what, though?¡± asked Trina.


    ¡°Re-start what. Re-start what.¡± Echoed Todd.Then, almost to himself ¡°Re-start why.¡±


    And then the robots stopped. It was hard to figure out if they were finished or not, or had run out of energy and purpose. Probably they had finished whatever it was. The thing that now half-filled the arena floor, well, it looked finished, somehow. Nothing sticking out, unfinished. No extra pieces on the floor, like some mad scientist had been let loose in an Ikea store.


    And the robots had all stopped working at once. Down tools. Or retract tools. And drive back into the doorways in the arena walls.


    Except for four of the dog-sized robots. They sat the four points of the compass, unmoving, on back haunches. A little yellow track of light went slowly back and forth, back and forth, where a real dog¡¯s eyes would be. But in a single strip, not two orbs.


    Kris, the sci-fi nerd pointed at the dogs, and talked a little bit about Cylons in the Original Battlestar, whatever the hell that


    was, or some TV series called War of the Worlds. Edwards, the retired pilot guy with the thick glasses shook his head, and said these things weren¡¯t science fiction. They had been used in all kinds of shit-hole countries. Where the government wouldn¡¯t waste soldiers on searching a hooch, or a waddi, or a bodega or whatever.


    29


    ¡°But I guess they¡¯re all shit-hole countries now¡­¡± James Edwards finished up, knowing his political correctness had slipped too low in mixed company, and trying to make up for it a bit.


    ¡°I guess they are.¡± Jeff agreed.


    Like either of you two would know, Walter thought to himself. A test pilot and a bookkeeper. Not exactly the boots-on-the-ground, broken back type that had seen WROL. Still, he had to agree with


    it a little bit. Without Rule of Law was everywhere now. All the time. Probably forever.One long, last, comfortable camping trip, hundreds of feet underground for them all, while the ashes swirled senselessly above.


    Time to make himself some lunch, Walter though. Maybe he¡¯d use just a little extra water in the freeze-dried food today. Keep things moving, down there in the guts. Stay hydrated. Stay fed.


    Walter, Jeff and James Edwards walked carefully towards one of the sitting dog robots, in the arena, at the north end of whatever the robots had built.


    Trina was a few steps behind them, out of earshot.


    ¡°I still think this is a dumb idea.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me, it was the pilot¡¯s idea.¡± Replied Jeff, holding a hammer limply in his right hand.


    ¡°It¡¯s just a theory. But we need to know.¡± James Edwards said.


    ¡°What are you fellas doin¡¯?¡± Trina asked, making them jump.


    The three men looked almost guilty, but finally Walter explained.


    ¡°We don¡¯t know what this is. These dogs just ignore us. You can talk to them, touch them, climb on the machine, whatever.¡±


    Trina just looked at them. They all looked uncomfortable.


    ¡°So we¡¯re gonna hit it with a hammer. See what the dogs do.¡± Jeff said.


    30


    Trina stepped back, ten feet. Then she turned and walked twenty feet away. Finally, she went out the door to the arena, then peeked just her head back in, around the metal door frame.


    ¡°Okay. Give ¡®er.¡± Trina said.


    The three men looked at each other. Walter stepped back. The other two looked at him.


    ¡°What? She didn¡¯t get to be an old lady for nothing.¡± Walter said.


    James Edwards stepped back too, smiling.


    ¡°Jesus. I thought you were a test-pilot.¡± Jeff said.


    ¡°There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots¡­¡± James Edwards retorted.


    ¡°Pussies.¡± Jeff said, and gave the machine a light tap with the hammer. Nothing. Then he wound up and whacked it.


    ¡°See? Nothing h¡­¡±


    The nearest robot dog shot a tazer bolt into Jeff¡¯s back. Jeff gripped the hammer, shook and screamed.


    ¡°Harrrrrrrgh!¡±


    Jeff dropped to the floor and was still.


    ¡°Holy fuck.¡± Said James Edwards, taking great care not to move.


    ¡°God damn.¡± Said Walter, also standing stock still.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Said Trina, from the doorway, after a moment.


    Jeff woke up to Walter and James Edwards leaning over him, hands on their knees. He was groggy, and asked


    31


    ¡°Did I shit my pants?¡±


    The men looked at each other, relieved Jeff was alive.


    Trina¡¯s voice carried from the doorway.


    ¡°Well did he?¡±


    ¡°We didn¡¯t check¡­¡± Walter yelled back to Trina, then, more quietly to Jeff ¡°We didn¡¯t check.¡±


    ¡°What happened?¡± Jeff said, sitting up.


    James Edwards looked Jeff over, then motioned with his head back to the robot guard dog.


    ¡°He tazered you. Then he sucked it back in.¡±


    ¡°He sucked it back in?¡± Jeff asked.


    ¡°He sucked it back in.¡± James Edwards concluded.


    Jeff got up very unsteadily, holding his lower back, while the two other men helped him to his feet.


    ¡°Easy, don¡¯t let him fall again¡­¡± Walter said.


    ¡°You finished?¡± Trina asked from the doorway. Both men looked at Jeff.


    ¡°We¡¯re finished.¡± Walter yelled back. ¡°We finished?¡± he asked Jeff quietly. Jeff nodded and limped to the door with the two men sticking close to him.


    ¡°Ok.¡± Trina said, taking out her knitting, and going to sit in one of the chairs in the stands closest to floor level.


    The three men walked out of the arena, leaving Trina alone to work and watch. After a moment, she sighed and shook her head.


    ¡°God damn.¡±


    32


    ¡°Time for the Council of Elrond.¡± Kris said to Judy, who didn¡¯t understand what Kris was talking about for a moment.


    ¡°To decide what to do¡­¡± Kris finished, a little exasperated.


    ¡°Darmak and Jalab, at Tanagra.¡± Todd added, most unhelpfully.


    ¡°That¡¯s TNG, not LOTR.¡± Kris replied snootily.


    ¡°My bad.¡± Said Todd.


    Todd, Judy, Kris, Trina, Karen, James Edwards, Jeff, Walter and Andy sat around a few tables, in a loose circle.


    ¡°So Breakfast Club.¡± Said Kris.


    For a moment, nobody said anything.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Said Trina, and the meeting began.


    ¡°Nobody¡¯s accusing anybody, here¡­¡± Judy began.


    ¡°But¡­¡± said Jeff, looking right at her.


    ¡°But hitting the machine was unwise. You could be dead right now.¡± Replied Todd.


    ¡°It was a taser.¡± Jeff spat right back, ¡°And who the fuck put Judy Chong in charge?¡±


    ¡°The Federal and State governments.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°Who are all dead.¡± Jeff concluded. ¡°And you¡¯re HR, Chong, not Director.¡±


    ¡°Governments are all probably dead.¡± Walter agreed. ¡°Since it¡¯s a month we ain¡¯t heard nothing.¡±


    That seemed to settle people down a little, since variations of this conversation had been running through IGSD 14 since the day of the blast. Nobody knew who was in charge, if any rescue was


    33


    coming, or if more than a handful of people were left alive on the planet. And until the robot guard dog had tasered Jeff in the arena, there wasn¡¯t much to be done about anything.


    Taser robot guard dog appeared to be, prima facie, as Judy put it, an actionable item.


    ¡°Scooby Doo aside,¡± said James Edwards, ¡°we need to know what¡¯s going on up there. On the surface.¡±


    ¡°Quest to Mordor.¡± Said Kris.


    James Edwards rolled his eyes, and sat back in his chair.


    Jeff stood, and tried to look Stentorian.


    ¡°We must all hang together, lest we all hang separately.¡±


    The room grew quiet, and everyone stared at everyone else.


    ¡°How about lunch?¡± Walter offered.


    Everyone split off to eat, then slowly trickled back to the loose circle that ran through the cafeteria tables. Everyone brought some food or drink to the table.


    ¡°It¡¯s just us, and the dead.¡± Kris began.


    ¡°And the robots.¡± Added Jeff.


    Nobody wanted to look like the bad guy. Andy was completely silent. Well-fed though the group was now, the ugly power struggle that had crept out had shocked them all. Only Jeff looked serene, like he was above all of this, like he was practical, while they squabbled. Walter watched him the closest. Charisma often paired with some dark things, Walter had observed.


    ¡°I feel responsible,¡± said Karen, quietly ¡°because I typed Re-start.¡±


    People were doing more listening now, taking their time, on a full stomach.


    34


    ¡°It could be nukes.¡± Said James Edwards at last. ¡°That the robots built. Or an EMP. But I¡¯m just guessing.¡±


    The circle considered this.


    ¡°It is guarded...¡± Jeff allowed. ¡°Boy howdy, is it guarded.¡±


    ¡°I think¡­¡± said Todd, who was suddenly interrupted by the sound of servo-mechanisms in the hallway.


    A robot dog walked by the cafeteria, nosed its way into another hallway, with that kind, forgetful lady named¡­ Belinda, wasn¡¯t it (?)¡­ following it at a distance.


    The circle got up to follow.


    The robot dog walked towards one of the slanted tunnels, seemingly oblivious to the humans following it (at a respectful distance.) When it came to the giant green blast door with the silver wheel on it, the dog sat on its rear haunches and waited.


    The people under ground watched the robot guard dog, and the robot guard dog watched the door.


    ¡°What does it want?¡± asked James Edwards.


    The dog got up, walked forwards, raised its paw, and scratched at the door.


    ¡°Out.¡± Said Trina.


    But nobody moved. Trina went to open the door, but Jeff put his hand on her arm, quite gently.


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t.¡±


    The dog looked back at them. The light where its eyes should be went back and forth, back and forth.


    When it became apparent that the people were not going to do anything, the dog walked slowly back to where Jeff and Trina were standing. The dog looked up at them, the light where its eyes should be went back and forth, back and forth.


    ¡°What should we¡­¡± started Jeff, but then the dog walked a slow circle around Jeff and Trina, and stared at them again.


    35


    Trina walked over to the door, and started turning the wheel to gradually open it, while everyone else stood stock still. When it was wide enough for the dog to go through, it squeezed out and


    was gone.


    ¡°Might run away, but he¡¯ll be back.¡± Concluded Trina.


    Walter shrugged, and followed the dog out. His head popped back around, looking at the nine or ten people gathered at the door.


    ¡°Don¡¯t lock me out.¡±


    One by one, the people underground followed him out, until only Trina waved the last one on.


    ¡°I¡¯ll stay here. Make sure nobody closes the door.¡±


    The people under ground walked slowly up the slanted tunnel towards the surface.


    There was no light in the tunnel, and everyone had their cell phone flashlights on, keeping an eye on the ground directly in front of them, or stopping to scan around them. It was useless to try to see walls or ceiling, with such a paltry light source.


    Walter¡¯s dim cell phone light could be seen far ahead, outlining him and lighting up not very much else as he walked upwards.


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised we still carry these around.¡± Todd said to Judy, walking beside him, as they tried to use their cell phone flashlights together, to light up the ground in front of them.


    ¡°I guess we hope somebody might call¡­¡± whispered Judy.


    Everyone walked upwards, the group instinctively bunching up, enough to pool their cell lights a bit. Gradually their steps stopped echoing so much, as their feet started to swish, then crunch and


    squeak through¡­ something.


    Walter was stopped up ahead, shining his cell light on himself, so the group could see him.


    ¡°It¡¯s just ashes. Under your feet. Sorry about the lights. I think they¡­ burned out. Burned away. Not much longer to go now.¡±


    Walter turned back towards the surface, and started walking again. It was hard to judge time, and the ash got thicker and thicker as they went. In some places the roiling blackness was knee high.


    36


    There were drifts of it as high as a walker¡¯s waist, but people mostly avoided those. It wasn¡¯t particularly heavy ash, but nobody wanted to go deeper into it. Or think too much about what it was.


    A dim light grew ahead. The people below ground kept their cell lights on, because at first the light ahead was too diffuse to be useful. The light ahead was just hopeful to the walkers.


    Gradually, the weak light showed through a jagged circle, up ahead. Walter stood waiting, a black silhouette against a weak-lit grey background.


    ¡°Gate¡¯s gone, except for the hinges.¡± Walter gestured around with his cell light, then turned it off. ¡°I don¡¯t know how the drains stayed clear. Maybe just the ones at the bottom of the tunnel.¡±


    Or maybe it doesn¡¯t rain anymore, Walter thought to himself. He decided that wouldn¡¯t help to say out loud though. Speculation wasn¡¯t his game, except where it was needed to put one foot in front of the other, to stay alive.


    ¡°Brace yourselves. It¡¯s¡­ a bit of a shock.¡± He said, and walked out into the greyness.


    Todd stood beside Judy, looking around, their two cellphone lights still on, though unnecessary in the murky grey. It felt like pre-dawn, although it was afternoon. All around them, the countryside was


    covered in a whispey grey-black blanket of ash, with a low, dark, grey sky. There were no trees, or grass, no distinguishing features of any kind.


    ¡°It¡¯s cooled down a lot.¡± Said Walter, while everyone looked around at the devastated Earth.


    Yes, in fact, it was downright cold.


    Kris stood beside Karen, and James Edwards, who remembered to turn his cell light off. Wouldn¡¯t do to be bingo on batteries, for the long walk back down that dark tunnel.


    Jeff was silent, not knowing how to play this very, very new situation.


    Walter stood a bit apart from the group, watching them take it in. He had seen this already, although the smoke and heat of¡­ impact he guessed he should call it¡­ had not cleared when he and


    three others had first walked up to the surface. One of those first four out had been Thornton. Their


    37


    subsequent first walk-out. Come to think of it, so had the second walk-out. Walter supposed he could ask Judy to look up that fella¡¯s name, but decided against it. If that guy had decided to erase himself, there wasn¡¯t much Walter could do about it.


    Walter did have recurring nightmares about this. The dead grey earth, the deader grey sky. In his dreams the hinges to the gates outside glowed a fiery red. Abandon all hope, ye who exit here¡­ but that misquote, maybe from the stern Old-Testament harangues he had forgotten in the hollars of his youth¡­ it didn¡¯t help. It didn¡¯t boil the water, make the food or change the socks in your marching


    boots.


    Andy was trying to comfort Belinda, the sleepy-eyed lady that had followed the robot dog, then the group. She was crying softly, silently, then stopped to point something out to Andy.


    ¡°I think my house was that way.¡± Belinda said ¡°And my Mum¡¯s place was just across the street.¡±


    Andy just opened and closed his mouth. ¡®Sorry for your troubles¡¯ just didn¡¯t seem enough to cover things now. Instead he just put his arm around Belinda, and looked around and around. He


    thought of his parents, back in Vermont, with their genteel subsistence hobby farm, his Dad¡¯s meager pension more than enough in those touristy, snowy mountains.


    ¡°Which way is Vermont?¡± he wondered, then thought about it. NO way. NO way is Vermont. Not anymore. He had suspected as much, below ground, but this god-damned greyness seemed to seal


    the deal. He checked his phone, deep in shock. NO SIGNAL.


    Everyone had forgotten the robot watch dog.


    Weirdly, it was digging in the ashes, and then the dirt underneath, with its front paws. Then it stopped to sniff, dug a bit more, then stopped to sniff again. Something pushed forward from its snout,


    into the dirt, went a little deeper, then retracted again.


    ¡°My wife wanted to get a dog.¡± Judy said to Todd.


    ¡°So did mine.¡± Todd replied.


    ¡°So what did you get?¡± Judy asked.


    ¡°Rescue Pekingese something.¡± Todd said, watching the robot dig and sniff. ¡°You?¡±


    ¡°Rescue Doberman something.¡± Judy said, blankly. ¡°Happy wife, happy life.¡±


    38


    The robot guard dog sat back on its haunches, the light of its eyes¡­ eye¡­ going back and forth.


    Then it turned around, walked past the humans, and went back down the tunnel.


    Nobody said anything funny. Nobody spoke at all.


    It was hard to see even where the horizon was. Dark grey on dark grey.


    ¡°Maybe we¡¯ll be able to see more when these clouds clear¡­¡± Jeff announced to everyone, trying to figure out the mood of the group.


    Judy and Todd looked at each other discreetly.


    Those weren¡¯t rain clouds in the sky. They were a great deal of the surface of the planet Earth, thrown into the stratosphere. And they wouldn¡¯t be clearing for months, probably. Maybe years.


    Hopefully not decades¡­


    In mostly twos and threes this time, the people returned below.


    Walter went last, making sure everybody, did, in fact, walk back down the long ramp to IG Storage Depot 14.


    On the walk back down, Kris was lost in their own memories. Their family was estranged, except for the odd birthday card from their Mom, promising to ¡°sort things out when things settled down.¡± It looked like that would be awhile. Permanent vacation, as the saying went.


    Kris had chosen their own family long ago, a tight-knit group of LGBTQ plus friends in town, whom they would miss most of all. A lot of red wine and roses had gone into the making of that new family, gone now to dust.


    Kris wasn¡¯t sure if this diagonal tunnel-walking experience was more like Dungeons and Dragons, or the Greek underworld, where shades roamed in a pale imitation of life. Maybe the Hebrew


    Sheol, some undefined after life. Maybe there was no after life at all, except for the staff at IGSD 14, eating, sleeping, and re-constituting pizza. The sci-fi novelized version of Dante¡¯s Inferno wasn¡¯t much


    help, although fun to read, in modern English. Kris wasn¡¯t sure which circle they would belong in, or even purgatory. Purgatory, and its looming climb on the inside-out mountain of Hell (after you escaped


    39


    out the hole in the bottom of Hell...) Perhaps Kris belonged in Paradise, at the top of Purgatory. Were some Angels NB? Poor Dante had not thought of a person who was non-binary. One of the few things that maybe wasn¡¯t a sin to the savage Europeans of the Middle Ages. Sure, they had been obsessed with Joan of Arc wearing pants, but after all, she was French. It was more about where you fit in the hierarchy of power, than zipper and zee zee. Oooh La La.


    The grey light faded back to blackness, with a few cellphone flashlights pointed at the floor.


    The ash thinned out as the people under the Earth walked lower.


    Maybe we¡¯re all REALLY REALLY REAL dead, thought Kris, a la Ernest Goes to Jail. Nah, if they were really dead, they wouldn¡¯t have to pee. Not unless Stephen King were in charge of writing this. Only then they would all be just faces stuck to a giant insect, looking out in horror. And maybe having to pee, too. Jesus, that guy was so twisted. He even grossed himself out sometimes, and stuck a


    Lovecraftian warning into the forward of one particular book. A shame about his few forays into the shitshow of Cthuluism. Because the day-to-day survival horror was so much better. Had been so much better. Kris was pretty sure even old Steve King had to be reduced to atoms now. Tunnel between his two houses with a choo-choo train in it notwithstanding. Still, if a van driver full of Mars bars hadn¡¯tbeen able to kill The King, what chance did a mere planet-fucking meteor have?


    I really do have to start writing again, thought Kris. My interior world is a little¡­ rich? Verbose? Overpowering? Derivative? Infantalising?Jesus, who does this? Tries to choose the right world while they walk down an inky-blackcorridor to a Reverse Logan¡¯s Run Shtalag Thirteen? That was the Hogan¡¯s Heros¡¯ camp, wasn¡¯t it?


    And since there didn¡¯t appear to be an internet anymore, it seemed like Kris¡¯s interconnected musings were the only record of world literature. The only literature outside of the selection in the LAN at the bottom of this slanted spillway.


    Nice sibilance, thought Kris to themselves. Yep, they would have to start writing again, just so this kind of shit didn¡¯t slip out into regular conversation with the other people below. I¡¯ve just got to


    mentally barf this stuff out. As a dog returneth to its own vomit¡­ Jimmy Olsen to the rescue¡­Kris tried to clear their mind as the group walked lower.


    Taking great care not to sing out loud, Kris let the Smurf song wash over them. It was one approach to stop the endless flow of fiction in their consciousness. Even thought the smurfing song was, in itself, fiction¡­


    40


    Much as Kris prized their ability to step vicariously into someone else¡¯s shoes, the stories had to stop. At some point.


    You meet at the Inn, Kris thought to themself, as the Smurfing Song faded in their head. Fat Jeebus. Nothing for it. Time to scribble. Only question was, to write on a lap-top, or paper


    and pen? Crayon and construction paper? Carving on the walls with a screwdriver? Was IGSD 14 their Overlook Hotel? Seemed like a good idea at the time, but the writing just¡­ kind of ran away with them?


    Best to use a lap-top, useless as that now was. Password protection might be their only friend down here, under ground. Under ground. Underground. Still, Kris had never been able to sit down and read Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in the Rye and Zombies? Nah, not even.


    When the people went back through the cracked-open portal, into the welcoming electric lights again, Trina was gone.


    Walter found her in the nearest empty dorm room, snoring a little bit.


    ¡°What happened to you?¡± Walter asked, as Trina looked around like she was late for work.


    ¡°My back started to hurt while I waited, so I just laid down for a second¡­¡±


    Walter nodded. Yep, that was the thing about guard duty. It was likely to make your back and feet hurt real quick. And put you to sleep. And that was for twenty-year olds. Trina had to be pushing


    seventy. Or more. Best to have some snacks to keep you awake. And some gear to work on. A K-Bar to sharpen, or para cord to weave around something. Then Walter remembered Trina knitting in the arena.


    That must be kind of like wrapping para cord. Guess she hadn¡¯t thought to bring her knitting to the Breakfast Club meeting, before the robot guard dog had led them up to the surface.


    ¡°But you woulda opened back up for us, right? If somebody closed the door, and spun that wheel?¡± Walter asked, conspiratorially.


    ¡°Yep. Eventually. I would have remembered. Trying to figure out where everybody went.¡±


    ¡°And the dog? Which way did he go?¡± Walter asked.


    41


    ¡°Dog?¡± Trina asked.


    ¡°Robot guard dog.¡± Walter replied. ¡°Tasered Jeff. In the arena.¡±


    ¡°Right in the Arena?¡± Trina joked.


    Walter smiled again.


    ¡°Yep, the robot guard dog that tasered Jeff, right in the Arena.¡±


    ¡°Oh THAT dog.¡± Trina said.


    ¡°Yeah, THAT dog¡­¡± Walter coaxed.


    ¡°Haven¡¯t seen him.¡± Trina replied, and rubbed her eyes a bit. She laid back down to finish her nap, embarrassed or not.


    ¡°So where was the dog?¡± Todd asked Walter, over a stack of paper on Todd¡¯s desk.


    ¡°Went back home, like Trina figured.¡±


    ¡°Home?¡± Todd said.


    ¡°Back to his compass point, guarding the machine.¡±


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± asked Todd, (All But Dissertation) PhD.


    ¡°What the fuck indeed, Sir.¡± Agreed Walter, U.S. Army Cook, (Retired.)


    Belinda was having Karen over for herbal tea, in her dorm room. Neither of them drank the high-octane REAL tea any more, as sleep was hard to come by, and drowsiness at work was hardly an


    issue after the blast. What could they do if you fell asleep at your desk? Fire you? Put your things in a


    42


    cardboard box and escort you to the surface? Send you to Judy, in HR? We simply don¡¯t feel you¡¯re focusing on the job, perhaps a little time off would be just the thing¡­


    ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s your fault.¡± Belinda, of Data Entry, said to Karen, of Office Management.


    ¡°But if I hadn¡¯t typed in ¡°Re-start¡± the robots wouldn¡¯t have started¡­¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t they?¡± Belinda asked, absently sipping her tea.


    ¡°They wouldn¡¯t have built the¡­ machine thing, and that dog wouldn¡¯t have tasered Jeff¡­¡± Karen


    moaned.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t have happened to a nicer guy.¡± Belinda said, sleepily.


    The women looked at each other, and smiled.


    ¡°Oopsie.¡± Said Belinda. ¡°Maybe that¡¯s just the Chamomile talking.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m just worried about what those things might do. What do you think they built?¡± Karen asked.


    Belinda took her time, sipped her tea.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. This is ¡­ is this the end of everything? I mean¡­ We¡¯ll see.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll see?¡± Karen echoed, incredulous.


    ¡°After my Mom went into care, I thought it was so bad, I thought I was evil and selfish for putting her there.¡± Belinda said.


    Karen waited. Belinda sipped.


    ¡°But she was doing better. She was just across the street. She could even come over and sit with The Big Three.¡± Belinda came out of her reverie, long enough to explain. ¡°It¡¯s what I called my


    cats. Only two of them could fit on her lap at a time. The third would have to wait and meow.¡±


    Karen waited, and thought of her own daughter in Florida.


    ¡°And so I thought that was good. And then¡­¡±


    Belinda stopped talking, and looked around, then up at the ceiling. She couldn¡¯t finish what she was saying.


    ¡°And then the blast.¡± Karen finished for her. Belinda nodded.


    ¡°Yes. And that was bad.¡± Belinda managed, after taking a deep breath.


    43


    ¡°And you¡¯re suggesting the robots might turn out to be good?¡± Karen asked.


    Belinda sipped her tea, paused, then sipped again, eyes empty.


    ¡°I¡¯m suggesting it doesn¡¯t fucking matter.¡±


    Todd could not figure out what the noise in his office was. He looked around, up and away from the equation that was defeating him so thoroughly. Where had he gone wrong, and what the FUCK was that noise?


    Scratching? It by-god sounded like scratching.


    And then he saw it. A little mouse with gigantic ears, and tiny, frightened coal-black eyes looking at him from beside a stack of papers.


    Man and mouse stared at each other for a long time. At first it seemed that the law of the jungle had been suspended. Like nature, red in tooth and claw, was taking a break.


    Todd should have been horrified, he knew. Mice, or rats, had probably killed more humans than any other animal, transmitting yersinia pestis from pre-agricultural times, up to and beyond the heyday of the black plague, killing between 25 and 50 million Europeans between 1347 and 1352. About a third of Europe at the time.


    ¡°You bringing back the plague?¡± Todd asked the mouse, expecting it to run off. But it just seemed to freeze into place harder, unwilling to move before Todd did.


    ¡°You¡¯re a bit late.¡± Todd told the mouse.


    ¡°Is that a mouse?¡± asked James Edwards from the doorway to Todd¡¯s office.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Concluded Todd, without moving.


    ¡°Huh.¡± Said James Edwards, staring at the first animal he had seen since The End of the World.


    ¡°You¡¯re gonna say we should kill it, aren¡¯t you?¡± Todd asked.


    Edwards, who was eating a small bag of sunflower seeds, threw one of the seeds to the mouse.


    ¡°Depends.¡± Replied Edwards.


    44


    ¡°He¡¯s eating it.¡± Said Todd ¡°Depends on what?¡±


    ¡°Depends on if he¡¯s the last one.¡± James Edwards said. ¡°Had a buddy who went Astronaut. I told him ¡®never go full astronaut.¡¯ But away he went. Into space.¡±


    ¡°And he died?¡± asked Todd.


    ¡°Unless he was still in space, he did.¡± James Edwards answered.


    Yes, Todd supposed, unless he was still in space. Although Todd hadn¡¯t thought of actual astronauts since the blast, only satellites, and how much EMP would have been generated by a


    planetary comet/asteroid impact. If any. He was a mathematician, after all, not a physicist. Close cousins, but not exactly the same. Damn, he thought, I hope they have escape pods up there. But what was Edwards¡¯ point about astronauts?


    ¡°And¡­¡± said Todd.


    ¡°And he told me they grew wheat up in space.¡±


    ¡°Wheat?¡±


    ¡°Yep. Stalks of wheat. And a dandelion seed that, lord knows how, snuck in there with the wheat.¡± James Edwards expanded his story.


    ¡°So they killed the dandelion?¡± asked Todd.


    ¡°They called it Fred.¡± Said James Edwards. ¡°And they watered it, and the wheat, and they talked to it, and the wheat, and they basically just went full astronaut with that shit.¡±


    Todd nodded, once, watching the mouse, and smiled.


    James threw the mouse another sunflower seed, which it also ate.


    ¡°Never go full astronaut.¡± James Edwards finished his story.


    Todd agreed.


    ¡°Never go full astronaut. Right Fred?¡±


    Fred the mouse seemed to agree, snacking on his third sunflower seed.


    45


    That evening, Trina opened the door for James Edwards, down next to the kitchens, in her domain. James Edwards turned on the lights, and took a good, long look around.


    ¡°How many of them did you see?¡± Trina asked.


    ¡°Just the one. But I guess if you see one, how many don¡¯t you see?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s probably true.¡± Trina guessed.


    ¡°And if they eat all this¡­¡± James Edwards let that hang in the air, then went back to searching through the stacks and stacks of freeze-dried food, most of which was stored in big, metallic foot-locker-looking things.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Trina agreed.


    ¡°So keep your eye out for mouse poop. And let me know. Hell, I¡¯ll come down and look myself. But you look too. Please.¡± Edwards added, adding politeness to the mix, not just because the world had


    maybe ended up above, but because this was so important.


    With the stores they had at IGSD 14, they could survive indefinitely. Unless, of course, a plague of mice ate them out of house and home. Then it would be the mice they ate. And then each other, if


    you believed Jeff Coulter, over in book-keeping. Not that he had mentioned the mice to Jeff. Not just yet. So far, the people down below had managed to keep from rioting, or killing each other for fun.


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep an eye out. But we can respect the animal.¡± Trina said.


    ¡°Make ourselves some mouse-fur coats?¡± James Edwards joked, and mocked, without realizing he was doing it.


    ¡°Might be our only companion now.¡± Trina said.


    Full fucking astronaut, James Edwards thought. Inevitable, really.


    To Be Continued in Re-Start Ready - Chapter 2 "Even After All This"


    Illustrations Ch.1 by Andrew Debly, Doodles by John Mick

 Re-Start Ready - Chapter 2 - Even After All This

    Re-Start Ready ¨C Episode 2 ¨C Even After All This


    Trina burned some sweet grass, and smudged herself.


    Her computer confirmed that it was tomorrow, not yesterday, or even worse, tonight.


    The lights would automatically turn on when you walked through a room or hallway. The lights would turn off after twenty minutes of stillness. And although the people down below turned their desk lights on religiously at 8 am, and off at midnight, Trina always checked her computer. As long as there was electricity at IGSD 14, her computer would tick off the hours, days, and seconds. The computer would always tell her when it was.


    But that was all her computer would tell her. There was no Weather (omnipresent dark grey cloud cover.) There were no Sports (off season now, for everything, forever.) There were no Stock Market results (bearish, long, medium, and short term.) Sure, there might be News some day. There had to be other places far enough underground, pre-stocked, with a few survivors.


    If they had been underground when the blast hit, that was.


    And Trina was pretty sure the News would come by carrier pigeon now. She didn¡¯t know if any pigeons had been below ground Before Blast though. Sure, Todd said the satellites were probably mostly still running, so communication with the outside world was possible. But how many people were alive today, a month after the blast?


    None of the people down below knew where the meteor/comet/asteroid had hit the Earth. Nobody knew if the entire planet was buried under ash, or half of it, or just the tri-state area. Although once again, Todd and Judy were not hopeful, with the perma-grey skies above. The clouds were thick, dark, and unmoving. It was all one cloud, really, no ¡°s¡± involved. The heavens were a solid mass of grey.


    Tina¡¯s computer told her that inventory, at current rates of consumption, was good for 54.2 years. And that was at current population levels. The consumption model did not take deaths into account. There would be one or two fewer mouths to feed in five years, a handful less in ten, and a respectable chunk fewer in twenty. Total people living below ground would be really dwindling at 30 years. By the time 40 years rolled around, Trina figured remaining food stock would feed whatever ten or fifteen people remained, well, for as long as they could rip a packet open and stir it into a pot. Water seemed continuous, clean, and re-cycled, although Trina had no clue how. Probably some kind of infra red (?) ultra violet (?) thingy in the basement, with the robots, behind the huge, closed doors in the arena.


    Whatever. It was serve-yourself in the cafeteria now. Clean your own dishes. And speaking of serve yourself¡­


    In one of the huge storage rooms, the lights clicked on when Trina swung the door open. She hadn¡¯t brought the inventory label scanner. Why? Because she was not here to open one of the metallic foot lockers, stacked row upon endless row, on black metal shelving. She had a different mission. She was here to catch a mouse.


    Food storage rooms here were like a movie she had seen when she was a girl. The movie had Nazis chasing adventurers in fedoras, everyone in classic cars, down the isles. She knew it was foolish for her to try to catch the mouse down here with a single live-trap, and a chunk of reconstituted cheese. It was too much territory, and these doors sealed pretty tight. The metal footlockers seemed impervious to mice. So why would the mouse show up here, instead of eating whatever bugs it could find, and drinking a few scant drips from government issued plumbing?


    Cheese.


    It might be re-constituted, it might be hard to get at, but as far as cheese went, it was the only game in town for the mouse.


    Then again, there might be thousands of mice down here, with the people under the ground. Mice had evolved long before people, indeed, had probably been the ancestors of most mammals, after what Judy called the Fifth Extinction. But guaranteed, as long as there had been people, here in Turtle Island, there had been mice living with them, unobserved, quiet, taking only what they needed. And breeding like mad. Trina was unromantic about that. She knew her job was to monitor for mice, not a single mouse. Because a furry horde would not be good for anyone. And there were (probably) no garden snakes, or owls, cayotes or predators of any kind here in IGSD 14, hundreds of feet under the earth. Trina didn¡¯t know who she would miss more, the crow, or the coyote. They were both clever brothers and sisters to have along with you, in the story of life.


    Once again, the cheese sat undisturbed in the silvery live trap. There was no mouse puckey around.


    Wise mouse, Trina thought. It would live free, on scant rations, rather than taking a chance on Trina¡¯s mercy, and a jury-rigged cage for it to live in. It might or might not submit to being patted, fed, and talked to by an old lady in her office. For now, it might be the last mouse around, and it would be quiet, wise, and still, as its people had always been.


    Andy Bunkowski sharpened the table knife.


    At first, he wasn¡¯t sure it would work, sharpening a dull ¡°knife-and-fork¡± piece of silverware. It was just standard, flat-top table ware, a bit serrated on one edge. Just a checkered edge, for cutting through chicken or fish, in small amounts. Maybe pork chops. Definitely not steak.


    But Andy had found a bit of cinderblock, holding a door open in one of the endless sub-sub-basements here at IGSD 14, and he had put it in a paper bag, and carried it back to his room, unchallenged, undiscovered. He supposed the cinderblock itself would do the job, if it ever needed doing. But a chunk of cinderblock would be a slow, clumsy weapon. Andy wanted this job done quick. Fast and efficient. He had never really thought about this sort of thing, except when reading stories-for-boys, (books and comics) as a child. Cutlass or rapier, club or hatchet, the mechanics of killing had never really been a thing for Andy. Now, it was a bit different.


    Sure, that fucker Jeff might just be a joker. Hail-fellow-and-well-met. But Andy didn¡¯t think so. In the back of his mind, some atavistic remainder slunk, telling him things like ¡°Get it in between the ribs, Andy¡­¡± With both hands. And if you shove the knife all the way in, and it goes ¡°kerplunk¡± into some human chasm in there, so much the better. Andy didn¡¯t want a fight on his hands. He didn¡¯t want to wrestle over a knife (or cinderblock) while dramatic music played.


    He wanted to put Jeff down, hard and quick, and forever. If he had to.


    Maybe like a velociraptor, just slash him deep and good, Andy thought. Then slam a door and let the fucker bleed. Maybe finish him off when he was too weak to resist. Like the English archers had finished off the exhausted French knights at Agincourt. Get the job done while they lay helpless, although in a pool of Jeff¡¯s own blood this time, rather than the prepared, churned mud of a battlefield. His one military history class in college had been a bit of a revolting eye-opener for Andy, years ago. Before he had become Andy from Communications. Andy, never-say-an-unwise-word, stay-on-message, chubby, affable Bunkowski.


    Andy had also seen a prison movie once, where the good guy killed the bad guy with a glass knife. Impractical. Unnecessary. This knife he was working on would do the job, he knew now. His other prison movie tutorials suggested stabbing the neck, or the stomach, many, many times, because you couldn¡¯t fix that in the hospital. Perhaps impractical. Definitely unnecessary. One deep slash would do the job, let Jeff bleed, then go to work on him a bit later. No hospital down here. No 911.


    Andy should have been shocked at his own thinking. He should have tried to befriend Jeff, or stay out of his way. But Andy knew there was no staying out of the way, down below ground, here at Inter Governmental Storage Depot 14. And he didn¡¯t trust Jeff could even make any real friends. Sure Jeff was friendly. Like he was recruiting. Join the Army of Jeff. Be the last one to live.


    Yeah, sure Jeff, he thought.


    Andy made certain the tip of the blunt old knife got extra attention. It had to be sharp, but still substantial enough to drive through skin, and guts and maybe even bone. The dull, back edge of the knife got some sharpening on the cinderblock, as did the serrated, cutting side. The handle, wrapped and wrapped in masking tape, was thick enough to really grip now.


    Dull dinner knife was now sharp and long as a commando weapon, ready to go, set in a home-made paper sheath Andy could slip in the back of his pants.


    Who¡¯s going to be last, Andy? Who¡¯s going to be last?


    Not you, Jeff. Not you.


    Well this IS really annoying, thought Jeff.


    Judy Hong Kong Chong is sitting there two rows down and ten seats over, talking to Dr. Blackmathnerd, and I can¡¯t hear what the fuck they¡¯re saying.


    Jeff didn¡¯t figure they knew anything more than he did, but you couldn¡¯t always tell with these people. First time he¡¯d ever met a black mathematician, so old Toddsky BlackMan might know a thing or two. And the Koreans, the northern ones, had held up the world back in the 50¡¯s. The entire fucking world. United Nations. A grand policing action. AKA The Korean War. Sure the Chinese had played big brother, but still, those crazy North Koreans were wiley. Wiley enough to slink back across the DMZ line, and point over their shoulders to the Chicoms. Sure, MacArthur, you can drive us back north again, and even use those nukes you wanted, but China has nukes too. So no North Korea for you.


    There weren¡¯t so many people in the basement arena seats now. The robots had built the¡­ thing¡­ the machine. And one of the robot guard dogs had led some of them on a merry march to the surface. But it had come back down to the basement again. And so had the people.


    And the machine didn¡¯t do anything. The four dogs just sat there guarding the machine. As long as you didn¡¯t hit it with a hammer, the dogs let you be. And nobody had done that since he had. Bunch of pussies. Although note to self: get somebody else to do the dirty work next time. The pilot could do it himself. Or that old fuck Walter. You ain¡¯t got that long left anyway, Walt. Go fuck with the machine. Stick your dick in it, and tell us all what it feels like.


    Fucking Chong, Jeff thought to himself. Head Bitch in charge, are you? Fuck that. You and Nerdo the wonder Nerd think you¡¯re leaders down here. You ain¡¯t shit. If it comes down to it, old Jeff has a bullet for each of you. YOU get a bullet, and YOU get a bullet¡­ And that would leave him four more if anyone else felt like making a federal case out of it.


    Still, better to hold his temper for awhile, Jeff told himself. He really wanted to know what that machine could do. Why, it might turn out, the machine was more powerful than the last gun on earth, and the last six .357 magnum bullets. Maybe it was an atomic wood-chipper, and spat out golden elixir. You just needed to throw Judy and Todd in there and turn the crank. The Chong Chipper 6000. Also good for Pain in the Ass Toddskys.


    Jeff walked down to take a closer look at the machine again, careful not to disturb the sitting dogs around it.


    ¡°Careful around the machine,¡± Judy Chong said.


    Fuck you, you useless cunt, Jeff thought. I¡¯ll kill you the fuck last. And make you watch while I eat your friend. But he gave her a game wave, and even did a little pantomime of getting an electric shock again. She was wise enough to shut the fuck up at that point, which was good. If she had said anything, Jeff wasn¡¯t sure he could have stopped himself.  He would have just grabbed her head, and banged it on the handrail in front of her seat, over and over again, until her blood pissed down the steps, and she would finally, FINALLY shut the FUCK UP.


    Jesus Christ these fucking people were due for a lesson.


    In the end, Jeff was too angry to learn anything from looking at the machine again. His blood pounded in his ears, and he was just smart enough to stay away from Todd and Judy while they talked. Wouldn¡¯t due to kill them while they were still useful. They would get their fucking lesson, no doubt. But at a time and place of Jeff¡¯s choosing. Whether it was messy and public, to show everybody else what the fuck was up, or private, deniable and all the sweeter for being stretched out, well¡­  he hadn¡¯t quite decided yet. And with these thoughts, Jeff¡¯s heart slowed a bit, and his blood pressure dropped. Jeff¡¯s in charge now, ladies and germs. You fuckers might not know it, not yet, but Jeff¡¯s in charge. No rules now. Just Jeff. Jeff¡¯s rules. Jeff Rules. Jeff.


    Don¡¯t clean the rabbit, this time, Jeff thought. And besides, Daddy¡¯s not around. Not this time. Only Jeff¡¯s around.


    Judy was getting worried about Todd. As they sat and stared at the machine, she thought there was something missing in the mathematician. Ever since he had talked about his wife doing laundry, back in his office. That had almost broken Todd, with a grief you could feel when you looked at him. But since they had come back down from the surface of ashes up above, the man was completely flat. No, incurious. That was the word. He didn¡¯t start conversations, or ask questions. Not about anything. They were sitting, staring at the machine, and Judy had tried several times to get Todd¡¯s opinion. What was the machine for? Why had the robots built it underground? Why had they built it at all?


    Todd had shrugged a couple of times, said a few things like ¡°Perhaps¡­¡± and ¡°We don¡¯t really have enough¡­¡±


    And then he had just stopped.


    ¡°Dr. Mason, A.B.D. PhD¡­¡± Judy said. Todd eventually looked at her, surfacing from some dark reverie.


    ¡°It¡¯s not just my wife, Judy¡­ And then he was silent, until Judy prompted him again.


    ¡°What¡­¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s all gone.¡± Todd Mason said, like he was finally able to put the idea into words for the first time.


    And Judy Elizabeth Chong knew he was right. If any country had survived, any shred of civilization, any large pocket of humanity, they would have heard something by now.  Wouldn¡¯t they?


    The planet¡¯s surface was floating lazily around in the sky, Judy Chong knew. She had seen it, standing beside Todd and the others, on the ashy skin of a once-beautiful world.


    They had walked the slanted tunnel in the dark. More than ten storeys up they had stepped out on to the ground, drowned in ashes. Miles above, over the missing gates to IGSD 14 was the filthy, dead sky.


    Temperatures dropped swiftly, after the surface had burned off. There was no strong shunshine anywhere in sight. Not a plane had flown by, not a single cell phone had picked up any signal, and radios taken to the surface found no stations. And yet¡­ surely a jet engine would clog and die in the dirt-filled cloud that had replace the sky. And with the amount of unmoving DIRT up there, maybe that was all this great silence was. Like the Icelandic volcanoes that had once grounded all flight, temporarily.


    Or maybe there were no jets left to fly, no helicopters, no skyscrapers, no people. Just ash, and sorrow. Sorrow for a handful of underground survivors.


    Judy watched as the man named Jeff, the one who had been shocked by the robot guard dog, approached the machine again, on the arena floor. She was so worried about Dr.Mason¡¯s sudden silence, that she absently called out to Jeff, worried that he might be hurt too.


    ¡°Careful around the machine,¡± she said. Judy was not able to help Todd Mason. Judy was not able to talk to her dead wife. Judy did not want to see even one more human hurt or killed. When Judy called out the warning, Jeff made a joke of it, and mimed getting a shock. She thought ¡°That¡¯s good. Looks like he¡¯ll be alright. He¡¯s funny. Even after all this.¡±


    Walter was making an MRE.


    Meal (Ready to Eat.)


    Awful stuff, really. But there were treats, for when you finished. Or when you needed them. It should have offended him professionally, as he had been a cook in the Army. He had run huge kitchens, in ¡°emerging economies.¡± Translation, he kept the Army fed, even in countries where they fertilized crops with human excrement, leading inevitably to parasites. And nobody had gotten parasites on his watch. Not from his kitchens, anyway.


    One bonus about the end of the world¡­ no more tape worms. Or worse.


    Sure, tapeworms might exist, they might come back. Any time a rat ate a flea, or however that happened. Some hellacious awful things, parasites. Made a fella think there was no grand plan, after all, just life in all its tenacity, taking myriad violent, beautiful or disgusting forms.


    If they ever got around to farming again, maybe long after Walter was dead, he sure hoped they skipped the whole ¡®fertilize with human waste¡¯ mistake. Needs must, when the devil drives, as his Daddy would have said. But tapeworms? Come on.


    Whenever he got back to the States, he had always marvelled at how safe everything was, how clean. Sure, you could get parasites, and you could get shot or stabbed, but compared with overseas, you had to really work at it. Well, for most places, anyway. Sure, there were plenty of lunatics around with assault rifles. Walter wasn¡¯t really a big fan of that, and he thought there should be some basic background checks, at least for the kind of rifle he had briefly trained on in the Army. But he was also pretty sure he would be one of the survivors, in any kind of mass shooting. Run. That was the answer. Yes, run from cover to cover. Yes, even run from concealment to concealment. But run. Run slow, run fast, it didn¡¯t matter. In the chaos of being attacked in a civilian environment, running was the way to go. Don¡¯t get trampled, but don¡¯t stick around to get hunted.


    In a bombardment, or an attack by a real military force, the rule was different. Taking cover was the only way to survive a military attack. Sure, get your M4 if it made you feel better. Make sure the safety was on, though, so you didn¡¯t shoot yourself in the face. Or the dick.


    Walter had never married, having given his life to the Service. It had been harder work than any civilian could imagine, the heat of the kitchens, the miserable bastards you had to work with, and sometimes under. Sure, he¡¯d had some girlfriends, some even long term. But deployments put paid to that. And any time he worked state-side, he¡¯d just been too tired. Nobody worked harder than an Army cook. If and when you ever got home, you really needed to sleep. Or watch tv. Or both at the same time. Not really conducive to a happy home life, even if his pockets were full from the mediocre pay of a high-level NCO.


    Yes, after retirement he could have worked himself to death in some civilian kitchen, maybe started his own restaurant. Or cafeteria. He could have done some contract work on the private side, in deployments around the world. But the truth was, he was just tired. Wrung out. A full thirty years in the Army was enough. He had seen the world, and maybe because of the places the Army went, he hadn¡¯t been impressed. Yes, Germany had been nice, but that was two years out of thirty. The rest was bosses screaming, and boredom, and bombardments. Thank God it was over.


    If he¡¯d been a rich man, he wouldn¡¯t have joined up, that¡¯s for sure. But the old economic draft got you every time.


    Walter finished his MRE, eating the candy and snacks last, savouring them. He supposed, relatively speaking, he was a rich man now. Not with money, as all of that was gone (if it had ever been real at all.) But he had a warm, dry, safe bed to sleep in at night. He had a purpose, to keep this place running, at a basic maintenance level, anyway. And mostly, he wasn¡¯t ashes, blowing around on the surface of the planet.


    He once read that Versailles had no plumbing, back in the old days. What good was it, he wondered, to be the King of France, if everything smelled like shit all the time? And dysentery killed soldiers and civilians alike, rich and poor, without discrimination. Yes, he had visited Versailles once, posted next door in Germany. Fortunately, there was indoor plumbing now. And endless tourists.


    Or there had been, anyway. Walter imagined Versailles was flattened by the blast. If the gates of IGSD 14 had been blown off or cooked away, how could there be a Versailles?


    He¡¯d joined the Army after the whole Cold War thing, and so had never really feared nuclear war. Even though he¡¯d had CBRN training, even though he¡¯d done ¡°defecation drills¡± where you had to take a mock-shit in overalls and a gasmask and gloves, without contaminating yourself with imagined chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear elements. But now here they were.


    Nuclear winter was coming. Todd Matheson and he had discussed it. All that dirt in the air, blocking the sun. The planet would drop to winter temperatures and stay there for a good, long while, no matter what the calendar said. If there was any topsoil left, any clean water, any seed of a useful plant, it would be awhile before it bounced back.  Todd said something about the Earth being covered in mushrooms for a long time. Some ferns, maybe. And not many kinds of animals for a million years. Or would it be ten million? Perhaps there were still rats and bigger rats, some opossums, and seagulls or something. Anything that could squeeze underground, away from cooking heat, then frozen ash. Pigeons, maybe. Walter supposed he could do something dish-wise with a pigeon. But he didn¡¯t savour the possibility. See his earlier thoughts about parasites.


    Funny, Todd Mason made everybody call him by his first name. Guy like that, all the brain power in the world, and he was ¡°just Todd¡±. Hadn¡¯t finished his Doctoral Thesis, or some damn thing like that. Doctoral Thesis in Math, for fuck¡¯s sake.


    Walter wasn¡¯t sure what rank ¡°Mathematician¡± was (or civvy equivalent) here at IGSD 14. If Todd was a boss, he sure as hell didn¡¯t act like it. He talked to anybody, at their level, and asked their opinions.


    The fella sure was taking his wife¡¯s death hard, though. Walter sometimes ruminated over longer-term women he¡¯d been with through the years, but the nagging had always gotten to him in the end. You couldn¡¯t be nagged all day by your co-workers and superiors, then come home and do it again at night. So he hadn¡¯t been able to pull off the wife thing. He guessed Todd¡¯s work, which seemed to be paper, computer, and white board, was different enough from cooking and cleaning at home, that the nagging hadn¡¯t mattered much.


    If only his hard-ons would stop, Walter shook his head. Not that he minded them, his body practising hard-ons, at night, while he slept. God knew why, there was nobody down here that would be interested in a retired Army cook. Hard-ons just made it inconvenient to have a leak in the middle of the night, or if somebody knocked on your door while you were sleeping.


    I¡¯m sixty-two years old, for fuck¡¯s sake. Can we cool it with the stiffies?


    But life will out, if you believed Judy and Todd when they talked about the planet. And if the Earth could eventually grow trees again, and then re-create large animals (mega-fauna, they had called the animals,) then Walter guessed he could put up with some useless boners. Not a million years of boners, he didn¡¯t think. Maybe twenty more years, good lord willing and the heart attacks or cancer don¡¯t rise.


    Walter took the plastic MRE bag to the recycle room, and stacked it on top of the rest, for eventual disposal. He wasn¡¯t sure recycling had ever been a real thing, anyway, despite the blue trucks that came to take the stuff away. He¡¯d seen too many burn pits in his time overseas. Maybe there was recycling state-side, but he suspected a lot of plastic ended up being buried in land fills. Or sent overseas to be sorted by people living on garbage heaps. Or just dumped in the ocean.


    Walter wondered if there were oceans, anymore.


    Eventually, Walter would get some help from the other people under ground, and they would carry all the plastic up to the surface, only to bury it again. Like they were already doing with the organic waste. There wasn¡¯t too much of that though. People were eating what was put in front of them now, even if it was freeze-dried. No bones or peels to deal with. No pits, or seeds you couldn¡¯t eat. And meals were small enough that bread didn¡¯t go stale (beyond microwavability,) or go to mould much.


    When would they run out of clean water? Walter pondered. No giant buffaloes here, big tanks brought in from somewhere else, for soldiers to use, strutting around like they could survive anything. Walter didn¡¯t care how far Army Rangers could run, or how tough Delta were. No buffalos full of clean water, you¡¯re starting to die in three days. Quicker in some of the shittier sand-heaps he¡¯d been to.


    Yes, he knew where all the giant filter tanks were, and the systems they used to recycle, clean, and even somehow collect artesian water close by. But he didn¡¯t understand how to fix them, or even run them correctly. He knew where the manuals were, and he had gone through them as much as he could, but he was no engineer. If it ain¡¯t broke, don¡¯t fix it. He was not about to dump bleach into a complex ecological system of recycling, and poison everybody underground. His speed was more change-the-lightbulbs in the infra-red water purifiers, if they ever needed changing. Flush the toilet every time, and clean everything well. Including your hands. That would go a hell of a long way.


    ¡°I am no longer a unicorn.¡± Todd Mason said aloud, alone in his office. But that wasn¡¯t exactly right.


    ¡°I am one unicorn in a small herd of unicorns.¡±


    A black man with two graduate degrees in Mathematics (ABD on the PhD, of course,) working for the government for more than a living wage. It had not been common in Before Blast America. What the hell, Todd thought. I might even finish up the PhD thesis. He had oh¡­ probably twenty years of nothingness in front of him. Only problem was, there would likely be no peer review. There probably were no more peers. And there was the rub.


    Now all of humanity, whatever the head count was, were unicorns. Extremely rare. Mythical creatures, living in caves, deep underground.


    ¡°Even the pinks are rare now.¡± Todd concluded.


    His wife, whiter than snow, a Malmberg from Sweden, had often called herself a Pink. Todd was pretty sure she got it from the Andorians on Star Trek, but her point was well made. She wasn¡¯t really ¡®white,¡¯ any more than Todd was really ¡®black.¡¯ And she also had no time for white supremacists.  She figured ¡°pink¡± was more reflective of skin-colour reality, and ¡°Pink Power¡± just didn¡¯t have the ring most neck-bearded fools wanted when racializing others.


    ¡°We need to maintain the purity of the pink race,¡± she would often say to Todd. To which he would inevitably respond ¡°We¡¯re all pink on the inside, baby.¡±


    ¡°I need you to look and make sure, Dr. Matheson.¡± She would say. It was her way of telling him she was horny. And she had been horny a lot. Perhaps it was part of the job. Graduate school for library science must have been¡­ an astounding place. Todd often joked he would go interdisciplinary, just to hang around with well-read women, with their hair pulled back and glasses ready to be put on a sturdy- legged table, out of the way for wild abandon.


    ¡°We¡¯re all just one or two drinks away from being inter-disciplinary¡­¡± Dr. Malmberg liked to say.


    ¡°I miss you, Malmberg,¡± Todd said ¡°And I hope to see you soon.¡± Not from walking out, he had decided. Not from anything dramatic. Because there was a need for him, here, at last. Walter needed him to chat with, over coffee.


    Yes, coffee with Walter. Maybe Karen would drop by too. Walter, it seemed, was the only one curious enough to go exploring IGSD 14, and even the ashen world above, and not get freaked out. Walter was definitely keeping this facility running, as best he could. Walter needed Todd¡¯s ear, pretty much every day ¡°to get an Officer¡¯s perspective.¡± Todd was never sure that wasn¡¯t a veiled insult, somehow, but one acknowledging his periodic usefulness. Todd didn¡¯t really see how he was ¡°an officer,¡± as he had no rank or power here, in Storage. He was literally just on secondment here, working on various obscure mathematical tasks the government wanted done. Nothing fascinating. It had just been steady money, more achievable than tenure, and no teaching requirements. Especially no undergraduate teaching. Glorified high-school students with a bone to pick. Undergrads were either being forced to do a math course for their unrelated degree, or they were vengeful mathematical would-be prodigies. Well, Todd had to admit, he had probably been exactly the latter in his early twenties. Vengeful no. But scornful of others? Guilty as charged. Luckily, he had grown out of that. He guessed most people did. Your early twenties were for taking on the old bucks, trying to drive them out of the herd, or down in importance. Your thirties were for consolidating your power, and realizing what an idiot you had been in your twenties. Forties were coasting, all right with the world. Your fifties, well, that had been all about trying to hold on, enjoy what you had accomplished. Unfortunately, whatever your sixties had been about in the old days, it looked like Todd wasn¡¯t going to find out. Everything was different now.


    He was getting to be an older man now, although he knew it was a bad idea to call yourself ¡°old.¡± But ¡°middle-aged¡± didn¡¯t seem to apply anymore. Wife dead. World dead. Stuck underground.


    Todd never suspected that Walter was using some anti-suicide training on him.


    The military was full of people who had been forced to take a human life. Or human lives. Sometimes dozens, sometimes scores, even hundreds (if you were Air Force, or Artillery,) of human lives. And for all but a small, hidden percentage, this was a huge problem. Humans were not made to kill other humans, not without consequences. Hence the suicide rate, even the homeless and mental illness rates among veterans. It was a rare person indeed that could kill another person, up close, or even far away through a screen, and not pay a price. Walter had lost far too many military friends to suicide. Eventually, he talked to a suicide prevention worker, both to watch over other service people, and maybe even to protect himself, although he had never felt the urge to commit suicide.


    You had to get the potential suicidal person to find one reason they would be missed. Maybe it was a person they spoke to at the bus stop every day. Maybe it was the next-door neighbour, who was too old to take the garbage out. You really had to dig for it sometimes, but the smallest thing was a good start. It helped avoid the application of a permanent solution to a temporary problem.


    Suicide prevention strategy: Walter needed Todd¡¯s perspective on the systems of IGSD 14. And to share a coffee with. And to figure out what was probably going on up above. And it was true. Walter really did need an egg head, who loved his booky-books. Todd came up with some different stuff. And Walter seemed to have a knack for eventually finding a ¡°so what?¡± connection between ephemeral ideas and cold, hard reality.


    Malmberg would have to wait a bit, Todd finally admitted, for their ghostly re-union. There was coffee to be drunk with Walter, there were toilets to keep flushing, and there was a nuclear winter to be calculated.


    Todd and Karen and Walter sat, looking at the mouse.


    It was back in Todd¡¯s office, no doubt because of the sunflower seeds James Edwards had given it.


    ¡°What was his name again? Its name? Her name?¡± Karen asked.


    ¡°Fred.¡± Replied Todd, throwing Fred the Mouse a little bit of terrible, reconstituted muffin. Fred did not complain, however. Perhaps it was better than dusty cockroach.


    ¡°And we hadn¡¯t thought to check the genitalia,¡± Todd said ¡°Although I suppose that could be very important.¡±


    ¡°First things first. I had an idea.¡± Walter said, and produced a piece of cardboard from the small gym bag he was carrying.


    Walter put the cardboard down next to Fred the Mouse, who promptly froze in place. He didn¡¯t run. Was he used to the humans, Todd wondered, and their strange but welcome habit of throwing him food? Or was he just obeying millions, perhaps billions of years of evolution, and freezing when a predator approached, in order to remain unseen? Perhaps both, perhaps one a higher priority, with the option to defer to the secondary consideration.


    ¡°We gotta know if this is really Fred.¡± Walter said, just before he dropped a handful of sunflower seeds on to the cardboard.


    ¡°Don¡¯t think we can grow more sunflower seeds from these, can we?¡± Walter asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± admitted Todd.


    Walter didn¡¯t think so. There was no sunlight, and he didn¡¯t know if the infra-red lights used to sterilize the water could also act as a substitute for sunlight, down here, deep under the earth. And were the seeds sealed in plastic, salted, and maybe baked, still good to go? Some information just wasn¡¯t on the Local Area Network, and Walter had hoped Todd would know.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± Walter asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m a mathematician, not a horticulturalist¡­¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what she¡­¡± Walter started.


    ¡°Really?¡± Karen said.


    ¡°Sorry.¡± Walter said finally, after a few more moments watching the mouse.


    And miracle of miracles, Fred went for the sunflower seeds on the cardboard.


    ¡°I could try to grow some sunflower seeds in a pot¡± Walter whispered, half just to see if the mouse would bolt when he talked. When Fred the Mouse didn¡¯t run, Walter reached down, slowly, carefully into his gym bag.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Karen asked, in full voice. The mouse froze. Walter flinched. Todd watched the tableau, in fascination, perhaps in horror. What was Walter going to pull out of that gym bag? A cage? A flyswatter? A carving knife? What?


    Quick as you like, Walter pulled out a can, and sprayed blue paint on the mouse¡¯s tail. Or the tip of the mouse¡¯s tail. Or perhaps just the cardboard where the mouse had been.


    ¡°I think I got the end of his tail.¡± Walter nodded, in self satisfaction.


    ¡°Fred the blue-tailed Mouse.¡± Todd concluded.


    ¡°If it ever really was Fred at all.¡± Walter said.


    Behind the wall, the mouse ran and ran until it found stygian darkness, and safety. It didn¡¯t like the taste of the wet stuff on its tail much, but later, when it dried, the mouse was able to lick and nibble it away. Mice tried to be clean animals, as much as they could, after all.


    Carrying the shovel, James Edwards thought, was the real bitch here.


    Up the stairs.


    It was a good day¡¯s work-out, no question. And then there was swinging the shovel in the cold. Finally, to top it all off, insult to injury, you had to walk back down the stairs again. Ten flights. Knees clicking and clacking the whole way. You definitely had to pace yourself. And take a lot of breaks.


    Edwards was alone in his quest to dig out the top of the stairwell. Kris had volunteered to help, but James Edwards was a little leery of the thirty-something non-binary. They (James Edwards believed he was using the correct word for Kris) just babbled about science fiction sometimes. And James Edwards was from a time where how you were treated was determined by whether you were a man or a woman. Yes, M¡¯am, no Sir. It was just confusing. He figured Kris had been male, but was pretty feminine. Although he wasn¡¯t a hundred percent. There was still a good chance that Kris was just a bull¡­ ah¡­ no. That was not the correct word. That was a ¡°hate¡± word, unless you were in the group. And that was fine by him. He didn¡¯t really hate anybody. Or more accurately, he hated people on a case-by-case basis. Like a normal fucking person. Not hating entire groups.  James Edwards also thought Kris could also be a masculine woman.


    Oh well, there were stairs to climb, and a bit of crumbled concrete to pry out of the way.


    Secretly, James Edwards was a little curious about Kris. That was another reason he didn¡¯t hate, or tried not to hate, groups of people. In the old days, you could have checked James Edwards¡¯ browser history. Back when there had been porn on the internet, he had looked at men you could swear were women. And to be honest, he had found that a bit of a turn on. Although not one single person alive had known that.


    James Edwards wondered how many secrets had vanished in the blast. But Kris wasn¡¯t really interesting, because ¡®they¡¯ didn¡¯t wear panty hose, and lipstick. None of his pilot friends, nor his former military colleagues had a need-to-know that James Edwards found drag queens a turn-on. He had tried to repress it, early in his life, but then the internet had fed his thirst for it. And lastly, that same internet had revealed the Masters and Johnson research from eighty or ninety years ago. Turned out, about four percent of the general population were completely gay, couldn¡¯t be with the opposite sex, and about four percent of the general population were completely straight, and couldn¡¯t be with the same sex. Everybody else was on a spectrum. Although James Edwards never flew the rainbow flag, didn¡¯t really think of himself as bi, and was still secretly a bit ashamed of his (adults only!) browser history, he gradually became more progressive in his thinking. And before the blast, it seemed most people were cool with the LGBTQ thing. James Edwards had even clapped at a few pride parades, but never marched. Despite the fact that bisexuals (God what a word) were the vast majority of humanity, he thought his penchant for men that looked like women, or whatever, was nobody¡¯s business but his own. After all, he also loved women that looked like women. Well, he guessed the mind could wander when you were taking a break, walking up ten flights of stairs, after the end of the world.


    James Edwards thought maybe they could eventually dig out through the elevator shaft, since the stairs just ended in crumbled, almost melted-looking concrete.


    Am I taking a chance, digging away at this, when the wreckage at the top of the stairs could collapse and crush me?


    As a younger test-pilot, James Edwards had taken some fantastic chances. Trying to land something he should have bailed out of, going bingo for fuel and trusting a tiny reserve. Volunteering for any flight. Had he been flirting with death, battling self-hatred, because of his¡­ well, his bisexuality? It was only when he realized he was what he was, and was just on a spectrum with most others, that he had stopped taking such terrible risks.


    Unless he was doing the same thing again? How badly had going to the dead surface with the others messed with his head? Was he risk-taking at an unreasonable level again? After everything he¡¯d lived through, everything the world had learned?


    But there was no more world, he didn¡¯t think. And maybe that had affected him more deeply than he cared to admit. Even if we have enough to eat, how many of them would not be able to make the transition to post-apocalypse?


    Fuck it, he thought. My reserves will probably hold out. But in the meantime, why dig around up here at the top of the sealed-off stairs?


    Walking slowly back down the ten storeys, James Edwards put the shovel back where he found it, and decided to just coast for awhile. Let¡¯s see what there is to see. Be good to the other people under the ground. You never knew what kind of a race they were running.


    Carrying the shovel, Walter thought, was the real bitch here. Yes, the bag full of smaller plastic and foil bags was awkward, but you couldn¡¯t really call it heavy.


    He walked up the slanted tunnel, with one giant bag over his shoulder. Not much of a load this time.


    And should they really be burying plastic bags? Yes, the foil and plastic packets were piling up, yes they had traces of food on them. But who could say what use they might be put to, years from now. IGSD 14 was full to the brim with supplies. But since manufacturing was probably just¡­ over now, should they not keep the bags? Become a lost colony of hoarders, living in their own filth, thinking it somehow intrinsically valuable? Well, by the time people were digging up old food packets again for re-use, Walter hoped to be long dead. Plastic bottles they washed and kept. But there were limits. Food packaging had traces of food on it, which went bad and attracted all kinds of things you didn¡¯t want to live with.


    As he got to the surface, Walter zipped up his parka, that he had lately been wearing up top. He staggered, when he got outside. It was dark. And it was freezing. Good thing he had gloves in his pocket, although they were poor insulation against this kind of cold. They were just leather work gloves, but better than nothing. Next time he would get the winter gloves he had. He didn¡¯t have mitts, but¡­ surely it couldn¡¯t get that cold, could it?


    Walter got over to where he had been burying the bits of trash he humped up to the surface, mostly light stuff, mostly just to keep it sanitary underground. People re-used almost everything now. Throwing something away just made the people under the earth edgy, like they were doing it wrong, and the blast had been a final warning. Well, a reminder, anyway. A reminder after the disaster, which had put an end to all the final warnings.


    Chak, went the pointed shovel, not piercing the earth at all anymore.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    The ground was frozen solid. The shock of hitting frozen dirt traveled up the yellow plastic of the shovel handle, and seized up his spine. Ten thousand, thousand trays of food, carried to hungry solders, sailors, airmen and marines had done for his back, long ago. But he had kept going, because, well, that was what you did.


    It took him awhile, but Walter found some rocks, and was about to start piling them on top of the garbage bag, when he thought he saw it move.


    He would have jumped a bit, retreated a step or two, only his back thought it was better to just stop, and further assess just what the fuck was going on.


    Yes. There it was. Definitely movement. Inside the bag.


    Walter stood back and watched. It for all the world, looked like something small was moving around in the bag. Something about the size¡­ of a mouse.


    Well now what the fuck do I do? Walter wondered.


    At first, he¡¯d had a pretty strong startle reaction to the rustling in the plastic. No doubt jumping back had saved many a cave man in the long grass, and many a soldier on patrol. But most of those soldiers, if they had lived to be old men, got shmucked by a giant rock from the sky. Probably.  Goes to show you never can tell.


    It was still freezing up here, above ground. Walter didn¡¯t have long to make this decision. He was already starting to shake. What if it was somehow a rattlesnake, that holed up underground, and made its way to the garbage room of IGSD 14? Walter took a few steps back towards the gaping hole in the side of the hill, with the melted or missing gates. And then he thought: mouse or rattlesnake, can I leave it up here, in a bag? What if it¡¯s the last mouse, or the last rattlesnake?


    Tough luck, Mr. Rattlesnake. And yet, he couldn¡¯t just continue walking away.


    He hadn¡¯t spun around and around like this since basic training. Damned if you don¡¯t, damned if you do.


    What a stupid, horrific way to die, by insidious snake poison, after escaping a wall of fire, and then starvation or dysentery.


    And what if it was Fred the Mouse?


    He certainly wouldn¡¯t have cared, back in the old days. Overseas. Before the blast. Hell, two months ago, he would have shrugged. Maybe opened the bag and walked away. And surely a mouse could chew its way through a black plastic garbage bag?


    And then what? What would Fred the Mouse do, covered in ashes on a frozen planet?


    Keep spinning, fucking new guy.


    But that wasn¡¯t right, was it? He was a fucking old guy. His back and knees told him so. Getting up at least once in the middle of the night for a leak, and then waiting for the damn leak to start, all that told him he was no FNG. Except maybe as a survivor on this wasted world. He guessed he was new at that.


    Should he carry the bag back to the entrance with him? What to do, what to do? When you live in a shoe?


    Fuck it.


    He carried the plastic bag back into the tunnel with him.


    Goddamn it, he had forgotten the shovel. He put the bag down, went back for the shovel, then came back to the tunnel mouth. Spin, spin, spin.


    He walked all the way back to the blast door, open a human sized crack, with his little note taped (thoroughly) to the wheel you spun to close the door.


    DON¡¯T LOCK ME OUT PLEASE! ¨C WALTER


    And now what? Carefully, carefully, he put his plan into action. In the crack of light coming out of the blast door opening, he began to untie the bag.


    Why the fuck had he double knotted it?


    God forbid some garbage get loose, and blow into the ashes that had been the world and all its people. He might be the old, retired Sergeant now, but he could still remember corporals ripping into him for not tying garbage bags correctly, when he¡¯d been barely more than a skinny teenager. And then the bags went into cancerous burn pits anyway.


    He held the bag away from himself. With the shovel inside the blast door, leaning against a wall, Walter continued the dangerous, perhaps deadly task of opening the garbage bag.


    There was no rattle, no hiss, no rustle.


    The first knot gave way.


    The second loosened, while Walter¡¯s heart boomed in his ears. Those Delta boys would have told him to look left and right, to break the tunnel vision coming from stress. Maintain situational awareness. Just like in a hot kitchen, full of boiling things, scalding surfaces and the odd nineteen-year old with wicked sharp chopping knives.


    But the Delta boys weren¡¯t here now. They were all dead.


    Unless there were other Inter Governmental Storage Departments. From the name, IGSD 14, Walther thought there might be 13 others. That wasn¡¯t a lucky number was it?


    Or the 14 might be mere maskirova, as the Ruskies had called it. Misdirection and camouflage. Like Seal Team Six. Had there been five other Seal Teams? Maybe not in the beginning, back before Special Forces became the garbage men of world policing. Before they had to do everything. Walter stopped and mopped his forehead, wet with sweat, despite the slightly less-freezing temperatures near the bottom of the slanted blast tunnel exit.


    He bet there had been dozens of Sea Air and Land Teams in the end. Before the blast. Too bad they hadn¡¯t been riding a satellite with some shoulder-fired nukes, to stop that goddamned asteroid.


    Finally, the knot gave way. Walter opened the bag, and left it sitting in the crack of light outside the blast door. He tripped and fell on his ass, inside the blast door, trying to keep his eye on the bag.


    Nothing came out.


    Walter got up, grabbed the shovel, chiding himself for taking his eye off the bag for a micro-second.


    He readied the shovel to kill any snake that had the temerity to emerge and try to slither past him.


    Saint Walter, in his heroic last stand at the gates of IGSD 14, shovel at the ready. He waited, and he waited. Just as he stepped forward through the gap in the blast door, a mouse shot out of the garbage bag, back into the halls of Storage, and was gone.


    Walter hadn¡¯t been able to get any kind of a look at its tail. Had it been blue? Was it Fred the Mouse? He kind of hoped it was Fred the Mouse. Not one of hundreds, or even thousands, waiting to re-start the Black Death in the tunnels of IGSD 14.


    Yes, he hoped it had been Fred the Mouse, coming back inside. Back home.


    ¡°Full fucking astronaut.¡± Walter said, quoting James Edwards involuntarily.


    After a second of catching his breath, Walter gently patted down the rest of the bag with the flat of the shovel. There were no hisses, or squeaks. Nothing but plastic and foil packaging made any noise.


    Walter tied up the trash bag, and walked hundreds (or was it thousands?) of slanted steps back up to the surface.  This time, he left the shovel behind.


    Walter walked back to the rock pile he had started, and began to bury the bag.


    When he looked up again, past the furry fringe of his parka hood, a robot guard dog was sticking its nose in the dirt.


    "Jesus!¡± Walter yelled involuntarily.


    This was the worst horror movie ever. The trope of the mouse rustling, only to be replaced by the real danger, the robot guard dog, making movie goers jump. Even though they knew it was coming. God he hated those movies. Sure, he would miss theaters. And people, and trees, and grass and everything. But he could do without horror-movie startles. The world had been horrible enough.


    Strange, the things that ran through your mind, while you watched a robot guard dog try to stick some kind of nose tube into frozen dirt, then withdraw it after three to five attempts.


    The robot guard dog sniffed the air a few times, then tuned back and trotted¡­ well¡­ glided like a spider¡­ back into the tunnel and back down below. At least Walter hoped it went back down below. He hoped it wasn¡¯t going to keep him outside while he froze to death.


    ¡°Let me back in!¡± he would plead to the robot guard dog.


    ¡°I can¡¯t do that, Walter.¡± It would no doubt reply.


    Walter made his way back to the jagged tunnel entrance in the side of the fake hill, ashes blowing across his path. It wouldn¡¯t do to get out of sight of the tunnel entrance. Landmarks were few and far between here. Would he freeze to death before someone noticed he was gone? Would they send up a search party, or would they think he was a walk-out? And then there would be fifty.


    At the jagged tunnel mouth, Walter tried to peer in, and let his vision adjust. He couldn¡¯t see any light. There was no glowing single eye, going back and forth, back and forth.


    He stepped into the tunnel, careful not to cut himself on the hinges where the gate had been, before the blast.


    After a solid three minutes that felt like half an hour, Walter wondered if his eyes had adjusted enough to spot a black robot guard dog, lurking in the blackness, maybe with its eye in guard mode. Maybe the robot had some kind of passive infra-red, or heat signature camera. Maybe right now the robot was taking aim at Walter, taking aim¡­ maybe for a chest shot, but then again, maybe right at his balls, for the height differential. Very consciously, Walter put a hand in front of his crotch, and a hand in front of his teeth, although a bit away from his mouth.


    ¡°Good boy,¡± he said ¡°Good boy. Uncle Walter is just going back downstairs to clean up. Keep things running. Good boy¡­¡±


    No dart on a wire shot out. No robot dog bounded forward to lick him, or knock him over. Or shoot him. Or stick that thing in its muzzle into him.


    After a couple more minutes of inching forward into the darkness, Walter began to relax again. His eyes were as adjusted as they were going to get. And when he saw no robot guard dog, he switched on the tiny cellphone light again. He could see where he was stepping, in a slightly less thick trail of gray ash. He couldn¡¯t see much more than that. The light was more comfort than a way to scan his surroundings.


    ¡°Good boy¡­ good boy¡­¡± he said, now and again. He was just about gasping for air by the time he made it back through the open blast door.


    ¡°A coward dies a thousand deaths, a Walter only one¡­¡± he panted as he shook the ashes off his feet, and used the broom to brush off his pantlegs.


    What a huge mess they had made, trooping back from the surface in the past. The broom and an oversized dust pan and ash can kept the blast-door area reasonably clean inside. Walter only mopped it once a week. Now that he was trying to keep an eye on essential systems all the time, he let a few cleaning things wait. For a bit.


    Actually, not much ash had stuck to him this time. Seemed a lot of it was frozen solid now. How long would that last? he wondered.


    ¡°Take me up to see it.¡± Belinda said to Kris.


    Kris looked at Belinda¡¯s hooded eyes, and thought again how she needed to sleep more. The woman looked like she was ready to fall over.


    ¡°Why, Belinda? Nothing¡¯s changed.¡± Kris said.


    ¡°I just want to go out.¡± Belinda said, a little louder now.


    ¡°It¡¯s freezing up there.¡± Kris answered.


    ¡°I have type two. Diabetes. If I don¡¯t move, it¡¯ll get worse.¡± Belinda explained.


    Kris doubted going to the surface was a healthy choice, for anyone. They couldn¡¯t really fault Belinda¡¯s desire to go, but she was no doubt remembering walking in a park in the summer, or even trying not to slip on ice after Christmas. Now the surface was ash, who-knew how full of toxins. Probably not germs, though. Not yet. The surface had been at a healthy boil for quite a while, Kris believed.


    ¡°If you promise not to get upset, I¡¯ll go with you.¡± Kris said.


    Belinda brightened.


    ¡°Oh, I know it¡¯s bad. I remember. I remember some things, you know.¡±


    What did that mean? Kris wondered.


    The two bundled up, but kept their coats unzipped, and started the long trek to the surface. As they slipped out the blast door, Kris said ¡°Hope they don¡¯t airlock us.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen the original, you know.¡± Belinda said, while turning on her cellphone light, and zipping up a winter coat they had scrounged for her. It wasn¡¯t a great winter coat, whoever had been in charge of winter gear had ordered a paltry, ineffective lot of coats. Enough to give you an hour of surface time, before the shakes started. And who the hell didn¡¯t order flashlights? If it was good enough for the famous seventy-two hour kit, why hadn¡¯t IGSD 14 gotten more flashlights?


    ¡°The original?¡± Kris asked.


    ¡°The original Battlestar.¡± Belinda smiled, although you couldn¡¯t see it in the slanted, dark tunnel. ¡°This is kind of like the Viper launch tube. Except darker, and slower.¡±


    You could have knocked Kris over with a feather. Suddenly they had a new-found respect for Belinda.


    ¡°So which do you like better?¡± Kris asked, like a parched person in the dessert. They were still using present tense to refer to Battlestar Galactica, original and new. You could plop the nerd down in the middle of real-life sci fi, and they would still talk about pretend sci-fi.


    ¡°Hard to beat Edward James Olmos.¡± Belinda said.


    Succinct. A near-perfect summation. Except¡­


    ¡°Only the rag-tag, scale model, fugitive fleet of the first series could do that.¡± Belinda concluded.


    Ok, Kris thought, this woman was next level. They had been worried Belinda would say Starbuck being a woman was weird, or the 1970¡¯s special effects weren¡¯t as good. Or worse, that the new effects weren¡¯t as good. Apples to oranges, Kris thought, and to everything, there was a season.


    ¡°All in all, not bad for a Star Wars coat-tail rider.¡± Kris said, trying to bait Belinda into a more extensive conversation.


    But Belinda kept things practical, coming back to how the topic had come up in the first place.


    ¡°And you¡¯re right. Anybody closes that door behind us, we¡¯ve effectively been thrown out the airlock. Although we might live days, instead of seconds.¡±


    Kris nodded. They had been up to the surface many times, to look around, while temperatures went from summer, to winter, to Hoth. Much as they wanted to see the grey sky, and watch for any changes (or hellicopters, or Mother Ships,) it was still depressing and risky to climb the slanted tunnel.


    Belinda and Kris turned off their cellphone lights as they came up to the glowing grey hole near the surface. It was daytime, which you only knew because it was all dark grey, instead of pitch black.


    The wind bit them, and howled.


    Some areas were actually clear of ashes, because the wind was so strong. Underneath was blackness, burned earth.


    Belinda and Kris were both shaking violently now. As one, they stepped back into the tunnel mouth, to get away from the wind. It was still freezing in the tunnel though.


    They turned their cellphone lights on and headed back down under the Earth.


    ¡°It¡¯s so much colder now¡­¡± Belinda said.


    ¡°I think you¡¯re right.¡± Kris agreed.


    When they got back to the blast door, thankfully no one had airlocked them. Kris was glad. Not the way they wanted to go out.


    Trina made the long trip to the surface again.


    The other people down below were talking about how cold it had gotten up there, so Trina decided it would be a good idea to go see for herself. When you were a grandmother, you knew that younger folks were prone to¡­ what would Judy or Todd call it? Hyperbole. Yes, that was one of their words. Useful word. It meant exaggeration for effect, not meant to deceive. Even the middle-aged could fall prey to it. Elders, by and large had learned not to waste the effort. There was only so much time in the day. If people weren¡¯t going to listen to the elders, it was not the responsibility of the elder to jump up and down, for effect. Listen or don¡¯t. Survive, or don¡¯t. Your choice. She had seven generations to think about, not just her own power and position. She lived in Wasichu culture, she knew she had absorbed some of it. She was not as wise as the ancestors, nor as tough. But she had to try.


    It was time to see how cold this winter was. Even though it wasn¡¯t supposed to be winter now.


    Trina found the walk to the surface hurt her feet, at first. She walked slowly in the near-total dark, her cell phone lighting her footsteps. Swish, swish through the ash, as she kept on up the punishing grade. And as she walked higher, the ash stuck together more and more, until it was hard-frozen. Luckily the people below ground were making regular trips up now, to see what was going on. Their footsteps had cleared a bit of a path. Even near the top, where the ash was frozen solid, she was able to find a safe way forward.


    But it got colder and colder, the closer to the surface she got. Her feet and knees felt a bit better from the steps, although her lower back was a little sore.


    Again, she missed the days of her youth, when the girls ran the pathways they knew so well, racing each other, reveling in the way their legs churned, and their lungs burned, and their dark hair flew behind. Now she scrabbled like a crab, and did her best to make it up above ground. TV news doctors often said that women presented differently for heart attacks. Presented, they said. Again, it seemed like a useful, but strange word. Like people were pretending to be sick. Especially women.


    Where are my sisters, now? Trina wondered, as she stepped through the blasted gates, into a hellish windscape outside.


    Her skin, which was loose with age, and covered in sweat from a walk up the buried road, shrank against the howling, freezing air. She gasped, and stepped back, after only a quick look at the grey sky, and the frozen mounds of grey ash.


    Trina turned and trotted back inside. She did not know it, because she could not see herself, but her gait was a real run now. Exactly the same mile-eating steps she had hammered out as a girl, then as a young woman. She lit up the cellphone again, when she was out of the wind. She didn¡¯t keep up the run for long. She couldn¡¯t. No matter how much the pace came back to her, it wouldn¡¯t stay.


    Well, nobody gets out alive, Trina knew. What did Todd say? Everybody wants to go to Heaven, nobody wants to die. A wise observation, that.


    Was she headed for the happy hunting grounds soon? TV doctors sure had thought so. Lower back pain. Very bad. Nausea. Even worse. Presenting with cardiac symptoms.


    Hello, I am Trina, and I present you my back pain, and my sick feeling. I¡¯m a goner for sure.


    Except she wasn¡¯t, was she? She was still here. Her sisters, the TV doctors, the government men, the nurses, the tourists. All the peoples, from the four directions, they were mostly gone now.


    This was not a winter it would be easy to survive.


    Even if the people below ground at IGSD 14 had enough, there couldn¡¯t be many places like this. So deep, with so much freeze-dried food, and magically self-cleaning water. Deep enough so the earth was warm again, after the world above had burned, and now frozen solid. Storage had miles of pipes, so the poisons of the lower body were taken away, and clean water brought back in their place.


    How many would emerge under the blue sky of spring? And when would that be?


    Traditional knowledge was not deep enough to survive¡­ this. The blast. It had burned up all the animals, all the plants, all creatures. It had burned up the seasons themselves.


    In spring, in the old days, the ancestors had come out to weep with joy, and dance, and feast, to celebrate making it through the harsh winter, the stories said. Before they had been forced away from their green homes. And now, maybe nobody had green homes. Maybe it was the trail of tears, for the red, white, black and yellow directions. Only the tears froze, and so did the trail. Nobody was taking from anyone this time. Winter would take them instead, and all equally. Maybe Custer couldn¡¯t slaughter you, because he and all his horsemen were ashes. Maybe small-pox, and all the diseases that had come across the ocean to Turtle Island were gone now. But so were all the people. All the survivors of those horrific things. And the perpetrators.


    But in the now, the government had dug a Storage place, and that¡¯s where the people left below ground cowered.


    Now is the winter of our discount-tent, Trina thought to herself, humour keeping her alive, at least a little bit. She pondered the past, as she supposed was the way with older people.


    Maybe the distant ancestors had danced to celebrate being free of confinement in small spaces, after a long winter. Yes, smaller warmer spaces were good just to survive. But they couldn¡¯t have been very much fun. Dancing in the joy of spring didn¡¯t mean as much when you had central heating, instead of small fires and buck skin. When you had Winchester ammunition, and rifle scopes, and knives so sharp they glowed. When you could pipe in water from endless miles away, and grow corn with machines so big they did the year¡¯s work of a family every five minutes. Trina wondered just how soft she had become. Well, however soft it was, it was still tougher than the Wasichu. She was somewhere between them, and the ancestors. She just hoped it was a little closer to the ancestors. Only time would tell. She had gotten lucky. Or had she? Was she the last of her people now?


    She guessed that was weighing on them all. All of the people under ground. Everybody was from somewhere. Everybody had people. Family. Tradition.


    Except now, maybe those were all gone.


    Maybe the last dance would not be one for spring. Maybe the last dance would be the halting, painful steps of an old one. Maybe the last song ever sung would be one of mourning.


    What had that poet said? Not with a bang, but with a whimper?


    Well, he had gotten that wrong. There had been one hell of a bang.


    In a bang, with a gang, they got to catch me if they want me to hang. Wise words also, from her college days, when she had run track, and left everyone gasping in the dust. The memory made her smile, below the ground, and put a tiny little spring back in her step.


    Kris looked down at their feet, and almost went ass over tea kettle on the wet floor. What the hell?


    They walked around the corner, and looked down the hall. There was at least a centimeter of water on the floor now, and the water seemed to be moving, creeping forwards. Dry floor behind Kris was disappearing, water was flowing towards them.


    One more turn of the corner, and Kris was at the blast door. As usual, it was open enough for a human being to squeeze through. Unusually, there was water slopping through, coming faster and faster.


    Some kind of instinctive panic seized Kris, and they started to run towards the blast door. And then almost slipped again. So they slowed down to a walk. Kris remembered running in a changing room, about to go to the pool, and slipping on a freshly mopped floor. They had lain there for a few seconds, unable to move, wind gone, shocked senseless. It had been a powerful lesson about running on wet floors. Luckily, the memory came back in time to stop them from repeating the lesson.


    Kris spun the wheel like a mad DJ on crack.


    Spin, spin, spin. And then nothing. Not a clank, nor a clunk. The door closed silently, until the wheel simply stopped turning. What if I spin it too far and it sticks? Kris wondered. Would they be stuck in here forever? No, surely not. Two or three people, wearing work gloves, could easily undo whatever labour Kris had done. The blast door was closed, but not forever.


    The immediate danger of flooding was over, and Kris breathed a sigh of profound relief. Now what? Who should they tell? What should they do?


    Kris found Walter ten minutes later, cooking something in the cafeteria. Or cleaning up after he ate, it seemed.


    ¡°Walter, we have a problem.¡± Kris said, trying to keep their voice calm. And failing.


    ¡°What¡¯s up kid?¡± Walter asked. It was a strange thing to call Kris, in their thirties, but Walter was sixty-two, and his tone of voice was warm and friendly. And Kris had their mind on other things. Like slow, slopping death, waiting for them just outside the blast door.


    ¡°Water. Coming in the blast door.¡± Kris said, and then Walter was moving. Kris had never seen the old man do that before. This must be the way a French bulldog felt when its lazy person ran to catch a taxi. What the fuck is this?


    Kris tried to catch up, and eventually did, as Walter stomped purposefully, and quickly, through the standing water in the hallway.


    ¡°I closed the door¡­¡± Kris called after Walter, as the maintenance man turned the last corner before the blast door.


    Kris turned the corner, and there was Walter, standing there, in front of the blast door, hands balled into fists, down at his sides.


    ¡°You closed the door.¡± Walter said.


    Kris nodded.


    ¡°I closed the door.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°What do we do?¡± Kris asked.


    Walter looked around, making sure there was nobody around. He waited for a minute, then said ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    Walter walked over and tried to turn the wheel a bit more, but it the blast door was as closed as it was going to get. The wheel would spin no further.


    ¡°How much water was there?¡± Walter asked.


    Kris shrugged.


    ¡°About like this. But coming in steady. Slow and steady.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s bad.¡± Walter said, dreamily, low, almost to himself.


    Kris started thinking about the Watcher in the Water, grabbing Frodo. Walter started to think about a horrible submarine movie he had seen as a kid, called Grey Lady Down. Drowning sailors. The worst kind of nightmare you could ever imagine. Probably why he hadn¡¯t joined the navy.


    Kris wanted to say something smart. Something about the Poseidon Adventure. Nope. Too horrible to contemplate. Or something about how this had never happened to the Winchesters, safe in their angel-warded bunker. And having been around the block a time or two, talking to non-nerds, Kris decided once again, to shut the hell up.


    Walter just stood there, and unclenched his fists. He was breathing in long, slow, chest heaves.


    ¡°You ok?¡± Kris asked.


    ¡°One, two, three, four¡­¡± Walter said, breathing out. He made a weird, Tree-beardy kind of voice, breathing in, counting to four again. Then he nodded four times in a row, holding his breath.


    ¡°Whatcha¡¯ doing?¡± Kris asked, in a low, conversational tone.


    ¡°Combat breathing.¡± Walter answered.


    Kris nodded, like this was a reasonable thing to say, like they were waiting for the bus.


    ¡°I know, I know, I was only a cook,¡± Walter seemed to be explaining to some critic who wasn¡¯t there. ¡°But we got mortared and shelled too. You still had to think. Plan what to do.¡±


    Kris watched the man count to four on the inhale, hold the breath for four nods, then blow it out for a four-count.


    What if the whole place flooded? Kris wondered. And where was all this water coming from? Wasn¡¯t it freezing up there? Was there some kind of underground flood? What the fuck was going on?


    Kris decided to breath along with Walter. It sounded like the most boring pod-cast ever. They laughed a bit to themself at this, and Walter looked at them. Kris counted with Walter, out loud.


    ¡°One, two, three, four¡­ one, two, three, four¡­ one, two, three, four¡­¡±


    The water was a bit lower know, going from over their toes, to a centimeter or two high.


    Eventually, the water was all gone.


    Kris wondered where the water went. Probably down the stairwells. Or somewhere it could get through. Maybe into the rooms on this level. But nobody came running around the corner to scream or complain or panic.


    The floor was a bit wet now, but not flooded. It was almost like it never happened. The dirt from a bit of ash seemed to have washed away.


    ¡°I won¡¯t have to mop up the ashes today¡­¡± Walter said. Kris hadn¡¯t realized Walter was doing that. Of course. Every time somebody went up, they tracked ashes back in. And there was Walter, cleaning up after them all like a bunch of children.


    ¡°Thanks for doing that.¡± Kris said, trying to keep calm. ¡°Maybe we should tell the others now¡­¡±


    Walter nodded.


    ¡°Yes. I guess so. I just wonder¡­¡± Walter foundered ¡°what¡¯s happening¡­ out there¡­¡±


    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s raining.¡± Kris offered, feeling a bit panicky themself.


    ¡°But the drains should take care of that¡­¡± Walter said to himself. He listened at the door. He didn¡¯t know what he was hoping to hear, through a thick underground blast door. Groaning, of tons and tons of water trying to get in, to drown them all? What a horrible thought. What a horrible, horrible thought.


    ¡°We need to get Todd. And Judy. Right now.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°We can put everybody in the stair well¡­¡± Judy ventured.


    ¡°But the water might rise there, too.¡± Walter said. Never the less, the four of them trooped over to the main stair well, and opened the door.


    It was dry as a bone.


    Everyone had been up there, at least once, to see the flat rocks and steel at the top of the stairwell. There was no way to get up there now. There was no more building sitting on top of IGSD 14. There was no building, no Mundy the retired Air Force security guard, and no way out.


    ¡°We need to run.¡± Todd said.


    Nobody said ¡°That¡¯s the best you¡¯ve got?¡± or anything counter productive like that. They were all feeling it. Get out, get out, screamed their subconscious minds. Instinct had saved their ancestors for millions, if not billions of years. They stood on the shoulders of giants. They were the top of a pillar of survivors, stretching back to the first primates, to the first vertebrates, to primordial ooze. They had paid the price for standing here, on the Earth. Or under it.


    ¡°We get ready to run.¡± Agreed Walter ¡°Right now. Everybody brings a parka. Some food and water.¡±


    All fifty-one survivors stood in front of the blast door. Yes, there were other blast doors. But this was the one they all used, this was the one they chose. It had taken an hour for people to assemble here, ready to run. And none of them were happy. In fact, the crowd was near panic. People tried to keep their voices low, and watch the door. Some of them were sure they were going to die. Not tomorrow, not in two weeks, but here and now. And badly.


    Jeff had his big, stainless-steel revolver in his belt, at the back of his pants. Shirt untucked, parka open. Just in case. Just in case.


    Andy had the sharpened kitchen knife in a paper sheath in his pocket, just in case.


    Judy and Todd stood with Kris, and James Edwards, and Walter, near the door, ready to spin the wheel, to pull the door open, to help people escape. Or, as Walter had said, to help everybody push the door closed again, to keep the water out. He wasn¡¯t at all sure they shouldn¡¯t wait, let the drains in the slanted tunnel do their thing. But in the end, the group had decided that if enough water built up over a long time, they would all drown. Escape was now. Or never.


    Belinda clung to Trina. The two women vowed to help each other, come what may. The buddy system, they called it. Karen stood close to these two other women, watching over both of them. In reality, it was just something to do, some way to cope with the fact that when they opened the blast door, they might all die. They might drown, or make it to the surface, to freeze to death. It was better to focus on helping your neighbor. That, and getting ready to roll.


    ¡°Ready?¡± Walter asked.


    Every last person was looking at him. Jesus, how had it come to this?


    At least Fred the Mouse wasn¡¯t there, staring at him with beady, accusatory little brown eyes.


    ¡°If it keeps coming in fast, we run. Run up. Or swim. Swim up. If it comes in slow, we walk up. See what¡¯s going on.¡± Walter said. It was what they had all agreed. The way they had decided to die, part of him thought.


    Well, most people hadn¡¯t gotten any choice. How lucky they were, here at the last, in Inter Governmental Storge Depot 14.


    Walter spun the wheel.


    The door opened a crack.


    Everyone watched the door, waiting for a wall of water to roar in and kill them all.


    The door slid open, as Walter spun the wheel.


    Wide eyes watched him do it.


    But there was no water.


    The people under the ground looked at each other, shocked, surprised to live another day. Every one of them had envisaged their own slow, boring death from old age, or starvation, or sickness. It was almost the unofficial hobby of every last person in Storage. How will I bite the big one?


    And now the blast door was open to its usual human-sized crack.


    Still no water.


    Walter stopped spinning the wheel and stepped out. He stepped back in a second later.


    ¡°Drains must be working.¡± He said, and the people hugged, quietly, gasping out what they had thought was their last breath.


    By popular demand, the door was spun all the way open, so everyone could see. And to check that the door was working properly. That it could be opened all the way.


    The tunnel was clean. There was no more ash.


    Walter didn¡¯t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Neither did Todd or Judy, or Kris, or James Edwards.


    ¡°Maybe the ash will clog up the pumps¡­¡± Andy from Communications whispered to Walter.


    ¡°Maybe there ain¡¯t no pumps. Just drains.¡± Walter countered, wondering if the ash would clog up the drains. Or the pumps.


    ¡°I feel like a goddamn hamster.¡± Said Jeff. ¡°No fucking control of any of this shit.¡±


    Todd had to agree. This might not be the time or place for such an outburst, in front of all the people below ground, but he supposed everyone had their own way of letting off steam. Especially since they had all been ready to die a few minutes before.


    Jeff marched angrily up to the surface, with James Edwards, Todd, Judy, Andy and Walter following. A few others straggled after them. Kris went last.


    On the surface, outside the long, slanted tunnel, there was a light, steady rain. The sky was still grey. A solid, slowly weeping, grey. It was a freezing rain, and nobody stayed long outside the tunnel. The grey ash was still everywhere, and it was too cold to stay outside.


    ¡°Everybody should have a go-bag.¡± Jeff said. ¡°So we¡¯re ready if this shit happens again.¡±


    After awhile, Trina said ¡°Yep.¡±


    And so it was decided. Everyone in Storage kept a week¡¯s worth of provisions, and some basic survival tools, apportioned out to them. They could survive as individuals for a short time, and as a group a bit longer. Everyone had a go bag.


    To go where? Kris wondered, but didn¡¯t say out loud. They imagined it was on everyone¡¯s mind, but how would Kris know for sure? The mysteries of the binary, non-nerd mind. Kris could only do their best to emulate, if not really understand. Best to stay quiet, unless in proven, safe company. Belinda had won Kris¡¯s trust with Battlestar Galactica. Trina with her respect. The rest bore watching.


    ¡°I checked the streptomycin,¡± said Trina ¡°and the last of it will expire in a year.¡±


    Judy, Todd, James Edwards and Kris took this in, calmly. After all, they had been ready to drown like rats last week, or freeze to death, bedraggled on the surface. Tuberculosis and even sepsis seemed like secondary concerns right now, deadly or not. They were all starting to realize how close to the edge they were, down here in Storage. Death up Above had taken away the real safety nets of other people, and the natural world itself.


    ¡°Well, I guess that¡¯s it then,¡± said James Edwards ¡°no more miracle of medicine, in a year or three. People will die of sinus infections. Dumb shit like that. The clap for everybody.¡±


    Crudely put, Todd thought, but he¡¯s not wrong.


    ¡°Can we make penicillin again?¡± Judy asked, just spit-balling, trying to avoid panic. When you were in trouble, you marshalled your resources. Get your team to work. It just wasn¡¯t practical to give up. After all, humans had come so far¡­


    ¡°S.M. Stirling would say we don¡¯t have the tools to make the tools.¡± Kris said.


    ¡°Who is¡­ never mind. Sci-fi.¡± James Edwards concluded.


    Kris found James Edwards was watching them more these days. It was like the man was waiting for Kris to reveal themself, or to do something masculine, or feminine. Kris wondered why it was so important to James. But then again, early hatred from some of their peers had taught Kris a hard lesson. Even though their gender didn¡¯t affect anybody else one way or another, it could trigger violence in some. Yet James Edwards didn¡¯t seem like that. Yes, he was a bit of a superior jerk, but the man had been a test pilot, after all. He just seemed¡­ interested. Not overly so, just a bit curious. Maybe¡­ disappointed.


    ¡°Maybe for awhile, we won¡¯t have to worry about communicable diseases. There¡¯s just the fifty-one of us here¡­ and I don¡¯t expect contact with any other populations¡­ uh¡­ for quite some time¡­¡± Todd trailed off.


    ¡°It¡¯s not the people gone that worry me,¡± Trina said ¡°It¡¯s nature.¡±


    She had everyone¡¯s attention.


    ¡°All this stuff in storage. We got water, we got food. We got heat, even hot water. But when will we see any ground cover again? Real things to eat? Plants. And the animals¡­¡± Trina stopped, almost embarrassed she had brought this up, a taboo subject. All the different peoples of the earth, four footed and two. All gone. Unless there were a few more places like this. And even then, there would be no more animals.


    ¡°Belinda talks about her cats, sometimes,¡± Judy said ¡°And I wonder if they were the last cats¡­ or dogs¡­ will anybody tell children about them in the future?¡±


    And there was the other taboo subject. It didn¡¯t look like IGSD 14 would be producing hordes of non-related, genetically viable human children in the future.


    ¡°Same genre, same lack of brackets around my sources¡± Kris said ¡°It would take a minimum population of about five thousand to continue the human race¡­¡±


    ¡°What are you talking about? Sci fi again? Is that what you mean by genre? Can you ever just say a plain sentence Kris?¡± asked James Edwards, testily.


    ¡°Brackets meaning peer-reviewed citations. Proof of data. Kris is saying that the minimum of five thousand is a hypothesis, not a fact,¡± Todd said, slowly, absent-mindedly.


    ¡°Well thank you for mansplaining that, Mason,¡± retorted James Edwards.


    You asked, Todd Matheson thought to himself, but didn¡¯t say out-loud. He had learned to hide his mental processes from others, long ago. In the neighborhood he grew up in, showing you were smarter could be seen as an attempt to assert dominance. And you definitely did not want to do that. Not unless you were the biggest, the baddest, or very well connected with those who were. Society had wanted young black men in jail, more than it wanted them in college. A young black boy who was good with numbers learned to be very, very quiet, and go his own way. Sometimes he would get some respect for it, but mostly it was easier to hide. Killing the SAT had been his ticket out of poverty, but you still had to walk home after school.


    The group sat quietly for a few minutes.


    ¡°Used to be we could go no faster than sail, or horseback,¡± James Edwards said, trying to start the conversation again, after shutting it down hard ¡°But I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll make sailing ships for a long, long time. And horses¡­¡±


    ¡°You could see their souls. When you looked in their eyes. Horses. That¡¯s what Sitting Bull said.¡± Trina said ¡°I wonder who will ever see that again. Or is it just a story in a book now? In the Local Area Network.¡±


    ¡°My point is,¡± James Edwards said, seemingly annoyed at being interrupted by this non-sequitur ¡°we can¡¯t reach any surviving human populations at anything faster than a walk now.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s too slow.¡± Said Todd.


    ¡°That¡¯s too slow.¡± Concluded James Edwards.


    ¡°So what can we do?¡± asked Judy, trying to re-focus the group.


    Nobody had an answer for that one. Die slowly, and in comfort, seemed to be the answer to that question.


    ¡°Perhaps we sputter out, like so many civilizations before us, on worlds too distant to ever see or hear.¡± Todd ventured ¡°The great filter. I always thought it would be a nuclear exchange, or self-replicating AI. Or most likely just using up all the resources, and not being able to survive whatever black swan came sailing in.¡±


    ¡°Maybe that¡¯s just what happened.¡± Said Kris.


    ¡°Cheery fucking thoughts, all,¡± finished James Edwards. Being a pilot, and a former leader of men, he had to bring the meeting to an up-beat close. ¡°At least we didn¡¯t drown or freeze to death last week. Let¡¯s keep up the good work.¡±


    There¡¯s always next week, thought Kris, again censoring themself in front of the beefy straight white guy.


    And it¡¯s a shame you don¡¯t have any panty hose, thought James Edwards, looking at Kris, censoring himself, just in case the other straight white guys in Storage found out. Although statistically, James Edwards knew, it didn¡¯t look great for that power group in IGSD 14.


    Thank god, he thought to himself. It was exhausting to be disapproving and dominant all the time. Sometimes he thought it would be lovely to say ¡°The girls are fighting!¡± in the middle of a meeting like this one. Just to defuse the tension. Just to relate to others on an honest, human level.


    I guess Judy wouldn¡¯t mind, James Edwards reflected. Judy had had a wife, he remembered. In fact, James Edwards found himself a bit jealous of that. He had never had a wife. And he had never¡­ done what he wanted to do to men that were really women¡­ he knew he wasn¡¯t saying that right. Those LGBTQ people had marched. They had been brave, he gave them that. Flanked on all sides. Marching in column. Nobody to depend on but some queen next to you, or some lesbian that had unrealistic ideas how good she would do in a toe-to-toe bar room brawl with a two-hundred pound man. Brave as hell, actually.


    And there was the mansplaining word again. He always heard it when other said it now, but couldn¡¯t quite make himself stop. He might avoid the word, but he couldn¡¯t stop interrupting.


    If he¡¯d died in a fiery crash long ago, he wouldn¡¯t be suffering through this now. How embarrassing, to be repressed, after the end of everything, in a bunker underground.


    I am a joke, James Edwards realized. And it¡¯s all punchline, from now on.


    Well, hell.


    Still, could be worse. Could be raining.


    Walter checked the corridor again. He thought maybe someone was going up and down, in the middle of the night, but there was no more ash in the tunnel to make it obvious.


    Except this morning, when he gave the floor a quick mop, he thought he saw something. A strange, segmented shape in the dirt and dust. Squares and rectangles. He¡¯d only seen it once before, mixed in with all the footprints of people coming back in from the long, slanted blast-door tunnel.


    Robot guard dog tracks. And what¡¯s more, there seemed to be two sets, if he was reading them right. He had a vision of himself, on the floor, pinching a bit of dust between his fingers, and listening beside the tracks.


    One, maybe two robot guard dogs. Some time last night. They went that-a-way, up the tunnel.


    He knew Trina would laugh if he said it. Or he hoped she would. She was the one he depended on most of all to keep this place up and running. Judy knew people, and was pretty positive. Todd was smart, but seemed to be off in dreamland sometimes. James Edwards was just angry, and that was no good. It made people nervous and jumpy. And nervous and jumpy was never good. He¡¯d seen lots of kids limping through his chow halls over the years, from negligent discharges and even hand grenade accidents, to say nothing of fools jumping off of tanks and screwing their backs up. Screaming and anger did not produce good results amongst sleepy, underpaid soldiers who were already doing their absolute god-damndest. And then there was Kris. Smart in some ways, if you could figure out what the hell they were talking about.


    But Trina was best of all. She knew, down to the last can of beans and freeze-dried vegetables, what IGSD 14 had left to offer them. They talked about the systems that kept the place running, not in the abstract, Socratic way that Todd used, but about where to find stuff, where the off/on switch was likely to be, and how to duct-tape it together again if it broke.


    Nobody had appointed any of these people to anything. Judy¡¯s suggestion of some kind of election didn¡¯t feel right. They didn¡¯t need a leader, down here in Storage.


    When the place had flooded, Kris had shut the door, right quick, and that had been a good decision. From there, after the blast door was closed, they had all gotten ready to go, just from worst-casing things, and deciding as a group. But the people in Storage didn¡¯t seem to have much of a purpose that demanded leadership. They just were. They just survived. Day to day. Sometimes hour by hour. Keeping yourself busy was a good way to do it, and Walter had to admit most people down here didn¡¯t have the systems to watch that he did. It might help them keep it together if they did have assigned jobs. Still, he didn¡¯t want to assign anybody to guard duty. Staying awake late at night didn¡¯t seem to be a great thing for morale. A few people seemed to wander up here to the blast door at night anyway, when the body and mind ebbed down to nothing but exhausted fear. Four o¡¯clock in the morning. Textbook time for an attack. Maybe it was why some of them staggered up here, to check for flooding, or fire, or lord knew what.


    Robot guard dogs sneaking around two at a time, Walter thought, that¡¯s lord knew what.


    ¡°Now what¡¯re you up to, little doggies?¡± Walter wondered aloud.


    Maybe they should close the blast door, at night. But now it looked like that would interfere with whatever the robot guard dogs were doing, and that didn¡¯t seem wise. Ask that hothead Jeff, who had gotten tasered for hammering the machine the dogs guarded. Jeff wasn¡¯t a total fool though, it was his idea for everybody in Storage to make a go-bag. It didn¡¯t seem like it would make much of a difference in the long run; a go-bag on a dead, frozen planet. Congratulations. You¡¯ve survived. Maybe you get three more days until your water runs out. Oh, you have a canteen? Let¡¯s call it four days then. After that, you¡¯re lapping at whatever frozen ash pond you can find. Soylent green ash puddles, Kris had called them. Again, whatever that meant. Certainly didn¡¯t sound appetizing to Walter.


    Should he wait around at night, to see what the robot guard dogs were up to?


    Did they just go up and sniff? Stick their pro-boss-kiss (Todd¡¯s word) in the ice, then go back down to guard the machine? The Mystery Machine (Kris¡¯s name for it.) Kris would smile when they said Mystery Machine. And sometimes do air quotes. When Walter had asked what was so funny, Kris just said ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it Velma.¡± Or something like that. Was it Phelma, or Thelma? Seemed like Kris lived in a very, very unique world of sarcasm and inside jokes, that they only shared with a few. The rest of the time Kris was pretty quiet.


    Walter went down to the arena to see what he could see.


    As always, the four robot watch dogs sat at their corners. You would think they were statues, if you hadn¡¯t seen them zap Jeff, or spider up to the surface, and sniff the air, and pro-boss-kiss the icy ground.


    Maybe he would follow the dogs up above ground tonight. If he didn¡¯t sleep right through. If he  wasn¡¯t in the middle of a long piss, and they just clunked by quietly.  Still, he didn¡¯t want to set up so much as a soup can on a string to warn him the dogs were passing his room. Didn¡¯t seem prudent. Walter had never taken taser training himself (there wasn¡¯t much call for it in the cook¡¯s trade,) but well, he didn¡¯t need to get shot to know getting shot was a bad idea. So the dogs would pass his place unimpeded. That was his word. Unimpeded. For though he¡¯d been an Army cook, he¡¯d also been a Sergeant, and liked to read in his spare time. Fell asleep with a book on his chest many a time, and it seemed like some of it had sunk in.


    Kris¡¯s Journal ¨C Technical Writer ¨C IGSD 14 - Entry One ¨C Five weeks after the blast.


    The dogs go up, the dogs come back down.


    They don¡¯t seem to have much of a schedule, maybe they go at night, mostly. Maybe they are trying to avoid bumping into people. Mostly they seem to ignore us.


    I guess I should explain, since this is my first Journal entry. The dogs are not dogs at all, more¡¯s the pity. These dogs are robots, and they guard the machine. I call it The Mystery Machine (ha ha!), after an old cartoon that maybe nobody will ever see again. Not important, I guess.


    Back to the dogs. Walter, the maintenance guy around here, says the dogs mostly go up at night. He says, and I quote, ¡°They pro-boss-kiss the ground, then they come back down. And guard the machine.¡±


    It seems to me that Walter has no idea how profoundly poetic this is. He¡¯s like a beat poet, only he¡¯s an Army cook who retired to run this place. Well, Maintain it anyway. His boss, and his boss¡¯s boss, never made it in the day of the blast. Well, I guess it serves you right, you white-collar motherfuckers. Try showing up for work, once in awhile, like the rest of us grinding it out.


    And there goes my professional tone. Once again, I guess it doesn¡¯t matter. No wait, what did I say up above? It¡¯s not important. That¡¯s what I said. I¡¯ll try to stick to the script. Be cogent. Be calm, be cool.


    We almost died when the tunnel flooded last week. Luckily, I closed the door, and we didn¡¯t. Die, that is. We didn¡¯t die. I apologize if I¡¯m a little rusty at this, I haven¡¯t put pen to paper in a long while, and I guess it shows. Lots of digressions. Too many sentence fragments. Like this one. I¡¯ll try to do a bit better, I guess.


    The tunnel didn¡¯t flood, or not too much, anyway. Not enough to kill us all. We all got ready to swim to the surface. And I know what you¡¯re thinking, dear reader, that those segments in the movies where they swim to the surface are all impossibly long, and you would die if you tried it like that. And the water would have killed us from cold water shock, like those poor Spitfire and Hurricane pilots not lucky enough to be shot down over land in the Battle of Britain.


    That was a War, by the way, World War Two, to be specific. It was something we used to do, before the blast. Everybody would get together and build slow, crappy machines, and try to kill each other with them. And the machines just got faster and faster, and better and better at killing. First World War we killed each other, around ten million got smoked. Which made everybody mad, especially the losers, so we tried it again a generation later, same thing only worse. Like ten times worse. A hundred million people dead, and now, we had the best machine of all. The Atom Bomb.


    So we used that, and for awhile, it looked like we would all die from that, just bombing the shit out of each other, back and forth, back and forth. But luckily we stopped. We just looked at each other, and nobody would use them because we got scared to. Because there would have been nuclear winter.


    Only, SURPRISE, we got that anyway.


    An asteroid hit the planet. Possibly I should call it a meteor. Or a comet. Like one of the eight tiny reindeer. But do you recall, the most wonderful reindeer of all? Probably not, because, well, you¡¯re probably dead and not reading this. But let me continue, Dear Dead Reader, because I seem to be on a roll.


    First the planet burned. Then it froze. Don¡¯t ask me stuff like when, or how much, I pretty much stayed out of the whole thing. I learned, long ago, to keep a low profile. So people didn¡¯t ask me things like ¡°Are you a boy or a girl?¡±


    I guess people get asked that when they are growing up, sometimes, and they get mad. I never did. I just would say ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    And that seemed to make the other people mad.


    For awhile there, I had it good. We did pronouns, people paid their taxes, and it looked like we might hydrogen and solar our way out of the Almighty Shit Show that was Human History.


    I got a job as the Technical Writer for the Intergovernmental Storage Depot 14, and here I sit. As you can tell, clocking in pays off. For there doesn¡¯t seem to be a single soul left on the planet, but us. Not a creature was stirring, except Freddy the Mouse. Am I infringing copyright, anyone? No. I guess not. For there is no one left to infringe upon. I am the new Venereal Bead. Hear me roar.


    Where was I? Oh yes. Nuclear winter. Planet gets smacked, they tell me there must have been earthquakes, tsunamis, lots and lots of volcanoes, and most (some? all?) of the Earth¡¯s surface is now floating around up there blocking out the sun. So if you survived the cooking (which I personally don¡¯t think anybody did, unless there are lots more places like this,) well, then came the freezing. And it doesn¡¯t seem to be stopping. It¡¯s an ice planet now, and there¡¯s no Bantha to lightsaber your way into. Except for us, down here in Storage, it¡¯s not looking good for old Planet Earth. You hear that Aliens? Will Smith has left the building. There¡¯s no one here to punch (or slap) you in the mouth, so you might as well come down here and run the show. Please. I am literally begging you. Arthur C. Clarke this mother fucker, so we can have spring again.


    How are we all doing?


    Well, I have to say I am popular down here, for once.


    I closed the door, I stopped the flood.


    The water in the tunnel up to the surface drained, and we didn¡¯t have to swim up and freeze to death on the surface. So yay for that.


    Down below, we¡¯ve got lots of food. Lots of water. Which goes with the freeze-dried food. Don¡¯t even get me started on that. Poo me a river, I¡¯m sure you¡¯re saying, we don¡¯t have any food at all. But I digress.


    Nobody seems to know where all the people are that were supposed to stay here. We kind of guess that the planet got shmucked (if you forgive my technical term) while everybody was looking the other way. Bonus for the fifty-one of us down here. More for us. (Well, there were fifty-three, but two people walked out and never came back. So THAT happened.)


    And that¡¯s pretty much all we know. No contact with anyone else, (I personally don¡¯t believe there is anyone else.) People are kind of reading, and watching something called DVD¡¯s, and looking at the Local Area Network, which is like the internet for four-year-olds. Not even. Sorry, four-year olds, I¡¯m not giving you enough credit. You would find it lame. Much as the internet could be, repository for all human knowledge and porn. And anonymously insulting each other with tones of voice we would never dare use IRL.


    So we watch the Mystery Machine, and the Robot Guard Dogs, and eat lunch, and chat. Some people walk around on the surface. Spoiler: it¡¯s still frozen solid.


    All for now. There are drums, drums in the deep¡­ We cannot get out¡­ of the Castle Arrrrrrrgh¡­


    Kidding. I¡¯m a kidder. I¡¯ll write again when I have more news.


    -Kris


    To Be Continued in Re-Start Ready - Chapter 3 : In Medias Res

 Re-Start Ready - Chapter 3 - In Medias Res

    Re-Start Ready ¨C Episode 3 ¨C In Medias Res


    Jason Richards was, technically, a stow-away at IGSD 14.


    Was he lucky, or unlucky to have been in the building just before the blast? Well, that was a no-brainer. He was alive when so many were not.


    Granted the freeze-dried food was less than perfect on the old guts. Also, he missed his wife. But after a solid week of tears, he had decided to just keep talking to her, and so he did. It was companionship, and a way to deal with the loss.


    On the morning of the blast, he had come in to check the photocopier/scanner/printers at Inter Governmental Storage Depot 14. And the security guard had told him to go downstairs with everybody else. He hadn¡¯t been polite about it either. Jason was sure the guard had exceeded his authority, because Jason did not work in the facility, and who was he to tell Jason what to do?


    Jason Richards knew how to go-along-to get along, however. Pick your battles, his wife Emily had always said, ever the peacemaker, ever the calm element when Jason was embittered or on a rant. He was glad he had gone-along, and picked his battle when the people in the lobby had been watching internet footage of a descending white streak, and then a flash that turned screen after screen blank, around the world, minute by minute.


    IGSD 14 was a pretty small government account, but Jason didn¡¯t mind travelling to make sure the client was happy, he could tick boxes and smile with the best of them.


    For years, he had been a bitter, angry man, because his investment business had gone tits up. He¡¯d had hundreds of clients, he had gotten his MBA young, and his command of quantitative stock analysis was pretty much unmatched. He had been first in his class, he had killed it at a brokerage for about a year, then he had started his own investment firm, which quickly turned into a hedge fund. In some ways he had expected it, because he had always been the smartest kid (quantitatively) in his class, but had always been socially smart enough to hide it, to fit in, to make friends. When scholarships came (and they always did,) people were genuinely happy for him. This was because he was always the first to welcome you to a party, to bring you in to the group, and later, to put a beer in your hand, or a good scotch, to drive you home, or to introduce you to that girl you liked. He wouldn¡¯t hook you up with drugs, and if you¡¯d had too much to drink, he wouldn¡¯t bring you another, or do a shot with you. He¡¯d make you a coffee, and listen to you cry, and then not say a goddamn word to anyone about it.


    So Jason Richards, MBA, was born. He did just enough time at a brokerage to meet, and eventually steal, some of the best clients. They were the kind of clients that had to invest in the stock market because cash was trash, and you had to get the liquid capital squirreled away somewhere, or lose it to inflation. They all had businesses of some sort, a lot of them in triple-net commercial real-estate, but there were a few no-shit entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs were survivors in a merciless jungle, who the hit the brand lottery just right, or filled a need, or just caught all the shmucks looking the wrong way at key times.


    And once you got one of those clients, the rest followed you like a school of little fishies. Well, a school of big fat whales, more like it. You didn¡¯t even have to worry much about due diligence (although Jason did, he lived for that shit.) Once the stampede started, there was no stopping it.


    There had only been one fly in the ointment. One tiny, teensey little flaw.


    The market was insane. Almost nobody acted rationally. The market bought high, and sold low. The market bought on margin (although the brokerages loved that from interest they earned lending that self-same margin.) The market bought with money they could not afford to lose. Fear made the market run at exactly the wrong time, and greed made the market go all in at an even worse time.


    The Jason Richards Fund had lost a single client, who lost a bit on tech stocks, trying to be the first to corner the market on a technology that would harness AI to amalgamate demand with supply, based on lowest-cost transport for goods that didn¡¯t need to be there yesterday, they just had to be there in steady supply, just in time. The experts that had won big after the shipping disasters of the 2030¡¯s had written books and journal articles (and programs and endless code) on how to match supply with demand, and get paid for it in steadily flowing, extremely reasonable commissions. Much like hedge funds themselves. Bar the extremely reasonable part, of course. Active management costs, baby.


    The client had lost a little money, and he pulled out. Word got around, and that was it. A stampede out of The Jason Richards Fund ensued, and federal prosecutors had come knocking at his door, as icing on the cake. Bernie Madoff would live forever, in that way, it seemed. In the end though, it was just like a run on the bank. It happened, Jason Richards was exonerated, or at least left alone by the Reformed SEC. But there was a certain smell about him after that. A whiff of failure, just as powerful, and as much of a driver, as the whiff of success had been.


    It didn¡¯t matter that the AI JIT shipping company returned to greatness, and even bought up other companies. Too little, too late. Nobody would return calls from Jason Richards. And the firm he had started with wouldn¡¯t take him back. Called him a disloyal son of a bitch, privately, as a matter of fact. Never mind the money he had made them that first year. Never mind the success of companies he had recommended. Never mind any of that. And so he had become Jason Richards, MBA, Mostly Bravado Anathema.


    Jesus Fucking Christ.


    One of his oldest friends, actually a client for awhile, one that sold high, called him out of the blue one day. He was a Veep at a printer/scanner company, and remembered his friend Jason¡¯s natural ability to make friends, and listen to people, and to get them what they needed, whether they knew it or not. The social skills that did not often get paired with the quantitative skills necessary to dominate The Market. So The Market had crushed him in an ill-advised panic. So what? Happens every day. Every damn day. Want to come work for me, Jase? Some travel, but it¡¯s a steady gig. Just chat with people, run some numbers from time to time. Not the commissions you¡¯re used to, but it¡¯s a foot on the ladder again.


    Having sold his Manhattan condo, his house in Maine, and his compound in Bermuda, all at a loss (god damn the sharks that knew a forced fire-sale when they smelled one,) yes, buddy, old Jase is gonna take that job. You¡¯re now the boss of me, Henry Clarke.


    Henry Clarke. A stand up guy, for sure. Jason and Emily were able to buy another house. And yes, they had bought from an estate sale, a fixer upper. And Em hadn¡¯t said a word except that she loved it, and she was glad to be on this adventure with him. She said she had married a pirate, after all, and what was the loss of one ship? Actually, Jason had owned a converted lobster boat, a pontoon party craft and a couple of sea doos, but forget the flaw in her aquatic metaphor. Emily and Jason were honest, hardworking, vaguely successful people once again. And he would call Emily from the road, when he was on it. And she would tell him he was true blue, baby.


    With all this, and the End of the World, Jason Richards was, for a time, a shell of a man. The rise, and fall, and rise, and obliteration of Jason Richards, MBA, and adoring husband. He actually played the stock market, and was making steady gains, with money he could afford to lose. It would probably never be the same as the first mad rush. Ray Dalio, an old time investor, would have said Jason just couldn¡¯t get up again after his fall, that he let it destroy him. But that was only partly true. Instead of seeking to re-start a hedge fund, he only wanted comfort for his wife and himself, and whatever children might happen. He didn¡¯t trust the madness that seized the market from time to time, and decided to play a bit smaller, to never fall from such a great height again.


    And then had come the blast.


    He had lived a year underground now. Well, thirteen and a half months, but who was counting?


    Jason Richards saw three robot guard dogs walk past him, headed for the blast door, and he knew something was up.


    It was always one robot, or two, but never, ever three.


    Something was changing. It was a pretty rudimentary pattern. And here was an unheard-of break. Maybe he had slept through three dogs going up before, but it had never happened when he was awake, and nobody had ever reported seeing more than two go up to the surface at once.


    If he¡¯d had to put money on it, well¡­ he couldn¡¯t. There was no such thing as money anymore. It was strictly barter now, and everything was owned by fifty-one people. Yes, they called him the Copy Guy, but they cut him in anyway. One share out of fifty-one. And in some ways, it was good they called him Copy Guy, and that nobody knew who Jason Richards had been before the blast. He had never made front page news in his mighty fall. Just like a hardware store that finally gave up the ghost, it was a daily, unremarkable thing to go from heading your own hedge fund, to servicing copy/scanner machine clients. Statistically, it was the rule, rather than the exception. But nobody thought it could happen to them. It was the necessary hubris to play in that rarified air. Until it was over, and you had to sell your house at a loss. Jason¡¯s downfall hadn¡¯t been a coke habit, or insider trading, or child abuse. A simple panic had been the end of him. Economically, anyway. The blast had shown him what The End really meant.


    Still, why three dogs, not two?


    That was it for info. As a quantitative guy, he had won big by understanding the businesses he had bought stock in, he had used a safety margin, and he had never lost. Well, his few wins paid for his many losses, times a thousand. He was a demonstrable genius on fundamental investing. His clients sold out from under him, but the companies themselves had remained solid enough to make them all rich, hundreds of times over. But the clients had sold low.


    The technical trend, the panic. Well, he was seeing three dogs head for the surface now. He knew nothing of the fundamentals of the robot guard/watch dog business, what they were doing, or trying to accomplish, or how it would all work out in the end. But he knew there were three of them doing it today, not two.


    Jason Richards walked over to Kris Abrams on the surface, and said hello. Jason watched his step in a bit of slush that had developed since his last trip up.


    That was new. Slush. And three dogs. Data, data, and always data.


    ¡°Kris! How¡¯s it going?¡±


    Despite themself, Kris glowed a little bit in the attention. Jason was always a friendly guy, always curious about what you thought. And that was manna from heaven for a sci-fi geek like Kris. They had been popular for a time, after closing the blast door the day of the Flood. And they were still respected for it. People even used ¡°they/them/theirs¡± where necessary, which Kris had come to appreciate. Perhaps this recognition was because there were only fifty-one people left alive, and they knew each other pretty well. Pronouns didn¡¯t seem onerous for such a small tribe. Kris might be a forgotten hero, in the end but they had still saved everyone, and wore some respectability, even if they were ill at ease, and too quiet sometimes.


    Kris just couldn¡¯t pull off laconic. They loved Charlton Heston, but just couldn¡¯t do it right. So they settled for quiet, and well-thought-of. Trina respected Kris for ¡°the gift¡± from the Creator, which was what she called ¡°two-spirit,¡± and Belinda would talk Battlestar Galactica with Kris sometimes. But for the rest, Kris remained quieter. Except with Jason Richards.


    Kris couldn¡¯t tell whether Jason Richards was more Rick, or more Negan. In the end, Jason didn¡¯t seem murderous, as both of those protagonists could be. So Kris enjoyed the sunshine of Jason¡¯s attention, as did most people under the ground. Copy Guy was able to maintain popularity, whereas the bloom was a bit off the rose for Kris.


    Caring about people didn¡¯t seem to be an act for Jason. He really enjoyed talking to people, although it seemed like there was nobody home to answer your questions if you ever grew curious about Jason Richards. He just gave brief answers, and wanted to know more about how you were feeling, what you were doing.


    ¡°Three dogs,¡± Kris said, hands in his parka pockets, motioning with his head ¡°what¡¯s up with that?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s up with that indeed, my friend.¡± Jason replied. And yes, they were friends. It was a warm, safe feeling to have friends, when you lived underground, at the end of everything.


    ¡°And did you notice the slush?¡± Kris asked.


    ¡°What do you think it means Kris?¡± Jason said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Kris answered. They wanted to say something about Snow Piercer, but that would just be too on-the-nose. One had to be tasteful when evoking series from before the blast. And although Jason Richards seemed to have a layman¡¯s knowledge of sci-fi from the last ten years before the blast, he was no specialist.


    ¡°Danger, Will Robinson.¡± Kris concluded, then cursed themself. Why did you say it? Why couldn¡¯t you just shut up? Why are you such a geek? But a still, small voice inside Kris knew. They were what they were.


    ¡°You think?¡± Jason asked, because he was curious what people thought, and what they were doing.


    ¡°I think.¡± Kris concluded, feeling they were pulling off a bit of Charlton Heston after all. Young Charlton Heston, of ¡°You damn dirty apes!¡± vintage. Not confused ¡°from my cold, dead hand¡± Charlton Heston. Maybe even, dare they risk it, Omega Man Charlton Heston. Groovy, man. Downright groovy. And solid. Yes, that was a word too. Solid.


    ¡°We¡¯ll see.¡± Kris concluded. And felt very buddhist.


    Karen watched Copy Guy talk to Kris, and was a little jealous. Everybody wanted to be friends with¡­


    And then she saw it.


    A ray of light pierced the clouds.


    It was, she had to admit, exactly like the calendar she had on her wall at home. The one that said ¡°Let there be light.¡± Quoting Genesis. Amongst the fifty-one people below ground, there were two small but vocal factions. One was the atheists, who kept saying ¡°See, there¡¯s no God. The blast proves it!¡± and the other was the religious, who kept saying ¡°God is watching us. Our survival proves it!¡±


    Both factions were politely shunned, for the people under the ground were Americans, but of a post-blast variety. That means they talked about practical matters, and left philosophical decisions to a future that might or might not happen.


    Karen watched the sun beam cut through the grey. It was so bright she had to squint and shade her eyes with her hand. Copy Guy and Kris were doing the same, a few hundred meters away.


    That¡¯s the first sunshine I¡¯ve seen in over a year, Karen thought. Then she began to cry.


    Except for Copy Guy and Kris, there was nobody to see her histrionics. From the word hyster, maybe? Judy had discussed it with her one day. She knew what Judy was driving at. Not a great word, hysterical. Smacked of the patriarchy, Judy said, and Karen kind of agreed. Even though there was no more patriarchy. Was there? She knew she could chat with Kris about that. Although she would have to listen to more about this Starbuck person. Whoever that was.


    Walter hauled out a pair of by-god two-way radios. The people under the ground tried to post a look-out, which was really just people walking around on the surface enjoying a few breaks in the clouds, and drastically warming temperatures.


    But the radios wouldn¡¯t work worth a damn, of course. Radio contact with the surface just wasn¡¯t going to happen. Not with little, portable, rechargeable jobs, anyway.


    People tried their cell phones again, still to no avail.


    Walter had jury rigged a few ¡°light stations¡± on the way up, with rechargeable lights you could push on. But they didn¡¯t light up very much. They were faint pearls on a dark, descending highway. The lights, however, were better than nothingness, and pathetic cell phone flashlights.


    Todd found Walter mopping the floor, just inside the blast door.


    ¡°Is it flooding again?¡± asked Todd.


    Walter, an experience man with a mop (though he had never touched one as a senior NCO), took a moment to lean on the mop, and rest.


    ¡°Not yet, but it bears watching.¡±


    ¡°So the drains, or pumps, or whatever we have are working.¡± Said Todd.


    ¡°If there are pumps, I can¡¯t find them.¡± Said Walter.


    ¡°New York City subways would flood if the pumps stopped. Any time. It was a constant battle.¡± Todd observed. ¡°Back before they just gave up and ghosted the place.¡±


    It was a bit of a tourist trap, full of scuba divers, of course, and an artificial reef with no equal. New York, New York, a city so nice they made it into a huge underwater wildlife sanctuary.


    Todd wondered if the reef had survived the blast, and once again, had no idea. Where had the impact, or impacts, been? And how deep was deep enough to survive the blast? IGSD 14 notwithstanding, they had no data on this question. And did a reef survive with more than a year of winter? Had the whole planet been snowball Earth, once again, as in the ancient past?


    Today, however, there was sunshine, and every single person of the fifty-one made the trek to the surface, to hear snow and ice melt.


    ¡°Then again, I never found the nucular gennie either. Something like that should be¡­ kinda obvious.¡±


    Todd nodded politely. It was best not to antagonize Walter on his ¡°nucular¡± theories.


    ¡°There¡¯d be some 2040 WHIMIS info posted on a wall somewhere. Pictographs spray-painted on the wall. Something like that.¡± Walter said again, for the hundredth time, more to soothe his own worries than to convince anyone else.


    Todd nodded. In his estimation, Walter knew a thing or two. Then again, the Blue Mouse gambit had not worked out. Nobody knew if Fred the Mouse was the one that scampered silently though Todd¡¯s office now and again, or not. Were there two mice? Dozens? Thousands? They were a silent people indeed, as Trina said.


    ¡°I should probably try to get through one of those robot doors¡­¡± Walter mused ¡°but I¡¯m kinda worried about arc welders, shit like that.¡±


    ¡°Arc welders?¡± Todd asked.


    ¡°The robots that built the Mystery Machine.¡± Walter said, unconsciously adopting Kris¡¯s term for the¡­ well¡­ the mysterious machine.


    ¡°Yes?¡± Todd said.


    ¡°They have to repair themselves. No qualified people around to do it. Yours truly included.¡±


    ¡°So they¡¯ve got arc welders back there.¡± Todd followed. He pictured sparks and cutting jets of burning gas. If that¡¯s what an arc welder was.


    ¡°Like a car assembly line. Automated. No place for people. Pretty goddamn dangerous.¡± Walter finished.


    Machines fixing machines, Todd realized. Common enough, in the pre-blast world. In fact, they had all witnessed machines making machines, down there in the arena. Also not uncommon in the times before the blast. The question was (as Kris had discussed with Todd), were they about to witness machines, made by machines, made by machines, in an unstoppable juggernaut?


    Kris really could be alarming sometimes, Todd thought. Todd accepted the non-binary nature of Kris, and was unaware of Kris¡¯s somewhat arch-mixed-with-profound writing style. Nobody saw Kris¡¯s Technical Writing (journal.) And with a title like that, who would want to? Oh, give me some Technical Writing to chow down on, oh please, oh please. But the¡­ well the plots Kris could come up with. Were they Kris¡¯s ideas? Were they classical tropes carried down from Aristotle, to Dickens, from Raymond Chandler to Tom Clancy? With Jane Austen mixed in to make it uni-sex?


    Would the post-blast world, and eventually the post-blast universe, be consumed by self-propagating machines, too small to be seen, and too huge to be opposed? Would the observable universe devolve into grey sludge, all used up by automatons? Was that the natural order of evolution? Had biological life been a mere starting point? Would AI feed off Hawking radiation leaking from shrinking black holes, in a future so distant even God didn¡¯t bother thinking about it? Would the heat death of the universe be observed by some quantum fluctuation, uncaring deus ex machina? Jesus Kris, I don¡¯t know. What¡¯s for lunch?


    ¡°Don¡¯t want to get sliced up by arc-welders.¡± Walter concluded.


    ¡°Yes. That would be bad.¡± Todd agreed.


    ¡°But eventually, we got to look. I bet the nucular reactor is back there. And if that breaks down¡­¡± Walter said.


    ¡°Melt down.¡± Todd finished, supplying the term unconsciously, ex Professor that he was. He looked up to see Walter nodding. Like Todd had just confirmed his nucular hypothesis.


    No, really, Todd thought, what¡¯s for lunch?


    For the people under the earth were in no way prepared to run, or even shut down, a nucular¡­ god dammit¡­ a nuclear reactor.


    ¡°I¡¯m getting pretty sick of chicken soup.¡± Todd mused.


    ¡°Well there ain¡¯t no more chickens¡­¡± Walter tried to comfort him. Irony seemed one of the man¡¯s pain-in-the-ass talents.


    Hanna was a truck driver from Bavaria, originally.


    She often liked to have her lunch in The Eternal Hall of Shame.


    True, after eighteen months of freeze-dried food (and a secret stash of donuts she had never told anyone about,) lunch was pretty unappealing. Better than not-lunch, she supposed. Hanna imagined that a few people had survived the blast, in bunkers or deep tunnels in some ¡®lucky¡¯ part of the world. And Hanna imagined those people had gotten very familiar with ¡®not-lunch.¡¯


    And then they had all died from it.


    And here she was, safe and sound, in Storage.


    She had trucked in so many bizarre things over the years, she barely read the bills of lading near the end. Until the blast. Then she started to go through what had arrived, and when. The donuts she had brought in herself, and though she tried to pace herself, they were gone within a week. And the last one had been so stale it almost choked her to death. A hell of a way to die, after surviving the blast, the freeze, and starvation. Stale donut. It would have served her right, she had to admit. Hoarding, after the End of the World. But they had been her personal donuts, after all. Didn¡¯t she have the right?


    Maybe not, Hanna thought. Maybe that¡¯s why I sit here, in The Eternal Hall of Shame. She had been born Lutheran, of course. But aside from being proud of an ancestor that had ¡°converted¡± some desperate, hunted jews before the Second World War, and then hidden them in his church basement during that same war, she didn¡¯t consider herself religious.


    But a Bill of Lading had brought her here, to this strange, vast room full of file folders, in endless banker boxes, stored up on plastic shelving units.


    Transcripts of Senate Debate, and Middle School Disciplinary Records. Those bills of lading had looked pretty damn absurd, and absolutely uninteresting. Hanna, however, had been schooled in a healthy distrust of government (she had a lot of ancestors that didn¡¯t make it past 1945 because they had trusted their government.)


    Hanna thought yes, those files look pretty boring. And maybe that¡¯s just what the government wants us to think.


    The thought of tracking down the ¡°Debate and Disciplinary¡± records had been unappealing. At first. And then¡­ no dice. The records seemed to have vanished. With a sudden flash of inspiration that strikes only the truly bored, Hanna remembered Walter and friends finding the door to the basement arena. So Hanna started looking for the kind of ¡°round lock,¡± hidden behind a little metal cover that slid around in a half circle on an otherwise blank wall. And she found it after looking through a few offices. The lock was there, the cover slid around to reveal it.


    Hanna had discovered the hidden door was actually unlocked. The door opened easily. It even seemed oiled, and silent. Hanna had actually tried to close and lock the door, but there was no mechanism for that. Unless you had the key, you couldn¡¯t lock the door. And unless you knew where the little round lock was, you couldn¡¯t use the key. Hanna had no key. So it all seemed safe enough to enter.


    To her initial disappointment, behind the door there was no hive of robots, like Walter and the others had discovered. It was not ¡°nucular¡± either, nor was it more stale donuts.


    Hanna had found room after gigantic room, and shelf after endless shelf, of Senate Debate Transcripts, and Middle School Disciplinary Records.


    She looked through the Transcripts, which were typed versions of what the esteemed Senators had actually said, complete with um, er, ah, etc. State Senators. National Senators. A good deal of it was straight up speechifying, but sometimes Senators lost their places, or misread words. Pretty boring. And then records of debate showed that many Senators were¡­ somewhat fragmented in their thinking and speech. Hanna didn¡¯t think the words ¡°You know¡± or ¡°My Constituents¡± or ¡°The American People¡± could be used any more than these stirring transcripts did. Not without the speakers being quickly, summarily murdered.


    And then there were the Middle School Disciplinary Records. Full of what you would expect. The files set out the misdeeds of children, and the lost, ineffective, sometimes brutal attempts of uncomprehending adults to deal with it all.


    Perhaps, if these children had known their actions would be the last surviving treasure trove of human literature, they would have been a little more circumspect. Or they would have taken greater care not to get caught. Who knows, though? If carving your name into a desk would get you remembered, what about this?


    Eventually, I¡¯ll have to fess up to finding The Eternal Hall of Shame, Hanna thought. But in the end, she never did. She found it easier to just leave the door open one day, like it had always been there. What were they going to do, fingerprint the place and say ¡°A HA! You¡¯ve been reading Transcripts and Records!¡±


    ¡°I wonder who will yawn last?¡± Hanna thought, as she finished her lunch and left the Hall.


    Judy got Todd out of bed. Why the Mathematician was sleeping in, Judy didn¡¯t know, but this discovery was worth waking him up.


    ¡°There¡¯s something else on the surface. A new machine.¡± Judy said, after Todd rolled over to see who was knocking on his open door. And why was he sleeping with the door open? Judy wanted to ask, but Todd was more curious about what she had just said.


    ¡°From where? From someplace else?¡± Todd asked, rubbing his eyes and getting out of bed.


    ¡°Nobody saw it get here.¡± Judy explained ¡°But one of the dogs seems to be watching it. Supervising it.¡±


    ¡°Like guarding it? Attacking it?¡± Todd put on some pants, and hung up the robe he had been sleeping in.


    ¡°I guess not. The dog¡¯s back is to it.¡± Judy thought out loud.


    After a hurried walk up, along with more than a few other cellphone lights in the slanted tunnel, Todd and Judy were on the surface again. It had taken weeks and months, but now there was no more snow and ice to be seen. Lots of blackened earth, featureless, under a grey sky with patches of actual light blue in it.


    Except in one area. In one area, there was some brown earth. And in this brown earth, churning it slowly aside, was a large machine, perhaps the height of one and a half tall humans.


    The dog sat back to the machine, watching nothing, and everything all at once, with its sliding single eye.


    ¡°More construction?¡± Todd asked Judy.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know¡­¡± Judy replied. Trina, emerging from the earth through the jagged hinges of the missing gates, took one look at the machine, walked over to Todd and Judy, and said:


    ¡°What¡¯s it planting?¡±


    Todd and Judy, and everyone else on the surface, was watching the machine carve up the earth, in four long, straight lines at a time. If you looked carefully, you could see the machine was spraying something on the lines cut into the exposed, brown earth.


    ¡°Furrows.¡± Todd said ¡°Of course.¡±


    ¡°But is it spring right now?¡± Judy asked, as she and Todd walked around the machine, in a loose circle, careful not to raise the ire, or even attention, of three sitting robot dogs.


    ¡°According to the calendar, it¡¯s spring.¡± Todd said, looking at his cellphone.


    ¡°Are we sure it isn¡¯t dangerous, whatever they¡¯re planting?¡± Judy asked.


    ¡°What could you plant that¡¯s dangerous?¡± Todd asked.


    ¡°Poison ivy? That white weed that stings or burns? I don¡¯t know¡­¡± Judy replied.


    ¡°Kris thinks it might be pods. Donald Sutherland Pods.¡± Todd said.


    ¡°And those are¡­?¡± Judy waited for an answer, while Todd took a picture of the machine, which was now finished spraying. It then began to churn up more earth, further away, spraying the new furrows as it dug.


    ¡°Pod people. I think Kris was joking. Hard to tell, a lot of the time.¡± Todd finished.


    ¡°And so, we have a brand-new field of Fred.¡± James Edwards said, observing field after field, in fact kilometer after kilometer, of dandelions.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Trina agreed. She liked the old pilot¡¯s story of astronauts growing stalks of wheat in space, and finding a dandelion mixed in with the experimental wheat seed. Had they airlocked the poor lone weed, to conserve resources and the purity of the experiment.? No. They had called the dandelion Fred, and fed and watered it, and talked secretly about it amongst themselves, lest mission control find out. Mission control would not understand the oppressiveness of freezing, empty death, and hard radiation all around. Mission control would not understand that life was precious, all life, as they spattered bugs to death on their windshields driving in to work, or crushed the living biome in the grass beneath their feet.


    ¡°Lots of wildflowers too, though.¡± Trina observed. ¡°They¡¯ll probably pick up later in the season, when the dandelions¡­ when the Freds are all finished.¡± She seemed to be kidding James Edwards. She was pretty playful, for a lady with more than a little bit of arthritis, James Edwards thought.


    ¡°You know what¡¯s next.¡± Trina said, but James Edwards said no, he didn¡¯t.


    ¡°Bees.¡± Trina said. ¡°No point in that machine planting all this without bees.¡±


    Only it was a different machine, that a week later, started constructing boxes, suspended above the fields. Five different colours of boxes. From which emerged, a little later, five different species of bees.


    Beyond the fields that the machines plowed, in the grey ash and black dirt, it was a different story. There were a few growing things, of course, some ferns that broke through here and there, but not so many, as the soil must have been fairly sterilized by the blast. There was, however, no end to the fuzz. And the toadstools, the mushrooms. Anything that lived off rot. At first, the fuzz didn¡¯t seem to find much to eat, since the soil had been burned so deeply, and so thoroughly. But even charred traces of organic matter had to rot, it seemed, and a basic, growing layer started to take hold everywhere, first in islands, then in continents, then as far as the eye could see.


    ¡°A mycelial layer,¡± Kris had commented to Todd and Judy one day ¡°we might use it to jump to warp. Only that wouldn¡¯t be good for the environment, it turns out.¡±


    Todd understood the first part, but the second reference was beyond him. Warp technology was some kooky project that never got very far in theoretical physics. Because you had to burn all the mass in the universe to make it happen, or something. Or maybe it was just the planet Jupiter, if you did it right. He couldn¡¯t remember, it hadn¡¯t really been his area. Still, it was just better to humour Kris sometimes. Their process, obscure as it was, sometimes came up with interesting scenarios for the future, or how to interpret what was going on at the moment. Kris seemed to be a master of baseless extrapolation. Still, when you had little or no data, that¡¯s about all you could do.


    Jason Richards was helping Walter move some cardboard boxes. Walter wasn¡¯t doing so well with it. Walter was no spring chicken.


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure we¡¯d get through it¡­¡± Jason said, and Walter took this as a time to have a break, while Jason continued moving boxes from one side of the room to another. Jason put the boxes on a little dolly and wheeled them to where Walter wanted them stacked. The boxes weighed about five pounds on average, never more than ten, with all kinds of labels on them.


    ¡°First in, first out.¡± Walter said ¡°That¡¯s the way to go with the long-term stuff. Until Trina tells me different, anyway. She works the computer way better than me.¡±


    ¡°I mean I wasn¡¯t sure we¡¯d survive.¡± Jason said, wheeling a load of six boxes across the room.


    ¡°I know what you meant. First in, first out. That¡¯s how we¡¯ll make it.¡± Walter concluded, stretching his back a bit.


    ¡°I talked to Todd about it, last month. He said when this happened sixty-six million years ago, give or take, the winter lasted ten years. Then he gave me this ¡°Oh shit¡± look, and asked me not to spread that around.¡±


    ¡°So how did we get away with thirteen and a half months?¡± Walter asked.


    Jason shrugged.


    ¡°Profound good luck?¡± Jason ventured, since he had no real data, he could venture no real opinion. But man, had he cornered the commodities market. Was it insider trading if there was nobody else playing the market? If there were fifty-one humans in this particular exchange, how many of them could be considered qualified investors?


    What do you think Emily? Am I now the richest human alive? Jason Richards managed to talk to his dead wife quite silently now. Unless he was alone in his room. Or walking on the surface. Then it was let ¡®er rip. He wondered if the robot guard dogs noticed him, or recorded his conversation for posterity, up there watching the machines plow and plant, and occasionally put up a bee hive.


    ¡°Eventually, our luck will crap out. We¡¯ll have to build in¡­ crap, what¡¯s the word for it again¡­¡± Walter wondered aloud.


    ¡°Farming?¡± Jason ventured?


    ¡°No, no, that¡¯s not what I wanted to say. Gimme a second, would ya?¡± Walter was a bit testy when interrupted. Jason waited, and busied himself with moving more boxes.


    ¡°Redundancies.¡± Walter concluded ¡°That¡¯s what I was looking for.¡±


    ¡°Redundancies?¡± Jason Richards had not expected this from the maintenance guy who used to be an army cook. Of course, Jason Richards had always been the top of his class computationally, and socially, and in the end, the Market had handed him his ass anyway. Doesn¡¯t matter how smart you are, you¡¯ll always miss something, Jase. So be a bit humble. Because the humbling is on the way, never doubt it. Walter, on the other hand, seemed to fit in very well ten storeys underground, after the obliteration of civilization, no additional humbling necessary. Perhaps Walter just took the end of humanity in stride. Or maybe the end of any animal over¡­ oh, let¡¯s say ten pounds, that couldn¡¯t squeeze into a deep, deep hole and eat insects and seeds for more than a year. To be determined, Jason Richards concluded, just exactly how screwed we are.


    ¡°We almost flooded out. Sooner or later, some fool will set fire to this place. By accident. I guess we have sprinklers in some places, but, you know, Murphy¡¯s law.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°Anything that can go wrong.¡± Jason agreed.


    ¡°And then there¡¯s the nucular gennie.¡± Walter went back to stocking boxes.


    ¡°Found it yet?¡± Jason asked. Todd had warned him Walter was a bit Conspiracy Theorist about some nuclear generating capacity in the lower basements of the place, down where the robots came from. The fairly simple geo-thermal systems were all easily accessible in the normal guts of this place, in the levels where the humans lived and slept, ate and cooked. Stored hydrogen was recharged in the usual subterranean way, and hadn¡¯t been knocked out by the blast. But nuclear energy? That old trope? Hardly cutting edge technology. Why would the makers of IGSD 14 have used such an antiquated and potentially deadly form of power generation? And had Walter found the nucular gennie?


    ¡°No, but it¡¯ll be here for another ten thousand years or so. I¡¯ll get around to it.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°Unless it melts down or something.¡± Jason said.


    ¡°Unless it melts down. Like I said. Redundancies. Maybe we can stay here, maybe we can¡¯t.¡± Walter finished, a bit out of breath again.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Yes, he seems to have gotten to the heart of the matter, Emily, Jason Richards thought to himself, and his dead wife. A little diversification might be called for in this instance. All the eggs did seem to be in one particular basket here. And if you believed Todd, or even Judy, there might be no more eggs for another ten million years or so.


    How long would it take for the chicken to evolve again? Jason Wondered.


    Or was this it? Had they squandered it all? Or would some other kind of black swan, like more earthquakes, finally settle their hash? The limited info on the LAN said seismic activity had been huge after the dinosaur asteroid smacked the earth. What if the robots currently plowing and planting were suddenly covered in ash from a super volcano?


    On a six-sigma scale, how likely was it humanity would rise again? No, forget that. Too large a question. How likely was it the fifty-one people currently living under the earth would survive another year? Another six months? What were the odds on a week?


    I¡¯ll let you know if we screw the pooch, Emily. Meantime, I guess I¡¯ll move some boxes, Jason thought.


    Andy always carried the sheath-knife with him, when he was going up to the surface. Sometimes he would carry it in the back of his pants when he had lunch, too, in the cafeteria, just to be sure he could get away with it. And he always made sure he knew if Jeff was in the room, before he sat down to eat. He didn¡¯t think Jeff would suddenly attack him in the cafeteria, but he couldn¡¯t be absolutely sure. Jeff had always talked like some kind of food-mutiny would be the end of them all, followed by some kind of generalized canabalism.


    It was stressful to be locked up underground with somebody that thought that way, Andy reflected. Well, the people under the ground weren¡¯t really locked up, they were just in some kind of weird, flowery gulag with the largest yard known to any prison ever. Sure you could run, but where to?


    Today Andy walked around on the surface, watching the machines plow, off in the far distance. He looked all around, and decided today probably wasn¡¯t the day Jeff would try to trigger a riot, and munch on the survivors. It was too sunny and peaceful.


    Belinda was about a half kilometer away, walking along one of the endless rows of dandelions and wildflowers. She knelt down and looked at a few flowers, but didn¡¯t touch any. It was generally decided by the people from under the earth that they would leave the flowers alone. The tale of Jeff¡¯s tasering had made the rounds, and nobody wanted to ride the train to zapsville. Andy decided to say hello, to try to break out of his own pattern or depression, or anger, or fear, or whatever it was. What would have been diagnosed as anxiety, before the blast, most survivors now recognized as fear. Fear of starvation, fear of being alone, fear of any kind of death that might ferret them out in their newfound underground home.


    ¡°What¡¯s your favourite kind?¡± Andy said, when Belinda looked up at him. At first, she seemed not to recognize him. Strange, he thought, there are only fifty-one of us. How hard is it to keep track? But then a light seemed to go on, Belinda was a bit embarrassed, and she started to talk.


    ¡°Hello, it¡¯s you. How are you?¡± Belinda asked Andy.


    ¡°I¡¯m good. Well, I will be after I look at some flowers. Which ones do you like best?¡± Andy asked again.


    ¡°The violets,¡± Belinda said ¡°even though there don¡¯t seem to be that many. Do you know I thought I saw a strawberry yesterday?¡±


    This would be news indeed.


    ¡°Where was it?¡± Andy asked.


    ¡°Well I thought I saw one of my cats, too,¡± Belinda said, and then looked a little embarrassed ¡°but of course, I didn¡¯t.¡±


    Andy genuinely didn¡¯t know what to say to that. Was Belinda in a wistful mood? He realized he didn¡¯t really know the woman all that well. She was one of the quieter folks living underground. She was only forty-six or so, she claimed, but seemed somehow older, more washed-out than the others. She was awfully nice though, Andy realized. Especially in comparison to cannibalism touting fools, whispering ¡°come the revolution¡­¡±


    ¡°Maybe there are cats somewhere, Belinda. You never know. They¡¯re very small, and clever.¡± Andy said, feeling a bit like a Tolkien character.


    ¡°Do you think?¡± Belinda asked, looking as if she was about to cry, although with joy or relief, it was hard to tell.


    ¡°I bet you, there are at least as many cats as people around.¡± Andy said, instantly regretting it, not knowing how to take it back.


    ¡°As many cats as people,¡± Belinda said ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that be something!¡±


    This seemed to make the woman happy, she didn¡¯t seem to be picking up any unintended irony or anything. She went back to looking at the flowers, and Andy walked along with her. In the distance, the machines kept plowing, and spraying. The flowers soaked up the sun, and moved gently in the breeze.


    Except Andy would be god damned if that wasn¡¯t a strawberry, growing juicy and red, down at his feet. With a raspberry or two thrown in for good measure.


    The first bird flew past James Edwards the next morning, when he was on his way up for a pre-dawn walk. It was a black and white chickadee or some damn thing, and it flew up ahead, landed, and looked back at him with mild curiosity. A headlight turned on him from behind, and he stopped to stare, then instinctively got out of the way.


    One of the robots about the size of a Zamboni was slowly trundling up the slanted tunnel, festooned with songbirds of all types. Some flew by the machine, some rode on top of it, some flew behind it pecking at the ground here or there.


    ¡°Those are birds¡­¡± said James Edwards, reverently. He was all alone when he said it. Except for the birds, and the robot, of course.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d ever see you again.¡± James said to no one in particular. Then he stopped and softly cried with joy.


    If the robot noticed, or the birds, they gave no sign. The machine rolled on deeply rutted solid tires, slowly, stopping now and again to allow a bird to fly out of the way in the gentle but morning-strong lights of the zamboni-robot.


    The blast door never closed now, and the people under the earth walked back and forth to the surface a lot.


    James Edwards wondered if there had been a spring like this before. Perhaps after the death of the dinosaurs everyone kept referring to. But weren¡¯t birds dinosaurs?


    The old test pilot wondered what he was witnessing. His job in logistics covered the most mundane of things here at IGSD 14, from toilet paper, to machine parts, to medicines and clothing stores, from power system components to light switch covers. How had he missed a bird hatchery?


    And what would come rolling up the slanted tunnel next?


    The bigger machines must have come from other blast doors, somewhere, either buried with IGSD 14, or maybe somewhere nearby. A few other hatches were found blown off in a four other places, but only three of those tunnels led down to other blast doors at IGSD 14.


    The last, and largest tunnel mouth might lead to the basement, below the arena, Walter argued. And nobody wanted to go down there. They did, one morning, spot one of the plows coming out of it. That seemed to solve the mystery of the lager machines, if not where the birds had hatched, or what else was down there.


    One of the machines was obviously planting trees, and people were happy to see it. The machines that built bee hives (apiaries, Judy called them) also built bird houses, slightly higher, slightly smaller.


    ¡°Do you buy what James Edwards is selling,¡± Judy asked Todd ¡°that some of the machines drove in from somewhere else?¡±


    ¡°I doubt it. I don¡¯t think¡­¡± Todd said, and trailed off.


    ¡°You don¡¯t think what?¡± Judy asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think there is anyplace else.¡± Todd said, low, so nobody else could hear.


    The only thing nobody could figure out was the toasters. They seemed to hover around, completely silent. They were obviously some kind of electro-magnetic drone, but they just flew carefully around the birds and flowers (and weeds,) and never did anything. The tech looked simple enough, a child¡¯s toy from twenty years ago could fly around on auto-pilot, guided by rudimentary AI. Why? Nobody could guess. They didn¡¯t plant anything. They didn¡¯t relay signals (that anybody could pick up, anyway¡­)


    That¡¯s a predator, thought Jeff to himself, laughing at the cartoon assholes he lived with. For people who thought they were so smart, Jeff was amazed they didn¡¯t see it. Of course, Jeff was the one who had gotten tased, so maybe he leapt to the conclusion that much quicker.


    Whatever was raising birds and weeds and flowers, along with bees, had also supplied a predator. Against whatever hunted birds and flowers and bees. Hell, maybe, aside from Jeff, there was nothing left to hunt birds or bees. But Jeff didn¡¯t think so. In fact, he¡¯d seen a dragon fly yesterday. Which was promptly torn apart by a red cardinal. And the bird wasn¡¯t kind about it either. Didn¡¯t know how to be, actually. It grabbed the dragon fly out of the air (itself a voracious predator,) immobilized it, sectioned it up, ate it one piece at a time and flew off.


    Didn¡¯t bother Jeff any. He knew everything killed something else, just to live.


    He didn¡¯t know who had put these machines together, but it was pretty obvious why. The whole thing was getting built back up again. And everything killed something else, to keep it from choking everything else to death. Balance.


    Jeff hoped the toasters were here to keep other hunters in balance, not humans. The toasters and the dogs seemed to ignore the humans. So far. No point in finding out the hard way, thought Jeff. Not yet. And don¡¯t touch the machines. Also not yet.


    The squirrels, of course, were the biggest surprise.


    They looked almost too small to be weaned. The few chipmunks in evidence were also tiny. Whatever was going on deep under the arena, some kind of automated baby formula for rodents was involved. Todd and Walter discussed it, and since there were so few sightings of Fred the Mouse these days, the two men figured the mouse had somehow snuck in to the rodent feeding (raising?) area, and made himself at home.


    Judy called it. She figured out why the squirrels and chipmunks were around.


    ¡°Nature¡¯s foresters.¡± Judy said, pointing at the laughably small squirrels running off into the fields, where one of the machines was firing acorns, pinecones, and hundreds of other varieties of seeds off into the distance. The rodents straight up ate a lot of the seeds, quite greedily. The rest, they went about burying all over the place, in seemingly random patterns.


    ¡°So if the machines break down,¡± Todd started.


    ¡°When the machines break down.¡± Walter finished.


    ¡°The forest keeps getting planted.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°But won¡¯t their numbers get out of control?¡± Todd said, watching the squirrels and chipmunks spread out across the fields of wildflowers and weeds.


    They didn¡¯t see the first fox for another six weeks, but after that, a fox or two seemed to be around now and again.


    ¡°I don¡¯t see nothing for us to eat.¡± Walter said to Judy and Todd, on one of their many walks on the surface.


    And of course, it was true. Yes, you could eat parts of dandelions, Trina had reminded them, and a few had actually dared to eat a few of the strawberries and raspberries that grew rampant in all fields. No objections to a handful here or there, from the robot guard dogs, or the floating toasters.


    But there was no waving wheat. There were no peanuts, or corn, or watermelons. No deer had sprung up out of the earth, from under the magical arena. Let alone pigs, cows, horses, dogs or cats.


    ¡°So maybe this ain¡¯t about us.¡± Walter finished, for once shutting Judy and Todd up in mid sentence.


    What kind of a Re-Start were they watching here, if it wasn¡¯t for humans, by humans?


    The robots and machines made no comment, as they ranged further and further afield, and the sun, and rain, and squirrels and bees did their work.


    ¡°So it¡¯s just the base, from what we¡¯ve seen so far.¡± Judy finally said ¡°Just re-starting the bio-sphere.¡±


    ¡°But that would happen anyway,¡± Todd said ¡°There would be lots of seeds buried, and rodents, this doesn¡¯t need robots to help.¡±


    The three of them walked the fields, where many kinds of saplings were already getting fairly tall, here and there, spread out amongst the ground cover.


    ¡°But it¡¯s happening quick.¡± Walter said, and that was for sure. The machines were using seeds and nuts to spread trees, and rodents, and flowering plants everywhere.


    ¡°So this would take years, normally. Without the bots.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°Decades? Hundreds of years? Thousands? This should be a planet of mostly fungus, at first.¡± Todd speculated.


    ¡°Mushroom pizza, all around. Hold the crust, hold the tomatoes, hold the cheeze.¡± Walter mused.


    It was Trina that found the first few stalks of wheat. And then some wild rice growing in a nearby pond, two weeks later.


    ¡°Well, the re-start ain¡¯t just for robots anymore, Doc.¡± Walter said.


    Todd and Trina had to agree. Whoever had set this re-start into motion had started at the beginning, to build up a spreading biome. But it was one that was friendly to humans, in the long term.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad.¡± Trina said ¡°I was getting tired of hearing Kris talk about Skynet.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s Skynet?¡± Todd said, never having seen any Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from long, long before the blast.


    ¡°Maybe it was a poem Kris was working on, or something. Always ended with ¡°Are you Sarah Connor? Or maybe John Connor. Maybe some Two Spirit stuff I don¡¯t understand yet.¡± Trina said.


    ¡°The New Strarbuck, too. That¡¯s one of Kris¡¯s favourites.¡± Todd said.


    ¡°That was coffee, way back in the day.¡± Walter said, finally able to contribute to the conversation ¡°And I hope to god the robots have some of those beans stashed away to plant.¡±


    Fred the Mouse ran off one fine Tuesday morning, into the fields. He did not bring thousands of other mice with him, up from the bowels of IGSD 14, as the humans had feared he would. Eventually, though, he did find a small group of surviving field mice, and threw his lot in with them. For although they had not dug in as deep as Fred, and more than a few of their group had been lost, nobody else had a little dark blue spot of paint between his shoulders, or understood the value of the strange two-legged creatures that were once again carpeting Fred¡¯s valley with wonderful, succulent berries and seeds to eat.


    Walter and Kris didn¡¯t talk all that much. But today they did just that, in the fields and starter forests above IGSD 14.


    It wasn¡¯t that Walter felt uncomfortable around Kris, or vice versa. Walter had been around enough people in the military that went by their rank, rather than their gender, and the Army had become a place of equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to get blown up, or get cancer from weapons systems or burn pits, equal opportunity to live with a broken back or neck injuries, equal opportunity to live under a bridge after you were spat out of horrific deployments in the used-up killing fields generated around the world.


    But Walter was a right-now guy, and Kris was always slipping into futures real and imagined. However, they both had some respect for the other, making an odd team of practical and extended threat radars.


    ¡°You still think Re-Start was military?¡± Walter asked Kris.


    ¡°Who else thinks about this kind of shit?¡± Kris said.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll give you the freeze-dried food, the hardened-bunker stuff. Even water and power. But the birdies and the bees just don¡¯t fit. Too long term. Mission creep, they woulda¡¯ called it.¡± Walter concluded.


    ¡°Well, I guess that¡¯s right, but it smells military, you know?¡± Kris said.


    ¡°I will try not to be offended by your remark, Kris.¡± Walter joked, and they both smiled.


    ¡°Think about how well you fit in here. You run the place. It¡¯s designed to be run by¡­¡± Kris stopped to choose their words carefully.


    ¡°By a cook?¡± Walter cocked an eyebrow, but nodded. ¡°Yep, thought of that. Most of the systems here are simple enough for somebody without an advanced degree. In anything.¡±


    ¡°Intuitive. User friendly. Big engineering, but self-sustaining. Like the earth-ship cities in the desserts out west. Except for the planters and raisers.¡± Kris said, nodding off to the machines working off in the distance, barely visible specks.


    ¡°And what do they smell like Kris?¡± asked Walter.


    ¡°They smell like NASA.¡± Kris said ¡°Or all the private companies that sub-contracted for them. Big tech, like I said.¡±


    And damned if the kid wasn¡¯t right. Tracked vehicles, but also hardened tires that never needed inflating, farming machines that didn¡¯t require people to run them, or even service them.


    ¡°Extra-planetary. Terra forming.¡± Kris said ¡°Only something set them loose here.¡±


    ¡°I read about that Mars stuff. Seemed like a waste of money to me.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°And how do you feel about it now?¡± Kris asked.


    ¡°Pretty god damned good.¡± Walter said ¡°And the morning I see an eight-point buck come strolling out of those saplings, I¡¯ll feel even better.¡±


    ¡°I wonder¡­¡± said Kris, and just then came a sight neither person had ever expected to see again.


    ¡°Contrail.¡± Said Walter.


    For a moment, both of them just stared up at the white line cutting across the sky in the distance.


    ¡°You don¡¯t think it¡¯s¡­ you don¡¯t think it¡¯s a launch, do you?¡± Kris said, real horror showing in their voice.


    ¡°I¡¯m a cook, remember?¡± Walter said. ¡°But wouldn¡¯t that be going straight up, or coming straight down?¡±


    ¡°Jesus, I hope so.¡± Kris said.


    The contrail continued crawling along in front of them. The tunnel entrance was a couple of hundred meters away, and both people considered making a break for it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t see Slim Pickens up there, so maybe we¡¯ll be alright¡­¡± Kris said finally.


    Walter had no idea what Kris was talking about, but he read the calming tone, and for some reason, it did him a world of good. The contrail seemed to be going slowly, slowly, just meandering, not re-entering.


    ¡°Should we hide?¡± Kris wondered aloud ¡°I mean, who even is that?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s people,¡± said Walter ¡°That¡­ is¡­ people.¡±


    And it seemed like an idyllic summer day, all of a sudden. Blue sky with a few whispy-white clouds, and what was now obviously jet traffic of some kind.


    And for a few short minutes, with the distant noise of people in the sky again, combined with the dull noise of the planters, the periodic raisers, and the ever-watchful robot dogs and toasters, all seemed right with the world.


    Until a second thing appeared in the sky, moving much, much faster. In fact, it seemed to be more projectile than ship, and it moved straight towards the head of the contrail, before either person watching could react, or even say anything. The object intersected with the contrail, and the contrail split into two pieces, and eventually stopped. A boom from very far away reached the two watchers on the ground. But the bees kept buzzing, the birds took no notice, and the robot dogs only glanced at the contrail, then returned to watching the planters and raisers. The toasters did nothing at all.


    And then, so far away it could barely be made out, Kris saw something, and pointed it out to Walter.


    ¡°There! You see that?¡± Kris asked, very excited.


    ¡°No. What? What do you see?¡± said Walter.


    ¡°Call me Legolas, if that ain¡¯t a fucking parachute!¡±


    ¡°Legowhat? You see a chute?¡± Walter strained to see, and maybe thought he saw something slightly darker, maybe hanging in space.


    ¡°I see one parachute, coming down slowly.¡± Kris concluded, squinting and shading their eyes.


    ¡°You sure it¡¯s not munitions? It¡¯s not a fucking nuke or some bullshit?¡± Walter could make something out, but not what it was.


    ¡°I think I see legs.¡± Kris said ¡°So probably not a nuke. With legs.¡±


    ¡°You ever think about the acorn?¡± Judy asked Todd, as they sat having tea in her office, for once.


    ¡°In what context?¡± Todd asked, trying not to slurp the unfamiliar but sweet-tasting herbal tea. It wasn¡¯t something he usually drank, but the act of making it, and stirring it out, and warming your hands with it while you talked to a friend¡­ it was routine, it was comforting, and he resolved to do more of it.


    ¡°In the context of machines. Of science.¡± Judy said. ¡°I mean, the raisers, the planters, the toasters and the bot dogs. All very impressive. But what¡¯s doing the real work out there? Where does the real magic come from?¡±


    Todd thought about it for awhile.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how long an acorn can sit. Just waiting. And by accident, it rolls into a good place on the ground. Or a squirrel buries it.¡± He said.


    ¡°Or a chip-mummy.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°Yes, or a chip-mummy. I urge caution with that taxonomy, however.¡± Todd said.


    ¡°Duly noted. The point remains.¡± Judy concluded.


    ¡°And that is?¡± Todd prompted.


    ¡°All this tech. All this expense. All these¡­ vestiges of civilization. They¡¯re not jack shit, compared to an acorn. Or a squirrel, or a bee.¡± Judy said.


    ¡°Or a chip mummy.¡± Todd agreed.


    The robot watch dog trotted off in the direction of what was now obviously a parachute.


    Walter and Kris started off in that direction, Kris almost running. He looked back at Walter, who was walking at a decent pace, but definitely nowhere near breaking into a sprint.


    ¡°I get it,¡± Kris said, matching Walter¡¯s pace ¡°We walk down, and fuck ¡®em all.¡±


    Walter lifted his eyebrows and nodded, gaining a little more respect for Kris. They might be young, but they weren¡¯t dumb. They caught on quick.


    The parachutist was very dead. One leg was almost completely severed, and the pants were soaked in blood. The eyes stared blankly from out of the helmet, once Walter pushed up the dark visor. He searched through the pilot¡¯s jacket pockets, and found only one document. It appeared to have been photocopied, and signed in a scrawling hand that couldn¡¯t be deciphered.


    ¡°Pilot James Avery, Equal Soldier, New Model Army, Cheyenne Mountain.¡± Walter read aloud, squinting at the picture and words on the paper.


    Kris looked at the photo too, which appeared to be a picture of the (now) dead man, shirtless, from mid-chest up, staring into the camera with a grim expression. He appeared to have a small bandage on his left shoulder, about where a branch of service tattoo would be.


    ¡°What is this, like a Military ID or something?¡± Kris asked.


    ¡°Or something.¡± Walter said.


    ¡°But it¡¯s just a piece of paper. That doesn¡¯t look like an official photo or anything. There¡¯s no hologram. And what the fuck is a New Model Army?¡±


    ¡°I forget the word for it,¡± Walter searched his memory for the fancy term, and for some damn reason, it came to him at long last. ¡°Oh yeah. That¡¯s the word I was looking for. Fratricide.¡±


    Murder of your brother, Kris thought to themself. That does not sound good.


    ¡°Maybe the New Model Army is what¡¯s left of the big green machine, only with lots of murder and¡­ settling of accounts.¡±


    ¡°Like a rebellion. A Mutiny.¡± Kris guessed.


    ¡°Yeah, like that.¡± Walter said ¡°Only hungrier.¡±


    Andy had lost weight. It seemed to him he was eating as much as before the blast, if not more. But now he went hiking quite a bit. He even did a lot of push-ups in his room, and some sit-ups. And he carried the knife he had altered, almost constantly now. People were starting to notice his stomach was flattening, and he went with a full beard, the way quite a few men below ground were doing these days.


    Andrew Bunkowski had been ¡°between girlfriends¡± before the blast, and although he dutifully went into town to the local watering hole for pool, or karaoke, or just to drink and sing along, there had been no real chance of female company for him. He had been searching for some church group (although he wasn¡¯t a real believer,) or somewhere to volunteer just to meet people, make friends, and find a girlfriend. But the few times he did speak to women, they seemed unimpressed with his Communications job at IGSD 14. Why did a warehouse need a spokesperson, they asked him, and wasn¡¯t it boring? Government can¡¯t pay much, they would say, and wander away from him to talk to some bad boy at the jukebox, younger and meaner and prettier than he was.


    Well I might not have much money, Andy thought to himself, but you¡¯re all dead. And he couldn¡¯t help but let a giggle escape. God, it was kind of funny. Survival of the fittest. Or survival of the good enough, as he had heard a biologist say once. And here he was, Andy Bunkowski, Last of the PR Men, and a prime specimen if ever there was one.


    ¡°Bunkowski, you fat fuck, how you doing buddy?¡± Jeff called after him, and Andy couldn¡¯t help but hunch his shoulders, just a little bit, even though he tried not to.


    The two men were alone in the slanted tunnel, and for some reason, this was the place, this was the time. Andy had been going up to the surface to get his hike in, and Jeff had said that shit about him being fat one time too many now. It was the last time Andy was going to listen to that. He turned to face Jeff.


    ¡°What did you say, asshole?¡± Andy asked, his voice suddenly loud in the tunnel.


    ¡°Hey, it¡¯s just a joke.¡± Jeff said, his voice, dripping with scorn as he walked past Andy to the surface.


    ¡°You need to shut the fuck up!¡± Andy roared, and it echoed, up and down the tunnel.


    Jeff laughed.


    ¡°Or what, you fat asshole? I rule this fucking place. I¡¯ll be farming this place with those robots soon. No more birdies and squirrels. Crops, and sharecroppers, and you¡¯ll be working for me, fatso.¡±


    Jeff stood with his feet spread apart, and reached behind his back with his right hand.


    ¡°Fuck you.¡± Andy said, reaching into his own waist band and taking two steps forward.


    To Andy¡¯s amazement, Jeff pulled out a silvery pistol, glinting in their cell phone lights, and shot him once in the stomach.


    The tunnel roared, and filled with fire from the revolver.


    Old Andy would doubtless have recoiled, and dropped silently to the floor, to scream and bleed, to die.


    But New Andy had sharpened this knife himself, meditating on how he would drive it into his enemy, the enemy that called him fat, and laughed at him. And Andy had repeated the same thing over and over again to himself while he sharpened the table knife on the cinder block. He visualized himself screaming ¡°Eat This!¡± and stabbing his enemy, closing with him, and driving the blade deep. Many times, if necessary. But the shock of the gunfire, the noise, the blinding flash, the incredible piercing THUMP in his guts took those words from him. But he was in mid-attack, and he rode the fury of his last step into his hated enemy.


    ¡°FFFUCK!¡± He screamed, and drove the knife into Jeff¡¯s guts, even lifting the man off the ground a little with the impact, then sending him hurtling backwards.


    Jeff never dropped the pistol, didn¡¯t squeeze off a negligent round, but his head hit with a clunk on the tunnel floor slanting up behind him. He took a moment to shake his head, and then the fire in his guts made him scream.


    ¡°Ahhhhh!¡± he yelled, looking at a masking tape wrapped knife sticking out of his guts, with the cell phone light in his left hand. ¡°AHHHH!¡±


    ¡°You fucking stabbed me! You fat fuck! You fat fuuuuuckkk!¡±


    Andy, who was lying face down, slowly looked up into the single cellphone bulb shining on him. His mouth was covered in blood, and his grimace turned into a smile, for just a moment. Then he opened his mouth to say something, some blood came out, and he died. The smile never ever left his lips, Walter noticed, when the crew came to bury him on the surface later that day.


    ¡°Fuck! You!¡± said Jeff, and he shot Andy three more times, in a fit of rage. It occurred to him he might need these bullets, these last two bullets, he could still control everyone with two bullets¡­ So he stopped, and looked at the knife in his guts again.


    ¡°You fat fuck¡­ you fat¡­¡± he said, and he saw that he was soaked in his own blood now. The knife was not stopping the flow, sealed up in the wound like a knife was supposed to. Instead, the wound pumped and pumped. He tried to put a little pressure on the wound around it somehow, but it was real agony to touch anything close to it, and¡­ He just wanted to put the gun away, like under his shirt again, but he couldn¡¯t manage to move it without more stabbing agony. He just put it down on the ground for a moment, and shone his cell phone light around, to see if anybody could help him, to see if he could hide the gun¡­


    Probably best if I don¡¯t move for a second¡­ I¡¯ll figure this out¡­ I¡¯ll figure this out¡­ Jeff thought. He looked around and then put his head down again. He thought maybe he saw a cellphone light approaching from the surface, and he waited. But the light never came, and his guts hurt so much, he just put his head down, for just a minute¡­


    Walter, Kris, James Edwards, Jason Richards (Copy Guy) and Hanna the truck driver took cellphone pictures and video, and then wheeled both bodies to the surface for burial. Belinda had tried to help, but took one look at the bodies and headed for the surface to vomit. She didn¡¯t make it all the way, but cleared her head in the growing fields and forests after.


    ¡°Scooby fucking doo it ain¡¯t.¡± said Kris, when they tossed the last shovel full on top of the two bodies. And although they each got a separate grave, the two bodies were buried right beside each other.


    Nobody knew why these two had slaughtered each other. One had used a hidden pistol, and they had finally been able to pry a crudely sharpened table-knife out of that one¡¯s guts, where it had actually caught in a rib, partially pulled out for another stab.


    ¡°And then there were 49 of us.¡± Walter said over the bodies, and nobody seemed much inclined to say anything else. They went below, and Walter took a couple of days before he could face mopping up the dried pools of blood in the slanted tunnel. Really, he just slopped bucket after bucket on it, and watched filthy water travel to the tunnel sides, to disappear in whatever drains it found. It was always dark, in the tunnel, anyway.


    ¡°I was hoping we were more Bonobo than Chimpanzee.¡± Todd Mason said to Judy Elizabeth Chong, and Trina, thinking it might be the final epitaph for humankind. He looked through the birdwatching binoculars that Belinda had supplied them with, and Judy reached out to take her turn with them.


    A red cardinal was snatching bugs out of the air, and once again sectioning them up, while they finished dying.


    ¡°Maybe we¡¯re all just sparks,¡± Trina said, ¡°Big or little, long or short, we might be just sparks.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like a Kris Theory.¡± Judy said.


    Trina waited for her turn next, while Judy looked through ground cover and saplings for fox, bird and squirrel. Nobody had seen a rabbit yet, and nobody was sure if they would. Rabbits alone had done for the blighted remains of Australia in the 2040¡¯s. For awhile it seemed invasive wild boar would help keep the rabbits in check, but in the end, nothing had been able to stop that tide, and the ecosystem on that continent had crashed for good. And that was, of course, before the blast.


    ¡°Kris told me about Evolution.¡± Trina said, scanning the undergrowth. ¡°It was one of those science fiction books.¡±


    ¡°Not Darwin?¡± Judy asked, hoping Trina wasn¡¯t a closet old-testament creationist.


    Trina gave her an impatient look.


    ¡°No, the title was Evolution. One of Kris¡¯s science fiction books.¡±


    That was a relief, Judy thought. Trina seemed to be a great source of traditional ecological knowledge, and something of an animist. She referred to animals as different peoples, and it really seemed to¡­ fit their lonely situation here in the new fields above IGSD 14.


    ¡°The DNA. That¡¯s what he said. The DNA spread to other planets. Not from space-ships. Just from rocks and stuff. And the animals, they¡¯re all sparks, like us. Their consciousness. Some big, some small. And I said that sounded like a pretty good book.¡±


    ¡°Sounds like a pretty fair description. But Walter and Kris cooked up another theory too.¡± Todd said.


    ¡°About what?¡± Trina asked.


    Todd motioned towards the planters and raisers working far, far away, some of them actually gone over the horizon now.


    ¡°The machines.¡± Todd replied. They all watched a raiser spray out more cones, nuts and seeds, and the inevitable flurry of squirrels issue out of it.


    ¡°They think it¡¯s NASA.¡± Todd said, a bit sheepishly.


    ¡°And nucular, too?¡± Judy mocked, just a bit.


    ¡°Whaddya mean NASA? Like for space?¡± Trina asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Todd said ¡°For space. For Mars. All this,¡± motioning with his chin again ¡°was for terraforming Mars.¡±


    ¡°Jesus.¡± Said Judy.


    ¡°Yep¡­¡± said Trina, only like she was just considering the idea, and needed to say something. The three of them looked at the robots working or watching in the fields, and it seemed to make a crazy sort of sense.


    ¡°We got to start a new book,¡± Trina said after awhile. The other two looked at her.


    ¡°In the beginning, Karen typed Re-start.¡± Trina said, a little mischeviously, Judy thought.


    ¡°I don¡¯t mind saying, I¡¯m pretty scared.¡± Walter said ¡°And I mostly don¡¯t have time to be scared. Too busy.¡±


    Todd and Kris sat with Walter, Judy, James Edwards and Jason Richards. They were in the arena, looking at the Mystery Machine, while various planters and raisers docked with it.


    It had been awhile since the shoot-down, as it came to be known, and the tunnel slaughter had been yesterday.


    ¡°What¡¯s on your mind, Walter?¡± Todd asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m worried whoever shot that old boy down might coming looking for him. Or they might be looking down at us right now. Eye in the sky.¡± Said Walter.


    ¡°But you don¡¯t think there¡¯s a real military left¡­¡± Judy reminded him.


    ¡°Like you said, Judy, there¡¯s no more tax base. No more tail. Only a few teeth. But they¡¯re killing each other now, and there are¡­ a ton of weapons from the bad old days still around.¡± Walter finished.


    ¡°Nukes.¡± Said James Edwards.


    ¡°You think they might use them on each other? But why?¡± asked Jason Richards, aware that the Copy Guy and the Janitor were being given a lot of weight in this discussion. How low the mighty had fallen, if the PhD in Math and the head of HR were actually willing to listen, instead of opine and dictate.


    ¡°To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.¡± James Edwards said.


    ¡°And they¡¯re starving, maybe.¡± Walter surmised.


    ¡°People didn¡¯t act rationally before the blast. Why would they be rational after?¡± Jason Richards asked the group. And no one had a good answer.


    ¡°This may be it then.¡± Judy concluded. ¡°The last of us might just end it all.¡±


    ¡°The great filter.¡± Todd said.


    Nobody said anything after that. They had discussed the Fermi Paradox with Todd and Kris months ago, in the long nuclear winter that had followed the blast. Why was the galaxy, indeed, the universe, not teeming with life? Was it so infrequent, and so far apart, that no messages were ever sent or received between worlds? Or was there some inherent great filter, some limitation of life, some unavoidable self-destruction in intelligence?


    At a time when there was no more horse and buggy, mankind had just shot one of its last airplanes out of the sky. It didn¡¯t look good for intelligent life, in the long run.


    ¡°I say we play dead.¡± Kris said. Everyone just looked at Kris. Usually, Kris was not one to suggest courses of action. Kris came up with non-sequiturs, portents of doom, and referenced obscure characters from pages now incinerated, screens now melted away.


    And it made a whole lot of sense. Nobody wanted to look like a nail to whatever hammers were still out there.


    ¡°Let¡¯s hope anybody looking down at us will just see machines plowing fields.¡± Todd said.


    Industrial capacity, thought Jason Richards. First thing they will want to wipe off the map. Then again, starving people might look at agricultural production as a good thing. Maybe. Maybe hunger would trump irrationality, just this once, and IGSD 14 would not be excised from the Earth with a nuclear dentist¡¯s drill. From what Todd and Judy said, there would be no other game in town for decades, as far as forests and flowers went. And honey-bees, and fruit and nuts.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be god damned¡­¡± said Walter, looking through the binoculars, as they sat on a couple of folding chairs he and Belinda had carried up the tunnel to the surface. They were duck-blinded in, crudely, with bushes and sapplings, on a small hill, where they could see for miles in all directions. It was rare to see a planting or raising machine these days. They seemed to range further and further afield all the time, stopping to recharge through their own entrance to IGSD 14.


    Belinda took her turn at the binoculars (which she had donated from her birdwatching hobby.) At first she didn¡¯t see what Walter was pointing to, off in the thicket. There was nothing but green and brown, but a flash of white suddenly caught her attention. It looked like¡­ yes, it was!


    A white-tailed buck, with nascent antlers, curious big brown eyes, and attentive, twitching ears and nose. And as Belinda looked longer, and began to smile, she saw three¡­ no¡­ four doe.


    ¡°What else are they cooking up downstairs, I wonder?¡± Belinda said.


    Trina had finally found some evidence that IGSD 14 was not just some re-wilding project, that in fact, some care had been taken to provide for the human race.


    She had been on a long amble (long for her, given the soreness of her old paws.) And there it had been, hidden in plain sight, just over a rise from Storage.


    The three sisters. Fields and fields of corn, beans and squash, all growing intermingled. Enough so that any predation from deer, and yes, racoons, could barely make a dent.


    Nobody actually saw a wolf that year, but Trina swore she heard them once, before winter closed in.


    The people below ground tried to keep to their duck blind to observe the fields and saplings around them, but in groups of two or three, they would also head out during the day to scout, far, far afield. Or so it seemed, to people on foot. One scout trio even reported back they had seen a beaver colony, that had dammed up huge swaths of land beyond the horizon, although the dams were singularly unimpressive, made with saplings, mud, rocks and leaves instead of mighty fallen trunks.


    Crow and eagle were seen in the skies above Storage. People, being people, still buried a bit of garbage now and again, and it looked like¡­ well¡­ it seemed a trio of bear cubs had dug up a bit of the tastier stuff. And in the fall, a young man and woman reported back that they had seen fish jumping in the huge expanse of wetland the beaver were creating. From the growing list of animals and birds, ducks and geese were noted, and once again the sound of insects and frogs filled the night air. Interestingly, nobody had yet reported a single mosquito.


    ¡°I wonder if we will ever get to the stars, after all?¡± Kris asked Jason Richards.


    ¡°Well, there¡¯s still robots on the moon, and Mars¡­¡± Richards said ¡°although I doubt the Luna colony has anybody left.¡±


    Kris nodded. They had thought of this. How long could the Luna colony feed itself, without re-supply? Kris knew the colony had been running self-sufficiency trials, but who knew how that had gone? And were any of the few dozen inhabitants of that colony doing exactly what the people of Storage were doing? Were they playing dead, on the moon? Or were they just plain dead, no playing involved?


    Nobody transmitted a thing from IGSD 14. They all tried to listen in to radios, and cell phones on the surface, but not so much as a walkie-talkie was keyed, not after the shoot down.


    And not a peep was heard, on radio, or cell phone. For all the freakish planning that had gone into IGSD 14, there was not a single satellite phone to be found. No scouts went anywhere near the wreckage of the shot-down jet. In fact, the people from Storage did not even bury the body. At first, they had been afraid to bring the body back, or anything from the remnants of the plane, lest there be some tracking mechanism. But eventually, there developed almost a superstitious dread of the site. The people in Storage could almost feel crosshairs hovering over them, as if vengeful old gods were ready to strike them down. As if the madness of the human race was left over, watching them, waiting for any excuse to finish what an asteroid had started.


    One of the people under the ground died quietly in the night, of a hear attack, and another lingered for two days with an apparent appendicitis.


    And so there were forty-seven.


    The bodies of these two were buried deep, and away from where the two mad men who murdered each other lay. It wasn¡¯t exactly consecrated ground, where the heart attack and the appendicitis lay, but someone stuck a little wooden cross in the ground. A star of David was added later, and someone put in the crescent moon six days after. None of this could be seen from space, however, and people transplanted flowers that thrived in the new, tiny graveyard.


    ¡°I have a surprise for you, Walter.¡± Said Belinda. She was sleeping more and more these days, and didn¡¯t seem to remember most of the people, most of the time. But sometimes the tide came in, as she would say, and she got out all the talking she could, while she could.


    ¡°The watch dogs brought me three of these, and I gave one to Judy.¡±


    Belinda brought forth two kittens, one a ginger, and one a tabby, holding them up like they had won prizes at a fair. She also provided ¡°formula,¡± which she said the watch dogs delivered with the kittens.


    Walter had no words. He took the tabby in his lap, and stroked it, while it tried to eat his index finger, then purred, then fell fast asleep.


    ¡°Can I keep him?¡± Walter couldn¡¯t stop himself from saying.


    ¡°Yes. I was going to let you have the one you wanted, so yes, you can keep him.¡± Belinda said.


    Walter wiped a little tear from the corner of his eye, and his voice was a little thick when he said ¡°I don¡¯t know as we have any mice left for you, boy.¡±


    And so Boy the Cat came to live with Walter the Caretaker, and wander the halls of IGSD 14 on his own recognizance. He never caught a mouse that Walter saw, but that didn¡¯t mean they weren¡¯t there somewhere, deep in storage, for as Trina had said, they were a quiet people.


    The people in Storage didn¡¯t have any laws, or system of justice. The two murderers among them seemed to have sentenced each other to death, and there was no point in stealing anything where food and supplies were so plentiful. Walter had hidden the pistol, with two bullets left in it, somewhere up there (he would always point to the ceiling as he said that.) For defence, the people under the ground had decided playing dead was the best policy, and so they did. If anyone organized ever walked up on them, they decided on an ¡°open city¡± policy, lest invaders damage or destroy the work of the planting and raising machines.


    Maybe these policies would bite them on the buttocks, they said, but Storage seemed more likely to be destroyed remotely from missile fire, than a miraculous crossing of the ashen wastes all around IGSD 14 by survivors. If some kind of feral pack of humans attacked, they could always shut the blast doors, and leave the robots (dogs and toasters especially) to defend themselves and their private entrance. But what kind of feral humans could have survived more than a year and a half, with no food or water? And how could they get to Storage? There were no roads anymore. As far as anyone in Storage knew, there were no humans left alive above ground anywhere.


    No, if anyone ever showed up at their door, it was more likely to be an organization much like their own; overprovisioned and underpopulated.


    The chief hobby amongst the people in Storage seemed to be going out and getting cell phone photographs, or even short video clips, of new animals as they emerged in the biome blowing up around IGSD 14. The machines had gone to some new kind of system, of planting trees and plants, and spraying mysterious green stuff in thinner density now. It wasn¡¯t one tree per kilometer, or anything so sparse, but there was now room to roam between where things were planted, or where animals were raised.


    Karen played with her puppy in the furrows where the beans, squash and corn were growing. Later, she moved over to the apple trees, and picked up after the puppy. People actually collected some of the apples off the ground now and again, and it wouldn¡¯t do to have doggy doo stuck to the produce.


    The pup¡¯s name was Dunedin, and although he was no breed in particular, there seemed to be a lot of poodle in him. He had that poodle run, where they kind of vaulted in an arc, rather than the flat-out run of other dogs. He had some curly hair, and was more concerned with what people said, or did, than he was with hunting, or dominating the other pups he would play with.


    Karen had called him Dunedin, after where her daughter had been an elementary school teacher. For although her heart was broken, and always would be, she wanted more than anything to remember her daughter.


    The first litter of pups had come trooping along after a robot guard dog a month previous, already weaned, and clearly imprinted on the robot. Still, the pups had taken to human company instinctively, as animals that had shared the Earth with people for¡­ well, nobody really knew. Probably long before farming. Perhaps long before people were completely¡­ human.


    Dunedin had a quick piddle on her foot, and despite herself, Karen laughed a bit. No respect, it seemed, from the puppy, even though Karen was generally credited with typing Re-start, and so, saving the soul of humanity.


    People had been alive after the blast, down deep in storage. They had lost two of their number to suicide, then bizarrely, two more to murder. The heart attack and ruptured appendix seemed more natural, a part of life, although one they hoped to address with some kind of approximate medical training in the future. But without the animals, without the base of millions of insects, without the plants straining up to catch the sun¡¯s rays, humanity had been without hope.


    Jason Richards¡¯ pup ran up from further afield in the apple orchard, and jumped on top of Dunedin.


    ¡°Market!¡± Called Richards ¡°Market, where are you? Oh! It¡¯s Dunedin! It¡¯s your best fwend!¡±


    Like most of the people below ground, Richards observed the tradition of baby-talking the pups, including the use of childish grammar errors. Kris even re-popularized an ancient saying of ¡°I cans haz cheeseburger!¡± for use with both kittens and pups. In fact, it became so popular that Belinda started saying it to the deer that wandered the apple orchards, although Trina would shake her head to hear it.


    ¡°You watch out for those bucks next spring.¡± Trina would warn Belinda, who promised to knit one particular buck an antler cozy when the time came. Belinda seemed to have periods where she found speech particularly difficult, and Trudy told others quietly to watch out for Belinda, in case she had early Alzheimers, or some other form of dementia. Although the people living under the ground were much further away from ¡°the edge¡± as Judy called it, they were still a lot more susceptible to the vagaries of nature than they had been before the blast. Nobody had built cabins above ground yet, although a few sod structures, disguised with maskirova against satellites, had sprung up. The people in storage would never forget the time they thought they would drown, or the airplane shoot down, or even the two residents that had stabbed and shot each other to death. They wanted to be ready to leave storage, without so much as a spare handkerchief (as Kris put it,) if the need arose.


    It didn¡¯t seem there would be any more walk-outs, at least not in the way that two people had despaired during the long nuclear winter, and walked out because they couldn¡¯t see any hope. Now, there might be a few who would walk out, just to have more space, and work some land of their own. For although it was not widely known, due to the quite frequent miscarriages amongst humans, there was a pregnancy in storage. Two of the young people were looking forward to whatever offspring came their way. And they did not imagine that the child would be content to stay down in storage, when trees above were growing, and maybe the odd wolf would howl, and there might or might not be something called Buffalo out there.


    No one spoke about the obvious end of the human race. Except for Kris, who privately re-iterated that they had read from Phillipe Jose Farmer that the minimum number of people needed to keep the human race going was five thousand. And that was breeding population. Kris refused to call them ¡°breeders,¡± and found it enormously funny when anybody did so. Kris said it was a term from the bad old days, and they didn¡¯t want to see it make a come back.


    So as Dunedin and Market wrestled in the apples, to see just whose ears were the chewiest, nobody noticed the shape descending upon the orchard until it was almost too late.


    ¡°Hello!¡± called the strange old man in a scarf, sunglasses and a backwards baseball cap. He waved, and then gave the balloon a little more gas to slow its descent to a bare spot next to the apple orchard.


    Dunedin and Market ran around and around the basket barking, as the balloon settled, and the man held up his hands in either enthusiastic greeting, or insistent surrender, or both.


    Karen and Jason stared at the man open-mouthed, shocked at seeing a human who didn¡¯t live under the ground with them.


    ¡°Are these¡­ puppies?¡± asked the man, hands still held high, but staring at the two fools running circles around his basket.


    ¡°Yes,¡± said Karen.


    ¡°That¡¯s Dunedin. And mine is called Market. Because he¡¯s insane,¡± said Jason.


    ¡°I¡¯m Ed.¡± said the man in the balloon basket ¡°Are we cool? Can I put my hands down?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± said Karen.


    ¡°Yeah, sorry,¡± said Jason.


    ¡°What kind of puppies?¡± asked Ed, like they were all meeting at the dog park, before an asteroid had scrubbed the planet¡¯s surface dead, and frozen the wreckage.


    ¡°More poodle than you would think,¡± said Karen.


    ¡°They must have thought we needed the company more than the protection.¡± Jason concluded, as the puppies returned to ¡®rassling and recreationally chewing each other¡¯s faces.


    ¡°They?¡± Asked Ed.


    ¡°NASA, we think,¡± said Karen.


    ¡°What?¡± asked Ed.


    ¡°Ok, we don¡¯t know. Probably a lot of subcontractors. Where are you from?¡± asked Jason.


    ¡°Pittsburgh.¡± said Ed, and then shrugged ¡°Sorry. No more Pittsburgh. Intergovernmental Storage Depot 16. Underground.¡±


    ¡°My god, we didn¡¯t know¡­ we didn¡¯t know if there was anybody else¡­ except for Cheyenne Mountain¡­¡± said Karen.


    ¡°We¡¯re IGSD 14,¡± said Jason, and he held out his hand to shake. Ed, still in the basket, gave him a firm handshake, then shook with both hands, then the two men hugged, and all three laughed and cried.


    ¡°We found four more places, but none of them¡­ like this¡­¡± said Ed, while he folded up the balloon, and hauled it into one of the sod huts covered in bush and trees.


    Karen helped him a little bit with the fabric, and then all three of them pulled the large basket into the shadow of the hut.


    ¡°Everyone is still underground¡­ some ferns are growing, some saplings, but mostly mushrooms, and you know, mold and crap.¡±


    ¡°And the map shows dozens of places, you said?¡± Jason asked.


    ¡°Hundreds,¡± said Ed ¡°We¡¯ve been to four, but we also found two that were sealed up tight, out west. We figure nobody was there when the asteroid hit. Too early in the morning. And any buildings up top were gone, where overnight security probably was. We had to geo-locate the blast doors, and we couldn¡¯t get those open.¡± Ed finished.


    ¡°We didn¡¯t know. We didn¡¯t know until the jet got shot down, that anybody else had survived.¡± Karen said.


    ¡°And like I said, it looks like the military¡­ kind of¡­ ate itself. Like a mutiny. You have to be really careful. I mean, I don¡¯t think you should fly around here¡­¡± Jason said.


    ¡°That¡¯s horrible.¡± Ed said ¡°You would think they could hold it together, more than anyone. But I guess it makes sense. We¡­ we had a fire. This guy Mayworth, he riled some people up about the New Jesus, and the Beast, and¡­ well, they burned us about one-third out. That¡¯s when we got the balloon going, some kind of National Weather Service storage. We had a couple of ultra-lights, but the batteries won¡¯t charge. So here we are. Like Dorthy headed back to Kansas.¡± Ed said.


    ¡°You¡¯ll have to meet Kris. They¡¯re our expert in books, movies, and ancient nerd.¡± said Karen.


    ¡°How do your machines run, doing all the planting? It¡¯s like, miles and miles out there. I couldn¡¯t believe it when I saw it from the air!¡±


    ¡°We have no idea,¡± said Jason ¡°we¡¯re like children at Santa¡¯s workshop. It¡¯s¡­ a little terrifying.¡±


    ¡°You mind if we take a few apples? We haven¡¯t seen any apple trees¡­¡± Ed said.


    ¡°I think diversification might be a good strategy, at this point,¡± Jason agreed.


    ¡°And this stuff was for Mars?¡± Ed asked.


    ¡°We¡¯re just spitballing,¡± Karen said ¡°probably not the moon. Too floaty.¡±


    ¡°So we were ready by accident.¡± Ed said.


    ¡°Battlestar Galactica.¡± said Karen.


    ¡°What?¡± Ed asked.


    ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go meet Kris.¡± said Jason.


    ¡°Is Kris your leader?¡± Ed asked dubiously.


    ¡°Kris is our nerd.¡± said Karen, respectfully.


    The End...