Everfree- Humanity's Last Stand
A/N
This story is going to take quite some time to write, and even longer for various plot elements to fall into place. Updates will be rather random, but don't expect them to be too common. I'm looking for some editors, so please leave a message in the comments or message me if you're interested.
-RuBisColt
December, 2012.
Another Monday. It seems only yesterday that I was trying to relax for the weekend, after another hectic week. But stress adds up, and a full time job as an FBI agent will do that to you. But today seems different.
A few days ago, something fell from the sky near the White Sands Missile Base. Thinking it was a pre-emptive attack from some disgruntled nation or rather, the commander at the base was on the verge of declaring war, when it turned out it was a meteorite. A big one at that. When it hit the ground, it was moving so slowly that it would barely have made an impact crater, had it not punched through the gypsum sands into a cavern that hadn't been noticed before. The hole it made in the ground was small enough that we would have probably never noticed it- if it weren't for the signals.
About 6 hours after we think it landed, some encrypted transmissions were picked up by the folks at the base. Of course, their budget means they have some of the most advanced communications equipment in the world, and they triangulated its location to be within an area about 4 miles due south of the main base. It didn't seem to be sending a logical signal, just random stutters and bursts towards a large swathe of the sky, repeating once every 43 minutes. We can't crack the code, and In the interests of goddamn “national security”, we've been sent in to find out what it is, before someone in Washington decides to bomb Tehran or North Korea for no good reason. Right now, through some barely-legal bylaws, I've been yanked away from my normal job as a cryptographer, and dropped off at a makeshift camp near the White Sands base, like a soldier. I just hope that we get this shit over and done with quickly, so I can go home.
I miss you, Emily.
I really do.
*ATTENTION: DEPARTURE FOR WHITE SANDS IMPACT SITE IN 15 MINUTES.*
Matthew Jones groaned inwardly as he swung his legs out of the bed, his feet hitting the rough tarpaulin floor of the temporary tent. Forcibly rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he stumbled towards the flap of the tent, and looked outside. It was at best an hour until sunrise, and the sky over the sand dunes was cloudless. A few stars hung in the sky, and the moon was about to dip below the horizon. Pulling a shirt on, he stumbled over to the breakfast tent and sat down. Foley was already there, anticipating his arrival. Matt sat down at a table across from him, bracing himself for a cynical comment.
"Good morning Matt. Once again, I must commend you on your punctuality. A few minutes later, and we could have left you behind."
And, thar she blows.
" 'Morning, Foley. Nice to see you too."
Foley sighed at the apparently ignored snide remark, and pulled a map out of his bag, detailing the White Sands and the surrounding areas. Unfolding it to its full size and covering nearly all of the table, he leered over its contours, before jabbing with a stubby finger. "We're here, and the place where the meteorite hit," Foley said as he reached across to the far side of the map, "Is over there. It's going to be a long day of walking. If we're lucky, we might make it there before nightfall. That is, if we don't get attacked by the scorpions that live in the sands. I mean, it's not that likely but I heard that if you get bitten, necrosis can set in...”
Matthew stared blankly at Foley while he trailed off. He had a piggish face, with a permanent sneer that darted across his eyes and lips, where words were shoved off into oblivion. His intelligence notwithstanding, Matt idly wondered for the upteenth time what god he had angered enough in a past life to punish him with Foley's presence. He tried to shut out the white noise of Foley's ramblings, drooping his head towards the table. If I could get five more minutes of sleep...
"Matt, hey. Hey Matt. Hey, are you there?"
Matthew snapped his head up, jerked back into reality. "Huh? Wuzzat? Are we leaving now?"
A good few hours later, and the sun had reached its pinnacle in the sky before drooping once more towards the horizon, its daily trek across the sky now nearly over.. Despite being forced to stop several times, they had made relatively good time. (Foley had insisted that they maintain hydration- in his words, “It's hot enough to cook eggs on these sands. Of course, that depends on the kind of egg. For instance, the ostrich egg takes more than two hours to hard-boil and probably even longer to fry, and the heat of the sands is partly due to the residual heat accumulated during the day, so the amount of time required to cook the egg in question would likely be affected by the surface area over which the egg whites was spread.. Speaking of spread eggs, that reminds me of the time I went to Greece...” This continued on for a while. Essentially, he insisted that they dig a hole to collect trapped groundwater, then use purification tablets, then boil it THEN filter it. Foley was that kind of person.) A breeze whipped up the white gypsum sands beneath their feet, as Matt tried to distance himself from Foley complaining about how much his feet hurt and the potential risks of Deep Vein Thrombosis.
Stumbling over another dune, the crash site became visible. It was spectacularly unspectacular, with a cluster of small tents crowded around a roughly oval small black maw in the ground.
They had been given one task to complete (For Matt at least- he secretly hoped that Foley had also been orded to show the insides of his brain a piece of lead), and that was to descend into the unknown, and take measurements of the radio bursts that the object gave out. Foley had been given a Geiger counter, to monitor for spikes of ionizing radiation. Finally, they had both donned Haz-mat suits, to protect them from all manner of things, be it biological, chemical or simply deadly neurotoxin.
Without further dithering, they descended into the Earth, by the use of a rope ladder (which, in Foley's opinion, was 'structurally unsound').
The warmth of the sun slowly fading as they continued, the cavern was filled with a suffuse silence, save for the occasional bursts of radio static coming from their communicators, which increased in frequency as they approached the object.
At face value, the 'object' in question was decidedly unremarkable. Like a fat cigar in shape, it sat at the bottom of a small caldera of displaced sand and gravel. However, upon closer inspection, its abnormality became apparent. The 'cigar' was divided into two sections, one of which glowed with a faint golden light, and the other with an indigo blue colour. The rock had clearly been through some tough times. The surface was pitted with various impact craters, and the tip of it had melted slightly when it entered the atmosphere, giving it a glossy black sheen. Add to that the fact that it was giving off radio transmissions of its own accord, and it seemed too strange to be true. Matt had been expecting something out of the ordinary, but not this weird.
Pulling the radio communicator out of his belt, he tried to talk to the base of operations up above.
“What are we looking at here? This thing-whatever the hell it is- it's not natural. It seems almost... alive.”
His words echoed around the depths of the chamber, while he waited for a reply.
None came. Not even a burst of radio static.
Looking around furtively, he saw Foley leaning against the surface of glossy black stone. He held a geological pickaxe high above his head with both hands, and was about to bring it down upon the rock.
A sense of historical preservation overtook Matt, as he lunged towards Foley. Oh no you don't. Probably the most important artifact in the history of mankind, and you're trying to break it?
Alas, he was too late. Matt's career flashed before his eyes, as the pickaxe hit the object square on and a resounding crack echoed around the chamber. The world around Matt went silent, save for the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. The scene played out in front of him as if he was in a dream. Out of a crack that Foley had rent in the object, a flawless white feather floated out. Drifting on unseen air currents, it bobbed in front of Foley's eyes for a moment. Entranced, Foley reached out to touch it, and vanished. A bright light washed over the cavern, as Matt came to his senses.
“Foley? You there?”
His words echoed around the cavern, but the towering walls of stone did not elicit an answer.
A light tremor passed through the gravel and scree, followed by another, and another. Rocks of increasing size fell from the ceiling, and gypsum sands caved in from the opening, high above. Matt didn't have time to react. Pinned below a growing mound of sand and rocks, he drew his final breaths.
So, this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. Quite a lot of things I'm never going to see now. People I'm never going to meet. Heck, I won't be able to see so much of Greece that Foley kept rambling on about.
I never got to say goodbye to Emily.
The world faded to white.
A voice filled the cavern. It spoke with the hardened tone of one who has suffered a great many conflicts and lost much, but also as if it was to do the world a kindness.
Soon.
I have plans for you.
Everfree- Humanity's Last Stand
Chapter One- Small Beginnings
New York, 2024
More specifically, 6:00 AM, one particularly unremarkable Wednesday morning.
Why do we dream?
It should be a simple enough question, really- every single day, with next to no exception, our brain feels the need to go comatose for hours at a time, plunging us into vivid hallucinations while some small shred of us remains conscious to glimpse at it all.
On paper, it looks like a simple question. Unfortunately, the world is not one big piece of graph paper. And simple questions can't ever have simple answers.
Some have suggested that our brain simply needs to sort memories into order of importance, lest we forget something vital to our everyday lives. Others have suggested that as a hunter-gatherer race, sleep was a useful tactic to evolve so we wouldn't accidentally wander into the waiting maw of some predator of the night. And some, like the notable J Ernest Clark- A comedian who quickly rose to international fame in 2018 before fading even faster into obscurity, suggested that sleep was a necessary measure to 'Mask the transmissions of our brainwaves overnight, so that we wouldn't attract the unwanted attention of our lizard overlords.'
I'm not particularly inclined to believe the last one. But then again, what do I know?
To me, sleep lacks substance. It's a lot like folders in a filing cabinet- it defines each day as a new experience, preventing my life from melding into one long afternoon. I don't notice it as an integral part of my life, and more often than not I take it for granted. All of us do. But without it, we would struggle to find meaning to our existence, as bags of atoms and molecules that looked up at the stars and began to think.
So, what are sleep and dreams to us? Are they like an old friend, whose comforting embrace we fall into each night to ease us of the day's troubles? Or are they a ferryman, carrying us through the shadowy realms of unconsciousness to a new day? Are they a guardian, whose watchful oversight over the cogitations of our mind help us keep our sense of reality in check? Should we fear our sleep and our dreams? The absolute power that our subconscious mind holds over our actions and our thoughts allow us to discern what is real and what is not. What would happen, should that mechanism go awry?
Our dreams mean something. Something so very important.
It was a Wednesday morning. More specifically, a rainy Wednesday morning. Water droplets pattered ceaselessly against the windows as I tried to escape back to the illusionary world of my dream, where I didn't have a life that required near-constant attention and maintenance. Five more minutes, I soundlessly pleaded to some nameless deity.
But sadly, my efforts were in vain. My alarm clock went off.
They say that silence is golden. If so, then the way it was shattered irreverently by my alarm clock that morning would likely be enough to make more than a few rich men turn in their graves.
Synthesized chirping noises filling the room, and my ruined blissful slumber lying in tatters around my tired mind, I turned to my wife for support, which came in the form of a few nudges my way and a muffled “Turhn it orff”.
Closing my eyes, I spoke to the ceiling. “ Carl, turn off the alarm please.”
A few moments of silence, save for the alarm and the low hum of motors, followed by a response.
I'm sorry, but I didn't understand that request. From my earlier records, did you mean “Turn off the fucking alarm or I'll break your legs, if you have any. My head hurts. Does that light have to be so bright”?
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” As long as it makes that godawful noise stop.
The source of the disembodied voice, 'Carl' (as he had opted to be called) was a tangle of transistors and wires, heaped onto a slice of silicon. His body (if it could be called that) rested somewhere in the ceiling.
Carl was one of a handful of remaining original models of ZoneTecs' , a UK- based tech company that burst onto the global scene in 2016 with a revolutionary range of affordable consumer AI systems, of which 'Carl' was an early model. However, a programming glitch in an update that was later attributed to a tub of lard, a computer running an archaic system once known as 'Windows XP' and 4 medium-sized ducks meant that the normally neutral AI gained a somewhat cynical personality. While it was a blow for the company's shareholders, it was not until one AI managed to convice a number of suicide hotline operators to hang themselves with phone cords that the company filed for bankruptcy. The remaining AI's were incinerated, save for a few such as the one that now resided in my ceiling.
I slid out of bed in an almost serpentine manner, not daring to use my legs until my knees contacted the cold wooden floor. Stumbling to my feet, I shambled down the hallway towards the kitchen.
My phone was on the countertop, a bevelled piece of rectangular glass with a slight grey tint and rounded corners. While many had long since opted to use contact lenses and Augmented Reality technology, replacing the once-vital smartphone of old,` I was one of a few who had stubbornly refused. I liked to have a physical piece of technology to hold in my hands, and besides, the idea access to Vreader 24 hours a day bugged me. What's the point of it really, other than to bury productivity 6 feet under? Of course, the Europium price scare of 2016 meant that anything with a screen ended up costing about 4 times more than it did before, but it's a necessary sacrifice for me.
Underneath the frosted glass countertop, a rectangle of subdued white light glowed softly. Dropping my phone into it, the room came alive. The lights turned on, shifting their brightness as to compensate for the fact that I was still hungover, and a panel that sat flush with the rest of the wall flared to life. Conveniently, a kettle of water also started to boil. If it wasn't for his cynicism, I could almost admire Carl's elegance.
...and President Eisenoff announced today a further increase in taxes on the extraction and refining of all crude-oil based products, making it harder still for oil companies to turn over a profit. Since riots in Saudi Arabia over two years ago meant that oil to much of the developed world was cut off, Price shocks coupled with increasing global awareneshave meant that 84% of Americans now are against the further extraction and use of oil. Many have hailed the President's decision as a step in the right direction for reducing environmental pollution, although some worry that reductions in profitability may lead companies like the once-multinational petroleum giant BP to expand their operations as much as possible in order to stave off the tax hikes.
And in other news today, the presenter droned on with an emotionless tone of voice. I could swear that she was descended from robot parents, what with her lively personality and all. New studies have revealed that up to 60% of Alzheimer patients state that they do not in fact have Alzheimers'. More after the break.
Turning down the volume as the adverts filled the screen, now awash with all manner of vivid colours, my phone started to ring. Looking over from the now boiling kettle of water to see who it was, my blood ran cold.
Suddenly forgetting of the world around me, my coffee cup hit the floor. It didn't shatter, nor did it have any liquid in it, as my wife had insisted that we use plastic mugs for this exact reason. It's a shame though, some subconscious part of me thought. The cup breaking as it hit the floor would have added a nice emphatic effect.
You see, there's something you should know about me.
If you were to meet me what, and more importantly who, would you see?
Would you see Max Petrus, the man who tried to escape his childhood too soon, landing a job as a bank clerk and now yearning for days long since past?
Or would you see Maxmillian Percival Petrus, the man who works for an above-government organization that officially doesn't exist?
Of course, we all have secrets. Some are just a lot bigger than others. We control what other people see, and ultimately think, of us. They only see what we want them to see. And nothing more.