Journal Entry, 31/08/2049.
In the end, it wasn’t aliens that brought about the collapse of society. It wasn’t nuclear war, nor any sort of virus or disease. No clouds or zombies to be found, mushroom or otherwise. None of the mainstay currencies collapsed, and AI hadn’t yet developed to the point that it could be any sort of agent in the end of life as we knew it.
No. In the end, we knew our killer. Opened the door and allowed them into the house. ‘Want some tea? Or maybe a biscuit?’ we’d say as they methodically took our belongings and splashed oil about, only realising something was wrong when they were about to leave, lit match in hand. And by then, it was too late.
Global warming.
Just not in the way you’d expect. Noone knew the true cause at first.
In our glorious year of 2037, resources were becoming somewhat scarce, used up through our endless crusade of technological advancement. Faster jumbo jets, faster cars. More convenience for the common man than ever before! You could get from one side of the world to the other and be back before dinner by the time that one scientist turned to the other and said ‘CARL! Where’s all the coal!?’.
So in typical human fashion, what did we do? When life takes away your lemons, don’t plant some yourself, no. That wouldn’t do at all.
Take someone else’s. And thus the Resource Wars began. Boring name I know, but that’s history for you.
Every country in the world started turning on eachother. Noone had cracked nuclear fusion yet, and energy needs were ever-rising. Treaties were slashed, agreements crumpled and dunked in the trash. Amazing how quickly goodwill crumbles when you need something.
It was every nation for itself, not even broaching the internal strife. Public unrest sat at an all-time high. People were suspicious of their neighbours, and crime had never been more prevalent.
So when the ice caps finally melted to the last ten years later and the world was forever altered, the breaking of the old regime was almost too easy. The rising of new powers was less so, much messier and more violent, but the strong dominating the weak isn’t a complex process. Just a bloody one.
Those who could find and take advantage of the cracks in the new system rocketed upwards in personal strength, and by then it was too late for the meek to catch up. It helped that the population halved in less than 3 days, but that was more a symptom of the problem than the cause.
I’d find out all of this later, the rioting and looting, the burning of all I had left behind. Where was I for all of this chaos?
I was being shot at.
—-----------------
I think I can feel the bullets grazing my ears as I run. Deadly bits of metal and flashes of light whip by me as I stupidly remove myself from my previous cover and leg it to the nearest shelter, a deep crater a few feet ahead. I’d seen the telltale flash of an SM before the others, and there wasn’t any time to explain beyond shouting “RUN.”
Some of them were too slow.
An instinct honed by long years of endless fighting twinges in my head, and I drop into a slide under the sleek black tube as it passes where my head once was. That’d be the SM. My guess is quickly proven right as the missile detonates where it lands, scorching my back with heat and sending a plume of dirt sky high. I catch flashes of body parts flying past me through the smoke, scattering over the field as I careen over the edge of the crater.
Every rock and spike of the wall digs into my back like my fatigues aren’t even there. I rocket downwards until my heels dig into the churned earth and bring me to a stop, only sheer experience allowing me to not end up as a heap of limbs. My gun had come loose in the slide, and was slipping further down the slope every moment, though I wasn’t too torn up about that. Never wanted the thing anyway.
My mind is whirring, a constant state of battle-awareness drilled into me by too many years of service. Smoke lays about in a haze, a constant companion if you’ve ever been in an active fighting zone. As I’m contemplating my choices in life, and the more immediate choice of ‘what the hell do I now’, a rattling cough sounds out.
Someone is in the crater with me.
Through an effort of will and much practice, I tune out the constant rattle of gunfire above my head, though I knew I would never forget the sound. It was constant and grating, an ever-present reminder that death was close. But I only have ears for the man laying near me now. I saw quickly he was one of our own, not that it mattered to me at this point.
He lies on his back, a body’s length to my side and a few feet up the slope. I can see from here how white he is, a stark contrast to the black mud of the battlefield. His left hand grasps his side like he’d die if he let go. Judging by the blood through his fingers, he might. His eyes meet mine.
“Y-You’re Lawrence right?”
I recognise him, but I don’t know him well. Don’t even know his name. He’d joined our battalion late, and you could see the brief flashes of sadness and grief flash across the face of every veteran in the tent when he’d walked in. Myself included.
‘Couldn’t be more than twenty-four.’
‘Poor kid.’
‘Another lamb for the slaughter…’
Turns out we were right. I drag myself towards him through the muck, keeping as low as possible, and know this would be yet another moment that will never leave me. This stupid-ass war. All the same, no matter the era.
Pointless.
His eyes are wild, bright and blue, set into a face that still hasn’t lost all its baby fat. He’s dressed in the identical fatigues we were all given, same as me. His breathing comes quick, shallow in the way of so many dead men. He’d lost his helmet at some point, though his blonde hair was matted with enough sweat, grime and blood to almost serve as a replacement.
He’s conventionally attractive, in a naive sort of way. High cheekbones, expressive eyes. We could have chatted over a drink another time, another place, if I were a few years younger. Decades younger. Some nice bar back in New York, in a world that hadn’t gone to shit. If there wasn’t a hole right through his abdomen.
Even now he hadn’t realised it. His gaze was filled with hope, looking at me as if I was his saviour, while his own blood leaked into the groundwater. I must look it as well, sliding into this hole with him like GI Joe on a mission. Like I wasn’t just trying to save my own skin.
But I knew. I’d seen enough situations like this, been in enough, to know that he was going to die. Even if we could somehow escape this fucking hole, even if I could drag him all the way back to our lines without being riddled with more holes, the chances of him pulling through aren’t even slim.
They’re non-existent, based solely on the sheer amount of blood I could see leaking through his grasp. My own chances aren’t much better, but I give him a smile regardless as I pull myself to his side.
“Got it in one kid. I’m afraid I don’t know yours.”
A feeble grin plays upon his lips. “Al-ucgh!,” he sputters, a little blood leaving his mouth, but he tries again, “Alex. Alex Williams. G-god, I’m glad you're here.”
I know the feeling. The only thing worse than dying is dying on your own. I don’t know if the kid knows he’s on borrowed time though. The mud underneath him is dyed crimson. How long had he been here?
I glance upwards at the hail of metal and light flashing over us. If you don’t like the smell of gunsmoke, the searing burn of ozone from the new age energy guns is so much worse. Hurts more as well, having experienced both. Nothing like a partially cauterised baseball-sized pit in your flesh.
“I’m glad you’re here too Alex. This might be the end for us though.”
Surprisingly he shakes his head, though the movement takes him some effort, “It is for me at least.” His hand twitches upwards a little from his side. Right where his kidney should’ve been, there was now a gaping pit. The wound was ragged and burnt at the edges, bright and inflamed at the centre, the telltale signs of a light based injury. ”But you’re okay sir. You could make it.”
I grimace at the address and don’t bother to rebut his first point, “None of that now, I’m no sir or anything else. Just a soldier, same as you.”
Alex just grins at me, “With all due r-respect sir, I’ve heard the stories. A-Anyone who’s survived as long as you have deserves the title.”
“Bah!” I thump back down into the cold mud next to him, “The stories are exaggerated. And a decade isn’t that long, kid.” Though it feels longer. I've been able to feel my age catching up to me recently, all the military training in the world unable to halt the march of time and accumulation of injuries. Aches and pains, and my knees aren’t as good as they used to be. Nana always said they’d be the first to go.
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Alex was silent. I looked over, fearing the worst but he was still breathing. The worst thing about plight blaster wounds was that they killed you slowly. The colloquial name was accurate, if unimaginative. They shot light, with a p-for-pain. Lots and lots of pain.
When he speaks again, his voice is weaker, but steady, “That’s not why I’m glad though. I can’t do it myself.” Slowly he lifts his right hand, and I see for the first time the pistol he holds. His arm falls back, “All outta bullets. I don’t think I’d have the strength anyway.”
I blink at him, and reevaluate my earlier impression. He knows his situation, knows he isn’t gonna make it. The hope in his eyes wasn’t hope that I would save him.
It was the opposite.
Seeing my shock, he chuckles a little, “I was a med student before the draft. Even then, I had hoped I’d be placed with the medical unit but apparently it doesn’t even matter. I always wanted to save lives, not take them…” His expression turns rueful, and his eyes move to where my gun had ended up. “It does mean I know this is the last wound I’ll ever take though, even if it takes another hour. So.”
It still took a moment to process. If he was one of the old soldiers, those who had seen enough and were at peace with their eventual end, then it would be easier to swallow. I knew any of them would do the same for me if my luck ever ran out, and I for them.
But there was something viscerally horrid about a young man with an otherwise bright future asking for that. His gaze was pleading now.
I knew what I had to do.
I didn’t say anything more, just gave him a short nod and slid further down the slope to grab my rifle. One of the newer models that still shot bullets, it was sleek and vicious looking, mass produced as a weapon of war. Now at least, I’d be using it to end suffering rather than cause it.
The first bullet slams into the dirt next to my head, and I immediately push, flinging myself to the side and turning my body and gun to face where the bullet had come from. Several more bury themselves in the dirt where I’d been, their source a man at the edge of the crater, dressed in the black bodyarmor of the Confederacy.
Seeing his potshots failed, he immediately tries to reposition. He turns, moving to duck behind the lip of the crater. But then there’s a bullet in his head.
I lay back, barrel of my rifle smoking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the enemy soldier slowly fall down, a new hole in his ear and probably out of the other one.
520.
I’d never lost track of the number, even though it was probably much higher if you counted everything I’d done. But whenever I knew I had taken the life of another, I increased the counter. At the start it was almost an achievement, my youthful self finding pride in the amount of people I’d slain. Heh, I used to brag about it in the mess hall. Dumb.
Now I never brought it up. It was no longer a source of pride, but one of shame. I’d never been able to let go of the practice. I felt like I’d be doing myself a disservice if I forgot. It was to keep me accountable, to remind me that no matter what good I did in my life, I’d taken that opportunity away from so many others.
My own personal form of torture.
Returning to Alex felt like it took longer than it probably did, my thoughts whirling. Tempered by hard-earned pragmatism but whirling nonetheless. Already the life I just took was pushed to the back of my mind, replaced by the one I was about to take.
The thought of what I had to do was hard, but I’d done it before. Just never with someone so young. Someone the age of my daughters. If it was one of them asking me to do the same, to put them out of their misery, I… I don’t know if I could.
But I could with this boy. No, this man. He deserved that much. Does that make me a hypocrite? Hell if I know, but it doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
I scramble back up the slope, the constant smoke in the air stinging my eyes. By the time I get back to Alex he’s moved himself up the slope into a somewhat sitting position, probably fighting through unimaginable pain to do so. His eyes, incredibly expressive, are predictably scared. But a core of steel runs through them, and I find myself wondering where he found it. What events in this boy’s life had led him here, to this hole, with that look in eyes?
I force myself to meet those eyes through the ever-present smoke, hoping the question in my own was evident as I lift the gun. Are you sure?
I see the same thing I’ve seen a million times when someone has a gun pointed at them. Utter terror was always the first reaction to your own death, it was human nature. No matter your bravery, your belief in an afterlife or whether you just thought you were a hard-ass, it was always the same. Everyone baulked when faced with the end.
But that same steel surfaced again with a wince, and a glance down at the wound in his stomach. He nodded, “Just… 316 Foxrun in Brooklyn… Could you tell her I died peacefully? Not like she thought I would.”
I give a solemn nod, committing the address to memory, “She got a name?”
“J-Judie Ivercast. Tell her I love her, I always have. Promise?”
Childhood sweetheart maybe? A friend or a lover? Who knows. But I’d do my damndest to deliver the message, especially since it was so close to my own home, if I ever got back.
“I promise. Anything else?”
He smiles, a strange sad smile, and shakes his head. He closes his eyes and lays back into the mud, “Make it quick.”
I raise the rifle to my eye, not that I could miss at this range. Despite it all, despite the complete chaos surrounding us both, he does look peaceful lying there. Like a man who would’ve liked to live longer, but has made peace with not doing so. I envy him, just a little.
I look at my hands, pointing a weapon at a man barely out of his teens. They aren’t quite wrinkled yet, but they are certainly weathered. Riddled with scars and calluses, a constant homage to what I’d struggled through.
I would like to tell you they were trembling, that the prospect of what I was about to do scared me out of my wits. Or that rage was simmering in my stomach. But I’d be lying.
I was too broken for that.
My voice comes in a haunted whisper, “Goodbye, Alex.”
I close my eyes, and pull the trigger.
521.
—---------
When I opened my eyes and saw Alex lying there, a smile on his face and a hole in his forehead, something had changed.
The first thing I notice isn’t the big thing.
No, the first thing is the lack of noise. The sound that haunts my dreams and waking hours, the constant rattle of gunfire has…
Stopped.
I look up, wondering if maybe I’d suddenly gone deaf. But no. There were no deadly projectiles flying above my head, no searing balls of plasma. In fact the clouds that had laid the entire battlefield in shadow were parting, sunlight streaming in rivulets through the slowly fading smoke.
The second thing is the pain.
A slow burning is rising through my body, starting from my feet and slowly moving upwards. It feels like my own self is turning against me, like every muscle, bone and organ is suddenly straining to rip free. The pain is incredible. More than being shot by any sort of weapon, more than the one time a transient in NYC had stabbed me worryingly close to my junk. I grit my teeth. And it’s rising FAST.
What the fuck is happening? Some kind of sonic weapon? I’ve been on the wrong end of one of those before and it felt similar, though nowhere near this bad. The pain has reached my chest by now, blazing like a bonfire in my flesh.
Someone is screaming, and it takes me a second to realise it’s me. My fists are clenched around the gun I still hold at my side, and I can’t let go. My mind is yelling at me to MOVE, but my legs aren’t responding. They’re locked in place, along with the rest of me.
Is this how I die? Without even knowing what’s killing me?
The pain reaches into my head. Something is IN there, writhing, twisting! Sharp hooks feel like they’ll rip out every memory I’ve ever made.
“aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Darkness.
—--------------
When I wake it’s to sunlight and lots of shouting.
I’d collapsed at some point, and I’m lying face down in the mud like a marionette with its strings cut. The pain is gone, but my body feels… different.
For a second I don’t even move, just lay there. That was, without a doubt, the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I like to think that in my forty-something years of life I have experienced more pain than most.
I’ve been shot, stabbed with everything from a fork to a machete, burnt, almost drowned and I’ve stepped on a Lego more than once. The worst I’d ever felt until now was a plight blast to the abdomen, similar to Alex’s fatal wound.
Luckily nothing vital had been hit, and I’d been dragged to a medic quick enough to not die of blood loss, but it had still put me out of commission for six months. I have a wicked scar to show for it too, and doing sit-ups is much harder than it had been before.
But that was something else. It felt like my very soul was being scoured with steel wool and lemon juice. Weirdly, there’s none of that now. In every instance of pain I’d encountered before, the aftermath was almost worse than the initial wound, but my body is… fine?
In fact I feel no pain whatsoever.
I should probably get up.
Slowly I lift myself out of the muck, and immediately notice that I’m not just pain-free. I feel great. There is no grinding of joints, no muscles protesting at being made to work. I haven't felt like this since my twenties.
There’s still shouting, a lot of it actually. Seems like no-one noticed my presence yet.
I look at Alex, and drop my rifle. It hits the ground with a wet thud. Sighing, and with none of the aches that I’m used to, I lower myself next to him.
I have no idea what's happening. Never in the many battles I’ve been in have things just stopped and not restarted a second after. Usually there’s a big shift, like a roiling cloud of gas or someone sighting a big-ass bomb that causes these kinds of moments. I guess this one was whatever that pain was. Did everyone feel that?
I take a second to just enjoy the sunlight on my face, tilting my head up to meet the rays. In reality it was just this morning that I sat down last, but it feels like an age has passed since then.
That’s when I notice the big thing.
Since I woke up there’s been…something in my head. I only realise it now. It’s like a.. tab in my mind? It somehow feels like a notification you might get on a phone, just waiting patiently for me to pay attention to it.
Huh. That’s really weird, what is tha-
PROGENITOR SYSTEM RELEASED
PREVIOUS ITERATION SHUT DOWN UNEXPECTEDLY
REBOOTING…
REBOOT SUCCESSFUL
GATHERING DATA…
DATA GATHERED
ESTIMATED INTERVAL BETWEEN SEALING AND REBOOT: 4 MILLION YEARS
UPDATING SYSTEM BASED ON GATHERED DATA…
UPDATE COMPLETE
INITIALISING...
PROGENITOR SYSTEM ONLINE
CONGRATULATIONS! HUMANITY HAS BEEN REINTEGRATED INTO THE PROGENITOR SYSTEM.
YOU HAVE BEEN RESTORED TO PERFECT HEALTH AS A REINTEGRATION REWARD! THIS IS A ONE-TIME EVENT AND WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.
PLEASE WAIT FOR SYNCHRONOUS GLOBAL INTEGRATION