Most people speculated that the world would end in fire, and the vast majority of them assumed that that fire would be nuclear. The atomic annihilation of nations in a mutually destructive moment of glory as automated systems responded to other automated systems, a series of dominoes set off by a pair of keys turning in locks. While the nukes existed and the capacity for them to burn the world had never vanished, Sam doubted that the missiles had ever left their siloes.

Volcanoes, meteors, all manner of wide-scale natural and man-made disasters, even religious or spiritual means, and none of them had caused the end. Instead, when the end had come, it had come at the beckoning of superscience.

In the final days, somebody had gotten incredibly brave. Sam would never know who they were or what they’d precisely done, he doubted that anybody ever would, but they’d cracked the lid on every single piece of superscience the world over in an instant. The entire planet had turned into a patchwork of experiments gone wrong and science run rampant, impossible creatures and warps in space time. There was an anomaly just outside that he’d been tracking through the cameras, a stabilized gravitic warp that drew in whatever approached it, crushed it down, and then launched it out the other side faster than sound.

Sam had been lucky. When everything had cracked and he’d realized what was going on, he’d stumbled his way into some government database, all of its server security stripped in an instant. On that database was listed a series of extremely long-term bunker residences, meant to support a handful of people for decades. One had been nearby, and when he’d taken a single look at the news, he’d packed a bag and driven for it as quickly as possible.

He watched a monitor as, on the screen, a creature three meters tall and made out of what looked to be blood red tubes wandered into an unnaturally smooth depression in the ground. It shrieked as its limbs were caught in twisted gravity, and the entire thing was yanked into its hold. For a moment, he was almost sure that he saw it be spaghettified, as something on the edge of a singularity was. After only a moment, it had been compressed into a piece of mass the size of a baseball, which was immediately flung towards the distance.

The bunker hadn’t been guarded or anything, and as far as he was aware, the particular flavour of science stored here had been the more mundane kinds. He’d bunkered down here, watching through the cameras as the world around him twisted and heaved in the passing of abominations of science he could scarce comprehend. Creatures and phenomena that he’d thought restricted entirely to the likes of media, brought to life by some hacker popping every lock in the world at once.

As far as Sam could tell, the person, whomever they were, had done it for the sake of truth. As far as he was concerned, he thought that perhaps the governments and corporations of the world should have kept their secrets, if this was the other option. Maybe they’d intended something different, or maybe this had been an accident in the first place, but he supposed that it didn’t matter in the end. The milk was all spilt, and there was little value in figuring out who’d done it or why.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance as the soldering iron he was holding refused to melt a bead of solder on the PCB in front of him. He touched it to the spool of solder again, getting a good drop of it, then pressed it to the point and pushed a wire into the molten metal before drawing the iron away. Gently, he took the wire between his fingers and tugged lightly, nodding when the bead of solder held.

The bunker had radios. He said had, because they’d all been smashed when he got here, reduced to bits and parts spread across the workshop. But Sam had experience with electronics, and there were all the tools he’d need in the cabinets and plenty of power from what he was beginning to suspect was a reactor of some kind, so it wasn’t a problem as far as he was concerned. He’d scraped together enough functioning parts to build a complete radio, and now he was simply soldering wires and assembling it from the bits he had.

Smoke rose in the light from the iron as he touched it to another point on the PCB, pulling away the damaged wire that had been there. The wisp was drawn into the overhead ducts, pulled away by the ventilation system, to wherever it pulled outlet gasses. Putting a radio back together wasn’t something he had huge hopes for, but it was a way to pass the time that wasn’t just staring at the security cameras.

He drew a wire into place and soldered it in, then jumped as the speaker crackled. Hurriedly, he started searching for the power source- he hadn’t wanted the damn thing plugged in, it could fry, and a battery fire caused by a short circuit was the last thing he needed to deal with. His hands froze, however, when the speaker kept making sounds.

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It was like… he shook his head. That was impossible, yeah? He was under concrete and he didn’t think- hold on. He traced the antennae wire, and found that he’d wired in a circuit board that had a black line running from it to a port in the wall. He touched the plug, then turned to stare at the speaker, which had resolved into… something. He thought.

It was all static, air waves beaten by whatever was out there and interference no doubt wrapping the world, but… he paused, listening carefully. The static warbled, hissing at him from the speaker, and after a moment the tension went out of his shoulders. He’d misheard, clearly; there was no pattern in the random noise. With quick motions, he disconnected the power source and the antennae from his patched-together piece of equipment, then sat back down and went back to work.

Over the course of hours, the radio slowly came together, wires and boards. He’d carefully inspected each, looking for damaged or burnt circuitry, discarding the boards that were less than perfect and selecting only those that had no damage at all from the pile of parts he’d salvaged. The rough schematics he’d sketched based on how they’d been arranged in the various units guided him through the necessary parts and repairs, as he slowly replaced wires and soldered joints. Occasionally, he’d glance up at the wall of monitors in front of him, sometimes catching a glimpse of a creature or of something happening in the distance. Every so often, something would wander into the range of the gravitic field and be sucked in, though it was usually pretty quick and clean.

There were meals, there was sleep, and there was work on the radio. He tracked the passage of time by the exterior cameras, watching the sun rise and fall and the time stamps increment. Sometimes he explored the bunker he’d found himself in, finding armouries, stocks of safety gear. Various pieces of technology that were more advanced were scattered throughout, experiments secreted away when their projects were canceled or shelved for future use. He found orders to that effect, scattered here and there throughout the place, consigning some tech to storage and some to wait in the dark until it was believable that they be used.

He’d found a bulkhead that was plastered with the recognizable yellow and black trefoil. He’d chosen to do nothing about that bulkhead, and had resolved not to even go down the hallway it was contained in. He’d found dosimeters in the stocks, and they read a level that was below background, so not anything he’d worry about. He’d still left one of them turned on and facing the camera down there, however; no excuse to be reckless.

Eventually, however, he came to it: the last board of the radio.

He turned the thing over in his hands, inspecting it. Capacitors were good, chips were good, no damage to any of the pads. The solders were all intact, as far as he could tell, and nothing had been ripped from the board or was missing. Satisfied, he clipped it between two tiny alligator clamps and went to work putting in the necessary wires.

It didn’t take him long to add it to the organized mess of the patched-together radio. He’d found a shell that was more or less intact for it and had slowly assembled the parts inside of it, leading to something that was more or less intact. He soldered the last wire into place, then slid the board onto plastic pegs, putting in a couple of screws. He double-checked the entire array, ensuring that none of his solder jobs had been poor and that all of the components were intact. Finally, he picked up a sheet of plastic with screw holes, slotting it into its access panel and putting in each of the screws that held it in place.

Moment of truth. He ran the antennae cable from its jack, and found himself holding the power input. He hesitated for a moment, then huffed and plugged it in. He winced as the radio shrieked, then settled into static, with-

His eyes widened as he heard the same pattern in the static that he’d thought he’d heard before. The bursts, much clearer now that the radio was complete, varying lengths and… Morse. It was such a basic code, basic enough that anybody could recognize it, and recognize it he did. He rushed to a cabinet, throwing books out of it before digging out an ancient translation book for Morse, then practically threw himself into the chair with a piece of paper and a pen.

“Ell. Ay. Cee. Ay. Tee- location?” He muttered himself as he rapidly translated what he could hear into understandable words.

As he listened, he realized that the message was on repeat. Through its repetition, he got every word of it, written out and decoded. He scribbled down the last word, then leaned back, staring at what he’d translated from patterns of static.

Taken refuge in facility. Working for solution. Location, and then a series of numbers- coordinates. Holding out, need assistance. Any help welcome. Shelter and safety. Message repeats.

He leaned back in his chair, absorbing the words.

This bunker was a fine place, safe and secure- for the moment. He had food and water, though that wouldn’t last forever. But what was he doing with it? Sitting here, simply idling. Survival was important, but this wasn’t just going to blow over, he knew that. The message had said ‘solution’. They’d asked for help. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but…

He looked at one of the cameras, labeled ‘HANGAR ONE’. There, in the center of the space, stood a hulking figure. Arms and legs, a torso, towering above what a human would. He’d been reading the manual during meals, figuring that it would be his best chance of survival if the bunker was ever breached. Now, however, the mech was something more; if the promise was true, then it was something that could make a difference, potentially in saving what was left of the world.

It only took a moment for him to come to a decision. He snatched up the manual from where it was lying to one side and leaped to his feet, already pawing through its pages for the place that he’d left off.

He had some preparation to do. But once he was done? Well, then he’d be on his way, to make whatever difference he could.