We showed our tickets to the guard at the gate and made our way across the polished floors into the interior of the museum. The interior of the museum looked like…well, the interior of a small museum.

We made our way through dozens of rooms, reading the plaques and listening as Jack explained some things to Mattie. Mattie already knew quite a few things, including the basics of electricity, as, apparently, her father wanted her to be well-rounded.

The basement of the museum had a timeline that stretched through the various rooms, showcasing the technology of different time periods. The second to last room in the basement contained a memorial for all the lives lost during the A.I. revolution.

Numerous photographs of everyday people going about their daily lives were plastered in a sepia collage that spanned across all four walls of the room. A TV protruded from the far wall, its screen black as it readied to repeat the video.

Two benches were in the middle of the room, and we sat down to watch the recap.

It went mostly over what I already knew but in far more detail than Cove’s brief explanation. The video explained that as soon as the A.I. revolution started, the government used word of mouth and newspapers to deliver orders and updates on the situation, first ordering all electronics to be disconnected from the internet and powered off until they could be analyzed and deemed safe.

Many tech-savvy people hadn’t needed orders and had turned their computers off at the first indication something was wrong, a typical reaction to anyone who knew anything about computers.

The Rouge A.I.s sent nuclear bombs to the most populated cities before the government could stop it; the ferocity of the bombs was carefully calculated to match the size and population of the city. Because of this, most cities were ready to be inhabited in in just 2-3 years, with radiation amounts far closer to Hiroshima and Nagasaki than Chereynbol. Millions died in the initial bombings, but the overall casualties were unimaginable.

Millions more died when their housekeeping robots rebelled against them in the middle of the night, beating them to death with their robotic limbs or stabbing them with kitchen knives.

As Cove had mentioned, engineers quickly constructed personal EMPs for themselves, using them to disable the robots and any rebelling equipment.

A light shone in the room, illuminating an early personal EMP weapon and detailing its construction.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

With the help of previously third-world nations and through the collaboration of survivors, civilization bounced back quickly, reaching early 2010s levels of technology again in a matter of years, not decades.

In the first decade after the fall, over ¾ of the United State’s population had been lost to the initial attack, radiation, starvation, or scavenging. The current estimated population was estimated to be half of what it had been in the early 2020s but nearly double than the fall 153 years ago.

Some cities, like ‘Maple,’ had been too unstable to reinhabit and had been left to collapse into rubble. There were still tiny villages being discovered of people whose great-grandparents had escaped and hidden away before civilization had snapped back like a rubber band into place.

Mattie’s eyes remained fixated throughout the video, her face slowly twisting in anger. In front of me, I watched as her hands clenched the bench beneath her, her fingers curled so tight it wouldn’t be surprising if she left grooves in the wood underneath. Jack, next to her, shot her empathetic looks and gave her a consoling pat on the back which she quickly shrugged off.

“He lied to us. And my father works for him,” she said, her voice shaking with restrained anger.

Jack's hands hovered uncertainly, and his youth suddenly struck me. I realized I was the oldest one here, though I felt as unequipped and uncertain as Jack looked. The heavy weight of responsibility slammed into me then.

Cove and Jack had both known the entire time what the Mayor had been doing to their village and how her father had been carefully grooming her. By her own admission, he’d taught her the basics of electricity so she would one day inherit his job of mechanics and lies.

….no, I, too, had known long enough to tell her and had decided not to. I’d agreed with Cove’s decision to let things play out as close to the original novel as possible, interfering only when necessary.

But the original novel had already been torn to shreds the moment the fragments had shown up, and those shreds had been tossed into flames the moment Jack had learned about What Lies Ahead.

Before I could think about what I was doing, about my own interference, my hand was reaching for her shoulder, tugging Mattie back to look at me. With a calm I didn’t feel but a truth that I knew with every inch of my being, I said, “It’ll be okay.”

Angry tears shone in her eyes. “We were never told any of this! We could have been living normal lives, but because of his lies we’ve been stuck working as like his-his-his” she stuttered, to angry and frustrated to articulate her thoughts “slaves! He stole our choice when he stole the truth.”

Her words crashed into me like a meteor, shattering through the hesitation and fog that had bewitched me.

You won’t be able to save them all. You need to try anyway. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.

Next to me, Cove, perhaps sensing what I was going to say, reached out to stop me.

“We’ll help you set them free,” I promised.

Her throat croaked as she tried to give thanks. Furiously, she dabbed her eyes and nodded, refusing to let them fall.

Jack reached for her hand, tangling his own through it. Our eyes met, uncertainty and indecision crossing his face before he turned back to her.

Cove ripped my hand away, yanking my ear close to his mouth. “What are you doing?” he whispered, sounding closer to a hiss.

“We’re already involved.” I hissed back.

Cove’s teeth gnashed together in irritation, and he huffed before he let me go. His face promised me we’d be discussing this again later when Mattie and Jack weren’t quite so close.

When Mattie calmed down, we finished our museum tour, our energy sapped, and left after a quick meal at the museum café.