“I’ve decided,” David said. “We need to know.”

The week had passed all too quickly. A week where David decided the help of four youngsters helping with spring planting outweighed unexpected and uninvited guests. A week where his amused platitudes gave way to caution and acceptance as the power stayed out and the world was silently empty of modern technology. A week of no cars, no planes, and few groups of people fleeing west on foot carrying impromptu luggage. A week of biting my tongue lest David kick us out of his farm.

Guessing David’s age was hard. His skin, the consistency of hard tanned leather, made him seem ancient, contrasted with his fit, muscular build; however, would blend in on the free climbing circuit. When we arrived on his doorstep, he listened to, as he described it, our wild story and gave us room & board for helping him around the farm. The seasonal workers from eastern Europe that were supposed to help him never arrived, and we were the right nut jobs at the right time to help each other out. As the week went on, his good-natured jokes about aliens petered out as his excuses about it being just a small power outage gave way to questions about EMPs.

“We also need to protect your farm,” I countered. “What’s stopping any wandering groups from settling in while we’re gone?” Frustrated, I was sick of David’s my way or the highway attitude. Sick of playing nice to fit in. Sick of banal conversations about pointless topics. I wanted this to be my journey of solitude, not group bonding with strangers on holiday. I didn’t like people, didn’t trust people, and hated myself for feeling that way. Maybe I should ditch these folks and make my way to the coast. Sometimes the worst thing you can do to someone is leave them to their own incompetence.

“Point,” he said, placing both hands flat down on the kitchen table and standing up. “Sauvez-moi des Américains arrogants! Why don’t you go out there and figure out what’s going on? Don’t come back without some food.”

“Like you’d believe anything you didn’t see with your own eyes,” I began before Ian interrupted.

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION

“Oi! Let’s not be hasty!” Ian said, both palms held up in front of him. “Safety in numbers, remember?”

It took me a second to recognize words that flashed in front of my eyes before quickly fading. That was enough to push me into a full-blown panic attack. After a week of doing nothing, things were moving too fast. With years of practice, I locked everything down and focused on sitting still before I freaked everyone out by dashing out of the room. After the initial flare washed over me and I could breathe, I shifted my focus on taking slow deep breaths while mentally saying, breathe in, breathe out. Was I hallucinating? Did the week’s stress push me over the edge?

“Nous avons besoin de Jacob,” Claire said from the doorway, defusing the tension. “C’est lui qui savait que c’était un EMP. Que le courant resterait en dehors. Ces gens fuiraient les villes. Tu veux le jeter dehors ? Très bien, nous irons avec lui aussi.”

I wanted this conversation to be over; to not have to hide my feelings. People take advantage if they see weakness. The world wouldn’t need lawyers if you could trust people.

“Right. We need supplies because it may be weeks until power’s restored. We also need information. Let’s split up with a couple going out to scout around a bit, and the rest staying to build up better defenses. That last group looked pretty hungry,” Ian said.

“Comment ai-je pu éviter le mariage et devenir directement responsable de tout savoir sur les enfants,” David said, sitting back down. “Fine, Jacob and I will scout out the town and see if we gather supplies.” David gave me a hard stare. “You’re right. I need to see this with my own eyes.”

Looking away, I said, “Fine, I’l go get ready.” Anything to get out of that room and examine my head space. Focusing on looking calm, I slowly stood up and walked out the back door. Outside and alone, I let out the breath I was holding and gave myself a good shake to loosen my stiff muscles. Time to go back to dealing with things one step at a time. I made my way across the muddy ground to the bunkhouse we were staying in. It was a plain, open room with a row of metal bunk beds. A small room in the back contained a toilet and shower for communal use. This was the space David used to store the seasonal workers when they were working his land. Yes, David was a real charmer. No wonder there wasn’t a Mrs. David and company.

Sitting on my bunk, I said, “Status.” My vision filled with a translucent heads up display that took inspiration from modern FPS shooters. The top center of my field of view looked like a six degrees-of-freedom compass currently reading:

90°/15°

So, I was looking east and a little up from the horizon. The upper right corner read:

QRP: 0

The dream mentioned Q radiation. Did QRP stand for QR something? Points, potential, penalty? Flashing around my field of vision was a tiny crosshair. After a moment, I realized the crosshair pointed to what was holding my attention. Focusing my attention on the bunk across the aisle.

Range: 2.6m/QRP: 0

The text briefly replacing the crosshair before switching back. Crazy or not, stuff was definitely getting real. Having never visited, I suddenly missed Kansas. Right, one step at a time. I spent some time playing with the crosshair until Ian entered the bunkhouse. Yes, I pointed the crosshair at him; it read:

QRP:0.

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“So, that happened. Again,” Ian said, sitting down on the bunk across from me. “Why do you two keep going at each other?”

“Rule 11,” I quipped out of habit. I was too tired to keep my thoughts to myself. “David’s right. We need to get some answers, and we should be the ones to go.” I grinned at Ian’s shocked expression. “We’ll either sort things out or kill each other.”

“I think you’re forgetting Rule 9, so cut out that loaner attitude.”

Getting up, I turned my back to Ian and pretended to pack my things. “Look, I need to get my stuff together for this supply run.” After a few minutes, I heard Ian get up and leave.

Finally, I thought, sitting back down on my bunk. It was time to accept that the thing in my head was real or I was too far gone to tell the difference. Remembering the dream, he said he had provided me with an open system I could change, so there should be a development environment or administrative console.

“Console,” I tried. A small flickering light appeared just in the upper corner of my vision. I turned to look, and it stayed persistently at the corner of my vision. Closing my eyes, the light resolved itself to an old school terminal line prompt. Heh, the end of the world runs on Linux. Being a poor homeless college student, I didn’t own a computer and instead used the computer lab for my classwork. The normal ones were in constant use, and only a few computers running Linux were consistently available. Now, how do I type without a keyboard?

It didn’t take long to learn that I just needed to visualize what I wanted to accomplish, and it would happen. In my home directory was a project folder filled with source code files. Why couldn’t the super computer in my head have a better way of developing software than a Linux console? As fast as that thought flittered through my consciousness, the Linux console dissolved into an outline of the Vitruvian Man in repose. A multitude of lines in fractal patterns covered the body; their meaning just beyond comprehension. The lines seemed to interconnect at seven points along the spine. There was a haze that I instinctively knew was Q radiation being absorbed by the seven points and defusing along the lines. The Q radiation seemed to clump in locations where my limited knowledge of anatomy thought my major organs were. The easiest spots to guess were organs like my brain, eyes, or lungs. Other spots were harder as I didn’t know what organ was where in my chest cavity. The remaining radiation seemed to collect within my major muscles. Intuition flashed like a lightbulb and I realized this was the closest visualization that described reality.

Trying many techniques to manage my anxiety, the most effective was meditation. In my drive to understand the underpinnings of meditation, I studied several types of eastern philosophies, including Buddhism. The seven points along the spine seemed to coincide with the seven chakras where Buddhism believed the seven spiritual energies intersected. While it raised the interesting question of was this evidence that chakras were real or was the funky computer just using my knowledge to help visualize the truth, I pushed the question aside until I had the luxury of thinking beyond survival.

Focusing on the seven points, an overlay of eight lines of text appeared; seven lines aligned next to each point and the eight’s point hovered above the figure.

QR: 1

Visualization: 0

Perception: 0

Understanding: 0

Empathy: 0

Desire: 0

Feeling: 0

Will: 0

I knew QR represented the buildup of radiation in my body and that I could somehow convert that radiation into different potential effects represented by the seven categories. The conversion didn’t seem to be automatic, and I somehow knew that, unless converted, it would cause damage either through sickness or mutation. Remembering the glowing blue eyes and cracked skin, I knew mutation meant more X-Men than gluten and peanut allergy. While I initially considered Buddhism’s cultivation techniques as an answer to converting Q radiation, I didn’t think that was the path a computerized battle management system of the apocalypse would follow.

Again, as if reading my thoughts, the visualization changed into my favorite game integrated development environment, Gadot. I won’t spend too much time singing the praises of building game systems in Gadot, but, for a broke college student, it was the promise land of indy game development. It organized the computer code into a graph of related functionality, with each node being a simple script. I quickly dived in and started reviewing how the battle management program worked.

I first focused on how the program ingested and converted radiation. Whereas my charkas based visualization seemed elegant, the program used a brutal, coarse conversion into what it labeled as XP. The user could spend XP on either classes or abilities. The user could purchase each multiple times, with the cost rising exponentially. Most games I was aware of automatically gave the user a single class, accumulated XP determined what level the user was, and each level then gave certain abilities and skills. This system seemed to be more flexible in that it allowed multiple classes where each class determined the choices of abilities. Digging deeper into the code, I discovered that each chosen class actually chose how the Q radiation converted between the seven nodes in the body visualization. The act of spending XP on a class actually converted the radiation. Class also somehow interacted with chosen abilities to strengthen sub-patterns within the fractal lines of the prior visualization body. Intrigued, I looked at the code representing the act of buying an ability. The list of abilities didn’t seem to be determined by the class at all. Instead, each available ability had a series of requisite conditions based on the strength of each of the seven points, and, optionality, the strength of a sub-pattern of lines within the body. Switching back to the Vitruvian Man visualization, I realized I could instead cultivate my body by imagining the radiation flowing through the seven charas and through the lines in my body until the energy flowed smoothly instead of clumping like it seemed to do now. Switching back and forth between the two views, the lines within the Vitruvian Man didn’t align with the patterns representing each ability. Did that mean I would somehow use cultivation to carve out these energy patterns in my body? How would I even do that? Could I mentally manipulate the radiation? How?

Eventually, I couldn’t tease out anymore, understanding from reviewing the code. I remembered something my father once said to me when I was quoting some book to him, “You can’t find knowledge in dusty books, only information. If you want to know what that information actually means, you need to earn it by doing.”

With that in mind, I quickly got ready for bed and laid down, acting to sleep. Beginning to meditate, I visualized my body pulling in energy through my seven chakras and flowing through my body. I had trouble visualizing the energy flowing smoothly; it wanted to clump. As my focus deepened and became more dreamlike, additional senses engaged, and I felt the energy like a viscious syrup burning and pooling in my organs. A cloying sickness filled my nose, smelling like a body left to rot in the sun. I knew the radiation wasn't causing me to mutat, instead it was slowly killing me. Engaging a will honed from years forcing myself out of bed and into a world I hated, years of making myself to go to college, years of fighting debt collectors and their army of lawyers, I made the syrup move. With each breath, I applied my will until the energy, in fits and starts, flowed.