Trying to return the way they came wasn’t really an option. If Humility was to be believed, the chances of the transhumans failing to track them were small. They were good enough to still be on their tail, despite hours that had already passed.
It wasn’t a matter of losing them. It was a matter of getting enough distance to make them decide that they had to go back, as they were at too much of a risk while pursuing an unknown force through an unknown territory, so far away from their nearest base.
There was a high chance that they had already given up. Being angry at wrongly identifying them as surviving Pure could only bring you so far, even combined with sheer genocidal anti-human murderboner.
But… they couldn’t return to their original base, since its location was outed to a group that could annihilate them with a fragment of its full firepower and would probably do it simply out of hatred for humanity.
They were yet to find a place that felt properly habitable. So, for now, they continued their long journey.
Naturally, this meant that they had to brave whatever was waiting for them ahead.
“Humility.” He decides to ask before they depart from the ruined checkpoint. “What can you tell me about that local… ethnopolity, was it?” It might come useful if they run into survivors. The chances for that were minimal judging from the age of the corpses, but…
“Republic of New Springfield.” Humility replies. “Distantly related to the United States of your time. Speaks English, so at least that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Revenant manages to restrain the ‘Springfield, seriously?’ reaction, but he does hear Decay groan in the background. So many centuries in the future and that name is still used? Wow. Then again, he studied to become a hero in Smallville, he isn’t one to judge.
“Political system: Authoritarian Democracy.” Humility continues. “Member of the Alliance for the Preservation of Democracy. State religion: Church of Divine Redemption, some modern protestant church distinctly descended from baptists of your time. Population exclusively composed of baseline humans, with Anglosaxon Caucasians as state biomorph template. Limited cybertransformationism. Questions?”
About a million. But Revenant doesn’t want to spend too much time. Besides, he genuinely thinks that it’s better to learn things in small doses, letting the whole system slowly develop in your mind together with an opinion on it, instead of getting flooded with raw data.
For some reason, people tended to present said data shaped by their biases. And Revenant, to be honest, preferred to establish his own as independently as possible.
“Authoritarian Democracy?” He asks instead. Painfully aware that the others were all busy listening in. Ugh.
“Something akin to the United States of your times.” Humility replies. “Democracy, but with an extensive law enforcement system and state security equaling those in dictatorships. In a twisted way, an elective dictatorship with terms in office. That somehow manages to work without transforming into a straight dictatorship.”
That made sense, more or less. Especially for space descendants of the United States. Time for the next point. Alliance for the Preservation of Democracy is actually something that he omits for now, the foreign relations of a dead nation don’t concern him for now.
“State religion?” He asks instead.
“Sorry to break the news, but the concept of a country without a state-supported religious view is something out of historical books nowadays.” Humility replies. “It might be a state atheism or even something akin to a ‘state agnosticism’, but you will have those made official and written into the law.”
Wow, that was incredibly stupid in his opinion. But hey, he missed several centuries of development, maybe it made sense in the context. He had no interest in obtaining said context right now, that’s for sure.
“State biomorph template?” Revenant asks another question.
“Ultimate solution to the issue of racism.” Humility replies. Revenant is almost certain that if it was an option, it would sound sarcastic. “Make races elective. Although with how genetic modifications work, it will only truly manifest itself with the next generation. You can also expect most ethnopolities to have a dominant or mandatory genetic template. It’s mostly about looks, though, so the rest is still inherited from your parents as usual.”
Well, that’s certainly one way of solving racism. Sounds like it showed up just in time to let humans focus on a much more constructive form of bigotry - namely the speciesism against aliens and however you referred to xenocidal hatred towards transhumans.
Ah, Humanity - truly there can be no more delightful lifeforms out there.
Anyways.
“And let me guess…” Revenant then decides to make a guess. “... with how much better technology and so on got… education is probably much better? Less likely to produce people with issues against the system as a whole?” Humility nods. “And since there are no FTL comms aside from flying somewhere on a starship, most planetary populations are limited to their own cultural swamp, with limited contact with anyone else? So it’s easy for an ethnopolity’s government to make sure that the only news the locals have are those putting their dominant ideology in the right light?”
“That's an absolutely correct assumption.” Humility replies. “It’s nearly impossible to stage a successful regime change nowadays, aside from some very young countries. Precisely because of how reinforced and resistant to change the memeplex forming the ethnopolity’s culture is.”
Revenant looks up, at the ceiling, before sighing painfully and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Thousands of years of human sociopolitical, philosophical and religious history.” He then says, mostly to himself. “And the final stage of their evolution are literal planets of hats.” Decay shivers in the background. Revenant then returns to life and looks at Humility. “Let’s go. I just don’t want to think about it for a moment.”
Humility doesn’t complain about it.
***
They run into a group of survivors half an hour later. After walking through a particularly messy maze of corridors, carrying some signs of fighting. Just as Humility mentioned, the people he saw in front of him could as well be used for an encyclopedia entry about White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
It seemed like a small refugee camp, scattered throughout the long and wide hallway. A lot of crates and other objects scattered around, and a few people spread around wearing civilian clothes (once again, looking very 22nd Century - so, also, very early 21st Century, that part didn’t change a lot from the times before the Days of Fire).
Few possibly inhabited rooms on both sides of the said hallway. No visible weapons. Well, at first, because when they entered (Virtue and Revenant leading the party, Humility wisely staying behind with the rest), two of the people in front of them pulled assault rifles from behind whatever crates or piles of things they were busy with.
Armed and clearly cautious but not directly pointing at them. Conversely, Revenant lets his assault rifle stay on straps. The civilians don’t know that if they try to do something nasty, it won’t work.
Virtue will raise her Golden Bulwark in time. Revenant knows her reaction speed well enough and is ready to bet his life on it.
Besides, handguns are handier (pun intended) in close quarters. And the civilians aren’t far from them.
“Who are you?!” One of the civs (a middle-aged man with a short beard) shouts. The others are staring at the new arrivals. Strike two. No, wait, three, if you count the checkpoint they passed through.
Uh-oh.
Seven adults, including two women. One child, a girl about 12 years old. Reminds him of Chronoshift, somewhat. Different looks, but… to him, all girls that age remind him of his daughter.
He misses her a lot.
She is standing quite close to the new arrivals. Smart. Very smart. Also, a singular exception in terms of looks, since her hair was of auburn colour. A ponytail, huh?
“We come in peace.” Revenant replies, showing the palms of his hands in a universal ‘I carry no weapon’ gesture. He is certain that Virtue shared his opinion on the situation. “Survivors of this whole mess, just like you. And… wait a moment.” Let’s try it this way. In the meantime, he puts his hands down, looking at the girl in front of him with a surprise on his face. “... Leah? Is that you? You look similar, but… I thought that this transhuman killed you!”
He is trying to be a slightly better person. Mostly for Onslaught. So, at least, he makes one final confirmation. He only puts a bullet in that girl’s head after she falls for the deception and says that no, she managed to escape in the commotion.
“Wrong answer.” Revenant comments. His voice is perfectly emotionless even when he raises his pistol and guns down the closest of the remaining civilians, a young woman in her early twenties. The concealed knife slips from her hand when the bullets tear through her body.
Virtue blinds the two enemy gunners with flashes of light, before partially melting the face off of the nearest one of them with her laser. Doing that while pretending to fire fingerguns at them is a bit of a needless posturing in Revenant’s opinion.
One of the ‘civilians’ lunges at him with what looks like a fire axe. He puts a bullet in the man’s knee, and then, when the axeman starts falling, another one in his head. One of his friends has a slightly better idea, realizes that he won’t make it to his position with a melee weapon and tries to throw his knife at Revenant.
Slightly. He bends his body just enough to make the weapon bounce off his body armour before putting a bullet in the attacker. Virtue takes the same time to absolutely obliterate the remaining civilians.
Humility and Clockmaker enter the hallway. So do the enemy reinforcements.
Soldiers of the local ethnopolity, who were hiding in the rooms on both sides of the hallway. At least ten of them. He says soldiers, but they have the uniform of the conscripts, aside from two.
The last two are most certainly regular soldiers.
Clockmaker reduces the number by one, her tactical rifle punching a hole in the man’s chest. Or so they think for a very brief moment. Because then, against all odds, the soldier manages to withstand the recoil of the impact and returns fire, despite the gaping hole in his chest.
As if Revenant needed more evidence for the ‘it’s sus’ folder at this point.
Clockmaker doesn’t get shot - despite the supervillain being clearly too shocked by her new toy failing her - because Virtue acts fast enough and erects a Golden Bulwark. Humility dives behind it, pulling its girlfriend(?) with her.
Revenant hides fully too but manages to put a rifle bullet in the head of one of the soldiers first, the man falling to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Conclusion: Either the military tactics out there devolved significantly while they were busy not existing, or those guys weren’t actual soldiers. Because all that they did was slowly advance towards the villains, firing at them. With little interest in seeking cover.
The US Army soldiers that Revenant knew would have sought cover first, and then used grenades to push them from outside of their own cover so that they could mow them down easily. Of course, Virtue would stop the grenades mid-flight and bounce them back at them, but…
It’s Philadelphia all over again, except the enemy is incompetent. It’s a nice change of pace, in Revenant’s opinion.
Also, headshots apparently stop them completely. So, Philadelphia but the enemy is zombies with guns rather than the superhero Fireteam.
“Virtue, flashbang plus Scythe.” Revenant orders calmly, but loudly enough to be audible despite the raging gunfire in the background. “Go for their heads.”
And she does.
She throws the flash grenade over the bulwark, before standing up herself. She defends herself with her individuality (making the enemy fire in the wrong part of the barricade with some illusions), before waiting for the grenade to pop off.
She immediately reconfigures the resulting blast of light into a vertical cutting surface. It cuts through everything in front of her, from the wall to most of their enemies. She made sure to keep it to the correct height to either decapitate enemies or cut their heads in half.
She got most of them before the light dispersed and she was back to her normal level of firepower. The enemy didn’t appear to have responded to losing most of their numbers in any way, the rest continuing their advance through the ruined camp as if nothing had happened.
They die quickly, most of their suppression fire strength drained. Clockmaker puts an anti-armour shell in the head of the final soldier, the helmet and everything inside popping up like a broken watermelon.
Revenant gestures at them to advance. Bulwark vanishes, letting them march forward through the ruined camp, checking the adjacent rooms one by one. Only once he gets the all-clear does he let himself relax a little.
“Virtue, go and fetch the rest of the party.” He says to the lieutenant, who nods quickly and runs back. “Clockmaker, grab as many working weapons, ammunition and other valuables you can find and pack them onto Singularity or your backpack if it fits, others will help once they saw up. We’re departing in five minutes. Humility?” The robot, now crouching over one of the corpses, looks back at him. “Answers?”
The AI doesn’t answer him at first. Instead, it puts its fingers into what’s left of the civilian’s corpse. A moment later it pulls something out of what was left of its head.
Something small, metallic. An implant? It’s covered with a thin webbing of something else that Humility scrapes off quickly.
“Necrodrone.” The AI replies. “Fresh but well-preserved corpses infected with a strain of nanomachines that slows down the rotting processes by purging the body of microorganisms while lodging themselves in the nervous system to simulate normal behaviour. For a short while, and only within programmed parameters.” The AI stands up from the body, before joining the hurried looting. Despite that, the words come. “How did you know?”
“Strike one, a checkpoint nearby that wasn’t looted, and didn’t have some of them dispose of the bodies.” Revenant replies. He, too, takes off his backpack and starts putting things inside. “Strike two, no one was assigned to guard duty by the entrance, it’s as if they were inviting people to unexpectedly run into their whole group. Strike three, they didn’t even try to herd their supposed non-combatants into the side rooms after seeing us. Strike four…” Technically he only noticed it now, but… the AI doesn’t need to know. “... is that none of the stuff scattered around counts among perishables. Which, judging from the age of the corpses we’ve found, is suspicious in itself.”
This place smelled of a trap. But a trap that was active for weeks. Who would just randomly put around stuff that would perish quickly? But, to be frank, they should have at least seen some food in the boxes around. The civilians had to feed themselves somehow, and the whole camp in the meantime was clearly set to emulate a living space for the group.
Did the enemy simply forget to clean up the checkpoint they passed through?
“Final test was pretending that I knew one person that stuck out in terms of looks, meaning that they might not have been a part of the group from the start,” Revenant adds. His initial suspicion was some sort of infectious mind control. Was that a thing nowadays? “The child over there. Since she acted as if she recognized me, I immediately put a bullet in her head.”
The fact that no one reacted to him shooting a child in the head with shock (or any sort of exclamation whatsoever) was an immediate confirmation of his suspicions. Sure, attacking him on the spot was a perfectly logical reaction. The lack of surprise, shock or furious and horrified shouts, however, was a telltale sign of things being fishy.
“And what…” Humility pauses the looting before turning its face plate towards him. “... if you turned out to be wrong about it? And if you shoot an actual, living child to death over misidentification?”
He stops packing what seems to be a field medic pack before looking back at the AI.
“Then I’d apologize.” He replies. As dry as humanly possible. Humility keeps looking at him. “Keep looting, we don’t have time for this right now.”
Stupid question, stupid answer. They are lost in a maze filled with scary things, most of them they knew nothing about. All they need is one successful ambush to kick the bucket once and for all, their new lives ending before they could start for real.
He isn’t taking any chances. He’s just being cautious and logical.
That’s when Decay enters the room, the rest of the group following him. Revenant immediately throws a rifle towards him, Decay grabbing it easily.
“Pack it up.” He adds. “We’re leaving in a moment, in case there were more of those things inbound.” They really need the additional equipment, especially if they want to summon any mooks. And they might need the mooks if they want to take and hold a position.
“Sure thing, boss!” Decay shouts back, sounding almost cheerful about it. He then runs towards the nearest corpse. “It’s Philadelphia all over again, isn’t it?” He must have heard what happened from Virtue.
Revenant lets himself chuckle a bit before answering that yeah, it’s his thoughts on the issue exactly.
***
The final loot tally:
SA-72B Assault Rifle: 5
SA-16 Tactical Rifle: 2
SA-Z “Striker” Pistol: 7
Smoke Grenades: 12
Flash Grenades: 6
Frag Grenades: 9
So much for the weapons. As for the rest?
Seven sets of personal body armour and associated equipment elements. Naturally, only two working helmets due to the enemy only staying down if you headshotted them. The two survivors were from the soldiers that Virtue decapitated.
Add some medical equipment (two of them had to be field medics), some radios, flashlights and so on. In short, a very good haul, even if they had to leave a lot more stuff due to the looting taking more time than they hoped for.
Apparently, SA is an abbreviation for Springfield Armory. Which, in Revenant’s opinion, is a very bad name for a national arms company (now, sadly, defunct together with the nation as a whole). For some reason, though, with the whole ‘planet of hats’ thing the world has going, he doesn’t expect a lot of good naming sense in modern Mankind.
They are still low on food, but some of the soldiers carried field rations. Reasonably preserved, due to their holders not using them. Water wasn’t that hard to get, meaning that at least in the near future they were safe from having to deal with basic needs.
The most likely biggest and most important loot they got from the fight was a significant stockpile of toilet paper (since the camp did have a bathroom). Because, surprise, it was actually something that they had in scarce supply. And while running out of it wouldn’t kill them, it would be unpleasant.
He is trying to not think about the looming issue with more female hygiene products, especially as right now he, Decay and Humility are a minority. For some reason, no survival game he ever played with Decay covered that issue.
They did steal some soap and more general hygiene products. Had to be enough for now.
***
“Are those things common?” Revenant asks a few minutes later, the caravan having already departed and in a hurry. No enemy reinforcements on the horizon, but…
The loot they stole is rather substantial. No way they could carry it without Singularity. The girl is now followed by several floating platforms (mostly metal that Decay tore off the wall with his individuality) covered with goods, taped or roped to the platform itself. All of that weightless.
It was tiring for her. A bit too much. They would need to take breaks from time to time. In the meantime…
“No.” Humility replies. It’s… slightly reassuring. “Only BANDIT/TEAL ALPHA and BANDIT/RED OMICRON are known to use necrodrones, and the latter uses technology that is much more primitive compared to what I’ve seen there.”
Makes sense. When you think about it, it's a rather pointless waste of assets. Good for ambushes, except… the body needs to draw energy from somewhere. You can’t keep making it walk endlessly after death. A few days, at best. Then it will start being visible, if only through the dryness of the skin.
This means that you can only use them for ambushes for a few days after death. This implied some bad things. Namely that whatever the BANDIT/TEAL ALPHA did to the holdout of the survivors from the local ethnopolity included harvesting a lot of bodies.
How many civilians (and soldiers) are there, packed in some cold storage, waiting to be pulled out once the last group(s) of ambushers reaches their expiration date? Probably more than he’d be comfortable with.
“And if it’s Teal Alpha…” He then says. “... how bad is it?”
“Very.” Humility confirms his suspicions. “BANDIT/TEAL is a threat category for the singularitarian cults, with Alpha being the Truthseekers Corporation, the oldest and most dangerous of them. It’s a threat comparable if not bigger than the Transhuman Alliance remnants.”
God fucking dammit. This Galaxy is a burning mess. The fact that he was just getting a concentrated dose of the mess due to Visitor’s choice of collectibles (fuck you, by the way) wasn’t helping his perception of modern times.
“Singularitarian cults?” He asks. The term is unfamiliar, aside from possible relation to either black holes or the concept of technological singularity. “Care to elaborate?”
“Adherents of a long disproven concept of technological singularity.” Humility replies, once again confirming his suspicions. “I’m sure you know, but just in case: an endless acceleration of scientific progress resulting in a moment, perhaps due to the creation of self-improving AIs, of rapid change for humans and their society into something else.”
He does know it. Waste of time, but… he can stomach that.
“Very nice theory, except the technological progress started progressively slowing down, until halting almost entirely.” Humility continues. “This led to the creation of the Wall of Reason theory, which implies that the more advanced the science, the more advanced cognitive abilities are required to comprehend and further expand it. And while to some point the improvement of life quality and education could keep up with the growth curve of scientific difficulty, eventually, we reached the point where understanding the next scientific paradigm in the tech branch requires the IQ, creativity and sheer scope of understanding that no human can possess. Leading to the situation where most technological progress comes from reverse engineering stuff coming from alien species that either got stuck higher on the wall due to their fundamentally different cognition or managed to climb it fully into space godhood. Letting us produce things, despite no one understanding how they work.”
Yep. You could certainly make a religion out of it, Revenant decides. Judging from the combination of existential dread and curiosity on Clockmaker’s face (she was, of course, listening in), he isn’t the only one who thinks it.
“What about the transhumans and the AIs like you?” Clockmaker immediately asks. “Shouldn’t you be able to climb higher?”
“To a degree, we did.” Humility replies. For some reason, Revenant feels like it’s omitting the ‘transhuman’ part entirely. “But then, we got stuck too. Just a tiny bit higher on the wall than the baseline Mankind. The problem might be the fact that we might be smarter, but our consciousness is still programmed to be human-like. To quote one of my creators, human AIs are as stupid as humans, just faster about it.”
Revenant actually lets himself chuckle at that. The guy/gal might have been murdered by its creation, but at least some of his/her wisdom still lives on.
Thanks to his or her murderer, but that’s beside the point.
“And the singularitarian cults are people that didn’t like that theory.” Revenant then says. “And are militant about it.”
“Most of them are nigh-harmless loons.” Humility replies while nodding. “People that found pre-Wall of Reason books about theoretical science and decided that humans were robbed of progress and scientific godhood by aliens, government conspiracies, religion or whatever social group they don’t like. But then you also have mad scientists who decided that we’re not at the Singularity because we’re too restrained by ethics in our scientific pursuits. And those people are a much bigger problem.”
“I don’t even have to ask what category is Teal Alpha counted into.” Revenant replies. “How bad is it?”
“Imagine an entire organization composed entirely of Clockmakers.” Humility replies. “If you exclude the mooks, which are all cloned and fanatically loyal supersoldiers, armed in cutting edge technology and a lot of cybernetic and biotechnological improvements. Also, they mostly gave themselves emotion-altering cerebral implants just to entirely rid themselves of moral concerns for maximized work efficiency.”
Well, fuck.
Worst of all, what were the chances of some of them witnessing unknown phenomena (namely, individualities) and not wanting to dissect (metaphorically and literally) them to see how they worked?
“I… fucking… hate the real world.” Decay decides to betray the fact that he listened to them by speaking Revenant’s mind.