Final Dawn: Season 1 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (38 page)

Leonard McComb | Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | Nancy Sims

1:24 PM, April 5, 2038

“Everything okay, Rachel?” Leonard tapped her leg and she snapped her head up to look at him, her eyes wide. She began to speak at a rapid pace as the patterns started to fall into place in front of her.

“Yes, no I’m fine. It’s all fine. Better than fine. Well, as good as it can be, I guess. I think I know part of what’s going on.” She stood up as she talked, pacing back and forth in the small space. The other three shifted to watch her, craning their necks back and forth as she walked.

“Okay, this is a tenuous set of connections, but follow me here. The nanobots got out of control somehow, right? Some sort of glitch in their AI or something, it doesn’t matter. The point is, they developed some level of independent sentience and decided that they needed to do away with us, but not all of us. So, they somehow got every nuke on earth to detonate across the globe, scorching the cities and killing, oh let’s say ninety-nine point nine percent of us, something like that.

“Of course, they had to know that there would be survivors; any decent simulation of total thermonuclear war would account for that, so they did, too. So in addition to the nuclear weapons, they generated some kind of pulse that fried our central nervous systems and knocked out everyone who wasn’t hundreds of feet underground.” Rachel looked at Leonard as she spoke this last part.

“So we’re all unconscious for 48 hours while the nanobots are circling the globe, exploding in population while they devour every last trace of radiation from the planet. Then they start to clean up our remains. Who knows, who cares. Not really important. What comes next, though, that’s important.

“After their population is in the trillions or more and they’ve cleaned up the planet, they have to deal with the survivors. So they decide to use us instead of just killing us outright. These things can do just about anything on their own, though. I saw swarms lifting and moving railroad tracks and ties, but still they decided to use us in the form of these creatures. I just don’t know why yet. ”

Rachel stopped her pacing and turned to the group, raising her voice and punctuating her remarks with her hands, thrusting her fingers and fists in the air as she spoke. “The point is, they planned all of this from the start, accounting for every contingency down to the smallest detail. They want creatures, so they get rid of the radiation. They need time to clean up the radiation, so they blanket the globe with a pulse or a chemical or some kind of agent that disables us long enough to keep us asleep while they clean. At the end of the day, when the inevitable survivors wake up, the nanobots have dominance over the planet and the means to stop any resistance to their plans.”

“Why would they knock us out, though? Why not just kill us all and not have to worry about us screwing with their plans ever again?”

1:39 PM, April 5, 2038

The room was quiet for several minutes as everyone digested the new information. They all took a short break from listening to Rachel by walking around and stretching their legs. Rachel took advantage of the silence to give Sam some much-needed attention, rubbing his stomach and feeding him bits of food.

It was still quiet outside the armory, from what everyone could tell, and though they were all captivated by Rachel’s explanations, she could tell that they were getting restless.
We need to get out of here soon,
she thought.
But those creatures are probably still out there, just waiting for us
. There was still a chance that the creatures had moved on to other locations, but she had no way to be sure.

Leonard was the first one to speak after the long silence. “So… back to the creatures for a minute.” Rachel looked at him as he sat down, while Marcus and Nancy quietly followed his lead. They all resumed their positions on the floor, continuing the discussion. “Marcus raised a good point. Why do the swarms turn some of the people into creatures, but kill others?”

Marcus spoke quietly before Rachel could respond. “And why are the creatures trying to kill us if they’ve got the nanobots inside of them? Why aren’t the DNA whitelists working for the creatures, too?”

Rachel was quiet, sorting through everything in her head. Bits and pieces of these same thoughts had come up in her mind over the last few days, but putting it all together was taking time.

“Okay, so… the nanobots haven’t rewritten the DNA inhibition routines yet. That’s why we’re not all dead or turned into one of those things. Based on my experience with the military soldiers and scientist, I’d say that the strategy of the nanobots is to change people into creatures when they don’t present any serious threat. If there’s any sort of direct or implied aggression during an encounter with someone who has the ability to follow-through on it, they just kill them. That would fit with the self-defense measures we instituted, although they’ve clearly been radically altered.

“As for the creatures, though, I’m not sure. It’s possible that the integration with a human body and brain neutralizes the inhibition programming somehow, or maybe they just can’t detect DNA patterns because they’re not able to scan for them when they’re inside a person.”

Silence settled over the group again, then Leonard continued his questioning. “So what went wrong? I’m guessing that even though these things were designed to be weapons, they weren’t meant to get out of control like this.”

“Yeah… see, that’s where it gets a little fuzzy.” Rachel had been dismissed on leave before the major software upgrades went into place that she suspected caused the situation to spiral out of control. She wasn’t certain about what had happened, but based on what Mr. Doe had spoken to her about, she had her suspicions.

“I wasn’t there when this all went down. They had sent me home for a while, to ‘recover.’ It was nonsense, though. They just wanted me out of the way temporarily so they could do their upgrades without having to listen to the one person who was strongly against them.”

“What kind of upgrades did they do?” Leonard continued to express the most interest in the revelations, and it showed in his expression and tone.

“Like I was saying, I’m not one hundred percent positive. The last I heard, though, they were pretty displeased with the original AI that was on the nanobots, so they decided to upgrade it to something a little more advanced. The details weren’t given to me, but I read the executive summary before they sent me away. It talked about military strategies, advanced compression techniques to store more data and experimental neural network simulations. There was even a section marked ‘Imprinting’ but it didn’t have any details.”

“What’s that all mean?” Nancy was lost in the sea of technical terms.

Rachel took a deep breath. “My theory is that when they upgraded the AI on the nanobots, something went wrong. Either the programming was off or it was too advanced, but either way, the nanobots had far too much self-awareness. They went from being a tool to an autonomous intelligence, capable of thinking on its own and incapable of being controlled. From there, I’m guessing it just snowballed out of control. If we can contact David, maybe he’ll know more about what happened.”

Rachel started to say more, but a loud scraping from outside the armory stopped her. The group went quiet, their eyes darting around the interior of the room to try and find the source of the sound. Suddenly, the entire armory shifted, taking on a wild angle as it moved, as though it was sliding down a mountain. Rachel grabbed Sam and held him tight as they tumbled, head over heels, with the contents of the armory spilling everywhere as the structure flipped over and fell.

Undisclosed Location

March 21, 2038

A deep blue glow fills the chamber, turning the lone occupant’s skin the color of the ocean. He remains motionless, his eyes closed, with his head placed back in a recess in the chair that holds him in a reclining position. Under his eyelids, his eyes move rapidly to the sides, as though he is intensely dreaming. A little over an hour after beginning the procedure, the blue light switches off and the chair slowly reverts to a normal sitting position.

Mr. Doe is assisted out of the chair by two assistants who he waves off once he is back on his feet. He walks out of the room into a small observation booth nearby, where three scientists huddle over a monitor, viewing results data from their work.

“Well?” Mr. Doe’s voice is unnaturally cold and clear, with no trace of an accent to be found. His short, thick black hair contrasts starkly with his pale white skin, especially in the artificial lighting of the facility. Dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit, even his pocket handkerchief is perfectly folded. Mr. Doe wears no jewelry save a plain Rolex wristwatch that peeks out from underneath his sleeve.

The scientist closest to the monitor addresses Mr. Doe while the rest of the individuals file out of the room, whispering amongst themselves. “All indications are that it was a complete success, sir. We’ll pass off these results to the engineers who should be able to prototype something within the next few days, hopefully.”

Mr. Doe nods curtly, turns and walks noiselessly away. Once he has left, the scientist breathes a sigh of relief, then turns back to his monitor. With a few keystrokes, clicks and taps on the screen, a file upload is initiated to the central server, where it is processed and stored for retrieval by the next team.

Within moments of the file upload, the engineering team opens it and begins integration work. Moments after they begin work, just enough time for someone to walk from one section of the facility to the other, Mr. Doe enters the room. The head engineer anticipates Mr. Doe’s question and starts speaking.

“Sir, good to see you. We just received the file and are beginning work.”

“How long until the new changes are integrated into the update for the test swarm?”

“We’ll need a bit longer to review it, sir, since we haven’t really done anything like this before. It shouldn’t be more than a week, though, I would think.”

“You have forty-eight hours.”

Mr. Doe turns and walks away without waiting for a response. Once he is gone, the engineer turns to his colleagues. “Looks like we’ll be pulling some all-nighters here, guys.” A collective groan goes up from the group, but they dutifully return to their work.

After several hours of intense labor, the engineering team has a short break for dinner, over which they discuss their progress so far.

“I’ve got to say, I’m surprised with how easily these new neural patterns are integrating. The import code is really working wonders. I’m only getting a twenty-two percent error rate compared to the eighteen percent with the test animal data.” Murmurs of agreement go up between the engineers. A short, blonde woman speaks up in response to her colleague.

“Think we’ll get some time off if we get this done early?” Her statement drips with sarcasm and incites a round of laughter at the table.

“Ha! Fat chance. Finishing early just means shorter deadlines for next time.”

“Speaking of which….” The lead engineer taps his watch, prompting the rest of the team to finish their meals and return to their stations. After a few minutes of gearing up, they are back at work.

Leonard McComb | Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | Nancy Sims

1:50 PM, April 5, 2038

Though the smell of waste was strong in the overturned armory, Rachel was glad that they had the presence of mind to lock the waste container so that it wouldn’t spill. None of them imagined that the entire armory would be rolled over half a dozen times, but they were quick to get back on their feet, grimacing as the scent of the waste mingled with gunpowder and machine oil from the spilled piles of ammunition and weapons.

The EL light had been cast into a corner. Covered by uniforms and fallen shelves, its glow was weak, and Rachel dug in her pocket as she struggled to stand, pulling out the other lights that she had stored there. She felt around for the rest of the group, making sure they weren’t hurt and handing them lights, which they each switched on.

“Everyone’s okay, right?” Rachel asked the question again, making sure that no one had suffered any serious injuries before they moved forward with figuring out what happened. Sam rubbed up against her leg as Leonard, Marcus and Nancy all confirmed that they had suffered only minor bruises and scrapes.

“What the hell happened?” Marcus held his EL light aloft, trying to get his bearings in the newly rearranged armory. After the initial noise from the movement of the armory, the room had fallen into silence again. Every few seconds, though, a soft tapping came from the outside of the structure, as though metal was being lightly rapped against the steel walls. 

“It felt like we fell, like the whole armory came loose from the building or something.” Leonard helped Nancy to a standing position, looking around to try to find the door.

“There it is, up there!” Rachel pointed up to what was now the ceiling. The armory had come to rest on its side, with the only exit several feet away and well out of reach. The rapping on the armory was strongest near the door, and Rachel realized what had happened.

“They must have pulled away the supports from the floor below us. That sent the armory crashing down and out, maybe even outside the station itself. It sounds like they’re trying to find their way in now.” Rachel looked around the armory and pointed to one of the overturned shelves that was half buried under weapons and supplies.

“Leonard, help me stand this up, and we’ll try to get out of here. Marcus and Nancy, get some guns loaded up and ready to go. If we’re going to get out of here alive, we need to be ready to fill these things full of holes once that door opens.”

Leaning the shelf against one of the interior walls of the armory, Leonard held the makeshift ladder steady while Rachel slowly started to climb up towards the door. Marcus tapped Leonard on the shoulder and passed him a rifle, motioning for him to hand it up to Rachel.

“Rachel, here’s your rifle.” Leonard passed it up to Rachel, who nodded in thanks and looped it around her shoulder. Now only an arm’s length from the door of the armory, she looked down at the rest of the group. Marcus and Nancy had quickly gathered up several weapons of various sizes along with a few boxes of ammunition and loaded as many supplies as possible into all of their backpacks.

“Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to pop the door open and try to swing it up. As long as it’s not too heavy, I’ll push it all the way open and check for any creatures out there. As soon as I’m out, I’ll need some backup to join me. We don’t have another place to retreat to and we can’t outrun these things, so we’re going to need to kill them if we want to get out of here. Understand?”

Leonard, Marcus and Nancy all nodded as they stared up at her, guns held nervously in their hands as they waited for her to open the door on the armory. Rachel turned to the door and slid back the bolts that held it in place. With a deep breath she began to spin the locking mechanism, breaking the seal on the door and readying it for opening.