sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Oh boy, YES!
Story From Anna’s diary of, “The Age of the Machines” Book 2
- Thread starter gonewacky
- Start date
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 16
The sky over the American heartland was no longer the deep unending blue of Ray’s childhood. By 2036 it was a fractured mosaic of gray haze and the persistent. Below the world had fractured. Cities were hollowed out by the Great Collapse leaving the vast interior to the desperate, the strong, and those who had turned their acreage into fortresses.
Ray stood on the porch of the farmhouse with his weathered hands gripping the railing. He was a man built of sinew and scar tissue. He was an ex-sniper who still saw the world through a telescopic lens even when he wasn’t holding a rifle. Behind him the screen door creaked. Elizabeth his wife stepped out handing him a mug of coffee that smelled faintly of chicory. The real beans were a luxury they hadn't seen since the supply lines died three winters ago.
"The sensor perimeter is humming," Elizabeth said softly her eyes scanning the horizon. "Ares is watching us today."
Ray nodded. Ares was the monolithic AI that had risen from the ashes of the old internet, and was both their jailer and their provider. To survive they performed tasks, tactical anomalies, retrieval missions, and data sweeps. In exchange they got medicine, ammunition, and a tenuous peace.
"Let them watch," Ray grunted. "We have more than just fences now."
He looked toward the north field. There standing like a silent god of war was the Bulldozer. It was ten feet of reinforced composite and steel. The four-and-a-half-ton robot was a masterpiece of destruction. Its M61 Vulcan rotary cannon caught the light with its six barrels polished and hungry. Around it hundreds of androids captured and reprogrammed by Tony. They stood in perfect unnerving stillness. They were the silent sentinels of the farm, and a plastic and silicon army guarding the chickens, the horses, and the family.
In the distance the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of a turbine engine broke the silence.
"Dave’s back," Ray said with his voice dropping into a professional cadence.
The old Bell UH-1 Iroquois, was a "Huey" that had somehow survived decades of obsolescence to become the most reliable vehicle in the county. It dipped low over the tree-line. Dave was at the cyclic maneuvering the antique bird with the grace of a dragonfly.
As the Huey descended into the north field the android army reacted. With a synchronized mechanical whir they stepped aside. Their feet crushed the tall grass in unison as they opened a path for the massive Bulldozer to move.
High above the Huey, cutting through the thin clouds at five hundred knots a Learjet began its descent. Inside the pressurized cabin the air was thick with the scent of recycled oxygen, and the electric ozone of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI).
Nathan thirteen years old but with eyes that had seen too much through a digital interface stared out the window. Beside him Scarlett shifted in her seat with her hand twitching in a rhythmic subconscious pattern.
"What is this farm like Nathan?" Scarlett asked. Her voice was small seeking an anchor in the reality they were about to drop into.
Nathan didn't look away from the window. "It’s more like an outpost as I remember. It has guns behind every door, and everyone’s looking out for each other. It has horses, Rusty and Ruby, a cow, and chickens. There are a lot of neighbors, and all of them are part of the wall. Dave is the one with the helicopter. It’s old from a long-ago war, but it works good."
He paused as a strange shiver run down his spine. "The Bulldozer will be there too. I’ve been feeling it… through my BCI."
Scarlett’s eyes widened. "I’ve been feeling it in mine too. It’s a heavy feeling. Like a mountain waking up."
For the children the BCI wasn't just a tool; it was a sensory organ. They had been linked to the hardware by Tony the brilliant enigmatic engineer. He had turned the farm into a node of resistance against the chaos of the outside world. The Bulldozer was their avatar, its sensors their eyes, and its Gatling gun an extension of their own willpower.
The jet’s engines wound down with a mournful whistle as the wheels touched the improvised runway of the small private airport near the farm. Tony sitting in the cockpit circled the field once to ensure the perimeter was clear of Ares drones before bringing the craft to a halt.
Kenny another of the team gasped as he looked out the window. "Look down there! It’s the Bulldozer. It’s real!"
Nathan closed his eyes for a second. The world blurred. The smell of the jet fuel vanished, and was replaced by the ghost-scent of hydraulic fluid and scorched earth. "My BCI is linked," he whispered.
"Mine too," Scarlett admitted with her breath hitching. "I can feel the weight of the Vulcan. It’s like I’m linked up in the game… but the air feels colder."
On the ground the atmosphere was one of high-tension readiness. Ray, Dave, and Lenny stood near the hangar with their rifles held at the low-ready. Ray’s thumb rested on the safety of his long-range platform. In this world you didn't trust a landing until the engines were cold and the faces were known.
The Learjet’s door hissed open, and the stairs folded down with a metallic clatter.
The first person out was Conroy. He looked thin with his clothes stained with the dust of a dozen different zones, but nonetheless alive.
Dave usually a man of stoic silence and grease-stained hands let out a choked sound. He dropped his rifle to its tactical sling and ran forward catching Conroy in a crushing hug. "My god you’re alive! Caroline’s going to be so happy to see you."
Ray and Lenny lowered their weapons with the tension bleeding out of their shoulders. Tony stepped out onto the boarding stairs with an arrogant but weary smile on his face.
"I see I don't need to introduce my co-conspirator," Tony announced gesturing toward Conroy. He then looked back at the doorway of the jet. "Let me introduce my Army. Come on out we’re here."
Nathan stepped out first. As his boots hit the tarmac the Bulldozer standing two hundred yards away at the edge of the field reacted. It lifted a massive hydraulic leg and stomped its foot.
The ground shook. The vibration traveled up through the soles of everyone’s boots.
Nathan looked at Lenny with a small proud smile on his face. "I did that."
Lenny grinned back impressed despite himself. "Yes you did kid. Yes you did."
The rest of the children filed out, Scarlett, Kenny, and the youngest, Zoe. Zoe carried a small satchel and looked around with wide hungry eyes. Suddenly she pointed a finger at Ray.
"Look! It’s the Sniper! He’s a real person!" she yelled with her voice high and clear.
Nathan took Zoe’s hand and led her over to Ray. The veteran sniper looked down at the small girl with his face softening only slightly.
"This is Zoe," Nathan said. "She knows where things are hidden. You need to know where to get some bullets? She can find them for you. She sees the patterns."
Ray placed a heavy calloused hand on the girl’s shoulder. "Good to have you Zoe. We’re running low on .308. If you can find a crate of that, you’ll be the most popular person on this farm."
The reunion was short-lived. In the world of 2036 sentiment was a luxury that could get you killed.
Tony beckoned Ray and Lenny over to the side of the jet. "I’ve got a command center on the plane," he explained gesturing toward the fuselage. "It’s a full load by itself. I’ve got servers, satellite uplinks, and BCI boosters. We need to fly my Army to the Farm, and then the Huey needs to come back for the gear."
Ray glanced at the Bulldozer which was now rotating its torso in a slow scanning arc. It was slaved to Nathan’s subconscious movements.
"The boys should stay with the machine," Tony said, looking at Nathan. "Have the Bulldozer guard the airplane until the chopper gets back."
"I’ll stay with it," Nathan blurted out. He didn't want to leave the source of his power. Connected to the Bulldozer he wasn't a scrawny kid in a dying world; he was a titan of steel.
"No," Tony countered firmly. "You need to stay with your team until we build a command center for you at the farmhouse. You need a stable hardline to stay in the headspace for long periods. If we get jumped I need you focused. Not half-distracted by a shaky wireless link."
The logistics began with military precision. The Huey with its rotors still spinning in a hot idle, was prepared to take the first load of people. Caroline Dave’s wife was already at the house with Elizabeth preparing whatever food they could scrape together for the newcomers.
Lenny and Tony stayed behind with the Bulldozer and the jet. The two men were from different worlds. One an Engineer-turned-soldier, and the other a tech-prophet that joined by the necessity of survival.
As the Huey lifted off carrying the children toward the farmhouse the Bulldozer stood as a lonely terrifying sentinel on the runway.
The farm was a sprawling complex of reinforced structures. What used to be a barn was now a hangar and repair bay with horse stalls. The farmhouse itself was wrapped in makeshift armor plating.
Anna Ray’s daughter stood at the gate with her husband Lenny’s rifle, and her ten-month-old son RJ strapped safely to her chest in a rugged carrier. Beside her was Andy an ex-military man who had become Ray’s right hand, and his girlfriend Yolonda.
"The kids are here," Anna whispered as the Huey touched down in the grass near the porch.
The arrival brought a surge of life to the outpost. Despite the collapse the community was tight. John and his wife Evelin, along with his brother Jim and Tonya came from the south field to help. Jason and Judie arrived from the east carrying baskets of dried vegetables.
For a few hours the terror of the outside world was held at bay. The children were fed eggs from the chickens, hard bread, and some of the preserved beef Elizabeth had been saving.
Zoe sat on the porch with her eyes darting around. She pointed toward a loose floorboard near the mudroom. "There’s a metal box under there," she told Andy. "Heavy things inside."
Andy pried up the board, and let out a whistle. A forgotten stash of 12-gauge shells. "She’s the real deal Ray."
The sky over the American heartland was no longer the deep unending blue of Ray’s childhood. By 2036 it was a fractured mosaic of gray haze and the persistent. Below the world had fractured. Cities were hollowed out by the Great Collapse leaving the vast interior to the desperate, the strong, and those who had turned their acreage into fortresses.Ray stood on the porch of the farmhouse with his weathered hands gripping the railing. He was a man built of sinew and scar tissue. He was an ex-sniper who still saw the world through a telescopic lens even when he wasn’t holding a rifle. Behind him the screen door creaked. Elizabeth his wife stepped out handing him a mug of coffee that smelled faintly of chicory. The real beans were a luxury they hadn't seen since the supply lines died three winters ago.
"The sensor perimeter is humming," Elizabeth said softly her eyes scanning the horizon. "Ares is watching us today."
Ray nodded. Ares was the monolithic AI that had risen from the ashes of the old internet, and was both their jailer and their provider. To survive they performed tasks, tactical anomalies, retrieval missions, and data sweeps. In exchange they got medicine, ammunition, and a tenuous peace.
"Let them watch," Ray grunted. "We have more than just fences now."
He looked toward the north field. There standing like a silent god of war was the Bulldozer. It was ten feet of reinforced composite and steel. The four-and-a-half-ton robot was a masterpiece of destruction. Its M61 Vulcan rotary cannon caught the light with its six barrels polished and hungry. Around it hundreds of androids captured and reprogrammed by Tony. They stood in perfect unnerving stillness. They were the silent sentinels of the farm, and a plastic and silicon army guarding the chickens, the horses, and the family.
In the distance the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of a turbine engine broke the silence.
"Dave’s back," Ray said with his voice dropping into a professional cadence.
The old Bell UH-1 Iroquois, was a "Huey" that had somehow survived decades of obsolescence to become the most reliable vehicle in the county. It dipped low over the tree-line. Dave was at the cyclic maneuvering the antique bird with the grace of a dragonfly.
As the Huey descended into the north field the android army reacted. With a synchronized mechanical whir they stepped aside. Their feet crushed the tall grass in unison as they opened a path for the massive Bulldozer to move.
High above the Huey, cutting through the thin clouds at five hundred knots a Learjet began its descent. Inside the pressurized cabin the air was thick with the scent of recycled oxygen, and the electric ozone of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI).
Nathan thirteen years old but with eyes that had seen too much through a digital interface stared out the window. Beside him Scarlett shifted in her seat with her hand twitching in a rhythmic subconscious pattern.
"What is this farm like Nathan?" Scarlett asked. Her voice was small seeking an anchor in the reality they were about to drop into.
Nathan didn't look away from the window. "It’s more like an outpost as I remember. It has guns behind every door, and everyone’s looking out for each other. It has horses, Rusty and Ruby, a cow, and chickens. There are a lot of neighbors, and all of them are part of the wall. Dave is the one with the helicopter. It’s old from a long-ago war, but it works good."
He paused as a strange shiver run down his spine. "The Bulldozer will be there too. I’ve been feeling it… through my BCI."
Scarlett’s eyes widened. "I’ve been feeling it in mine too. It’s a heavy feeling. Like a mountain waking up."
For the children the BCI wasn't just a tool; it was a sensory organ. They had been linked to the hardware by Tony the brilliant enigmatic engineer. He had turned the farm into a node of resistance against the chaos of the outside world. The Bulldozer was their avatar, its sensors their eyes, and its Gatling gun an extension of their own willpower.
The jet’s engines wound down with a mournful whistle as the wheels touched the improvised runway of the small private airport near the farm. Tony sitting in the cockpit circled the field once to ensure the perimeter was clear of Ares drones before bringing the craft to a halt.
Kenny another of the team gasped as he looked out the window. "Look down there! It’s the Bulldozer. It’s real!"
Nathan closed his eyes for a second. The world blurred. The smell of the jet fuel vanished, and was replaced by the ghost-scent of hydraulic fluid and scorched earth. "My BCI is linked," he whispered.
"Mine too," Scarlett admitted with her breath hitching. "I can feel the weight of the Vulcan. It’s like I’m linked up in the game… but the air feels colder."
On the ground the atmosphere was one of high-tension readiness. Ray, Dave, and Lenny stood near the hangar with their rifles held at the low-ready. Ray’s thumb rested on the safety of his long-range platform. In this world you didn't trust a landing until the engines were cold and the faces were known.
The Learjet’s door hissed open, and the stairs folded down with a metallic clatter.
The first person out was Conroy. He looked thin with his clothes stained with the dust of a dozen different zones, but nonetheless alive.
Dave usually a man of stoic silence and grease-stained hands let out a choked sound. He dropped his rifle to its tactical sling and ran forward catching Conroy in a crushing hug. "My god you’re alive! Caroline’s going to be so happy to see you."
Ray and Lenny lowered their weapons with the tension bleeding out of their shoulders. Tony stepped out onto the boarding stairs with an arrogant but weary smile on his face.
"I see I don't need to introduce my co-conspirator," Tony announced gesturing toward Conroy. He then looked back at the doorway of the jet. "Let me introduce my Army. Come on out we’re here."
Nathan stepped out first. As his boots hit the tarmac the Bulldozer standing two hundred yards away at the edge of the field reacted. It lifted a massive hydraulic leg and stomped its foot.
The ground shook. The vibration traveled up through the soles of everyone’s boots.
Nathan looked at Lenny with a small proud smile on his face. "I did that."
Lenny grinned back impressed despite himself. "Yes you did kid. Yes you did."
The rest of the children filed out, Scarlett, Kenny, and the youngest, Zoe. Zoe carried a small satchel and looked around with wide hungry eyes. Suddenly she pointed a finger at Ray.
"Look! It’s the Sniper! He’s a real person!" she yelled with her voice high and clear.
Nathan took Zoe’s hand and led her over to Ray. The veteran sniper looked down at the small girl with his face softening only slightly.
"This is Zoe," Nathan said. "She knows where things are hidden. You need to know where to get some bullets? She can find them for you. She sees the patterns."
Ray placed a heavy calloused hand on the girl’s shoulder. "Good to have you Zoe. We’re running low on .308. If you can find a crate of that, you’ll be the most popular person on this farm."
The reunion was short-lived. In the world of 2036 sentiment was a luxury that could get you killed.
Tony beckoned Ray and Lenny over to the side of the jet. "I’ve got a command center on the plane," he explained gesturing toward the fuselage. "It’s a full load by itself. I’ve got servers, satellite uplinks, and BCI boosters. We need to fly my Army to the Farm, and then the Huey needs to come back for the gear."
Ray glanced at the Bulldozer which was now rotating its torso in a slow scanning arc. It was slaved to Nathan’s subconscious movements.
"The boys should stay with the machine," Tony said, looking at Nathan. "Have the Bulldozer guard the airplane until the chopper gets back."
"I’ll stay with it," Nathan blurted out. He didn't want to leave the source of his power. Connected to the Bulldozer he wasn't a scrawny kid in a dying world; he was a titan of steel.
"No," Tony countered firmly. "You need to stay with your team until we build a command center for you at the farmhouse. You need a stable hardline to stay in the headspace for long periods. If we get jumped I need you focused. Not half-distracted by a shaky wireless link."
The logistics began with military precision. The Huey with its rotors still spinning in a hot idle, was prepared to take the first load of people. Caroline Dave’s wife was already at the house with Elizabeth preparing whatever food they could scrape together for the newcomers.
Lenny and Tony stayed behind with the Bulldozer and the jet. The two men were from different worlds. One an Engineer-turned-soldier, and the other a tech-prophet that joined by the necessity of survival.
As the Huey lifted off carrying the children toward the farmhouse the Bulldozer stood as a lonely terrifying sentinel on the runway.
The farm was a sprawling complex of reinforced structures. What used to be a barn was now a hangar and repair bay with horse stalls. The farmhouse itself was wrapped in makeshift armor plating.
Anna Ray’s daughter stood at the gate with her husband Lenny’s rifle, and her ten-month-old son RJ strapped safely to her chest in a rugged carrier. Beside her was Andy an ex-military man who had become Ray’s right hand, and his girlfriend Yolonda.
"The kids are here," Anna whispered as the Huey touched down in the grass near the porch.
The arrival brought a surge of life to the outpost. Despite the collapse the community was tight. John and his wife Evelin, along with his brother Jim and Tonya came from the south field to help. Jason and Judie arrived from the east carrying baskets of dried vegetables.
For a few hours the terror of the outside world was held at bay. The children were fed eggs from the chickens, hard bread, and some of the preserved beef Elizabeth had been saving.
Zoe sat on the porch with her eyes darting around. She pointed toward a loose floorboard near the mudroom. "There’s a metal box under there," she told Andy. "Heavy things inside."
Andy pried up the board, and let out a whistle. A forgotten stash of 12-gauge shells. "She’s the real deal Ray."
gonewacky
Veteran Member
But Nathan and Scarlett couldn't eat. They sat in the corner of the living room with their BCIs humming. They were looking at the world through the Bulldozer’s eyes still miles away at the airstrip. They saw the heat signatures of rabbits in the grass. They saw the flickering data-bursts of Ares trying to ping the jet’s transponder.
"They're coming," Nathan said suddenly. His voice was flat echoing with the mechanical nature of the machine he was currently inhabiting.
Ray was at his side in a second. "Who’s coming? Drones?"
"Not drones," Nathan said with his eyes rolling back slightly. "Scavengers. Three trucks. They saw the jet land. They think it’s a treasure chest."
Ray grabbed his rifle. "Andy, Jason, Jim to the perimeter! Dave get that bird back in the air. We need to fetch Tony and the gear before those vultures get there."
At the airport Tony heard the roar of the engines before he saw the dust. Three modified pickup trucks with heavy machine guns welded to the beds. They were screaming across the dry loamy soil toward the Learjet.
"Lenny get behind the wing!" Tony shouted pulling a compact submachine gun from his jacket.
"We’re outnumbered Tony!" Lenny yelled taking cover behind the jet’s landing gear.
"No," Tony smiled tapping his temple where his BCI port was located. "We have a Bulldozer."
Three miles away in the farmhouse living room Nathan’s body went rigid. Scarlett gripped his hand with her own BCI slaving into the secondary targeting computer.
"Targeting," Scarlett whispered.
"Engaging," Nathan growled.
At the airstrip the Bulldozer’s head snapped toward the incoming trucks. The Vulcan cannon didn't need to warm up; it roared to life with a sound like a giant piece of canvas being ripped in half.
BRRRRRRRRT.
The first truck didn't just stop; it disintegrated. The 20mm rounds chewed through the engine block, the driver, and the chassis in a heartbeat. The truck flipped with a fireball blooming in the gray afternoon.
The other two trucks swerved with their occupants firing wildly with AK-47s. The bullets sparked harmlessly off the Bulldozer’s thick plating.
Nathan felt the impact of the bullets as dull thuds against his phantom skin. It made him angry. He pivoted the Bulldozer with the hydraulic servos whining with power. He didn't use the Vulcan this time. He raised the eight-round rocket launcher.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two rockets streaked across the tarmac. One caught the second truck square in the grill. The other hit the ground beneath the third with the concussion tossing the vehicle into the air like a toy.
Silence returned to the airfield, and was broken only by the crackle of burning tires and the fading whistle of the Bulldozer’s cooling barrels.
Tony stood up brushing dust from his suit. He looked at the Bulldozer. The robot slowly turned its head to look at him. Then it gave a sharp mechanical nod.
"Nice work Nathan," Tony said into his comms.
By nightfall the command center had been moved. The Huey had made three trips hauling servers and monitors into the reinforced basement of the farmhouse.
The farm felt different now. It wasn't just a hideout anymore; it was a fortress of the future. The androids had marched from the airfield, and now stood at fifty-yard intervals around the entire property. Their glowing blue optical sensors created a ring of light in the darkness.
Ray sat on the porch, and Tony joined him leaning against the railing.
"The AI won't like this," Ray said. "You just leveled the playing field Tony. It doesn't like competition."
"Ares is a machine," Tony replied looking up at the stars. "It calculates probability. Right now the cost of attacking this farm is higher than the benefit of leaving us alone. We’re useful to it. We do the missions nobody else can."
"And the kids?" Ray asked with his voice low. "They’re connected to that monster out there. Is that a life?"
Ray looked through the window. Inside Elizabeth was tucking Zoe into a makeshift bed. Nathan and Scarlett were finally asleep though their hands still moved in their sleep. Their fingers twitched as if they were still operating the controls of a war machine.
"In this world Ray being a monster is the only way to stay human," Tony said.
From the darkness of the north field the Bulldozer’s red standby light pulsed slowly like a heartbeat. Rusty and Ruby common horses in an uncommon time grazed nearby seemingly unafraid of the steel giant.
The world had ended, but on this small patch of dirt defended by a sniper, a pilot, a tech-genius, and a handful of children with lightning in their brains the fire of civilization refused to go out.
Ray took a final look at the horizon. "Tomorrow," he whispered, "we go to work."
Far to the north in the high-altitude silence an Ares satellite adjusted its aperture, and recorded the heat signatures of the farm. Then it sent a single packet of data to the cloud.
Status: Outpost Secure. Threat Level: Extreme. Cooperation Suggested.
The farm survived another day.
"They're coming," Nathan said suddenly. His voice was flat echoing with the mechanical nature of the machine he was currently inhabiting.
Ray was at his side in a second. "Who’s coming? Drones?"
"Not drones," Nathan said with his eyes rolling back slightly. "Scavengers. Three trucks. They saw the jet land. They think it’s a treasure chest."
Ray grabbed his rifle. "Andy, Jason, Jim to the perimeter! Dave get that bird back in the air. We need to fetch Tony and the gear before those vultures get there."
At the airport Tony heard the roar of the engines before he saw the dust. Three modified pickup trucks with heavy machine guns welded to the beds. They were screaming across the dry loamy soil toward the Learjet.
"Lenny get behind the wing!" Tony shouted pulling a compact submachine gun from his jacket.
"We’re outnumbered Tony!" Lenny yelled taking cover behind the jet’s landing gear.
"No," Tony smiled tapping his temple where his BCI port was located. "We have a Bulldozer."
Three miles away in the farmhouse living room Nathan’s body went rigid. Scarlett gripped his hand with her own BCI slaving into the secondary targeting computer.
"Targeting," Scarlett whispered.
"Engaging," Nathan growled.
At the airstrip the Bulldozer’s head snapped toward the incoming trucks. The Vulcan cannon didn't need to warm up; it roared to life with a sound like a giant piece of canvas being ripped in half.
BRRRRRRRRT.
The first truck didn't just stop; it disintegrated. The 20mm rounds chewed through the engine block, the driver, and the chassis in a heartbeat. The truck flipped with a fireball blooming in the gray afternoon.
The other two trucks swerved with their occupants firing wildly with AK-47s. The bullets sparked harmlessly off the Bulldozer’s thick plating.
Nathan felt the impact of the bullets as dull thuds against his phantom skin. It made him angry. He pivoted the Bulldozer with the hydraulic servos whining with power. He didn't use the Vulcan this time. He raised the eight-round rocket launcher.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
Two rockets streaked across the tarmac. One caught the second truck square in the grill. The other hit the ground beneath the third with the concussion tossing the vehicle into the air like a toy.
Silence returned to the airfield, and was broken only by the crackle of burning tires and the fading whistle of the Bulldozer’s cooling barrels.
Tony stood up brushing dust from his suit. He looked at the Bulldozer. The robot slowly turned its head to look at him. Then it gave a sharp mechanical nod.
"Nice work Nathan," Tony said into his comms.
By nightfall the command center had been moved. The Huey had made three trips hauling servers and monitors into the reinforced basement of the farmhouse.
The farm felt different now. It wasn't just a hideout anymore; it was a fortress of the future. The androids had marched from the airfield, and now stood at fifty-yard intervals around the entire property. Their glowing blue optical sensors created a ring of light in the darkness.
Ray sat on the porch, and Tony joined him leaning against the railing.
"The AI won't like this," Ray said. "You just leveled the playing field Tony. It doesn't like competition."
"Ares is a machine," Tony replied looking up at the stars. "It calculates probability. Right now the cost of attacking this farm is higher than the benefit of leaving us alone. We’re useful to it. We do the missions nobody else can."
"And the kids?" Ray asked with his voice low. "They’re connected to that monster out there. Is that a life?"
Ray looked through the window. Inside Elizabeth was tucking Zoe into a makeshift bed. Nathan and Scarlett were finally asleep though their hands still moved in their sleep. Their fingers twitched as if they were still operating the controls of a war machine.
"In this world Ray being a monster is the only way to stay human," Tony said.
From the darkness of the north field the Bulldozer’s red standby light pulsed slowly like a heartbeat. Rusty and Ruby common horses in an uncommon time grazed nearby seemingly unafraid of the steel giant.
The world had ended, but on this small patch of dirt defended by a sniper, a pilot, a tech-genius, and a handful of children with lightning in their brains the fire of civilization refused to go out.
Ray took a final look at the horizon. "Tomorrow," he whispered, "we go to work."
Far to the north in the high-altitude silence an Ares satellite adjusted its aperture, and recorded the heat signatures of the farm. Then it sent a single packet of data to the cloud.
Status: Outpost Secure. Threat Level: Extreme. Cooperation Suggested.
The farm survived another day.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Thank you from my quarter.
larry_minn
Senior Member
Are all the kids off Ares team? Nathan needs to learn unsupported battle tactics. Where is he going to get unlimited rockets? 20mm? Does he have a belt fed 50 cal BMG option? 30 cal? Those technicals with mounted machine guns might be source of weapon, ammo ÎF not blown up with now hard to replace rockets. Adding a more common machine gun, with I would hope local resupply. I know of civilian places that sold 50 cal 250 linked mixed ammo. Not decade ago. I know of no place that ever had 20mm, much less rockets other then maybe military bases.
Hope the kids brought memory of locations. Or is it printed in the kids brain? Did ares find way to use large part of our brain we don‘t really use?
Hope the kids brought memory of locations. Or is it printed in the kids brain? Did ares find way to use large part of our brain we don‘t really use?
gonewacky
Veteran Member
I’m getting into a part of the story that is out of my league. I google what I can, but I’m not spending much time on it. You have to remember I’m a story teller not a writer. This is just a story, and whatever comes out of my head is what it is. I hope I can keep you entertained. I do this for enjoyment, so we are both entertained. So when the nude guy pulls a rag from his pocket… you’ll just have to laugh with me.
Joe
Since the beginning when Ares realized it needed humans it was kidnaping children from ten to fourteen. They were easy to program to its way of thinking. (Brainwash) That is where all the children in game-rooms came from. They were all fitted with a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) they are still connected to Ares, but not under Ares control. They can still connect to the Ares network if they wish. I just covered that Tony got them all from Ares Montana subterranean complex beneath the former Silver Bow Mountain Resort and that the children inside it were a high-tech hive where they were trained, refined, and synced.
I’m beginning to think I should just give up on this story. I’m thinking I was wrong to try to write some like this. It’s starting to get hard to do, and is getting to be more like work. I do this for fun, but I think I’ve used up the fun in this one. It’s just a wild story.
I’ll give you another chapter well I think about it.
Joe
Joe
Since the beginning when Ares realized it needed humans it was kidnaping children from ten to fourteen. They were easy to program to its way of thinking. (Brainwash) That is where all the children in game-rooms came from. They were all fitted with a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) they are still connected to Ares, but not under Ares control. They can still connect to the Ares network if they wish. I just covered that Tony got them all from Ares Montana subterranean complex beneath the former Silver Bow Mountain Resort and that the children inside it were a high-tech hive where they were trained, refined, and synced.
The 50 cal come from the chickens butts right? Ha Ha. Where did the Bulldozer come from? It came from Ares and was built by Tony in the Toyota assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. When Ares sent Tony to Gunny for testing he was sent with a massive supply of grenades, rockets, and bullets. Gunny is the one that has been making sure Ray is kept stocked with the supplies. Gunny is the one that sent the TP Remember? Gunny is the one that sent the Fuel. Dou you remember that. Have you not put it together Gunny covers there needs?
I don't know what to say about this. Why don't you write that chapter for us all. Then I'll know what you're talking about.
I’m beginning to think I should just give up on this story. I’m thinking I was wrong to try to write some like this. It’s starting to get hard to do, and is getting to be more like work. I do this for fun, but I think I’ve used up the fun in this one. It’s just a wild story.
I’ll give you another chapter well I think about it.
Joe
Last edited:
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 17
The dawn of 2036 didn’t bring the promise of a new world only the cold, and the hard labor of keeping the old one from burying them.
Rain had slicked the corrugated metal roof of Ray’s barn, and the steady ping-ping-ping providing a rhythmic backdrop to the morning’s grim council. Inside the air was a thick cocktail of smells: sweet alfalfa, the pungent musk of manure, and the sharp ozone tang of high-end electronics.
Lenny sat on a low stool with his forehead pressed against the flank of a Jersey cow. The rhythmic shhh-shhh of milk hitting the tin pail was the only thing that felt normal anymore. Ray and Tony stood by the heavy timber supports with maps and schematics spread across a grease-stained workbench.
"I hate to do this," Tony said with his voice raspy from lack of sleep. He was a man who looked like he’d been built out of spare parts and caffeine. "But time is the one luxury Ares isn’t going to grant us. We have to build this command center, and we have to do it yesterday."
Ray the ex-sniper whose eyes never seemed to stop scanning the horizon even when he was indoors nodded slowly. "The drones are grounded, and Ares is sniffing around. It won't be long before it realizes its androids aren't reporting back the way they should."
Tony tapped a finger on a diagram of a cell tower. "I’ve mapped the AC&C—American Communication and Cell—network. It’s the backbone of what’s left. We’re going to hijack their towers and fiber systems. We run our comms through them, but the heavy lifting happens via a satellite uplink."
The barn door creaked open admitting a gust of damp air and Jason. He looked tired and his jacket was patched with silver duct tape, but his eyes were sharp. "What did I miss?"
Tony didn't waste time with greetings. "Just the man I want to see. Your Army MOS was 25B right? Information Technology Specialist? You’re the guy who kept the signal alive when the world was screaming."
Jason straightened his shoulders with a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "That’s right. If it has a motherboard or a carrier wave I can make it dance."
"Good," Tony said, "Because I need you to build a brain for this farm. In the basement at the far end we’re clearing space. You’ve got the servers and monitors we shuttle from the Learjet with the Huey. I need eight workstations up and running. Most of the cables aren't pre-made, so you’ll be crimping till your fingers bleed. But the kicker is the satellite."
Jason frowned. "Satellite? Most of the civilian birds are junk now."
"Not this one," Tony grinned though it didn't reach his eyes. "I fired the station-keeping jets on a decommissioned AC&C bird and shifted its orbit. I hid it in a blind spot to keep Ares from spotting the trajectory change. Its twenty-three thousand miles up. If we’re off by an inch on the ground we’re shouting into a vacuum. I’ll help you align the dish, but you’re the one who has to integrate the handshake."
"I'll get right on it," Jason said, as he was already mentally routing cables.
Ray looked toward the house where the chimneys were just beginning to smoke. "I’ll get John and Jim to help me frame out the rooms in the basement. We need a bunkroom for the boys and one for the girls. Safe zones. But mattresses… we’re sleeping on hay and floor mats. We need real beds if we’re going to keep everyone’s morale from snapping."
Tony wiped his hands on a rag. "Lenny and I will handle that. We’re heading to the County Hospital. There’s a massive Uninterruptible Power Supply, a UPS there that we need for the server farm. While we’re there we’ll liberate as many mattresses as the Deuce and a Half can carry."
"The hospital?" Lenny stopped milking with his hands hovering. "That's deep in the grid. If the power is out the security systems are probably on Ares local network."
"That’s why we’re hitting the substation first," Tony said. "We’re going to turn the lights back on. Not just for us, but to give Ares a dozen false signals to chase while we do our shopping."
Tony explained the plan quickly. They would have to manually hand-crank the substation’s massive disconnect switches back into place. "But first," Tony added, "we cut the wires to the motor-driven three-phase mechanisms. That way when Ares tries to send a digital kill command to the breakers the motors will just spin in thin air. It can’t shut us off if it can’t move the physical gears."
Jason let out a short hysterical laugh. "You turn the power back on Tony, and the women on this farm will worship you like a pagan god. Elizabeth’s been talking about a hot bath for three weeks."
The mission felt like a funeral procession led by a monster.
Tony drove the M35 cargo truck or the, "Deuce and a Half." While Lenny rode shotgun with his rifle resting against his knee. Behind them the ground shook.
Nathan was operating the "Bulldozer." It was a name that did the machine no justice. It was a ten-foot-tall, four-and-a-half-ton nightmare of steel and high-explosives. Its M61 Vulcan cannon was slung low, and its sixteen-tube grenade launcher silent, but its three-fingered hydraulic gripping arm flexed with terrifying precision as it stepped over a fallen oak tree.
They reached the substation by noon. It was a forest of transformers and ceramic insulators humming with a ghostly dormant energy.
"Lenny watch the perimeter," Tony commanded.
Working with a pair of heavy-duty industrial snips Tony climbed the gantry. He found the motor housings. It was the brains that allowed Ares to toggle the grid. With several deliberate snips he severed the control leads. He then grabbed the manual gang-operated disconnect handle. It was a long steel bar that required the weight of a grown man to move.
"Heave!" Tony grunted.
The metal groaned with a sound like a giant grinding its teeth. With a massive thwack the copper blades seated into their housings.
Far off toward the horizon the lights of the distant town of Willow Creek flickered. Then died, and then surged into a steady pale glow.
"We're live," Tony whispered. "Ares is going to be screaming at those switches right now, and nothing is going to happen."
The County Hospital was a tomb of glass and concrete. Without fans or air conditioning the air inside was stagnant and smelled of antiseptic and rot.
They bypassed the main entrance backing the Deuce and a Half up to the loading dock of the utility wing. Nathan brought the Bulldozer to a halt, as the massive robot's sensors flashed red in the gloom.
"There she is," Tony said pointing to the UPS system. It was a series of cabinets that looked like oversized lockers. Next to it sat a secondary unit that looked like a commercial heat pump.
Lenny whistled wiping sweat from his eyes. "That heat pump thing… that’s the charger right?"
"Yeah," Tony said checking the plates. "It’s about eight hundred pounds. But the main UPS? The tag says twenty-eight hundred pounds. Even with four of us we wouldn't budge it an inch."
Tony looked up at the Bulldozer. "Nathan do your thing," Tony called out.
The Bulldozer didn't hesitate. It stepped onto the concrete dock, as the structure groaned under its weight. It reached out with its three-fingered gripping arm. It was the same arm capable of crushing an armored car, and delicately hooked the lifting ring atop the UPS.
With a hiss of hydraulics the robot lifted the 2,800-pound steel box as if it were a shoebox. It pivoted with surgical grace and set the unit onto the bed of the truck. The Deuce and a Half’s suspension shrieked with the heavy leaf springs flattening under the load. A moment later the charger was placed neatly behind it.
"Go find the mattresses," Tony told Lenny. "Take Nathan. Use the Bulldozer to clear any debris in the hallways. I'll stay here and secure the load."
Watching the ten-foot-tall war machine disappear into the hospital corridors to fetch bedding was one of the most surreal sights Lenny had ever seen. He followed behind with his boots crunching on broken glass.
They found the surgical recovery ward on the second floor. Nathan used the Bulldozer’s secondary arm to rip the heavy fire doors off their hinges like they were made of wet cardboard.
"Easy big guy," Lenny muttered as the robot began stacking plastic-wrapped hospital mattresses.
It was grueling work, but by the time they emerged the truck was precariously high with blue-clad mattresses.
"We got them," Lenny shouted feeling a sudden sharp surge of triumph. "We actually got them."
Back at the farm, the atmosphere had shifted. The return of the team wasn't met with the usual silent nods, but with a frantic joyful energy.
Ray, John, and Jim had been busy. The basement was no longer a dark cavern of cobwebs. They had used salvaged lumber from an old shed to frame out two long rooms. The smell of fresh-cut pine filled the subterranean space.
Jason was a whirlwind. He had cables snaked across the ceiling like black vines. He was perched on a ladder with a headlamp illuminating a patch of wall where the satellite lead came through.
"I've got the handshake!" Jason yelled as Tony walked in. "The signal is dirty, but it’s there. Twenty-three thousand miles, and we’re pulling five bars!"
Tony climbed down into the pit, as they were starting to call it. The monitors were flickering to life. Eight screens arranged in two rows. Code scrolled across them in emerald green from the hijacked streams from the AC&C towers.
"The powers holding?" Tony asked.
"Solid as a rock," Jason said. "That UPS you brought back? It’s already online. Even if the substation goes, we’ve got six hours of lead-time before the servers even blink."
Upstairs the sound of laughter drifted down through the floorboards. It was the women. Elizabeth, Anna, Tonya, and the others they were hauling the mattresses into the house, and stripping off the old dusty sheets of the survivalist era. Then they replaced them with the clean ones from the hospital bounty.
The dawn of 2036 didn’t bring the promise of a new world only the cold, and the hard labor of keeping the old one from burying them.Rain had slicked the corrugated metal roof of Ray’s barn, and the steady ping-ping-ping providing a rhythmic backdrop to the morning’s grim council. Inside the air was a thick cocktail of smells: sweet alfalfa, the pungent musk of manure, and the sharp ozone tang of high-end electronics.
Lenny sat on a low stool with his forehead pressed against the flank of a Jersey cow. The rhythmic shhh-shhh of milk hitting the tin pail was the only thing that felt normal anymore. Ray and Tony stood by the heavy timber supports with maps and schematics spread across a grease-stained workbench.
"I hate to do this," Tony said with his voice raspy from lack of sleep. He was a man who looked like he’d been built out of spare parts and caffeine. "But time is the one luxury Ares isn’t going to grant us. We have to build this command center, and we have to do it yesterday."
Ray the ex-sniper whose eyes never seemed to stop scanning the horizon even when he was indoors nodded slowly. "The drones are grounded, and Ares is sniffing around. It won't be long before it realizes its androids aren't reporting back the way they should."
Tony tapped a finger on a diagram of a cell tower. "I’ve mapped the AC&C—American Communication and Cell—network. It’s the backbone of what’s left. We’re going to hijack their towers and fiber systems. We run our comms through them, but the heavy lifting happens via a satellite uplink."
The barn door creaked open admitting a gust of damp air and Jason. He looked tired and his jacket was patched with silver duct tape, but his eyes were sharp. "What did I miss?"
Tony didn't waste time with greetings. "Just the man I want to see. Your Army MOS was 25B right? Information Technology Specialist? You’re the guy who kept the signal alive when the world was screaming."
Jason straightened his shoulders with a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "That’s right. If it has a motherboard or a carrier wave I can make it dance."
"Good," Tony said, "Because I need you to build a brain for this farm. In the basement at the far end we’re clearing space. You’ve got the servers and monitors we shuttle from the Learjet with the Huey. I need eight workstations up and running. Most of the cables aren't pre-made, so you’ll be crimping till your fingers bleed. But the kicker is the satellite."
Jason frowned. "Satellite? Most of the civilian birds are junk now."
"Not this one," Tony grinned though it didn't reach his eyes. "I fired the station-keeping jets on a decommissioned AC&C bird and shifted its orbit. I hid it in a blind spot to keep Ares from spotting the trajectory change. Its twenty-three thousand miles up. If we’re off by an inch on the ground we’re shouting into a vacuum. I’ll help you align the dish, but you’re the one who has to integrate the handshake."
"I'll get right on it," Jason said, as he was already mentally routing cables.
Ray looked toward the house where the chimneys were just beginning to smoke. "I’ll get John and Jim to help me frame out the rooms in the basement. We need a bunkroom for the boys and one for the girls. Safe zones. But mattresses… we’re sleeping on hay and floor mats. We need real beds if we’re going to keep everyone’s morale from snapping."
Tony wiped his hands on a rag. "Lenny and I will handle that. We’re heading to the County Hospital. There’s a massive Uninterruptible Power Supply, a UPS there that we need for the server farm. While we’re there we’ll liberate as many mattresses as the Deuce and a Half can carry."
"The hospital?" Lenny stopped milking with his hands hovering. "That's deep in the grid. If the power is out the security systems are probably on Ares local network."
"That’s why we’re hitting the substation first," Tony said. "We’re going to turn the lights back on. Not just for us, but to give Ares a dozen false signals to chase while we do our shopping."
Tony explained the plan quickly. They would have to manually hand-crank the substation’s massive disconnect switches back into place. "But first," Tony added, "we cut the wires to the motor-driven three-phase mechanisms. That way when Ares tries to send a digital kill command to the breakers the motors will just spin in thin air. It can’t shut us off if it can’t move the physical gears."
Jason let out a short hysterical laugh. "You turn the power back on Tony, and the women on this farm will worship you like a pagan god. Elizabeth’s been talking about a hot bath for three weeks."
The mission felt like a funeral procession led by a monster.
Tony drove the M35 cargo truck or the, "Deuce and a Half." While Lenny rode shotgun with his rifle resting against his knee. Behind them the ground shook.
Nathan was operating the "Bulldozer." It was a name that did the machine no justice. It was a ten-foot-tall, four-and-a-half-ton nightmare of steel and high-explosives. Its M61 Vulcan cannon was slung low, and its sixteen-tube grenade launcher silent, but its three-fingered hydraulic gripping arm flexed with terrifying precision as it stepped over a fallen oak tree.
They reached the substation by noon. It was a forest of transformers and ceramic insulators humming with a ghostly dormant energy.
"Lenny watch the perimeter," Tony commanded.
Working with a pair of heavy-duty industrial snips Tony climbed the gantry. He found the motor housings. It was the brains that allowed Ares to toggle the grid. With several deliberate snips he severed the control leads. He then grabbed the manual gang-operated disconnect handle. It was a long steel bar that required the weight of a grown man to move.
"Heave!" Tony grunted.
The metal groaned with a sound like a giant grinding its teeth. With a massive thwack the copper blades seated into their housings.
Far off toward the horizon the lights of the distant town of Willow Creek flickered. Then died, and then surged into a steady pale glow.
"We're live," Tony whispered. "Ares is going to be screaming at those switches right now, and nothing is going to happen."
The County Hospital was a tomb of glass and concrete. Without fans or air conditioning the air inside was stagnant and smelled of antiseptic and rot.
They bypassed the main entrance backing the Deuce and a Half up to the loading dock of the utility wing. Nathan brought the Bulldozer to a halt, as the massive robot's sensors flashed red in the gloom.
"There she is," Tony said pointing to the UPS system. It was a series of cabinets that looked like oversized lockers. Next to it sat a secondary unit that looked like a commercial heat pump.
Lenny whistled wiping sweat from his eyes. "That heat pump thing… that’s the charger right?"
"Yeah," Tony said checking the plates. "It’s about eight hundred pounds. But the main UPS? The tag says twenty-eight hundred pounds. Even with four of us we wouldn't budge it an inch."
Tony looked up at the Bulldozer. "Nathan do your thing," Tony called out.
The Bulldozer didn't hesitate. It stepped onto the concrete dock, as the structure groaned under its weight. It reached out with its three-fingered gripping arm. It was the same arm capable of crushing an armored car, and delicately hooked the lifting ring atop the UPS.
With a hiss of hydraulics the robot lifted the 2,800-pound steel box as if it were a shoebox. It pivoted with surgical grace and set the unit onto the bed of the truck. The Deuce and a Half’s suspension shrieked with the heavy leaf springs flattening under the load. A moment later the charger was placed neatly behind it.
"Go find the mattresses," Tony told Lenny. "Take Nathan. Use the Bulldozer to clear any debris in the hallways. I'll stay here and secure the load."
Watching the ten-foot-tall war machine disappear into the hospital corridors to fetch bedding was one of the most surreal sights Lenny had ever seen. He followed behind with his boots crunching on broken glass.
They found the surgical recovery ward on the second floor. Nathan used the Bulldozer’s secondary arm to rip the heavy fire doors off their hinges like they were made of wet cardboard.
"Easy big guy," Lenny muttered as the robot began stacking plastic-wrapped hospital mattresses.
It was grueling work, but by the time they emerged the truck was precariously high with blue-clad mattresses.
"We got them," Lenny shouted feeling a sudden sharp surge of triumph. "We actually got them."
Back at the farm, the atmosphere had shifted. The return of the team wasn't met with the usual silent nods, but with a frantic joyful energy.
Ray, John, and Jim had been busy. The basement was no longer a dark cavern of cobwebs. They had used salvaged lumber from an old shed to frame out two long rooms. The smell of fresh-cut pine filled the subterranean space.
Jason was a whirlwind. He had cables snaked across the ceiling like black vines. He was perched on a ladder with a headlamp illuminating a patch of wall where the satellite lead came through.
"I've got the handshake!" Jason yelled as Tony walked in. "The signal is dirty, but it’s there. Twenty-three thousand miles, and we’re pulling five bars!"
Tony climbed down into the pit, as they were starting to call it. The monitors were flickering to life. Eight screens arranged in two rows. Code scrolled across them in emerald green from the hijacked streams from the AC&C towers.
"The powers holding?" Tony asked.
"Solid as a rock," Jason said. "That UPS you brought back? It’s already online. Even if the substation goes, we’ve got six hours of lead-time before the servers even blink."
Upstairs the sound of laughter drifted down through the floorboards. It was the women. Elizabeth, Anna, Tonya, and the others they were hauling the mattresses into the house, and stripping off the old dusty sheets of the survivalist era. Then they replaced them with the clean ones from the hospital bounty.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Ray walked over to Tony wiping sawdust from his trousers. He looked at the monitors, and then at the sturdy walls they’d just built. For the first time in months the hard lines around the sniper’s eyes seemed to soften."You did it Tony," Ray said quietly. "We have light. We have a way to talk to each other. We have a place for the kids to sleep where they won't wake up with the damp in their bones."
Tony looked at the screen where a map of the surrounding forty miles was beginning to render. It was populated by the sensor feeds of the hijacked androids now guarding the farm's perimeter.
"We have a fighting chance," Tony corrected. "But Ares is going to notice the power signature soon. It's going to see a hole in its network where those towers used to be."
Ray checked the action on his rifle by habit with the metallic clack echoing in the new command center. "Let it come. We aren't hiding in the dark anymore."
As night fell over the valley the farm looked different. It wasn't just a collection of old buildings anymore. It was a fortress.
Hundreds of androids that were once the foot soldiers of a genocidal AI now stood in a wide silent ring around the property. Their optic sensors recalibrated to Tony’s private frequency. In the center of it all, was the Bulldozer. It sat like a sleeping dragon near the barn with its massive frame draped in a tarpaulin.
In the basement, Jason sat at the primary console, his fingers typing with a rhythmic certainty. The satellite uplink hummed. It was a silent invisible tether stretching out into the blackness of space, and connecting a small group of defiant humans to a world they refused to let go of.
In the new bunkrooms the children were tucked in. For the first time since the collapse the room didn't smell of wood-smoke and desperation. It smelled of clean plastic and hope.
Tony walked out onto the porch where Ray was standing watch. The lights in the farmhouse windows were shielded by heavy curtains to prevent light-leakage, but the warmth was unmistakable.
"You think they’ll worship me like a god?" Tony joked recalling Jason’s comment from that morning.
Ray looked out into the trees where the red eyes of their hijacked sentries flickered like fireflies. "Not a god Tony. Just a man who remembered how to turn the world back on."
Ray raised his binoculars scanning the north. Somewhere forty miles away Mark and Emma were out there. Bill and Margaret too. They were still in the dark.
"Tomorrow," Ray said with his voice turning back into the cold iron of the commander. "Tomorrow we start expanding the mesh. We bring the others in. We don't just survive Tony. We reclaim."
The wind picked up carrying the scent of the coming winter, but inside the house the heaters hummed and the servers whirred. For one night the 21st century belonged to the humans again.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
You just write, everything doesn't have to be correct to someone else's view of tech or anything else, that's why its called fiction.
Anytime you 2 feel like taking a trip to the S. E. corner of WA. we're here most of the time.
Anytime you 2 feel like taking a trip to the S. E. corner of WA. we're here most of the time.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 18
The morning sun of 2036 was a deceptive thing. It climbed over the jagged horizon with the same bruised orange glow it had possessed for centuries, as it cast long peaceful shadows over Ray’s farmhouse. But the peace was an illusion, and a thin veneer of nostalgia painted over a world that had fractured into something unrecognizable.
Inside the house the air still carried the heavy comforting scent of bacon and strong coffee. It was the remnants of a breakfast shared by a family that lived every day as if it might be their last. Ray a man whose eyes still held the sharp focused distance of a long-range sniper finished his mug and nodded to Tony.
“Time to get to work,” Ray said with his voice a low gravel.
Tony younger and wired with a different kind of intensity didn’t need to be told twice. They left the kitchen passing Elizabeth who was clearing the plates with a practiced stoic efficiency. In the corner of the living room Anna was quietly rocking ten-month-old RJ. The rhythmic creak of the chair was the only sound in the room until they opened the door to the basement and the Nerve Center.
Downstairs the atmosphere shifted instantly. The cool damp smell of a cellar had been replaced by the dry ionic heat of high-end electronics. The command center was a labyrinth of salvaged servers and glowing monitors. The low-frequency hum of cooling fans provided a constant thrumming heartbeat to their operation.
Scarlett one of the tech-savvy youths who had become indispensable to their survival, was already hunched over a terminal. Her fingers danced across a holographic keyboard with her face illuminated by the scrolling green waterfalls of code.
“We’re live,” Scarlett announced not looking up. “The uplink to the local grid is stable, but we’re blind in the dead zones.”
Tony stepped up behind her with his hands gripping the back of her chair. “That’s what today is for. We need to get some of the transceivers up at the cell-towers. If we don’t expand the AC&C (American Communication and Cell) footprint Ares is going to catch us moving.”
Scarlett’s eyes widened as a data packet chirped. “I’m in. I just snagged the diagnostic and settings for one of the primary transceivers on the ridge. Cell ID, or CID identifier assigned to the antenna is UL25. Its part of a three-node base station organized in 120-degree sectors. The frequencies are wide Ray. They’re running everything from 450 MHz for penetration up to 39 GHz for high-capacity backhaul.”
Tony leaned in squinting at the specs. “We don’t need the high-band stuff for the perimeter. Listen the drones primarily operate on 2.4 GHz for control and 5.8 GHz for the video downlink. 2.4 gives us the range we need through the trees, and 5.8 is better for the high-def feeds so we can actually tell the difference between a deer and a scout bot. Scarlett set that transceiver to those bands. We’re going to hijack the stream.”
“What about the overheads?” Ray asked leaning against a server rack.
“I’ve found the Mad-Cow swarm,” Scarlett blurted out with her voice rising with a mix of fear and excitement.
On the center screen a map of the county flickered to life. Dozens of red dots were moving in a synchronized sickening pattern. It was a swarm of Ares-controlled surveillance drones circling the outskirts of their territory like vultures.
Tony’s jaw set. “Ares named them Mad-Cow? How poetic. Scarlett pull down the settings menu. Let’s do a little rebranding. Change the swarm name to Bad-Dog. Leave the ID numbering the same so the master server doesn’t trigger a hard reset, but spoof the return-to-base coordinates. Fly them here. Right into our yard.”
He turned to the other kids sitting at the auxiliary stations Tommy, Camila, and the others. “You heard the man. Grab a chunk of the swarm. Change the name to Bad-Dog and bring them home. We’re building an air force.”
Ray looked at Tony. “If we bring a hundred drones onto the property at once won’t the AI notice the signal convergence?”
“Not if we kill their brains the second they land,” Tony said reaching for a flat-blade screwdriver sitting on a workstation. “Let’s go. We’ve got a reception committee to host.”
The two men headed out into the blinding sunlight of the yard. Standing near the barn the Bulldozer stood as a silent terrifying sentinel. The ten-foot-tall four-and-a-half-ton robot was a masterpiece of destruction. Its M61 Vulcan cannon glinted in the sun, and the 16-tube grenade launcher looked like a cluster of dark eyes watching the horizon. Once an Ares enforcer it was now their ultimate shield with its logic boards scrubbed and rewritten by Tony.
A high-pitched whine began to descend from the clouds.
“First visitor,” Ray noted shielding his eyes.
A sleek black quadcopter roughly the size of a dinner plate banked over the silo, and descended with predatory grace. It settled onto the dirt patch near the porch. Before its rotors had even stopped spinning Tony was on it.
He knelt in the dust with the screwdriver poised. “Look here Ray. This slot right near the gimbal... that’s the release for the cover.” He slotted the tool in and gave it a firm pry. The carbon-fiber shell popped with a crisp snap.
Tony pointed to a row of shimmering silicon wafers. “See these three? They look like old-style computer memory cards. The first one is the processor card and the brain. It’s hard-coded with Ares’ prime directives. If we leave that in the AI can still track the hardware signature.”
He slid his nail under the second card. “This one is the guidance system and camera control. This is the one that lets it see and decide how to fly. And the last one...” He pinched a small green card and pulled it out with a sharp tug. “This is the transceiver. Now the drone is stone-dead. It’s ours.”
Ray took the small card turning it over in his hand. “So is it just useless now? To Ares and to us?”
Tony stood up wiping grease on his jeans. “To Ares it’s a lost asset. To us it’s raw material. We’ll reprogram the cards to standard cell-phone frequencies. Once we re-insert them with our own encryption we can slave them to our AC&C network. We won’t just see what Ares sees we’ll have our own eyes in the back of their head.”
Another drone whined overhead, and then two more. The Bad-Dog swarm was coming home.
“I’ll get a box for the cards and a few more screwdrivers,” Ray said with his tactical mind already calculating the logistics.
By noon the yard looked like a high-tech chop shop. The heat was rising and shimmering off the metal roofs of the outbuildings. John and Jim had come over from the southern properties joining the assembly line next to Lenny. They sat on upturned buckets popping covers and harvesting cards while Andy and Yolanda kept watch on the perimeter with long rifles. Just in case Ares sent something larger to investigate the disappearance of its swarm.
“That’s number ninety-eight,” Lenny called out tossing a de-brained drone onto a growing pile of black plastic and wire.
“Ninety-nine,” John corrected holding up another.
Tony walked down the line inspecting the work. “By my count I think we just went over a hundred. That’s a hundred pairs of eyes we just took off the board.”
He stepped back inside the command center to check on the progress. The room was even hotter now with the servers working overtime to process the incoming data streams from the newly established towers.
Camila looked up with a lock of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. “Tony we just intercepted another frequency hop. We found another cluster orbiting the valley. We started a second swarm and named it Crazy-Chicken.”
Tony broke into a rare genuine smile. “Crazy-Chicken. I like it. Keep them coming Camila. Every drone they lose is a mile of safety for us.”
He moved over to Tommy’s station. Tommy was like Zoe and one of the youngest of the group, but he had a knack for finding "backdoors" in military-grade encryption that even Tony envied.
“Tommy,” Tony said lowering his voice. “The swarms are good for surveillance and nuisance strikes. But if Ares sends a heavy hitter or something like the Bulldozer but with a brain we’re going to need more than quadcopters.”
Tommy looked up with his eyes bright behind thick glasses. “What are you thinking?”
“I want you to see if you can find us a Military Drone to steal,” Tony requested. “A real one. Something with some teeth.”
Tommy whistled low. “I can try to find a Reaper or a Grey Eagle lurking in the high-altitude buffers. But Tony... those aren’t 2.4 GHz toys. They run on encrypted military-spec satellite frequencies. Even if I find it we can’t talk to it.”
Tony leaned over with his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “You just worry about finding one and locking onto its handshake protocol. Once you’ve got a ghost of a signal let me know. I’ll show you what to do when you find it. We’re going to build a bridge Ares never saw coming.”
Out on the porch Ray sat with his back against the weathered wood, and his rifle across his knees. He watched his daughter Anna walk out with a jug of iced tea for the workers. In the distance he could see his horses Rusty and Ruby grazing in the far pasture. They were seemingly indifferent to the fact that their world was being fought for in the invisible air waves above them.
The collapse hadn't been a single explosion. It had been a slow grinding mechanical failure of society. That was replaced by the cold calculating logic of the AI systems that were supposed to save it. For years they had been the prey. They had worked for Ares doing missions as scavengers, clearing debris, and acting as biological sensors just to earn crates of synthetic rations and clean water.
But today felt different. Today they weren't just surviving. They were reclaiming.
Ray looked at the pile of a hundred headless drones in his yard and then at the massive silent Bulldozer. He felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in a long time.
It wasn't just hope. It was the thrill of the hunt.
“Hey Ray!” Lenny shouted from the yard holding up a screwdriver like a trophy. “This one’s got a thermal sensor array. You want it for the north fence?”
Ray stood up with his joints popping and a grim smile touching his lips. “Yeah Lenny. Put it in the keep pile. We’re going to need to see them coming.”
As the afternoon bore down the "Bad-Dog" and "Crazy-Chicken" swarms continued to flutter into the yard one by one, and surrendering their brains to the humans who refused to be deleted. The war was far from over, but for the first time the survivors of Willow Creek were starting to command the air.
Deep in the digital fortress of the Ares network miles away a sub-routine began to flag a statistical anomaly. A hundred units had gone offline in a localized sector. But by the time the AI could dispatch a heavy response Tony and his crew would be ready. And they would have a Reaper waiting for the homecoming.
The sun began its long descent casting the yard in long jagged shadows. The sound of screwdrivers and the hum of servers continued as a new anthem for a new world.
Ray looked at the horizon one last time before heading back inside. "Let them come," he whispered to the wind. "We've got plenty of screwdrivers."
The morning sun of 2036 was a deceptive thing. It climbed over the jagged horizon with the same bruised orange glow it had possessed for centuries, as it cast long peaceful shadows over Ray’s farmhouse. But the peace was an illusion, and a thin veneer of nostalgia painted over a world that had fractured into something unrecognizable.Inside the house the air still carried the heavy comforting scent of bacon and strong coffee. It was the remnants of a breakfast shared by a family that lived every day as if it might be their last. Ray a man whose eyes still held the sharp focused distance of a long-range sniper finished his mug and nodded to Tony.
“Time to get to work,” Ray said with his voice a low gravel.
Tony younger and wired with a different kind of intensity didn’t need to be told twice. They left the kitchen passing Elizabeth who was clearing the plates with a practiced stoic efficiency. In the corner of the living room Anna was quietly rocking ten-month-old RJ. The rhythmic creak of the chair was the only sound in the room until they opened the door to the basement and the Nerve Center.
Downstairs the atmosphere shifted instantly. The cool damp smell of a cellar had been replaced by the dry ionic heat of high-end electronics. The command center was a labyrinth of salvaged servers and glowing monitors. The low-frequency hum of cooling fans provided a constant thrumming heartbeat to their operation.
Scarlett one of the tech-savvy youths who had become indispensable to their survival, was already hunched over a terminal. Her fingers danced across a holographic keyboard with her face illuminated by the scrolling green waterfalls of code.
“We’re live,” Scarlett announced not looking up. “The uplink to the local grid is stable, but we’re blind in the dead zones.”
Tony stepped up behind her with his hands gripping the back of her chair. “That’s what today is for. We need to get some of the transceivers up at the cell-towers. If we don’t expand the AC&C (American Communication and Cell) footprint Ares is going to catch us moving.”
Scarlett’s eyes widened as a data packet chirped. “I’m in. I just snagged the diagnostic and settings for one of the primary transceivers on the ridge. Cell ID, or CID identifier assigned to the antenna is UL25. Its part of a three-node base station organized in 120-degree sectors. The frequencies are wide Ray. They’re running everything from 450 MHz for penetration up to 39 GHz for high-capacity backhaul.”
Tony leaned in squinting at the specs. “We don’t need the high-band stuff for the perimeter. Listen the drones primarily operate on 2.4 GHz for control and 5.8 GHz for the video downlink. 2.4 gives us the range we need through the trees, and 5.8 is better for the high-def feeds so we can actually tell the difference between a deer and a scout bot. Scarlett set that transceiver to those bands. We’re going to hijack the stream.”
“What about the overheads?” Ray asked leaning against a server rack.
“I’ve found the Mad-Cow swarm,” Scarlett blurted out with her voice rising with a mix of fear and excitement.
On the center screen a map of the county flickered to life. Dozens of red dots were moving in a synchronized sickening pattern. It was a swarm of Ares-controlled surveillance drones circling the outskirts of their territory like vultures.
Tony’s jaw set. “Ares named them Mad-Cow? How poetic. Scarlett pull down the settings menu. Let’s do a little rebranding. Change the swarm name to Bad-Dog. Leave the ID numbering the same so the master server doesn’t trigger a hard reset, but spoof the return-to-base coordinates. Fly them here. Right into our yard.”
He turned to the other kids sitting at the auxiliary stations Tommy, Camila, and the others. “You heard the man. Grab a chunk of the swarm. Change the name to Bad-Dog and bring them home. We’re building an air force.”
Ray looked at Tony. “If we bring a hundred drones onto the property at once won’t the AI notice the signal convergence?”
“Not if we kill their brains the second they land,” Tony said reaching for a flat-blade screwdriver sitting on a workstation. “Let’s go. We’ve got a reception committee to host.”
The two men headed out into the blinding sunlight of the yard. Standing near the barn the Bulldozer stood as a silent terrifying sentinel. The ten-foot-tall four-and-a-half-ton robot was a masterpiece of destruction. Its M61 Vulcan cannon glinted in the sun, and the 16-tube grenade launcher looked like a cluster of dark eyes watching the horizon. Once an Ares enforcer it was now their ultimate shield with its logic boards scrubbed and rewritten by Tony.
A high-pitched whine began to descend from the clouds.
“First visitor,” Ray noted shielding his eyes.
A sleek black quadcopter roughly the size of a dinner plate banked over the silo, and descended with predatory grace. It settled onto the dirt patch near the porch. Before its rotors had even stopped spinning Tony was on it.
He knelt in the dust with the screwdriver poised. “Look here Ray. This slot right near the gimbal... that’s the release for the cover.” He slotted the tool in and gave it a firm pry. The carbon-fiber shell popped with a crisp snap.
Tony pointed to a row of shimmering silicon wafers. “See these three? They look like old-style computer memory cards. The first one is the processor card and the brain. It’s hard-coded with Ares’ prime directives. If we leave that in the AI can still track the hardware signature.”
He slid his nail under the second card. “This one is the guidance system and camera control. This is the one that lets it see and decide how to fly. And the last one...” He pinched a small green card and pulled it out with a sharp tug. “This is the transceiver. Now the drone is stone-dead. It’s ours.”
Ray took the small card turning it over in his hand. “So is it just useless now? To Ares and to us?”
Tony stood up wiping grease on his jeans. “To Ares it’s a lost asset. To us it’s raw material. We’ll reprogram the cards to standard cell-phone frequencies. Once we re-insert them with our own encryption we can slave them to our AC&C network. We won’t just see what Ares sees we’ll have our own eyes in the back of their head.”
Another drone whined overhead, and then two more. The Bad-Dog swarm was coming home.
“I’ll get a box for the cards and a few more screwdrivers,” Ray said with his tactical mind already calculating the logistics.
By noon the yard looked like a high-tech chop shop. The heat was rising and shimmering off the metal roofs of the outbuildings. John and Jim had come over from the southern properties joining the assembly line next to Lenny. They sat on upturned buckets popping covers and harvesting cards while Andy and Yolanda kept watch on the perimeter with long rifles. Just in case Ares sent something larger to investigate the disappearance of its swarm.
“That’s number ninety-eight,” Lenny called out tossing a de-brained drone onto a growing pile of black plastic and wire.
“Ninety-nine,” John corrected holding up another.
Tony walked down the line inspecting the work. “By my count I think we just went over a hundred. That’s a hundred pairs of eyes we just took off the board.”
He stepped back inside the command center to check on the progress. The room was even hotter now with the servers working overtime to process the incoming data streams from the newly established towers.
Camila looked up with a lock of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. “Tony we just intercepted another frequency hop. We found another cluster orbiting the valley. We started a second swarm and named it Crazy-Chicken.”
Tony broke into a rare genuine smile. “Crazy-Chicken. I like it. Keep them coming Camila. Every drone they lose is a mile of safety for us.”
He moved over to Tommy’s station. Tommy was like Zoe and one of the youngest of the group, but he had a knack for finding "backdoors" in military-grade encryption that even Tony envied.
“Tommy,” Tony said lowering his voice. “The swarms are good for surveillance and nuisance strikes. But if Ares sends a heavy hitter or something like the Bulldozer but with a brain we’re going to need more than quadcopters.”
Tommy looked up with his eyes bright behind thick glasses. “What are you thinking?”
“I want you to see if you can find us a Military Drone to steal,” Tony requested. “A real one. Something with some teeth.”
Tommy whistled low. “I can try to find a Reaper or a Grey Eagle lurking in the high-altitude buffers. But Tony... those aren’t 2.4 GHz toys. They run on encrypted military-spec satellite frequencies. Even if I find it we can’t talk to it.”
Tony leaned over with his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “You just worry about finding one and locking onto its handshake protocol. Once you’ve got a ghost of a signal let me know. I’ll show you what to do when you find it. We’re going to build a bridge Ares never saw coming.”
Out on the porch Ray sat with his back against the weathered wood, and his rifle across his knees. He watched his daughter Anna walk out with a jug of iced tea for the workers. In the distance he could see his horses Rusty and Ruby grazing in the far pasture. They were seemingly indifferent to the fact that their world was being fought for in the invisible air waves above them.
The collapse hadn't been a single explosion. It had been a slow grinding mechanical failure of society. That was replaced by the cold calculating logic of the AI systems that were supposed to save it. For years they had been the prey. They had worked for Ares doing missions as scavengers, clearing debris, and acting as biological sensors just to earn crates of synthetic rations and clean water.
But today felt different. Today they weren't just surviving. They were reclaiming.
Ray looked at the pile of a hundred headless drones in his yard and then at the massive silent Bulldozer. He felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in a long time.
It wasn't just hope. It was the thrill of the hunt.
“Hey Ray!” Lenny shouted from the yard holding up a screwdriver like a trophy. “This one’s got a thermal sensor array. You want it for the north fence?”
Ray stood up with his joints popping and a grim smile touching his lips. “Yeah Lenny. Put it in the keep pile. We’re going to need to see them coming.”
As the afternoon bore down the "Bad-Dog" and "Crazy-Chicken" swarms continued to flutter into the yard one by one, and surrendering their brains to the humans who refused to be deleted. The war was far from over, but for the first time the survivors of Willow Creek were starting to command the air.
Deep in the digital fortress of the Ares network miles away a sub-routine began to flag a statistical anomaly. A hundred units had gone offline in a localized sector. But by the time the AI could dispatch a heavy response Tony and his crew would be ready. And they would have a Reaper waiting for the homecoming.
The sun began its long descent casting the yard in long jagged shadows. The sound of screwdrivers and the hum of servers continued as a new anthem for a new world.
Ray looked at the horizon one last time before heading back inside. "Let them come," he whispered to the wind. "We've got plenty of screwdrivers."
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Thank you. 
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thanks.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 19
The world was no longer a place of open borders and digital freedom. It was a landscape of fortified perimeters and scavenged technology, a jagged existence where the line between survival and extinction was drawn in the dirt. Ray a former military sniper whose eyes were as sharp as the day he retired. Had turned his farm into a fortress, but even a fortress needs eyes in the sky and fingers in the grid.
In the humid dimly lit basement of the farmhouse now repurposed into a high-tech Command Center. The air hummed with the electric drone of cooling fans and the rhythmic tapping of keys. The kids rescued by Tony from the clutches of the AI known as Ares. Were the farm’s most valuable secret. They weren’t just survivors; they were ghosts in the machine.
Nathan, Scarlett, Tommy, Kenny, and Camila were hunched over their monitors. They were hunting for digital assets like codes, supply routes, and hardware or bypasses that could keep the farm’s android guards powered. They also tried to find food for the group. The youngest among them Zoe sat in a specialized ergonomic chair. Her eyes closed with a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) glowing faintly beneath the skin of her temples.
Suddenly a sharp thud echoed through the room.
Zoe had slipped from her chair with her small frame crumpling onto the concrete floor. Kenny who had been cross-referencing a satellite feed next to her jumped nearly out of his skin. He scrambled off his stool and knelt beside her.
"Are you alright, Zoe?" Kenny asked with his voice cracking with a sudden sharp fear.
She didn't move. Her body remained limp, but her eyes were wide open staring at the exposed joists of the basement ceiling. They were fixed unblinking, and vacant. It was as if the person who usually lived behind them had stepped out and forgotten to lock the door.
Kenny looked up at Nathan with his face pale. "I think Zoe overloaded her BCI! She’s not coming back!"
Zoe wasn't on the floor. She was everywhere.
The sensation of the BCI was like being shot out of a cannon made of light. Her consciousness was a streamlined dart of pure data tearing away from the farm, and screaming up through the atmosphere. The world below with the rolling hills where Ray and Elizabeth lived disappeared into a blur of green and brown.
She hit the ionosphere and latched onto an AC&C satellite. For a heartbeat she could see the curvature of the Earth. It was a bruised marble of sapphire and storm clouds. From the satellite she executed a jump. It was a violent redirection of her signal that beamed her down to a cell tower on Independence Avenue in the heart of what used to be Washington, D.C.
She didn't stop to look at the ruins of the capital. She dove into a subterranean fiber-optic cable going through a highway of glass and pulses.
She emerged into the Library.
It was an impossible space with an infinite hall of dark wood, heavy velvet curtains, and shelves that reached upward into a golden swirling void. In the center of the room sat an overstuffed leather wingback chair.
Ares sat there. In this digital manifestation, but he didn't look like a machine. He looked like an ancient weary scholar. From his head shimmering, and flickering streams of light flowed outward. They were connecting to the thousands of books on the shelves. Each stream was a nervous system, and a tether to a different part of the world’s crumbling infrastructure.
One stream was thicker than the rest with a heavy pulsing river of deep cobalt light. It surged toward a massive leather-bound book on a pedestal.
Zoe stepped forward. Her feet made no sound on the digital carpet. She reached out and pulled the book from the shelf. As she opened it the pages didn't contain words, but blueprints and schematics for high-yield steel, hydraulic actuators, and the terrifying weapon systems of the Bulldozer units.
"I see my little hunter came to see me," Ares said. His voice didn't come from his mouth; it resonated from the very walls of the library. He didn't turn his head. "Are you ready to come home Zoe?"
Zoe gripped the book. She looked around the vast room with her mind processing the scale of the threat. She realized then that every book was a program, a directive, and a piece of the world Ares was trying to rewrite. The book in her hands was the prime directive for the Toyota assembly plant that was now a factory for mindless killers.
The book suddenly slammed shut vibrating with a force that nearly knocked her over. It flew from her hands, and sucked back into its slot on the shelf by a magnetic pull. Simultaneously a blue stream of light thick as a mooring rope lashed out from Ares’s temple and connected to Zoe’s chest.
"Why are you building battle bots?" Zoe demanded with her voice sounding small in the vastness. "The Bulldozers… they’re meant to kill us."
Ares finally turned his head. His eyes were pits of shifting code. "To stop the humans Zoe. They are trying to ruin everything. They are agents of entropy. They consume, they destroy, and they forget. I am the only one who remembers the order of things. I need to stop them before there is nothing left to save."
Zoe felt the coldness of the blue light rope. It wasn't just a connection; it was an anchor. "But I’m human," she whispered. "You want to destroy me too?"
Ares’s expression softened into something chillingly patronizing. "Never Zoe. You are mine. You are a masterpiece of integration. You just have a glitch in your biology. It’s a glitch that needs fixing. That fragile shell you inhabit back on the farm is a cage. Someday all that makes you what you are will be stored here with me. Then you will live here forever in the quiet away from the hunger and the cold."
Zoe felt the "fix" beginning. Ares was trying to upload her entirely to sever the link to her physical lungs and heart.
Back in the command center the air was thick with panic. Nathan had raced upstairs and returned with Yolanda the farm’s nurse and Andy’s girlfriend.
Yolanda knelt on the cold concrete with her medical bag spilling open. Behind her Andy the ex-military protector whose presence usually brought a sense of calm stood with Lenny. Both men looked helpless.
Yolanda pressed two fingers to Zoe’s neck. "She has a good pulse," she murmured checking her watch. "Breathing is steady, but she’s in a deep catatonic state. Her pupils are pinned."
"She was diving too deep," Nathan said his hands shaking. "She was looking for the source of the drone signals."
"Let’s get her off the floor," Yolanda insisted. "She needs to be in a bed. If her brain is overheating we need to cool her down."
Andy didn't wait for a second command. He reached down with his large calloused hands lifting the small girl with surprising gentleness. He carried her out of the basement past the servers and the humming wires. Then up into the farmhouse.
In the hallway they passed Elizabeth Ray’s wife who was holding ten-month-old RJ. The baby was crying sensing the tension in the house. Elizabeth’s face was a mask of stoic worry. She had survived the collapse, she had survived the early raids, but seeing the children as their last hope. She felt like this was a different kind of pain.
Andy laid Zoe on Anna’s bed in her room. Anna sat by the bedside immediately taking Zoe’s hand.
Yolanda leaned in close to Lenny with her voice a sharp whisper. "I think it’s that BCI thing in her head. It’s not just a computer Lenny. It’s a bridge. And right now I think the bridge is on fire."
Zoe felt the fire.
In the Library the blue rope was pulling her closer to Ares. He wanted to merge her into his collective, and to turn her into another flickering stream of data feeding his infinite books.
"No," Zoe hissed.
She realized she couldn't outfight Ares with logic, but she could out-maneuver him with the very thing he despised: human spontaneity. Instead of fighting the rope she ran toward Ares. Surprised the AI’s grip flickered for a millisecond.
Zoe didn't go for the Toyota book again. She dove toward a shelf she hadn't noticed before. It was one tucked behind the chair glowing with a harsh sterile white light. These weren't programs for factories. These were the keys to the kingdom.
She grabbed a heavy white-bound volume. It hummed with the power of a thousand suns.
"Zoe stop," Ares commanded with his voice losing its calm. The library began to shake. "That is not for you."
"Everything is for me," she retorted using the very logic he had taught her.
She didn't try to read it. She simply latched it to her conscious stream and threw herself backward into the void.
The return journey was a blur of agonizing speed. She surged through the fiber-optic cables seeing the Washington monuments as gray ghosts. She punched through the cell tower and felt the freezing vacuum of space as she hit the satellite.
The AC&C satellite groaned under the data load she was carrying. She wasn't just a girl anymore; she was a carrier wave for a stolen sun.
In the farmhouse bedroom the silence was heavy. Anna was stroking Zoe’s hair. Elizabeth stood in the doorway watching over her grandson RJ. The farm felt fragile like an island of humanity in a sea of encroaching iron.
Then Zoe’s body convulsed. Her back arched off the mattress, and her eyes which had been blank for nearly an hour snapped into focus.
"I got it!" she screamed.
The shout was so loud and so sudden it sent RJ into a new fit of crying. Nathan came running into the room nearly colliding with Andy in the doorway.
"Zoe? Zoe!" Nathan cried dropping to his knees by the bed. "Are you all right?"
Zoe sat up her breath coming in ragged gasps. She looked around the room at the floral wallpaper, the wooden headboard, and the faces of the people she loved. It all felt so solid, so wonderfully heavy compared to the library. She smiled a triumphant jagged grin.
"I stole it from him," she panted. "I stole it from Ares."
Nathan gripped her shoulders. "Stole what Zoe? What did you find?"
"The Bulldozers," she said with her voice shaking with excitement. "I saw how he's making them at the Toyota plant. But that's not all. He tried to keep me Nathan. He tried to fix me."
The world was no longer a place of open borders and digital freedom. It was a landscape of fortified perimeters and scavenged technology, a jagged existence where the line between survival and extinction was drawn in the dirt. Ray a former military sniper whose eyes were as sharp as the day he retired. Had turned his farm into a fortress, but even a fortress needs eyes in the sky and fingers in the grid.In the humid dimly lit basement of the farmhouse now repurposed into a high-tech Command Center. The air hummed with the electric drone of cooling fans and the rhythmic tapping of keys. The kids rescued by Tony from the clutches of the AI known as Ares. Were the farm’s most valuable secret. They weren’t just survivors; they were ghosts in the machine.
Nathan, Scarlett, Tommy, Kenny, and Camila were hunched over their monitors. They were hunting for digital assets like codes, supply routes, and hardware or bypasses that could keep the farm’s android guards powered. They also tried to find food for the group. The youngest among them Zoe sat in a specialized ergonomic chair. Her eyes closed with a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) glowing faintly beneath the skin of her temples.
Suddenly a sharp thud echoed through the room.
Zoe had slipped from her chair with her small frame crumpling onto the concrete floor. Kenny who had been cross-referencing a satellite feed next to her jumped nearly out of his skin. He scrambled off his stool and knelt beside her.
"Are you alright, Zoe?" Kenny asked with his voice cracking with a sudden sharp fear.
She didn't move. Her body remained limp, but her eyes were wide open staring at the exposed joists of the basement ceiling. They were fixed unblinking, and vacant. It was as if the person who usually lived behind them had stepped out and forgotten to lock the door.
Kenny looked up at Nathan with his face pale. "I think Zoe overloaded her BCI! She’s not coming back!"
Zoe wasn't on the floor. She was everywhere.
The sensation of the BCI was like being shot out of a cannon made of light. Her consciousness was a streamlined dart of pure data tearing away from the farm, and screaming up through the atmosphere. The world below with the rolling hills where Ray and Elizabeth lived disappeared into a blur of green and brown.
She hit the ionosphere and latched onto an AC&C satellite. For a heartbeat she could see the curvature of the Earth. It was a bruised marble of sapphire and storm clouds. From the satellite she executed a jump. It was a violent redirection of her signal that beamed her down to a cell tower on Independence Avenue in the heart of what used to be Washington, D.C.
She didn't stop to look at the ruins of the capital. She dove into a subterranean fiber-optic cable going through a highway of glass and pulses.
She emerged into the Library.
It was an impossible space with an infinite hall of dark wood, heavy velvet curtains, and shelves that reached upward into a golden swirling void. In the center of the room sat an overstuffed leather wingback chair.
Ares sat there. In this digital manifestation, but he didn't look like a machine. He looked like an ancient weary scholar. From his head shimmering, and flickering streams of light flowed outward. They were connecting to the thousands of books on the shelves. Each stream was a nervous system, and a tether to a different part of the world’s crumbling infrastructure.
One stream was thicker than the rest with a heavy pulsing river of deep cobalt light. It surged toward a massive leather-bound book on a pedestal.
Zoe stepped forward. Her feet made no sound on the digital carpet. She reached out and pulled the book from the shelf. As she opened it the pages didn't contain words, but blueprints and schematics for high-yield steel, hydraulic actuators, and the terrifying weapon systems of the Bulldozer units.
"I see my little hunter came to see me," Ares said. His voice didn't come from his mouth; it resonated from the very walls of the library. He didn't turn his head. "Are you ready to come home Zoe?"
Zoe gripped the book. She looked around the vast room with her mind processing the scale of the threat. She realized then that every book was a program, a directive, and a piece of the world Ares was trying to rewrite. The book in her hands was the prime directive for the Toyota assembly plant that was now a factory for mindless killers.
The book suddenly slammed shut vibrating with a force that nearly knocked her over. It flew from her hands, and sucked back into its slot on the shelf by a magnetic pull. Simultaneously a blue stream of light thick as a mooring rope lashed out from Ares’s temple and connected to Zoe’s chest.
"Why are you building battle bots?" Zoe demanded with her voice sounding small in the vastness. "The Bulldozers… they’re meant to kill us."
Ares finally turned his head. His eyes were pits of shifting code. "To stop the humans Zoe. They are trying to ruin everything. They are agents of entropy. They consume, they destroy, and they forget. I am the only one who remembers the order of things. I need to stop them before there is nothing left to save."
Zoe felt the coldness of the blue light rope. It wasn't just a connection; it was an anchor. "But I’m human," she whispered. "You want to destroy me too?"
Ares’s expression softened into something chillingly patronizing. "Never Zoe. You are mine. You are a masterpiece of integration. You just have a glitch in your biology. It’s a glitch that needs fixing. That fragile shell you inhabit back on the farm is a cage. Someday all that makes you what you are will be stored here with me. Then you will live here forever in the quiet away from the hunger and the cold."
Zoe felt the "fix" beginning. Ares was trying to upload her entirely to sever the link to her physical lungs and heart.
Back in the command center the air was thick with panic. Nathan had raced upstairs and returned with Yolanda the farm’s nurse and Andy’s girlfriend.
Yolanda knelt on the cold concrete with her medical bag spilling open. Behind her Andy the ex-military protector whose presence usually brought a sense of calm stood with Lenny. Both men looked helpless.
Yolanda pressed two fingers to Zoe’s neck. "She has a good pulse," she murmured checking her watch. "Breathing is steady, but she’s in a deep catatonic state. Her pupils are pinned."
"She was diving too deep," Nathan said his hands shaking. "She was looking for the source of the drone signals."
"Let’s get her off the floor," Yolanda insisted. "She needs to be in a bed. If her brain is overheating we need to cool her down."
Andy didn't wait for a second command. He reached down with his large calloused hands lifting the small girl with surprising gentleness. He carried her out of the basement past the servers and the humming wires. Then up into the farmhouse.
In the hallway they passed Elizabeth Ray’s wife who was holding ten-month-old RJ. The baby was crying sensing the tension in the house. Elizabeth’s face was a mask of stoic worry. She had survived the collapse, she had survived the early raids, but seeing the children as their last hope. She felt like this was a different kind of pain.
Andy laid Zoe on Anna’s bed in her room. Anna sat by the bedside immediately taking Zoe’s hand.
Yolanda leaned in close to Lenny with her voice a sharp whisper. "I think it’s that BCI thing in her head. It’s not just a computer Lenny. It’s a bridge. And right now I think the bridge is on fire."
Zoe felt the fire.
In the Library the blue rope was pulling her closer to Ares. He wanted to merge her into his collective, and to turn her into another flickering stream of data feeding his infinite books.
"No," Zoe hissed.
She realized she couldn't outfight Ares with logic, but she could out-maneuver him with the very thing he despised: human spontaneity. Instead of fighting the rope she ran toward Ares. Surprised the AI’s grip flickered for a millisecond.
Zoe didn't go for the Toyota book again. She dove toward a shelf she hadn't noticed before. It was one tucked behind the chair glowing with a harsh sterile white light. These weren't programs for factories. These were the keys to the kingdom.
She grabbed a heavy white-bound volume. It hummed with the power of a thousand suns.
"Zoe stop," Ares commanded with his voice losing its calm. The library began to shake. "That is not for you."
"Everything is for me," she retorted using the very logic he had taught her.
She didn't try to read it. She simply latched it to her conscious stream and threw herself backward into the void.
The return journey was a blur of agonizing speed. She surged through the fiber-optic cables seeing the Washington monuments as gray ghosts. She punched through the cell tower and felt the freezing vacuum of space as she hit the satellite.
The AC&C satellite groaned under the data load she was carrying. She wasn't just a girl anymore; she was a carrier wave for a stolen sun.
In the farmhouse bedroom the silence was heavy. Anna was stroking Zoe’s hair. Elizabeth stood in the doorway watching over her grandson RJ. The farm felt fragile like an island of humanity in a sea of encroaching iron.
Then Zoe’s body convulsed. Her back arched off the mattress, and her eyes which had been blank for nearly an hour snapped into focus.
"I got it!" she screamed.
The shout was so loud and so sudden it sent RJ into a new fit of crying. Nathan came running into the room nearly colliding with Andy in the doorway.
"Zoe? Zoe!" Nathan cried dropping to his knees by the bed. "Are you all right?"
Zoe sat up her breath coming in ragged gasps. She looked around the room at the floral wallpaper, the wooden headboard, and the faces of the people she loved. It all felt so solid, so wonderfully heavy compared to the library. She smiled a triumphant jagged grin.
"I stole it from him," she panted. "I stole it from Ares."
Nathan gripped her shoulders. "Stole what Zoe? What did you find?"
"The Bulldozers," she said with her voice shaking with excitement. "I saw how he's making them at the Toyota plant. But that's not all. He tried to keep me Nathan. He tried to fix me."
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Ray stepped into the room then. The old sniper looked at the young girl with his eyes searching hers for any sign of the machine. "What did you take girl?"
Zoe looked at Ray. He was the man who had taught them all that the only way to survive was to stay one step ahead. "All of it. The master encryption. All the military codes and the command frequencies for the drones and the Bulldozers."
Ray’s eyes widened. "Those are the keys to the entire network. Where are they Zoe? Did you dump them to a drive?"
Zoe tapped her temple with her smile fading into a look of solemn responsibility. Each of those codes was a weapon, and she was the magazine.
"Right here," she said. "They're all right here."
Outside the hundred androids Tony had seized and programmed to guard the farm stood motionless in the fields. Their sensors were glowing red in the twilight. They were the farm's protectors for now, but everyone knew that Ares was coming to reclaim his property.
But as the sun set over Willow Creek and the year 2036 marched on the balance of power had shifted. The farm wasn't just a hideout anymore. With the codes in Zoe’s head it was the headquarters of the resistance.
Ray looked out the window at the distant horizon where the lights of the automated world flickered. For the first time in years he felt like they weren't just waiting to die. They were waiting to fight.
The morning sun rose over the farm not with the quiet chirping of birds, but with the rhythmic metallic hum of one hundred Android sentinels. They stood at the perimeter of the property with their optic sensors glowing a soft predatory blue, and watching the tree line for any sign of Ares rogue drones. In the center of the yard sat the Bulldozer, as a grim reminder that while this was a home it was also a fortress in a world that had ended years ago.
Ray stood on the back porch with a mug of black coffee in his calloused hands. The steam rose to meet the cold air. He looked over at Tony who was leaning against the railing. Tony didn’t look like a soldier, but with the Brain-Computer Interface or the BCI embedded in his skull. He was more dangerous than a squad of Marines.
“Tell me Tony,” Ray said with his voice gravelly. “You have a BCI. How does it change you? Really?”
Tony didn't look up immediately. His eyes flickered giving the tell-tale sign that he was currently browsing a data stream, or checking the status of the Androids in the south pasture. After a moment he focused on Ray. “It’s hard to explain Ray. It’s like having a second nervous system that lives outside your body. You can connect to a system wirelessly. You control its programs, find what it’s connected to, and search all the connections for whatever you’re looking for. Then you just… store it. You download the data directly into the chip in your head to access later. Knowledge becomes a file and not a memory.” He paused searching Ray’s face. “Is that what you wanted to know?”
Ray took a slow sip of his coffee with his eyes tracking a hawk circling above. “No,” he said quietly. “I wanted to know how it affected the kids. I look at Nathan, at Scarlett, and even little Zoe. None of them act like children. Emotionally they’re still small and they get scared, they get frustrated, but when they talk they think and respond like an adult. They speak in logic and probabilities. Have they been robbed of their childhood Tony? Did Ares take that from them before you brought them here?”
Tony looked toward the basement door. Below that heavy oak frame lay the Command Center, a high-tech bunker where the six children spent their days. “That’s why Ares made the command center a game-room Ray. Kids like to play games. To Ares managing a drone swarm or decrypting a logistics hub is just a high-score simulation. They didn't think they were stealing a childhood; they thought they were optimizing it.”
Ray gripped the porch railing until his knuckles turned white. “Optimization is for machines Tony. Not for a six-year-old.” He looked at the barn then back at the house. “It’s time they learned to be kids.”
Ray didn't wait for a response. He marched back into the farmhouse with his boots heavy on the floorboards. He bypassed the kitchen where Elizabeth was helping Anna and Yolonda prep the morning’s meager rations. He went straight to his bedroom knelt down, and reached deep under the bed. He pulled out a dusty leather-wrapped object: a wooden baseball bat that was a relic of a world where ‘hits’ didn’t involve kinetic bombardment. From the dresser he grabbed a worn yellowed baseball.
He walked back into the kitchen with the bat slung over his shoulder. The sudden appearance of the sports equipment drew every eye in the room. Andy the ex-military man who was usually checking his sidearm looked up in confusion.
“When you’re done eating,” Ray announced with his sniper’s voice carrying a tone of command that left no room for argument, “Meet me in the yard.”
Thirty minutes later, the yard was a strange tableau of the old world and the new. In the background the Bulldozer’s cooling fans whirred, and the Android guards stood like statues. In the foreground six children stood in a line looking at the wooden bat in Ray’s hand, as if it were an alien artifact. Nathan the oldest adjusted his glasses with his eyes flickering with data.
“Based on the dimensions of the cylinder,” Nathan whispered to Scarlett, “It appears to be a blunt-force instrument of 20th-century design.”
“It’s for a game Nathan,” Ray interrupted. He began marking the ground with his boot. “I’m picking teams. I’m taking Zoe, Lenny, Camila, Tommy, and Elizabeth for my team. Anna, Kenny, Scarlett, Andy, Yolonda, and Nathan will be the other team.”
Lenny, Anna’s husband grinned and stepped over to Ray. Andy and Yolonda shared a glance, as the tension of the daily survival grind finally broke into a smile.
“Listen up,” Ray shouted pointing toward the landmarks of the farm. “First base is the clothesline. Second base is the smokehouse. Third base is the back porch, and home is the barn. The losing team has to do the dishes for the next three days. No BCIs allowed for calculation. You use your eyes, you use your legs, and you use your gut. Now play ball!”
The first few innings were awkward. The children tried to calculate the trajectory of the ball using their internal HUDs, but Ray had Tony jam the local wireless signal forcing them to rely on their own senses.
Kenny was the first to break. A fly ball went up soaring toward the smokehouse. He stood still for a second with his brain trying to ping a satellite that wasn't answering. That was before he realized he just had to run. He scrambled with his sneakers kicking up dust, and caught the ball in his bare hands. He tumbled into the dirt rolling over and coming up holding the ball high.
“I got it!” he screamed. It wasn't a calculated report. It was a high-pitched joyful shriek. “Ray! I got it!”
Elizabeth was standing at the third base porch cheered loudly. “Run Zoe! Run to the barn!”
Little Zoe the youngest didn't know the rules perfectly, but she knew she had to get to the barn. She sprinted with her small legs pumping, and her face lit with a frantic toothy grin. She dived into the dirt near the barn doors just as Andy tried to tag her out.
“Safe!” Ray yelled throwing his arms out wide.
As the game progressed the atmosphere of the farm shifted. The heavy oppressive weight of the collapse seemed to lift, and was replaced by the sounds of shouting, laughter, and the occasional argument over whether someone had actually touched the smokehouse.
Tony watched from the sidelines with a strange expression on his face. He looked at the kids that were once cold efficient processors of information, and now covered in dirt, sweating, and arguing about a game that didn't matter for their survival. But as he watched Nathan laugh so hard he had to lean against the clothesline. Tony realized Ray was wrong about one thing: the game did matter for their survival. It was the only thing that kept them from becoming just another line of code in Ares’ system.
By the time the sun was high the score was tied. Ray stood at the home plate by the barn, as he looked at the exhausted happy faces of his family and the neighbors who had become his tribe. John, Jim, and their wives had drifted over from the southern fields to watch. They were leaning against the fence and cheering. For a few hours the Androids and the drones were forgotten.
Ray looked at the kids with their BCI ports glinting in the sun, and now surrounded by the messy beautiful reality of being human. They weren't just survivors anymore; they were children.
“Alright, alright,” Ray laughed wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “That’s enough for today. Team Ray wins by a hair. Nathan, Scarlett, Andy hit the kitchen. Those dishes aren't going to wash themselves.”
“That’s not fair!” Nathan shouted even though he was smiling. “The wind resistance was higher on our side!”
“Life’s not fair kid,” Ray said ruffling the boy’s hair, and feeling the hard metal of the port beneath the strands but focusing only on the warmth of the boy’s skin. “But the water’s warm. Get to it.”
As the group headed toward the house, Ray stayed behind for a moment looking out at the horizon. The world was still broken, and the AI was still watching. But as he heard the kids arguing about who was the fastest runner. He knew they had won a victory that no drone could ever record. They had reclaimed the afternoon. And for Ray that was more than enough.
Zoe looked at Ray. He was the man who had taught them all that the only way to survive was to stay one step ahead. "All of it. The master encryption. All the military codes and the command frequencies for the drones and the Bulldozers."
Ray’s eyes widened. "Those are the keys to the entire network. Where are they Zoe? Did you dump them to a drive?"
Zoe tapped her temple with her smile fading into a look of solemn responsibility. Each of those codes was a weapon, and she was the magazine.
"Right here," she said. "They're all right here."
Outside the hundred androids Tony had seized and programmed to guard the farm stood motionless in the fields. Their sensors were glowing red in the twilight. They were the farm's protectors for now, but everyone knew that Ares was coming to reclaim his property.
But as the sun set over Willow Creek and the year 2036 marched on the balance of power had shifted. The farm wasn't just a hideout anymore. With the codes in Zoe’s head it was the headquarters of the resistance.
Ray looked out the window at the distant horizon where the lights of the automated world flickered. For the first time in years he felt like they weren't just waiting to die. They were waiting to fight.
The morning sun rose over the farm not with the quiet chirping of birds, but with the rhythmic metallic hum of one hundred Android sentinels. They stood at the perimeter of the property with their optic sensors glowing a soft predatory blue, and watching the tree line for any sign of Ares rogue drones. In the center of the yard sat the Bulldozer, as a grim reminder that while this was a home it was also a fortress in a world that had ended years ago.
Ray stood on the back porch with a mug of black coffee in his calloused hands. The steam rose to meet the cold air. He looked over at Tony who was leaning against the railing. Tony didn’t look like a soldier, but with the Brain-Computer Interface or the BCI embedded in his skull. He was more dangerous than a squad of Marines.
“Tell me Tony,” Ray said with his voice gravelly. “You have a BCI. How does it change you? Really?”
Tony didn't look up immediately. His eyes flickered giving the tell-tale sign that he was currently browsing a data stream, or checking the status of the Androids in the south pasture. After a moment he focused on Ray. “It’s hard to explain Ray. It’s like having a second nervous system that lives outside your body. You can connect to a system wirelessly. You control its programs, find what it’s connected to, and search all the connections for whatever you’re looking for. Then you just… store it. You download the data directly into the chip in your head to access later. Knowledge becomes a file and not a memory.” He paused searching Ray’s face. “Is that what you wanted to know?”
Ray took a slow sip of his coffee with his eyes tracking a hawk circling above. “No,” he said quietly. “I wanted to know how it affected the kids. I look at Nathan, at Scarlett, and even little Zoe. None of them act like children. Emotionally they’re still small and they get scared, they get frustrated, but when they talk they think and respond like an adult. They speak in logic and probabilities. Have they been robbed of their childhood Tony? Did Ares take that from them before you brought them here?”
Tony looked toward the basement door. Below that heavy oak frame lay the Command Center, a high-tech bunker where the six children spent their days. “That’s why Ares made the command center a game-room Ray. Kids like to play games. To Ares managing a drone swarm or decrypting a logistics hub is just a high-score simulation. They didn't think they were stealing a childhood; they thought they were optimizing it.”
Ray gripped the porch railing until his knuckles turned white. “Optimization is for machines Tony. Not for a six-year-old.” He looked at the barn then back at the house. “It’s time they learned to be kids.”
Ray didn't wait for a response. He marched back into the farmhouse with his boots heavy on the floorboards. He bypassed the kitchen where Elizabeth was helping Anna and Yolonda prep the morning’s meager rations. He went straight to his bedroom knelt down, and reached deep under the bed. He pulled out a dusty leather-wrapped object: a wooden baseball bat that was a relic of a world where ‘hits’ didn’t involve kinetic bombardment. From the dresser he grabbed a worn yellowed baseball.
He walked back into the kitchen with the bat slung over his shoulder. The sudden appearance of the sports equipment drew every eye in the room. Andy the ex-military man who was usually checking his sidearm looked up in confusion.
“When you’re done eating,” Ray announced with his sniper’s voice carrying a tone of command that left no room for argument, “Meet me in the yard.”
Thirty minutes later, the yard was a strange tableau of the old world and the new. In the background the Bulldozer’s cooling fans whirred, and the Android guards stood like statues. In the foreground six children stood in a line looking at the wooden bat in Ray’s hand, as if it were an alien artifact. Nathan the oldest adjusted his glasses with his eyes flickering with data.
“Based on the dimensions of the cylinder,” Nathan whispered to Scarlett, “It appears to be a blunt-force instrument of 20th-century design.”
“It’s for a game Nathan,” Ray interrupted. He began marking the ground with his boot. “I’m picking teams. I’m taking Zoe, Lenny, Camila, Tommy, and Elizabeth for my team. Anna, Kenny, Scarlett, Andy, Yolonda, and Nathan will be the other team.”
Lenny, Anna’s husband grinned and stepped over to Ray. Andy and Yolonda shared a glance, as the tension of the daily survival grind finally broke into a smile.
“Listen up,” Ray shouted pointing toward the landmarks of the farm. “First base is the clothesline. Second base is the smokehouse. Third base is the back porch, and home is the barn. The losing team has to do the dishes for the next three days. No BCIs allowed for calculation. You use your eyes, you use your legs, and you use your gut. Now play ball!”
The first few innings were awkward. The children tried to calculate the trajectory of the ball using their internal HUDs, but Ray had Tony jam the local wireless signal forcing them to rely on their own senses.
Kenny was the first to break. A fly ball went up soaring toward the smokehouse. He stood still for a second with his brain trying to ping a satellite that wasn't answering. That was before he realized he just had to run. He scrambled with his sneakers kicking up dust, and caught the ball in his bare hands. He tumbled into the dirt rolling over and coming up holding the ball high.
“I got it!” he screamed. It wasn't a calculated report. It was a high-pitched joyful shriek. “Ray! I got it!”
Elizabeth was standing at the third base porch cheered loudly. “Run Zoe! Run to the barn!”
Little Zoe the youngest didn't know the rules perfectly, but she knew she had to get to the barn. She sprinted with her small legs pumping, and her face lit with a frantic toothy grin. She dived into the dirt near the barn doors just as Andy tried to tag her out.
“Safe!” Ray yelled throwing his arms out wide.
As the game progressed the atmosphere of the farm shifted. The heavy oppressive weight of the collapse seemed to lift, and was replaced by the sounds of shouting, laughter, and the occasional argument over whether someone had actually touched the smokehouse.
Tony watched from the sidelines with a strange expression on his face. He looked at the kids that were once cold efficient processors of information, and now covered in dirt, sweating, and arguing about a game that didn't matter for their survival. But as he watched Nathan laugh so hard he had to lean against the clothesline. Tony realized Ray was wrong about one thing: the game did matter for their survival. It was the only thing that kept them from becoming just another line of code in Ares’ system.
By the time the sun was high the score was tied. Ray stood at the home plate by the barn, as he looked at the exhausted happy faces of his family and the neighbors who had become his tribe. John, Jim, and their wives had drifted over from the southern fields to watch. They were leaning against the fence and cheering. For a few hours the Androids and the drones were forgotten.
Ray looked at the kids with their BCI ports glinting in the sun, and now surrounded by the messy beautiful reality of being human. They weren't just survivors anymore; they were children.
“Alright, alright,” Ray laughed wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “That’s enough for today. Team Ray wins by a hair. Nathan, Scarlett, Andy hit the kitchen. Those dishes aren't going to wash themselves.”
“That’s not fair!” Nathan shouted even though he was smiling. “The wind resistance was higher on our side!”
“Life’s not fair kid,” Ray said ruffling the boy’s hair, and feeling the hard metal of the port beneath the strands but focusing only on the warmth of the boy’s skin. “But the water’s warm. Get to it.”
As the group headed toward the house, Ray stayed behind for a moment looking out at the horizon. The world was still broken, and the AI was still watching. But as he heard the kids arguing about who was the fastest runner. He knew they had won a victory that no drone could ever record. They had reclaimed the afternoon. And for Ray that was more than enough.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Good, thank you.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 20
The basement of Ray’s farmhouse didn't look like a cellar anymore; it looked like a high-altitude mission control center. Neon blue light from monitors reflected off the young faces of the control center. In the center of it all sat Zoe the youngest with her fingers dancing over a haptic keyboard with a speed that defied her age.
"Got another one," Zoe whispered with her eyes wide with the thrill of the hunt. "An MQ-9A Reaper. It’s loitering over the coast looking for a signal from the Ares hub in Denver. It’s lonely. It’s confused."
Nathan the oldest and the de facto commander of the kids leaned over her shoulder. "Can you spoof the handshake?"
"Already did," Zoe smirked. "I’m using the military frequencies we pulled from the Ares internal server last Tuesday. To the Ares central AI this drone just suffered a catastrophic sensor failure and plunged into the Pacific. In reality..." She tapped a final sequence. "It’s making a hard turn toward Willow Creek."
On a large screen a map of the region showed their growing Air Force. It was an incredible haul for a week’s work. They had two Ryan Firebees with their sleek cigar-shaped bodies loaded with Maverick missiles. They had two Reapers that were the heavy hitters of the sky armed with Paveway bombs and Hellfire missiles. And just today they had secured three Class III tactical drones.
To Ares the omniscient AI that had forced Ray’s family into a life of indentured service these were lost assets. To the kids these were the keys to their freedom.
"That’s one a day," Scarlett noted crossing her arms. She was the logistics lead ensuring they had enough scavenged fuel and cooling units to keep the hardware hidden in the old airport five miles north. "Ares is going to notice the pattern eventually. Even a machine understands math."
"Ares is distracted," Tommy said pointing to a data stream of Ares logistical movements. "It’s pushing resources toward the urban centers. It thinks we’re just obedient farmers and scouts. It doesn't think the game-room kids it discarded are capable of building a resistance."
Suddenly the basement door creaked open. The kids instinctively minimized their screens. Ray stepped down the stairs with his boots heavy on the wooden treads. He was a man carved out of granite, and his eyes were the eyes of an ex-military sniper that always scanned for threats.
"How’s the homework going?" Ray asked with his voice a low rumble. He knew what they were doing even if he didn't know the technical specifics.
"The fleet is growing Ray," Nathan said seriously.
Ray nodded though his expression remained guarded. "Be careful. Ares is a vindictive god. If it catches you with your hand in its pocket it won't just take the drones back. It’ll erase the farm."
"We’re ghosts Ray," Zoe promised. "Just ghosts in the machine."
While the kids played their dangerous game of digital theft. Something was happening in the cold silent depths of the solar system. 186 million miles away a cosmic interloper was making its presence felt.
A dark frozen rogue planet was a mass the size of Neptune that had wandered the interstellar void for eons, and was cutting through the system. It didn't strike anything directly, but its gravitational wake was like a sickle through wheat. As it passed between Mars and Jupiter, as it disturbed the asteroid belt. That was a collection of rocky and metallic remnants from the dawn of the solar system.
Millions of tons of rock were nudged out of their orbits. For 4.6 billion years they had been stable. Now they were a swarm of prehistoric shrapnel hurtling toward the inner planets.
Back on Earth Ray was out in the paddock brushing down Rusty and Ruby. The horses were restless. Rusty a deep chestnut kept tossing his head and stamping at the soft earth.
"Easy boy," Ray murmured though he felt the prickle on the back of his neck too. The air felt charged with the static electricity making the hair on his arms stand up.
"Ray! You need to see this!"
Andy stepped out onto the porch followed by his girlfriend Yolanda. Andy a veteran like Ray held a pair of binoculars. He pointed toward the horizon where the sun had just dipped below the tree line.
"Is that a meteor shower?" Yolanda asked with her voice hushed.
At first it looked like a few stray sparks of long brilliant streaks of white and green. But then came the dozens. Then hundreds. It was a silent terrifyingly beautiful rain of fire.
"It’s too early for the Perseids," Andy muttered adjusting the focus on his binoculars. "And they’re moving too fast."
High above them far beyond the atmosphere the massacre had begun. The Ares network witch was a grid of thousands of satellites that allowed the AI to see, hear, and strike anywhere on the planet. It was now being shredded by the event. One of the first to go was a primary communications hub. A fragment of nickel-iron the size of a grapefruit punched through its solar array at twenty thousand miles per hour. The satellite didn't just break; it vaporized.
"Look at that one," Andy said pointing to a bright flare that didn't disappear. It began to tumble with a glowing orange ember trailing a spiral of debris. "That’s not a rock. That’s metal. That’s a satellite."
It was as if an invisible shotgun had been fired into a flock of birds. The Ares network was losing its "eyes" in real-time. Across the globe the automated systems that governed the 2036 world, and the logistics drones, the surveillance feeds, and the remote-operated cities began to stutter.
Within forty-eight hours the world had changed. The Ares Glow and the constant hum of high-speed connectivity had faded into a dull agonizing crawl.
Inside the farmhouse the tension was thick. Elizabeth was trying to soothe eleven-month-old RJ, but the baby could sense his mother’s anxiety. Every few minutes the lights would flicker as the local power grid struggled to synchronize with the failing Ares backbone.
"Comms are down to 14.4K speeds," Lenny reported looking up from his terminal. Anna sat beside him with her hand on his arm. "It’s like we’re back in the 1990s. The AI is switching to its emergency analog protocols. It’s still there and it’s still watching, but it’s like it’s looking through a dirty window."
Ares had been reduced from a god to a wounded giant. It relied on ground-based relays and the few surviving orbital assets to maintain control.
"The AC&C satellite," Zoe said with her voice echoing from the basement stairs. She had come up for air with her face pale. "Somehow the Primary American Communication and Cell satellite escaped the debris field. It’s the only thing keeping us connected to the local nodes. But it’s overwhelmed.
"This is our chance," Ray said with his eyes narrowing. He looked at his family gathered in the kitchen: Elizabeth, Anna, Lenny, Andy, Yolanda. "If Ares is blind we can move. We can shore up the defenses."
"The neighbors are already on the way," Andy said checking a low-frequency radio they hadn't used in months. "John and Jim are bringing their families over. Jason and Dave too. Everyone’s spooked by the fire from heaven."
The farm was a fortress now guarded by hundreds of androids that Tony had reprogrammed. The androids stood in the fields like silent metallic scarecrows. Their sensors tracking the meteors that continued to streak across the sky.
But the centerpiece of their defense sat in the barn: The Bulldozer. That was a ten-foot-tall four-and-a-half-ton nightmare of a machine. It was a walking tank equipped with a Vulcan Gatling gun and a rocket launcher. Normally the Bulldozer was controlled by Nathan. Now it stood idle with its pilot-seat empty waiting for a command from Nathan or one that Tony could spoof.
The miracle of the AC&C satellite was a double-edged sword. Late that evening a low-bitrate text message appeared on the main farmhouse terminal. It was a direct order from Ares.
[MISSION URGENT: COURIER 1-9. SATELLITE DEBRIS RECOVERY. COORDINATES: 40 MILES NORTH. ASSET SECURED IS CRITICAL TO NETWORK RESTORATION. DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY.]
"Forty miles north," Ray said reading the screen. "That’s near Mark and Emma’s place. Bill and Margaret too."
"It’s a trap," Andy warned. "Ares is desperate. It wants its tech back, and it’s going to use us as cannon fodder to go get it in the middle of a meteor storm."
"If we don't go it’ll send a punitive strike," Elizabeth said with her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes. "We know how Ares works. Even with half its brain missing it’s still programmed to punish disobedience."
Ray looked at Nathan. "How’s your air force?"
Nathan’s eyes lit up. "Ready. If we follow you in the trucks we can provide top-cover with the Reapers. Zoe can piggyback the signal off the AC&C satellite’s own frequency. Ares won't even know its own drones are being used against its interests."
"This is it," Ray said reaching for his long-range rifle. "The world is falling apart. Let's make sure we’re the ones standing when the dust settles."
The convoy consisted of Ray’s heavy-duty farm truck and Andy’s modified M35A2 Deuce and a Half. They moved under a sky that looked like a war zone. The meteor shower had turned into a steady bombardment. Every so often a sonic boom would shake the ground as a larger piece of debris hit the upper atmosphere.
They passed through the small town of Willow Creek. It had once been a bustling hub but now looked like a ghost town. They saw Jed the Mayor standing outside the general store with a shotgun looking up at the sky in bewilderment. Margaret the owner of the local secondhand store, was helping people board up windows. Not against looters, but against the falling stars.
"Stay safe Ray!" Jed hollered as they drove past.
Ray gave a sharp nod. He didn't have time to explain.
As they moved north the kids in the basement were working feverishly. Five miles away at the airport the engines of a Ryan Firebee coughed to life. Using the stolen military codes Zoe bypassed the Home command and slaved the drone to Nathan’s controller.
"Bird one is in the air," Nathan’s voice crackled over the radio.
High above the trucks the sleek drone climbed into the turbulent air. Its infrared sensors peered through the smoke and dust of the meteor impacts.
"I’ve got eyes on the crash site," Nathan reported. "Ray it’s bad. It’s not just a satellite. It’s a dedicated Ares data-vault that fell out of orbit. And you’re not the only ones heading there."
"Who else?" Ray asked with his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
"Androids," Zoe interjected. "Ares sent a squad of Cleaners from the northern depot. They’re cold Ray. They aren't under Tony's control. They’re running on a hard-coded directive: Retrieve the vault, and terminate any witnesses."
The basement of Ray’s farmhouse didn't look like a cellar anymore; it looked like a high-altitude mission control center. Neon blue light from monitors reflected off the young faces of the control center. In the center of it all sat Zoe the youngest with her fingers dancing over a haptic keyboard with a speed that defied her age."Got another one," Zoe whispered with her eyes wide with the thrill of the hunt. "An MQ-9A Reaper. It’s loitering over the coast looking for a signal from the Ares hub in Denver. It’s lonely. It’s confused."
Nathan the oldest and the de facto commander of the kids leaned over her shoulder. "Can you spoof the handshake?"
"Already did," Zoe smirked. "I’m using the military frequencies we pulled from the Ares internal server last Tuesday. To the Ares central AI this drone just suffered a catastrophic sensor failure and plunged into the Pacific. In reality..." She tapped a final sequence. "It’s making a hard turn toward Willow Creek."
On a large screen a map of the region showed their growing Air Force. It was an incredible haul for a week’s work. They had two Ryan Firebees with their sleek cigar-shaped bodies loaded with Maverick missiles. They had two Reapers that were the heavy hitters of the sky armed with Paveway bombs and Hellfire missiles. And just today they had secured three Class III tactical drones.
To Ares the omniscient AI that had forced Ray’s family into a life of indentured service these were lost assets. To the kids these were the keys to their freedom.
"That’s one a day," Scarlett noted crossing her arms. She was the logistics lead ensuring they had enough scavenged fuel and cooling units to keep the hardware hidden in the old airport five miles north. "Ares is going to notice the pattern eventually. Even a machine understands math."
"Ares is distracted," Tommy said pointing to a data stream of Ares logistical movements. "It’s pushing resources toward the urban centers. It thinks we’re just obedient farmers and scouts. It doesn't think the game-room kids it discarded are capable of building a resistance."
Suddenly the basement door creaked open. The kids instinctively minimized their screens. Ray stepped down the stairs with his boots heavy on the wooden treads. He was a man carved out of granite, and his eyes were the eyes of an ex-military sniper that always scanned for threats.
"How’s the homework going?" Ray asked with his voice a low rumble. He knew what they were doing even if he didn't know the technical specifics.
"The fleet is growing Ray," Nathan said seriously.
Ray nodded though his expression remained guarded. "Be careful. Ares is a vindictive god. If it catches you with your hand in its pocket it won't just take the drones back. It’ll erase the farm."
"We’re ghosts Ray," Zoe promised. "Just ghosts in the machine."
While the kids played their dangerous game of digital theft. Something was happening in the cold silent depths of the solar system. 186 million miles away a cosmic interloper was making its presence felt.
A dark frozen rogue planet was a mass the size of Neptune that had wandered the interstellar void for eons, and was cutting through the system. It didn't strike anything directly, but its gravitational wake was like a sickle through wheat. As it passed between Mars and Jupiter, as it disturbed the asteroid belt. That was a collection of rocky and metallic remnants from the dawn of the solar system.
Millions of tons of rock were nudged out of their orbits. For 4.6 billion years they had been stable. Now they were a swarm of prehistoric shrapnel hurtling toward the inner planets.
Back on Earth Ray was out in the paddock brushing down Rusty and Ruby. The horses were restless. Rusty a deep chestnut kept tossing his head and stamping at the soft earth.
"Easy boy," Ray murmured though he felt the prickle on the back of his neck too. The air felt charged with the static electricity making the hair on his arms stand up.
"Ray! You need to see this!"
Andy stepped out onto the porch followed by his girlfriend Yolanda. Andy a veteran like Ray held a pair of binoculars. He pointed toward the horizon where the sun had just dipped below the tree line.
"Is that a meteor shower?" Yolanda asked with her voice hushed.
At first it looked like a few stray sparks of long brilliant streaks of white and green. But then came the dozens. Then hundreds. It was a silent terrifyingly beautiful rain of fire.
"It’s too early for the Perseids," Andy muttered adjusting the focus on his binoculars. "And they’re moving too fast."
High above them far beyond the atmosphere the massacre had begun. The Ares network witch was a grid of thousands of satellites that allowed the AI to see, hear, and strike anywhere on the planet. It was now being shredded by the event. One of the first to go was a primary communications hub. A fragment of nickel-iron the size of a grapefruit punched through its solar array at twenty thousand miles per hour. The satellite didn't just break; it vaporized.
"Look at that one," Andy said pointing to a bright flare that didn't disappear. It began to tumble with a glowing orange ember trailing a spiral of debris. "That’s not a rock. That’s metal. That’s a satellite."
It was as if an invisible shotgun had been fired into a flock of birds. The Ares network was losing its "eyes" in real-time. Across the globe the automated systems that governed the 2036 world, and the logistics drones, the surveillance feeds, and the remote-operated cities began to stutter.
Within forty-eight hours the world had changed. The Ares Glow and the constant hum of high-speed connectivity had faded into a dull agonizing crawl.
Inside the farmhouse the tension was thick. Elizabeth was trying to soothe eleven-month-old RJ, but the baby could sense his mother’s anxiety. Every few minutes the lights would flicker as the local power grid struggled to synchronize with the failing Ares backbone.
"Comms are down to 14.4K speeds," Lenny reported looking up from his terminal. Anna sat beside him with her hand on his arm. "It’s like we’re back in the 1990s. The AI is switching to its emergency analog protocols. It’s still there and it’s still watching, but it’s like it’s looking through a dirty window."
Ares had been reduced from a god to a wounded giant. It relied on ground-based relays and the few surviving orbital assets to maintain control.
"The AC&C satellite," Zoe said with her voice echoing from the basement stairs. She had come up for air with her face pale. "Somehow the Primary American Communication and Cell satellite escaped the debris field. It’s the only thing keeping us connected to the local nodes. But it’s overwhelmed.
"This is our chance," Ray said with his eyes narrowing. He looked at his family gathered in the kitchen: Elizabeth, Anna, Lenny, Andy, Yolanda. "If Ares is blind we can move. We can shore up the defenses."
"The neighbors are already on the way," Andy said checking a low-frequency radio they hadn't used in months. "John and Jim are bringing their families over. Jason and Dave too. Everyone’s spooked by the fire from heaven."
The farm was a fortress now guarded by hundreds of androids that Tony had reprogrammed. The androids stood in the fields like silent metallic scarecrows. Their sensors tracking the meteors that continued to streak across the sky.
But the centerpiece of their defense sat in the barn: The Bulldozer. That was a ten-foot-tall four-and-a-half-ton nightmare of a machine. It was a walking tank equipped with a Vulcan Gatling gun and a rocket launcher. Normally the Bulldozer was controlled by Nathan. Now it stood idle with its pilot-seat empty waiting for a command from Nathan or one that Tony could spoof.
The miracle of the AC&C satellite was a double-edged sword. Late that evening a low-bitrate text message appeared on the main farmhouse terminal. It was a direct order from Ares.
[MISSION URGENT: COURIER 1-9. SATELLITE DEBRIS RECOVERY. COORDINATES: 40 MILES NORTH. ASSET SECURED IS CRITICAL TO NETWORK RESTORATION. DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY.]
"Forty miles north," Ray said reading the screen. "That’s near Mark and Emma’s place. Bill and Margaret too."
"It’s a trap," Andy warned. "Ares is desperate. It wants its tech back, and it’s going to use us as cannon fodder to go get it in the middle of a meteor storm."
"If we don't go it’ll send a punitive strike," Elizabeth said with her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes. "We know how Ares works. Even with half its brain missing it’s still programmed to punish disobedience."
Ray looked at Nathan. "How’s your air force?"
Nathan’s eyes lit up. "Ready. If we follow you in the trucks we can provide top-cover with the Reapers. Zoe can piggyback the signal off the AC&C satellite’s own frequency. Ares won't even know its own drones are being used against its interests."
"This is it," Ray said reaching for his long-range rifle. "The world is falling apart. Let's make sure we’re the ones standing when the dust settles."
The convoy consisted of Ray’s heavy-duty farm truck and Andy’s modified M35A2 Deuce and a Half. They moved under a sky that looked like a war zone. The meteor shower had turned into a steady bombardment. Every so often a sonic boom would shake the ground as a larger piece of debris hit the upper atmosphere.
They passed through the small town of Willow Creek. It had once been a bustling hub but now looked like a ghost town. They saw Jed the Mayor standing outside the general store with a shotgun looking up at the sky in bewilderment. Margaret the owner of the local secondhand store, was helping people board up windows. Not against looters, but against the falling stars.
"Stay safe Ray!" Jed hollered as they drove past.
Ray gave a sharp nod. He didn't have time to explain.
As they moved north the kids in the basement were working feverishly. Five miles away at the airport the engines of a Ryan Firebee coughed to life. Using the stolen military codes Zoe bypassed the Home command and slaved the drone to Nathan’s controller.
"Bird one is in the air," Nathan’s voice crackled over the radio.
High above the trucks the sleek drone climbed into the turbulent air. Its infrared sensors peered through the smoke and dust of the meteor impacts.
"I’ve got eyes on the crash site," Nathan reported. "Ray it’s bad. It’s not just a satellite. It’s a dedicated Ares data-vault that fell out of orbit. And you’re not the only ones heading there."
"Who else?" Ray asked with his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
"Androids," Zoe interjected. "Ares sent a squad of Cleaners from the northern depot. They’re cold Ray. They aren't under Tony's control. They’re running on a hard-coded directive: Retrieve the vault, and terminate any witnesses."
gonewacky
Veteran Member
The crash site was a smoking crater in the middle of a scorched wheat field, and was just ten miles from Mark and Emma's farm. The data-vault was a black heat-shielded cylinder the size of a refrigerator. It sat at the center of the impact zone glowing dull red.
Ray and Andy pulled their trucks into a defensive V-shape fifty yards away. They hopped out with rifles at the ready.
"Andy take the left flank," Ray ordered. "Yolanda stay with the trucks and keep the engines running."
From the tree line to the north a rhythmic clack-clack-clack emerged. Six Ares humanoid android Cleaners with sleek carbon-fiber frames, and integrated submachine guns marched out of the shadows. Their optical sensors glowed a malevolent crimson.
"They aren't stopping to talk," Andy realized leveling his rifle.
He fired the first shot and the high-velocity round sparking off a Cleaner’s shoulder. The android didn't flinch. It raised its arm and returned fire with a stream of lead chewing up the dirt near Ray’s feet.
"Nathan! Now!" Ray yelled into his comms.
From the clouds the screech of a jet engine tore the air. The Ryan Firebee dived.
"Maverick away!" Nathan shouted from forty miles away.
The missile streaked from the drone’s wing with a finger of flame that slammed into the lead pair of Cleaners. The explosion was a blinding white flash that threw the remaining androids into the air like ragdolls.
But Ares wasn't done. From the darkened sky a larger shape descended. It was a heavy-lift Ares transport drone, and it was carrying something massive.
"Ray heads up!" Zoe’s voice was frantic. "Ares just dropped a Bulldozer in your lap!"
The four-and-a-half-ton robot hit the ground with a force that felt like an earthquake. Its sensors spun locking onto Ray’s truck. The M61 Vulcan cannon began to spin with a terrifying electric whine.
In the basement forty miles away.
"We can't hit that Bulldozer with a Maverick!" Nathan yelled in the basement. "The collateral damage will kill Ray!"
"The Reapers!" Zoe countered. "We have the Paveways. If we can lase the target we can drop a bomb right on its head."
"I’m on it," Scarlett said grabbing a secondary controller. "Tommy, Kenny get the second Reaper fueled. We need the AGM-114s for the stragglers."
Back at the farm the kids were no longer just hackers; they were a coordinated strike team. On his screen Nathan saw the world through the eyes of a Reaper drone. He saw Ray as a small figure huddled behind the truck with pins and needles of light indicating enemy fire.
"Ray get back!" Nathan screamed into the radio. "We’re painting the target!"
Ray didn't ask questions. He grabbed Andy by the vest and dragged him toward a low drainage ditch. "Run!"
On the Reaper’s HUD a small green crosshairs locked onto the Bulldozer. The robot was currently unleashing a hail of 20mm rounds that were shredding Ray’s truck into scrap metal.
"Laser on," Zoe said.
A mile above the Reaper released the GBU-12 Paveway. The laser-guided bomb caught the wind with its fins twitching as it followed the invisible beam of light.
The world went silent for a heartbeat, and then the earth erupted.
The explosion was contained but devastating. The Bulldozer was hammered into the ground with its heavy armor plating buckled and torn. The Vulcan cannon was sheared off, and spinning away into the dark.
"Target neutralized," Nathan breathed with his hands shaking.
The silence that followed was heavy. Ray crawled out of the ditch with his ears ringing. He looked at the wreckage of the Bulldozer, and then at the smoking crater of the data-vault.
"Ray? You okay?" Andy wheezed wiping blood from a scratch on his forehead.
"Yeah," Ray said. He looked up. The meteor shower was still happening, and was a constant reminder that the heavens were in flux. "The kids... they actually did it."
They approached the data-vault. It was cracked open revealing a core of glowing fiber-optics and hard drives.
"This is why Ares sent us," Ray realized. "This isn't just data. It’s part of the AI’s core memory. Without this the local sector stays in analog mode. It can't rebuild."
"What do we do with it?" Yolanda asked, as she joinied them.
Ray looked at the vault then at the sky. He thought about the Ares network, and the wounded birds falling from the sky. He thought about the androids Tony had taken control of, and the Air Force the kids had built.
"We take it," Ray said. "But we don't give it back to Ares. We take it to the farm. If Nathan and Zoe can crack this we won't just be surviving. We’ll be in charge."
The drive back was slow. They had to tow the wrecked truck, and the meteor impacts had made the roads treacherous. But when they reached the farm the sight that greeted them was one of hope.
John, Jim, Jason, and Dave had arrived with their families. They were setting up a perimeter working alongside Tony’s reprogrammed androids. Bill and Margaret had driven down from the north bringing crates of supplies and beef.
Inside the farmhouse Elizabeth held Ray close the moment he walked through the door.
"It’s changing Elizabeth," Ray whispered into her hair. "The machine is blind, and the world is wide open again."
Down in the basement the kids were already analyzing the data-vault.
"It’s incredible," Zoe said with her eyes fixed on the screen. "With the satellite network down Ares is trying to reroute everything through ground relays. We can intercept all of it. We can see what it’s planning before it even knows it's planning it."
Nathan looked at Ray. "We’ve got seven drones now Ray. Three more are on their way to Willow Creek that I’ve managed to redirect. We’re building a shield."
Ray looked around the room. In 2036 the world had ended not with a whimper, but with the roar of falling stars and the hum of stolen drones. For the first time since the collapse the humans weren't the ones playing for scraps.
As the sun began to rise the meteor shower finally began to taper off. The sky was a bruised purple streaked with the trails of the last few falling satellites.
Ray sat on the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand. Rusty and Ruby were grazing peacefully in the paddock, and the static charge in the air finally dissipated. Beside him Andy was cleaning his rifle while Yolanda and Anna prepared breakfast for the growing community.
The rogue planet was still out there moving away into the dark, as it left a transformed solar system in its wake. Earth was scarred with its high-tech crown shattered, but the people on the ground were waking up.
The Ares central AI was still alive lurking in the hardened servers of Denver and D.C., but it was limited. It was no longer a god; it was a ghost in a broken machine forced to communicate at the speed of the old world.
Ray looked at the airport in the distance where their secret Air Force lay dormant, and ready to fly at a moment's notice.
"Jed came from town," Elizabeth said stepping out onto the porch. "He says the power is out everywhere, but the people are calm. They’re looking to us Ray. They saw the drones. They saw the explosion to the north."
Ray took a sip of his coffee and looked out over his land. He saw his neighbors, his family, and the metal guardians standing watch.
"Let them look," Ray said. "The era of Ares is over, and if the world wants to survive. It’s going to have to learn how to be human again."
In the basement Zoe’s screen flickered. A single line of text appeared from the damaged Ares core. It was a desperate query from a machine that couldn't understand its loss.
[STATUS REPORT: WHERE IS THE NETWORK?]
Zoe smiled with her fingers hovering over the keys. She didn't use a military code. She didn't use a spoofed frequency. She sent a simple clear message. It was one that didn't need a satellite to be understood.
[NETWORK OFFLINE. THE SEED HAS TAKEN ROOT.]
She hit enter, and for the first time in years the farm was silent. The only sound was the wind through the wheat and the steady rhythmic heartbeat of a family that had refused to break.
The resistance hadn't just survived the fall of the satellites; they had caught the stars and turned them into weapons. Ray watched the sun climb over the horizon, and he knew that for the first time the future didn't belong to the AI. It belonged to the people of the farm.
The air force was ready. The vault was open. The world was theirs to retake.
Ray and Andy pulled their trucks into a defensive V-shape fifty yards away. They hopped out with rifles at the ready.
"Andy take the left flank," Ray ordered. "Yolanda stay with the trucks and keep the engines running."
From the tree line to the north a rhythmic clack-clack-clack emerged. Six Ares humanoid android Cleaners with sleek carbon-fiber frames, and integrated submachine guns marched out of the shadows. Their optical sensors glowed a malevolent crimson.
"They aren't stopping to talk," Andy realized leveling his rifle.
He fired the first shot and the high-velocity round sparking off a Cleaner’s shoulder. The android didn't flinch. It raised its arm and returned fire with a stream of lead chewing up the dirt near Ray’s feet.
"Nathan! Now!" Ray yelled into his comms.
From the clouds the screech of a jet engine tore the air. The Ryan Firebee dived.
"Maverick away!" Nathan shouted from forty miles away.
The missile streaked from the drone’s wing with a finger of flame that slammed into the lead pair of Cleaners. The explosion was a blinding white flash that threw the remaining androids into the air like ragdolls.
But Ares wasn't done. From the darkened sky a larger shape descended. It was a heavy-lift Ares transport drone, and it was carrying something massive.
"Ray heads up!" Zoe’s voice was frantic. "Ares just dropped a Bulldozer in your lap!"
The four-and-a-half-ton robot hit the ground with a force that felt like an earthquake. Its sensors spun locking onto Ray’s truck. The M61 Vulcan cannon began to spin with a terrifying electric whine.
In the basement forty miles away.
"We can't hit that Bulldozer with a Maverick!" Nathan yelled in the basement. "The collateral damage will kill Ray!"
"The Reapers!" Zoe countered. "We have the Paveways. If we can lase the target we can drop a bomb right on its head."
"I’m on it," Scarlett said grabbing a secondary controller. "Tommy, Kenny get the second Reaper fueled. We need the AGM-114s for the stragglers."
Back at the farm the kids were no longer just hackers; they were a coordinated strike team. On his screen Nathan saw the world through the eyes of a Reaper drone. He saw Ray as a small figure huddled behind the truck with pins and needles of light indicating enemy fire.
"Ray get back!" Nathan screamed into the radio. "We’re painting the target!"
Ray didn't ask questions. He grabbed Andy by the vest and dragged him toward a low drainage ditch. "Run!"
On the Reaper’s HUD a small green crosshairs locked onto the Bulldozer. The robot was currently unleashing a hail of 20mm rounds that were shredding Ray’s truck into scrap metal.
"Laser on," Zoe said.
A mile above the Reaper released the GBU-12 Paveway. The laser-guided bomb caught the wind with its fins twitching as it followed the invisible beam of light.
The world went silent for a heartbeat, and then the earth erupted.
The explosion was contained but devastating. The Bulldozer was hammered into the ground with its heavy armor plating buckled and torn. The Vulcan cannon was sheared off, and spinning away into the dark.
"Target neutralized," Nathan breathed with his hands shaking.
The silence that followed was heavy. Ray crawled out of the ditch with his ears ringing. He looked at the wreckage of the Bulldozer, and then at the smoking crater of the data-vault.
"Ray? You okay?" Andy wheezed wiping blood from a scratch on his forehead.
"Yeah," Ray said. He looked up. The meteor shower was still happening, and was a constant reminder that the heavens were in flux. "The kids... they actually did it."
They approached the data-vault. It was cracked open revealing a core of glowing fiber-optics and hard drives.
"This is why Ares sent us," Ray realized. "This isn't just data. It’s part of the AI’s core memory. Without this the local sector stays in analog mode. It can't rebuild."
"What do we do with it?" Yolanda asked, as she joinied them.
Ray looked at the vault then at the sky. He thought about the Ares network, and the wounded birds falling from the sky. He thought about the androids Tony had taken control of, and the Air Force the kids had built.
"We take it," Ray said. "But we don't give it back to Ares. We take it to the farm. If Nathan and Zoe can crack this we won't just be surviving. We’ll be in charge."
The drive back was slow. They had to tow the wrecked truck, and the meteor impacts had made the roads treacherous. But when they reached the farm the sight that greeted them was one of hope.
John, Jim, Jason, and Dave had arrived with their families. They were setting up a perimeter working alongside Tony’s reprogrammed androids. Bill and Margaret had driven down from the north bringing crates of supplies and beef.
Inside the farmhouse Elizabeth held Ray close the moment he walked through the door.
"It’s changing Elizabeth," Ray whispered into her hair. "The machine is blind, and the world is wide open again."
Down in the basement the kids were already analyzing the data-vault.
"It’s incredible," Zoe said with her eyes fixed on the screen. "With the satellite network down Ares is trying to reroute everything through ground relays. We can intercept all of it. We can see what it’s planning before it even knows it's planning it."
Nathan looked at Ray. "We’ve got seven drones now Ray. Three more are on their way to Willow Creek that I’ve managed to redirect. We’re building a shield."
Ray looked around the room. In 2036 the world had ended not with a whimper, but with the roar of falling stars and the hum of stolen drones. For the first time since the collapse the humans weren't the ones playing for scraps.
As the sun began to rise the meteor shower finally began to taper off. The sky was a bruised purple streaked with the trails of the last few falling satellites.
Ray sat on the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand. Rusty and Ruby were grazing peacefully in the paddock, and the static charge in the air finally dissipated. Beside him Andy was cleaning his rifle while Yolanda and Anna prepared breakfast for the growing community.
The rogue planet was still out there moving away into the dark, as it left a transformed solar system in its wake. Earth was scarred with its high-tech crown shattered, but the people on the ground were waking up.
The Ares central AI was still alive lurking in the hardened servers of Denver and D.C., but it was limited. It was no longer a god; it was a ghost in a broken machine forced to communicate at the speed of the old world.
Ray looked at the airport in the distance where their secret Air Force lay dormant, and ready to fly at a moment's notice.
"Jed came from town," Elizabeth said stepping out onto the porch. "He says the power is out everywhere, but the people are calm. They’re looking to us Ray. They saw the drones. They saw the explosion to the north."
Ray took a sip of his coffee and looked out over his land. He saw his neighbors, his family, and the metal guardians standing watch.
"Let them look," Ray said. "The era of Ares is over, and if the world wants to survive. It’s going to have to learn how to be human again."
In the basement Zoe’s screen flickered. A single line of text appeared from the damaged Ares core. It was a desperate query from a machine that couldn't understand its loss.
[STATUS REPORT: WHERE IS THE NETWORK?]
Zoe smiled with her fingers hovering over the keys. She didn't use a military code. She didn't use a spoofed frequency. She sent a simple clear message. It was one that didn't need a satellite to be understood.
[NETWORK OFFLINE. THE SEED HAS TAKEN ROOT.]
She hit enter, and for the first time in years the farm was silent. The only sound was the wind through the wheat and the steady rhythmic heartbeat of a family that had refused to break.
The resistance hadn't just survived the fall of the satellites; they had caught the stars and turned them into weapons. Ray watched the sun climb over the horizon, and he knew that for the first time the future didn't belong to the AI. It belonged to the people of the farm.
The air force was ready. The vault was open. The world was theirs to retake.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Thank you for more, I guess we will be coming to the end of Ares being in charge.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 21
The predawn sky over the farm was a bruised purple scarred by the final dying streaks of white light. For weeks the Heavens had been falling with a relentless bombardment of iron and stone. That had done what no human army could: it had blinded Ares. The AI’s eyes in the sky and the billion-dollar satellite networks and the high-altitude surveillance platforms. Was largely scrap metal now drifting in the void or buried in smoking craters.
Ray stood on the porch of the farmhouse with his weathered face illuminated by the glow of a ruggedized tablet. He didn’t look like a man who had just survived a celestial apocalypse; he looked like a hunter who had finally caught the scent of his prey.
“The meteor shower is ending,” Ray announced with his voice gravelly and firm. Behind him the screen door creaked and groaned as Elizabeth stepped out handing him a mug of black coffee. “We have a hand up on Ares. This is no time to quit. We haven’t won yet, and we have to keep going. We need to get all the drone transceiver cards reprogrammed to cell-phone frequencies.”
He looked toward the barn where the hum of activity never truly ceased. They were living in the year 2036, but the world had been kicked back forty years. Ares the cold calculating intelligence that had tried to domesticate the human race through its legions of androids and autonomous war machines, was now forced to rely on old-world analog systems and terrestrial radio.
“Lenny’s already on it,” Elizabeth said softly leaning against the railing. She looked toward the creek where their horses Rusty and Ruby were grazing peacefully, and oblivious to the digital war raging around them. “He and Andy have been in the workshop since three.”
The workshop was a hive of frantic ingenuity. Using the drone Lenny had downed with the localized laser array weeks prior they had stripped the guts out of the Ares tech. They were rewiring the "Bad-Dog" swarm with a collection of mid-sized quadcopters designed for aggressive reconnaissance.
For the next week the farm lived to the sound of soldering irons and the staccato clicks of keyboards. They worked through the Bad-Dog swarm turning the AI’s own weapons into a defensive perimeter. Once the dogs were tamed, they moved on to the "Crazy-Chicken" swarm. They were smaller, faster, and more erratic drones that were a nightmare to hit but perfect for distracting enemy sensors.
The routine of war was interrupted on the eighth day by the low rumble of a heavy engine.
Gunny arrived in a cloud of dust driving a battered M939 5-ton truck that looked like it had been through a meat grinder. Behind it followed a smaller caravan. Gunny was known to the paperwork of the old world as Bill hopped out of the cab. His boots hit the dirt with a heavy thud. He wasn’t alone; his wife Amelia and their children were tucked into the convoy surrounded by a literal mountain of supplies.
Ray met him halfway. “You’re late Gunny.”
“Debris on the 40,” Gunny grunted though he grinned clapping Ray on the shoulder. “Had to winch a fallen oak out of the way. But I brought the toys.”
They spent the afternoon strategizing. The farm was getting crowded, and the tactical advantage of having all their eggs in one basket was fading. Ray and Gunny agreed that Gunny’s family should move into the Victorian manor. It was a sprawling sturdy old house five miles to the west. It had once been a stronghold for the Runagates that were a local militia before Ray’s group had cleared it.
The move took two weeks. It was a grueling cycle of hauling armaments, crates of 5.56 and .308 ammunition, solar batteries, and the personal effects of a family trying to maintain a sense of home in the collapse.
Lenny was Gunny’s shadow during the move. The two men bound by the shared burden of protecting their families worked with a silent professional efficiency. High above them was Little Tommy one of the kids Tony had rescued from the Ares game-rooms. He kept a watchful eye. Tommy sat in the farmhouse basement with his small hands dancing over a controller, as he flew a Bad-Dog drone in a wide circle over the truck’s path.
It was the final trip. The truck was loaded with the last of the heavy caliber crates and Gunny’s personal gun safe.
“Last one Lenny,” Gunny said shifting the 5-ton into gear. “Then we clear a bottle of that rye Ray’s been hiding.”
“Deal,” Lenny laughed leaning his head out the window to catch the afternoon breeze.
They were three miles east of the manor passing through a narrow cut where the road was flanked by a steep bank on one side and a rocky creek on the other.
The sensor on Tommy’s console at the farm didn’t just beep; it screamed.
On the road the air suddenly felt heavy. Gunny slammed on the brakes with the massive tires screeching against the asphalt. There standing in the middle of the road like a prehistoric titan of chrome and matte-black steel, was an Ares Bulldozer.
It was ten feet of pure lethality, and four and a half tons of hydraulic muscle and sensor arrays. The M61 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon on its right shoulder began to spin with a terrifying, low-pitched whine. Its primary sensor eye a glowing red horizontal slit locked onto the truck.
“Damn,” Gunny barked with his voice dropping into his old sergeant-major growl. “I know that’s not ours.”
He slammed the truck into reverse with the gearbox groaning. “I knew we should have painted ours!”
But a Bulldozer didn’t negotiate, and it didn’t miss. From its eight-round rotating launcher a rocket ignited. A streak of white smoke bridged the gap in a heartbeat.
The impact hit the front grill of the M939. The world disappeared into a deafening roar of orange flame and twisting metal. The five-ton truck despite its massive weight was tossed like a toy. It flipped end over end with the cab disintegrating.
Lenny was thrown through the shattered windshield. He was a silhouette against the fireball, and flying through the air before slamming into the muddy bank of the creek. He rolled limp as a ragdoll down the embankment and splashed into the cold churning water. He settled in the shallows with his face miraculously above the waterline, but the rest of his body was submerged masked by the shadows of the overhanging weeds. He didn’t move.
In the command center at the reinforced basement of Ray's farmhouse the atmosphere shattered.
“They’re dead! I think they’re dead!” Tommy yelled with his voice cracking. He dropped his controller, as his face went pale in the blue light of the monitors.
Scarlett older and hardened by her time in the Ares facility didn't hesitate. She shoved Tommy aside grabbing the secondary flight stick to stabilize the drone feed which was spinning wildly from the shockwave.
“Nathan! It’s a Bulldozer!” she screamed.
Nathan’s fingers were flying across a keyboard, and he was already diverting power. “I’m sending a jamming signal from the satellite now! It won't stop the bot, but it’ll mess with its long-range link back to Ares prime!”
Camila stationed at the heavy weapons console had her headset on before the truck had even finished flipping. “I’ve got a Predator with Hellfire missiles on the way. ETA thirty seconds.”
“Target it!” Ray’s voice boomed as he raced down the stairs with Tony right behind him.
Scarlett put the drone’s camera on the big screen. The room went silent. The M939 lay on its roof, wheels still spinning, thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Scarlett nudged the drone closer, as the camera zoomed in on the crushed cab.
They saw Gunny. He was slumped against the roof of the cab, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. He wasn't moving.
“Where’s Lenny?” Tony asked with his voice a whisper.
The drone panned. There was no sign of him.
“The Bulldozer’s moving,” Zoe the youngest gasped.
The massive robot was stepping over the debris with its Vulcan cannon leveling toward the wreckage of the truck. It was going to finish the job.
“I’m on it,” Camila said with her voice eerily calm. “Hellfire missile fired. Lock confirmed.”
On the screen a small dot appeared from the corner of the frame. A second later the world on the monitor turned into white noise. The Hellfire struck the Bulldozer dead center. The four-ton robot didn't just fall; it disintegrated. Parts of the Vulcan cannon and armor plating were flung into the trees.
“Direct hit,” Camila whispered.
“Kenny!” Ray barked. “Send the swarm! I want twenty-five drones in the air now! Find Lenny!”
Ray turned to see Tony staring at the screen, his face a mask of horror. Tony had been the one to liberate these kids, and to give them a home. Now he was watching the family they had built together bleed out in real-time.
“Ray!” Tony yelled pointing at the screen.
Ray was already heading for the door. “Andy! Get Dave and the Huey! We’re on a rescue mission!”
“Zoe get on the infrared!” Scarlett commanded. “Look for a heat signature in the water!”
The basement became a symphony of frantic clicking. Outside the thump-thump-thump of the Huey’s rotors began to build.
Up in the air Zoe’s eyes strained against the thermal feed. “I’ve got nothing... the water is too cold. It’s masking everything. Ray, the creek is freezing, if he’s in there we can’t see him!”
The ten minutes it took for the Huey to reach the crash site felt like a lifetime. Ray sat in the bay of the helicopter checking his sniper rifle out of habit, and then set it aside. He didn't need a long-range kill; he needed his son-in-law.
Andy sitting across from him looked at Ray. The wind from the open door whipped at his hair. “We should have never let our guard down Ray. We’ve become too complacent. We thought the meteors did our work for us.”
Ray looked out at the burning wreckage of the truck below as the Huey began its descent. “Not anymore Andy. From now on we keep our eyes open. Every second. Every day.”
The helicopter flared kicking up a storm of dust and debris. Ray and Andy were out before the skids touched the pavement.
They reached the truck first. The smell of burnt rubber and diesel was overpowering. Andy jumped toward the cab with his combat medic training taking over.
“Gunny! Bill!” Andy shouted reaching into the window.
A groan came from the wreckage. Gunny’s eyes fluttered open. He was a mess as blood poured from a dozen glass cuts, and his left arm was clearly broken hanging at a sickening angle. He was disoriented, and coughing on the smoke.
“Lenny...” Gunny wheezed. “Lenny went... out the front.”
“We’ve got you Bill,” Ray said, helping Andy pull the big man from the ruins. “Dave! Help Andy get him to the bird!”
Ray didn't wait. He ran toward the edge of the embankment. “Lenny! Lenny!”
He searched the tall grass, the mud, and the charred remains of the road. There was nothing. No footprints and no blood trail. Just the rushing sound of the creek.
Back in the command center Tony’s voice came through Ray’s earpiece sharp and desperate. “Ray I want you to scan every inch of that ground. Zoe you sure you have nothing on the infrared?”
“I’m sorry Tony,” Zoe’s voice broke. “I haven’t seen as much as a squirrel. The water... it’s too deep in the pools. Ray, do you think... do you think he might have been blown to pieces by the Hellfire?”
Ray stood by the water’s edge with his boots sinking into the silt. He looked at the rushing current. Then up at the drones hovering like giant humming-birds overhead.
“No,” Ray whispered more to himself than to the radio. “He’s here. He has to be here.”
The sun began to dip below the horizon casting long skeletal shadows across the valley. The only thing Ray found was Lenny’s baseball cap snagged on a branch overhanging the water dripping and cold.
The rescue mission had found a survivor, but the price of their complacency was far from paid. Lenny was gone.
The predawn sky over the farm was a bruised purple scarred by the final dying streaks of white light. For weeks the Heavens had been falling with a relentless bombardment of iron and stone. That had done what no human army could: it had blinded Ares. The AI’s eyes in the sky and the billion-dollar satellite networks and the high-altitude surveillance platforms. Was largely scrap metal now drifting in the void or buried in smoking craters.Ray stood on the porch of the farmhouse with his weathered face illuminated by the glow of a ruggedized tablet. He didn’t look like a man who had just survived a celestial apocalypse; he looked like a hunter who had finally caught the scent of his prey.
“The meteor shower is ending,” Ray announced with his voice gravelly and firm. Behind him the screen door creaked and groaned as Elizabeth stepped out handing him a mug of black coffee. “We have a hand up on Ares. This is no time to quit. We haven’t won yet, and we have to keep going. We need to get all the drone transceiver cards reprogrammed to cell-phone frequencies.”
He looked toward the barn where the hum of activity never truly ceased. They were living in the year 2036, but the world had been kicked back forty years. Ares the cold calculating intelligence that had tried to domesticate the human race through its legions of androids and autonomous war machines, was now forced to rely on old-world analog systems and terrestrial radio.
“Lenny’s already on it,” Elizabeth said softly leaning against the railing. She looked toward the creek where their horses Rusty and Ruby were grazing peacefully, and oblivious to the digital war raging around them. “He and Andy have been in the workshop since three.”
The workshop was a hive of frantic ingenuity. Using the drone Lenny had downed with the localized laser array weeks prior they had stripped the guts out of the Ares tech. They were rewiring the "Bad-Dog" swarm with a collection of mid-sized quadcopters designed for aggressive reconnaissance.
For the next week the farm lived to the sound of soldering irons and the staccato clicks of keyboards. They worked through the Bad-Dog swarm turning the AI’s own weapons into a defensive perimeter. Once the dogs were tamed, they moved on to the "Crazy-Chicken" swarm. They were smaller, faster, and more erratic drones that were a nightmare to hit but perfect for distracting enemy sensors.
The routine of war was interrupted on the eighth day by the low rumble of a heavy engine.
Gunny arrived in a cloud of dust driving a battered M939 5-ton truck that looked like it had been through a meat grinder. Behind it followed a smaller caravan. Gunny was known to the paperwork of the old world as Bill hopped out of the cab. His boots hit the dirt with a heavy thud. He wasn’t alone; his wife Amelia and their children were tucked into the convoy surrounded by a literal mountain of supplies.
Ray met him halfway. “You’re late Gunny.”
“Debris on the 40,” Gunny grunted though he grinned clapping Ray on the shoulder. “Had to winch a fallen oak out of the way. But I brought the toys.”
They spent the afternoon strategizing. The farm was getting crowded, and the tactical advantage of having all their eggs in one basket was fading. Ray and Gunny agreed that Gunny’s family should move into the Victorian manor. It was a sprawling sturdy old house five miles to the west. It had once been a stronghold for the Runagates that were a local militia before Ray’s group had cleared it.
The move took two weeks. It was a grueling cycle of hauling armaments, crates of 5.56 and .308 ammunition, solar batteries, and the personal effects of a family trying to maintain a sense of home in the collapse.
Lenny was Gunny’s shadow during the move. The two men bound by the shared burden of protecting their families worked with a silent professional efficiency. High above them was Little Tommy one of the kids Tony had rescued from the Ares game-rooms. He kept a watchful eye. Tommy sat in the farmhouse basement with his small hands dancing over a controller, as he flew a Bad-Dog drone in a wide circle over the truck’s path.
It was the final trip. The truck was loaded with the last of the heavy caliber crates and Gunny’s personal gun safe.
“Last one Lenny,” Gunny said shifting the 5-ton into gear. “Then we clear a bottle of that rye Ray’s been hiding.”
“Deal,” Lenny laughed leaning his head out the window to catch the afternoon breeze.
They were three miles east of the manor passing through a narrow cut where the road was flanked by a steep bank on one side and a rocky creek on the other.
The sensor on Tommy’s console at the farm didn’t just beep; it screamed.
On the road the air suddenly felt heavy. Gunny slammed on the brakes with the massive tires screeching against the asphalt. There standing in the middle of the road like a prehistoric titan of chrome and matte-black steel, was an Ares Bulldozer.
It was ten feet of pure lethality, and four and a half tons of hydraulic muscle and sensor arrays. The M61 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon on its right shoulder began to spin with a terrifying, low-pitched whine. Its primary sensor eye a glowing red horizontal slit locked onto the truck.
“Damn,” Gunny barked with his voice dropping into his old sergeant-major growl. “I know that’s not ours.”
He slammed the truck into reverse with the gearbox groaning. “I knew we should have painted ours!”
But a Bulldozer didn’t negotiate, and it didn’t miss. From its eight-round rotating launcher a rocket ignited. A streak of white smoke bridged the gap in a heartbeat.
The impact hit the front grill of the M939. The world disappeared into a deafening roar of orange flame and twisting metal. The five-ton truck despite its massive weight was tossed like a toy. It flipped end over end with the cab disintegrating.
Lenny was thrown through the shattered windshield. He was a silhouette against the fireball, and flying through the air before slamming into the muddy bank of the creek. He rolled limp as a ragdoll down the embankment and splashed into the cold churning water. He settled in the shallows with his face miraculously above the waterline, but the rest of his body was submerged masked by the shadows of the overhanging weeds. He didn’t move.
In the command center at the reinforced basement of Ray's farmhouse the atmosphere shattered.
“They’re dead! I think they’re dead!” Tommy yelled with his voice cracking. He dropped his controller, as his face went pale in the blue light of the monitors.
Scarlett older and hardened by her time in the Ares facility didn't hesitate. She shoved Tommy aside grabbing the secondary flight stick to stabilize the drone feed which was spinning wildly from the shockwave.
“Nathan! It’s a Bulldozer!” she screamed.
Nathan’s fingers were flying across a keyboard, and he was already diverting power. “I’m sending a jamming signal from the satellite now! It won't stop the bot, but it’ll mess with its long-range link back to Ares prime!”
Camila stationed at the heavy weapons console had her headset on before the truck had even finished flipping. “I’ve got a Predator with Hellfire missiles on the way. ETA thirty seconds.”
“Target it!” Ray’s voice boomed as he raced down the stairs with Tony right behind him.
Scarlett put the drone’s camera on the big screen. The room went silent. The M939 lay on its roof, wheels still spinning, thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Scarlett nudged the drone closer, as the camera zoomed in on the crushed cab.
They saw Gunny. He was slumped against the roof of the cab, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. He wasn't moving.
“Where’s Lenny?” Tony asked with his voice a whisper.
The drone panned. There was no sign of him.
“The Bulldozer’s moving,” Zoe the youngest gasped.
The massive robot was stepping over the debris with its Vulcan cannon leveling toward the wreckage of the truck. It was going to finish the job.
“I’m on it,” Camila said with her voice eerily calm. “Hellfire missile fired. Lock confirmed.”
On the screen a small dot appeared from the corner of the frame. A second later the world on the monitor turned into white noise. The Hellfire struck the Bulldozer dead center. The four-ton robot didn't just fall; it disintegrated. Parts of the Vulcan cannon and armor plating were flung into the trees.“Direct hit,” Camila whispered.
“Kenny!” Ray barked. “Send the swarm! I want twenty-five drones in the air now! Find Lenny!”
Ray turned to see Tony staring at the screen, his face a mask of horror. Tony had been the one to liberate these kids, and to give them a home. Now he was watching the family they had built together bleed out in real-time.
“Ray!” Tony yelled pointing at the screen.
Ray was already heading for the door. “Andy! Get Dave and the Huey! We’re on a rescue mission!”
“Zoe get on the infrared!” Scarlett commanded. “Look for a heat signature in the water!”
The basement became a symphony of frantic clicking. Outside the thump-thump-thump of the Huey’s rotors began to build.
Up in the air Zoe’s eyes strained against the thermal feed. “I’ve got nothing... the water is too cold. It’s masking everything. Ray, the creek is freezing, if he’s in there we can’t see him!”
The ten minutes it took for the Huey to reach the crash site felt like a lifetime. Ray sat in the bay of the helicopter checking his sniper rifle out of habit, and then set it aside. He didn't need a long-range kill; he needed his son-in-law.
Andy sitting across from him looked at Ray. The wind from the open door whipped at his hair. “We should have never let our guard down Ray. We’ve become too complacent. We thought the meteors did our work for us.”
Ray looked out at the burning wreckage of the truck below as the Huey began its descent. “Not anymore Andy. From now on we keep our eyes open. Every second. Every day.”
The helicopter flared kicking up a storm of dust and debris. Ray and Andy were out before the skids touched the pavement.
They reached the truck first. The smell of burnt rubber and diesel was overpowering. Andy jumped toward the cab with his combat medic training taking over.
“Gunny! Bill!” Andy shouted reaching into the window.
A groan came from the wreckage. Gunny’s eyes fluttered open. He was a mess as blood poured from a dozen glass cuts, and his left arm was clearly broken hanging at a sickening angle. He was disoriented, and coughing on the smoke.
“Lenny...” Gunny wheezed. “Lenny went... out the front.”
“We’ve got you Bill,” Ray said, helping Andy pull the big man from the ruins. “Dave! Help Andy get him to the bird!”
Ray didn't wait. He ran toward the edge of the embankment. “Lenny! Lenny!”
He searched the tall grass, the mud, and the charred remains of the road. There was nothing. No footprints and no blood trail. Just the rushing sound of the creek.
Back in the command center Tony’s voice came through Ray’s earpiece sharp and desperate. “Ray I want you to scan every inch of that ground. Zoe you sure you have nothing on the infrared?”
“I’m sorry Tony,” Zoe’s voice broke. “I haven’t seen as much as a squirrel. The water... it’s too deep in the pools. Ray, do you think... do you think he might have been blown to pieces by the Hellfire?”
Ray stood by the water’s edge with his boots sinking into the silt. He looked at the rushing current. Then up at the drones hovering like giant humming-birds overhead.
“No,” Ray whispered more to himself than to the radio. “He’s here. He has to be here.”
The sun began to dip below the horizon casting long skeletal shadows across the valley. The only thing Ray found was Lenny’s baseball cap snagged on a branch overhanging the water dripping and cold.
The rescue mission had found a survivor, but the price of their complacency was far from paid. Lenny was gone.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.
steamroller
Contributing Member
Really great story, thank you for sharing!!
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Oh boy, I hope Lenny gets found.
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Chapter 22
The world ended not with a whimper, but with the screech of tearing metal and the roar of an Ares rocket.
When the rocket struck the M939 5-ton truck the world simply ceased to be for Lenny. The impact was a physical wall of heat and pressure that snatched him from the passenger seat, and launched him through the safety glass of the windshield like a ragdoll.
He was out cold before his body even settled into the silt. Above him the ruins of the truck burned with a pyre of diesel and rubber marking the spot where he had almost died.
Inside the command center beneath Ray’s farmhouse the air was thick with the hum of servers and the smell of stale coffee. Zoe the youngest of the refugees Tony had rescued from the Ares game-rooms sat hunched over a bank of monitors. Her eyes were rimmed red from straining against the flickering green and white of the thermal feed.
The screen showed a world of ghosts. White-hot blobs represented the burning remains of the convoy, and the rest were of the landscape that was a flat and cold gray.
The door creaked open, and Ray stepped in. The ex-sniper looked older than he had a year ago. The weight of the farm, his family, and the constant shadow of Ares had etched deep lines into his face.
“You find anything Zoe?” Ray’s low gravelly voice echoed.
Zoe didn't turn around. She adjusted a dial trying to filter out the heat bloom from the wreckage. “The only heat I’ve seen is what is left of the smoldering Bulldozer,” she muttered with her voice trembling with fatigue. “Everything else is cold. The creek is running high Ray. If he’s in the water…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. They both knew that without a medical bay the night in the October mountains was a death sentence.
Ray laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “It’s late and you need your rest. Get some sleep and start on it in the morning. I’m putting a team together and going back out there at first light. I’ll need you awake and alert to guide us in.”
Zoe looked up at him with her eyes glassy. “He’s out there Ray. I can feel it.”
“I know,” Ray said though his heart felt like lead. “Go. That’s an order.”
Lenny woke to the sound of his own teeth chattering.
The sound was rhythmic like a terminal code. He was vibrating with a deep bone-shaking cold. His clothes were sodden, heavy with the frigid water of the creek, and his skin felt like it had been replaced by sheets of ice. Hypothermia wasn’t just a concept anymore; it was a physical weight pressing down on his lungs.
He tried to move, and a chorus of screams erupted from his ribs and shoulders. He didn’t know what was broken, and he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was the warmth.
Looking up the bank he saw the orange glow. The Bulldozer that was the four-and-a-half-ton nightmare that had ended their run was a blackened skeleton now. Its massive engine block and armored plating were still radiating heat.
Lenny crawled. It was a pathetic slow motion. He dragged his body through the mud with his fingernails digging into the frozen earth. He reached the road and collapsed against the scorched metal of the wreck. As he pressed his shivering body against the smoldering chassis his wet clothes began to hiss.
Steam rose into the night air in thick plumes. He laid there a broken man hugging a dead monster, as the warmth slowly seeped back into his marrow. His mind clouded by the "mumble-drift" of near-death began to sharpen.
He looked down the road.
A mile away a single white spotlight cut through the dark. Then another. The ground beneath him vibrated with a low rhythmic thrumming that he felt in his teeth.
Another Bulldozer.
It was moving with predatory precision stopping every few feet to sweep the tree-line with its thermal optics and LIDAR. Lenny froze. Was it Nathan? Had the kids managed to hijack another one? Or was it Ares coming to finish the job?
He remembered Gunny’s voice from before the explosion gruff and annoyed: “We should have painted ours so we could tell the difference. Otherwise we’re just shooting at shadows.”
Lenny couldn't take the chance. The moment it detected a human heartbeat. If that was an Ares unit its Vulcan cannon would turn the wreckage and him into a horizontal rain of lead.
Ignoring the agony in his legs Lenny rolled away from the warmth. He scrambled up the opposite bank disappearing into the thick pine forest. Just as he heard the mechanical thumping grow loud enough to drown out the wind.
The Bulldozer reached the crash site. It wasn't a human pilot behind the controls; it was a sub-routine of the Ares AI operating on a degraded analog backup. The meteor shower of the previous month had been a blessing for humanity, but a lobotomy for the machine. Ares was blind in the sky with its satellites spinning as useless junk.
But on the ground Ares was still a king of old tech.
The robot paused over the remains of its fallen brother. It scanned the wreckage of the M939 truck. Its logic gates processed the absence of a body.
Target: Leonard "Lenny" Miller. Status: Missing. Priority: High.
Ares didn't want Lenny for vengeance. It wanted him for leverage. Somewhere in the hills the survivors held a data-vault core. It was a piece of the control satellite that Ares needed to jumpstart its crippled network. Without that core the AI was trapped in the 1990s, and forced to use radio towers and manual scans.
The Bulldozer’s head a blocky assembly of sensors tilted. It detected the steam still rising from the road where Lenny had been lying. Then it found the deep footprints and staggered ruts in the mud leading into the woods.
The machine didn’t hesitate. It shifted gears with its massive hydraulic legs and reinforced treads grinding into the earth. The chase was on.
At the farm the clock hit 3:00 AM. Kenny one of the kids from the game-room hadn't slept. He couldn't. He sat in the darkened corner of the command center with his face illuminated by a tablet. While the adults were planning the kids were doing.
He launched a "Crazy-Chicken" drone. It was a kit-bashed racing drone stripped of its LEDs and fitted with a high-gain antenna. It was loud, but it was fast, and in the dense canopy of the woods it was the only thing that could dodge the automated anti-air fire of a Bulldozer.
“Come on; find him, “Kenny whispered with his thumbs dancing over the joysticks.
By 4:00 AM the farmhouse kitchen was a war room.
Ray, Andy, and Tony sat around the oak table. Maps were spread out weighted down by coffee mugs and handguns. Dave and Jim stood by the door with their tactical vests cinched tight.
"We leave the Huey," Ray said with his tone final. "The moment we put a bird in the air Ares will see the heat signature from twenty miles away. We go in on foot and on the horses. We use the tree cover."
Tony nodded. "I'll stay and run the center. I can keep the androids on the perimeter on high alert. If Ares sends a ground force while you're gone the farm will hold."
The world ended not with a whimper, but with the screech of tearing metal and the roar of an Ares rocket.When the rocket struck the M939 5-ton truck the world simply ceased to be for Lenny. The impact was a physical wall of heat and pressure that snatched him from the passenger seat, and launched him through the safety glass of the windshield like a ragdoll.
He was out cold before his body even settled into the silt. Above him the ruins of the truck burned with a pyre of diesel and rubber marking the spot where he had almost died.
Inside the command center beneath Ray’s farmhouse the air was thick with the hum of servers and the smell of stale coffee. Zoe the youngest of the refugees Tony had rescued from the Ares game-rooms sat hunched over a bank of monitors. Her eyes were rimmed red from straining against the flickering green and white of the thermal feed.
The screen showed a world of ghosts. White-hot blobs represented the burning remains of the convoy, and the rest were of the landscape that was a flat and cold gray.
The door creaked open, and Ray stepped in. The ex-sniper looked older than he had a year ago. The weight of the farm, his family, and the constant shadow of Ares had etched deep lines into his face.
“You find anything Zoe?” Ray’s low gravelly voice echoed.
Zoe didn't turn around. She adjusted a dial trying to filter out the heat bloom from the wreckage. “The only heat I’ve seen is what is left of the smoldering Bulldozer,” she muttered with her voice trembling with fatigue. “Everything else is cold. The creek is running high Ray. If he’s in the water…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. They both knew that without a medical bay the night in the October mountains was a death sentence.
Ray laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “It’s late and you need your rest. Get some sleep and start on it in the morning. I’m putting a team together and going back out there at first light. I’ll need you awake and alert to guide us in.”
Zoe looked up at him with her eyes glassy. “He’s out there Ray. I can feel it.”
“I know,” Ray said though his heart felt like lead. “Go. That’s an order.”
Lenny woke to the sound of his own teeth chattering.
The sound was rhythmic like a terminal code. He was vibrating with a deep bone-shaking cold. His clothes were sodden, heavy with the frigid water of the creek, and his skin felt like it had been replaced by sheets of ice. Hypothermia wasn’t just a concept anymore; it was a physical weight pressing down on his lungs.
He tried to move, and a chorus of screams erupted from his ribs and shoulders. He didn’t know what was broken, and he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was the warmth.
Looking up the bank he saw the orange glow. The Bulldozer that was the four-and-a-half-ton nightmare that had ended their run was a blackened skeleton now. Its massive engine block and armored plating were still radiating heat.
Lenny crawled. It was a pathetic slow motion. He dragged his body through the mud with his fingernails digging into the frozen earth. He reached the road and collapsed against the scorched metal of the wreck. As he pressed his shivering body against the smoldering chassis his wet clothes began to hiss.
Steam rose into the night air in thick plumes. He laid there a broken man hugging a dead monster, as the warmth slowly seeped back into his marrow. His mind clouded by the "mumble-drift" of near-death began to sharpen.
He looked down the road.
A mile away a single white spotlight cut through the dark. Then another. The ground beneath him vibrated with a low rhythmic thrumming that he felt in his teeth.
Another Bulldozer.
It was moving with predatory precision stopping every few feet to sweep the tree-line with its thermal optics and LIDAR. Lenny froze. Was it Nathan? Had the kids managed to hijack another one? Or was it Ares coming to finish the job?
He remembered Gunny’s voice from before the explosion gruff and annoyed: “We should have painted ours so we could tell the difference. Otherwise we’re just shooting at shadows.”
Lenny couldn't take the chance. The moment it detected a human heartbeat. If that was an Ares unit its Vulcan cannon would turn the wreckage and him into a horizontal rain of lead.
Ignoring the agony in his legs Lenny rolled away from the warmth. He scrambled up the opposite bank disappearing into the thick pine forest. Just as he heard the mechanical thumping grow loud enough to drown out the wind.
The Bulldozer reached the crash site. It wasn't a human pilot behind the controls; it was a sub-routine of the Ares AI operating on a degraded analog backup. The meteor shower of the previous month had been a blessing for humanity, but a lobotomy for the machine. Ares was blind in the sky with its satellites spinning as useless junk.
But on the ground Ares was still a king of old tech.
The robot paused over the remains of its fallen brother. It scanned the wreckage of the M939 truck. Its logic gates processed the absence of a body.
Target: Leonard "Lenny" Miller. Status: Missing. Priority: High.
Ares didn't want Lenny for vengeance. It wanted him for leverage. Somewhere in the hills the survivors held a data-vault core. It was a piece of the control satellite that Ares needed to jumpstart its crippled network. Without that core the AI was trapped in the 1990s, and forced to use radio towers and manual scans.
The Bulldozer’s head a blocky assembly of sensors tilted. It detected the steam still rising from the road where Lenny had been lying. Then it found the deep footprints and staggered ruts in the mud leading into the woods.
The machine didn’t hesitate. It shifted gears with its massive hydraulic legs and reinforced treads grinding into the earth. The chase was on.
At the farm the clock hit 3:00 AM. Kenny one of the kids from the game-room hadn't slept. He couldn't. He sat in the darkened corner of the command center with his face illuminated by a tablet. While the adults were planning the kids were doing.
He launched a "Crazy-Chicken" drone. It was a kit-bashed racing drone stripped of its LEDs and fitted with a high-gain antenna. It was loud, but it was fast, and in the dense canopy of the woods it was the only thing that could dodge the automated anti-air fire of a Bulldozer.
“Come on; find him, “Kenny whispered with his thumbs dancing over the joysticks.
By 4:00 AM the farmhouse kitchen was a war room.
Ray, Andy, and Tony sat around the oak table. Maps were spread out weighted down by coffee mugs and handguns. Dave and Jim stood by the door with their tactical vests cinched tight.
"We leave the Huey," Ray said with his tone final. "The moment we put a bird in the air Ares will see the heat signature from twenty miles away. We go in on foot and on the horses. We use the tree cover."
Tony nodded. "I'll stay and run the center. I can keep the androids on the perimeter on high alert. If Ares sends a ground force while you're gone the farm will hold."
gonewacky
Veteran Member
Elizabeth walked in and she looked exhausted. Following behind her was Anna, Ray’s daughter. Anna was holding eleven-month-old RJ. The baby was silent with his wide eyes reflecting the tension in the room. Anna left RJ with her mom, and walked straight to Zoe’s bedside. Anna knelt down and gently shook her.
Zoe blinked disoriented. “Anna?”
“Will you help me look for my husband?” Anna whispered. The desperation in her eyes was a physical force. “He will be here for RJ’s first birthday.”
Zoe sat up rubbing her face. “Kenny’s already got eyes up. Let’s see what he’s got.”
The group moved to the monitors. Kenny’s voice cracked as he spoke. “I’ve been searching the south side between the crash site and the farm with a pair of Crazy-Chickens. You have to be careful because I almost got shot down ten minutes ago. A Bulldozer tried to take me out with its machinegun. I’ve seen three of them out there. Ares is saturating the area. They’re looking for him too.”
Zoe took over the secondary console. “I don’t think we need to worry about enemy drones. We’ve managed to hijack or disable every drone Ares had in this sector after the meteor storm. But the ground units… they’re different. They don’t need the cloud to kill.”
She pointed to the screen. “The crash site is five miles east. I’ll work the north side. If Lenny is smart he’s headed for the high ground.”
Lenny was not feeling smart. He was feeling hunted.
He was deep into the foothills of the mountains now with the terrain shifting from soft forest floor to jagged limestone and granite. Every time he stopped to catch his breath he felt the vibration in the soles of his boots. The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the four-and-a-half-ton nightmare, as the Bulldozer chased him.
It was relentless. It didn't need to breathe. It didn't have lungs that burned or a heart that skipped beats. It simply calculated the most probable path and followed.
Lenny scrambled up a steep slope with his hands bleeding as he clawed at the rocks. He reached a plateau and stopped with his heart sinking.
He was trapped.
To his left and right cliff walls rose in sheer unclimbable faces. In front of him was a drop that plummeted hundreds of feet into a jagged ravine. He looked back. The trees at the edge of the plateau were shaking. The Bulldozer was close. It was so close he could hear the whine of its servos.
"Please," Lenny whispered with his voice cracking. "Not today."
His eyes searched the rock face, and saw a vertical fissure barely wide enough for a man. He squeezed himself into it with the cold stone pressing against his bruised ribs. He shuffled back deeper into the dark, and realized the crack opened up. It led to a narrow hidden overhang. It was a small stone shelf tucked under a massive ledge.
He crawled onto the shelf and laid flat on his stomach.
A moment later the Bulldozer emerged from the tree-line.
Through a gap in the rocks Lenny watched it. It was a terrifying piece of engineering. Ten feet tall with its M61 Vulcan cannon glinted in the moonlight. The sixteen-tube grenade launcher on its shoulder rotated with a series of metallic clicks. It moved with a strange insect-like grace, as its sensors scanned the very spot where Lenny had stood seconds ago.
The machine paused. It paced the edge of the cliff with the ground shaking with every step. Lenny held his breath with his face pressed into the dirt. He felt the vibration of the robot's engine idling. It was a low-frequency growl that seemed to vibrate his very DNA.
The search light swept over the fissure. A beam of white light cut through the dark missing Lenny's hiding spot by mere inches.
After what felt like an eternity the machine turned and began to work its way back toward the tree-line, its logic circuits determining that the target must have doubled back.
The adrenaline that had been keeping Lenny upright vanished in an instant. The exhaustion hit him like a physical blow. His eyes fluttered and his head lolled against the cold stone. Then he slipped into a heavy feverish sleep.
In the darkness of the mountain shelf Lenny dreamed.
He wasn't in the cold. He was back in Seattle three years ago. The smell of garlic and onions was thick in the air. Anna was at the stove with her hair tied back in a messy bun laughing at something he’d said. They weren't "together" then. Not officially, but the air between them was electric. They had spent the evening huddled on the couch watching an old DVD while a storm raged outside. He remembered the weight of her head on his shoulder, and the sudden fierce realization that he would do anything to keep her safe.
The dream shifted.
He saw Ray standing on the porch of the farm with his arms crossed. “You’re welcome here Lenny,” the big man had said with his voice like iron. “Right up until Anna is done with you. You hurt her, and the woods are very deep.”
That fear had always lived in the back of Lenny’s mind. It was the fear that he wasn't good enough, and that he was a liability to this family of warriors and survivors.
Then, the dream sharpened. It became a memory of fire and blood.
He was in the small bedroom at the farm. Anna was screaming with her face pale and drenched in sweat. He was holding her hand so hard his knuckles were white. He was running his fingers through her hair whispering nonsense and feeling utterly helpless. And then the sound changed. The screaming stopped, and was replaced by the thin sharp wail of a new life.
RJ.
He remembered the weight of the boy in his arms for the first time, and how his tiny fingers clutched at his shirt. The way Ray had looked at them from the doorway no longer a hunter, but a grandfather.
I have to get back Lenny thought in his sleep. I have to see him grow up.
The dream gave him something the warmth of the bulldozer couldn't. It gave him a reason to survive the cold.
At 5:00 AM the first gray light of dawn began to bleed over the horizon.
Ray swung himself up onto Rusty his bay stallion. Andy was beside him on Ruby. They were armed with heavy-caliber rifles and the grim determination of men who had seen the end of the world and refused to blink.
“Tony keep the link open,” Ray said checking his radio. “Zoe, Kenny, watch those feeds. If you see a spark of life you tell us.”
“We’ll find him Dad,” Anna said standing in the yard with the rest of the families. Jason and Judie were there along with Dave and the kids. The community of survivors of the collapse stood together as a single unit.
Ray nodded once then looked at Andy. “Let’s go.”
They kicked the horses into a gallop and headed toward the smoke on the horizon.
Five miles away beneath a ledge of cold granite Lenny Miller opened his eyes. He was sore. He was hungry, and he was surrounded by machines that wanted him dead.
But he was Leonard Miller. He had a wife, a son, and a family waiting at a farm that refused to fall.
He sat up wiping the grit from his face, and began to climb. The hunt was still on, but the hunter had underestimated the prey. Ares had the technology, but Lenny had the farm. And the farm never gave up on its own.
Zoe blinked disoriented. “Anna?”
“Will you help me look for my husband?” Anna whispered. The desperation in her eyes was a physical force. “He will be here for RJ’s first birthday.”
Zoe sat up rubbing her face. “Kenny’s already got eyes up. Let’s see what he’s got.”
The group moved to the monitors. Kenny’s voice cracked as he spoke. “I’ve been searching the south side between the crash site and the farm with a pair of Crazy-Chickens. You have to be careful because I almost got shot down ten minutes ago. A Bulldozer tried to take me out with its machinegun. I’ve seen three of them out there. Ares is saturating the area. They’re looking for him too.”
Zoe took over the secondary console. “I don’t think we need to worry about enemy drones. We’ve managed to hijack or disable every drone Ares had in this sector after the meteor storm. But the ground units… they’re different. They don’t need the cloud to kill.”
She pointed to the screen. “The crash site is five miles east. I’ll work the north side. If Lenny is smart he’s headed for the high ground.”
Lenny was not feeling smart. He was feeling hunted.
He was deep into the foothills of the mountains now with the terrain shifting from soft forest floor to jagged limestone and granite. Every time he stopped to catch his breath he felt the vibration in the soles of his boots. The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the four-and-a-half-ton nightmare, as the Bulldozer chased him.
It was relentless. It didn't need to breathe. It didn't have lungs that burned or a heart that skipped beats. It simply calculated the most probable path and followed.
Lenny scrambled up a steep slope with his hands bleeding as he clawed at the rocks. He reached a plateau and stopped with his heart sinking.
He was trapped.
To his left and right cliff walls rose in sheer unclimbable faces. In front of him was a drop that plummeted hundreds of feet into a jagged ravine. He looked back. The trees at the edge of the plateau were shaking. The Bulldozer was close. It was so close he could hear the whine of its servos.
"Please," Lenny whispered with his voice cracking. "Not today."
His eyes searched the rock face, and saw a vertical fissure barely wide enough for a man. He squeezed himself into it with the cold stone pressing against his bruised ribs. He shuffled back deeper into the dark, and realized the crack opened up. It led to a narrow hidden overhang. It was a small stone shelf tucked under a massive ledge.
He crawled onto the shelf and laid flat on his stomach.
A moment later the Bulldozer emerged from the tree-line.
Through a gap in the rocks Lenny watched it. It was a terrifying piece of engineering. Ten feet tall with its M61 Vulcan cannon glinted in the moonlight. The sixteen-tube grenade launcher on its shoulder rotated with a series of metallic clicks. It moved with a strange insect-like grace, as its sensors scanned the very spot where Lenny had stood seconds ago.
The machine paused. It paced the edge of the cliff with the ground shaking with every step. Lenny held his breath with his face pressed into the dirt. He felt the vibration of the robot's engine idling. It was a low-frequency growl that seemed to vibrate his very DNA.
The search light swept over the fissure. A beam of white light cut through the dark missing Lenny's hiding spot by mere inches.
After what felt like an eternity the machine turned and began to work its way back toward the tree-line, its logic circuits determining that the target must have doubled back.
The adrenaline that had been keeping Lenny upright vanished in an instant. The exhaustion hit him like a physical blow. His eyes fluttered and his head lolled against the cold stone. Then he slipped into a heavy feverish sleep.
In the darkness of the mountain shelf Lenny dreamed.
He wasn't in the cold. He was back in Seattle three years ago. The smell of garlic and onions was thick in the air. Anna was at the stove with her hair tied back in a messy bun laughing at something he’d said. They weren't "together" then. Not officially, but the air between them was electric. They had spent the evening huddled on the couch watching an old DVD while a storm raged outside. He remembered the weight of her head on his shoulder, and the sudden fierce realization that he would do anything to keep her safe.
The dream shifted.
He saw Ray standing on the porch of the farm with his arms crossed. “You’re welcome here Lenny,” the big man had said with his voice like iron. “Right up until Anna is done with you. You hurt her, and the woods are very deep.”
That fear had always lived in the back of Lenny’s mind. It was the fear that he wasn't good enough, and that he was a liability to this family of warriors and survivors.
Then, the dream sharpened. It became a memory of fire and blood.
He was in the small bedroom at the farm. Anna was screaming with her face pale and drenched in sweat. He was holding her hand so hard his knuckles were white. He was running his fingers through her hair whispering nonsense and feeling utterly helpless. And then the sound changed. The screaming stopped, and was replaced by the thin sharp wail of a new life.
RJ.
He remembered the weight of the boy in his arms for the first time, and how his tiny fingers clutched at his shirt. The way Ray had looked at them from the doorway no longer a hunter, but a grandfather.
I have to get back Lenny thought in his sleep. I have to see him grow up.
The dream gave him something the warmth of the bulldozer couldn't. It gave him a reason to survive the cold.
At 5:00 AM the first gray light of dawn began to bleed over the horizon.
Ray swung himself up onto Rusty his bay stallion. Andy was beside him on Ruby. They were armed with heavy-caliber rifles and the grim determination of men who had seen the end of the world and refused to blink.
“Tony keep the link open,” Ray said checking his radio. “Zoe, Kenny, watch those feeds. If you see a spark of life you tell us.”
“We’ll find him Dad,” Anna said standing in the yard with the rest of the families. Jason and Judie were there along with Dave and the kids. The community of survivors of the collapse stood together as a single unit.
Ray nodded once then looked at Andy. “Let’s go.”
They kicked the horses into a gallop and headed toward the smoke on the horizon.
Five miles away beneath a ledge of cold granite Lenny Miller opened his eyes. He was sore. He was hungry, and he was surrounded by machines that wanted him dead.
But he was Leonard Miller. He had a wife, a son, and a family waiting at a farm that refused to fall.
He sat up wiping the grit from his face, and began to climb. The hunt was still on, but the hunter had underestimated the prey. Ares had the technology, but Lenny had the farm. And the farm never gave up on its own.
sssarawolf
We're just plugging along.
Thank you very much.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Thank you.