Latter-Day Prometheus - See Fan Fiction

 

From space the Earth looks beautiful, the blue of the oceans the green of the forests and the browns of the deserts all teem with life. But I find myself circling the world of my birth seeing it as a graveyard. I arrived home to find the greater mass of humanity having been killed in a plague that my instruments and sensors tell me happened over six-hundred years ago after my recruitment into the Cohort.

From a population that must have peaked at over eight-billion human souls before the plague, my sensors say there is only a little under ninety-million people now scratching out a near neolithic existence on the surface. After analyzing my findings, the simulations I've run suggest that the human population more than likely dropped to around two-million at its lowest point.

I came home believing I'd find my species having expanded out into the solar system. That given what the Cohort had judged as Homo sapiens probable technological growth rate, that humanity by now should have primitive starships running between the Sol system and several of the nearby stars with planets that could easily be colonized.

Instead, I find my species on the edge of extinction with no way to protect itself from what fate or circumstance might throw their way. Any number of events could occur and end all hopes for humanity eventually reaching its potential.

My Cohort training comes into effect and I send dozens of sensor pods down to the surface to try and find out what happened. As the pods descend into the atmosphere, they release billions of tiny sensors no bigger than motes of dust. These instruments would float on the wind and embed themselves on anything they touched. This included all living things and especially human bodies. In the span of days I would have a comprehensive genetic analysis on everything living.

The results come back as expected but they are horrifying nonetheless. It was a virus that destroyed civilization by killing billions all across the planet. No surprise there, but what was unexpected was that of those very few that survived the initial outbreak it burned out the visual centers of their brains leaving them blind. Worse yet, the virus was still active and is passed from mother to child. Except for the possible but rare mutant immune to the virus, the entire human race on Earth is totally blind.

The sensor dust I released is also able to record video and audio signals. With that data I am able to determine that a sight-less culture has naturally emerged among the various survivor communities. Something that could easily be predicted but the as with everything else involving my species it gets complicated. In all these blind cultures the very concept of sight is something akin to myth. In others, namely the North American continent, the blindness is considered a punishment from God for Man's sins.

From this video and audio data, I learn that fanatical groups of religious zealots scour the countryside looking people who might be sighted. The similarities to hunting for witches in North America and Europe are haunting. My sensors collect video of people having been burned at the stake.

Curing this virus-imposed blindness isn't a problem, my medical systems can analyze and develop a safe cure in a few weeks. Synthesizing the counter-virus and deploying it across the planet could be done with the dust sensors. Adults humans wouldn't regain their sight, but young children and everyone born after deployment of the cure would would be able to see.

The problem is all these blind cultures, especially the religious ones. Thousands would die at the hands of the fearful believers in God's wrath, especially the children born to sight.

It is a conundrum my Cohort mentor, Janai, would find funny in a cosmic way. It reminds me of a situation we found ourselves in just a few years ago in another part of the galaxy.

***

Janai found me on the shore of one of the lakes of liquid mercury the Sgrang use to breed their young. The Sgrang are a species composed largely of mercury and other elements housed in a silicon/carbon matrix and require exacting conditions for successful reproduction. Out of trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, their home world was incredibly unique. It had evolved a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere, something quite rare by itself, but what really set it apart was its geology. The planet was improbably rich in heavy metals all the way up to uranium and other heavy elements that didn't exist on Earth.

The evolution of life on the Sgrang home world took advantage of both the heavy metals and its above average vulcanism. So much that when the Sgrang realized one of their neighboring stars would go supernova they called for the Cohort to help them find another planet to live. The coming supernova, less than three lightyears away, would utterly sterilize their world.

The conditions on the Sgrang home world didn't allow either Janai nor myself to set foot on the surface. The Cohort had environmental suits that could stand the incredible pressure and heat, but it simply wasn't worth the risk. Instead our minds were linked to mechanical avatars allowing us to interact with the Sgrang. Beings that looked like stone caterpillars with spikes of clear crystals for eyes covering their bodies.

“Has the council come up with any ideas on where the Sgrang can go?” I ask after turning towards the ridiculous looking mechanical cephalopod standing beside my equally weird looking humanoid form.

Despite her extremely alien shape, both mechanical on the surface and biological up on the orbiting starship Janai chuckles just like a human. “The council is dumbfounded, twenty-million worlds extensively cataloged in this section of the galaxy alone and none meet the requirements. The planetary vulcanism isn't a problem, it's the Sgrang elemental composition. None of the known worlds have quite the exact composition, most have too little of the heavier elements. Too much and the young Sgrang emerge from the lakes of mercury without the normal mental capacity.”

“Has the ship contacted the Cohort Motherbases, maybe one of the central libraries knows of worlds in the one of the smaller satellite galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud or even all the way to Andromeda?” I ask my mentor as I watch Janai dip one of her ten tentacles in the mercury lake.

Unlike the fictional interstellar governments from the science fiction I read and watched on Earth, the Cohort is not based inside the galaxy. The Cohort mainly existed on gigantic bases built out in the intergalactic void. Most advanced intelligent species consider galaxies insanely dangerous places with all sorts of disasters ready to befall any lifeforms unwilling to think beyond the surface of their home mud balls.

Membership in the Cohort, something humans would not be ready for probably a millennium, required a mass relocation to one of those bases. The benefits included technology originally developed by the Elder Races and exposure of cultures of hundreds of other species. Living condition are idyllic on the residential Dyson Spheres with the extremes of planetary weather carefully controlled. Plus each member species gets living space of about the surface area of ten Earths. As long as the members behave like rational beings and control their numbers, everyone get along quite well. Plus evacuating the planetary home worlds gives evolution a chance to proceed allowing near intelligent-species to make the jump to full sentience.

After a long silence Janai finally gives her answer. “ The council is purposing a different solution.”

“What other solution is there besides seeding the Sgrang on another world?”

“Ah, my young protege, you need to stop thinking so three dimensional.” Jania says in her soft voice that usually means I'm about to get a lecture.

After she tells me her answer it is my turn to be dumbfounded. What the council wants to do violates everything I understood to be right and wrong. Janai reminds me that to be a successful Cohort diplomat I have to reserve the right to change the rules of any game I find myself playing.

I protest, but being the only hairless primate from an insanely primitive planet in the Cohort, I am ignored. At least Janai sees fit to give me several decades to think about the situation. After all, the Sgrang are vital to the science of thirty dimensional physics.

Several days later, Janai is at the main hangar of our starship to see me off for my sabbatical. “Where will you go Jacob Reese?” She asks obviously worried over her sad protege.

“Probably Earth, my dumbass people should well off the planet by now. Who knows, maybe they've crossed the threshold point for initial contact.”

“Remember Jacob,” she says stroking the hair on my head with one of her real tentacles like any concerned mother, “the universe loves to play practical jokes that cross all of spacetime.”

***

That memory occurs to me as I run the simulations on my ship's main computer. Despite my ship's small size the hyperdrive it uses to cross interstellar space is no different from much larger cousins. Instead of using it to cross distance though, I am forced by the situation on Earth to consider crossing time.

Deploying further dust sensors on Earth allowed me to access century old records sitting on the hardrives of ancient computers rusting away in forgotten facilities. This has allowed me to narrow down the year and month the plague first emerged.

The main purpose for the Cohort's existence has always been to reduce suffering among intelligent species and promote the expansion of life and civilization. And in the case of the Sqrang, that even means going back in time and altering their biochemical evolution just enough so that one of the cataloged worlds meets their requirements.

The science of temporal adaptation is what the Cohort calls it. Being that the Cohort is over two-hundred millions years old means they have plenty of experience in closed-loop time travel.

I am still uncertain though, if I alter time and prevent the plague from occurring I will effectively kill millions of people dooming them to a form of oblivion incomprehensible to most thinking beings. On the other hand, if I introduced the cure now it would almost certainly cause untold bloodshed with the newly emerging sighted people being persecuted by superstitious and religious types. Because if there is one constant in the universe it is backwards ignorant beings believing they know the mind of God.

In the end, saving the billions who perished during the plague and those that would have been born after is my first priority. And yes, I am not blind to the knowledge that my actions are more than a little self-serving. I want the civilization that produced me back probably most of all.

With one touch to the command screen, I bring up the holographic display and input the required codes to initiate temporal travel. I input the destination going back two-years further for a safety measure.

The holographic icon that will activate the hyperdrive floats a few centimeters in front of my hand. Swiping left will begin the operation, to the right will cancel it. My certain falters, I think of all the humans on the surface living and loving, making the best of their lives. Do I have a right to wipe them all way, not even leaving a trace that they ever existed?

Clearing my thoughts, I swipe left sending my ship and myself to that critical pivot point in human history.

Author's notes: Yes, this is a form of fan fiction and yes, my wife and I spend way too much time watching television. Our explorations of the internet entertainment channels and their offerings is embarrassing even in these Covid-dominated months. Still though, it was subscribing to Apple TV that I stumbled across one of their original shows called “See”, staring Jason Moma. The show's premise is essentially what I wrote in my humble story.

A plague sometime this century kills off the vast majority of humans. The survivors, about two-million, are all blind as a result, and so are the children that comes after them. As apocalypse entertainment goes how the producers go about building this blind world is fascinating. The viewer gets incredible hints at the complex cultures and adaptations that would arise if such an event every happened.

Humans are highly adaptable creatures but a state of blindness effecting the entire species is a form of Hell all by itself in my opinion. On the show most humans appear to live in a near neolithic state with any leftover technology akin to sacred religious relics. Even worse, being blind the sun is technically unknown to them and is worshiped and called the “God Flame” for the heat it produces. It goes without saying the survivors have no idea the moon nor stars exist. Leftover metal is called “God Bone” and is highly prized. No, there isn't any evidence that they can produce metal themselves.

My attempt with this story was to create an ethical dilemma for my character. That given the ability to change history and save billions of lives is condemning millions to oblivion less of a crime? I obviously made my choice, I'd like to hear what others think.

Entering the Lion's Den-The Conclusion of Handmaid's Tale Fan Fiction

Hours later as Amanda and I enter the Charleston Jezebels, the Gilead government run brothel, my mind still couldn't quite come to terms with what I learned about my spy partner's ex-husband. That Andrew Maddox was bisexual and had been while Amanda and he were married. I couldn't help but figure that explained our affair back before America fell. She asked me what I thought of Andrew after meeting him the first time and my response was less than positive. I thought the guy was a major dick and that his only real talent was being born into a well established and wealthy family with huge connections in D.C.

But the real icing on the lets-screw-with-Andrew cake is that his current boyfriend was an aide to none other than the Reverend President of Gilead. One of the absolute worst crimes in Gilead was something called “Gender Treachery.” The penalty being the convicted having their skulls impaled with a meat hook mounted to a wall. Having knowledge that a senior official had hidden a sexual life was information any respectable spy agency milked until that cow was a crusty corpse. Amanda didn't need to tell me that pressure on Andrew was how the scientist we were sent to rescue, Jennifer Burgess, ended up in the now Potemkin village of Charleston.

The building itself was a new construction situated on the grounds of what was once the South Carolina Aquarium. The place essentially looked like a six story rectangular warehouse with the main entrance located at the southwest corner. Needless to say, in a country that was supposedly established to be God's kingdom on earth there wasn't any signage proclaiming what was going on in the place. While less than six years had passed since Gilead was proclaimed, good citizens had long learned that asking any questions was a quick way to earn a ticket to the toxic wastelands of the Colonies.

Once inside the building, the décor seemed intent on making up for the outside anonymity. It was a mashup of 20^th century New Orleans and 19^th century Antebellum south. Red velvet wallpaper covered the walls on which hung portrait paintings of ancient plantation owners. Their expressions a curious combination of approval or amusement, which given that the dead bastards all thought nothing of keeping fellow humans in bondage seemed appropriate. The worst thing though were the huge stuffed hunting trophies, elephant tusks, and rhino horns on display. All clearly recent kills given their condition. Lighting came from wrought iron fixtures hanging from the ceiling which gave the place a subdued atmosphere. Scattered about the lobby floor were numerous overstuffed chairs and ornate couches where the upper tier of Gilead society and foreign tourists could be found relaxing while waiting their turn with the talent upstairs.

One of the concierges approached Amanda and myself as we stood at the threshold of the lobby. After we gave him our German cover names he checked a notebook sitting on a small podium and then guided us to the bar in back of the lobby. As we made our way through, the concierge did a nearly imperceptible hand gesture as he brushed some imaginary lint off his right sleeve. A sign that he was part of the Mayday Resistance.

While Amanda was the senior of our team and made operational decisions, my general task was to imagine creative ways to escape. Especially if our best laid plans went sideways and we ended up being hunted like rats. Standing at the bar while Amanda ordered us some drinks my best guess at the moment was to kill as many of the clientele and in the confusion slip back outside and jump into the harbor which was just a short distance away. From there we would simply swim for our lives hoping the scores of small gunboats the authorities use to keep people from escaping by sea were taking the night off.

If everything went as planned, Amanda and I would be escorted up to the room Dr. Burgess was waiting. From there things got weird, I had to get us all back down to the first floor quietly as possible, through several storage rooms and out a rear door. If that was successful, Andrew Maddox would be outside with his vehicle and driver who would take us out of the city. Once over the bridge connecting Charleston with Mount Pleasant, we would be dropped off near the abandoned village of Awendaw. After ditching Maddox, we would make our way through the forest and link up with a Marine Recon Unit who would get us out of the country.

***

Twenty minutes later Amanda and I enter the bedroom suite where Dr, Burgess had been placed. Jezebel management had one of their security thugs guide us to the suite, probably to make sure Amanda and I didn't do anything stupid and to remind people like Burgess to behave.

Walking directly behind the thug with Amanda bringing up the rear, I was able to get the guy to talk a little with me learning his name was Hank and that he loved his job. As Hank used a card key to open the door to the bedroom suite, I caught sight of Dr. Burgess standing inside. Dressed in slinky, low cut dress it took less than a second for me to realize that Hank and Dr. Burgess were about the same height.

“Hank my man,” I said in clear American English, “this isn't your day.”

Hank shrugged in surprise from my change in accent but before he had a chance to turn around I quickly grabbed his head and shoulders and snapped his neck. He fell to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Dr. Jennifer Burgess,” I said looking her straight in the eyes and taking her hands in mine. “I don't have time to explain but you're going to have to trust us. We're here to get you out of the country.” As inspiring opening speeches went it didn't have the effect I wanted. Burgess was in shock and my worry was that the Gilead regime and her Jezebel masters had broken her. As the intelligence reports suggested, the women who end up in Jezebel facilities were the ones who refused to go along with the regime but were too good looking just to send to the colonies or kill. That didn't mean women like Burgess weren't mentally tortured to the point they couldn't be sure if it was raining even if they saw their persecutors come into a building soaking wet.

Just to make things more difficult, Amanda chose that moment to get picky on how I handled our escape. “Really Ryan, you couldn't wait for us to see if Dr. Burgess was going to be difficult. You had to kill the guard, they're expecting him back in a few minutes.” She said after making sure no one was behind us and closing the door.

“I improvised, Burgess can wear his uniform.” I said beginning to strip Hank of his equipment belt and boots.” How about less nagging and more getting Burgess ready to move.”

Amanda was able to get the female-to-female connection going with Burgess and in less than ten minutes we had her wearing Hank's uniform after making some adaptations. It was more than a little loose, but with the dim lighting of the hallways and us moving extremely quickly it would work. Better yet, as we left the room I discovered Hank's card key opened every door we passed.

Hank's card key allowed us access to the stairwell, which thankfully was empty as we made our way down to the first floor. Our luck ran out just as soon as I opened the stairwell door, two women sentenced to the “Martha” underclass pushing room service carts spotted me and made too much noise for another security thug to ignore.

“Hi,” I said to the guard as he approached abandoning the German accent. “I'm a bit lost, can you help me find the bathroom.”

It was either the easy duty in Jezebel facilities or the fact that the guy wasn't that smart to begin with, but my statement caused the thug a moment of confusion allowing me to remove him from the escape equation. It wasn't a clean solution, there was enough noise to attract attention and I was sure the Marthas were spilling the beans to the first person in authority they saw. At least this guy had a pistol, three extra magazines of ammo, and a radio which I gladly took. After hesitating for a second, I pulled the man's knife out of the back of his skull wiping the blade on his shirt.

“Dammit Ryan,” Amanda said stepping out of the stairwell as I dumped the body inside, “you were never this messy.”

That comment irritated me to my core. “Well you know Ms. Carter, less than two weeks ago I was a happy retired spy living a quiet peaceful life. Then you appeared and crapped all over everything.”

“We don't have time for you guys to get a room.” Dr. Burgess said looking around the corner down another hallway. “This way leads to the storage room you mentioned, Amanda.”

Amanda and I glanced at each other not because of our bickering but because Dr. Burgess was shaking off her captivity. The way towards the storage rooms looked clear and that was the moment I decided to once again improvise. “Here,” I said to Amanda giving her the pistol and the extra magazines. “Get Burgess outside and in Andrew's vehicle, I'll head towards the kitchen hopefully drawing the security with me.”

Amanda didn't argue and the two were running before the sound of my words faded. I in turn readied the knife I had taken from the second security thug and headed towards the kitchen. One of the things a spy has to learn to stay mentally healthy that he or she may be forced to kill people in the line of duty, they must never think of themselves as killers. It's a small distinction that only works for a short time but as I plowed through the kitchen there was no time for me to decide who might be a friend or who was more than likely a foe.

I made it outside just as Amanda and Dr. Burgess were getting in Andrew's vehicle. By that time all hell appeared to be breaking loose with sirens going off all over. It didn't take a rocket scientists to figure out the Charleston Jezebels was about to be ground zero. That pretty much left me one choice.

“Amanda,” I yelled out, “get Burgess out of here. I'll run interference for you two. And don't wait for me, I won't make it to the site in time.”

Got to give Amanda points on being consistent, she wasn't sentimental in the least. She must have told Andrew's driver to hit it because they were out of sight in seconds. That left me to run towards the nearest Guardians of the Faith checkpoint playing the scared German tourist.

***

The German tourist thing worked and soon after that I had a slightly bloody Guardian uniform to wear and an armored Humvee with one of those nifty automatic grenade launchers mounted to the roof. I played absolute hell that night shooting up anything that would cause increased confusion. What also helped was the total lack of training on the part of the Guardians who at one point were broadcasting in the clear on their radio net. They thought the Remnant U.S. had launched an amphibious invasion on Charleston like the overland one they pulled on Chicago.

I dumped the Humvee around Goose Creek and went into the shadows living off the land and moving at night. It was a total pain in the ass and I cursed Amanda more times that I could count for dragging me back to this shit hole. One aspect of my guerrilla campaign was getting an idea of the mindset of the people trapped in Gilead. I didn't have much time to dwell on it though since survival was my chief concern.

Months ticked by and I eventually made it to the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee and into rebel territory. The Gilead regime had overall control of the country but they had pissed off many of the religious evangelicals that initially supported them. Their relationship went to shit after the regime declared their brand of Christianity the one true faith. Those who didn't convert to the new state-approved religion pretty much ended up on the same shit list as the secular intellectuals before them. Some obeyed the conversion order while others hauled ass to the mountains eventually forming alliances with those already fighting the regime.

Word of my exploits had long since reached the rebels who sent word to the Remnant U.S. leadership in Anchorage. So when a rebel patrol discovered me in the ruins of Cherokee, North Carolina I was fast tracked for extraction back to civilization. That itself took about a month but I eventually crossed over into Canada. I did provoke a bit of an international incident when the I made the Canadian Army lieutenant escorting me to the nearest U.S. military post stop at the first McDonalds we passed. After a Big Mac and Coke, my tired butt was on a military transport for Anchorage.

***

The debriefing by numerous military intelligence types was almost as painful as my solitary guerrilla campaign through South Carolina. But at least I learned that Amanda and Dr, Burgess made it out of Gilead safely. Adding to the intelligence coup, the Marine Recon Unit that got the ladies to the stealth submarine waiting for them didn't feel obliged to honor the deal with Andrew. As soon as Amanda identified him to the Marine captain in charge of the group, they hog tied his ass and stuffed him in the second stealth sub that carried them out. Maddox has apparently answered a lot of questions concerning the nature of the Gilead leadership.

General Okamoto showed up a week later for what he said would be a personal chat. By that time I was rested and finally getting sick of fast food. All I wanted by that point was safe passage back to my cabin in New Zealand, something that Okamoto promised me back at Johnston Atoll.

“What we'd like to know Ryan is the attitude of the American population trapped inside the country.” Okamoto asked as we relaxed in his office.

I'd had already spent the last hours recounting my exploits while he had gone on about how they were going to liberate the country and restore the Republic. It was actually a little sad that I was going to have to burst the man's bubble.

“General, I truly hate to be the one telling you this but there isn't any America any more. I won't get into a sociopolitical debate about when the country fell but for shits and giggles I'd say it was already dead by the time of the 9/11 attacks. Apathy and ignorance had long since infected the population and when you threw in the climate of fear and paranoia those attacks created it was probably game over by then. The fear fed on itself and when you have a population already wondering why their share of the American Dream hadn't materialized as promised, well human nature takes over. Since they didn't have an outside enemy, they turned on themselves and the most insane faction came out the winner of the bloodbath.

“The people who I encountered are fully wrapped into the same fears they've been nursing since the 1990's. The Remnant U.S. leadership can't liberate these people and restore democracy. They wouldn't know how to manage a rational, civil debate on issues if their sorry lives depended on it. It's probably different in some areas, like the west coast, but that's where the Gilead regime has most of its effective forces on brutal occupation duty. Gilead will fall, but that's going to happen because it bases its existence on terror. The best the Remnant U.S. can do is figure out ways to nudge it along to its eventual doom. I don't envy the people that will have to pick up the pieces.”

My talk with Okamoto didn't go over well, they had me on a flight to New Zealand a couple of days later. Much to my surprise the Kiwi government didn't hassle me on arrival. Even more surprising was that my cabin was in excellent shape when I finally returned home. The answer to how such things were possible became apparent as I stepped inside.

“Hello Ryan,” Amanda Carter said sitting at my kitchen table again.

The End.

Entering the Lion's Den - Part Two of Handmaid's Tale Fan Fiction

After the briefing Amanda and I were rushed off to another building where the details of the rescue operation were being planned. The person we were being sent to retrieve was Dr. Jennifer Burgess, probably the top mind in the world on human reproduction. Before everything went sideways she had been picked by the United States government to lead the team researching the causes of the fertility crash and to come up with a way to counteract it.

But things did go sideways starting with the Mayday Attacks, which lead to martial law being declared, that in turn became the “Transition” and finally the five-month civil war between loyalists and the new regime. During the chaos, Dr. Burgess fell off the map with everyone figuring she was just another intellectual the new regime murdered and then cremated with the ashes being dumped in a landfill. Once I was settled in New Zealand ignoring the outside world, especially what was happening in North America, became a bit of an obsession for me. But I still couldn't avoid the pictures that were somehow smuggled out of Gilead showing the bodies of intellectuals ranging from college professors to scientists stacked on rolling pallets heading to a crematorium. In a fit of gallows humor, one of the Hawaiian shirt wearing CIA spooks organizing the mission called the elimination of all the smart people the first instance of a brain flush instead of a drain.

Elements of the resistance inside the country had turned up intel that Burgess was being kept in a glorified whorehouse run by the Gilead government and called Jezebels. Despite the founders of Gilead claiming they had the inside track on God's idea for righteous living on earth, for various reasons they had established numerous Jezebels all over the former-U.S. These establishments catered to the sinful carnal needs of the Gilead elites and people they wanted to impress. If the information was correct, Dr. Burgess had been sentenced to work the sheets of whomever her overseers wanted to impress. Which for the Charleston Jezebel facility meant international tourists that the Gilead regime eagerly milked for foreign currency. Having Dr. Burgess in Charleston was fortuitous for Amanda and myself since it actually made entering what was now an extremely totalitarian country somewhat easy.

***

Eight days after arriving on Johnston Atoll, Amanda and I are on a Lufthansa Airlines flight from Berlin heading to the exotic destination of Charleston. To everyone on the plane we were an adventurous German couple with a penchant for vacationing in bizarre locations. Being out of the spycraft trade for five years, I tried not to the think about the twenty-something American kid a few decades back that decided a vacation in North Korea was a good idea. He stole a poster off the wall of the motel, was arrested, sentenced to hard labor, and was beat to death a few months later by prison guards.

What was really strange on a personal level was the blue dye job done on Amanda's hair and the cosmetic device used to hide the scar running down the right side of her face. It was more than enough to change her overall appearance, which meant unless someone was looking directed for her she would be just another European on the tour group. For me, all I could do was shave my head and wear contact lenses that changed the color of my eyes. The one high tech disguise we left Johnston Atoll with were the synthetic skin gloves glued on our hands. They completely changed our fingerprints and even left DNA samples that were linked to a German database should the Eyes of God, the Gilead secret police, decide to check us out.

Luckily, after the flight landed we received only the most minimal of hassle from customs. That came from the basic fact that Gilead wanted foreign currency and to annoy the rich tourists was counterproductive. Both Amanda and I did a lot of smiling at the skinny kid looking over our passports and asked a lot of questions about his life. It's always good to try and connect with the locals but what really sealed the deal was the low cut of Amanda's blouse and her touching his hand several times. He quickly cleared us for entry with only the extreme blush on his face confirming that the guy had never gotten laid. While leaving the airport was easy, the drive to the hotel in downtown Charleston was a different matter.

The armed muscle of the Gilead regime was called the Guardians of the Faith. It was the result of a merger of the old United States Army National Guard and numerous right-wing militias. Their presence was everywhere with roadblocks and watch stations located every couple of miles. Heavily armed squads of six appeared to be the usual that often included armored Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns mounted to the roof and I even saw a couple with automatic grenade launchers. The icing on the totalitarian cake though were the billboards and sides of buildings displaying propaganda messages.

Most were images of happy, white, families either going to church or sitting at a formal dining room table overflowing with food. These messages declared that Gilead had the favor of God and that prosperity was around the corner for the truly faithful. Others showed dark-skinned monsters wearing the uniforms of American Armed Forces, which meant the Remnant U.S., threatening young, white, babies but who were being protected by a glowing Jesus welding a massive sword.

Both the armed thugs and propaganda disappeared when we entered the lower peninsula of Charleston around the Battery. There a surreal normalcy dominated with the stately mansions looking excellently kept with residents strolling along the sidewalks. Hell, even the horse drawn carriages were still prowling the streets and old black women could be found in Battery Park weaving sweet grass baskets.

Our hosts stopped the bus at Battery Park several blocks away from our hotel and let us disembark. Our guide, a guy in his thirties who seemed stiffer than a telephone pole, worked hard to keep us organized and on a particular track. It was obvious he wanted us to interact with as many of the basket weavers, casual artists painting pleasant scenes, and food vendors as possible. The intention was clear, happy and entertained tourists go home to tell friends and family that nasty Gilead wasn't the nightmare it seemed.

While munching on a hot dog, I admired an old man sitting by himself painting a scene of a sailboat on the ocean. Our conversation was cordial with me saying in my best German accented English how much I liked his work. His response was exceedingly polite but his eyes darted around like he was expecting a rabid bear to come charging out of nowhere. His fear was so palatable I wanted to say something reassuring, but the danger that he was just a well trained Eye agent looking for foreign troublemakers was real.

The same held for the old black women weaving sweet grass baskets. The Gilead regime was inherently racist, but since it desperately wanted to discredit the Remnant U.S. and be accepted by the rest of the world, it made a minimum effort at playing nice. The sweet grass weavers placidly sat under small shade shelters and did their craft. While no Antebellum task master stood over the ladies with a whip, I noticed that they paid special attention to all the people around them. I couldn't help but feel it was a talent that was connected to America's original sin.

***

Our hotel was what was once the Calhoun Mansion Museum, appropriated by the Gilead government it was now simply called the Palmetto. The 24,000 square foot structure still looked the same inside from what I remember of a school field trip a lifetime ago. Except for the staff which, like the artist and the sweet grass weavers outside, all clearly understood they were living in a nightmarish Potemkin village. A bellboy, another skinny kid that should have been worrying over college exams instead of being tied down by a mutant society, escorted us to our room while carrying our luggage.

“If there's anything I can do for you sir, just ask.” The boy said standing at the doorway. A wave of pity washed over me seeing him stand there wearing what had to be the most ridiculous uniform ever conceived. Making matters worse, the uniform was about three sizes too big giving it a comic appearance.

“Here's the deal, young man,” I said being careful to keep my fake German accent. “My wife and I have particular tastes in entertainment and we've heard there are activities here in Gilead we can partake.” I said while slipping him a ten euro note.

The boy immediately lost his comic tinted look of innocence. “Yes sir, I know exactly what you mean and that can easily be arranged. What time would you like for someone to pick you and your wife up?”

“You can arrange this for tomorrow evening after dinner.” Amanda answered for us both before disappearing in an adjoining room. I found something in her certainty a little unsettling.

The next morning I woke up on the couch, Amanda's orders, while I heard her in the bathroom. Being summer in the northern hemisphere, I was quickly reminded of Charleston's humidity as I stepped out onto the long second floor porch that looked down upon the gardens. People were already walking around enjoying the statues, fountains, and flowers. For a moment I found myself imagining that Gilead was just some nightmare that I would soon shake off. All that ended when down on the street a large SUV came into view flying a tiny flag of Gilead on the hood with several body guard type Guardians jumping out as soon as it stopped. I almost jumped back inside the room until I remembered I was just a harmless German tourist taking advantage of the morning air.

“We've got to move quickly,” Amanda said coming out onto the patio. “Our contact has arrived early.” She said after turning and reentering our room.

“What's the play, Amanda?” I ask grabbing a fresh shirt then changing into a pair of pants that would be presentable to the public.

“The Jezebels meeting is up in the air. But our contact will be strolling in Battery Park seemingly out to meet and greet the tourists.”

“Can I assume the VIP vehicle that pulled up a minute ago is our contact?” I assume that was a given. What I didn't ask was how Amanda was communicating with this person. She was carrying several electronic devices like a camera and a cheap computer tablet. Tech wizards back on Johnston Atoll could have easily integrated hidden text functions into the circuitry of either device.

Amanda paused giving me a stern look clearly debating on how much I needed to know.

“Listen, I've played the good junior spy.” I said getting upset. “Tell me what this means Amanda because I could easily slip out of this city and disappear leaving you here alone.”

Several second later the expression on her face softens. “Just be prepared for a surprise Ryan, our contact is not helping us out of his desire to overthrow the Gilead regime. I've got the bastard by the balls and your appearance and reaction to seeing him will undermine his already damaged psyche.”

Leaving the Palmetto, Amanda was playing the affectionate wife as we made our way to Battery Park. She even made a point of stopping our stroll several times to give me a passionate kiss. To the local onlookers it was a display of affection that was forbidden in any other place in Gilead. When your a spy, you automatically know such behavior is for the benefit of people watching. She wanted to shock someone, but I didn't have a clue who that person might be.

Oh, I eagerly played along, since she had been nothing but cold to me from the day I found her in my New Zealand cabin. From the corner of my eye, I saw the VIP approaching us and saw that he was wearing the suit of one of the Commanders of the Faithful, it looked like a regular business attire except for a series of patches on the sleeves and other trinkets attached to the lapels. I never was into fashion, especially since formal attire for me consisted of my navy dress whites uniform, so the outfit to me looked ridiculous. But what the guy was wearing was the clothes of Gilead's ruling class.

I'll give the guy credit, when Amanda and I finally got within handshaking distance we recognized each other. The shock that registered across his face was extreme but also brief. Instinctively, his eyes began darting around like the old man the day before looking for that metaphorical rabid bear.

I on the other hand went cold, the man standing before me should have been dead. He was the senior aid to the late Senator Laura Claiborne of California, who while not in the Capitol at the time of the first Mayday Attack was one of several assassinated in their offices. He was also Amanda's husband, Andrew Maddox, the man who upon learning of the affair I had with his wife tried to end my career.

Killing him wouldn't have been an issue. His two bodyguards standing a few feet behind him looked like overweight thugs. My mind played out several scenarios where I killed them, took their handguns, and murdered Andrew before anyone had a clear idea what had happened. But being the good spy I stuck with what I thought was Amanda's script.

“Hello Andrew,” I said pulling his ex-wife close to me. “Good to see you somehow made it through the attacks.”

Andrew was silent, frozen in place, it was Amanda playing the master manipulator that defused the situation. “Now boys, we're here to do business. Andrew, you provide the assistance we need and nothing will bother you again. How about we step over to one of the nice benches, have a seat, and talk.”

End of Part Two

Entering the Lion's Den - Handmaid's Tale Fan Fiction

(See author's note at the end.)

My days are simple now. They are a set routine of mundane events that vary only slightly over the course of a year. What doesn't change though is that after waking up I take a quick shower before eating my breakfast while listening to the news on the radio. It is during those few minutes that I feel some solace in the fact that the world has finally calmed down, somewhat, after having nearly everyone's preconceived notions radically overturned. Its been five years since the events that historians are saying marked the end of Western Civilization and even now I can tell no one still believes it actually happened.

Except for me, I saw the juggernaut speeding down the tracks bearing down on the distracted and self-adsorbed nation oblivious to the danger it faced both from forces outside the government and the cancer inside. I tried to warn my superiors, men and women with real authority but who were so part of the institutional mentality that they could neither see the mutating landscape nor the corruptive forces lurking in plain sight. The darkly funny thing that still needles my soul is that while the winners and losers of the life and prosperity columns switched hundreds of millions of innocent souls since the end of everything, above it all a tiny minority sailed through the chaos unscathed as usual.

That's all in the past now. With breakfast finished, I turn off the radio and begin to prowl the small portion of the Earth I can call my own. During the summer months I keep occupied working in my garden and doing repairs on the small cabin I call home. But it is now during the harsh winter months here on the South Island of New Zealand that I am forced to accept the fall of the United States of America and the establishment of the Republic of Gilead.

The day is misty with heavy gray clouds sealing up the sky from the sun. With no real chores, I go for a short hike through the hills. There is comfort in the forest, a solitude that allows me to imagine a much different world, one far wiser and more adaptable. That morning however, I feel old instincts stirring. Someone is watching me, probably several people off in the distance.

In the early days of Gilead it would have been their secret police, curiously called the “Eyes of God.” A combination of former CIA or former military types who were either Christian extremists or well disciplined and trained serial killers that didn't have any guiding philosophy. They made a point of hunting down people around the world the Gilead government had declared were “unredeemables”, American dissidents who refused accept the new regime or quietly fade into the society of whatever nation they were taking refuge.

With the world dissolving into chaos the Eyes had free reign for months. That is until the Remnant United States, a government in exile consisting of Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico launched six nonnuclear cruise missiles at the Texas compound where the “Leader” of Gilead resided when he wasn't in Washington. The Remnant U.S. had possession of all the workable nuclear weapons and long range delivery systems once held by American Armed Forces.

The missiles killed hundreds of the most fanatical participants of the new government, which the propaganda arm instantly turned into martyrs. The attack missed the Leader by a couple of hours, but he got the message and ended all overt assassinations.

If my not so well hidden observers wanted me dead, I'd already be laying on the ground in a growing puddle of my own blood. So, with nothing left to do I begin walking back figuring they wanted to talk with me. The only questions remaining being who are they, and what do they want. As I approach my cabin I notice the front door is wide open. I can't help but feel a growing curiosity combined with a great deal of worry as I stepped threw.

When it became apparent no one in the doomed U. S. Government was listening to my warnings, I skipped the country with money and a new identity. For several months, I jumped around the world looking to avoid the hundreds of assassins the Gilead regime had dispatched to short circuit anyone forming an organized and effective resistance.

But once the Eyes were called back home, I settled on the South Island of New Zealand. In normal times unless you were a legitimate refugee or very rich, the Kiwis were always stingy about allowing outsiders into their beautiful country. As far as the Kiwi immigration ministry was concerned, I was a rich entrepreneur who just happen to become a permanent resident right before the Mayday Attacks that overthrew the United States government. When the world was thrown into chaos because of that event, New Zealand along with every other stable nation was forced to take in tens of thousands of displaced former United States citizens.

For that reason, New Zealand didn't put up with any shit from alien residents. Even a minor crime committed by a stupid teenager could result in the entire family being deported on the first available tramp freighter. At best the family would be sent to the Remnant U.S., probably Alaska where they would end up working the mines or oil fields. At worst, Gilead itself in one of the toxic interment camps they called “colonies” where life expectancy is usually less than two years.

I liked New Zealand, I felt at peace here and the last thing I wanted was to cause any trouble or be noticed by the local constabulary. For that reason, I had my hands up as I entered the cabin curious about who had finally found me.

“Hello Ryan, its been too long.” The beautiful redhead sitting at my kitchen table said. “I'm reforming Section Thirty-One, and you're one of the band members I just can't do without.”

***

While the roar of the cargo plane's massive jet engines were canceled out by the headphones I wore, escaping the clamber of my thoughts was something far more difficult. Seeing Amanda was one of the absolute last things I thought would ever happen again in my life. Thinking back on it, having an affair with her while she was married to a high-ranking aid to a powerful United States Senator as well as being my boss was a really bad idea.

On the face of it, Amanda Carter was the poster woman for dynamic feminism. After graduating West Point she became a member of the Criminal Investigation Command working in intelligence gathering. Her exploits in Afghanistan and several other dangerous locations around the world cleared her a pathway to joining the FBI and soon after its Hostage Rescue Team, eventually commanding the entire department. From there she fell in love and married Andrew Maddox, senior aid to the now deceased Senator Laura Claiborne.

I met Amanda when we were both recruited for Section Thirty-One, a semi-secret agency created in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. When America's commie foe went belly up in the 1990's, a whole host James Bond-like villains were the result. With access to thousands of loose Soviet tactical nukes, deadly biological agents, and other pieces of inconvenient technology the United States intelligence community created Section Thirty-One in an effort to contain and eliminate their dangers. By the time Amanda and I were on the team, its purview had expanded to other threats to the nation. All things considered, Section Thirty-One did a damn good job up until it was sidelined by what was called at the time the “War on Terror.”

They pulled her from the FBI and me from the Navy Seals in 2015 and made us partners after graduating 31's training academy. Several dangerous missions later one thing lead to the other and we became lovers in Vienna while holding up in a safe house. A couple of months later her husband, Maddox finds out with Amanda getting a new partner while I was assigned to a desk in Washington. All told the desk job analyzing domestic terrorist groups was probably a good thing. It gave me a heads up on the Son of Jacob, the radical group planning the overthrow of the U.S. government allowing me to cleanly skip the country when I realized no one in authority was listening to my warnings. Most of Section Thirty-One was assassinated in the months after the Mayday Attacks.

Amanda sat on the other side of plane from me, asleep but in the middle of a very bad dream. She was trying to curl up in one of the seats mounted in a long row next the fuselage. From the moment I saw her in my cabin it was obvious the years since Mayday had been nightmarish. Her face was still beautiful but her eyes were empty, the person she was when we were partners and lovers long dead. Emphasizing that point, was the scar running down the side of her face visible to me.

After leaving my cabin, she wouldn't reveal the mission she had come all the way down to New Zealand to get me to join until we reached our destination. She did tell me that I had experience critical to its successful completion. The cold expression on her face all but confirming the idea floating around in my head that I would probably end up wishing I hid from the world a lot better. Later on, sitting next Amanda in the vehicle one of her teammates drove, I tried to ask about the scar and her reaction was even worse.

Our destination turned out to be Johnston Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A long time naval refueling station later turned into a testing facility for chemical and nuclear weapons. After the fall of the Washington, the Remnant U.S. increased the island's size many times by sinking scores of unneeded vessels in the shallow waters and then piling hundreds of tons of material on top from coral dredging. The purpose to provide a highly secure site to plan operations against the Gilead regime. The official capital of the Remnant U.S. was Anchorage, Alaska but brutal experience had taught what was left of the American government was infiltrated with Gilead sympathizers.

One of the few things Amanda did tell me before we departed New Zealand was that being admitted to Johnston Atoll meant that the Resistance leadership was sure you were not the enemy. Something I told her I appreciated since I was the goddamn person who tried to warn them in the first place.

***

The building we were taken to after landing while prefab had obviously been hardened to the point of absurdity. My guess was to withstand tropical storms and the disturbing possibility that Gilead, or its ally Russia, might try to attack the place. That is if anything they threw at it could get by the several cruisers out in the nearby waters or land-based missile batteries scattered about the island.

Amanda and I were quickly ushered inside and to a conference room filled with a collection of military types from all the military services. Mixed in where a few intelligence spooks wearing actual Hawaiian shirts and khaki pants. They looked like irate insurance salesmen who had missed the flight to Vegas for the annual convention and were about to lose the reservation at their favorite whore house.

After taking our seats in the far corner of the room, a four-star army general entered the room and took up position behind the podium.

“Good day ladies and gentlemen,” he said while organizing his papers. “For those who don't know me I'm General Robert Okamoto director of continental insurgence. We are here today to begin plans to extract a high value prisoner trapped in Gilead. The president himself has approved this operation not just for how it will hurt the Gilead regime but the target is also a highly trained scientist who was researching the fertility crisis before the Fall.”

To say I was nervous about how I was supposed to be critical to this mission was an understatement. I had been part of at least a dozen hostage rescue missions in my career, but never one to what was supposed to be my home country. That it had become a totalitarian state dominated by a freakish religion only made the situation more bizarre. Nonetheless, I stayed quiet and waited for the other shoe to drop.

General Okamoto continued on for a several minutes before revealing the location of this vital individual. I began to understand why Amanda had come for me the second I saw the map. It was a map of Charleston, South Carolina, my hometown, a place that as a kid I thought I would never leave. But now one I wouldn't have bet money the day before I would ever dare to return.

I turned my head towards Amanda and found her looking intensely at me. The person next me was not my Amanda, she was long dead. But the expression on her face was one I was familiar with after being her partner and then lover.

“What piece of information are you not telling me, Amanda? I whispered to her.

She ignored me and just turned her head back towards General Okamoto.

End of Part One

(Author's note: For reasons that should be obvious I'm in a really dark mood right now. I honestly feel our country is just a few small steps away from a true nightmare. What history I've read seems to suggest any people that come this close to giving away their freedoms and rule of law have only a few fleeting opportunities to make them safe again. That the elements seeking to institute authoritarian restrictions have the advantage in pursuing their goals while the good guys are often at odds with themselves. Those of us in the “Resistance” can only do our best and hope.

This story is crap, but I have based it on the Hulu series, not the book or movie, and have done my best to expand the landscape of that excellent production.)

Sufficiently Advanced

Art by Rene Aigner, Click picture to enlarge.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke

 Albert was the one who brought up the idea of making a side trip to Yeager Air Force Base. About five members of our group were outside the darken motel we had taken refuge, sitting around a campfire built in the middle of the parking lot. We didn't need a fire, it was still warm enough to sit outside without building one. In fact some in our group relished the ability to see the stars without dealing with the now gone light pollution from countless buildings and cars. But the fire served a more primal purpose, it called to the human need for safety and togetherness that stretched back to the beginning of our species.

A little over a year had passed since the event our small group of twenty-nine people collectively called the Disappearance had occurred. As a rule we rarely talked about the event or what our lives were like before it. I truly don't think the couples that naturally formed as we came together talk about it amongst themselves in private. The event so violated our concept of reality that to acknowledge it would be like surrendering our sanity.

“I served at Yeager for over five years.” Albert said while staring at the fire revealing more about himself with that statement than in the five months since I linked up with them. “I was a satellite photo-reconnaissance specialist, my group could redirect any of the assets we had in orbit and take clear, detailed pictures of everything from the license plates of Russian military vehicles to women sunbathing naked on the beach.”

Albert an African-American male in his late twenties who, like the other survivors, joined the group seeking the reassurance and companionship everyone desperately needed in the wake of what had happened. To me, he seemed a little nerdy, especially since I noticed he was constantly taking measurements of the weather conditions and keeping it logged in a journal.

“Why are you telling us this, Albert?” Cynthia asked in her normal irritating manner. I really didn't care much for her, Cynthia was in her late fifties and one of those upper middle class hippy types who threw hissy fits about gluten and GMO veggies in the grocery store. Now, she complained about not having the benefits of civilization like electricity, running water, taking a relaxing crap inside a warm house, along with instant access to her psychiatrist.

Albert took a deep breath and used a stick to poke the fire before saying anything. “There's a chance I can get the emergency generators working and with power I can download the stored data in the satellites. That way we could see what happened on that day.”

I didn't say anything at first. Our group was camped for the night at one of those motel/restaurant/gas stations conglomerations just off Interstate 40 outside Oklahoma City. Our destination was Willow Creek, California where a group of about 600 west coast survivors had begun to assemble. If the short wave broadcasts we had with them were true, the small town had access to electricity supplied by a combination of windmills and hydroelectric power.

Albert's idea was intriguing and if our group didn't consist of nine kids from the ages of three years-old running up to a pregnant girl of fifteen, he and I would definitely go check it out. But Agatha Higgins, more or less our leader, would not be keen on the side trip. Being a pediatric nurse before the Disappearance, right now her life was dedicated to getting the kids to Willow Creek before another winter hit. The price the rest of us adults paid for riding along was unqualified support of Agatha's efforts.

“Gregg is the person I'd talk to about that idea, Albert.” Wilson Banner said while sitting next his partner. “Agatha is in Jean's room watching over her, so there's little chance she would pay you any attention.” Jean was the fifteen year-old pregnant girl who Agatha was watching like a hawk given her age and condition. With Agatha preoccupied, that would allow Albert and myself a straight shot at Gregg.

If Agatha was the leader of our group, Gregg Mason was the second in command. He also held the position as Agatha's love interest. Given the nature of the Disappearance, it goes without saying that their relationship didn't start until after the event. They were a curious couple, Agatha was a statuesque black woman in her forties almost supernaturally dedicated to the welfare of children. Whereas Gregg was a short, truly ugly white guy of about the same age possessing the talent of coaxing in all things mechanical back to life. Like I said, we really didn't talk about our lives before everyone disappeared so no one really knew how they came together in the aftermath.

While still not saying anything directly to Albert that I had a growing desire for this trip to happen, I follow him up the outside stairs to the second level of motel rooms we had taken. It wasn't late but as Albert and I passed the open rooms occupied by the kids, we could tell they were asleep. Something that came naturally to us all really with electricity now gone.

We found Gregg wide awake in he and Agatha's room sitting at the desk next a battery-powered lamp going over a ledger, probably a list of our supplies and what we should look for along our travels. Albert quickly spelled out his idea and how he could possibly bring the satellite control center back to life.

“So you want to do this as well, Rick?” Gregg asked me as he reached for a bottle of Gatorade on his desk.

“Yeah, I'd like to know just what in the hell happened that day.” I replied. “Albert can't do this by himself and then there's the question of security.”

That question went both ways, the one element of my life that everyone knew about was that when the Disappearance happened I was a staff sergeant in the United States Army stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. After linking up with Agatha, Gregg, and the others I essentially became the chief of security.

Along the way after that I had played a big role protecting the kids, mainly from dogs that had gone wild and from a small group of lions someone had obviously let loose from a zoo. Luckily, a few rounds fired in their general direction from the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the roof of the Humvee I drove sent them running. The world was clearly up for grabs with humans now an endangered species, but I didn't want to kill those beautiful animals.

“Do you think Ralph and Laura can fill your shoes?” Gregg asked about the two people who more or less worked under my command.

Both had served in the military and I found that I could honestly answer yes to Gregg's question. As long as they could tear themselves away from each other. The two screwed like sex starved rabbits when not on duty.

“Then take one of the SUV's and go,” Gregg said instantly. “We all hope Willow Creek is the promised land but if you get those satellites up I want you two to look the place over.”

***

The trip to Yeager Air Force Base sucked about as much a journey can without someone getting killed. Before the Disappearance it should have taken two days at best to cover the distance from Okie City to the outskirts of Colorado Springs. Instead it took six with Albert and myself stupidly deciding to cut across old U.S. Highway 87 which ran between I-40 and I-25, which then took us into Colorado Springs. Turned out US 87 had been washed out in numerous spots since the Disappearance and then there was the problems with finding supplies.

For those of us remaining on Earth after the Disappearance, life revolved around foraging the leftovers of civilization. As we passed through the dozen or so small towns on our route, we found nearly all the gas left in the underground storage tanks contaminated. That required us to use the technique Gregg developed to filter out the water, which took hours. The grocery stores, reeking of decaying meat in the dead refrigerators, still held plenty of canned and packaged goods but it was clear another bunch of survivors had already passed through going God knows where.

We finally arrived on the outskirts of Yeager on our sixth day and quickly found the building that housed the satellite control facilities. Given my army background, I somehow expected Cold War era/Terminator movie-style harden bunkers with twenty-ton steel blast doors. While the actual control facilities were in an obviously well guarded subbasement of the building, the place reminded me more of a commercial call center than military redoubt.

The real fun began as Albert lead me through a long series of pitch black access tunnels to what he called “one of the emergency generator rooms.” We both carried several spare flashlights, but the entire time we were down there I realized that if they all somehow died getting back out would be a near impossible task.

Luckily, Albert easily found the door to the generator room and just when I was about to ask him how we would get inside he began typing something on the recessed keypad next it. The sound of a loud click followed by the door opening slightly and lights coming on inside the room itself was deeply reassuring.

“Albert,” I begin whispering for no reason I could think of, “just what in the hell were you in the Air Force?”

“Honestly,” he replied while walking over to a control panel that looked like a piece of the bridge of the starship Enterprise, “satellite reconnaissance specialist like I said. But after leaving the Air Force with the rank of captain, I worked at the NSA.” He finished obviously happy with the stunned look I had on my face.

“Jesus dude, you could have told me you were an officer.” I say upset since his quiet demeanor with the group and on our way to Yeager suggested he was at best a NCO like myself while in the Air Force.

“No worries,” he tells me while working through a complex array of commands on two different computer screens. “You're an experienced infantry soldier while I never even slept outside more that two nights in the service. One of my worst struggles during those years was being deployed to Afghanistan for six months and having to eat at an army mess hall.”

Whether Albert was telling the simple truth or attempting humor I had no idea. Although, I could understand, army mess halls were crap when compared to Air Force cafeterias.

About an hour later we walk into the now fully functional satellite control room. Now it was everything I imagine with giant video screens showing maps of different sections of the planet in front of several long rows of computer terminals sitting side by side.

“So it's this easy to gain access to a highly classified government facility?” I ask Albert as he takes a seat at a supervisory terminal.

“Not for anyone who shouldn't be here in normal times. The system was designed with multiple redundancies in the event of national emergencies so proper personnel could bring it back up. But I admit, having the vast majority of the global population simply disappear was not one of the scenarios they envisaged.” Accessing the satellites and downloading the stored data took longer than Albert expected. He blamed it on an operating system upgrade but eventually he was able to show the end of the world.

The data was completely anticlimactic compared to what those of us who lived through it on the ground. From the perspective of the satellites, planes fell from the sky and all telecommunications stopped at the same moment. Of course the electric lights of cities seen from the night side of the planet stayed on anywhere from several hours to a couple of days but even they died. We found absolutely no reason for the Disappearance, no orbiting alien space ships harvesting unsuspecting humans nor an army of winged angels whisking worthy souls up to heaven.

Silently Albert continued to scan the downloaded data and even redirect satellites in an effort to get an idea on what the rest of the world was like before the power died. He even got several high resolution scans of Willow Creek and intercepted a couple of radio broadcasts local to the area. At least it was turning out to be the sanctuary Agatha, Gregg, and everyone else hoped.

As the hours passed, I had long since wandered off searching for food when the building intercom screeches to life. “Rick,” Albert's voice yells through the speakers, “get back in here, I found something.”

***

We were three weeks into Mexico driving to a totally middle-of-nowhere spot in the state of Durango when I begin to doubt the sanity of both Albert and myself. While the post-Disappearance weather and years of neglect before that had taken their toll on American roads, those in Mexico were even worse. Backtracking became a hellish daily activity, along with foraging fuel and food from locations we were simply not familiar. But somehow we made progress with an Air Force GPS device we stole from the base slowly ticking closer to our destination.

We first saw it at a village we camped at several miles away. It was just an unimpressive bump on the horizon but given that we were a good distance from the nearest thing that could be called a city, it was a large structure that had no business existing. It wasn't the only one on the planet, Albert had fished around with the satellite surveillance data and discovered bizarre large structures appearing on every continent the same time most of humanity vanished. What gave them away were the satellites recording extremely high electromagnetic radiation emissions when they popped into existence, then nothing.

The structure we were about to visit was North America's. The one for South America was almost dead center in the Amazon rain forest, while Europe's was in Hungary. Asia got two, one in eastern Siberia and the other in northern India. Africa had two as well, with the northern one just a few dozen miles from the Giza pyramids and the other in the jungle of southern Congo. For a reason I couldn't describe that seemed almost funny, Australia's missed the entire continent and was located on the island of Tasmania. Even Antarctica had one near the South Pole, its function more of a mystery than the rest since there were so few people on the continent.

Neither of us said anything the next morning as we started the final leg of our long journey. The structure slowly grew higher and larger as we traveled across the desert plain. I'm not sure about Albert, but I expected some sort of activity as we approached. I believe the lack of any response filled me with a dread far worse than if the structure had been guarded by murderous aliens or rage-filled demons.

I stopped the vehicle just a few dozen feet away from the structure. It was rectangular in shape standing over thirty-stories tall with the four sides about forty-five to fifty feet wide at the base. Looking at it just a few feet away, it appeared to be a crudely cut block of stone. Pictures of ancient Stonehenge came to mind, except that this was far more massive. Then there were the vein-like filaments running up and down its length that coursed with a pale blue light. The structure was so alien, so utterly unearthly the reptile part of my brain wanted to drop everything and runaway. It took a conscious effort to walk towards it for a closer examination.

Albert on the other hand was enthralled, obviously the structure appealed to his highly analytical mind. He was already touching it while I was still deciding whether or not to flee.

“The Sentinel,” Albert said touching the structure.

“What are you talking about?” I ask edging closer.

“Remember the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith that appeared to the hominid creatures and the one on the moon and later in orbit around Jupiter.”

Albert was right, while the structure wasn't a dead ringer for Arthur C. Clarke's fictional monolith, the one in front of me sure as hell was even more enigmatic.

“A shape for something that had no shape,” I said repeating the lines from one of the characters in the sequel made a decade or two later. That's when I snapped, my mind was flooded with memories of a wife I lost to pursue my military career and my seven year-old son I probably held less than ten times when he was a baby. With no apparent culprit to hold accountable for their disappearance, I had put all the emotions and guilt I felt towards them in a box and pushed it away. Seeing the monolith in front of me caused that box I wanted to ignore and forget about to explode.

“Rick, what the hell are you doing?” I vaguely heard Albert say before I grabbed the pickaxe from inside our vehicle and started taking swings at the monolith. Albert tried to stop me after the first swing but I pushed him away.

While my first swing glanced off the side of the monolith, on the second the pick dug deep into stony material of the monolith. In fact, a rather large chunk broke off and fell to the ground. That's when everything really went to shit.

***

I'm not sure what happened all I know is that everything went both totally dark and utterly silent. Hell, during that period I don't even know if I had a body. What I do know was that I could sense the presence of numerous powerful minds or just one massive entity. Truthfully they seemed to merge, split apart, and then repeat the process. Attaching human equivalencies would be ridiculous but I would guess that is how they communicated with each other. They didn't try to communicate with me, if one thing is certain I was less to them than bacteria are to us. But somehow my fear and anger affected them much in the same way bacteria can make us sick. They had to neutralized me to prevent their monolith from being damaged further.

What these entities did though was allowed me to sense some minuscule portion of their existence. The first thing I could discern was that the monoliths weren't things that allowed shapeless beings to have a form. No, the best human term for the structures would be that they are test leads or probes used to measure not just physical conditions like heat and humidity, but all life and how it interacted.

Earth was an experiment to them, whether their endeavor was planned out from the birth of the solar system or that they noticed the conditions of the young planet met their needs and decided to make use of it, I have no idea.


What I could tell was that our concepts of good and evil held no meaning to them. They aren't heavenly beings but neither are they purposely cruel, it gets back to the same way we humans look at bacteria. Yes, they are responsible for the Disappearance, and I don't know if everyone they took was erased, stored away like music on a CD, or now safely living in some paradise-like realm. I did learn that it was pure accident that some of us were left behind, their abilities and technology, hell their very reality are all way beyond our comprehension but they're not gods.

At some point those beings released me, because just as suddenly as everything went dark I found myself leaning on the monolith with Albert asleep inside our SUV.

***

“You were gone for over five hours,” Albert tells me after I crawled over to the SUV and woke him up. Now that I was back in the world, my body screamed my time away was much longer. I felt like I haven't eaten in days which is only surpassed by my thirst.

“Where did you go, Rick? Did you meet the beings that made the monolith?” Albert asks me as I finish off a second liter bottle of water.

We camped next the monolith for the night and I told Albert everything I learned. He in turn just listens saying nothing but somehow I could tell my experiences were concepts he already grasped. I finish by saying there was nothing we as a species could do to change the way the monolith entities view humans. They could easily wipe the remaining humans and the planet itself away. 

“I don't know about that,” Albert says looking towards the monolith. “The second you disappeared the blue light running through the veins stopped. I'd bet money you did that and the entities have disengaged from our planet.”

Just to be sure, the next morning I used the pickaxe to break off several more pieces of the monolith. Nothing happened, as far as this monolith was concerned, and I somehow knew all the others were just as dead.

With nothing left to prove or discover I just stood in front of the monolith staring at it. It was Albert who pulled me back to the world of the living.

“We're done here, Rick. Lets start heading back home to Willow Creek.”

The Meaning of Life and Chance

The morning was cold. It wasn't the new normal type of chill that forced people to wear a light jacket, only to shed it in the early afternoon. It was the old fashioned type of freezing cold that had people wearing heavy coats and quickly scurrying from one warm location to another. With the climate increasingly changing for the worse, this was the odd weather event that people would talk about for years like they once did about freakish snow storms.

Aaron Carpenter didn't mind the cold as he sat on one of the benches in Centennial Park gazing at the Atlanta skyline. The sky was a stunning cobalt blue with only a few clouds lazily floating by to give it contrast. While the park itself wasn't devoid of people, the few that were around didn't wreck his sense of solitude.

Not that he really noticed them, the nearest being an old man feeding hungry pigeons scraps of bread from a paper bag several yards away. Aaron was fully preoccupied with his own life story and the decision that circumstance had forced upon him. He damned Fate or whomever was in charge of the universe for making love so complicated.

The first time he had set eyes on Katherine Palmer was second grade in Wilmington, North Carolina. Katherine's father had taken a teaching job at the local community college and moved the family from their Arizona home over the summer. On that first day of the new school year, Aaron remembered how lost Katherine looked as children with long histories greeted each other and began stories of what they did over the summer.

For Aaron, the ill-timed birth of his baby sister had turned his summer into one excruciatingly long and boring affair. With his parents totally preoccupied with caring for the newborn and trying to reestablish a dependable routine, Aaron found that he had to learn to entertain himself. The adult Aaron sitting on the park bench found some minor amusement in the fact that during that summer he quickly learned how tiresome video games can become. The only thing worse that summer than old video games were the week long visits to his grandparents' house.

It was basic empathy that caused Aaron to walk over and begin talking to the girl he would call Kathy. He could tell she was lonely and a little scared, and knew the right thing to do was make her feel better. But by the end of that day though, the two would become fixtures in each others lives.

Best friends all through elementary school, it was the middle school years that foreshadowed how their relationship would become more complex. Halfway through redrawn school lines physically separated them, their evolving relationships with peers and changing social interests pulled them apart even further. So much that there was period they could actually pass each other on a street and not speak.

The high school years changed their relationship again. The friendship was rekindled slowly but by their junior year they found their emotions for each other far deeper than they could have imagined. After graduation though there wasn't a happy ending. Accepted at different universities hundreds of miles apart, they had originally planned to stay a couple and keep the relationship going. But their last night together a small disagreement turned into a fight, harsh words were exchanged and feelings were deeply hurt. Two weeks into the first semester of college Kathy finds out that Aaron was dating another woman.

But like stars locked in long-term elliptical orbits, they encountered each other again after having lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for several years. It was their careers that forced the two back together, merging marketing firms put both of them in the same department. At first their relationship was casual and strictly work related, while neither was married they were both seeing other people. But neither could fight whatever force that had put them together as children.

Over the following months the attraction and history couldn't be fought. Kathy and Aaron moved in together and for a year the two were the picture perfect couple. So happy, that they became engaged and started planning their wedding. Fate seemed to have other intentions, a coveted position in Seattle was offered to Kathy and she eagerly accepted. Having traveled down this road before and knowing long distance relationships rarely work, they parted as friends both figuring for the last time.

Several years slipped by with Kathy in Seattle and Aaron eventually taking a management position in Atlanta, Georgia. On almost opposite ends of the country, the demands of their separate lives severed the remaining bonds binding them together. Kathy and Aaron carried on, both found other loves and in time married them. Neither felt the need to invite the other to their wedding.

Having been pushed back together several times by sheer chance or mischievous Fate, neither was surprised when they found each other working together after Kathy was transferred to Atlanta. Bosses of different departments that required close cooperation, in a brief but formal meeting they promised each other to keep any relationship strictly professional. They assured each other that their respective spouses were the most important people in their lives and would do anything required to keep it that way.

Their mutual promises last about six months. Kathy and Aaron's respective spouses knew they had a history with each other but both never claimed it went beyond friendship. So, there was little worry by them when Kathy and Aaron were required to make a business trip to San Francisco.

The affair began on their second night in San Francisco, both knowing it was as torrid and tasteless as anything in a badly written, second-rate romance novel. It was in the motel room that they finally revealed the things neither had dared to mention since Kathy had arrive in Atlanta.

Kathy had married a cardiologist, a handsome and brilliant man whose one flaw was alcohol. After one too many errors in diagnosing patients, both agreed that a change in scenery could reboot their relationship and his career. Moving to Atlanta was a step down career-wise for Kathy but after her husband promised to seek help, she figured it was a good move.

For Aaron, his seemingly happy marriage was hamstrung by he and his wife suffering through two miscarriages. Aaron told Kathy that he could feel his wife slipping away and cursed himself because there were times he really didn't care.

Weeks went by with neither Kathy's husband nor Aaron's wife seeing the handwriting on the wall. But then again both were dealing with their own complex issues. That was when Kathy came up with a plan. During one of their secret rendezvouses, Kathy told Aaron that one of her Seattle coworkers was opening up a new firm in London and needed anyone with experience. She told Aaron that they should just runaway, leave Atlanta and their spouses behind.

Aaron at first agreed, but arrangements for his wife would have to be made which would require them to keep everything secret for a couple of weeks. Kathy was okay with that arrangement, telling Aaron she would fly out to London and get things ready on that end. When the two parted from the apartment used for their trysts, they agreed to meet in Centennial Park and from there make the final announcements to their spouses and employer.

Aaron watched the old man feeding the pigeons and envied the guy in some ways. Without knowing his history, to Aaron the old man seemed carefree, able to pursue his own interests without regard to other people. The weight of his decision concerning leaving his wife and going off with Kathy had been unbearable. Part of Aaron felt he was on an endless loop, condemned to repeat the same choices for all eternity. Aaron chalked his feeling up to he and Kathy's inability to finally settle down together, they had been down this same road far too many times. But in the back of his mind there was another facet to his history with Kathy that seemed almost malevolent, like he was an unwilling part of some grand experiment. Aaron shook off such an insane idea, especially since he spotted Kathy walking towards him.

As she approached Aaron fought off his inherent desire to hold her body next to his. If there was any truth to the ancient myth that people could be soulmates, individuals destined by the gods to be together, she was that person for him. The problem was that some event always pulled them apart, it was one of the main reasons he had come to his decision.

“You're not leaving Carol,” Kathy said with a smirk, once they stood in front of each other.

“No,” Aaron answered feeling every fiber of his soul rebelling again him. “I want to leave with you so badly it hurts, but I can't abandon Carol. I don't believe our marriage is going to work. But I will not leave her like she is now, it would be as if I was daring her to commit suicide. I don't want to live with that on my conscious, even if it means losing you.”

“That's entirely what it means, Aaron. Everything is in place in London, when I fly out today, I will not be coming back.”

“Its for the best then,” Aaron responded. “All I can do is wish you happiness. We had our chances and let them all slip away.”

***

The old man looked on as the two parted ways. The finality of the scene would have been clear to anyone looking on without knowing the couple or their history. It was time for him to move on as well. He pulled a normal looking cell phone out of his pocket and tapped a couple of buttons on the screen. From there the Atlanta skyline and Centennial Park disappeared as he consciousness returned to the real world.

“Doctor Daniels,” the laboratory AI said as he removed the headpiece that allowed him to interface with the simulation. “You have a scheduled appointment with an agent from the Office of Scientific Inquiry in an hour. But Agent Mathai arrived early and is already waiting in your office foyer.”

“Excellent, tell her I will be in my office in a few minutes. I need to clean up and pause the simulation.”

Agent Zahra Mathai was more than a little relieved that she wouldn't have to wait for the scheduled appointment time. She viewed the assignment to interview Gregory Ogden Daniels as a minor annoyance in an otherwise busy agenda. The North American Commonwealth was dealing with far too many issues, and interviewing a second rate Caucasian scientist on the ethics of his research was best left to rookie agents. But as the old man entered the office she attempted to smile and exchange pleasantries with him to try and get honest answers.

“Now Dr. Daniels, you know the reason the OSI has sent me here to talk with you?”

“Yes Agent Mathai, I know the dean of my department has informed your agency that my reality simulations have taken a dramatic turn. Using just an old Cygnus mark two quantum neural net, I have constructed a reality simulation where some of the artificial inhabitants are showing actual sentience. Right before you arrived I was doing a run through on two of my favorite subjects.
"They are an American couple, business professionals who I introduced to each other back in their childhood. During the initial run of the simulation the male was already showing borderline sentience. Which crossed the 1.0 boundary by his early thirties. Once I isolated the individual, I began rerunning his life multiple times to the point he was not only making truly independent choices but I have a strong suspicion he might have some awareness of the true nature of his existence." 

“Sir,” Mathai began now showing concern, “you know there are ethical concerns with that type of research. There are even United Nations regulations granting such simulated people rights. Both China and India would have a strong reaction if they found out you were in effect torturing a planet full self aware individuals. They went to war with the Greater Arabian Federation to stop them doing just that in their high tech recreation lounges. You have undoubtedly saw the videos of hundreds of real people linked into a simulation using the conscious inhabitants of those artificial worlds as fodder in wars and the building of insane video game empires.”

Daniels could feel the condescension oozing from the young woman. “Yes Agent Mathai, I did see those videos and when I designed my simulations it was meant strictly for historical research. None of the inhabitants were supposed to exceed a level .4 in actual sentience. The hardware itself should have precluded anything greater, but as the simulation moved into the ninetieth century the average level increased to .6 with actual sentience being reached by a global minority by their late twentieth.”

“From my report you're running the simulation in the past but at the same rate as real time.” Mathai asked absentmindedly as she inputted information on her hand terminal. “My notes say your research was centered around cultural and societal simulations during the late period of the United States?

Mathai paused for a moment thinking to herself. “Oh my god, Dr. Daniels, you don't have them suffering through the Gilead Schism and the Global Upheavals that followed?”

“No, before you get any further upset in the simulation the year is 2017, six years before the Mayday Attacks. Even before sentience started appearing amongst the subjects my intention was to short circuit the plot and have them go off on their own timeline. Once past our current year I would increase the rate of time and allow that universe to play out to the expected Cold Death several trillion years from now.

I wouldn't force even non-self aware simulations to live through the Gilead Terror. I've never told anyone but the Gilead government took my grandmother away from her family when she turned sixteen and had her in one of the Red Centers to train as a Handmaid.”

From the look on Agent Mathai's face, Daniels could tell that information changed her perspective on him. He was no longer just a Caucasian, the ethnic group that had controlled North America for centuries. And then overthrew the very Republic they created and bragged was God's gift to the world when they realized that in a few decades they would be just another minority. The Gilead abomination lasted thirty-four years before it was finally overthrown. The North American Commonwealth eventually rose out of the ashes and restored liberty and freedom to the tortured land that was the former United States.

She was quiet for almost a minute, but when she spoke it was easy for him to understand her disdain of the Caucasian Remnant.

“My great grandfather was living in Minneapolis when the coup occurred. As he and the rest of the family were going through the wilderness and the depopulated areas trying to flee to Canada, they were spotted by a Guardian patrol a few kilometers from the border. My great grandfather allowed himself to be captured so his wife and daughter, the woman who would become my grandmother, could get out. The Gilead government didn't kill him, instead they used him as a token to show the world they weren't truly racist. He was the public face of the Gilead Justice Department in Minnesota and they made him sentence countless people to death.”

“Agent Mathai,” Daniels began, “rest assured I will not let the inhabitants of my simulation face such terrors. Of course, this brings up the question that scientists have pondered since the very idea of artificial reality and computer-generated historical simulations were first conceived. Do we exist in some sort of computer-based simulation?”

“Well doctor, what is your position on that subject?” Agent Mathai asked.

“I honestly don't know, our reality could very well be just one of millions nested inside increasingly complex computers. The fact that sentience seems to spontaneously appear in systems not designed for such entities suggests that might be the case. Either way, paraphrasing something one of my subjects said just recently, our world is finally on a firm footing, it's best we not let anymore of our chances slip away.”

(Author's notes: No, I haven't given up on writing more of “The Adventures of an American Misanthrope. I just couldn't ever devote enough time this week to write a decent chapter six. This particular story comes from several articles I have read on the speculation that our reality, including our universe, may be nothing but an elaborate computer software based simulation.

If you're wondering why I was so detailed with the story about Aaron and Kathy it was just me trying to paint a full picture of their existence inside Daniels' quantum neural net. I wanted those character to be fleshed out as much as possible to make them seem real. That's also part of the question, could such simulated people actually be considered real if they had free will? And falling further down the rabbit hole, do we, who supposedly live in the real universe, even have free will?

Some may have gotten my little deity joke.

Finally I threw elements of fan fiction into the mix during the last part. I wanted to create a truly alien but recognizable environment in the reality that exists above Aaron and Kathy's. Read the book or watch movie or Hulu series entitled “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood to get the full exposure.)