This science fiction story is set in a time long after the world's collapse in which Sara Bradshaw, an archaeologist, attempts to restore humanity's place on Earth following a world war initiated by an EMP-blast. Much of human history was lost during the blast including the reasons for the worldwide attack.
Join Sara as she struggles to find answers with the help of A.I., which has become a prominent force in humanity's survival in the decades following the war.
Join Sara as she struggles to find answers with the help of A.I., which has become a prominent force in humanity's survival in the decades following the war.
Chapter 1 (excerpt draft)
Blackness blanketed almost every surface within the fort’s deep lower level. Only a small square of light in one corner of the room’s ceiling offered Sara Bradshaw a semblance of a path back to civilization. Her life as an archaeologist waited there, too. Today, right now, she simply sat near the room’s solitary metal ladder, on the floor covered in rusty-brown, sandy soil. Every sound, no matter how insignificant, reverberated off the walls she knew to be stone due to the archaeodrone’s work. The stone and sand held warmth against her exposed flesh, as if a geothermal force stirred just beneath the surface. Sweat beaded and dripped from her forehead and slid down her bare arms.
Just two of the drones provided Sara with enough information to keep her and the graduate students busy for months. Not just this room, of course, but the entirety of the fort’s above-ground portion. Yesterday, the archaeodrones scanned this room well enough for her to travel safely alone.
Alone. The word rattled around in her mind. I’ve barely been alone for weeks. She chuckled before cutting the laugh off abruptly when the stone amplified the sound. Quite the difference from five years ago when my best friend was an AI. She would not let Anja’s loss reclaim any more grief—grief, that for most people, would have driven them to a desperate torpor. For Sara, though, her colleagues had watched as she delved deeper into her studies. She had heard them whispering when they thought she wasn’t listening. Her obsession, they called it.
She preferred fascination. Passion. She preferred either one really.
Almost everyone called it an obsession borne of a misplaced acceptance of the death of an AI…everyone but Professor Rabian. The name brought a smile to her lips, despite the sand sticking to her legs, trying its best to annoy her. Sara had pushed that name aside over the past weeks as her current passion took hold. Even when Rabian’s recording appeared on her eyepiece—six days ago according to the recording’s time signature—Sara quickly pushed the audio aside. No distractions, she had thought, knowing he would appreciate the delay. Her only real response had been a simple auto-text message. Something about how she would get back with him soon. Rabian replied with a simple, “I understand.”
Her aloneness, albeit short in duration, would give her time to think. That’s what I wanted. But why do I regret what I wrote to--
“Professor Bradshaw.” The voice’s feminine New Indian accent reverberated off the walls. “We’ve already spent nearly ten minutes down here. Should we begin our work?”
“Not yet, Ady,” Sara whispered, still listening to the echoing words. “Soon. Just wait a few more minutes, please.”
Very well.” Sara heard buzzing within her earpiece as the AI calmed down. Adalaj would wait until the next EMP Day, if I let her. Then, of course, she would not need to wait any longer. Sara inhaled and wiped away her chaotic train of thought, listening with her eyes closed to eliminate visual distractions.
Sara took the memorized images and words of the twentieth-century Brazilian rebel soldiers and implanted them within the room, as she had done in all the other rooms. At the least the room within my mind and only then will I feel comfortable continuing. As an archaeologist I’m not one to disregard humanity for mere artifacts. At least compared to the archaeologists who had worked complacently in the years leading up to the mess created by the EMPs. She pushed the stray thoughts aside.
In Sara’s mind, five soldiers worked at a long rectangular wooden table placed centrally in this room. Papers lay strewn about the tabletop unnoticed. The four younger soldiers, faces streaked with gray-black soot, sat across from one another looking to the single female soldier standing at the end of the table. Her simple insignias denoted higher rank upon the right side of her heavy cotton jacket’s front. Sara’s nostrils flared at the reek of unwashed bodies mixed with their sweat-soaked fatigues.
Sara imagined the heated conversation in their native Spanish, already archaic given all the language changes since EMP Day; Sara could easily have translated the confusing words with Adalaj’s help, yet she simply pondered the desperation lined within the tone of each word. The dialogue continued for another moment until the table exploded upward. Wooden shards and metal fragments shredded the soldiers’ bodies apart.
Sara jumped, her eyes shooting open, startled by her mind’s creation of the explosion. The room’s near-blackness pushed away the sudden tension wracking her neck; any hint of a danger to herself diffused. A familiar voice broke the silence, concern apparent, “Professor, your blood pressure and heart rate just spiked. Are you able to tell me what is wrong?”
Sara exhaled, “Nothing, Ady. Sometimes I don’t have control over my imagination,”
“Very well. We’ve been down here for thirty-three minutes. Should I inform your students that you’ll be spending the remainder of the day working?”
“No, Ady,” Sara breathed. No more time to waste. “Ady, give me a view of the room.”
Without a reply, Adalaj projected a stream of light in all directions. “To conserve power, I’ll need to limit the luminosity. At this brightness level, we will have two hours and forty-two minutes to observe. I’ve projected light toward the sole mirror in the room to maximize our time.”
“Fine. That’ll work,” Sara replied while she stood. Her lithe, muscular form radiated health, and her thin brown cotton shorts and tan shirt hung loosely, her arms free. A pair of well-worn leather boots were tied tightly around her ankles. She ruffled a tanned hand through her short hair, which held no particular style. I’ll need a haircut soon, she thought absently. Her hand came back covered in sweat.
Nothing significant remained in the large room except a singular hanging mirror, already measured by the archaeodrones. They had measured the room, too: fifty feet wide by fifty feet long by ten feet tall, yet Sara still scanned it with her eyepiece. Doesn’t hurt to double-check. The clear, shatter-proof glass, large enough to cover her right eye, had folded out from her earpiece. She unscrewed her thin resin canteen and took three long swallows to help rehydrate. Not even the slightest bit of air moving. If the surface is hot, then this place must be one of the layers of hell. Satisfied, she approached the mirror across the room. Carefully-positioned thick wooden beams and posts along the room’s walls had been more of a decoration, considering the strength of the gray-brown granite lining the carved walls. As Sara paced across the room, she realized that the sandy soil had been laid across the stone floor to help control the reverberations.
According to many rebel soldier’s paper journals, this seemingly-innocuous room held supreme importance. Even the localized explosion, described in perfect detail by a bystander who had once stood where Sara sat, had not erased the room’s importance to humanity’s history: the entire reason for her presence here.
Halfway to the mirror, Sara caught an artificially highlighted grouping of splotches on the floor. Sara paused. “Ady, what are those?”
“Professor, I’m already scanning. The outlines are my creation. The drones either didn’t catch them on their sole trip down here or simply disregarded them as unnecessary data.”
“Well, that’s why I’ve got you here with me,” Sara replied. Not to mention that the damned archaeodrones aren’t that exacting in their methodology. Scan the area. Then leave. No matter how I program them to look for tiny details, their algorithms still miss things. Sara focused on the splotches, now clearer as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Blackish-red splotches faded into the adjoining sandy soil. “I suppose I would have missed that at first glance, too.”
“I’m almost there, Professor,” Adalaj intoned, which Sara took to be the AI’s exceptional focus. “There. Without taking a physical sample for one hundred percent certainty, I can safely offer a presupposition.”
“Which is?” Sara prompted.
“It has the visual viscosity of homo sapiens blood, but— ”
“Take your time, Ady. I’ve got work of my own to do. You can do more than one thing, right?”
Gentle laughter followed. “You should know, Professor.” Sara felt a slight tug from her hip as she paced forward toward the mirror. A small disc the width of her hand released from her utility belt and flew upward. A tiny propeller positioned in the drone’s center allowed it to hover. The drone hummed silently behind Sara while she paced closer to the mirror. The light had dimmed further. Even Ady has limitations, she thought absently.
Within one pace of the ornate mirror, Sara studied the entire object through her eyepiece. Sara had been waiting for this moment for months, her anticipation nearly as palpable as her search for her grandfather’s memories in The Spire. Instead of her grandfather’s memories, though, the rebels’ memories lay just a pace away. Even The Spire hadn’t been this tough to find. First, getting the university’s approval. Then scouring through the jungle with the expedition of students and workers. Finally, the weeks leading into months of field work. Focus, Sara, she told herself remembering what lay behind the ancient, damaged mirror...
Blackness blanketed almost every surface within the fort’s deep lower level. Only a small square of light in one corner of the room’s ceiling offered Sara Bradshaw a semblance of a path back to civilization. Her life as an archaeologist waited there, too. Today, right now, she simply sat near the room’s solitary metal ladder, on the floor covered in rusty-brown, sandy soil. Every sound, no matter how insignificant, reverberated off the walls she knew to be stone due to the archaeodrone’s work. The stone and sand held warmth against her exposed flesh, as if a geothermal force stirred just beneath the surface. Sweat beaded and dripped from her forehead and slid down her bare arms.
Just two of the drones provided Sara with enough information to keep her and the graduate students busy for months. Not just this room, of course, but the entirety of the fort’s above-ground portion. Yesterday, the archaeodrones scanned this room well enough for her to travel safely alone.
Alone. The word rattled around in her mind. I’ve barely been alone for weeks. She chuckled before cutting the laugh off abruptly when the stone amplified the sound. Quite the difference from five years ago when my best friend was an AI. She would not let Anja’s loss reclaim any more grief—grief, that for most people, would have driven them to a desperate torpor. For Sara, though, her colleagues had watched as she delved deeper into her studies. She had heard them whispering when they thought she wasn’t listening. Her obsession, they called it.
She preferred fascination. Passion. She preferred either one really.
Almost everyone called it an obsession borne of a misplaced acceptance of the death of an AI…everyone but Professor Rabian. The name brought a smile to her lips, despite the sand sticking to her legs, trying its best to annoy her. Sara had pushed that name aside over the past weeks as her current passion took hold. Even when Rabian’s recording appeared on her eyepiece—six days ago according to the recording’s time signature—Sara quickly pushed the audio aside. No distractions, she had thought, knowing he would appreciate the delay. Her only real response had been a simple auto-text message. Something about how she would get back with him soon. Rabian replied with a simple, “I understand.”
Her aloneness, albeit short in duration, would give her time to think. That’s what I wanted. But why do I regret what I wrote to--
“Professor Bradshaw.” The voice’s feminine New Indian accent reverberated off the walls. “We’ve already spent nearly ten minutes down here. Should we begin our work?”
“Not yet, Ady,” Sara whispered, still listening to the echoing words. “Soon. Just wait a few more minutes, please.”
Very well.” Sara heard buzzing within her earpiece as the AI calmed down. Adalaj would wait until the next EMP Day, if I let her. Then, of course, she would not need to wait any longer. Sara inhaled and wiped away her chaotic train of thought, listening with her eyes closed to eliminate visual distractions.
Sara took the memorized images and words of the twentieth-century Brazilian rebel soldiers and implanted them within the room, as she had done in all the other rooms. At the least the room within my mind and only then will I feel comfortable continuing. As an archaeologist I’m not one to disregard humanity for mere artifacts. At least compared to the archaeologists who had worked complacently in the years leading up to the mess created by the EMPs. She pushed the stray thoughts aside.
In Sara’s mind, five soldiers worked at a long rectangular wooden table placed centrally in this room. Papers lay strewn about the tabletop unnoticed. The four younger soldiers, faces streaked with gray-black soot, sat across from one another looking to the single female soldier standing at the end of the table. Her simple insignias denoted higher rank upon the right side of her heavy cotton jacket’s front. Sara’s nostrils flared at the reek of unwashed bodies mixed with their sweat-soaked fatigues.
Sara imagined the heated conversation in their native Spanish, already archaic given all the language changes since EMP Day; Sara could easily have translated the confusing words with Adalaj’s help, yet she simply pondered the desperation lined within the tone of each word. The dialogue continued for another moment until the table exploded upward. Wooden shards and metal fragments shredded the soldiers’ bodies apart.
Sara jumped, her eyes shooting open, startled by her mind’s creation of the explosion. The room’s near-blackness pushed away the sudden tension wracking her neck; any hint of a danger to herself diffused. A familiar voice broke the silence, concern apparent, “Professor, your blood pressure and heart rate just spiked. Are you able to tell me what is wrong?”
Sara exhaled, “Nothing, Ady. Sometimes I don’t have control over my imagination,”
“Very well. We’ve been down here for thirty-three minutes. Should I inform your students that you’ll be spending the remainder of the day working?”
“No, Ady,” Sara breathed. No more time to waste. “Ady, give me a view of the room.”
Without a reply, Adalaj projected a stream of light in all directions. “To conserve power, I’ll need to limit the luminosity. At this brightness level, we will have two hours and forty-two minutes to observe. I’ve projected light toward the sole mirror in the room to maximize our time.”
“Fine. That’ll work,” Sara replied while she stood. Her lithe, muscular form radiated health, and her thin brown cotton shorts and tan shirt hung loosely, her arms free. A pair of well-worn leather boots were tied tightly around her ankles. She ruffled a tanned hand through her short hair, which held no particular style. I’ll need a haircut soon, she thought absently. Her hand came back covered in sweat.
Nothing significant remained in the large room except a singular hanging mirror, already measured by the archaeodrones. They had measured the room, too: fifty feet wide by fifty feet long by ten feet tall, yet Sara still scanned it with her eyepiece. Doesn’t hurt to double-check. The clear, shatter-proof glass, large enough to cover her right eye, had folded out from her earpiece. She unscrewed her thin resin canteen and took three long swallows to help rehydrate. Not even the slightest bit of air moving. If the surface is hot, then this place must be one of the layers of hell. Satisfied, she approached the mirror across the room. Carefully-positioned thick wooden beams and posts along the room’s walls had been more of a decoration, considering the strength of the gray-brown granite lining the carved walls. As Sara paced across the room, she realized that the sandy soil had been laid across the stone floor to help control the reverberations.
According to many rebel soldier’s paper journals, this seemingly-innocuous room held supreme importance. Even the localized explosion, described in perfect detail by a bystander who had once stood where Sara sat, had not erased the room’s importance to humanity’s history: the entire reason for her presence here.
Halfway to the mirror, Sara caught an artificially highlighted grouping of splotches on the floor. Sara paused. “Ady, what are those?”
“Professor, I’m already scanning. The outlines are my creation. The drones either didn’t catch them on their sole trip down here or simply disregarded them as unnecessary data.”
“Well, that’s why I’ve got you here with me,” Sara replied. Not to mention that the damned archaeodrones aren’t that exacting in their methodology. Scan the area. Then leave. No matter how I program them to look for tiny details, their algorithms still miss things. Sara focused on the splotches, now clearer as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Blackish-red splotches faded into the adjoining sandy soil. “I suppose I would have missed that at first glance, too.”
“I’m almost there, Professor,” Adalaj intoned, which Sara took to be the AI’s exceptional focus. “There. Without taking a physical sample for one hundred percent certainty, I can safely offer a presupposition.”
“Which is?” Sara prompted.
“It has the visual viscosity of homo sapiens blood, but— ”
“Take your time, Ady. I’ve got work of my own to do. You can do more than one thing, right?”
Gentle laughter followed. “You should know, Professor.” Sara felt a slight tug from her hip as she paced forward toward the mirror. A small disc the width of her hand released from her utility belt and flew upward. A tiny propeller positioned in the drone’s center allowed it to hover. The drone hummed silently behind Sara while she paced closer to the mirror. The light had dimmed further. Even Ady has limitations, she thought absently.
Within one pace of the ornate mirror, Sara studied the entire object through her eyepiece. Sara had been waiting for this moment for months, her anticipation nearly as palpable as her search for her grandfather’s memories in The Spire. Instead of her grandfather’s memories, though, the rebels’ memories lay just a pace away. Even The Spire hadn’t been this tough to find. First, getting the university’s approval. Then scouring through the jungle with the expedition of students and workers. Finally, the weeks leading into months of field work. Focus, Sara, she told herself remembering what lay behind the ancient, damaged mirror...
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