David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

“What happened?” She looked past his shoulder and screamed.

Old-timer had just reached the doorway as James pulled her out of the room with him and set her down on the ground floor.

“Dear God,” Old-timer uttered as he, Rich, and Djanet peered inside the room.

There wasn’t anyone in there—at least not anyone recognizable. What appeared to be the organic material that once constituted a human being was splashed all over the room. It looked as though someone had taken several buckets of blood and hair and used them to paint the bed, carpet, and walls. A fetid odor of blood hung in the air. It briefly crossed Old-timer’s mind that he was breathing the remnants of Katherine Keats. Suddenly nauseated, he covered his mouth and nose and turned away.

James was now on his knees, having removed his helmet, trying to get his breath. Thel held him, but she was as horrified as he.

“What the hell happened?” Old-timer asked to no one in particular.

James struggled to speak as he continued to gasp for air. “The nans. The nans are the only thing that could have…liquefied a person like that. You need to get to your homes. This wasn’t an earthquake. You need to get to your homes and see if this…if this hell is happening everywhere.”

“Oh my God,” said Djanet, as she began to think of her family in Trinidad.

“Are you saying you think our families might…” Rich began to ask of James, the question too horrific to finish.

James looked up at him, desperation in his eyes. “I didn’t see anyone out there. I didn’t see a single person other than us.”

“But how do we find our way home without the Net?” Old-timer asked. “It could take hours.”

James sat and pondered this for a moment. “Maps,” he said, still gasping. “Follow me.”

James and his four companions lifted off from his front lawn and ignited their magnetic fields. They raced toward the downtown core of the city, a sickening desperation seeping into each of their hearts as they began to accept that what they were dealing with was not just some scary virtual experience enjoyed late at night with a friend—this was real. Real .

As the group neared their destination, they slowed their approach, hovering just above the rooftops. There were no people. Usually, downtown flight was controlled by the A.I. One couldn’t enter downtown airspace without inputting their destination into their mind’s eye and giving over control of their flight to the A.I.’s highly organized transportation system. It was the only way to avoid thousands of collisions as millions of people buzzed around the downtown area every day, running errands, participating in meetings, and generally partaking in the great business of the hive. Destinations had to be input like phone numbers, and then the inputee would be guided like a phone signal to wherever he or she desired to go. Tens of thousands of people buzzed around the core every hour of every day. And yet today, there was no one. The sky was empty. James could not help thinking that it was as beautiful as it was horrific.

When James looked down to the street, he saw where all those Icaruses had gone.

Red splashes stained the streets as far as the eye could see. Small, robotic street-cleaners were working furiously to wash and scrub the streets clean. It wasn’t litter, coffee or latte spills that the robots were trying to wipe away; it was the inhabitants of the city.

“Oh no,” James said to himself, the bottom of the world falling away and splashing to the pavement below alongside so many souls.

When they reached the Vancouver Public Library, James disengaged his magnetic field, and the rest of the team followed suit. Their eyes were wide as they absorbed their surroundings, aghast at the implacable stillness. Vancouver was a massive mausoleum for the dreams and potential of millions of its former inhabitants.

“They’re all gone,” Thel uttered. “Can this possibly have happened everywhere?”

“We need to find out,” Old-timer replied as he looked to James for instructions.

James turned and let himself float down to the main entrance of the old library, the others following as if in a shared trance. The library was one of the oldest buildings in the city and had been protected as a museum and an important historical artifact as other buildings were razed around it to make way for the new world. It wasn’t practical like other modern-day buildings; it had been built to look like a coliseum that had spun itself until the gravitational forces caused its outer shell to peel away from the building. It gave the library the look of a spiral, like pictures of the Milky Way, with the walls reaching out like so many teeming solar systems—or, perhaps more appropriate to the current situation, like the spiraling water in a toilet after it had been flushed, humanity circling the bowl.

Modern buildings would never waste their time on architectural wonderment—things like walls that went nowhere; they were functional and practical. Usually they were tubular in shape—some cylindrical while others were squat like bees’ nests. The outsides of the buildings were dotted with large circular entrance ways, each protected with its own magnetic field that would function as both a door and a window. The rooms in the buildings, whether apartments or offices, were always accessible through the exterior of the building or through the hollowed-out core in the interior of the building. There were no stairwells, no hallways, no elevators.

The inside of the library was archaic. After walking through a massive lobby that stretched several stories into the sky, James led them into the main body of the building. The floors were connected to one another by escalator systems that had been shut down for decades and were rarely turned on now, so as to save wear and tear. To get from one floor to another, one had to ascend the frozen escalators like stairs, a task that required a willingness to indulge in embarrassing atavistic behavior. James began to climb the stairs first, followed closely by Old-timer. The others stopped for a moment at the foot of the stairs and watched the strange movements of the two men’s bodies.

“They look so…odd—like monkeys,” Djanet observed.

“Everyone used to go between floors in buildings like that,” Rich replied. “Can you imagine that? Being trapped on the ground, having to make a fool of yourself to get from one floor to another?” He shook his head at the demeaning thought.

“Well,” Thel replied, “there doesn’t appear to be anyone around to laugh at us.” She shrugged and began climbing the stairs and rushed to catch up to James and Old-timer.

Djanet and Rich hesitantly began climbing as well, but after a few awkward moments, both lifted off the stairs and began to carefully fly, skimming along the surface of the metallic stairs to the second floor.

When they reached their companions, James was smashing the glass display cases that contained several maps and atlases. He flipped through them furiously, making sure they contained the needed information. Each atlas that passed the test was handed off to one of the team members. “These old atlases will help guide you home.”

“How?” Rich asked, taking an atlas from James. “I don’t get how to use these old things.”

“You’ll have to get into space, high enough above the stratosphere so you can generally see where you’re going. Take your best guess and then head toward your home. When you get close to the surface you’ll be blind, unable to navigate because you’re too close. That’s when you’ll need these. They contain street and road names, and many of these old roads still exist. You can use them to guide you the rest of the way. If you find people, do everything you can to disconnect them from the Net, even if it means giving them a mild electric shock. When you’re done, rendezvous back at my house and report to the rest of us. If you find no one, the order is the same, rendezvous and report. As horrible as this is, none of us has time to mourn. Is that clear for everyone?”