Nick Cole - The Wasteland Saga

To his left, he could see he’d backed up past the remains of another tall building whose bottom floor had once been a café or a diner. He could see vinyl dining booths ripped and shredded within the darkness.

The Old Man gunned the engine and pivoted the tank.

There is no other way than this!

He checked the dosimeter and saw that the radiation levels were well into the redline.

The tank, which was capable of sudden and alarming bursts of speed, tore through the front entrance of the restaurant. In a moment the Old Man was crushing through the darkened kitchen, heading for the back wall.

The brick in these buildings must be rotten. Made even more so because of the radiation. So I’ll see if it puts up much of a fight against our tank. Right, my friend?

Right, Santiago?

Silence.

The tank burst through the back wall of the restaurant in a dusty spray of redbrick and launched itself off a loading dock, landing in a wide alley beyond, after a sickening moment of free fall.

“Ha ha!” the Old Man shouted in triumph.

He pivoted the tank right and sped off down the alley. The alley led to a small side street and the Old Man chose a road leading down toward the center of the town.

The tank bounced softly along the street, crushing or pushing other debris out of its way. Ahead, the Old Man could see the northern rim of the valley and the ribbon of highway climbing up out of it. A few streets later he took a right turn, and a block after that he urged the tank up an ashy embankment and back onto the old highway heading north.

Beyond Trinidad the road ran through a plain forever burned. A brief fork of lightning arced across the sky from west to east.

I have never seen lightning move sideways. Always up and down. But never across.

He stopped the tank.

He opened the hatch and a moment later noticed that the fuel drums had disappeared.

Probably when the building fell on me.

I’ll have to make it there on what’s left in the tank.

There is nothing for miles around.

The Rockies are like the dark shapes of ships crossing the ocean at midnight. You would have seen such a sight, you would know what I mean, Santiago.

“Natalie?” the Old Man said into the mic.

“I’m here. Where are you now?”

“I don’t know exactly. I don’t have my map with me anymore. But I’m just past a place called Trinidad.”

“You must hurry now. We don’t have much longer.”

“How far away am I?”

“Two hours if you maintain a high rate of speed.”

“Do your people have protection against the radiation? It’s very high here.”

“Yes. We have a convoy of vehicles that run on electric power. If the weapon does its job, we should be able to exit the facility in lightly shielded vehicles and make our way to someplace safe.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” began the Old Man. “If you don’t know where to go… well, there are some people waiting for you at a place once called Wagon Wheel Mountain. They’ve been told you might come and they’ll wait there for you. Then they’ll try for Tucson. You and your people could go there too.”

Ash stirred and whirled briefly on the melted road.

Far out on the plain another flash of lighting arced brightly across the darkening hot afternoon.

Silver sunbeams shot through clouds to the east.

“You should activate the beacon now,” said General Watt. Natalie.

Yes. I should.

It feels sudden. As if it’s all happening too fast.

That is always how things happen that you don’t want to have happen. Right, Santiago? You would say that to me. You would say that and then say, my friend.

The Old Man opened the case containing the beacon. Turning the device around, he located the on switch. A green light responded. But the red light that indicated the malfunctioning laser continued to blink.

Even if it worked, what good would it do me now? I’ve probably absorbed too much radiation.

The Old Man reached down and drank warm water from his canteen. His mouth tasted of metal. His tongue was numb.

“I have your signal,” said Natalie after a moment.

“What do I do now, Natalie?”

“Keep the beacon on. I’ll direct you to the emergency entrance near Turkey Trail. It’s south of the main complex. The mountain collapsed there when we were hit. The weapon should create an opening or allow us to set charges and clear the area.”

And what will happen to me when this weapon goes off?

You would say to me, You know the answer already, my friend. There is no need to ask.

Yes, you would say that to me, Santiago.

“And what will happen to you, Natalie? Will you stay behind or…”

She said she would self-terminate if they didn’t make it out.

Yes, but that was when there was no hope.

Isn’t there always hope? Tell me of hope, Santiago. Tell me how you felt in the days and nights on the boat when the fish carried you farther and farther out into the gulf. You had hope, my friend. Otherwise you would not have fought so hard. Fought with every skill of fishing you’d ever learned. You had hope, didn’t you?

“You have given us a chance,” said Natalie. “You have given my children a chance. I won’t lie to you anymore. Once you’re over the target, I will need to download into a secure and portable mainframe that is barely big enough to contain me. In fact… I will be ‘asleep.’ There will not be enough memory for my processes to run at optimum capacity. Someday, if they can ever find, or build a new mainframe, they will try to reactivate me. Someday.”

Lightning appeared briefly, farther to the north.

And where will I go?

“I was wrong, Natalie,” said the Old Man. “About what I said to you.”

“You have said many things since we first began to talk to each other. But, I think…”

She thinks, and that is amazing.

“I think I know what you are referring to. When I revealed my deceptions to you. You were angry and confused and hurt when I revealed who I really was.”

“Yes.”

I was.

I am still.

And sad.

Yes, that also.

Her laugh.

You take everything with you.

“You do not need to apologize,” said Natalie. “I only hope you understand that I was doing my best to save…”

“I do, Natalie. I do understand. I think our… lives… have been the same, in many ways. Since the bombs, I mean.”

“How so?”

“It’s like you said just now, we were both doing our best in a very difficult time.”

Silence.

“Thank you,” said Natalie. “Thank you for treating me as though I too am a living being.”

The Old Man watched a figure appear on the horizon to the north. A dark shape, stumbling and weaving as it fell forward toward him.

Whoever it is, they are still very far away.

“You are, Natalie,” said the Old Man, watching the distant figure. “I think… if this were different… if we were just people… I mean… I mean that I think we could have been friends, if…”

If we had time.

If the bombs had never fallen.

“Do you believe in life after death?” asked Natalie. The Artificial Intelligence. The program. The massive sequence of ones and zeros.

The Old Man wiped thick beads of sweat from his chest. He drank more of the warm water, but it was unsatisfying.

What I wouldn’t give for just one cup of the cool water that tasted of iron from the well back in the village.

“I don’t understand, Natalie?”

“Do you believe this life ends when our physical body dies? Many religious systems indicate there is something beyond. As a process, and I’m simplifying my nature, I am actually seven million processes at any given second, I understand that the mainframe, my physical body that houses me, may one day break down. But not my process, not my mind. That could be downloaded into a new body, if you will.”