James Van Pelt - Summer of the Apocalypse

“Was that it?” asked Ripple. “Are we too late?”

Her voice seemed to come from nowhere, as if she were drifting in space. The blackness was absolute, as solid as obsidian. “No. Too small. Too far away.” He thought, I turned right to get them. “Back, back, back!” He about-faced, put his hand out again and straight armed Teach. “We’re going the wrong way.” Within a few strides, Teach’s silhouette took form, and a few steps more around the gradually curving tunnel showed the bomb. Ceiling lights in a line beckoned beyond. Must be a different circuit, he thought. Breath came to him in quick sips. “Quickly, now,” he said. “That’s it.” In Eric’s head, a large stopwatch ticked off seconds. He giggled, a high pitched giggle that echoed metallically around him. He’d drug up a weird Gone Time association. It’s Sixty Minutes, he thought. Now for a few words from Andy Rooney. Only they won’t be words, and there will only be one. Looking larger and more ominous than before, the box raced toward them. How long, Eric thought, is five to nine minutes? Surely twice that time has passed.

Ripple reached it, ran by. Teach turned his shoulder, ran by, letting go of Eric’s hand, Dodge faced it, then ran by. Finally Eric slid his back along the cement, the box’s smooth surface catching a glint from the ceiling lights. His own breathing thundered in his ears; heartbeats throbbed, a death-clock. From within the box, a sharp snap, like a mouse trap.

Eric froze.

It’s a dud, he thought, and then he was beyond, following Teach, Ripple and Dodge who waved frantically at him to hurry from thirty feet farther along. He tried to laugh in relief, but he had no wind for it. All urgency fled. Dodge’s alive. We’re safe now. Besides, he thought, I’m an old man. What can they expect from me?

Running toward them as best he could, he attempted to get out the words about the bomb, to let them know the danger had passed. Then their faces lit up as if the sun peeped through a gap in the clouds, and a mammoth hand picked him up from behind. His last thought was, I’m flying. Something on his forehead cooled his brow and felt fine. For the longest time, Eric let the pressure of it hold him down, and he drifted. How old am I? he thought. Where am I now? Sounds swam around him, water whispers like voices murmuring, and for a while he believed he was in the house in Littleton where he and Leda had first stayed after he’d discovered the note from his father. He’d woken once in the middle of that night, her arm under his head, the bedroom window shimmering with moonlight, and the river gurgling and chuckling outside. She’d shifted in her sleep, snuggled closer but hadn’t wakened. I just need, he thought, to roll over and open my eyes, and there she’ll be, black eyelashes pressed together, her face an inch from mine. I’d kiss her on the corner of the mouth. Press my lips lightly against her, a clandestine declaration of love. She’d never know I’d seen her sleeping by the silvery sheen of the summer moon.

The damp weight lifted off his forehead—he wrinkled his brows—the compress returned.

“You’re awake,” someone said. Eric struggled to hold onto his unconsciousness, the pleasing lassitude, the painless ease of the past, back to the four-poster bed done in beige lace, but it was too late. Dodge leaned over him. “Grandfather?” he said. Eric tried to sit, and a grating pain in his left shoulder jerked him into full wakefulness.

“It’s broke,” said Dodge. “You’re not supposed to move.” The dark-haired boy adjusted the blanket under Eric’s chin. “You slept all night,” he said.

Lifting his head hurt too, but he did enough to see the dark-rock walled room lit by a single frosted bulb hanging from a wire. “Help me.” Bracing with his right arm, he pushed himself up from a thin mattress. A wave of dizziness swept through him, and he nearly fell back. Dodge supported him. Shifting the weight of his arm ignited new pains in his shoulder.

“They said you should stay still,” said Dodge. “I told them you wouldn’t go for it.” The young boy sounded triumphant.

“Where?”

Dodge helped Eric stand. Steady now, the shoulder only ached. A sling held it tight to his chest. Keeping hold of Dodge’s thin shoulder, Eric limped to the door.

“You’ll see,” said Dodge.

Outside the door, hundreds of lights circled a large, high-ceilinged room that at first Eric thought was a mausoleum. Black, square recesses, wide and tall enough to accommodate coffins, checker-boarded the stone walls. Fifteen feet away, in the center, around a cement table sat Teach, Ripple and the old woman.

“Welcome to the real library,” the old woman said, smiling. Eric joined them. The old woman looked at him keenly. “With Pope gone, you are now the last of the Gone Timers. This can be a place for you to stay. You can help us preserve the past. From here, the Gone Time will be restored.” Confused, Eric glanced again at the deep gray stone walls, and the clearly man-made space. The impression of a tomb struck him even more: the walls of stone, the carved niches side by side and stacked to the ceiling. Despite the electric bulbs, shadows dominated the room, and no light penetrated the squares cut into the stone.

She stood stiffly. “Cool air catches me in the joints.” Then she shuffled to a wall. “Did Pope say anything to you about the ancient libraries?” She faced them, her form bent and haggard in the room’s harsh light.

“It was his greatest fear that we’d suffer the same ignominy here.” Her voice cracked. Despite her age, she sounded like a lecturer, a college professor. “Three years after the plague, he drafted his plans.” She waved her hand inclusively. “It was a two-part strategy. Part one was the excavation of the chambers, and part two was this.” The old woman put her hand into one of the niches and removed a mirrored plate about the size of a tea saucer.

“It’s a…” Eric moved closer, searched for the word, “a computer disk.”

“Compact disk, with enough space for hundreds of megabytes of information. If it’s pure text, this disk will hold more than a full set of encyclopedias.” She carefully placed it back in its spot. “Within this chamber are over eighteen-thousand disks: the entire library, including pictures and diagrams, speeches and video. For the last fifty-seven years, Pope and the library staff have devoted themselves to preserving all the learning we have on these disks. They wore out and replaced computers and scanners and laser disk recorders, but they didn’t quit. He wouldn’t let them. Oh, his perseverance.” Her tone became reverential. “He knew the technology. He nurtured it, and he had the drive to make this all real.” Eric looked into one of the niches. Several score of disks stood side by side on edge in a marble tray. From where he stood, each disk caught a little of his reflection, an eye and a portion of his forehead. Behind that tray, a line of trays extended to the end of the four foot deep cavity. He plucked one disk out of its slot. It was nearly weightless, blunt-edged. The mirrored surface caught the chamber’s light and broke it into spokes of color radiating from the hole in the middle.

The old woman cackled. “The plan’s beauty is that the library itself will motivate man to rebuild. All knowledge is here, but when our last computer breaks down, it will be unavailable until technology can duplicate the readers. Pope thought of everything. He carved instructions on gold plate just inside the surface doors to the repository. Mankind must rise to learn.” The old woman sounded like an apostle now, filled with zeal and passion. “Of course, he hid the entrance. We can’t have the hordes in here before they are ready. No, that would be no good at all. The doors are hidden, but man will find it again. That was Pope’s dream: man will discover the treasure under the mountain. None of it disappears.” She scanned the room, her survey deliberate as her gaze wandered from section to section, as if she couldn’t believe the achievement herself. “Archival quality polymers in the disks. Highly stable,” said the old woman. “Under ideal conditions acid free paper might last a couple of hundred years, but it would be susceptible to fire, moisture, insects and wear and tear. Compact disks resist heat, cold, pests and mildew. They may last… well… forever. Until man is ready again.”