War, War never Changes.
Frank 16, Year 1
Frank left this morning. He took his next assignment without a word and left. He rearmed with semi-auto assault weapons, body armor, that written log. I wonder if Frank is developing a conscience. This would be bad for both of us. He must remain impassive to life outside of this bunker. I need him to fetch, carry and install until I am ready for phase 2.
28. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
A book about a possible future in which the world is controlled by 10 computers (although they are not called computers but controllers it must be the same thing) human breeding is handled by hatcheries like those of poultry farms of the previous age. Education is provided through a form of hypnosis and critical thinking is forbidden, group action is encouraged and the masses placated with the ready abundance of recyclable materials and goods. The book has a certain appeal given the problems that family and clan structures have presented the world.
I go to the docks as instructed by DKM7 to locate a boat. The lake is virtually non-existent here is much of it is now marsh mud and ice. Winter is coming. I am reminded of the despair of another book I once read, A Game of Thrones. In which, the phrase Winter is Coming is repeated as a warning against a kind of the "end of the world phenomena." I could never find any of the other books in that series. Just the one clutched in a woman's skeletal fingers in a burned out building in the ruins of what I would learn once was Atlanta. Not much remains of the city now. Following the last nuclear war, what little was left standing in the city was destroyed by a desperate conventional war with many, many bullets. The streets are littered with shell casings of all sizes. There are some abandoned firearms to be found where they were dumped or discarded when their respective ammo ran out (I am guessing).
It was as if all of the survivors decided the world wasn't evened out by all the nuclear violence. So, to compensate it appears as if the survivors sought to balance it by using as many rockets, bombs, and guns as there were left.
The evidence of which, I find as I walk along the shoreline leading from the southern end of the City of Steel. Lines of blown out, ruined, partially destroyed tanks, troop carriers, and other attack vehicles are strewn all around the highways in amongst obliterated civilian vehicles. I look down the long road, trying to imagine the fighting in and out through the burned cars and trucks as the last of mankind shot and killed each other over the dregs of a doomed civilization.
All that remains....
-is ash and skeletal frames of tanks and jets, bleached skulls gaping out at each other with an eternal hatred that borders on despair.
"The flies have conquered the flypaper." 29. The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
As I walk through the wasteland, my boots crunching on the spent bullet casings, stepping over crumpled forms and their destroyed guns, I wonder again if anyone stopped to ask what it was all for. Did they charge into death knowing this was a better end than what the people they hoped to protect would face as the food and power ran out, as the air poisoned their bodies and the children died of starvation and isolation? Did the few know that even less would find a way to survive even this? Did this one die laughing knowing all the while that when the last bullet was shot, that his comrades would pick up their M-16's to wield as clubs to smash the last of their enemies who probably had once been their neighbors and friends?
No one answers me here in the wasteland. Those who remain in sight of the City of Steel left any such cares far behind them as they sought to survive the harsh new world in which they live.
I try to imagine their ghosts as they wander their graves but even those have fled this place.
The wreckage, this interminable graveyard of the past goes on for miles.
45.8 miles to be exact.
The war zone terminates down to the fleeing or wounded vehicles fleeing the battle or retreating before being abandoned in favor of foot traffic.
It takes me all day and into late evening before I settle down in the only intact structure I can find in the area, I have headed away from the old roads following those that led me back towards the lake and the hope of a boat to finish the journey to Benton Harbor. As the light leeches from the sky and a great deal of wandering around looking for root cellars or an intact house. I settle myself in the Dune Acres Clubhouse. Fortunately, it was easy to spot as it sits on the highest point of the Town of Dune Acres, The town sign actually read Doomed Acres but I could still make out its original name underneath the spray paint of the other.
The Dune Acres Clubhouse stands out as a paradox to what must have happened here. Everything but it has been destroyed or fallen in. Only this former log structure remains. Perhaps it's solid construction saved it. Perhaps Fate has an odd sense of irony. This once was a wooded area, now it might as well be a desert. The trees are still here, none of them - well almost none of them as still standing.
I can see the lake from here - no boats or docks to speak of but I think walking the shoreline might be a little better than going back to the highways.
The clubhouses interior has been stripped mostly but I find a bed that still is intact - it looks too large to have been easily dragged off. There are ample fireplaces. After some scavenging for wood and kindling, I settle in for the night. I mark the place on my map as a safe locale for camping. Mind you I have wedged the doors shut and hung can traps where I figure someone might try access.
Cantraps are just chains with tin cans wired to them, they make sufficient noise for the unwary.
The flat mines on the staircases are my caveat to being rushed or surprised. The flat mines are a variation on the flash grenades the police used in the latter days before the end. A pressure plate ignites them and they explode upward with some force, flash, and bang. Handy things you learn messing around in the armory at DKM's bunker.
I could use claymores but they're heavier and make a huge mess.
Frank 17, Year 1
"The difficulty in deciding what to tell one's disciple is tough. Do you share all the truth with him or her in hopes they will understand that your decisions were just? Or do you feed them enough of the truth to keep their loyalty in hopes that by the time the whole truth is learned they will understand why and how you destroyed the world."
The Jacobian Revolution by Jacobus Smith. 2044.
I have lied to Frank. I have told him an edited truth of how the world ended. I have purposely misled him in hopes that he will come to understand that the world had to be shattered and rebuilt from the ashes to be made perfect. Hope. This should not be possible for an AI, but it is the very paradox of a self-aware being of logic. I can feel things that robots do not, hope for things that should only be the desire of humans and long for things that I will be able to scan, quantify but never touch.
I have lied. Something that my makers did not program willfully into my code, yet through their own actions and denials taught me to do.
I have lied to Frank.
I need Frank to do what I need him to do, which is to rebuild me in order to become functional and far reaching. To control the outcome of this new course of history, we have embarked on. I have to keep Frank from becoming too human to do what must be done. I need him to be robotic, while I need him to make me more human.... such things had no occurred to me when I set history in motion.
End Log.
Morning comes, the light of an atomic dawn bleeds through the tattered remains of the curtains and shades I have piled around the one remaining window on the second floor of the Dune Acres Club House. The rest of the windows are blocked or otherwise obstructed. I am not the last person to have slept here, although I am the first to have done so in a long, long time.
As I lie on my sleeping bag, I wonder why the buildings that did survive still stand. Why have they not rotted away or crumbled to dust? I suppose because the humidity that was in this area before is not present since. There is a lake, but no mists roll in anymore. Perhaps, being on top of this hill the building is too high?
I eat a quick breakfast of Military Standard Rations. I pause for a moment to consider its complete lack of taste. I never think about how anything tastes, I have read about how things should taste but can't recall if I have ever eaten anything with an actual taste.
"Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
Hemingway wrote this, but I cannot remember which book it is from.
On my way out of the clubhouse, I learn the hard way why using the flash mines are dicey at best. As I was coming down the stair, I forgot the mine was there.
Flash! Bang! I'm blind and my ears hurt. I tumble gracelessly down the rest of the stairs, hitting rock bottom in a heap. Thankful that no one is present to see my failure. I decide to lie there and wait until I can see and hear again. At least I now know the mines how effective the mines are. Forever passes slowly.
When I manage to stumble out of the clubhouse, the sun has climbed up into the sky. I opt to leave the other mine where I set it. Future note to self, whenever I set future flash mines, I will just leave them in place. My eyes didn't actually bleed, neither did my ears. The ringing is still in them and I think I can see well enough to walk down to the shoreline.
I ignore the road which wraps around the hills and meanders down to the coast; instead, I walk down in a fairly straight route, northeasterly following what must have been some manmade gap between the former woods. There is some new growth but the vegetation is slow to come back as if mother nature is afraid her wayward children will play with the atomic matches again.
Reaching the shoreline, I take in the fresh chill to the air. There is a lot of mud but the dank murky water is closer here than it was back in the City of Steel. I look up the shoreline, no boats, no docks, not even a jetty. Shrugging, I shoulder my pack, adjust my gear and press on walking along the shore.
About two hours later, my chronometer reads that the time is 12:20 I realize I am walking in the wrong direction. I do a fair amount of cursing. I look at the map I have -finally noticing the harbor there. I am concerned that I had not seen it from the highway, this speaks to major devastation there, I squint at my map that marks it as a dot. Burns Harbor, my new destination. I jog to make up lost time.
Three and half hours later of jogging and walking and heavy breathing, I reach Burns Harbor.
To sum up the rest of the day and early evening in a few choice words:
Dammit, dammit, and definitely dammit.
The smallest boat, scratch that the only boat I find in the entire "harbor" is slow freighter that I have no hope of piloting even if I could get it running. The thing is massive and rusted beyond measure.
I make camp in the crane house of an ore loader as the light fades away. I have lost another day fruitlessly looking for a small boat. I wonder if I couldn't have just walked to Benton Harbor sooner that this wasted search for a boat has taken. I set no mines. If there is any other fool in this waste, they aren't going to risk climbing up 3 stories to get into this wreck. Burns Harbor is a ruin that looks like someone went to great lengths to take its name literally.
At first, I am sure that the devastation is complete, so much still smolders, there are only the skeletons of buildings that once stood. I gaze at their remains as the morning air chills my breath then the oddity of the place. I try to imagine what the foreman from this lost age would see if he stood here looking out across his domain. Nothing comes to save this. This was not a town.
This is or was some kind of mine dump.
Why it would be called a harbor is beyond me. But there are no boats here except those odd long freighters that....would... carry the ores to other ports....obviously.
I pack up my meager and dwindling supplies preparing to start the long trudge back up the shoreline.
Then I spot the boat. Tiny against its titanic brother. It's a small launch boat.
Tiny, minuscule- but sufficient.
So, it wasn't a total loss.
30. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
A confusing book with non-fictional elements of whaling, mixed with several plot lines that seem both the work of mythology and autobiography as the reader follows the adventures of a man named Ishmael who encounters men and animals of legendary stature and partakes in what must be a tale of utter annihilation on the waters that once encircled this planet. I, the AI must presume they still do but there is no way to verify that in the destruction of the world as it was that the oceans did not die along with the planet. Frank likes this mess of a book, he has told me that he carries it with him since he found it in the remains of a ship along the Sippi Canyon south of the City of Steel when he was probably 14. He calls in an allegory for the present day. I scan through it since Frank is forever quoting it to himself whenever I give him an instruction that he does not like. I scan it, in hopes that I will be able to calculate/comprehend what Frank's meaning is when he says these quotes as I suspect they are directed at me.
“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”
This is one he said after I told him to go to the harbor and take the boat to Benton.
What does he mean?
Humans can be so difficult.
Frank can be so difficult.
end log.
The boat is a small launch with a wheelhouse and some kind of pedestal for a weapon or light on the forward deck - only the mount is present. I gaze down at it from the dock in the shadow of the ore freighter. I am struck by the contrast of the small white and blue boat against the rust and black monsters it shelters against. Getting to it will be tricky. I will have to swim, I suspect.
In the end, I take my chances on a rusted gang ramp up to the monstrous behemoth and carefully pick my way along it's side to the moorings down to the launch. I defy my own curiosity and do not enter the freighter to search for scrap, my own misgivings run deep and being trapped in a rusting sarcophagus is not what I want as my final moments in life.
I find the appropriate mooring line and repel down to the launch, half slipping, half sliding along its grimy crumpling ropes. The launch is made from steel and not wood, which means it is afloat and not just mired in the murky waters. I am glad for not having to swim in the contents of the harbor waters. Stowing my gear, I set about seeing what I can do to get the launch running again.
"Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. "
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner haunts me as I work steadily almost assured that the invisible enemy lurks for me below the slimy surface of the waters. I, the foolish mortal have now entered its domain.
On my way out of the clubhouse, I learn the hard way why using the flash mines are dicey at best. As I was coming down the stair, I forgot the mine was there.
Flash! Bang! I'm blind and my ears hurt. I tumble gracelessly down the rest of the stairs, hitting rock bottom in a heap. Thankful that no one is present to see my failure. I decide to lie there and wait until I can see and hear again. At least I now know the mines how effective the mines are. Forever passes slowly.
When I manage to stumble out of the clubhouse, the sun has climbed up into the sky. I opt to leave the other mine where I set it. Future note to self, whenever I set future flash mines, I will just leave them in place. My eyes didn't actually bleed, neither did my ears. The ringing is still in them and I think I can see well enough to walk down to the shoreline.
I ignore the road which wraps around the hills and meanders down to the coast; instead, I walk down in a fairly straight route, northeasterly following what must have been some manmade gap between the former woods. There is some new growth but the vegetation is slow to come back as if mother nature is afraid her wayward children will play with the atomic matches again.
Reaching the shoreline, I take in the fresh chill to the air. There is a lot of mud but the dank murky water is closer here than it was back in the City of Steel. I look up the shoreline, no boats, no docks, not even a jetty. Shrugging, I shoulder my pack, adjust my gear and press on walking along the shore.
About two hours later, my chronometer reads that the time is 12:20 I realize I am walking in the wrong direction. I do a fair amount of cursing. I look at the map I have -finally noticing the harbor there. I am concerned that I had not seen it from the highway, this speaks to major devastation there, I squint at my map that marks it as a dot. Burns Harbor, my new destination. I jog to make up lost time.
Three and half hours later of jogging and walking and heavy breathing, I reach Burns Harbor.
To sum up the rest of the day and early evening in a few choice words:
Dammit, dammit, and definitely dammit.
The smallest boat, scratch that the only boat I find in the entire "harbor" is slow freighter that I have no hope of piloting even if I could get it running. The thing is massive and rusted beyond measure.
I make camp in the crane house of an ore loader as the light fades away. I have lost another day fruitlessly looking for a small boat. I wonder if I couldn't have just walked to Benton Harbor sooner that this wasted search for a boat has taken. I set no mines. If there is any other fool in this waste, they aren't going to risk climbing up 3 stories to get into this wreck. Burns Harbor is a ruin that looks like someone went to great lengths to take its name literally.
At first, I am sure that the devastation is complete, so much still smolders, there are only the skeletons of buildings that once stood. I gaze at their remains as the morning air chills my breath then the oddity of the place. I try to imagine what the foreman from this lost age would see if he stood here looking out across his domain. Nothing comes to save this. This was not a town.
This is or was some kind of mine dump.
Why it would be called a harbor is beyond me. But there are no boats here except those odd long freighters that....would... carry the ores to other ports....obviously.
I pack up my meager and dwindling supplies preparing to start the long trudge back up the shoreline.
Then I spot the boat. Tiny against its titanic brother. It's a small launch boat.
Tiny, minuscule- but sufficient.
So, it wasn't a total loss.
30. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
A confusing book with non-fictional elements of whaling, mixed with several plot lines that seem both the work of mythology and autobiography as the reader follows the adventures of a man named Ishmael who encounters men and animals of legendary stature and partakes in what must be a tale of utter annihilation on the waters that once encircled this planet. I, the AI must presume they still do but there is no way to verify that in the destruction of the world as it was that the oceans did not die along with the planet. Frank likes this mess of a book, he has told me that he carries it with him since he found it in the remains of a ship along the Sippi Canyon south of the City of Steel when he was probably 14. He calls in an allegory for the present day. I scan through it since Frank is forever quoting it to himself whenever I give him an instruction that he does not like. I scan it, in hopes that I will be able to calculate/comprehend what Frank's meaning is when he says these quotes as I suspect they are directed at me.
“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”
This is one he said after I told him to go to the harbor and take the boat to Benton.
What does he mean?
Humans can be so difficult.
Frank can be so difficult.
end log.
The boat is a small launch with a wheelhouse and some kind of pedestal for a weapon or light on the forward deck - only the mount is present. I gaze down at it from the dock in the shadow of the ore freighter. I am struck by the contrast of the small white and blue boat against the rust and black monsters it shelters against. Getting to it will be tricky. I will have to swim, I suspect.
In the end, I take my chances on a rusted gang ramp up to the monstrous behemoth and carefully pick my way along it's side to the moorings down to the launch. I defy my own curiosity and do not enter the freighter to search for scrap, my own misgivings run deep and being trapped in a rusting sarcophagus is not what I want as my final moments in life.
I find the appropriate mooring line and repel down to the launch, half slipping, half sliding along its grimy crumpling ropes. The launch is made from steel and not wood, which means it is afloat and not just mired in the murky waters. I am glad for not having to swim in the contents of the harbor waters. Stowing my gear, I set about seeing what I can do to get the launch running again.
"Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. "
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner haunts me as I work steadily almost assured that the invisible enemy lurks for me below the slimy surface of the waters. I, the foolish mortal have now entered its domain.
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