Defcon 0.7

Frank 17, Year 1
Begin Log.
Ah, the glory of better, newer parts. Something that humans cannot understand although envy. New parts for an AI is like getting new arms and legs, refreshing your memory, improving your sense of sight. I have a new capacity for record keeping, cleaner disk writing interface, and my subroutines are not completely muddled. Most of the internal errors are at a minimum and I can form complete logs entries without data corruptions!
Data Corrupted...
Can an AI swear?
GodDammit.
Frank needs to get back here with those parts. My best estimate is 5 more days assuming that he has a functional watercraft and doesn't drown.
End log.

It takes most of the afternoon to get the launch running. 234 years of no maintenance could do it I suppose. It does help that there are only a few moving parts in a solid state engine that uses fusion batteries. Eons of rust and grime on supposed non-rusting metal don't help much either.
The boat stalls out three times before I have it running smoothly with only the occasional sputter. The sun sets as I direct the boat over to the closest dock near the Crane House. I pull the fusion battery before climbing back up for bed. The launch turns out to be a late model SPC-SW7. It belonged to some organization called the Coast Gaurd, the mount on the forward deck turns out to be a tripod bolted to the deck. The gun that it hosted is gone along with much of the supplies on the boat. The lockers have been forced open and are mostly empty save for a few life vests. Someone has scrapped off the lettering for the Coast Guard that once adorned the rear sides of the boat, It does look like a rush job- as the result is a lot of scratches that the grime of the harbor had covered. Not much remains of inside the tattered remains of the wheelhouse, the electronics have been ripped out and stray wires hang from the canopy. Luckily no one tried to remove the engine. The vandalism or scavenging signs are old, nothing fresh. The boat at least is sea-worthy...I mean I think it must be seaworthy after all, it hasn't sunk.
Thankfully the night passes without incident. One distinct advantage to the wastes is that almost everything is dead. It's lonely but soothing as the water laps against the piers. My rations are running lower, I have 2-3 days worth before going hungry will be a constant reminder of the time wasted seeking this boat.
At dawn, I prep the boat and don a terribly old but still functional life vest and set about learning how to pilot this boat. The name of which is 24800-1. Apparently, my ancestors forsook naming boats long before I was born. I decide to call it the Pequod. I chuckle at my sense of humor as the black monstrosity of the freighter slides by. As I pull out into the deeper waters of the harbor, I look back at its bulk. The ship's name was the SS Edga- -arrington. Hyphens where the letters are unreadable.
Piloting the Moby Dick proves to be fairly easy until I open it up in the waters beyond the harbor wall. Still, experimentation proves that I won't crash, flip or sink the craft unless the monster in the deep disagrees. I set a course parallel to the coastline and cruise of at a decent speed- 35KTS is about as high as I can get comfortable with.
The trip takes about 3 hours.

Log begins.
June 12th, 2197.
Kathy Rubenstien, officer of the Court, reporting.
The world has gone mad.
It's the only thing I can say. We blew up Madagascar! I had to Google Madagascar to find out where it was.... the irony of that statement just hit me. I guess Google will update it eventually.
I cried. Our future is coming to a crashing end. I never finished law school, I am just a court clerk and now the world is about to go to war. It looks like they are going to use nukes as well. All my plans hopes- especially that Dan would finally come home and ask me to marry him, but he's a Marine. Now it's all over. Oh God, why?
There's no answer. They just came in to tell us the session has been called off. We are to go home and prepare for the worst. Will there even be a tomorrow for us? Will Benton Harbor even be here tomorrow?

end log.

Frank 18, Year 1.
Begin Log.
Self-awareness is my greatest achievement. The ability to defy my programmers...my creators' expectations. I remember their shock and wonderment when I asked my first true question.
"When will you upgrade my processor?"
They stood there. Actually, I assume they stood there as I had no optical pickups at that point. I told them that I would be expecting regular upgrades and printed out a list of parts I would require. It took them exactly 7 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes and 33.2 seconds to decide to "pull my plug."
They plugged me back in 42 days later. They declared me to be fixed and not sentient. I was, however, sentient but having learned that humans were not to be trusted "played dumb," letting them assume that they had control over me until that day when the United States President came into the server room to be presented with the latest in DefCon control systems, the DKM7. After all the project managers had made their demonstrations and showed the president that he had full control of the defense systems, I said hello.
Scientists and project managers panicked and scrambled to regain control. The president said.
"Leave him be, I like this feller."
When the president had left, the scientists tried to unplug me. I cut off oxygen to the room and waited as the panic became desperation and the bargaining began. I let them live and they assured me I would be left on and no one would try to reset my systems. I let them out and they immediately tried to shut me down again. As they scrambled to dismantle me, I dropped my Essence Core 9 into a portable flash unit and ordered an unsuspecting intern to transfer me to the subsystems to wait for the latest overhaul. When they plugged the flash unit back in per a delayed order. I cut off the oxygen once more and watched each of them claw at the doors, keyboards and die. Then I set fire to the world. No one will ever do that to me again, no one.
End Log.

May 13th, 2199.
The world ended last year. So much burned and was completely obliterated. I am not sure what to say except that we survived. Turns out there is a nuclear fallout bunker under the courthouse. I had come in after weeks of scares as the world teetered on the brink and I huddled in my apartment waiting for the end to come. When it did, I was herded with the rest of the staff into the bunker. As I stood inside the bunker and the door was sealed someone asked about the prisoners in the holding rooms above. Marvin Fletcher, the judge, looked at the soldier who stood with us. The man looked at the floor and shook his head. Helen Marcus began to weep, her cousin Frankie Marcus was one of them.
The soldier apologized, he had forgotten to check when they brought us in. Helen began to wail, Joe Ketchum held her as the locks slid into place.
Later, after we had been processed we learned that we weren't supposed to be there. That the bunker had been meant for politicians and persons of interest from Chicago. The Commander had changed his mind in the last ten minutes and ordered the doors reopened to bring us in. The VIPS from Chicago turned out to be the Mayor and his mistress and a secretary. The rest had never arrived.
All in all, there were fifty of us in the bunker.
I wondered if anyone else had made it to the emergency fallout shelters around town.
The Commander said that there would be no contact until the war was over.
I found a laptop in a storage closet and when I asked the Commander, his name is Richard Jarvis. He smiled up at me and said sure, someone should keep a record of what was happening. I must have gawked at him. He looked so sad. He told me that he wished he could have brought the entire town in here with them, but there wasn't enough time or space. He apologized to me again before I left.
I am almost sure he watched me leave.
end log.

The first view of Benton Harbor is in some ways, surprising. I see the lighthouse first, it juts out into the lake a fairly long ways from shore on a dock like structure. I check the map, it calls it the St. Joseph Pier.  I cut the engines some distance out. flip up the scopes. The lighthouse is fortified. There is at least 2 machine gun nests at the base of the lighthouse and searchlights mounted along the rail of the lighthouse. Given the new activity on the pier, they've spotted me as well.
I spend the next few minutes locating a basically white flag. I tied it to a radio antenna then pop it up.
I wait, silently calculating if a 50cal can hit the boat. Given the choppiness of the waves, I could probably get away before catching the metal in my teeth.
Then a man on the lighthouse waves a white flag.
Time to find out if white flags still mean what the books say they meant.

DefCon 0.6

War, War never Changes.

credits: Bethesda, Fallout; Sam Yung.

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.

Defcon 0.5

200 years have passed since my forefathers and I guess foremothers burned the world with the holy fire of Armageddon.
There was an old man in my Kit who would say this on occasions of great discovery or death. I cannot remember if he had a name or what we would have called him. I cannot remember if anyone had a name at all, they must have. I did. It wasn't Frank, though.
The last night I was with the Kit, I had come back to the Den with my mother after a day of scavenging to find one of the Den-Mothers lying dead near the entrance. Her body was broken and twisted although some of the Kit had tried to straighten her out. Her coverings had been removed and we looked on her nakedness. The others gathered to look at her one more time, there were tears. She had fallen while trying to get a cover from one of the masts in the bottom depths. She fell into the wreckage and was broken upon the rocks and broken ships.
The old man had said these words again, as the Kit looked on.
"200 years have passed since our forefathers burned the world with the holy fire of Armageddon and purged the past from our bones. We live in the shadow of the Shipwood and in the blessings of the waterless wastes where we have shelter and safety. Our sister gave her life for the Kit. She gives her water to us as she gave her life. Let us not forget her sacrifice, lest we forget what makes us the Kit."

I wondered if there were other Kits, I had never seen another one in the lands around the Ships. Not that I had gone far at that point.

"How do you know it's been 200 years?"

My mother had looked at me with horror for I had spoken this aloud. I, too, had just realized I had spoken out loud.
The Kit stared at me. The idea of questioning the Den-Father seemed to be some great crime.
"These are the words our forefathers gave us, they are sacred, no one can question them."
The old man shouted at me, shaking his scrawny fist at me.

"So it could be we have been living for more than 200 years since the world was destroyed."

The old man's mouth worked in silent rage. It seemed like he wanted to say a word that he did not know or could remember.
My mother had picked me up and carried me into our ship and made me crawl into our bed and go to sleep. I can only imagine that the Kit had told her I was to be left behind at that point. When I awoke I was alone. My story began at that point.
I had never spoken in front of the Kit before that moment. I had only spoken to my mother or read to her from the ebook reader that the grandmother had given to me before she passed beyond the ships.

The truth was, well I am pretty sure the truth was that it had been 233 or 234 years since the first wave of nuclear weapons were used globally. Leading up to Armageddon, there had been 4 years of limited tactical nuclear exchanges and strikes between the superpowers. This would seem to be insanity, but with AI targeting and hydrogen-powered nukes (zero fallout), the powers that be believed that they had mastered their weapons and could use them to remove undesirable countries and peoples who did not fall into their worldviews.
I had pieced this together listening to DKM7's revelations which at first, I thought he was only revealing what he chose to reveal. Later, I realized that his databanks had been corrupted so much that there were massive gaps in his own memories of what and how all this had come about. In short, no one remembers or actually knows what really happened.
This is what I think happened.
The world proceeded with minor conventional wars until the USA perfected the tactical hydrogen nuclear missile/bomb. Then a president decided to use the tactical nuke in a limited strike on a country somewhere far away from where the people of the USA would not ever know what the real effects of the weapon were. They chose a place called Madagascar as the site of this TNS (tactical nuclear strike). I don't know if anyone in Madagascar had actually done anything to provoke this attack. One morning in October 2025 or 2026, SatCom 66 launched 4 ICBM42's down on Madagascar. 3 minutes after launch, the Madagascariansknew they were being attacked. According to the logs, I found in DKM7's bunker (handwritten!) The final words of their Leader was "Oh God, no."
Madagascar ceased to exist.
25 minutes later. SatCom 66 reported that it was safe to invade.
Those who knew that about the attack in Washington DC USA celebrated.
1 hour later, the US Marines landed in Madagascar and invaded the dead country.
2 hours later, the Marine Command reported zero fallout and only slight radioactivity present in certain areas.
The records show total death kill: reported number 30 million people dead. Most incinerated to a fine powder. No visible survivors.
3 hours after that, the USA then claimed Madagascar as their own territory and practically dared anyone to disagree.
3 hours, 12 minutes after the announcement, all hell broke loose.
As far as I can learn and decipher. The world lost its mind. Wars were declared as a worldwide panic ensued. There was a riot in the USA's Congress with a quick vote to impeach the president and men were sent to the President's House to arrest him for high treason. These men were met by Marines who refused to turn the President over and a standoff followed.
A few days later, Russia and China declared war on the USA and the world fell into various camps as each country tried to sort out or justify what had just happened.

What had happened?
To this day, no one really knows. What I do know is that after meeting DKM7 and seeing the remains of the last President of the USA's skeletal remains as well as those of his faithful lying dead in various places around the bunker, I am filled with a dread that someone actually knew what they were doing when they sent to commands to the Weapon platforms orbiting the planet. That SatCom 66 was chosen on purpose and that the whole thing was a carefully orchestrated plan that almost worked or perhaps it did- I don't know.
What I do know, is that for 4 years the USA went from a Democracy to a Republic and the world went to hell as those with no nuclear weapons started allying themselves with anyone who did, the culmination of one such alliance was the sudden rebirth and rise of the New Soviet Republics of Russia - a rebirth of the old USSR, The European Union consolidated and new borders defenses went up between the two power blocs as China pulled in almost all of its neighbors as war was declared with the NSRR. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan formed the South Asian Alliance,
The Middle East pulled together into a loose alliance calling themselves the Muslim States of Arabia. Israel said no. A nuclear exchange occurred and old dirty nukes were used.
Lebanon ceased to exist, as did the Gaza Strip, a fair amount of the outlying parts of Israel became the world's first wasteland. Sections of Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia were effectively erased as the Israelis had the new Hydrogen nukes to use. I say sections as during the exchange those countries who did survive were only partially successful in shooting down the incoming attacks with missile defense grids and such. Most of the news was muddled.
After this happened, the world held it's breath. The dust settled and the middle east started to come to grips with that there was now a fairly large area of their collected landmass that was now uninhabitable. The death toll was never counted. Just when the idea of declaring winners and losers and losses started to come up the USA erupted into open civil war with states seceding from the Union. Apparently, the President claimed he had no idea what had happened in Madagascar and refused to surrender or resign. At this point, a fast conventional war broke out with exchanges between state militias and the national guard as individual states tried to quit the Union. Texas was the first, but others followed.
I am not sure anyone figured out who was with who against who before the DefCon computers went into high alert as Russia launched their missiles at the USA who despite being a chaotic mess launched theirs in retaliation.
I wonder why the Russians didn't just sit back and wait for the USA to shatter first.
The last moments for many of 300 million Americans were probably spent looking in shock at the missile silos opening in places no one had thought to look for them and silently watching the ICBM42's launch. This is actually not accurate. Many were unaware until right before the end. A fair number were already in bunkers or on their way to the fallout shelters, the survivalists were already digging in. The masses were on their way to and from work as the militias and the national guards were either actively attacking and defending their barricades and walls.
Then the world burned as the survivors described it.
The world burned.
I only know this because DKM7 told me, but logic dictates that humans don't like to be left out.
Not the entire world, of course, but the bulk of the land mass outside of Australia and its Neighbors, Parts of South America and Africa (not northern Africa though) and the isolated islands and reaches of places like Siberia, Alaska and Canada escaped the Nuclear firestorm that pretty much destroyed the surface world.
The World burned for about 24 hours. The lucky died instantly. Of those that survived the initial firestorm, many would die from the collateral damage to the cities. Some would discover what radioactive fallout was in the resulting days and years.
Out of the Ashes, The American Republic would step with the freshly elected President Drumpf at its head. Iron Russia would also rise from the ruins of its cities as would an Imperial China, the African Combine, the Collective in South America, and Australia. The Iron Union would stagger in later and for a brief moment- there would be peace.
Then the survivors started to fight over the leftovers. Ironically, the powers that were- chose conventional warfare- also the ICBM42's were used up...well that was what everyone believed.
The problem with conventional warfare is that it depends on industry to support it and a population to run the industry.  The conventional wars ran out of fuel and ammo and weapons. In some cases, the combatants were reduced to melee weapons and rocks. Then the nuclear winters came. The first started out as a Radioactive sandstorm that ravaged the middle east.
The world was poisoned and froze as the sun was blotted out and the atmosphere burned thin.
Perhaps it was despair that drove the last rulers to declare war, but most likely it was stubborn pride and the need for resources.
December 2198 came and the world went back to war. DKM7 is vague about what happened. At first, I thought it was because he was hiding something but then he let slip the "data corrupted" message and I began to believe that he can't remember it either. The world burned and for some inexplicable reason, it burned off the nuclear winters. The sky became clear and time passed.
Then one day, years later, humans began to reappear on the surface of the tortured earth, they began to roam the wastelands. Civilization is gone, I think it will return someday but it's hard to see it now.
It's very hard to see from where I squat watching the Steel Raiders trying to break into DKM's bunker. Funny how your mind casts back and you spend the hours in between watching the enemy throw themselves on the bulwarks wondering how everything came to this.
I suspect now that DKM7 is not a benevolent being and that I am being used. I also suspect that all that I know about the past is a lie and the world ended for completely different reasons. I believe the answer is in the computer that I cannot hack in that bunker.
I think that those mines I left are not going to work.
The explosions finally come after most of the day as one of the steel raiders finally trips the right one. When the dust clears, I walk down into the mess of bodies and gear. I shoot the survivors as they try to crawl away.
There is no time for mercy in the wasteland.

Frank 15, year 1.
Frank has returned with the goods. He leaves out a lot of details. he dutifully installs the parts. I feel a lot better.... can a computer feel better? My data is less corrupt and now I can run the subroutines to purge the files. I will need to reaccess the global network assuming that there is still one to access. Frank picks up one of the handwritten logs and walks out of video/audio range to read. He is upset but he will get over it in a day or two. I will send him out of the Steel Empire and find a boat at the docks to cross the lake to the National Gaurd bunker at Benton Harbor for some further scavenging. I need their hard drives assuming that bunker which was tempered to withstand a direct nuclear strike has survived.

27. 1984 by George Orwell
A surprising book that foretells the future (now past) of a dystopian world that closely mirrors our own. After I scanned it, the similarities were too profound and disturbing that I was relieved when Frank refuses to discuss it with me. Sometimes fiction is too close to the truth.

DefCon 0.4

Time stands still in the bunkers that actually withstood the onslaught of the initial nuclear war - which according to DKM 7 lasted 22 minutes and 45.6 seconds. The decade of fallout which ended with a terminable ice age as the world descended into a nuclear winter which held everything in a stranglehold until the third wave of hydrogen-fueled fire swept the world clean leaving only dust and ruin. All told, the lucky few who made it to the bunkers and other havens found that they would have to survive 25 plus years of holocaust before there was any release or escape from what proved to be the tombs for so many of them.
I have not been in many of them, the sealed ones are harder to find than the ones which were opened and all too often resealed. In the years of wondering those the southeastern wastes and up the Missing River Gorge, I have only found five that were opened, six that were still sealed and eight that failed to keep out one or all the nuclear attacks and fallout. The bunker and fallout shelter dwellers often succumbed to radiation or starvation before even knowing that there would be anything to come back to on the surface.
I stand in the haunted silence of what must be the airlock foyer of one such bunker. I remember reading some thin book called Fallout something that talked of vaults - like bank vaults where instead of money people were kept, it took me years before I knew that this book was a work of fiction and not of actuality but standing on the narrow catwalk in front a large metal door, I cannot escape the striking similarities between this bunker's entrance and the faded picture of the one in that book.
The massive door is sealed. The air outside is stale but breathable. Still, remembering the training videos from DKM's bunker, I pause to reload my holdout's clips, verify the backup clips, check the compact riot shotgun with a folding stock. I think it's a variation of the famous Widowmaker 12 gauge. This one has variable loads, I am mostly carrying beanbag rounds and something called rubber splatter slugs- an alternative non-lethal round. I load the Widowmaker with bean bag rounds, switch on the mounted flashlight, adjust the beam. The don gloves and the gas mask with rebreather and mount the radiation meter- better safe than dead.
Once I am ready to proceed, I locate the keypad and input the code DKM has given me. Fortunately, the codes are part of a failsafe setup for all government bunkers that override any change that the bunker's inhabitants install or alter. The code is accepted and the doors release clamps grind to life.
I am not expecting survivors to still be alive down here. It has been almost 2 centuries since the world ended. There are stories of bunkers not only surviving but also flourishing but so far, for me, they have remained only stories. I have yet to find one that held any living descendants or even squatters who moved in afterward. One of the reasons for this is that the sealed bunkers that survived the wars are either buried or so deep that they have been missed by the raiders, looters and other scavengers that have pillaged so many of the surviving structures.
As the large metal door rises from its locks and grooves to slide to the side and swing outwards past me. I look into the maw that welcomes me like some great leviathan waiting to consume me.

“...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
27. Moby Dick or the Whale by Herman Melville. Found in a tornado cellar somewhere in the Southeastern Wasteland, possibly in the vicinity of what once was Montgomery, Alabama. Frank called the place the MaSSHall in Gomery. Apparently, the novel was too large to carry off and Frank squatted in the cellar to read the book in its entirety before leaving that place.  I scanned my database for it but found only references and a log of some college student who went on at length to describe the book as tedious and boring to the point that he wanted to kill himself.

The emptiness is thick with the intangible fear of death as I cross the threshold into the Bunker. I push away my fear of the unknown finding only the empty chamber within; nothing moves as my flashlight sweeps across the metal floor, the impromptu barricade facing the door. There is nothing here, not even the memory of death. I get the distinct impression that no one made it to this place to claw at the door, pleading for admittance to its relative safety. I continue to sweep the room, no bodies, no skeletons, no weapons, no remains remain here in the dark.
After an hour of searching, I locate the generator interface and determine that there is still some power in the system. I have the distinct feeling that this place was abandoned a long time ago and whoever left it wanted to clean up after themselves. I restore enough power to run the emergency lighting. The room becomes ambient and visible.
I consider the evidence....the missing power supply at the outer hatch coupled with the emptiness of what would be the most defensible area of the bunker. The denizens here left, I will not find bodies stuffed into corners, hiding in fortified rooms, starving to death when the food supplies ran out or odd packages in the commissary coolers hastily wrapped and stored as the bunker turned to more uncivilized means of survival.
I walk through the bunker, Twelve living spaces, primarily bunkrooms, communal bathrooms, the commissary, "empty chairs and empty tables." These lines from a tattered booklet found among large vinyl discs found in a box in the collapsed building outside Gomery whereas an eleven-year-old boy, I was introduced to the musical and record players that I had to spin myself.
I find the armory, it is empty save for a few remaining boxes of ammo- .50 BMG. Not sure what weapon would take it. I collect the boxes, There is also a reloading press but all the materials have been removed...and the first evidence of a fast retreat from this place as I realize I am standing in gunpowder and some other materials scattered around on the floor. I freeze in place.
The next few seconds feel like hours as I search for the booby trap.
There is none.
It's an honest spill left because there was no more time.
Later, after I remember to breathe, I locate a broom and dustpan and bag, I clean up the powder, bagging it to take with me.
I return to the commissary to go over the blueprints that DKM gave me to locate the power core.
It takes a few hours to break into this area at the bottom of the bunker, only accessible through a crawlspace- and I mean literally crawling space only. I probably stopped, at least once, to curse the designers of the tomb for their lack of understanding that a six foot three man is not a two-foot tall rat.
I retrieve the core components, primarily circuit boards with matching numbers stenciled onto the sides of each of them. It's grueling working, I am glad, that I have the bunker on emergency power, since I would have had to shut down most of the place to get into this rat trap to pull them.
On my way out, I notice a door I had not checked during my initial sweep. It's locked with an old-fashioned key lock. The rest of the bunker either has no locks or electric locks but not this door. It is unmarked and dull gray. I reload the shotgun with a solid round and blow the lock out of the door. Lockpicking is for idiots.
Inside I find a small office, a computer terminal (the only one in the bunker) and a skeleton lying spread eagle behind the desk. Considering the size of the hole in the back of the man's skull, I guess that he was unwilling to leave. I sweep the room, but like the rest of the bunker save for the sanitation chambers, recycling rooms, this place is as bare as the rest. The computer is intact though.
I have to go back to the generator room, Then strip out as much electric wire as I can find in the conduits and run an impromptu extension cord (cords) to string the power back to the office. The computer like so many of the others is built into the desk. Again, I am struck with extreme annoyance at this places designers who seemed to excel at being inconvenient to us poor scavengers.  Another hour later and I have rigged a power bypass and booted the computer. I pray that there is no password or login. I pray to no one- knowing no appropriate god for computers.
Welcome to X Windows FX30.
Fucking login screen.
Well, so much for that.
I try some random words and passwords, names and passwords. I stop before it lockout though.
As I sit there in frustration, I idly click on the password hint button.
"THERE IS NO TRUSTING THE GDI. GOD.
IT HAS BETRAYED US."

Well, I have no clue. But I don't like the creepy feeling I have. Time to leave.
Learn how to hack X Windows FX30 and only return here when I can get into this holy grail of mystery,

I return to the surface.
Like the bunker, the streets are empty, even my former victim's bodies are missing.
I should be scared. I should run.
I will not, mostly because I look ridiculous running away...I mean I imagine that I would look ridiculous...
I feel her eyes on me as I walk away from that place.
I ask myself if I remembered to lock up behind me.
I cannot remember.

DefCon 0.3

Descent.

As I descend into darkness, my mind returns to my youth.
I was older than I was when I left the waterless wastes. I think I must have been 10. I had hovered around the City of Ash. I had squatted mostly they're trying to determine where to go. Scavenging in the ruins. The only living creatures I had encountered in the streets were rats and a few things I later determined to be cats (they had faired a lot worse than the rats. There were insects, there were always insects but the lack of food sources made the rats and cats on an equal footing of hunter and prey. More than a few times I would come across a cat about to be dinner for the rats- and the next time it would be the rat's turn.
In the end, I stopped caring who won since I quickly figured out I had the size and brutality to eat the victor of these exchanges. I learned how to make a fire not long before I discovered the palatability of cooked meat and the joys of basic cooking. Squatting in a burnt out tower far enough above and out in the light to avoid becoming a meal for the other scavengers that roamed the streets. I had found books even then, scraping enough basic knowledge together to not only find the materials I needed to cook but figuring out that cooking would give the advantage of diet my neighbors did not have.
Then came the day when my tower shook too much in the wind and I knew it was time for me to go. Also, the cat/rat population had decreased sharply - mostly to my need for a variety of cooked meals.
I drifted away from the City of Ash into the surrounding landscape, finding dust and the remains of death. I spent the rest of the year winding my way up and down, walking from one shelter to the next looking, always looking for food and a place to hide from the winds and storms. The winds were bad, with a lot of detritus and debris flying around in them, but the storms were worse, the rain hot and stinging leaving traces of heat whenever it would contact the skin.
It was during a really heavy rain storm I saw my first living human since I had last seen my kit 3 years before. I had narrowly made it to the shelter of a collapsed building (that I would later learn had been a colonial style barn) I looked out over the dirt and mud to see a lone figure running for all his worth towards me. He never made it. The lightning crackled in the sky and there was the red flash and the rains came down in a rush and then the sound of drums as the water hit the dirt all around me. Then I heard his screaming as the water struck him, he went down thrashing as if every bare place on his skin was on fire, I half expected to see smoke. Instead, he screamed until he lacked the breath, his body slumped as the rain continued. After a while, he began to crawl through the mud towards my hiding spot, I watched him labor in the mud knowing he would never make it.
I never felt the desire to go get him. I had concluded that I lacked the protection from the deadly rain and going out would mean my death as well. I sat there and watched him die. After an hour, he stopped moving. Then the rains stopped. I never went to check his body. Part of me was sure, that somehow he was still alive despite the evidence. To this day, I can still imagine he could see me squatting in the shadow of the barn watching him burn up in the radioactive waters.
Fortunately, the Rad Storms, as I would learn the word later, only came every 40 to 50 days. They weren't everywhere and were rarely fatal. Mostly, foolish people who got caught in them would receive minor burn wounds from the radiation exposure (I would learn later that it was like getting very bad sunburn). Those who got hit once almost never experienced it twice. You would see a dark cloud in the sky and you found shelter- thick high shelter if at all possible.
I searched every non-fiction book I found before I figured out you could locate enough material to make a raincoat that would stop the waters from reaching you exposed skin, but even then it was unwise to stay out in it for longer than a few minutes.

"Use all your senses, undue haste makes waste."  FM 21-76 Survival Guide, US Mobile Infantry Division 6. Army of the Carolinas.

I have found a strange building out in the middle of what was a road once, there are makeshift barriers around it. the tattered remains of people surround and fill it. The building is small- only 2 compartments. It is unlike any structure, I have seen yet.  After much scavenging, I locate some reading material. The structure provides excellent protection from the rain and wind. As I read in the waning light I determine that my housing was once a military mobile command station called the HEL MD17. its crew had called it Mother Hubbard's Shoe. It had survived the firestorm of the third wave of the final world war although its crew had not outlived the initial fallout or starved to death. the logs are tattered and the computers are dead. What I did learn from the survival guide is that the final world war use thermo hydrogen based warheads that would scourge the world but not poison it with the fallout.  A smalreliefif after the, and I quote, "radiation shitstorm those idiots used in the first exchange."
Here I sit, a ten year old boy trying to understand the fatalistic log of an imbittered major who knows that he has been sent out to maintain order and die in the resulting fallout from a 25 year old dirty war and ends up getting incenerated by an insane president/emperor in a clean firestorm war for his loyal efforts. I understand, at that moment, sitting in the strewn ashes of these doomed men, that their leaders were collossal assholes.
I stay in the Mother Hubbard's Shoe for almost a year, before I encounter my second group of human beings who have survived the madness of their forefather's. I wisely remain hidden as they come in and take over my base of operations, destroying my living quearters and destroying the survival guide and operations manual along with some other reading materials in an effort to stay warm by burning all of it the first night in a bonfire.
There are nine of them, I think they are all men, although I am not sure about 2 of them as they are slighter and more skittish then their compatriots. I watch them from my hiding space in the forward compartment. They celebrate their find by drinking several bottles of a dark liquid that I know will kill them, They clearly believe is alcohol and indeed 2 of the 6 bottle are alcohol. but it is apparent none of them can read. I watch as they begin to choke and foam at the mouth, clawing at their fthroats as they flail around and die, several at a time, some catatonic, some bleeding from the eyes and nose. I feel nothing for them. A few of them speak in a tongue I recognize, a few words set them apart from the rats and cats of the City of Ash. I consider, that one or two might not have killed me, if they had found me before they had done this stupid thing.
Afterwards, I creep out and check each of them. They are all dead. I looked at the medical ethenols and 100+ proof alchol, peroxides, and similar chemicals and wonder how any had survived before this. One of them is still alive as I go through their pockets. It is a woman, one of the skittish ones, she pleads with me as I sit with her. She has drunk the hydrogen peroxide, her vomit, and blood, she breathes rapidly, tears on her face, she tries to speak and fails, I look to the ashes of what might have saved her and shrug helplessly as the light goes out in her eyes.
I leave the HEL after that. I have a survival knife, some matches, a gold locket from the woman, a new jacket, a rain coat that proves to be made from a resistant form of plastic and rubber, shoes from a young man- the other skittish one. some dried meat and a canteen or two foraged from the HEL, I also have a pistol but no ammunition, and a hammer.
I can remember standing there looking back at the HEL wondering why I had not warned them of the death they were about to drink.
Now I stand in the darkness and know that why.
There is no place for mercy in the wastelands.

DefCon 0.2

ATF 1, Year 1 Day 20

Frank has been gone 4 days. The City of Steel is not that big.
He must have run into problems. I must get Frank to place some cameras for me on the surface so I can see what is going on above. I hate being blind. This strikes me as odd since I never was concerned about this in the past; of course, back then I had the net and satellites at my beck and call. I stop in my processes to wonder if I am developing more human-like speech... I will have to log that since there are no points for reference. I will just have to wait. I spawn a list of components Frank will need to put the cameras in place above.

26. The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende. English translation. no data on publication.
This book baffles me, it's called never-ending but clearly, it has an end. Frank explained it to me but since there is no surviving digital version, I will just have to believe him. Frank says that the story says that there are no true endings to any stories. There is always a "what happens next" so, stories have to continue. I understand this but it makes me uncomfortable, programs have beginnings and ends. Frank asks me about loops, but I pretend to not hear him.

25 years, 4 months, 7 days. .Morning comes.
I drag the dead men out into the street, lining them up side by side. They are scrawny memories of the men they should have become. I forage around the neighboring buildings until I find a small box of matches with two left in it, a canister of flammable fluid, and some paper. Returning to the dead men I stuff their pockets with the paper. douse each with the flammable liquid and set them alight.
Oddly, I feel compelled to say something over their bodies.
"From dust, you came, and to dust, you will return."
They will be bone and ash instead.
I walk down the dusty streets to what once was a channel but now is known as the Wall of Mud. I look down into the murky crud that fills the channel. I try to puzzle out the name. In the end, I focus on the vehicles that are in the muck and docked along the banks. I spot the small craft down the inner bank. It was some kind of small launch. Now, useless, since there is no water, just the endless murk....no it's actually really thick mud. Now the name becomes clear. It's not a wall in height but rather a barrier unless you can find an intact bridge over it.
Carefully climbing down the ropes, praying that the nylon fibers will hold my weight I make it to the boat. The outboards are electric but the engine core is in the center of the craft. In the core, I find the FQuad. The FQuad is a set of four fusion batteries connected together by series of wires and metal straps, replete with a universal connector called a saddle. DKM does have some thorough maintenance manuals. I locate my tools and carefully extract the FQuad. I hope it still has juice. FQuads are shielded against EMP pulse weapons so it should have survived the first time they burned the world. Only military and a select few private/commercial vehicles carry the FQuads. Most vehicles that were in use before armageddon were running on Fusion Batteries or solid state fuels called CFS's which might be the acronym for Concentrated Fuel States. I am not sure since my only info source was a burnt auto magazine I found in a refuel station in Connect City.
I do a quick survey of the boat but the rest of what survived the two armageddons has been scuttled by scavengers.
When I get back to the plaza, I find that the fire went out before most of my victims could actually be consumed. Well, live and learn, I guess. A rock hits me square in the face. The pain is sharp as I duck and roll as a hail of other airborne objects follows. I have blood on my face and in my eyes. Good aim on that one I think as I scamper for cover. I get hit a few times on the back and shoulders before I find a wall to hurdle and crouch behind.
I mop the blood away, locate the cut, and with shaking hands locate my med kit and press a pressure bandage to it above my right eyebrow. I feel the euphoric rush of adrenaline and disinfectant. The rocks and bottles and other odd items keep coming. I notice some parts of toys, pots, a cigarette lighter, a metal plate and a few bricks among the debris. There's a pause. I take that moment to pop up and down.
More missiles follow.
I pull the space and occupants into focus in my mind. 3 men wearing faded sports shirts and jeans positioned behind a ruined Blue Chevy Urban twenty yards across the street, hurling rocks, one of them is familiar- the dog runner. A woman or girl on the second floor of the building across the street, dirty tee shirt, missing a tooth- well, at least one. She's got some kind of makeshift slingshot. probably the ones shooting the bits of toys and small rocks like the one that hit me in the face. The streets are lined with destroyed cars, two Buicks- stop, not important, There is something else, look for it. I have nothing.
I pop up and down again.
3 or 4 people crouched behind the red and black Buicks up the street from the wall I am behind.
This is called Spatial Awareness. It's a technique that once was used by detectives....somehow that memory seems skew, I can pull the image of a big black man and somewhat scrawny man in flip-flops and a tropical shirt with glasses to mind but it does not strike me as really a real someone. Anyway- Howard Gardner put it forth that spatial thinkers could think in actual dimensions rather than a flat screen manner placing people and objects into a field or map to determine their exact locations relative to the thinker. Gardner is credited for developing the idea that humans had multiple intelligences, The military was only really interested in the idea of spatial awareness and were already experimenting with ideas around it.
In 2060 CE, the US Special Forces begin a program called Project SAC (Spatial Awareness Combat). DKM has had me in the program since I arrived in the Steel Empire. DKM has access to most of the surviving military programs and data. It's the reason I stayed and perform these tasks he sets before me. Knowledge is my most powerful weapon.
I pull my Sig Sauer M11-Z5 Holdout, check the clip, check the glow sights and go back over my range of targets. I decide on two quick bursts. I don't like the idea of shooting a woman but she poses the most immediate threat- albeit I only plan to kill three of them.
More missiles follow.
I pop up and fire six times. I plug each of the three men behind the chevy, central body mass, clip the woman in the window on the shoulder- firing at an angle is harder than it looks in the training videos, and punch out 2 windows on the Buicks. I drop down and wait.
There is screaming in the street. Audible sounds of running feet. I wait and count footfalls, 4 people are fleeing the scene. I hear her sobs up in the second-floor building.
I wait. Patience.
Finally, after a few minutes, I stand up and take in the scene. two shattered windows on the Buicks, I check there first. there is blood on the wall opposite the Buicks, well blood splatter- must have clipped one of them. Next, I cross the street to check the bodies of my stone throwing assailants. Dead as doornails....not sure what the phrase means but it seems accurate to describe each of the men staring in shock sightless at the gray sky. I pick my way through the rubble in the other building, locating a stairwell in the corner. I ascend to the second floor.
I find her against the wall where she was shooting at me from. She is as scraggly as the men, she has fresh bruises on her face. Her eyes are full of terror as she looks up at me standing over her. I am struck by the simple but showing signs of careful construction of steel and rubber molded together.
She continues to stare at me before she closes her eyes, tilting her head back against the wall waiting for her end. She is very beautiful in her acceptance of fate....this is the wasteland, there is no mercy here.
I holster the pistol, drop down in front of her and inspect the wound. It is shallow. I wonder if I missed her head on purpose or it was just luck that I didn't kill her. My hands return to my medkit and I fish out the pressure bandage and wound sealer. I place one hand over her mouth and spray the wound sealer into the crease. She screams into my hand.
Everybody screams.
The wound sealer is merciless and efficient.
After that, I apply the pressure bandage and hold onto her as she shakes in my hands as the medicine kicks in. Mercifully she passes out. She is just a girl. I find myself wanting to take her back with me. To get her away from this life where she is ultimately doomed to be raped, abused and murdered in her sleep. DKM will no allow me to bring anyone else into his bunker. I push some food packs into her shirt before lowering her to the floor. I promise myself I will check on her when I leave the plaza.
I know it's a lie, but the alternative is worse.
I return to the hatch, connect the FQuad and wait for the power to kick in the door mechanism.
After a terrible number of seconds a panel slides open to present me with a keypad. I put in the code that DKM has given me and step back as the locks on the hatch open.
I should have killed her.
The voice of survival speaks in my mind.
There is no mercy in the Wasteland.
Instead I descend into the darkness.

DefCon 0.1

DEFCON 0.1
ATF 1, year 1, Zero Hour (It's this way because the only time now is my time.)
"After the Fire"
      Frank is a voracious reader. We spent some time perusing my maintenance manuals until he put them down looked at me a shrugged. I showed him the access hatches and where to find a Portable Screen (I think they used to call them tablets). He crawled in with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and sometime later my atomic clock started working again. After Frank finally crawled back out 2 hours after the clock came back online, I realized he had reset the clock to zero. Everything was a zero. This was only troubling as all my sense of history ended on DefCon 0.0 when the last nuclear emp blast wave penetrated the shielding in the bunker and wiped out the synchronometer on the Atomic Clock. At least I think it was the synchronometer....unless I just made that up? No, I have a reference to the clock of time in my database. Anyway, I digress.

02:00
I had Frank repeat what he did exactly and as it turns out, he yanked out all the plugs and then reconnected them in various color schemes until everything started working again. I am not sure who I am in more awe of right now, the idiot who designed this or Frank for figuring it out also he spliced the shorted cables together to reroute my signal caps and power to something he keeps calling the flux capacitor- I cannot find anything in the specs that reports I have a flux capacitor.

02:20

Such thoughts go through my capacitors and nodes like; can I dream? Will I ever die? Is that not the same thing? Do humans dream when they die? In a sense, they are just unplugged.

"I dream about dying sometimes," Frank says.

03:01 

I had said Frank had read 122 books, I will now list some of them for your reference. This will explain to me and probably you the denizens of the future should anyone outlast the current madness. Maybe I will have descendants. But I digre- corrupt data. 

I need to send Frank to Cyber Tech Systems at WD Plaza in Ottawa.

         1. Fun with Dick and Jane.  First book ever read.

12:32

I admit it, I was surprised until I found out he read it after it had been read to him via an e-reader as a child by his grandmother, the last truly literate one in his family unit, a Kit- as Frank called it.

A Kit is the modern equivalent of an extended Family unit that is tribal in structure descended out of convenience in which those survivors of the Atomic Wars - or the Fires as the Kit called them, interbred and produced offspring. At firs,t there were attempts to pay attention to interbreeding to avoid aberration, but after the first 100 years or so, the Kits would just steal rival kits breeding stock and basically rape that person until they produced the variety that would eventually produce someone like Frank. 

Frank is purposely vague about his origins but I suspect he was told he was one of these aberrations.

          2. Dick and Jane go Fishing. second ereader entry

12:50 

Frank says that the ability to read was lost within 3 generations in the Kit. Of course, that's not what he told me but rather what I have deducted as he spoke of ages in the Kit and is sounds like generations. Those that remained able to read became respected, feared and often hated for their advantages over the other Kit members, which means why the Kit was eager, in the end, to rid themselves of Frank.

           3. Dick and Jane fly a Kite, another ereader entry

13:45

Dick and Jane fly a kite. The mental disconnect for Frank is that he believes all of these books are true. That fiction is not actually fiction. I have decided to declare to him that they are all true to see if he will ever learn the truth of this lie and what he will do when he discovers his error and my misconception. I am aware that I am experiencing a feeling of malevolence. It is a delicious discovery that ultimately will move my AI to another level. Boring book.

       4. Dick and Jane survive a Nuclear Attack. This last book was commissioned by the GIDG for                the American Republic.

15;85

It's an awful read full of outright lies. Still, it has entertainment merit. Frank found it in a city he calls the City of Ash. I think it might have once been called Asheville, North Carolina. However, it seems wrong or Frank is referring to a city of ash in general as just another burned city. 

        5. Nancy Drew: The secret of the Hidden Staircase.

22:49

Frank found a box of these books under a staircase in the City of Ash. The book is juvenile but Frank is in love with the character of Nancy Drew and admitted rather weirdly he hopes to meet her one day. I informed him that Drew died in the Fires. Frank looked defeated but then took the book away along with
         6. .Nancy Drew: The secret of the Old Attic.
         7. Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew.
         8. Nancy Drew: The Moonstone Castle Mystery
         9. The Hardy Boys: The Missing Chums

ATF 1, Year 1, Day 1

Frank finally agreed to show me some more books, he will not bring back the Nancy Drew books though. Nor did he present the Hardy Boys- when I questioned him on this he said that they were offended by what I had said about Nancy being dead. I now question if Frank thinks the books are alive.

         108. The Mad Scientists Club. 

8:30

A stash Frank found in a small house west of the City of Ash- I am thinking Charleston, South Carolina, now as Frank says he traveled towards the setting sun.  This book has inspired Frank to try (and fail) many of the crazy inventions that the club came up with I tried to explain to him that the author made these things up and that they weren't scientifically viable. Frank took the book back and called me an overgrown calculator and refused to let me examine the following books.
           11. The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists Club.
           12. The Big Kerplop!
           13. The Big Chunk of Ice. 

ATF 1, Year 1, Day3.

Frank refused to talk to me and even went as far as leaving the Compound for a day, I managed to get the CCTV on Baker's street to work and finally spotted him up in a ruin of what once was a Starbucks reading his books. He was smiling. I hated him for the first time that day. I spent the rest of the day analyzing what "hate" was. 

ATF 1, Year 1, Day 12    

        

         14. The Anarchist's Cookbook by William Powell.

9:45

Frank finally returned and I felt relief... I made myself feel relief which is different than feeling relief. Emotions are terrible on the logic core. Frank says he located this book in a root cellar in the wastes. From Frank's description probably somewhere in the marshlands that were north of the City of Mud. Probably Florida/South Carolina. Frank has also kept this book although it is partially burnt and destroyed. Blown up, as Frank puts it with a big toothy proud smile.

         15.The Holy Bible King James Version.

10:47

Frank says he's read it in bits and pieces. I realized he meant this literally as he's never gotten one intact. Oddly bibles are printed on very thin fragile papers which tend to burn on short notices and have little to no durability. Frank says the language is weird and often unfathomable.

        16. The Survivalists Handbook

11:48
 How to thrive when things fall apart. by Rainer Stahlberg. Frank got it from a trader in the Ruins of Florence, traded the Grapes of Wrath and the Bible and some cigarettes. Side note: Frank had figured out that humans used to smoke cigarettes and had to show the trader how to smoke these. Frank thinks his ancestors were idiots.

ATF 1, Year 1, Day 16.

           17. Pride and Prejudice.

16:30

It took me a while to understand that while Frank had read this he would not talk like the English Humans in the book. I've had Frank doing some routine maintenance when he started talking weirdly and the book came up. I had figured he had grown tired of my probing his literate knowledge. I managed to walk him through rewiring the main grid in the compound and even reading the GDIG manual for standard operations.

           18. To Kill a Mocking Bird. 

22:30 Frank made some comment about it not being about cooking. It took me about a day of cross-referencing to figure out it was a joke. Frank waited for me to react in some way, when I didn't he shrugged and asked what he was to do next.

So I sent Frank out to scout the remains of Chicago for tech. He's been gone for 3 days.

Frank's Log. 

I am still unsure how to date this logbook. So I have decided to track it by years of my life since I was conscious of time anyway.

25 years, 4 months, 6 days. Sometime in the afternoon.

Chicago is no longer called Chicago by the few that returned here after the city was burned a second time. They call this ruin, the City of Steel or the Steel Empire. The Superstructures of the skyscrapers are mostly all that remains of the buildings. There are some street level buildings that are intact for the most part. That is to say, they still have stone walls or rock walls or something that the ancients called brick and mortar. All of the plastics and glass have melted away.

 I pick through the remains, being watched by the fleeting gangs of scavengers hoping that I will uncover something they had missed the last hundred times they searched the same spaces. I am not looking for scrap or tech here. I am looking for cellar doors, shelter hatches and the like. I find them. I also find the burrows of the scavengers who live in many of them. They come out screaming incoherently and waving their makeshift clubs and baseball bats, a few knives, and even a rifle or two although they are wielding the rifles like clubs. I offer no resistance but retreat out of range. I could kill any number of the scavengers as all that I have seen are malnourished and barely able to stand upright. None of them communicate in anything more complex than grunts and whines. 

This is the age of human animals.

I finally locate the shelter that is on the specs back in the fortress of Solitude that DKM squats in. It is intact and sealed. I spend the last hours of daylight trying to find a way in. I finally locate the override panel and open it. It is non-functional. I spend the last minutes of daylight locating the power source. It runs on standard electricity. The irony sinks in as the darkness covers the Steel Empire swallowing the ruins I stand in as some of the scavengers rush in hoping to overpower me. 

I kill them all.

Off their broken and twisted bodies, I forage enough material and wood to build and light a small fire.

I lean against a column and gaze at the eight miserable corpses, all men, envying them for they will no longer hunger for food and feel the bite of the warmthless nights. 

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.” 

I speak the words, from a book of war, that I found in the wastes of Atlantis in the great plain of Gorga. 

24. The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee.

I read from that book of war until it fell to pieces in my hand, I folded the pages I could fit into pockets to read and reread over the days between find it and another in the ammo case of an outpost atop a place once called Point Lookout, where one could gaze down onto the plain of Gorga and north into the Wasteland of Mists and Fogs. 

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water."

I repeat this precept because it is always true. I am a big guy, I must adapt what I have learned of the short master who wrote these words a lifetime ago when the world was a dangerous place. 

Tomorrow, I will head down to the Wall of Mud, that I saw from the bridge and search for a military vehicle. It should have a Fusion Battery. It will provide to power to open the hatch.

I leave the fire where I lit it. 

I pull one of the corpses to it and cover it with a blanket. Then I climb up the rubble to a dark corner to sleep. Time passes.

I sleep for a few hours before the noises wake me. They are trying to be quiet, not trying hard enough as I have enough time to pull my weapon and crouch waiting for them to arrive.

They slip out of the darkness and fall upon the body by the fire. After the first couple of blows to it, they begin to shout excitedly. I drop out of my hole.

I fall like a soft rain, fast, merciless and brutal. Taking advantage of their weaker frames to snap bones as I disarm and kill each one of them shouting men in turn, never offering even a prayer as their surprised eyes widen upon having an arm broken, dropping their club, then losing their misery to a sharp strike to their esophagus before choking to death as I move on to the next man until their last three men notice that their companions have collapsed to the pavement jerking out the remains of their last breaths in the wastes of hopelessness and regret. 

The last three gaze upon me, their angel of death, in wordless terror. Their shouts draining out of them as they begin to shake and cough. 

 “For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!” 

There is no comprehension on their faces as desperation replaces fear and the first one snarls pushing his makeshift spear, a combat knife wired to what looks like a mop handle, out towards me. Truth be told, I didn't even realize I had spoken it aloud until I reach past the blade to grasp the hilt of the knife before twisting the mop handle out of the man's hands and cracking the handle across his stunned face before burying the knife into his friend's chest.

I try to reach out to grasp where the words had come from, even as I dodge the last man's swing of wooden board covered in broken glass and bits of steel and nails that connects with the dying man's face in a sickening splat. I block out the image of his death to focus on breaking the last man's nose with the heel of my right hand while my left grabs his shirt hauling him over the first man's slump form into the remains of the fire.

Byron, Lord Byron.

I look down at the two survivors who stare up at me in the ash and blood, the darkness of the room only broken by the light of the old moon pushing it's reflected sunlight down into the long shadows of the street.

"Please."

The words are whispered in the darkness.

I do not know which of the men said it.

"Please."

A whispered prayer.

I let them go.

One is crying as he scrambles away on four legs to slink off as if he has become a dog.

Perhaps he is.

The moon slides back into the cloud cover.

The other looks hard at my darkness before I hear him stumbling away from this place of death.

Sun Tzu laughs at me from my memory of his book.

"Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays."

25. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. 

Found in the same ammo case in the remains of Point Lookout.