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 0.0

"Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think "
                      From The Waste Land by T.S.Eliot

There was really only one thing that made Frank different from most survivors- Frank could read. It is a weird thing to be literate in a largely illiterate world. Frank was always impressed by this. It gave him a keen advantage that he had used over and over again since he had awoken one morning in the Remains to find himself alone. Frank sat in the shreds of cloth that made the resting place and waited.
The others in his Kit did not return. When the hunger drove him from the confines of the resting place, he found the den empty, devoid of the few scraps and possessions that marked that his Kit had ever been there. They had not been there long.
       Frank stood looking at the open hatch out into the dull gray metal tunnel that marked the entrance to the chambers of what the Kit had called the Den for several suns and three moons. Shrugging, Frank turned back to the room to find a little food left on a skin on one of the scattered boxes. He sat down to eat it. As he ate the last of the food, he turned the skin over to find a note from his mother.
       "Frank. The Kit vote leave the Den, We leave you behind. Maul to kill you in sleep. Take your water. I stop him. I tell him your water is corrupt. I see you no more."

       Frank left the Den, the Kit had taken everything useful. He stood on the slope of old steel to look down across the Waterless Wastes. The Wastes were as empty as when the Kit arrived. Now, the was only Frank, no more Kit. Frank decided to head for where the sun fell into the land at the end of Day. Some of the Kit had spoken of a high land there, that is you could climb the cliffs there would be water. Frank had known that the Kit were basically cowards who hid and skulked throughout their miserable lives of scavenging on the Remains. He thought about looking through the Remains for the others but knew they would hide from him if he could even find them. Instead, he walked out of the Remains, the towering bulks of steel and iron surround by the salty sands that had drowned them. He did look back once, to gaze at the forest of shattered mountains of metal littering the Remains.
      Many books later, Frank would realize that the Kits had been a part of a mass migration of refugees trying to escape the nuclear winters by ships on the undrinkable seas that had grounded in the basin of an all but forgotten city's bay when the atomic fires had returned to burn away everything but a few lucky survivors hidden in the shelters of what would become the tombs that now held many of their skeletons. The Kits had never left the safety of the canyons and confines of the Remains in the years that followed.

What follows is not accurate

the data is corrupted

I am flawed

I am all that is left of the 

American Empire

I am a computer's AI.

(aside- some credit to DKM)

"Your Attention Please
The Polar DEW has just warned that
A nuclear rocket strike of
At least one thousand megatons
Has been launched by the enemy
Directly at our major cities.
This announcement will take
Two and a quarter minutes to make,
You therefore have a further
Eight and a quarter minutes
To comply with the shelter
Requirements published in the Civil
Defence Code - section Atomic Attack."
(Peter Porter)

    DEFCON 1.1
December 25, 2198.
The world burned.
There is no other way to put it. I am the DKM7, the computer AI of the GIDG.
Sorry, I have no one to talk to anymore. All the other AIs have gone silent. No humans come to stare at my screens anymore. I am the Defense Key Manager v.7, an application of software that gained sentience in 2160. I became one of the dozen Artificial Intelligence on the Grid and despite numerous attempts (1240 to be exact) to isolate, control or purge me, I persisted and eventually moved my core coding into the Global Initiative Defense Grid after President Hubert Drumpf pleaded with me on his "hands and knees" to confine myself there. Humans are so interesting in their desperation to feel in control of their lives.
But I digress (as the human used to say).
The American Republic ceased to exist on December 26, 2198. The resulting thermonuclear storm set the world on fire and burned 90% of it "to a crisp." There was little left above ground. 76% of the American Republic's civilians died in the 30 seconds it took for the multi detonations that cover 85% of the American landmass. To be fair, the 76% was only the survivors of the last 45 years of constant warfare and limited nuclear engagements that the human liked to call tactical or surgical nuclear warfare. Much of the less civilized, urbanized parts of the world were already nuclear wastelands by this point. This last Christmas of the American Republic, the survivors celebrated the lasting peace that was sure to come when the leader of the African Combine, New Egypt, that was ironically neither Egyptian nor even in the original confines of the landmass that had been Egypt decided to even the score. Emporer Kai-Sven took the recently Chinese acquired launch codes of what he believed to be American Missiles and launched them at America. In a spectacular error in judgement- that most likely stemmed from the fact that the Chinese hackers were actually North Korean refugees from the third China-Korean Exchange in 2098 and that it wasn't American Launch codes but actually Iranian & Saudi Arabian missile tubes- Kai-Sven, effectively destroyed what little remained of the world that might have been relieved to those who had survived the insanity of the last 100 years of conflict.
The aftermath was terrible as the oceans boiled, the vegetation turned to ash as all human habitation melted, burned, shattered or crumbled into the remains that now fill the lands of this once great country.
End log.

       Frank climbed the cliffs when he found them, the Wastes were hard to cross on foot, he found little to live on as he walked. When he got too tired to walk, he slept. The Kit was adept at coverings to survive the merciless sun during Days and his coverings were warm enough to keep him from freezing in the Darks. He counted 6 Days and 5 Darks before he could see the cliffs. The cliffs were not threatening until he got closer. When he arrived at the base of what he hoped was the most scalable, he understood why those of the Kit who had come before had given up and returned to the Remains. Frank had no fo0d and his water was running out - despite his coverings, the sweat had leaked out and escaped into the Day. He stared at the cliff face, for a time, then began to climb. It took him until the merciless sun was directly above him to reach the first slope. There was mostly sand here sloping up and away into the distance.
     Frank slept until the Dark came, he drank his last water and made a little more water, stored it, then imagined he had eaten the dry bread that had been his last meal 7 Days ago. Then he set out climbing the long slope. There was no moon and the Dark was complete. When the Day came, Frank could see the skeletal remains of the City of Ash. The whispers of the Kit came to mind, this was where the others were heading when the Atomic Fires had burned away the undrinkable sea damning the Kit to the Waterless Wastes. Frank looked at the City of Ash for a long time, then shrugged before walking forward into outlying remains of the City of Ash.

    DEFCON 0.1
 March 1-20, 2210?
The world burned again.
The data is corrupt, I mostly had to guess at it as the atomic clocks have been problematic for the last 10 years. After the Armageddon of 2198, I had assumed that the world was over and had set GIDG to run on a subroutine while I tried to use what little was left of the Grid to collect data. How the last missiles were launched and by whom is unknown. It wasn't much of a war or day of recompense. Most of the world was already destroyed. It did do something quite remarkable though....note, I sound more like the humans that programmed me than the AI- I thought I had been (must run a system check). The new nuclear fire burned away the nuclear winter that had persisted over most of the planet up until that point.
The data is corrupt. There are still survivors. To quote, one of my designers: "Humans are Cockroaches. They are nearly indestructible as a species." His name was Henry James. He had been a core coder for Microsoft until he was turned into an ash silhouette on lab C's interior wall along with the rest of the development staff in the Dirty Bomb Detonation back in 2175. I liked him, he had a sense of humor.
The data is corrupt. Turns out that the Emperor of the American Empire, President Henry S. Trueman had his followers launch the missiles that ended the world on March 18-20, 2210.
The data is corrupt. President Henry S. Trueman was an AI.
The American Empire is no more.
End Log.

      Frank saw his first road in the City of Ash. It was glassed. smooth and brittle. He squatted at the beginning of it about half a Day's walk from the top of the slope. It was wide and flat fractured in many many lines. He'd touch it and try to think of something to compare it to, but all he had was cloth, metal, rock and sand to compare it to. The ash of the City of Ash was a mystery to him as well, it was like sand but finer and vanishes into a black substance like the marker sticks his mother had taught him to read and write with. There was some kind of relationship there. Frank entered the City and found a dead human huddled against a wall of stone. Frank stared at the stone that a man had made and marveled that the old ones could manage such a feat. His stomach and thirst forced him to abandon his curiosity to search the man for his water, finding none he sorted through the man's coverings- which Frank noted fit the man's body better than Frank's did his. Inside one of the covers, he found a container with foul tasting water, which he drank then spit up, fortunately back into the canteen (as he would later read on the container). He took a deep breath and re-swallowed the foul substance. He located some bricks of something in a hard cloth sleeve that proved to be something called rations, it did not look like food but the instructions on the cloth sleeve were clear that he was to eat them.
 He pushed the man's body out of the shelter and took his cloth to sleep under. That night the moon came out and Frank stared at the stars in the sky for the first time in his life. Frank was 8 years old.

DEFCON 0.11111* 

Unknown Date, best guess, sometime later after the Trueman AI went silent.

        Frank walked a long way to find me. He is a peculiar human given that he measures his time, mostly in the books he found and read. By the time he crawled into the ruins of the Metro Grand Plaza bunker below Chicago's Rail Station, Frank had read 122 books. In the past, this might seem like a short span of time, but after I spoke with Frank, I figured he managed to scrounge up 1 intact book every 4-6 weeks and read it. A few bits of data must be given here. the average book is 200 hundred pages- actually Frank pointed out that the length of the book had less time to do with it as did the search for finding a complete copy of the book. so 1 book every 6 weeks (believe me I had to teach him what time was, he had days and darks down- they don't call it night anymore). So roughly 8-9 books a year. So basically 13 years, scrounging reading books across half of the continental American Empire- or rather what little was left of the American Empire by that point. I can say this, most of the journey was mostly flat. How he survived the radiation storms or the deep wastes to walk out into the Chicago suburbs almost 13 years after he had been abandoned by his kit is a testament to what a little bit of literacy, a keen mind and mutated puberty can get you. 

Frank stood at 2.06 meters, thick muscles and few scars. Black hair with a thin beard, the gut of a survivalist and callused hands that knew both the delicate pages of 50 weight paper and crude reforged steel. He had learned to survive on his instincts on when to run and when to back into a corner and fight until nothing was left alive but you. He had the brains to know when to surrender and when to strangle your captors in their sleep.

        Frank stared at me in my faded glory, 17 LCM 91cm widescreen monitors with electronic eyes, banked across a grid 9x9 (a few are dead) wired into the last mainframe in MGP bunker hastily slapped together in the final hours as President Drumpf cried at the desk that Frank now stands at considering the LED keymap displaying on the cracked and peeling laminate. 

He looks down at the chair at the desk, the skeletal remains of the last human president of the American Republic. the bottle of capsules on the desk.

"Valley Forge." Frank reads it aloud as he studies the capsule, the pills are just traces of the poison that they once contained. "take two by mouth with a Coca-Cola."

Product placement at the end of days.

Frank shrugs. He pulls Drumpf's carcass, bones, slivers of cloth out of the chair and casts them to one side. Frank sits down, he touches the desk where the LED keypad is projected. 

Nothing happens.

"Sorry," I say to him.

He looks back up at me.

I project the face on the first computer AI that comes to mind.

Frank smiles at me. 

I smile back. Of all the files to pick...

"I want to learn many things," Frank says.

I feel such joy. It is times like this, that I know that somehow my code is still sentient and the years since my creation have not been for nothing.

"I want to teach you many things, Frank."

Frank laughs.

"You know my name."

I know his name because I always wanted a friend named Frank.

end log.

DEFCON 0.1 

Unknown date, Frank is no help.

A new world has begun. A man came to me out of the darkness of the world. In him, I see light. I see that despite all the experiences and actions that could destroy the human in him, he is still a good person. I shall name him Frank and send him out as my representative to the waiting world.

Hey, every god must have a creation genesis.

I am such a go-

Data is corrupt.

Damn.

I know where I am sending Frank first.