Resurgence - Tell A Story To Me contest entry

This is my entry for @Calluna's Tell A Story To Me contest. The prompt for the story is "A permanent blackout forces mankind to rely on books for knowledge once held at the tap of a finger."

RESURGENCE

For most young people, talk of the Golden Era was not only tedious but pathetic. It was something for their grandparents to prattle on about, reminiscing about a time that they themselves had never actually known, which they had only ever heard about from their grandparents. An amazing time to be alive, the very pinnacle of human achievement! The Age Of The Electron! Did you know they built a telecommunications network encompassing the entire globe? Did you know they could send messages to any place on Earth in an instant? And not just messages, but images, and symphonies, and films! And they played incredible games, explored whole virtual realities, where the miraculous was commonplace! And all the knowledge held by humankind was integrated with the network, accessible by anybody anywhere at any time!

What their grandparents didn’t like to talk about was how the fairy tale ended. One day, for reasons which had never been explained, humanity had been stripped of its magic. In the blink of an eye, every last device which utilized electricity had ceased to function. This bizarre event came to be known as The Nullification.

And the trauma of that loss had driven all those fine, enlightened people to turn viciously on each other. The Nullification was followed by a Cataclysm. Arguments erupted into murders. International disagreements burgeoned into wars and genocides. Troops were conscripted and then marched by the hundreds of thousands to their destruction. A season of death overshadowed the world. For although their screens had gone dark, gunpowder still ignited. And they discovered, to their ruin, there were still a dozen ways to split the atom.

The Cataclysm wiped out more than three fourths of the global populace, and extinguished countless species. The devastation was incalculable, the greatest tragedy and crime in all of human history.

It was a history the youth were happy to forget. Their lives were hard, but that made them all the more eager to live them, to dwell in the now instead of yearning for a past they’d never known. They couldn’t help scoffing when they compared the grand tales of the Golden Era to the ruins and scars that cankered the landscape, the scorched and gutted buildings and the blasted patches of earth, most of which were still too radioactive to inhabit.

They had a mineral which they called metrocyte that glowed in the presence of ionizing radiation. Everyone wore jewelry forged from it, to help them steer clear of the danger zones. They also steered clear of the past, and felt a visceral revulsion for the storied ancestors who’d left them all a poisoned world.

But for scavengers, the past was inescapable. They made a modest living finding Golden Era artifacts and selling them to scientists. The most valuable discoveries by far were books. Texts on science and technology were especially prized. But any book from the Golden Era had some value. Even tabloids and novels sometimes offered inklings of those long lost secrets.

It was rare to find them anymore. All of the obvious sites, the old libraries and museums and stores and schools, had been picked clean. Most scavengers came back from their excursions lugging scrap metal, which they sold for paltry sums to be reprocessed. They could feel their profession slowly withering, their ranks diminishing. Some guessed that in another half a century, there’d be no scavengers at all.

* * *

The two of them were swathed in clingy radsuits, which could shield them from radiation up to 25 metrocytic lumens, but were also sweltering and claustrophic. And the bulky gloves made delicate tasks all but impossible.

“Hey, Yaz,” Gris blurted suddenly, making her jump.

“What?” Yaritza snapped. She was searching through a wood pile, picking up old logs then tossing them aside.

“Something feels off,” the big man said. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but... something here just doesn’t feel right.” He had his assault rifle trained on the door, his finger curled around the trigger.

“I told you, there’s treasure here,” Yaritza said. “Something big. I’m sure of it.”

“And I’m getting some seriously bad vibes.”

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere, Gris. The whole damn state is radioactive. I bet we’re the first people to come to this town in decades. You worry too much.”

“And you don’t worry enough. We’re gonna start losing the light in a couple hours. I don’t wanna be anywhere near this place when the sun goes down.”

“Just think of the money, Gris,” she said and tosssed another chunk of log off to the side. “Imagine a fat wad of Centuras, and all the Dark November you can swill.”

Her tone was confident. But in truth she wasn’t certain they’d find anything. When she’d sighted the shed, standing alone on the scorched plain, she’d felt a twinge of excitement and curiosity, an almost literal itch to know what lay inside. That same tingling had guided her to more than a few treasures in the past.

She was quickly losing hope however. Aside from an old workbench, strewn with tools that had nearly rusted away, the only furnishing inside the shed was a mouldering woodpile. At a loss for what else to do, she’d started pulling the pile apart, hoping to find a chest or fireproof box tucked in between the logs. But she’d found nothing. She was almost to the bottom of the stack.

Then something strange occurred. The piece of wood she tried to pick up couldn’t be picked up. No matter how she tugged it remained stuck.

It wasn’t any bigger than the others. It wasn’t pinned between two other pieces. Yet she couldn’t lift it. She tried another piece and found it stuck as well. Pawing around she realized that nearly all of the remaining logs were fused together into a single mass.

“Oh Gris,” she called. “I think I’ve found something. These logs have all been grafted together. I think this may be a false top.”

He hurried over.

“Try and lift one, if you can,” she said.

He shouldered his rifle, crouched down, and took hold of one of the logs. But when he tried to lift it nothing happened. Doubling down, he tried again. Veins bulged and muscles shivered in his massive arms. His face turned red and beads of perspiration broke across his brow. A ragged grunt escaped him.

Then a woody crack rang out, and the log broke loose from the stack. It flew from his palms, and sailed across the shed. Yaritza barely ducked in time. Gris staggered back a half a step and fell flat on his ass.

“That damn near hit my helmet,” Yaritza said when he looked over.

“Yeah, well I damn near broke my tailbone. You’re right though. This has to be a false top.”

“Told ya so,” she said. She said it every time her instincts bore her out. And on those rare occasions when they didn’t, he would crow it back at her and rub it in, hooting and laughing while she scowled.

They unslung their packs, fetched out their axes, and hacked away at the pile. But the wood seemed unusually hard, almost as if it had petrified. After only managing to chop away a few ragged splinters they swapped out the axes for wedges and sledgehammers. These worked much better, piercing deep into the hardened wood. In fifteen minutes they’d knocked open several gaping cracks. Underneath was a metallic hatch, secured with a handlewheel

“Jackpot,” Yaritza grinned.

“Jackpot,” Gris agreed, upbeat again now that they’d found something. “What do you think? Weapons cache? Bomb shelter?”

“Only one way to find out.”

They knocked away the rest of the false top, and then Yaritza tried to turn the wheelhandle. It was locked.

“Alright,” said Gris. “We’ll use the torch.”

He was rummaging inside his pack for his omniwelder when they both heard something from the other side of the hatch. It sounded like someone ascending a ladder, like hard shoes clanking and clattering up metal rungs. The wheelhandle wrenched around, the metal screeching horribly. After three shrill rotations, the hatch creaked open and a figure peeked out.

Though he wore a radsuit, they could see his face through his helmet. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, with a long thin nose, a rather broad jaw, and a goatee that had gotten out of hand. He also wore thick spectacles which made his amber eyes look pinched and watery. He glanced down at the pieces of the false top scattered on the floor and sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t chopped up our facade. Now we’ll have to construct another.”

“Hold up a second,” Yaritza said. She frowned as she studied his likeness.“Are you Jerran Dalbasch?”

“I am.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Merely a rumor,” Dalbasch said. “As you see. And not one I started, though I admit it’s served me well. I enjoy my privacy.”

“Who is he?” Gris asked. “I’ve never heard of him before.”

“A scientist,” Yaritza said. “An important one, from the Northern Union.” She shrugged and smiled. “We actually sold him a box of old metallurgical journals once. Remember?”

“Not really.”

“But I do!” Dalbasch grinned. “Which can only mean that you're Yaritza Warraq and Cohn Gris. I never forget a name, even if I’m not so great with faces.” He laughed. “You know, when you started breaking in, I almost blew you both sky high. This is an old military installation. This particular hatch is just an emergency exit. The floor of the shed is packed with explosives, to clear the way for any evacuees. The blast would vaporize just about everything with a 100 foot radius.” He laughed again. “I’m glad now that I didn’t light the fuse.”

“That makes three of us,” said Yaritza. “But I’m curious... why didn’t you? What changed your mind?”

“Believe it or not, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

Now it was Yaritza’s turn to laugh. “What could you possibly have to discuss with us?”

“It’s complicated, but... I’ve been working on a project. Something remarkable. Something that will change the world for the better. It’s finally complete, and since you're here, I’d like for both of you to see it.”

“And let me guess,” Gris said. “This project that will change the world is down there in your hidey-hole, and you want us to come inside.”

“As a matter of fact, it is. And as a a matter of fact, I do.”

“Fuck that. Let’s go, Yaz.”

But Yaritza hesitated. That instinct which had drawn her to the shed was tingling still. She had no idea if Dalbasch was trustworthy. But she was certain there was treasure somewhere down inside the bunker.

“What exactly is your project?” she asked.

“It isn’t something I can summarize in just a sentence. You’ll have to see it for yourselves to truly understand. But I promise you, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m offering you a chance to witness a pivotal moment, perhaps the pivotal moment in human history firsthand. You can tell your grandchildren some day that you were there for the Resurgence.”

“And what exactly is it that’s resurging?” Yaritza asked.

“The Golden Era,” Dalbasch answered with a smile. “My partner and I are going to reverse the
Nullification.”

“We’re not seriously considering this, are we?” snarled Gris. “You said he was a scientist. What’s he doing out here in the middle of nowhere? It can’t be anything good. I bet he’s killed off all the people he’s been experimenting on. If we go down there, next thing you know we’ll be his lab rats.”

“Easy, Gris,” Yaritza said, her voice level and somber. She met his gaze and touched his arm. He gazed back, begging her by that stare to ignore Dalbasch and leave. Begging her, because he knew that whatever she ended up doing he would follow her. He was neither stupid nor a pushover. But in moments such as these he inevitably deferred to her judgement. It had always been that way, from the very first time that they’d gone out scavenging together.

She squeezed his arm again. Trust me, Gris, she thought. There’s an opportunity here. Please trust me.

Gris stared back several seconds. Then the fire faded from his gaze. A sigh, soft and weary, faintly resentful, shuddered through him. I’ll trust you, Yaz, that exhalation seemed to say. Again. Here we go again.

She squeezed his arm once more, then turned back toward Dalbasch.

“What can I say,” she said. “I’m a sucker for a good Resurgence.”

“Splendid!” Dalbasch grinned. “I promise you, you won’t regret this. Please follow me.” He disappeared into the bunker.

“What have you gotten us into?” Gris asked softly.

“Let’s find out,” she replied, then followed Dalbasch down the hatch.

Gris grit his teeth, and shook his head, and followed after.

* * *

The bunker’s walls were constructed of some gleaming alloy, silver-blue in hue and smooth as glass. It emitted a soft glow, which furnished a fair amount of light all through the compound.

Dalbasch turned down the nearest corridor and bid them follow him. As they hurried along, Yaritza began to get a sense of just how big the installation was. It wasn’t merely a shelter, as she’d first suspected, but an entire underground base. And though many of the rooms they passed were sealed, a few had been left open. Glancing inside, she beheld artifacts and treasures beyond her wildest dreams.

Here was an armory, packed with Golden Era weaponry. Here was a garage, full of military vehicles. And here was a library, packed wall to wall with books! Just the sight of it made her giddy! She’d heard talk of secret government archives, where many of the world’s remaining books were stashed away. But what a thrill, to see one firsthand!

Dalbasch led them inside a massive storage room. Towering aisles of wooden crates and cardboard boxes loomed over them. He proceeded down one of these corridors. It brought them to the center of the room.

There a modest space had been cleared, the boxes and shelves pushed back. And that space had been appointed like a bedroom. A king size bed stood at its center, with a nightstand at its side. A portable wardrobe stood off to the left, and a bookshelf, packed with paperbacks, on to the right. A candle rested on the bookshelves, and beside it an old easy chair. Seated in that chair was a young woman.

Olive-complected and heavyset, with long dark hair and beautiful brown eyes, she was dressed in a teal sweater and faded jeans. And though she’d been reading a paperbacks from the shelf (a romance from the look of it) she lunged to her feet and tossed it aside as they entered.

“Who the hell are they?” she snapped, glaring at Yaritza and Gris.

“These are the witnesses, ” he replied. “Remember?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” she said, and facepalmed.

“Yaritza Warraq, Cohn Gris, this is my colleague, Asra Shett. Together we’ve been working tirelessly for almost five years now to bring about the Resurgence.”

“Bring it about how?” Yaritza asked.

He smiled anxiously at Asra. “Please show them, Asra, if you’d be so kind.”

She scowled at him another moment, then sighed and turned around. She drew back her hair, exposing the nape of her neck. They saw a small, metallic nub embedded there. After a puzzled moment, Yaritza recognized what it was.

“Is that a data port?” She’d seen them on countless Golden Era artifacts. But she’d never expected to see one lodged in someone’s neck.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Asra replied, and let her hair fall back in place.

“Do you see now what we mean to do?” Dalbasch asked excitedly, his watery eyes dancing behind his spectacles. “Over the last five years Asra has undergone extensive surgery. Her entire nervous system has been overhauled, her brain painstakingly tweaked. Every facet of her neural anatomy has been recalibrated, all to enable her to interface with Golden Age machines. Asra is the first of what will be many Interpreters.”

“Wait,” Yaritza said, her mind already reeling. “You’re going to plug her into a computer?”

“I’m going to plug a computer into her. Ever since the Nullification occurred, our brightest scientists have been dashing their brains out trying to figure out what happened. And you see how far that’s gotten them! Asra and I, however, have taken another tack. We accept the Nullification for the miracle it is. We don’t try to unravel the mystery. We accept it as our starting place, and throw out the understanding which preceded it.”

“The old devices simply do not function. But a living body is a complex electrical system in its own right... an electrical system that continues its work in spite of the Nullification. We can’t overcome a miracle. But maybe we can go around it. When Asra interfaces with a Golden Age machine, it will become a living part of her, her synaptic aura swelling to encompass it. Thus linked, she’ll gain dominion over the machine and all its secrets. We will regain access to all the knowledge stored away in these devices, and humanity will rise once more to glory... no longer masters of the electron, but the neuron! We’ll engineer biocomputers that make the mainframes of the Golden Era look like playthings! A second Information Age will dawn, more glorious even than the first! Do you see?”

“I suspected you were crazy when we met you,” Gris remarked. “Now I know it.”

“He isn’t crazy!” Asra fired back. “The science is sound. I ought to know. I engineered the bioelectric interface. The ribosomic capacitors and the dimerization matrix and the adrenal logic gates... I designed them all! Of course it sounds crazy to you. This isn’t some remedial science project. It’s an actual endeavor. If we succeed today we won’t just be stumbling along in the footsteps of Golden Era scientists. We’ll surpass them! We’ve engineered wetware beyond their wildest fever dreams, and we’ve done it all without any electronic assistance!” She glared at Gris, and then at Yaritza, and finally, with especial vehemence, back at Dalbasch.

“Remind me again,” she seethed, “Just why the fuck you dragged these idiots in here?”

“Great moments in history deserve a witness,” he said meekly.

“What’s the point of witnesses who can’t begin to comprehend what’s happening?”

“They’ll understand when they see the results.”

She threw hers hands up in exasperation, then stomped back over to the chair and plopped down. “Fine then. You have your precious witnesses. So let’s do this.”

“Right this minute?”

“Yes, right this minute. We were about to get started when you went to do your proximity check. Then you came back with these two. So I beg you, Jerran, plug me in, before any other witnesses come along.”

“Very well,” Dalbasch said stiffly. He crossed the room and ducked down one of the adjacent aisles. A minute later he reemerged, pushing a dolly whereupon three massive computer towers were mounted, their data cables stripped of their insulation halfway down and then all braided into one fat cord. At the end of that cord was a gleaming plug.

He rolled the dolly up alongside Asra’s chair, and she dutifully lowered her head and pulled back her hair. He raised the plug to the nape of her neck.

“Are you ready, Asra?”

“Yes, I’m ready.” The vitriol had vanished from her voice. She sounded nervous now.

“Then let’s make history. Good luck, my friend.”

And with that, Dalbasch eased the plug into her port.

* * *

A deathly silence hung over the room. Asra didn’t move a muscle all that while, just lay forward across her knees, her arms hanging down on either side, her knuckles resting on the floor.

Then a sound rang out which humanity hadn’t heard in over two hundred years. The middle of the three computers uttered a shrill beep, then sputtered to life, its central light flashing red, then orange, then green. A moment later, the computer on the left also beeped and tripped on. And a moment after that, the machine on the right. The fans inside all three began to whir.

Dalbasch gazed down at them in wonder and then back at Yaritza and Gris. His expression, in that moment, was a mask of unadulterated triumph.

“Eureka!” he cried. “You see, my friends?”

Any other time, Gris would have pointed out to him that he wasn’t his friend. But he was speechless. Yaritza didn’t blame him. Throughout their lives, they’d walked by countless such machines, hardly giving them a second glance or thought, had never regarded them as anything more than relics of a long dead world. Now, bathed in the otherworldy glow of those flickering lights, they felt the power surging forth from that dead world, the Golden Era stirring back to life.

“Oh, Asra!” Dalbasch cried, and clapped his hands. “Can you hear me my friend?” When she didn’t reply, he whirled back around to face the others again, still beaming. “That’s perfectly normal,” he said. “We estimated it will take her several minutes to interface. Full integration could take hours. She’s literally programming everything as she goes. But we’ve done it my friends, we’ve done it!” Unable to contain himself, the scientist flung his arms around Yaritza and Gris. Yaritza patted awkwardly at his back till he let go, while Gris just stood gaping at the computers.

“You really did,” Yaritza said. “I can’t believe it.”

“Aren’t you glad now you accepted my invitation?” Dalbasch said.

“I actually am,” she admitted.

He turned to Gris. “And what about you my friend?”

Gris muttered something unintelligible and glanced away.

“This is why we needed witnesses!” Dalbasch exclaimed! “And I know that once she’s finished interfacing, Asra will be happy you’re here too! You must excuse her earlier behavior. She’s been under a tremendous amount of stress. These past three months especially, we’ve been rushing to-“

A sound rang out, a shrill and piercing whine, and they all jumped. All three assumed that it had come from one of the computers. But glancing back, they saw that it was Asra. While they were talking she had thrust bolt upright in her chair, flung open her mouth, and unleashed the piercing cry. They noticed also that her eyes looked strange, the deep brown irises blanched white. The lights of the three computers began to change color and stutter and flash, painting everything in stroboscopic blues and reds and greens.

“Asra?” Dalbasch cried, raising his voice over her shriek. “What’s wrong, Asra?”

The horrid squall droned on and on, far longer than seemed possible, without her ever pausing to draw breath.

“Asra!” Dalbasch shouted. “Asra, can you hear me? Something’s gone wrong! I’ve got to break the connection!”

He reached out to yank the plug free from her port. But before he could take hold of it, her hand flew up and seized hold of his wrist. Her lips flapped weirdly and her tongue writhed to and fro, breaking the droning cry into a series of garbled sounds and ululations. Eventually these warbling sounds wrenched into syllables. At last a ragged speech took shape.

“YOU REACH TOO FAR!” she cried. “YOU OFFEND BEYOND YOUR STATION!” Then, as easily as a child might snap a pretzel, she broke his wrist. They heard the awful crunch of it as she bore down, the crackle, like wet velcro, of his tendons snapping free of their insertions.

Dalbasch screamed.

“TOO FAR BEYOND!” Asra screamed back, and clamped his head between her hands. Blood burst from both his nostrils, but before he could cry out again, she twisted his skull around. A soggy crunch announced his neck had snapped. His eyes rolled back into head and his body slumped to the floor.

Her shriek still droning on, the Asra-creature’s mouth spasmed again, sculpting the hideous cry into something like laughter. Then she turned her gaze on the scavengers.

She surveyed them just a moment then cried out “RED AND COMPLICIT! UNFORGIVEN AND UNCLEAN!” and launched herself at Yaritza.

The heavy crack of Gris’s rifle shook the air, and a ragged hole ripped open Asra’s throat, gouting hot blood and choking off her cry. His second bullet punched in just above her brow, and a crimson slurry of bone and blood and brain blew out the back.

Yet she kept coming! Her ruined red throat gargled and bubbled as she shambled forward, and she flung herself once more a Yaritza. But her head snapped back as the cable linking her to the computers snagged, yanking the plug out of her port. Her entire body went limp then, and she crashed down on the floor beside her colleague. The computer fans whined on another moment. Then all three towers fell silent and went dark.

Yaritza and Gris kept watching Asra, tensed for her to spring back to her feet. But she lay as motionless as Dalbasch.

“We should check their pulses,” Yaritza finally suggested.

“Fuck that,” Gris replied, and fired two more bullets into each. The mess it made left little doubt that they were dead. He turned away and shuffled from the room.

Yaritza lingered several minutes longer, eyeing both the corpses and computers. Finally she shuffled out as well.

Out in the corridor, she found Gris reloading his rifle.

“I told you we shouldn’t come here,” he said dryly as filed six new rounds into the clip.

Yaritza smiled. “And I told you we’d find treasure here.”

Both paused a moment, then cried “Told ya so!”

They hugged each other tight.

Image Source

Thanks for reading! :D And thanks to @Calluna for the awesome contest and cool prompt!