OUTSIDE CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
Malachi looked behind him. His legions followed closely, riding their stolen hoverjets and cycles over the rocky, barren soil that covered the whole earth. Death had already won on this planet, and only a few didn’t accept that reality.
Well today they would be instructed of that fact. Malachi knew that God was with them, and the thing that made God into God was the fact that He never lost.
Never.
Today Malachi would be God’s instrument. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the idea of heavenly wrath descending once again to finish the job that nuclear weaponry had begun two millennia before. The Controllers dead, Fran destroyed, the world would follow irrevocably. But this time the world would not be consumed by nuclear fire, it would be destroyed by fiery insanity and a flood of madness more complete than the Noachian tide that covered the earth once upon a time.
The old Bible had said that God gave the rainbow as a sign that He would never again cover the earth with a flood. But after Endwar, the sky had not permitted rainbows. They were a thing of the past. The promise was no more, and the flood was coming.
Malachi focused on the tracker that was leading him and his people to the hidden Controller hideout.
Rainbows were gone. And in a few hours, hope would follow those bright arcs of years past, disappearing in the darkness of death and eternal night.
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
John blinked rapidly, feeling as though he were waking from a dream so real that it doesn’t surrender its grip upon waking. "Fran’s the last?" he asked.
"The last," answered Adam. "After the wars of the late twentieth century, there was a significantly higher radiation count. And one thing it affected more than anything else was the reproductive process. There were fewer females born than males. We’ve been harvesting sperm from the real men scattered through the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that females have been an ever-shrinking number. Fran’s the last."
When Adam mentioned the wars of the late twentieth century, it spawned another question. It seemed that for everything Adam explained, fifty new mysteries arose. "What about the Gulf War?" he asked. Adam hesitated. "Tell me," John insisted.
"This is going to be hard to understand, but the Gulf War was nothing but a fabrication. Vietnam, Korea, both World Wars, the others. In the twentieth century - the real one, not the one we built for people like you and Fran to live in - they never really happened. There were wars, but they were terrible things."
John shivered, remembering the eyes of the little girl who’d looked at him while he hid in a hole in the sand, remembering the possibility that he might have had to kill her. "Iraq was terrible."
"Not compared to the reality of two thousand years ago."
"Then why invent something like the Gulf War?"
"To prepare you. We needed to have a good reason to draft people into the armies, so that they could train and be ready."
"Ready?"
"The ‘bots in your city are programmed to protect you. Their thalamic operations sense the proximity of a real person - you, for instance - and they orient to keep it safe. But what if there’s a glitch? Like what’s happened to you. How long would you have lasted if you hadn’t been in Special Forces?"
John didn’t have to think very long to arrive at an answer: "About four seconds."
"Exactly. The war you fought was for your benefit. You and a few other humans were the only real participants. And you were always protected, despite what may have appeared to you as direst peril, in what you remember as a tragedy that took thousands of lives. But it prepared you for the eventuality of something like what’s happened in the last few days. It kept you and Fran alive. And hopefully you two will have children and the human race will be one step closer to living on its own again."
Both men paused a moment. Then Adam continued, in a softer voice, "I know what you’re thinking. There would be other ways of preparing you. Why invent a horrible war? Why cause suffering?" John was silent, but knew that his eyes told Adam he was thinking exactly that. "Think about it, John. There has to be difficulty. Opposition is what makes us strong, what makes us appreciate the easy times, too. So we created worlds that held opposition in them, hoping that living in those environments would teach you - and all humans - how to be strong and good. So that someday, when and if there were enough real people, they could be strong and good enough to heal the world and make it a home again."
Adam hit a button on his desk and a ladder slipped quietly from the ceiling. He handed John a pair of goggles, motioning him to put them on, and slipped a matching pair over his head. John put on the eyewear, wondering what would happen when he did.
Nothing. The lenses were clear, and he looked at Adam quizzically.
"Protection," said the older man, and hit another button on his desk.
A trapdoor at the top of the ladder slid open, and John winced at the strange, red light that streamed in through the opening.
Adam climbed the ladder, motioning John to follow. He did, climbing up and out and finding himself on bare rock under a red, hazy sky. John stood, looking right and left. He could not discern where he was. He only knew that he stood on a high spot, looking down at a landscape that was burned and scarred beyond recognition.
"Wouldn’t the radiation have dissipated by now?" he asked. "Two thousand years is longer than the half life of a lot of nuclear byproducts."
"Of course," answered Adam. "But the nuclear strikes utterly destroyed much of the atmospheric filters that are meant to keep the world safe from microwaves, gamma rays, and a host of other nasty cosmic attackers."
"Oh," said John. "Then – " He stopped speaking suddenly as his stomach, still clenched in fear’s cold grip, now threatened to be crushed by the jagged grasp of sheerest terror. He stopped speaking as his world tumbled again, dropping around him in shards of reality that were forever broken and changed. He stopped speaking as he recognized where he was.
He stood on Mount Rushmore.
Below him were Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington. Now two thousand years older than he knew, the tops of their heads clearly visible to him and pitted and scarred from millennia of harsh climate.
John looked down and saw the valleys below. No trees, no nothing. Only bleak barrenness under a red sky and a sun that glowed a strange purple. Domes dotted the horizon, though, dozens of them standing across the sweep of the pitted land, huge constructs of metal and plastic that seemed to gleam in the weird light.
Adam pointed at the largest. "That’s Los Angeles dome, where Fran came from. It’s the biggest. She flew out in a plane we picked up, then we sedated her and transported her overland to that one," he pointed at another, much smaller. "That one is Denver airport, where people ‘land’ before we re-drug them and ship them to their final destinations. They just think they’ve had a nice nap all the way from home." He pointed out another place. "Chicago dome. Twenty two humans in there that we are aware of. All male of course. There was a female, but Malachi killed her a short time ago." His arm moved slightly, pointing to yet another. "Loston," he said.
John looked at it, automatically memorizing its placement among the others.
"They’re all in different times, too," said Adam
"What?"
Adam smiled. "The Los Angeles dome is set in nineteen ninety nine, like Loston. The Chicago dome is in the nineteen twenties. Others are in other times. We’ve been experimenting for the last two hundred years or so to find out which time period works the best for our purposes, which one creates the proper mix of protection and stimulation. So far the nineteen nineties are ahead." Adam looked up at the strange sky. "We’d better go back inside. You’re probably already sunburned."
He dropped back down into the office, John following quickly after.
OUTSIDE CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
Malachi stared at the mountain that lay before them, still small in the distance but easily recognizable. "Rushmore," he said, and began laughing.
It was so perfect. He should have guessed.
He raised his hand, and his people moved again. They were the army of Israel, come again to liberate Cana. And as it had been to the Israelites, so it would be with Malachi’s followers: they would destroy the interlopers, and the promised land would be theirs.