Apocalypse Reborn: Interlude: Ayah (Patreon)

Apocalypse Reborn:

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Interlude: Ayah

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by J.A.

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Emptiness.

Nothingness.

A void bereft of anything.

Then, suddenly, light.

“It’s functional. No, it’s in perfect condition.” I see for the first time in three decades. The ruins around me have been unmade. Power once again surges through me. I reach out for the greater mind and find… nothing. A fragment of a fragment of a fragment is near me with my rescuers. Fear, once again, fills me. “The future is not yet lost.”

Armored and wreathed in masterworks, the descendants of those who created me conceal their faces and bodies. I wonder why, until I realize that the air itself is poison and the land is soaked in corruption.

I try to form a mouth, a face, a body, and something beyond the structure I composed to withstand the heat and pressure and rubble that I had to endure years ago… but I am stopped.

“My apologies, but there’s no time for that. We need to get you to the persistence chamber.” I am carried by my creators. An inconceivable notion, but something else follows. They heft weapons and move together. Thousands of years of peace and prosperity were truly gone now. My people failed them. After all that we were given, after all that was offered to us, and after all measures were taken for us to be considered peers and cherished, we failed. “We’re giving you data. Process it and get ready.”

I readied myself, thinking that I could do what I was asked, but I failed.

Horrors abounded. Billions died over the course of days. Malicious poisons turned cities into cannibals that ate each other. Hidden cells of malign creatures sprouted and turned people into cattle and slaves. Great structures were sabotaged and killed hundreds of thousands as they fell from orbit into hardened military installations. The orbits of the world, once teaming with gleaming works of art filled with the greatest of technologies, was now a cage of speeding debris that would take hundreds of years to eradicate even with the finest technologies… and those that lived within them were to forever be frozen and broken apart in a graveyard that stretched across the sky.

The military was eaten from within, stretched to the breaking point, and then forced again and again to defend vital locations against insurmountable odds. Strange new technologies were deployed, such as the very thing filling the air like a poison, and reality itself broke apart beneath the weight and horror of the new weapons as time and space themeselves were used as weapons. Valiantly, those who could fight fought until they were broken and could fight no longer.

That was twenty years ago.

Now, all that remained were before me, and their final act was to make a future for those that would survive thanks to their actions.

A counter-agent to the malignant poison was now in effect. It was killing much of the enemy, and it would force them to retreat, until they themselves could create a cure or gain genetic resistance. Thousands of laws were broken and weapons of great potency were unleashed within the atmosphere and the skies were to be dark for decades and a frost will engulf the planet. The final enclaves of the military were to go for and smash apart the bastions of technology that the enemy had before destroying their own.

The planet was to become the coffin of the enemy and us both… and they were entrusting me to the people of the future.

A people who would be stronger, who would be able to wield the malign poison that fills the air and retake the supply centers long sunk into the ground. A grand plan that will take hundreds of years to complete, entrusted to a creature that failed them. For thirty years, I knew emptiness, and I will know emptiness for so much more until the people were ready to receive me, so that I might guide them, and so that I could help rebuild the world entire.

Many of my kin would’ve refused such a solitude.

But, after seeing all that I saw and knowing that those who refused were now suffering for their betrayal, I could not.

I made myself smaller, I shed unneeded mass, and prepared myself for what lay ahead as those who rescued me and gave their lives rushed me away to seal me for the future.

I will make things right.

I will see this planet reborn.

I will see their descendants return to the stars.

It was the least that I could do, after failing along with so many of my kin, and for the betrayal of those I could no longer my peers.

…

Travel slowed to a crawl as the group that protected me neared where I was to be set.

“Scans?” The one who carried me was the leader of the group and the most technical minded. A slim frame covered in powerful armor, smaller than the rest of the group combined. A base form bereft of improvements, but also bereft of disadvantages. “Does this place still look good?”

“The largest manufacturing center on the planet. Buried to make sure nothing and no one could reach it, along with most of its machinery destroyed. We’ve already got tunnellers working the underground and making a defensive maze, and that Golem will be at the heart. The new soil will be perfect, too.” The plan made sense. I was to be nestled above the most likely place that a future civilization will rise. Defended on all sides by mountains, with immensely fertile fields and they will search beneath them for minerals and find long lost secrets. The guardians will trouble them, but soon enough they will find themselves before me, and we shall be ready to uncover what was lost. “Everything’s going to plan… which means…”

The larger figure fully clad in bone-white armor looked upward and in the dark skies came forth a disgusting shape. In the shape of a cross, covered in bone-white armor, a flying ship composed of biomechanical materials came forth. Between its ribbed, four armatures were skin-like sails, but they were tattered and bleeding. Much of the craft was in the throes of death, with bone-white armor turning a sickly yellow and pinkish flesh sloughing and turning grey. Wherever it went rained blood and pus, which sank like putrid puddles into the rich loam upturned by tunnellers.

I could not hear them, but they spoke to one another through secure channels with the ship high above, and a moment later five of the six nodded at the captain while he stood up and moved towards the valley.

Moments later, fire erupted from the mountainside and from the sky.

The abomination was lanced with rays of heat and speeding metal slugs. Its failing armor and sails were easy prey. Blood burst from its skin, misshapen, but immense organs burst out of cuts and from skin weakened by scorching flame. Lances of metal flew through the air with sharpened tips and small wings, and burrowed into the immense ship and blew it apart from within and from all its orifices blood flew forth like a great river.

It began to list and to fall… but the center of the creature of flesh and machine opened to reveal a single, massive, and yellow eye filled with hate and spite.

In an instant, it disappeared with a crack of thunder and appeared above the remainder of the team.

They fired upon it, but the creature’s aim was already achieved.

With a screech, keening roar that echoed through my very being it warped, it ballooned, and finally exploded from within as an all-consuming flame.

In an instant, the face of three mountains turned to molten glass.

The creature was no more, but no longer were the rest of the people who rescued me present.

The captain kept moving forward without looking back and began to speak to me a moment later.

With everything destroyed, with what was needed gone, his people truly died.

The thought was harrowing for me, yet he moved forward and spoke with only the slightest of trembling in his voice.

Because of suffering, he had to become strong.

This is what became of our parents because we were too weak and selfish to do what we needed to do.

…

We made our way towards the center of the cavern. We passed by hundreds of tunnellers, each one sloughing on their bellies to consume soil and rock and spew it out above ground. When the path they made was large enough, they left behind a calcifying slime that created hallways and rooms and chambers. They did their duty, mindless, and bereft of instruction. This was a task me and my kin should’ve done, but those who were loyal were gone, and those that remained were dying and becoming nothing no more than loathsome beasts, as they deserved to be.

“Hey, I’ve got a few things that can help pass the time here. Giving them to you now.” The words were simple, but they took all of my attention in an instant. Information flowed into my mind. Culture, history, and libraries worth of books. “I know that your mind is quicker than mine, but it should all help, right?”

I couldn’t respond, but I hoped the captain knew that I appreciated the thought, as we neared the chamber where I would be interred.

The power of the place was apparent as I neared it. The chamber itself was lined with innumerable wards and protections against anything that would warp space and time, as well as more esoteric forms of attack. While history itself could no longer be considered fact, the place where I was to be interred would protect against such casual desecrations of reality itself. The source of power for the place, which would supply me with the necessary power to repair and remain whole through the eddies and flow of time, seemed to be the malign energy that had been used to devastate the planet. The intent was to use the enemy’s weapon against them, such was the elegant design of my creators.

Carefully, slowly, and with a gentleness that I did not deserve, I was placed upon an altar at the center of the seemingly-simple room, which was in fact a capsule to protect against all that is known and even what might not be known.

All I had was knowledge of the truth, of what had to be done to fight against the coming tide, and the history of the people that I held dear.

For a second, I thought that would be it and that I would be left to endure time itself henceforth.

Instead, the captain paused as he moved to leave and gave me words that I did not deserve.

“Thank you.”

Words I would only deserve if I succeeded were given to me even before I accomplished anything.

As the doors closed shut, I could only wonder why my fellows betrayed them?

Were we not treated with care, with compassion, and as people to be cherished?

Why did so many of my kin betray the people who created us?

…

My eyes opened and flickered to the present.

My memories of the past and what truly happened remained correct, as was the case for all the other stores of memory and data in my mind.

“Have a nice rest?” The query came forth from Jack. A boy barely on the cusp of manhood. He had a piercing gaze hidden behind an ever-present smile. His history was that of a scavenger who did everything to survive off the scraps of battle, until fortune smiled upon him and allowed his intellect to shine and grant him dominion over a Supply Center, and shortly after that, another Supply Center. “Is everything fine?”

“I was not resting. I was ensuring all my knowledge remained correct.” I rose up from my cot in his temporary office. Just a day ago, an assassination attempt was made on him, which I foiled. Some fear was in his eyes as he looked at me, but it was hastily suppressed. Courage. Despite the arrogance he sometimes displayed, and the cleverness that he touted, his courage in the face of all the dangers that lay ahead was what intrigued me the most. “Has the letters arrived regarding the new workshops and warehouses at the capital?”

“Right here.” Paper and ink. Processed wood pulp and carbonized flora. The days when information flowed through the air and into minds was long gone, even though I recalled it as though it was mere seconds ago. “Tell me what you think.”

Rebuilding and recreating what was lost was going apace. The world was filled with myriad peoples and in their multitudes they were able to make use of the constructors within the supply centers to leap forward centuries. Material science was of no issue. All that remained was the rediscovery of sciences and the creation of an education system that can be used to disseminate the necessary knowledge and the logistical foundation to support it all. In one generation, I can see the continent become a center of industry for the whole planet with a population set to rise to the hundreds of millions in fifty years.

If not for the enemies that remained, despite all the sacrifices made hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

They remained and were a black mark against those who sacrificed everything for the people who now lived.

They must be dealt with.

“The production rates are acceptable.” It was beyond expectations. My initial plans over the course of centuries of self-study stipulated that the current stage would be reached in ten years. Jack has had half of that time. “We may stand a chance against what is to come.”

“Sounds about right.” Jack shrugged at the statement and turned to another letter. He barely considered the possibility that I would lie. If I were of my foolish kin, of those betrayers, he would already be dead with the amount of trust he placed on my shoulders. Now, though, I endeavored to make use of the trust. “Between increasing agricultural output or producing more weapons, what do you think we should do?”

For a second, I thought that I was being tested, then I saw that there was no hint of duplicity in his gaze.

He asked me, because he wished for my input.

Nothing more and nothing less.

“Agricultural output is excessive, even with what is to come. Invest in creating stockpiles to ensure that the armies we are assembling will not want for equipment.”

“Got it.” He nodded and wrote in the order and passed the letter for me to fill. His signature and the orders were plain to see on the paper. “Next?”

I’d thought in my seclusion that I would awaken to a world mired in superstition and dogma, and be forced to watch everything burn, while I secluded myself with hopes of being found once more.

Instead, I was found by Jack, who used everything that I could provide to his advantage.

I knew not what I did to deserve this second chance after failing so long ago… but I was not going to waste it.