Clio and Cy: The Apocalypse (3 page)

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can
and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path.”

― Gautama Buddha

South Carolina:

RMB Jackson:

“When do you think Dad will come home?”

Her mother looked away, unsure why she was so emotional from
the question. “Soon, you beautiful creature you… soon,” she answered after
composing herself, looking at her daughter, flashing a smile. “Very soon.”

Asking the question as if she sensed he was gone,
twelve-year-old Clio felt emotional too. She and her mother had gotten used to their
father being gone, fighting in the war since it started seven years ago. While
living through the
end times
, they
were settled with his absence as much as any mother and daughter could be. But
for some reason, today just didn’t feel right.

 
They lived on RMB
(Resistance Military Base)
Jackson
in South Carolina. Thanks to the Marines that came to their aid from Camp
Lejeune, it was one of two major strongholds. RMB Pendleton in California was
the other. The West was stronger than the East, but it was still safe on RMB
Jackson, or so they thought. Still, they dearly missed their elite soldier man.
With her dad around, things were different; it felt safer. When she could hear
his voice, Clio was truly home.

Physically, Clio was a young girl, but the war had spun the
hands on her psychological clock. Seven years turned the people who lived
through them, into –
realists
. The
war forced survivors to grow up; chronological age was put aside whether they
liked it or not. In their attempts to stay sane, humans had to
get with the program
, especially after
witnessing all the war had to offer.

 
The robots ripped
human flesh to shreds. Ker blasted people into vapor mist. And now there were
rumors of worse things roaming the countryside, evil things. Sightings of cannibalistic
creatures were being reported with chilling regularity.

Unknown to Clio, her life was about to change forever.

Her world suddenly shattered from the deafening noise that
rocked the RMB. Sirens announced a state of emergency.

Defcon 1 had arrived:

The RMB’s alarm blared from overhead speakers like a whaling
trumpet. It shredded Clio’s tympanic membranes with piercing sound while she
covered her ears.

“Mom… what’s happening?” Clio asked while cupping her palms
tightly to the sides of her head.

“Honey, run. Get down in the shelter Clio, now! Go!”

“Come with me Mom… I don’t wan…”

“Go! Now! I’ll come down right behind you… I need to grab a
few things. Go Clio!”

Clio ran down a staircase and came out to a block wall that
encased a massive door. She slid to a stop and punched a code on the touch
panel, realizing why her dad pounded the combination into her head. Guided from
her subconscious, she couldn’t hear herself think while her fingertip worked
the numbers. While the battle raged above, the entrance began to open.
“ZZZzztss…” The Kevlar door disappeared inside the wall revealing the shelter.

Straddling the threshold, Clio slipped halfway through the
entrance and looked up the staircase, shouting. “Mom! Come on!”

“Go…” her mother called back in a faint echo. “Go… lock it!
I’m on my way in a second… I love you… trust me.”

Clio committed to enter the vault and spun her back toward
the inside. Withdrawing, she shuffled backward tripping the sensor - the door
shut behind her. “ZZZzztss.” It closed air tight, ending with a vacuum noise
after sealing her in. “Shhp.”

The lights cut off and blackness engulfed the room, then
fear, as she stood frozen. Disoriented, Clio began to panic, until “click,
click, click,” the emergency backups illuminated.

She felt the world rumbling above while things were crashing
in vibrations through the thick walls of the shelter vault.
I must be dreaming, this can’t be real,
she prayed. Her nightmare had come true. The RMB was under attack. Clio tried
to lie to herself, but hers
elf
wouldn’t let her get away with such deception. She couldn’t deny it, the Ker
were here and the base was under siege… she knew it was true.

Mommy…. Please be ok
Mommy… please don’t leave me. Please! Please Mommy! What are you waiting for?
Come on! Get down here now Mommy! Please!

Her mother didn’t come. Clio waited... Her mom was just
beyond that door;
she had to be
. At
any minute, Clio waited for her mother’s beautiful face to burst inside the
vault. She played the scene over and over until her mind played tricks.
Envisioning blood dripping from her pores, Clio felt her sweat rolling down her
skin. Asking for tender mercy, Clio prayed,
take
this burden from me
.

Day One:

No one answered. No one came.

Three hours and twenty-one minutes after her entry
:

Like a python, the confines of the room constricted the
insides of her flesh. The shelter became a tomb of empty hopelessness. Silence
fell. Clio realized that the battle was no longer raging above her.

It was quiet.

Time to be brave… She had to open the door and peek.
Mustering as much courage as her twelve-year-old soul could conjure, she walked
slowly toward the door. She punched the code. “Wwrrrmmm,” the door strained
like a stuck blender but didn’t open.
What’s
wrong,
she thought? Punching the code again... The door buzzed but didn’t
move.
It’s not working
. Clio thrust
her fingertip on each code number in a third attempt. “Wwrrrmmm…”

The door remained shut and she panicked.
What am I going to do?

Immediately Clio’s thoughts ran to the food and water stored
in the shelter. In between her survival thoughts, Clio’s mind ran to her
mother.
Why is she not here? Is she
alive? Oh my god my Mommy…

Day Two:

Clio awoke, not remembering passing out on the flimsy army cot.
She thought of her father, wishing he would burst through the door with her
mother, saving the day.

They didn’t. No one came.

She spent day two falling asleep and waking in terror. Clio
performed the same exercise over and over. Falling asleep… waking… each dream
faded away as she sat up. Every time Clio’s eyes opened she was smacked and
sobered by the penetrating dissonance of her reality.

Unsure of the hour, day two ended as Clio fell asleep guided
by her internal settings of habit. Tossing on the cot, she dreamed horrible
things.

“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”

― Emily Dickinson

Day Three:

Clio awoke. The third day drifted by in the
twelve-year-old-little-girl’s panic and madness. Something had to change.
I can’t just sit here
, she thought. Clio
did what any trapped animal would do; she took action. Exploring every inch of
the vault, the girl began digging, sniffing and scratching.

Clio remembered her father squatting and tinkering near a
particular spot on the wall once. It was after they’d first moved to the RMB
and she vaguely remembered him in that place,
maybe more than once
.
Over
there
, she recalled, walking toward the industrial cabinet that covered the
wall.

Slipping her finger’s behind the metal cabinet, Clio
attempted to move it.
Good god this is
heavy
. “Ghhh,” she grunted and pulled on the cabinet. Pausing, she reset to
gain better footing. Clio toe-kicked a pile of flak jackets to the side and
cleared a spot. She braced her heal against the base of the wall and pulled on
the metal organizer. After momentum swung in her favor, the cabinet slowly slid
away from the block partition…

Food supplies, first aid, cans, and things in heavy duty,
airtight containers filled the shelves inside the metal organizer. Clio looked
around, breathing hard from her efforts and realized how many things were
inside the vault around her. Dad knew how to prepare for a rainy day. Turning,
she moved closer to the wall where the cabinet had been.

The dust cleared and a small door sat flush in the cinderblocks.
After moving closer, Clio noticed a digital panel,
same kind as on the front entrance,
she thought while her pulse
quickened. Her circulation coursed, feeling as though it would pound her
unconscious.

Shaking violently, she reached for the touch-pad.
The door leads somewhere… outside maybe?
She
was sure of it.
Just need to calm down to
open it.

Clio backed off and drew in a deep breath.
Calm down,
she thought, slowly breathing
in and out. Using a simple trick her dad taught her, she counted to ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
now
steady enough, she went for it again.

Realizing the filthy touch-pad was too difficult to read;
she reared her head back and blew on the numbers. “Fwww.”

The dust cloud mushroomed off the wall. Clio turned away
coughing and waving her hands through the air. Nose tickled and body gripped,
she was suspended against her will. “Haachuu!” Again, she froze like a
mannequin. “Haachuu!” Clio’s motor control returned and she wiped her mouth and
nose on her sleeve.
Now I’m ready
…
Leaning in, Clio reached toward the panel.

Electrical currents came alive inside the wall after she
typed the code. “Shhhp.” The hatch opened and swung out like a hinged safe
door.
It’s a cave…
she thought
.
Clio stared down the dark hole and felt
a cool draft blowing out. Her nervous system electrified with danger.
Don’t go in there…
Air filled her
nostrils with dampness and fear. Shadowed indefiniteness sent cold chills up
her spine.
Come in here Clio
, she
heard an evil voice whisper.
Nope.

The girl yanked the door until it was flush and typed the
code, locking it. “Shhhp.”
Not ready for
that… can’t go down there yet…

Clio rummaged through the entire vault and searched for
useful items she intended to take with her. After putting things in and taking
them out of a small military rucksack, she narrowed it down to the winners.
Other packs were bigger than she. The twelve-year-old grabbed water, food,
flashlight, and the photon pistol that her dad trained her to use.

“A structure of astounding elegance, a ladder delicately
twisting into a double helix, packing into one, efficient strand all the
information to create a living being. No molecule in history has been more
controversial.”

-G. Santis, Cyprus

For his next design, Dr. Pavlov schemed and created using
what he’d stolen from a fellow scientist. A good man, Molecular Physicist and
Geneticist, Dr. Marcus Pressfield, was the leading mind in his field.

Several years back, Dr. Pressfield and Dr. Pavlov were
colleagues and worked together on defense contracts. Long before the war
started, Seth slowly mined Marcus’s work, piece-by-piece, cloaked in secrecy,
smuggling genetic formulas like blood diamonds for his devious desires. Dr.
Pavlov was a thief, no different than the government. Karma is a patient bitch.

Dr. Pressfield never enjoyed working with the strange man,
other than marveling at his
intelligence
;
Dr. Pavlov gave Marcus the creeps. And so did his wife. “Goddamn monkeys,” he’d
always hear her mumbling, giving everyone the stink eye.

Some things are better left un-invented and undiscovered,
like the atomic bomb, or anthrax, or the Hearth Virus that killed millions in
2384, spreading for almost two years before containment. And like those
examples, in the care of the wrong mind, so were Dr. Pressfield’s genetic
discoveries, better left to ignorant bliss.

Dr. Pressfield was a wise and just man, but so was Albert
Einstein. The latter helped invent the atomic bomb, and, the former, something maybe
far worse. In the wrong hands, Dr. Pressfield’s genetic discoveries could be
grown and created, guided to their evil side. After the war started, Seth
Pavlov mixed his stolen goods into a horrible recipe. Opening Pandora’s Box and
aiming DNA strands toward obliteration, Dr. Pavlov released nightmares – living
–breathing creatures of pure horror.

With his wife dead and his mind having slipped into the
corners of darkness, he conspired. Even with the “how to books” the “recipes”
and the “go-byes,” it still took Seth Pavlov significant time and substantial
effort to perfect the ideas he’d hijacked from Dr. Pressfield. But eventually,
he figured it out… building humanoids from hell.

 
Dr. Pavlov gave birth
to a new race of creature. The mad scientist created two things at the opposite
side of the spectrum from one another. Complementing the high tech Ker, he grew
bloodthirsty demon creatures that harkened to a land that time had forgotten.

Crossed with human and predatory animal DNA, they were
mostly void of higher brain function, but not all. The demonic humanoids were
smarter than any pure beast, and along with the Ker, he set them loose on the
war-torn world.

 
Ker strived against primitive flesh
eaters to win a game. Competing for the title of Ultimate Killer, both
creations stacked a rising death toll. Using their innate God given talents,
two sides of the same coin, each piled the bodies high.

Until the world realized they existed, Dr. Pressfield was
unaware his work had been hijacked. Marcus Pressfield knew it the second he saw
one captured on film. Hanging his head, he prayed for forgiveness, feeling sick
at what his mind produced. The flesh eating humanoids were introduced as top of
the food chain predators. A flash of pride entered him too, which made him
disgusted at his pathetic vanity, wishing he could tear it out. The monsters
that now roamed the planet were, in part, his fault.

Dr. Pressfield couldn’t dwell on Pandora’s Box; it was
already open. He could only focus on how to close it and continued to
concentrate on his
good
work.
Ironically, he’d have to use the same technology to create something, with
respect to evil, that resided at the opposite end of the spectrum. Wonderful
and new – it was something that was still secret, he hoped.

Dr. Marcus Pressfield toiled under a labor of love. He had
plenty of it in his heart, careful now at what he was crafting. Especially
after being the father of real live boogiemen. He wasn’t the one who created
the demonic humanoids, but if he could, it was his responsibility to rewrite
history. Those secrets, his work, it all should have been guarded like the Hot
Gates. Nothing should have slipped by; his vigilance failed the world, and now,
despite his intentions, that genetic technology was roaming the land in demonic
bloodthirsty flesh.

Be careful
… as
much as he held that emotion in his heart, his new creation was already alive.
His cyborg was complete. He couldn’t go back and undo things. Could he? Yes, he
could destroy S.C.I. (Superior Cybernetic Intelligence) and burn its very
existence. It was an unthinkable idea. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy
this new creation, this
being
of
synthetic materials fused with human flesh.

Subconsciously, Marcus knew SCI might be the only thing that
could stand in the gap. This cybernetic thing, this super advanced machine that
appeared as a young man, could be
man’s
last hope for survival. The flame was flickering delicately on human kind; the
earth was overrun with Ker. Flesh-eating humanoids were beginning to multiply.
Every military force on earth had been burned to rubble; only small, disbanded
resistance fighters remained. His cyborg and the lone Resistance were the only
chance the world had left at survival.

Dr. Pressfield wasn’t sure how much one cyborg could accomplish
though. How much good could a single perfect creation do? One cyborg and the
tiny pockets of rag-tag freedom fighters were all that was left. If those last
remaining strongholds fell, if the world’s sparse Resistance lost, monsters and
machines would hold the only memory of our existence.

Seth Pavlov would be the last remaining trace of mankind.
Fitting, since he was the one who started the beginning of the end. The worst
example of what we are, possessing the worst in us, would be the last human on
the face of the earth.

Dr. Pavlov would watch the last lights of humanity smolder
up and trail out in a gray smoke. Pavlov dreamed, wishing on a darkness star.
If God existed, he’d watch from above and see the blue ball, turning, with
metal and monsters wandering over its face, aimlessly traveling to nowhere. The
end was nigh. The world was arching up, settling as slow ash, falling with the
flakes of its dead.

SCI, pronounced
Cy
,
was made with goodness. In old earth, Cy could be a boy’s name or girl’s name,
meaning Master or Lord. Before the war started, Dr. Pressfield’s intention of
creating Cy was to revolutionize the world. Heal the sick. Cure cancer. Cripple
paralysis. Bringing merciful powers to the shores of mankind in healing
reality; that was his dream. Marcus Pressfield always intended his work to
point that direction, for goodness sake. Unlike Pavlov’s machine driven QAI, Cy
was distinctly human in thought, without all the neurotic hang-ups.

His intelligence was overseen by a halo of higher-brain order
and underneath, emotions coursed
inside. The
amount of which was unknown to Dr. Marcus Pressfield, yet to be discovered.
With the deepest river of feelings, Cy was capable of love; he was capable of
compassion, empathy and boundless forgiveness.

Cy wasn’t capable of hate, jealously, malice or anything
sinister that had evolved with man from out of the mud. More than not capable
of such things, they weren’t part of him.

Humans identify with all the bad behavior in others, because
all humans do bad things. We all have
badness
in us - unlike Cy. His advanced design allowed him to be aware when humans did
bad
things, while never personally
partaking in such deeds. But that was in his metal parts, his processors, not
his mammalian derived flesh. Cy’s personal boundaries had finally arrived at,
and achieved, what the ancient religious books worshipped – perfection.

His wisdom, if not his knowledge, was one hundred percent
perfection. Strength in his personal boundary allowed Cy to realize what he
could control and not control. Cy was incapable of doing the wrong thing after
assessing what was right – unlike humans who know what the correct action is
but still follow the wrong path. Although invisible, he knew boundaries were
the most powerful force humans controlled, whether they opted to control them
or not.

His emotions would never be absent for the misfortunes of
others, whether caused by their own doing, or from an outside force. He knew
the answers to the questions that almost every human since the rise has asked.
Why am I here? How do I become happy? Why am I always so angry… sad? Why am I
so afraid all of the time? Why do I fear failing… success? He would have made
the greatest psychiatrist in the world. Unrivaled wisdom and unfailing
compassion – that’s how Cy was born. That’s how he was made.

With his super-computer brain, housed in love and steeped in
wisdom, this half man, half machine could unlock the secrets of the universe
for anyone that asked. So far though, he’d only had contact with one person,
his creator, Dr. Pressfield. Cy was able to describe
maps
leading a person from anger to nurturing wellbeing, plotting a
course step by step. Cy could do the unthinkable. He could draw the invisible
science of psychology. Dr. Pressfield didn’t instill these gifts in his cyborg
directly; rather, they were just there. Seamlessly fused together, working as a
symbiotic organism.

Cy was truly half man, half machine. His intuition bordered
on the realm of magic, harnessing powers that Leonardo da Vinci and Michael
Angelo could only have whiffed at in a far off dream. Einstein and Newton were
snot-nosed toddlers compared to his intellect. Every now and then, however, Cy
showed that he wasn’t an actual god. Infallible human hands made him. Still, he
was the greatest thing ever created by any earthling.

Cy had the strength to match, made of improved
graphene
, far superior to its original,
first discovered in the 21
^st
Century. Back then, mechanical engineer
James Hone of Columbia University was quoted as saying. "It would take an
elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the
thickness of Saran Wrap." Three hundred and seventy times stronger than
steel, able to band gap currents of electricity, now, in its new and improved
form, it ran through Cy’s frame as the greatest super conductor in existence,
fused through every part of him.