ã€ŠSeeds of Doubt #1: Born in a Golden Stormã€‹


 Chapter 1: Inferno

    The humble church built overlooking Clearlake Valley was a very rare sight these days, one that was nigh impossible to find in the sprawling metropolitan jungles that had expanded to cover most of the country. It had none of the exaggerated opulence that one might find in a ¡°city church¡±. It was not an enormous building that spanned an entire city block, it didn¡¯t boast ostentatious trimmings that were made of solid gold, it wasn¡¯t filled with holo-projectors displaying images glowing with simulated holiness. No, out here in the countryside, the people didn¡¯t want anything to do with the glitzy brand of religion they peddled in the cities. We liked things simple, and that was what the church was: simple.

    Having said that, it did not mean that this little place was drab or dull. In fact, it held a magic that no amount of extravagant spending could emulate. That fact was never more apparent than during Sunday mass, as the early morning sun shone through the tall arched windows and beams of light passed through sacred images etched into the stained glass windows, bestowing each image with a peculiar but vivid sense of life: the chilly eyes of the evil serpent glinted with a sinister red glow as it tempted Eve with the forbidden apple that hung from a branch like the most precious ruby, the Archangel Michael¡¯s sword rippled a bright steely blue as it seemed to descend on the cowering bat winged demon who was waning like the embers from a dying flame, the halo wreathing the head of the baby Jesus lying peacefully in the manger glowed like burnished gold under the light of the northern star as the three wise men watched on in awe.

    The magic didn¡¯t stop there, the light refracted through the etched glass and turned into tiny multi-colored flakes in which dust motes would dance merrily. It splintered into a thousand slivers like a shattered rainbow and fell on the solemn faces of the devout worshipers engrossed in the priest¡¯s sermon. The room had some indescribable charm, something invisible yet almost palpable. It felt like it was a place graced with the presence of the divine, it felt like angels were watching over us, whispering to us from just beyond earshot. The only problem was that their soft whispers were being drowned out by the not so soft voice of Father Rodriguez.

    Father Rodriguez was the polar opposite of his church: completely plain and devoid of wonder. He had this uncanny ability to take the most interesting subject and turn it as dry as stale bread. The slightly rotund middle aged man was actually a very kind person and it was clear that he put a lot of thought and effort into each and every one of his sermons. Unfortunately, all his effort was rendered moot by his almost hypnotically sleep-inducing voice and general lack of charisma. For example, right now he was talking about contemporary saints, a topic that was rarely raised by most priests and one that was particularly fascinating, but all the appeal from the content of the sermon was smothered under an avalanche of what could only be described as ¡°grey noise¡±. Despite the voice he was cursed with, Father Rodriguez never gave up. Even now, he just kept droning on and on in a monotonous voice that made me nod off from time to time. I couldn¡¯t help but envy my little sister who was snuggled up in my mother¡¯s arms, snoozing away with a contented smile on her chubby little face.

    Thankfully, I didn¡¯t need to suffer the priest¡¯s mind numbing voice for much longer. The sermon that seemed to go on forever came to an abrupt end with a final chorus of ¡°amen¡± and everyone started rushing to the door. I found it a little funny that the same people who looked like the most eager worshippers just a few seconds ago were now struggling to get out of there as quickly as possible.

    Instead of joining the impromptu melee that had broken out near the doorway, my mother reached down and grasped my small fingers in her soft warm hand while carefully cradling my little sister in the crook of her elbow, only then did we follow behind the crowd that was still jostling around like a they were in a mosh pit at a rowdy concert. We patiently waited for most of the congregation to leave before slowly making our way out into the church courtyard.

    If the church was a solemn holy land filled with the secret songs of angels, the hill on which it stood was a boundless fairyland where mischievous spirits played and frolicked hidden among the trees and bushes. The transition between the two different worlds was quite sudden: one moment I was dragging around the fatigue that I had accumulated while my very limited attention span did battle with Father Rodriguez¡¯s voice which could qualify as a form of anesthetic, the next moment all my exhaustion was blown away as the perpetually musty smell of the old church was replaced by the damp smell of fresh grass coming from the overgrown lawn decorated with countless droplets of morning dew that glittered like miniscule diamonds. Tiny buds of red and yellow flowers that adorned the vines crawling all over what was left of the ancient crumbling stone walls transformed the landscape into something from a beautiful painting. To make the scene complete, a burst of cool air was blown into my face by a gentle breeze accompanied by what I could have sworn was the joyful giggle of a nature sprite.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    Unfortunately, the moment of pure bliss was doomed to be short lived. I had only made it a few steps into the fay land when my little sister woke up from her peaceful slumber and shattered the tranquil atmosphere with an ungodly wail, her shrill screams sounding eerily similar to a police car siren. Mom frantically tried to pacify her, but she continued to cry no matter what mom did. Meanwhile, I just stood awkwardly by the side, fidgeting uncomfortably under the gazes of all the people who were now staring at us. That was when I noticed that my little sister was missing her favorite toy, a pink stuffed bunny that she never allowed out of her sight. I realized that she must have dropped it back in the church and that was the reason she was crying. Knowing my sister, she probably wouldn¡¯t stop her incessant screaming until she got the toy back, and since my mom still had her arms full trying to hush her, it was up to me to retrieve it.

    Less than two minutes had passed since we had exited the church, but the place had completely transformed when I went back inside. For one thing, everyone had left so the place was completely empty. An oppressive silence shrouded the room and it pressed down upon me like a physical object. The colorful windows that had once bestowed the room with wonder had been covered by heavy curtains. What little light that did pass through was barely enough to illuminate the room, casting most of the corners and the high vaulted ceiling into pitch black darkness.

    I nervously navigated the place that had now turned into a den of demons and monsters, a forbidding land abandoned by light where nightmares hid in every corner.

    Thankfully, the bright pink bunny wasn¡¯t hard to spot. It didn¡¯t take long to find the damn thing under one of the benches. Once I retrieved it, I did not dally; I immediately bolted towards the exit, not wishing to spend another moment in this playground of horrors.

    As I ran, every shadow seemed to turn into a portal through which countless ghostly apparitions waited, their greedy malevolent gazes fixed on me as they crept towards me from just beyond the corner of my eyes.

    My breathing quickened and my heart started to race, the rhythmic beat from my furiously contracting heart being the only thing louder than the pitter patter of my hurried steps which suddenly sounded more like thundering stomps in the solemn silence surrounding me. The sound of my footsteps echoed off the walls and multiplied, getting magnified to a volume that was deafening. Even though a small part of me knew I was only imagining it, the illogical thought that someone was following me took root deep in my mind, and once it did, my imagination jumped into overdrive and threw out images of terrifying monsters chasing after me; I even felt the imaginary beasts¡¯ hot breaths on the back of my neck.

    With fear clouding my judgment, all I could do was run as fast as I could to escape my illusory pursuers. As a result of my panicked flight, I didn¡¯t notice the slightly crooked flagstone in front of me. My foot caught on the edge of the stone and I tumbled on to the floor. By the time I came to a stop after rolling a few times, I was only a few feet away from the wide open door.

    With tears welling up in my eyes, I clutched my skinned knee and looked out into the courtyard, my blurry vision automatically seeking the vague shape of my mother. I felt the impulse to callout to her, my instincts telling me that only she could come rescue me and make everything better, but before I could say anything, I was suddenly distracted by a bright flash in the distance.

    At first it was just a glint in the horizon, but it rapidly expanded from a barely visible speck into a giant avalanche of blinding light. The golden cloud blanketed everything in its path, consuming all that came into contact with it and setting the sky on fire. Impossibly large flames the size of mountains rose up into the heavens and shredded the blue sky into pieces like cheap fabric. It peeled and melted like burning plastic to reveal a velvet black sky dotted with twinkling stars. Bolts of blue and violet lightning started materializing out of thin air even though there wasn¡¯t a single wisp of cloud visible for miles. They twisted and squirmed into strange and unsettling forms: deformed faces with sharp teeth stretched into grotesque smiles filled with malice, giant menacing beasts with florescent claws and fangs, some even formed closed loops before exploding with thunderous fury that shook the very earth, their angry roars heralding the start of an unstoppable apocalypse.

    Meanwhile, I was still lying on the floor, looking helplessly out the door. For the first time in my life, I prayed for a miracle. I begged God to send his angels down from heaven so that they would use their white feathered wings to shield my family from the merciless golden flames falling from the sky, but my prayers went unanswered. The golden cloud swallowed them up just like it swallowed everything else. Right before my eyes, I saw them disintegrate into bits of ash before even that was blown away.

    A fraction of a second later, I felt fire assault every inch of my skin, the heat fusing my clothes onto my body with a sickening sizzling sound. Unsatisfied with the amount of pain it was causing, the fire flooded in through my nostrils and into my lungs so that I was burning inside and out. After an eternity of excruciating agony beyond anything I even believed was possible, some essential part of me simply gave out. I don¡¯t know if it was my mind that collapsed first or it was my body that broke down, but it didn¡¯t matter in the end.

    The only thing that mattered was that the pain disappeared along with all my senses as I fell into the merciful embrace of death.

 Chapter 2 â€“ Not Quite Heaven

    ¡°You need to wake up my little Blue Jay.¡±

    ¡°But I don¡¯t want to go! Can¡¯t I stay here with you?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t want you to go either, but they need you down there. They need you to help them.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t someone else help them? Why me?¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t you always wonder why you were different from the other little boys? You were born with a gift my little Blue Jay. You are the most special little boy in the world and you are the only hope they have for salvation. Don¡¯t you want to be a hero? Like your dad?¡±

    ¡°So I am going back to fight bad guys? Like dad?¡±

    ¡°Yes my little Blue Jay. You will stop the bad guys and help many people, just like your father.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m scared mom. I don¡¯t want to be alone.¡±

    ¡°Be brave my little Blue Jay. You will never be alone. Whatever happens, remember that I will always be with you, always watching over you.¡± I hugged the shivering boy close and kissed his forehead one last time before he vanished in a shower of golden sparks.

    I have done a lot of terrible things in the name of justice and the greater good: I have subverted ultimate truths and shrouded them with shameless lies, I have stolen objects of immense power, things that no god or demon should possess, I have even committed mass atrocities on a planetary scale, wiping out billions of sentient lifeforms in the blink of an eye, sacrificing them on an altar of my righteousness. Many people might have worshipped me as a virtuous goddess, celebrating me as Sophia the Saint, the one who weaves the strings of fate and protects the broken and downtrodden, but I knew that the majority of the multiverse saw me as a ruthless dark goddess, the wicked spider queen Lloth spinning webs of deceit and corrupting fate.

    No, I have grown used to being vilified. I have long decided to shoulder any sin and bear any insult in pursuit of my goals, but for some reason, what I had just done bothered me a great deal more than I thought it would. Cheating an innocent child made me feel dirty in a way that I had never felt before. On an intellectual level, I knew that what I had done was necessary. In fact, if I had decided not to act based on some misguided sense of honor or decency, I would have been guilty of negligence. It had to be done and that was final, but sometimes I wondered if I would look in the mirror one day and find that what I saw was something that was completely cold, uncaring, and devoid of humanity.

    I subconsciously touched the small wrinkles that radiated from the edges of my eyes and the corners of my lips, I gently traced the small imperfections that were as much signs of a happy life filled with laughter and joy as they were signs of aging. The woman whose appearance I was borrowing was an insignificant mortal whose only notable contribution to the tapestry of fate was giving birth to a remarkable son. She was a trivial speck destined to be washed away in the river of time, yet I felt jealous of what she had, she reminded me of all the things I chose to give up to fulfill my duty.

    I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I let someone get close to me. I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I felt the warm touch of someone who cared for me, someone who simply wanted to pull me into their embrace and share feelings of affection. I couldn¡¯t remember the last time another human being just held me close to their chest and told me everything would be fine. I couldn¡¯t even remember the last time I smiled without it being menacing or intimidating. I chased after lofty ideals, but I suddenly realized that somewhere along the way my existence started feeling very empty and hollow.

    I have always been alone, but for the first time in a very long time, I felt lonely.

    Maybe that was why I let him sneak into my domain and pretended I didn¡¯t notice him spying on me. Maybe I was so desperate for someone to talk to that I would rather suffer his foul presence than wallow in solitude. Of course, it didn¡¯t take long for him to make me regret my decision as he announced his presence by performing a slow sarcastic clap followed by a snarky comment.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    ¡°Bravo! Bravo! You truly are talented! Are you sure you wouldn¡¯t rather join the theater? Your talents are being wasted here.¡±

    I tried to control my temper because I knew he was nettling me on purpose. The prick would have liked nothing more than to get a rise out of me. Since I had too much power for him to challenge me directly, it was the only remaining way he had to try to undermine my authority. Of course, I wouldn¡¯t give him the satisfaction of knowing he succeeded.

    I took a deep calming breath, and with a small mental effort, I made the false ¡°heavenly¡± clouds around me vanish. My looks changed from a slightly overweight kindly thirty-two-year-old brunette wearing baggy jeans and a sweater to a slim well-built red-head donning a large elaborate robe.

    The robe that hung loosely from my shoulders wasn¡¯t a simple article of clothing or just a symbol of my status, it was also one of the most formidable weapons in existence. It was created using a pure white fabric synthesized from the liquefied energy extracted from the Heart of Light, a flame so vicious, it would burn through the space-time continuum if it ever escaped its prison. The fabric was obviously very unstable and the only way to contain it was using something that could match its voracious appetite, so the robe was decorated with concentrated essence of pure darkness in the form of gems mined from the depths of the Nameless Abyss, an endless void that had already swallowed countless universes and was hungry for countless more. Each gem contained a black hole locked away in its core, so it shackled the fiery fabric, preventing it from escaping and burning everything in its path.

    The robe that looked like dark stars floating in a lake of white flames matched well with the rest of the surroundings that was revealed after the fake clouds retreated. Everything was made of equal portions black marble with veins of gloomy red lines running through it like exposed blood vessels, and white marble with shinning lines of gold running through it like rivers of treasure. On the ground, the two types of stones were made into alternating tiles that turned the ground into a giant chessboard ready for an epic battle between good and evil. For the walls, the marble was polished until it turned into glittering mirrors that rippled with unsteady images made of light and shadows, images that would drive most men mad if they looked at them too closely. The giant columns supporting the roof were carved in such a way that the two different types of marble twisted together in a struggle for dominance that was frozen in time and immortalized for eternity. Even the throne that materialized behind me as I sat down was a jumbled mess of black and white crystals that shifted around constantly as if they were locked in mortal combat, each desperately trying to devour the other.

    After I sat down, I steepled my fingers together and focused on the annoying little man who had just spoken.

    ¡°Councilor Fairweather, I don¡¯t remember the two of us being close enough to call each other by our first names. I would appreciate it if you would refer to me by my title.¡± I looked down at the little man who didn¡¯t even reach the height of my knee and smirked at the way the corner of his left eye twitched in annoyance. Of course he wasn¡¯t really that small, it was just the way I had arranged the planar laws in my personal space. It might seem petty, but it was shocking how much a little intimidation can go a long way in keeping the councilors and petitioners in line.

    The miniature man adjusted the golden cuffs that adorned the white suit jacket which showed his position as a member of the Order Association and took a deep draught from the cigar that perpetually hung from his lips before puffing out a ring of smoke. ¡°Am I not allowed to call my own daughter by her first name?¡±

    ¡°I grant that you had a hand in my conception, but we both know that we are not truly related. Why are you really here Councilor Fairweather? Are you here on behalf of your people? Is there a problem with the Atelli?¡±

    ¡°Oh no, I just wanted to drop in to see what you were up to. Imagine my surprise when I found the great Magistrate herself lying to a kid. So, who was the little tyke? How did he rate a personal intervention from you?¡±

    ¡°Not that it is any of your business, but he currently goes by the name Jonathan Gates.¡± As I spoke, the tiles in the center of the room fell away to reveal a large pool filled with fog. With a wave of my hand, the fog turned into a whirlpool and retreated to the edge, revealing the image of a young boy burnt beyond recognition and buried under the rubble of a collapsed church.

    For the first time that I can remember, Councilor Fairweather¡¯s cigar fell from his mouth and dropped to the ground. ¡°I know that soul! I recognize that soul! The body is all wrong, but I am an Atelli; we never forget a soul. He is John the heretic!¡±

    I observed the charred body stir and a low moan escape from the impossibly injured child. A man in a black priest¡¯s robe pushed open a basement door along with the rubble on top of it just in time to witness the scene. He ran to the injured boy and dragged him out from under rocks that miraculously fell in such a way that they created a small space for the boy instead of crushing him.

    ¡°He is not John the heretic, at least not yet.¡±

    Councilor Fairweather looked away from the viewing pool and stared at me with wide eyes filled with incredulity. ¡°It was you? You led him down this path?¡±

    I leant back on the backrest of my throne and closed my eyes to hide my chaotic emotions. ¡°I had no choice. I created the Fulcrum and the Council of Sentients to maintain balance between the Order Association and Chaos Fraternity, but the Fulcrum itself created imbalance by its very existence. I tried to contain the side-effects, but things were only getting worse. John is the solution, the one capable of restoring the balance. John the heretic to balance Sophia the saint, poetic really.¡±

    I quickly brought my unstable emotions under control and looked back at the viewing pool just in time to see the priest drive into a large canyon. He then carried the limp body of the injured boy and disappeared into a pair of enormous metal doors built into the sides of the canyon wall.

    I sighed and spoke under my breath, ¡°Good luck John. I hope you can forgive me once everything is finished.¡±

    I said the words even though I knew he wouldn¡¯t forgive me.

    I said the words even though I knew I was beyond redemption.

 Chapter 3: Back to Reality

    Long after the sensation should have faded away, I still felt the lingering warmth from my mother¡¯s last kiss like a burning tattoo permanently imprinted on my forehead. At first I thought that it was just a simple fantasy manufactured by my imagination to act as a barricade against the flood of misery erupting with every beat of my broken heart, my heart which only seemed to fracture more heavily as it finally dawned on me that I had to leave my mother¡¯s side in heaven and go back on my own. Was my mind somehow trying to preserve this final kiss as a memento of my time in heaven? Was my subconscious making one final attempt to hold on to this precious moment?

    I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn¡¯t even realize that the kiss which was the subject of my ruminations was no longer just staying warm but was actively heating up, and very rapidly at that.

    By the time I noticed what was going on, the kiss had transformed into a searing hot ball of energy. It rose up to soar above my head at which point I finally got a good look at what it looked like: oddly enough it didn¡¯t look anything like an impression left behind by a set of lips. Instead, it looked like an orb that was filled with a swirling mass of half-pitch-black half-shining-white liquid. It looked like a three dimensional version of that most famous oriental image, the one that symbolizes the balance between two opposite forces, the yin-yang fish.

    The mysterious swirling orb didn¡¯t look very stable as it shuddered and convulsed like a living being. Even the black and white liquids that were inside seemed to get agitated. They started revolving rapidly, chasing after each other like two animals trying to nip the tails of one another. Before long, the inside of the orb was nothing but a grey blur, but even that didn¡¯t last long because the orb then collapsed upon itself before exploding into millions of tiny golden sparks. The sparks transformed into tiny strings which then wove together to form an inescapable net around me. Before I could react, the net constricted around me and I was violently yanked out of heaven.

    Just like that, I found that I had left my mother¡¯s embrace and was now falling down a dark passageway into a most peculiar place, a place that I couldn¡¯t even begin to describe using the feeble capabilities of human expression. It was neither dark nor light. It was neither hot nor cold. It was neither loud nor silent. It was neither here nor there. It wasn¡¯t past, present or future. Whatever adjective I tried, it just didn¡¯t apply to this place.

    The best way I could explain the phenomena I was experiencing was to put it into context with the rest of my life: it was like before this moment, I had been forced to experience the universe through a very narrow hole. All my perceptions and thoughts were shaped by this hole and I couldn¡¯t even envision there being anything else. But now, for the very first time, I was seeing reality without any filters. Deprived of my body, I realized that my five senses weren¡¯t essential to my being. In fact, they were more like shackles holding my spirit back, and with these shackles finally removed, I could freely interact directly with the intangible, ethereal, and the indescribable. My disembodied soul happily fluttered around like an excited little bird in a garden full of flowers in full bloom. I melded and mingled with pure concepts, abstract ideas, and even the most basic laws that governed the universe. I felt my spirit grow and strengthen with every sip of nectar from this garden of knowledge. Ambrosia! This was Ambrosia of the gods!

    Alas, I was an intruder in this wondrous garden, an interloper that was only passing through. The golden net around me constricted once more, pulling my disembodied spirit into the material world and forcefully stuffing it into a shriveled up lump of meat covered in black soot.

    Knowing the terrible state of my body, I knew that I was in for some suffering. I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming, and it did not disappoint. The unbearable agony that I felt when I died returned with a vengeance, but the seemingly all-encompassing anguish and misery that tore through my very being was suddenly eclipsed by something much much worse.

    All the memories I had of the events after my death started to fall apart like sand in the wind. The memory of my time spent amongst the serene white clouds with my mother and my journey through the wondrous garden slowly faded away until it became colorless and illusory like a half-forgotten dream. I desperately sifted through the rapidly vanishing memories to find some indisputable evidence of their authenticity, some subtle clue that would prove that it had really happened and that it wasn¡¯t all just a figment of my own imagination, but it was like trying to grasp at smoke. I frantically flailed for that one piece that might give me hope, and miraculously, I found it! It was a smell! A very unique smell! I stubbornly grasped onto the memory of that last whiff of lilac perfume and baby powder mixed with the natural scent of my mother. I held on to that memory even when searing pain unlike anything I have experienced before started nibbling away at my consciousness. It allowed me to struggle against the rising tide of weakness that threatened to overwhelm me, at least struggle enough so that I managed to make some noise before passing out again.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    *     *     *

    The next time I gained awareness of myself, the all-consuming pain from before had vanished without a trace. Instead, it had been replaced by a cold numbness accompanied by heavy fatigue and light headedness, a combination that made me suspect that I was under the effects of anesthesia. In this slightly fuzzy state, I could vaguely hear the voices of several people speaking nearby, but they were talking in hushed voices so I couldn¡¯t quite make out what they were saying. I tried to open my eyelids but they seemed to have been glued shut. Despite this, I wasn¡¯t willing to simply give up, so with a positively herculean effort, I succeeded in cracking them open. Unfortunately, what greeted my newly opened eyes was a burningly bright beam of light that forced them closed again.

    ¡°Damn it Tim, quickly turn down the lights! The boy¡¯s eyes are still sensitive from what happened.¡± The voice that spoke from my right sounded familiar but my mind was very foggy, so I couldn¡¯t quite remember who it was. This in itself was a very strange and disorienting experience for me since my mind and memory were usually crystal clear. It was the second time today that my supposedly ¡°eidetic¡± sensory memory had failed me.

    ¡°Jesus Christ Jerry, where did you find him? How did he survive all this? How is he still breathing?¡± Jerry? So the first man was called Jerry? Even knowing the man¡¯s name, I still couldn¡¯t figure out who the first voice belonged to. As for the man who answered him, unlike the first man whose voice I could vaguely recognize, he was completely unfamiliar to me. He had a very distinct high pitched voice and spoke with a thick Indian accent, something I would have remembered even in a drugged, semi-conscious state.

    ¡°I pulled him out of the rubble at my church.¡± The church! I finally put it together, the first man was the priest from the church! His voice might have been tense with worry, but I finally connected that numbingly monotonous voice with the image of the slightly rotund middle aged man who gave our sermons every Sunday.

    ¡°And his family?¡±

    ¡°He was alone when I found him. Maybe his parents lost him. Maybe they will come looking for him.¡± That comment made my heart twitch in pain. My father was deployed to Ukraine right after my sister was born and he was killed in the first of three wars later dubbed the Silent Wars. As for my mother and sister, I personally witnessed them get turned into ashes in the wind.

    ¡°Are you kidding me? Do you think there is anyone left alive out there? Look around you, this bomb shelter was built to house the entire city and the surrounding areas in case of a nuclear attack. Everyone knows where it is because of the mandatory drills we were forced to take for the past three years. Do you know how many people actually made it here? Two hundred and seventy-two! Only two hundred and seventy-two people made it here!¡± As the man with the Indian accent continued to speak, the pitch of his voice got higher and higher until it was almost painful to listen to.

    ¡°You have to calm down Mister Patel. We are all frightened by recent events, but we will get nowhere by panicking. Keeping that in mind, Mister Patel does raise a good point. Whatever is happening out there, it is still an ongoing event. There are some periods when it stops, but it is too dangerous to go out to search for people during these narrow windows of time. We have already tried to contact the military and the police, but it seems like all communication networks are down. As much as it pains me to say it, if there are people still surviving out there, they are on their own, so instead of worrying about things we have no power to change, we should try to resolve the problems we can do something about. Doctor Karp, what are the statuses of our injured?¡± This third voice that joined the conversation was calm and authoritative. I could tell that he was someone used to ordering people around and having his commands followed.

    ¡°There were fifty-four people who made it here with major injuries. Seven of them were already dead before they made it to a bed. I treated the rest with regeneration salve but forty-five have already died from internal injuries. Sir,¡­I¡­I am not a qualified doctor. I am just an intern! I am not trained to handle something like this!¡± The one speaking this time was obviously female and she sounded very young and frightened.

    ¡°Do the best you can for these two Doctor Karp, you are the only chance they have. We have already brought them here to the medical scanners. Doesn¡¯t that help?¡±

    ¡°Sir, I have something to say about that! The medical scanners are for essential personnel only. They are not supposed to be here.¡±

    ¡°Shut up, Tim! If you say another word, I will take that gun and cram it down your throat!¡±

    ¡°But sir, my orders¡­¡±

    ¡°Screw your orders! I am the highest civilian authority in this bunker and I say that the injured people get whatever treatment they need. Do you understand?¡±

    ¡°Yes sir.¡±

    I still couldn¡¯t open my eyes to see what was going on but I could infer a couple of things after hearing them speak. It seems that I was brought to the local bomb shelter after Father Rodriguez found me in the church. I also concluded from the previous conversation that I was one of only two people surviving from an initial group of fifty-four injured. Logically speaking, as a boy that was barely ten years old and not in possession of a particularly robust body, I should have been at a disadvantage compared to the other injured people, but it seemed that, not only had I beaten the odds, but I was even healthy enough to be aware of myself, however tenuous my grasp on consciousness might be.

    I couldn¡¯t help but remember the strange dream I had about meeting my mom in heaven. Maybe it wasn¡¯t a dream after all. Maybe my mom was looking down on me from heaven and protecting me.

    With that comforting thought in my head, I didn¡¯t feel scared as my tired body forced me to pass out again.

 Chapter 4: The Floundering Intern

    The Life Abacus was the most advanced and most complete patient care system ever created, a miracle of modern science that had no equal. This medical marvel was the brainchild of Chinese inventor and the only recipient of five separate Nobel prizes in the field of medicine, Professor Qin Fang.

    Professor Qin hadn¡¯t always been the well celebrated and respected personage that he was today. In fact, when Professor Qin initially proposed his idea to build an integrated, atomic system capable of performing all the tests, procedures, adjustments and operations a patient could ever possibly need, he was seen as an overambitious fool. Even the name of his project was a source of a significant amount of ridicule. The Life Abacus? A tool to calculate life and death? What a joke!

    Despite all of the mockery he faced and the hardships he had to go through, Professor Qin persevered and finished developing his machine after nearly three decades of hard work. But even after successfully assembling his first complete prototype, his efforts were met with doubt and mistrust, especially from the west.

    In the end, it took a live demonstration in the Copenhagen World Biomedical Expo for the world to realize the true significance of Professor Qin¡¯s new invention. In the hands of a professional, this machine could snatch the life of a doomed soul from the hands of the god of death himself.

    Of course, the key term in that sentence was ¡°professional¡±. The problem was that I was not a professional.

    I tried to steady my trembling hands as I manipulated the sophisticated controls that operated the many advanced micro-scanners monitoring the only patient I had left who had any real chances of survival. The controls of the machine were meant to be operated by experienced specialized doctors with years if not decades of experience under their belts, so it was no surprise that my ham-fisted attempts to manhandle them into doing my bidding were having very limited effect.

    The machine itself was one of the successors of the Life Abacus, a state of the art Medicare unit dubbed the ¡°Body Forge¡± for its nearly miraculous ability to treat almost any injury or illness. It came with a vast array of monitoring devices and a near inexhaustible army of microscopic robots. Together, they were a potent combination that could perform procedures with a level of precision and efficiency a conventional Doctor could only dream of. The only problem was that they were ridiculously expensive to produce and maintain. They were also a nightmare to use properly, requiring an absurdly high skill from their operators. Because of all these constraints, they were never made available for the public. Only the very rich and very powerful had access to them.

    I myself had never seen one before today. The only contact I¡¯ve ever had with a Body Forge was when I messed around with one in a virtual simulator. It felt frustrating to know that I had the most powerful medical tool in the world at my disposal, but I still couldn¡¯t prevent the deaths of more than fifty people because I couldn¡¯t use it properly.

    My eyesight grew bleary as my mind bore hours of accumulated stress in addition to guilt and helplessness. I had to make a tremendous amount of effort just to focus on the task at hand. My head felt like it was being pricked by a million needles and I knew that I was in no condition to operate any machine let alone a machine that was keeping a person alive, but there was no one else to help, so I continued to grit my teeth and do my best.

    ¡°This can¡¯t be right. These readings don¡¯t make sense.¡± I didn¡¯t even realize I was mumbling my thoughts out loud as I looked at the string of numbers, graphs and images on the screen. At first I thought that there was something wrong with the machine, but a diagnostic check showed that it was fully functional. Still in doubt, I re-run the test two more times but the screens and holographs kept displaying the same incomprehensible results.

    ¡°What is wrong Dr. Karp? Is the boy going to be okay?¡±

    My already fried nerves nearly snapped as an unexpected voice interrupted my disorganized thoughts. I turned around to find the priest who had brought in the young boy in front of me. I quickly hid how startled I was and tried to mimic the calm expression that a real professional doctor should have, a calm that was diametrically opposite to the real way I was feeling. ¡°The boy is going to be fine. In fact, that is the source of my confusion. All of the other people look like they have similar burns to this child, but his case is actually completely different. I don¡¯t know what is happening out there, but when a person gets exposed to the strange golden lights, they not only get burned on the outside but also on the inside. It is like they are getting cooked in a microwave oven. That is why they all died, their internal organs failed from severe injuries. The boy on the other hand might look charred and burned on the outside but his internal organs are perfectly fine. With the help of the regenerative salve, he should be completely cured in no time. The only thing bothering me is the strange neural activity I¡¯m picking up in his brain. It keeps spiking up to fifty percent more than the acceptable upper limits of a human brain. If the readings are right, he should have been experiencing continuous seizures, but the abnormally high neural density in his brain is allowing him to withstand the strain. The problem is that these spikes in neural activity are escalating in both intensity and frequency as time goes on. If something is not done very soon, even his abnormal brain won¡¯t be able to handle it. I¡¯m thinking of putting him in a medically induced coma, but I am hesitant to put more anesthesia into his system without knowing how it would affect his condition.¡±The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    An almost inaudible little voice drifted over from the opposite corner of the room where my only other patient was lying. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t do that if I were you. The anesthesia might suppress the boy¡¯s symptoms in the short term but you would be dooming him in the end.¡±

    Unlike what the soft voice would suggest, the person who had spoken was a rather tall robust African American woman. The strange thing was that even though she possessed a well-toned, muscular physique suitable to becoming a mixed martial arts fighter or an old-fashioned blacksmith at a renaissance fair, she gave off a meek aura in her disheveled clothes. She seemed totally harmless as she peeked at us from underneath her mop of messy hair, her eyes looking comically owlish behind a pair of thick glasses and spoke softly as if she was talking to herself, ¡°If the boy¡¯s condition isn¡¯t caused by an injury or an infectious disease, the only other explanation is that he has a congenital defect. The only congenital defect that matches his symptoms is Schwartz-Ritchie disorder.¡±

    Schwartz-Ritchie disorder? I¡¯ve never heard of such an illness. How could this woman know about a disease that I had no knowledge of? Was she a doctor? But if she was a doctor, why did she wait so long to say something?

    With my head buzzing full of questions, I finally decided to voice the most pressing one. ¡°Miss, are you a doctor?¡±

    The woman shifted her gaze back to the man lying on the bed next to her before answering, ¡°No, I am not a doctor, but I work in the field of genetic engineering. I know one or two things about congenital diseases.¡± She gently brushed a wisp of blonde hair hanging down from a small patch that had somehow remained unburned on the man¡¯s head. She showed no revulsion looking at his horribly disfigured face, just endless care and unfathomably deep sadness.

    The priest didn¡¯t show any empathy or pity when he looked at this tragic scene. Instead, his brows wrinkled in disapproval and his grey speckled handlebar mustache seemed to bristle like the fur of an angry cat. ¡°Are you one of those people who believe that they could improve God¡¯s work? One of those heretics who take God¡¯s gifts and twist them to suit their own visions of perfection? It is because of people like you that all of this is happening! You tried to meddle in places you shouldn¡¯t have and now we are all suffering the consequences!¡±

    The woman didn¡¯t show any indication that she had heard the priest¡¯s sharp rebuke. She didn¡¯t move from her seat, and her gentle gaze remained affixed to the injured man beside her, but the harmless air she gave off suddenly vanished and was replaced by an inexplicable coldness that sent shivers down my spine as she spoke with the same soft voice she spoke with before, although the words she spoke weren¡¯t nearly as soft as her tone would suggest. ¡°Don¡¯t try to peddle your narrow minded bigoted ideology in front of me old man. I don¡¯t care how much you wave your little story book and pretend that your fairytale god gave you divine authority to judge my actions, your opinion means less than nothing to me. I have dedicated my life to work that has the potential to eradicating congenital diseases, stop cancer, and strengthen the future generations of the human race so that they could live longer, healthier lives. Me and those of us like me might even have succeeded by now if we hadn¡¯t been obstructed at every turn by fundamentalist religious fanatics like you.¡±

    I could feel the headache I was repressing start to come back with a vengeance as the priest angrily pointed his fingers at the woman and started ranting like a lunatic, calling her things like a demon and a devil worshipper. In the end, I politely but firmly told the priest that he was disturbing the patients and made him leave.

    Once he was gone, I talked to the woman about the boy¡¯s condition. In the process, I found out that she was a renowned geneticist who even I had heard of. Her name was Beatrice Queen, and the injured man she was next to was her husband. She knew that he had already succumbed to his injuries and had been brain dead for more than half an hour, but she still stayed by his side. She claimed it was to say goodbye.

    As for the boy, she told me that the best way to treat him was to wake him up and provide him with mental stimulation. It was the exact opposite of what I thought we should do, but she seemed very confident about her diagnosis, so I decided to follow her advice. After some hesitation, I stopped administrating the sedatives that were keeping him unconscious.

    All I could do now was to cross my fingers and wait for the kid to wake up.

 Chapter 5 â€“ A Childâ€™s Grief

    With the memory of the stinging pain I felt the last time I tried to open my eyes still fresh in my mind and not eager to repeat the experience, I decided that the smartest thing to do was to leave my eyes closed for the moment, even though I had already regained consciousness for a few minutes. Instead of worrying about my sight, I focused on the rest of my senses to take stock of my condition.

    The good news was that my body hadn¡¯t deteriorated while I was unconscious, at least there were no new aches or pains from what I could sense. The bad news was that I still hadn¡¯t recovered any ability to move my arms or legs. That combined with the lack of sensation from my limbs and extremities, I felt like my body had been encased in a heavy lead shell.

    Eventually, I grew tired of staring at the darkness behind my eyelids so I gingerly opened them just a crack to check if I had gotten my vision back.

    Thankfully, there was no searing pain even though the light still seemed a little too bright and it took a while for my sight to come into focus. When the blurriness did finally go away, I was greeted by the scene of two very different looking women staring down at me as I lay in a bed.

    The two women appeared so different from each other that the extreme contrast was somewhat comical. The one standing to my right and gazing at me with calm steady brown eyes behind a pair of old fashioned spectacles. She was a very tall African American woman with an impressive physique. Her well-toned body could not be hidden beneath the business suit and lab coat she was wearing.

    On the other hand, the woman to my left was looking at me with her light hazel-green eyes squinted in nervousness, as if she was afraid my head could explode at any minute. I didn¡¯t know if the paleness she was exhibiting was a sign of her anxiety or just how she normally looked, but her milky white complexion made the light dusting of freckles on her nose, cheeks and forehead more conspicuous than they would have been otherwise. She had a very slim build that could be described as petite, especially when seen next to the other woman standing opposite her. In fact, she looked like a child wearing a grown-up¡¯s clothes. The dust covered, oversized jeans coveralls she was wearing was jammed underneath a clear plastic hazmat suit which itself looked a little crumpled because she had to tighten the size-adjustment bands on her waist as much as she could.

    She must have noticed my incredulous expression as I looked at her ridiculous getup because she blushed bright red and said, ¡°I know what I¡¯m wearing is a little strange but it is not like I chose these clothes. I was out spelunking in a nearby cave system when all this happened. I didn¡¯t exactly have time to care about my wardrobe.¡±

    I think she didn¡¯t realize what she was saying before she spoke, and by the time she heard her own words, it was already too late. All she could do was blush even harder and start to stutter incomprehensibly. At this point, I decided to save all of us from embarrassment and spoke to calm the poor girl.

    ¡°Greetings Dr. Karp. My name is Jonathan Gates, and I understand you have been the one taking care of me? I would get up to properly express my gratitude, but as you can see, I¡¯m somewhat indisposed, what with the bandages and the anesthetics keeping me stationary from the neck down.¡±This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    The good doctor would probably be a lousy poker player because her thoughts were clearly revealed by her reactions. Where she was blushing furiously before, now her jaws had slackened and her mouth was hanging open in shock. Her expressions were almost cartoonish.

    Although Doctor Karp¡¯s reaction was rather extreme, it was not by any means considered abnormal when compared to the way people usually responded to my more mature mannerisms and speech. I also admit that it was something of a guilty pleasure of mine to surprise people with speech that wouldn¡¯t normally be associated with a child my age and observe their reactions. In fact, what I found more interesting than Doctor Karp¡¯s reaction was the other woman¡¯s complete lack of one. She just kept looking at me with the same calm expression as if it was only natural for me to speak like an adult. I had an inkling that she had already figured out what was going on, but I tried to get a rise out of her anyways.

    ¡°Doctor Beatrice Queen, it is an honor to meet you in person. I am a big fan of your work on artificial gene-delivering viral agents. I think the whole concept is positively inspired. To what do I owe the honor of having one of the world¡¯s leading geneticists at my bedside?¡±

    As I expected, there was no surprise on Doctor Queen¡¯s face. She probably already figured out my condition, she was one of the very few people who would have come across such a rare congenital defect in the course of her work.

    On the other hand, Doctor Karp still seemed to be struggling to speak, but she finally managed to struggle through her stutter to ask, ¡°Wait, how do you know who we are?¡±

    ¡°I follow a few of Doctor Queen¡¯s lectures online, so it is only natural that I recognize her. As for you, Doctor Karp, I heard your name mentioned when I woke up earlier. I also heard you speak and noted your youthful voice. Add that to the fact that you are wearing a self-cleansing hazmat suit, which has been a recent trend that had appeared among overburdened trauma surgeons who do not have enough time to go through sterilization and decontamination procedures between patients, I could deduce your identity.¡± I felt a jolt of smug joy as I noted the unconcealed amazement from Dr. Karp. It was juvenile and trite, but I still found enjoyment in impressing the unsuspecting doctor.

    My attention that was focused on the more entertaining Dr. Karp was drawn to Dr. Queen when she, without giving any prior warning, sat on my bed on a spot right next to me and stared right into my eyes. Something in her gaze made me uncomfortable, but for some odd reason, I couldn¡¯t look away from her. After a few moments of eye contact, which to me felt like an eternity, she smiled and said in a very soft yet steady voice, ¡°A lot of people have the misconception that people with higher intelligence suffer from a deficit of emotions. They think that if someone is smarter than normal, then that person will somehow be unable to feel as much as a normal person. They believe that he or she will be able to shackle and control his or her emotions using intelligence. Of course, they would not be faulted for thinking that way because a lot of smart people build barriers around themselves like a protective shield. They seem to believe that feeling emotions would erode their rational side and diminish their intelligence. They see emotions as things to be suppressed and controlled, that expressing them openly would be a sign of weakness.¡±

    I fidgeted under her serene gaze that seemed to see right through me. ¡°What are you trying to say?¡±

    ¡°I am not a psychologist, but I do interact with a lot of very smart people on a daily basis, so I know a thing or two about the way they think and act. You are a very smart young man Mr. Jonathan, smart enough to fool others and even yourself if you wanted to, but I can tell you that it isn¡¯t necessary to hide your pain. I lost my husband in this disaster. He was the most important person in my life and I am devastated by his loss. I might seem calm on the outside, but I am in the process of grieving. I spent the last hour by his side, saying my final farewell. In a way, I think I am lucky because I got the chance to say goodbye. As one person who is mourning to another, I can see the pain you are hiding. It is tempting to think that by ignoring it, it will go away, but I promise you that it will only grow and end up harming you in ways that will be difficult to recover from. My advice is to just let it all out. We will not judge you or think any less of you if you do.¡±

    I tried to respond to her one sided assertions. I tried to argue that grieving for someone who has died was illogical; if someone was in heaven enjoying paradise, we should feel happy for them, and if there is no after life, then it is meaningless to care for an entity that no longer existed.

    In the end, I couldn¡¯t say a single word. The only response I could muster were the twin streams of tears that escaped my eyes and soaked the bandages covering my face.

 Chapter 6: A New Home

    After crying for a few minutes, I felt a pressure I didn¡¯t even know I was bottling up inside me ease up a little. Dr. Queen stayed beside me the whole time, her mere presence acting like a calming balm soothing my inflamed emotions. After my tears stopped flowing, she and Dr. Karp reintroduced themselves and it felt very natural, as if the previous moments had made us closer. Dr. Queen insisted that we call her Tricia, repeatedly stressing how formal titles made her uncomfortable. Not to be outdone, Dr. Karp requested that we call her Tina. She seemed very embarrassed every time we called her doctor because she hadn¡¯t graduated and gotten her medical license yet, even though we kept telling her that we didn¡¯t really care about her credentials.

    The three of us talked about many things ranging from inconsequential personal things to conjectures we had regarding the source and nature of the catastrophe that was happening; we kept talking for hours until exhaustion forced me to fall asleep.

    The same pattern repeated for the following days and weeks. Whenever I gathered enough energy to wake up, either Tricia, Tina or both would be waiting at my bedside to talk to me. I knew that they were trying to supply enough sustenance to feed the voracious appetite of my gluttonous brain which demanded a constant infusion of new information to stop itself from collapsing. I appreciated the significant amount of effort they spent on my care, it left an indelible mark in my heart. The affection I harbored was by no means unreciprocated, the three of us weren¡¯t really close with anyone in the bomb shelter, so we formed a kind of small family unit with Tricia acting as a mother figure to guide us, Tina as the bubbly, lovable older sister, and me as the youngest child who they showered with affection.

    With the two of them giving me help and support, it only took me two months to recover to full health. The regenerative salve had almost completely removed my burn scars and I was fit enough to get back on my feet. Tricia and Tina took me on a tour of the bomb shelter as soon as I could walk, but it turned out to be short and uninteresting. The shelter was very large and meant to accommodate the population of a large city, but the design was very simple and utilitarian. It didn¡¯t even have individual rooms for people to stay in, just large communal halls with rows upon rows of beds separated by curtains, and a humongous dining area with rows upon rows of stainless steel tables with benches wielded to them. Most of the more interesting areas of the shelter were kept under lock and key, and unfortunately, the person who held the key to these areas was Private Timothy Parker.

    ¡°No. I have already gone against my orders by allowing you to access the advanced equipment in the specialized medical bay, I will not allow any more unauthorized access to restricted areas.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t an unexpected answer from the frustratingly obstinate soldier. His inflexible attitude was probably why he was stuck doing babysitting duty at the shelter in the first place. There were six soldiers that were supposed to be permanently stationed at every shelter, and from what I heard, nobody wanted to be assigned to this duty. In the end, it became a place where the military would dump its trouble makers. In a way, being assigned to a shelter was a form of banishment and a sign that that soldier¡¯s career has come to an end. Because of this, most of the soldier¡¯s assigned to shelters didn¡¯t take their jobs very seriously. In fact, only four out of the six soldiers assigned to this shelter were actually present when the catastrophe struck. Private Parker on the other hand was the opposite of the lazy soldiers typically found in his position; he took his duty very seriously and followed orders like holy canons. His pigheaded attitude tested the patience of even Tricia who was the most level headed person I knew. Even she sounded slightly irritated as she pointed at the door he was blocking and said, ¡°It has been two months since we have been stuck in here with no news from the outside world. I need to get into that lab so that I can try to make sense of what is happening and maybe try to find a way to communicate with the other shelters.¡±The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Private Parker frowned and replied, ¡°The laboratories are meant for military researchers only. Besides, from what I know, you are a geneticist. You couldn¡¯t help in this situation even if I allowed you to enter.¡±

    ¡°Look around you, do you see any military scientists? As for whether I am able to help or not, I might specialize in genetics, but that requires an understanding of not only biology but also physics and chemistry. In addition to that, I work with immensely complex instruments, some of which I had to design and build myself, so I know a thing or two about mechanical engineering as well. Look, I am tired of arguing with you. I am willing to go over your head and ask Governor Richards for access to the laboratories. I know he was reluctant at first, but it has already been two months; do you think he would refuse my request? Do you think he would rather have us stay here twiddling our thumbs, doing nothing and wait for a rescue that may never come or do you think he would let us take action, however slim the chance of success might be? The only reason I am here talking to you is because I respect your dedication to your work, and I don¡¯t want to undermine your authority by involving the Governor.¡±

    Private Parker hesitated, but he finally realized that it was a losing battle and let us in. To be honest, I felt a little sorry for the guy. He wasn¡¯t really a bad person; he was just trying to do his job the best way he knew how, but regardless of his motives, he was still standing in the way of things we needed to do. Tricia¡¯s way of handling the situation may have seemed a little cold, but it was the only way we could proceed.

    After Parker opened the nine-inch-thick blast doors, we finally got our first look into the shelter¡¯s sole laboratory. I like to think of myself as quite knowledgeable and well read, but even I couldn¡¯t recognize more than eighty percent of the shiny, expensive looking equipment that filled the enormous cavernous room. From what I could see, the place was fully equipped to handle practically any experiment from any field of study. I could even see a massive fabrication station taking up nearly a quarter of the space which I would estimate was as large as five football stadiums combined. In fact, we needed a digital map and a small five seat vehicle to navigate the complex metal jungle.

    Tina looked around in bewilderment and apprehension seeming a little intimidated by her surroundings, while Tricia maintained her well-practiced calm. Private Parker was clearly already familiar with the area so he didn¡¯t show any awe, he had his usual sour expression on his face. As for me, I felt an odd sense of belonging, like I was meant to be in this place. Strange as it may seem, I felt like I had found my new home.

 Chapter 7: The Others

    ¡°Are you still in the lab? I swear to God, it is like you don¡¯t even sleep anymore!¡±

    I grabbed the piece of toast that Tina handed to me and took a bite before using the corner of the remaining toast to point at the little nest I created for myself using a mattress, some pillows and piles of paper, ¡°I take power naps over there when I need to rest. Besides, I don¡¯t need a lot of sleep. I guess that is one of the perks of having a dangerously unstable brain.¡±

    She wasn¡¯t very impressed with my response, and she chose to demonstrate her displeasure by smacking the back of my head with enough force to make sure it really stung. ¡°Don¡¯t be a smart ass. You need to sleep just like everyone else. If anything, sleep is more essential to you than other people. What could be so important that you are risking your health to stare at a bunch of screens all day?¡±

    I rubbed my tired eyes and yawned before looking away from the holographic screens surrounding me. As much as I would have liked to deny it, I had to admit that I was pushing things a little too far. Power naps were good and all, but I hadn¡¯t had a proper sleep in days and it was starting to show. ¡°Alright Tina, I¡¯ll go and sleep in my actual bed. It wasn¡¯t like I was getting anywhere with this anyway.¡± I wearily powered down the computers and got up to stretch the kinks out of my spine.

    It had been three weeks since me and Tricia had taken over the lab and started working. First thing we did was to check if there were any ways to send or receive information from the shelter. What we found was that all the cameras, sensors, and antennas that were outside had been fried. Thankfully, some of the subterranean solid drum-antennas were still functioning. With some clever maneuvering, Tricia was able to use the drum-antennas to receive a wide range of signals. To our disappointment, all we managed pick up was garbled noise. We spent days analyzing the noise but came up with nothing.

    To be honest, I wasn¡¯t much help at first, but I was a quick learner and had a basic understanding of programming, so I took over trying to find something useful in the noise we were collecting. I wasn¡¯t in any way an expert in the field, but with the help of the almost endless trove of information available in the laboratory¡¯s archives and the incredibly intuitive computer system that bordered on being an AI, I was able to apply a variety of techniques and filters to try and get something. Unfortunately, it was all for naught. Even after applying all the methods I found recorded in the repository of knowledge that was the archives, I was still left with nothing.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    As I lay on my bed, staring at the concrete ceiling and trying to fall asleep, something kept nagging at me about the signals I had been trying to analyze earlier. The program I had been using displayed the signals visually on a graph as it performed its analysis and I couldn¡¯t stop thinking about the erratic waveforms I had seen. I had been staring at similar waveforms for days, but now that I lay down and simply remembered each and every waveform, I started to realize that there were some parts that regularly repeated themselves at some intervals. That sudden thought made me jump out from my bed and race back to the laboratory. On my way, I woke up a groggy Tricia and dragged her with me.

    Tricia was still half asleep as she asked, ¡°Why did you wake me up? Did something happen?¡±

    I rapidly tapped on the multiple holo-screens that quickly appeared and disappeared around me as I worked. ¡°I figured it out. I know how to clean up the noise from one of the potential messages.¡±

    The fatigue and sleepiness she was exhibiting seemed to disappear as she spoke in agitation, ¡°What did you say?¡±

    ¡°There is a looped message in here somewhere. It keeps repeating itself again and again. Of course, there is some interference that is garbling it up, but small bits of it still manage to pass through. I will take advantage of this to create an algorithm based on an interpolation function to find the most common repeating patterns to reconstruct the original waveform.¡±

    As I was speaking. My hands and fingers never stopped working and right as I finished, one of the nine screens that formed a wall in front of me made a loud beeping sound and a red blinking dot started flashing on an adjacent screen to its left. The results I was seeing made me so excited that I jumped in joy up and hugged the uncharacteristically bewildered Tricia. ¡°This is it! This is the message!¡±

    Not able to wait another second, I pressed play on what was apparently a video file. A slightly older Asian gentlemen appeared on the screen and started to speak, ¡°To whomever might be listening, this is New York Mayor Damien Wu. Most of the tristate area has been completely wiped out. What remains of the fire department and police force have been using the underground subway and sewer systems to launch rescue operations, but we¡¯ve had very limited success. I beseech whoever is watching this to send aid to our city. We are in desperate need of help!¡±

    The video had barely finished playing when multiple beeps started going off. More and more red dots appeared and started blinking, each representing a different message.

    Tricia and I could only watch in slack-jawed amazement as the number of red dots just kept increasing.

 Chapter 8: The Soldier and the Scientist

    ¡°¡­ city lies in ruins¡­¡±

    ¡°¡­ millions are dead¡­¡±

    ¡°¡­panic has spread. We are having problems with security¡­¡±

    ¡°... the situation is deteriorating quickly. People are getting sick and we have no doctors¡­¡±

    ¡°¡­ please, we are running out of time¡­¡±

    Governor Baker, Mr. Patel, Tricia, Tina and I listened in horror as one bleak message after another played out on the large screen. Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York¡­, the list of cities that were begging for rescue just kept growing. After watching 34 such messages, Governor Baker couldn¡¯t keep watching anymore and swiped with his hand to dismiss the screen that was showing yet another desperate plea. He hunched down in his seat, looking like his soul had left him and muttered to no one in particular, ¡°Are they all like this? Is the entire country destroyed?¡±

    I opened my mouth to answer, but I hesitated to speak in front of all the adults because of my past experiences with situations like this. Adults didn¡¯t usually appreciate a child butting into their ¡°important grown-up discussions¡±. On the other hand, I was the only one who had read the transcripts of each and every message, so I was the only one who could answer his questions. Keeping that in mind, I ended up speaking despite my initial hesitation. ¡°Most of the messages are similar to those that we have seen so far but there are two that I think are important for all of you to see.¡±

    I pulled up another holo-screen and selected a particular video to be played. This time, the image on the screen revealed a man with sharp slanting eyebrows, cold steely grey eyes and a hooked nose that looked like he had broken it at least once, but what truly separated him from the people we had seen before wasn¡¯t his fierce, hawkish face. What drew our attention was the fact that he was wearing a neat and tidy military uniform.

    ¡°I am Lieutenant General Frank Grimes, acting head of the United States Army. To any civilians out there who are listening, an extinction level event has hit our country. As of now, I have no other option but to declare a state of emergency and take temporary command of whatever is left of government and the military institutions. I advise you to go to your closest bomb shelter immediately and stay there until you are rescued. We are mustering our forces and it is only a matter of time before we will come to you. As for any members of the military, you are ordered to rendezvous at Fort Regan as soon as possible. Failing that, you must at least establish contact. The final matter I would like to discuss is also the most pressing one. Right now, we are having trouble establishing a reliable communication network. The fact that you are able to receive this broadcast proves that you are either close enough to our location that the interference is minimal, or you have found a way to receive this broadcast even with the interference. If it is the second, it is essential that you find a way to contact us right away. Any information you can provide that could help us set up a communication network would be absolutely vital to our operations. The eventual fate of our country may very well rest in your hands. Lieutenant General Frank Grimes, over and out.¡±

    Before anybody could respond to the contents of the first message, I opened the second one and a very skinny, tall guy wearing a white lab coat appeared on the screen. He shuffled a messy bunch of papers in front of him before he started talking with a nervous stutter.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    ¡°Hello, um¡­ I am Simon Popper, Professor Simon Popper. Me and my colleagues are broadcasting from the Tesla Research Institute. We are doing this to share the information we have gained about this catastrophic event.  Um¡­ we have studied this event and have some conclusions based on our findings. The first being that, for some unknown reason, the harmful rays that are usually kept at bay by the ozone layer are now streaming in unimpeded. After extensive study, we have determined that the ambient radiation has spiked because of cosmic and solar radiation. Because of this, going outside without protection is very hazardous to a person¡¯s health. Even when it seems that there is no visible danger, we suggest that nobody goes outside. The other thing we have found is that, again for reasons we don¡¯t understand, the surface of the sun has been experiencing a very high level of activity. As a result, wave after wave of solar storms have hit and will continue to hit the earth. The primary cause of the frightening destruction are these solar storms. Um¡­ we will update this broadcast when we discover anything new.¡±

    Everyone sat in silence as they quietly digested the content of the two messages. The first person to break this silence was Governor Baker who seemed to have recovered some of his morale. ¡°All these people are able to send video messages; can¡¯t we do the same? Can¡¯t we contact the military to help us?¡±

    Tricia sighed and shook her head. ¡°They are using the emergency beacon systems in the shelters to broadcast their videos. We are using this same system as a makeshift listening station. We can load a video and use the beacon system to broadcast it, but I think this is a bad idea. We are relatively far away from most population centers so the nearest shelter is still too far away to receive our broadcast. In fact, the only reason we are able to de-scramble the videos from distant shelters is all thanks to Jonathan¡¯s tireless efforts. You heard that Lieutenant, even the military is having problems with communication.¡±

    Before Governor Baker could reply, the shrill voice of Mr. Patel, the fat balding Indian man who followed the Governor like a shadow, rung out like a sharp whistle, ¡°You are saying that a child was able to do what the military couldn¡¯t? What an absurd thing to say! Besides, even if the military couldn¡¯t figure it out, the scientists from the second message surely can. Obviously, we should stop messing around with this beacon thingy and just load it with the message like we were originally supposed to. That way, people can find us and rescue us.¡±

    Tina, who was usually shy, nearly growled in anger at Mr. Patel¡¯s dismissive attitude towards me. ¡°Jonathan is a million times smarter than you! He actually did something to help, what have you done except for spouting your unsolicited opinion everywhere you go? How dare you try to undermine Jonathan¡¯s contributions!¡±

    Governor Baker tried to play the peace maker and said, ¡°Calm down Dr. Karp, I¡¯m sure Mr. Patel wasn¡¯t trying to insult little Jonathan. I am sure we all appreciate what he has done so far, but Mr. Patel is respected member of our community and he deserves to have his say. Besides, his ideas do have some merit.¡±

    I remained quiet and tried to signal Tina to do the same. The Governor was ultimately in charge of the shelter and I didn¡¯t want her to get in trouble because of me, but as I tried to silently tell Tina to just let it go, Tricia stood up and looked at the Governor with a smile that wasn¡¯t really a smile. ¡°So you think that we should just turtle up in here and wait while we pray for someone to help us? Are you truly so foolish that you want to ignore the possibility that we might be the only ones in the country who have the ability to listen to other people¡¯s cry for help? You heard that soldier! You heard that they need our technique to coordinate their search and rescue efforts! We can¡¯t simply hope that someone else figures it out and gives it to the military. In this time of crisis, each of us needs to do our bit so that the country may survive. It is our duty! To do anything else is nothing short of cowardice.¡±

    The Governor opened his mouth and closed it several times, but he couldn¡¯t come up with a response. In the end, he just rubbed his temples like he was trying to ward off a headache and said, ¡°Fine. You have two weeks to get in touch with the military. If you fail, you will restore the beacon to its original function. Understood?¡±

    We all knew that this was his way of making a compromise so we didn¡¯t push him any further. We accepted his ultimatum and immediately started to work.

    As I started to research various ways to establish a two-way communication, I remembered that I should have been in bed two hours ago. I smiled bitterly and continued what I was doing. Something told me that I was going to get very little sleep for the next fourteen days.

 Chapter 9: Flying Turtle

    When the idea of building national emergency shelters was first proposed, it was during a time of strife between the U.S. and China. The two global superpowers were fighting over contested territories in the South China Sea like two rabid dogs fighting over scraps of meat. With a potentially world ending nuclear war looming just beyond the horizon, the American people started to realize that their once unassailable country could no longer guarantee their safety. In response to their panic, the American government did its best to allay the rising fears of its citizens by building bomb shelters.

    As one would expect based on the era during which they were conceived, the bomb shelters were built with one thing and only one thing in mind: survival. They were designed to be completely utilitarian, without an ounce of consideration for aesthetics or beauty, so it wasn¡¯t surprising that all of the walls, roofs, even the floors were made out of hard reinforced concrete. The dull grey surface of the bare concrete was untouched by even a drop of paint, it made it so that everywhere you go in the shelter, you were surrounded by the same grey color.

    Thus, when I opened my eyes and was faced with that same drab grey color of the concrete ceiling, it shouldn¡¯t have alarmed me, but there was an exception to everything. While it was true that all of the surfaces in the shelter looked almost identical, there were small imperfections that were visible on the concrete surfaces because of tiny pockets of air and small particles that got trapped in the cement as it hardened. Even with my advantage of eidetic memory, I would have ignored such small and inconsequential details, but I had spent a long time in the medical bay, bored out of my mind and staring at the ceiling, so I recognized the ¡°constellations¡± I had created to pass the time. Once I realized I was in the med-bay, I knew what was coming, and sure enough, I had just sat up when I was greeted by a smack on the back of my head.

    ¡°What the hell were you thinking? Didn¡¯t I tell you to get regular sleep? And don¡¯t you dare try to give me that ¡®I take naps¡¯ nonsense. I made Tim show me the security footage of the lab, and you know what I found? Eleven days! You have been working non-stop for eleven days! Are you trying to kill yourself? Because if you are, there are easier ways to go about it.¡±

    I smiled wryly and rubbed the back of my head while watching Tanya attempt to growl menacingly only to end up looking like an angry kitten. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I lost track of time while I was working. The Governor gave us an impossible deadline and I was trying to do my best to finish the job. I don¡¯t relish the idea of just sitting and waiting for help to come. This is our last chance to do something.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°John, you are not even ten years old yet. This shouldn¡¯t be a burden that you should bear. It is not fair that you have to be asked to do all this.¡± Tanya¡¯s unconvincing stern attitude was replaced by genuine worry and even a little guilt as she sat down on the bed and put her arms around me.

    I rested my head on her shoulder, closed my eyes and silently enjoyed the warmth that she offered before replying, ¡°The world has never been fair. Life is full of problems and all we can do is cope with them as best we can. Sometimes it is tempting to ignore our problems or push them away so that they become someone else¡¯s responsibility. It is tempting to give up without even trying and assign blame when things go wrong, but problems have a funny way of multiplying if left unattended. In the end, it all boils down to one thing: I have the ability to make a difference, to help myself and the ones I love, so I will do everything in my power to do so.¡±

    Tanya snorted derisively, completely unimpressed by my speech. ¡°Stop acting like an old man. You are too young to be so doomy and gloomy.¡±

    She demonstrated her point by holding me down and tickling me with her fingers until I was squirming and begging for mercy.

    *     *     *

    Depending on what you are doing, fourteen days could be very long or very short. If what you need to do is to design and build a specialized drone from scratch while learning the principles needed to complete the project along the way, fourteen days might as well be fourteen seconds.

    The task was made even more difficult because of the restrictions placed on the fabricator. Normally an industrial grade fabricator could make virtually anything given the right set of instructions. Unfortunately, because we had entered the lab with the lowest possible clearance, the fabricator wouldn¡¯t allow us to build anything that it classified as ¡°military hardware¡±. This included things like weapons, ammunition, advanced telecommunication technology, armored vehicles, and most drones.

    In the end, I had to create the drone by fabricating a whole bunch of civilian machines and stripping them down for parts before manually assembling it into what I wanted. I took the titanium chassis and graphene weave tires from a relatively small geological survey vehicle designed to explore volcanic regions and attached an old school internal combustion engine to it instead of using a conventional proton burst engine because it was less likely to malfunction in an electromagnetic storm. I also equipped it with a quartet of retractable rotors from two cricket helicopters so that it could fly for short distances. I finished it off by wrapping all the electrical components in faraday cages, covering the engine and sensitive parts with a special heat-resistant ceramic from a blast furnace, and casing the entire machine in a shell made out of hexagonal titanium panels. I had to manually weld the shiny green hexagonal plates together and handling a plasma torch took some getting used to, so the final product wasn¡¯t very pretty, but given the time I had, I was pretty happy with what I made. Besides, looking at how it turned out, it inspired me to name it.

    I looked at the car sized machine that in my eyes was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and took a paintbrush to write its name in bright red paint: The Flying Turtle.

 Chapter 10: Snow

    Half of the people in the bunker showed up for the maiden voyage of the Turtle, so the usually spacious area of the lab had turned into a rowdy stadium filled with an excited crowd. Poor Tim was dejectedly standing in a corner with his face scrunched up like he had bitten into the most sour of lemons, having failed to stop all of the ¡°unauthorized personnel¡± from getting into the lab, although it wasn¡¯t from a lack of trying. Word had gotten around that my little project was finished and I was going to take it for a test drive to see what it was like outside. Naturally, the people who had been cooped up in the bunker for days without so much as a peep from the outside world were very excited to know what the situation was like outside. As a result of their enthusiasm, they couldn¡¯t wait any longer for news on the outside world and they organized themselves into a large mob to march on the lab.

    First time I saw the unruly bunch of people with feverish expressions on their faces, I was reminded of that old movie ¡°Frankenstein¡± and the scene where a mob of people carrying pitchforks and torches stormed the castle of Dr. Frankenstein. Thankfully this mob did not come with violent intentions, they just wanted to have a look.

    Private Tim Parker didn¡¯t care about the mob¡¯s intention. He stubbornly blocked the door of the lab and insisted that he wouldn¡¯t let anyone in. Unfortunately for him, he was hopelessly outnumbered and the crowed simply steamrolled over him and entered the lab whose door had somehow been opened from the inside. If anyone asked by whom, I plead the fifth.

    Once inside, the mob of people crowded behind me as I run the final diagnostic checks on the Turtle before setting it loose into the unknown.

    After the checks were done, the Turtle crawled out of the bomb shelter, and for the first time in what felt like ages, we saw images of the outside world.

    What we saw left us all in deep shock. We expected a lot of things, we expected fires, devastation and destruction, we expected fire and brimstone. The sky that was covered with ominous clouds and occasional flashes of lightning did match with our idea of the apocalypse, but the ground was not the burnt landscape we expected.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    From the images captured from the Turtle¡¯s many cameras, we were treated to the surreal sight of an entire valley covered in what appeared to be a blanket of white snow.

    ¡°Is that snow?¡±

    ¡°How could there be snow? Wasn¡¯t everything burning when we fled?¡±

    ¡°Is this a nuclear winter?¡±

    ¡°How can there be a nuclear winter? This wasn¡¯t caused by a nuclear war.¡±

    ¡°Does this mean that it is safe outside? Can we search for survivors? I have family out there, maybe they survived until now and we can rescue them?¡±

    It started out as a mumble, but then the crowd started to talk excitedly at what the snow could mean. A lot of people seemed to be hopeful about what they saw, but I knew that they were celebrating too early. For one thing, the thermometer on the Turtle was reading 111.2 <sup>0</sup>C, well above the temperature at which water boiled let alone froze. The sensors were showing that there was nothing wrong with the atmospheric pressure so there was no reason for water to stay in a solid state which could only mean one thing: the white substance on the ground wasn¡¯t snow.

    I slowly moved the joystick that controlled the Turtle¡¯s motion so that it would crawl forward, but even with its special spiked threads, the wheels of the Turtle could not get any purchase on the strange white substance. It was so fine and soft that it seemed to fall apart with the slightest of contact.

    As everyone was still fantasizing about things getting back to normal, it was Private Parker who walked over and pushed into the crowd to get a closer look at the monitors displaying the images.

    ¡°That is not snow. That is ash.¡±

    Everyone suddenly stopped talking and looked at Private Parker, but he ignored them and kept looking at the screens with his face frozen in a strange wooden expression. ¡°For my first tour, I was stationed in Ukraine. My company once came upon a town that was part of the Russian controlled territories before the US advance, but when we got there, there was nothing but what appeared to be snow, which was rather strange because it was the middle of the summer. We later found out that the Russians had lured a Ukrainian Regiment into the town before firing a salvo of rounds from three large plasma cannons on the unsuspecting troops. Anything that couldn¡¯t burn was turned into slag while anything that could was instantly vaporized into ash and blown into the atmosphere. If we had been even a day earlier, we would have also turned into ashes along with that Ukrainian regiment. Instead, we were there just in time to watch the remains of an entire town float down to the ground in a hellish snowfall.¡±

 Chapter 11: Where to go?

    Once the shell-shocked crowd had been persuaded to leave the lab, the only people left were Private Parker, Trisha, Tina, Governor Baker and myself. With the four of them looking on from behind me, I continued to manipulate the controls of the Turtle.

    I tried very hard not to think about the source of the ash piled into small hills several centimeters deep as I slowly maneuvered the Turtle to plow through them and into an open clearing. Once I found an open clearing from which the Turtle could lift-off, I was about to deploy the Turtle¡¯s retractable rotors when I suddenly realized that in my hurry to get the Turtle working, I hadn¡¯t even set a destination for its journey. A little embarrassedly, I turned to the person who had become the de facto leader of the shelter, Governor Baker and said, ¡°Err.. Governor Baker, were should I pilot the drone to?¡±

    Governor Baker seemed taken aback by the sudden question but he remained entirely calm and collected as he extracted his vision that had been glued to the screen displaying the Turtle¡¯s voyage. ¡°To make that decision, I have a few questions I need to ask you, but before that I want to personally apologize to you. I know that I have not shown a great deal of faith in your ability, but I promise that this will be the last time I will underestimate you. If you do not mind, in the future, you don¡¯t need to call me Governor Baker, just call me Uncle Bill and I will just call you Jonathan, is that okay with you?¡±

    In my time in the bomb shelter, I had only ever interacted with Governor Baker two or three times, and when I did get to meet him, he had always been very stern and authoritative. His sudden change in demeanor was unexpected but not unwelcome. He was obviously trying to be friendlier to me and he was also recognizing the effort I made to build the drone, which was nice. Everyone likes being told that they are valuable.

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Thank you Governor Baker, I mean Uncle Bill.¡±

    ¡°It is me who should thank you. Of course a simple thank you is not nearly enough to express my gratitude for what you have contributed to our shelter, but we are in an emergency so I can¡¯t offer you anything more. Rest assured, when this is all over, you shall be rewarded appropriately. Now, I want to talk about this machine of yours? How far can it travel? What can it do?¡±

    I tried to seem stoic and unaffected but I couldn¡¯t stop my face from flushing with joy at the Governor¡¯s compliments as I answered him, ¡°The Turtle, which is what I named the drone, is equipped with simple instructions and instruments to set up a two-way communication terminal, so whoever we send it to, we will be able to establish a communication channel that would allow us to talk to each other. As for where it could go, there are a whole bunch of shelters similar to our own in the Turtle¡¯s flight radius, but there are two locations that stand out: Fort Regan where the military is concentrating their forces and the Tesla Research Institute.¡±

    Governor Baker was quietly contemplating his options when Tricia contributed her two cents on the matter. ¡°We should send the Drone to the Tesla Institute. I have some friends there and together we could come up with methods to get a handle on the situation we are in. The military is just a bunch of guys with guns, what we need now is brains nor brawn.¡±

    I thought that Tricia made a lot of sense and that Governor Baker would agree with her but I was proven wrong as he shook his head and said, ¡°That is where you are wrong, Dr. Queen. The military isn¡¯t just a bunch of men with guns as you describe them. They are what remains of our government and the only hope we have at reestablishing the United States of America. Right now, it is our duty as American citizens to provide all the assistance we can to Fort Regan. You say that we need brains, but I think we have all the brains we need right here. No offense but Jonathan managed to do on his own what all the so-called scientists in the Tesla Research Institute couldn¡¯t accomplish with their combined efforts. Sending the drone to them would probably be a waste of time,¡± his dismissive tone upset Tricia but Governor Baker, or Uncle Bill as he wanted me to call him now, didn¡¯t seem to notice as he placed his hand on my shoulder and ordered with a firm tone, ¡°Jonathan, set a course for Fort Regan.¡±

    I wanted to say something to smooth over the conflict between Tricia and the Governor, but I didn¡¯t get the chance as under the Governors insistence, I deployed the Turtle¡¯s rotors and it took flight into the air.

 Chapter 12: Fiery Eyes

    Problems immediately started popping up the moment the Turtle¡¯s spiked threads left the ground. For one thing, the short range antennas could no longer send and receive signals as the Turtle had left the range in which they would be useful, the direct consequence of which was that all of the signals to and from the Turtle had to go through long range antennas. Normally, this would not be an issue but the ambient electromagnetic disturbance surrounding the Turtle was so bad that it garbled up any signals traveling in the frequencies that long range antennas operated in. The only solution I could come up with was simply re-sending each signal repeatedly until the noise could gradually be screened out using the same extrapolation algorithm I had devised days earlier in order to fill in and decipher the SOS messages from the other shelters. Of course this meant that the time it took to send a signal would be multiplied by many folds. For example, it took a certain amount of time to clean up and buffer each frame of the Turtle¡¯s video feed before it could be displayed. At first this lag was barely noticeable but the video feed started to become jerky and sometimes even froze for a couple of seconds before resuming as the Turtle got farther from the shelter and the noise disturbing the signal correspondingly increased. It was like trying to play a game with very high requirements on a computer console that couldn¡¯t quite handle it.

    Thankfully, I had foreseen this problem and even though I could not think of a way to stop it, I took the difficulties it would cause into consideration as I designed the Turtle. I knew that the video and other sensory feeds will have serious delays and it would be impossible to properly pilot the Turtle with these delays, so I made the Turtle semi-autonomous. What this meant is that the Turtle had the ability to take simple instructions and translate them into complex maneuvers and adjustments based on its own ¡°judgment¡±. It also had the ability to react to some basic situations like when it faced an obstruction on its path. This meant that once I set the course for Fort Regan, the Turtle was basically on auto-pilot as it flew itself to its destination.

    That was the problem I had anticipated, but the problem I hadn¡¯t anticipated was the amount of turbulence that The Turtle had to face once it started flying. There was a significant amount of updraft coming from the ground as superheated air rose up from burning hot ground. If that was the only atmospheric disturbance, that would have been okay but there were also strong yet unpredictable winds blowing from every which way. This fickle gusts mixed with the updraft to create mini-tornados that randomly appeared and disappeared. They wreaked havoc on the Turtle¡¯s rotors and stabilizers. In the end, all I could do was make the Turtle climb higher so that it might avoid the turbulence. This seemed to work. The higher the Turtle climbed, the less turbulence it encountered. Eventually it was high enough that it could fly normally, but at this point it had breached through the dense clouds covering the sky and we finally got our first glimpse at the bizarre canopy that had replaced the blue sky that we were familiar with.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    The sun was shining bright as was right since it was mid-day, but that was the only thing that was normal. The bright sun wasn¡¯t a lonely tyrant resting on a canvas of blue, but rather it was flanked by an entourage of stars as they hung majestically displayed like gems strewn across a deep black background that didn¡¯t so much look like the night sky, but more like gazing straight into the heart of space. To make the scene even stranger, streaks of colorful light flashed across the sky like an impossibly vast iridescent flag fluttering with a ghostly green and violet color. I had seen pictures of the Aurora Borealis before, but witnessing them through the Turtle¡¯s cameras so far south from the North Pole was a giant shock. It finally drove home the fact that the earth had changed and there was no returning to the way things used to be.

    I was digesting the implications of what I was seeing when I noticed that the electromagnetic interference had gotten so bad that the video feed from the cameras had turned into something that resembled a series of snapshots taken every ten seconds or so. This in itself wasn¡¯t strange but the interference was increasing at an exponential rate and some of the video feeds even froze up completely.

    I could only look on helplessly as all of the main and auxiliary cameras stopped functioning altogether. The only clue I had as to what had happened was the final images that they transmitted before contact with the Turtle was lost.

    Eyes. Hundreds of menacing eyes made of burning blue flames stared out at us from the screen.

 Chapter 13: The Creature in the Clouds

    We stood stock still, staring at what the screen was displaying and lost for words. I did everything I could to reestablish connection with the Turtle, but nothing I did seemed to work. It was like the Turtle had vanished.

    It was Tina who broke the terse silence. With her voice quivering in fear, she asked the question on everyone¡¯s mind, ¡°Wh¡­what happened? What are those things?¡±

    Governor Baker, Tricia, Tina even Private Parker looked at me for answers but I had none to give them. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say that the Turtle was attacked by some sort of monster made with many eyes? Or should I say that it was consumed by a bunch of blue flames that momentarily joined together to form eyes?

    I typed away at the Turtle¡¯s console, trying to get any information I could, but I kept coming up with a blank. I was about to give up all hope in the Turtle when out of nowhere, the signal that had been cut off started broadcasting again. It was spotty at first, but eventually even the video feed was reestablished.

    The first thing I did when I regained control of the Turtle was run a full diagnostic check to see what kind of condition it was in. Thankfully, other than a slightly elevated temperature reading of a 150<sup>0</sup>C and small dents on one of it outer shields, the Turtle seemed to be just fine.

    The next thing I did was try to find out what had happened during the time we had lost contact with it. The Turtle was constantly storing what its cameras recorded into an internal memory storage unit so all I had to do was to request for the recordings it made in that particular window of time. Of course, this would mean that I would once again relinquish control over the Turtle and it would be impossible for us to see what was happening in real time as long as the Turtle was sending the recordings, but what had happened was so strange and alarming that we all unanimously agreed that it was worth the risk.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    Fifteen heart wrenching minutes later, the recordings had been successfully sent over by the Turtle. I opened the video file and we all finally got to see the culprit responsible for what had happened.

    This time, when Tina spoke, her voice wasn¡¯t cracking with fear, instead it was filled with incredulity as she asked, ¡°Is that a peacock?¡±

    What we saw in the recordings was indeed a peacock, but it wasn¡¯t a normal peacock. It was a giant albino peacock the size of a mini-van. Despite the bird¡¯s massive size, what drew my attention wasn¡¯t its abnormal girth, it was the veins of blue fire running throughout its giant white body. They formed fine networks that looked oddly similar to some tribal markings I saw in a documentary about relics found in ancient ruins in South America. This network of veins glowed brighter and dimmer as what appeared to be a blue fiery liquid pumped through them like blood.

    As for the many fiery eyes we had seen earlier, it was the birds flamboyant tail. The blue fiery liquid gathered into each on of ¡°eyes¡± in the peacock¡¯s tail and when it fanned out its tail, the ¡°eyes¡± turned into glowing orbs that looked like they were really looking at you.

    From what I was seeing in the video, it appeared that the giant bird approached the Turtle out of curiosity more than anything else. It flew around the drone a few times and even pecked it ones or twice, probably to check if it was edible before losing all interest in it and flying away by gently flapping its vast wings once or twice.

    The video raised as many questions as it answered. Where did this strange bird come from? What kind of animal was it? Why was its very presence able to block out all the signals from the Turtle? Why was the way it was flying so strange, as if it was swimming in the air? Why did it look like a creature that was half made of fire?

    But all of these questions had to wait because there was a more pressing matter at hand. Now that we knew that there were dangerous creatures flying above the clouds, it was clear that it was no longer safe for the Turtle to stay there. The giant peacock seemed harmless enough, but what if the next creature didn¡¯t turn out to be so benign? Both Governor Baker and Private Parker raised these concerns at the same time and I had only one solution that they found somewhat acceptable.

    There were creatures above the clouds and the turbulence was too much beneath them, the only remaining choice was to go through the clouds. Sure, the clouds themselves had so much electromagnetic activity in them that we would be unable to contact the Turtle, but we decided that it was the best chance it would have to get to its destination.

    After we adjusted the Turtle''s new course, we sat there looking at a blank screen. All we could do at this point was to hope and pray.