Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) (3 page)

The Academy Tiers were five-month segments, leaving a one-month gap between Tiers in the winter and the summer. During those times, we had to choose a research fellowship. Even as early as six years old, we were encouraged to peer through microscopes in biology labs or pick away at rocks in field geology camps. Semper was particularly obsessed with the Yellowstone Preserve, a research outpost far beyond the Cascade Mountains. After his third summer there, I decided to go with him. My parents protested because of the distance and the location of the region in zombie-held territory; the camp had actually repelled two separate zombie attacks just a few years prior. Semper’s parents assured mine that security around the volcanic ecolaboratory was flawless now, and we zipped off on a train ride to one of the most far-flung parts of our society to study various natural phenomena.

Our summer was spent with some volcanologists measuring the swelling ground under the supervolcano. We saw shooting geysers and brightly-colored geothermal paint pots. We watched the expansive roaming herds of bison and one day I even saw a lone wolf. What I enjoyed most, however, was the bright, cloudless nights under the full moon, staring up at the stars and the glowing swath of the Milky Way.

The Preserve had been one of the first attempts by the Cascadia government to restore biodiversity to the shattered planet beyond the borders of the Republic. Much of North America had become a barren wasteland due to rampant wildfires caused by climate change as early as the year 2090. By around 2200, the climate had begun stabilizing when most of the humans were dead and not producing fossil fuel emissions anymore, but the soils of Yellowstone had become acidic and hostile to life. For almost two hundred years, scientists had been restoring life to the Yellowstone Preserve in the hopes that the wildlife would spread downriver and across the plains. They cloned and reintroduced dozens of species of plants and animals to the region. We were tasked to go out and plant seedlings of tiny trees that would one day grow into habitat for the reintroduced species. Of course, there were machines that probably could have done the work, but the government scientists wanted us to take personal responsibility for the regrowth and care of our “new world.”

That summer fellowship month of my ninth year went by quickly. Semper was fascinated by the geothermal power station at the laboratory and spent less time with the geologists and more time with the engineers who kept the station running. It was around this time that he decided to go into mechanical engineering, and we’d come back to this place for the next few summers. I explored a lot of different careers at the outpost, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career until I went to space.

The most amazing part of my childhood was probably the same as everyone else my age. When I was nine, we took a trip on an airplane to visit the space elevator. Since most of the world was uninhabited (or inhabited only by zombies), we never had need to travel anywhere by plane and even the capital was only a hundred-kilometer train ride. As they taught us in Tier F, a space elevator has to be built near the Equator to maximize the physics needed to move the cars into space and maintain orbital stability. The original builders chose an island group in the Pacific Ocean called the Galapagos, which was isolated from the zombies and provided near-perfect orbital physics. The supersonic plane flight to the islands took only a few short hours and when we exited the aircraft, giddy and enthralled, we were stunned by the humidity and the heat. We’d never been to the tropics before. As we toured the campus, we were shown turtles and birds and all manner of exotic wildlife we’d never seen in real life, but we kept craning our heads skyward, trying to see the space station suspended above our heads.

The natural archipelago to the south was where modern biological science had begun with Charles Darwin’s observation of the finches. A man-made island was dredged from the sea floor south of there. The carbon-fiber cables, cooling apparatus, and nuclear power station were all anchored into the sea floor several kilometers beneath the surface of the waves. A tall tower reached from the island to the sky, and two dozen cables stretched upward to a point we couldn’t see…but that’s where we were going.

Compared to the other space elevators in the galaxy, ours was the smallest and oldest. It was relatively ancient, actually, having been built in 2092, but it was kept in impeccable shape by teams of engineers and scientists. Our destination was LEO, the Low Earth Orbit station, just one hundred-fifty kilometers above the Earth’s surface. It would take a half-hour to get there. Other passenger and freight elevator cars would pass LEO on their way to GEO, the Geostationary Earth Orbit station. This upper station was where the big deep-space freighters and research vessels were built and docked. Supplies from Earth were sent 40,000 kilometers up the cable to the GEO station, which was essentially built inside a massive hollowed-out asteroid captured by rockets and gravity a few hundred years ago. Almost a hundred thousand people lived in zero-gravity at the end of that cable, but ever since enhanced bodies became mandatory for spaceflight, the GEO base no longer had air or water facilities for visitors. LEO, however, still had low gravity and oxygen and was the perfect place to get kids excited about space travel.

We were told that there are only a few million humans left on Earth now, between the Plague and the Great Exodus to the stars that followed it. There are scattered pockets of humanity all around the galaxy—including some real humans who left Earth before the robot bodies became necessities for spaceflight. Once ships no longer needed oxygen, pressurized environments, or water and food to support our organic forms, most spaceships became small and fast, ripping holes in space-time and spreading humanity across the known cosmos. Along with all of the research stations and far-flung colonies, there are eight billion people living somewhere beyond the far end of the cable. Some had never even seen Earth.

From our vantage point at LEO, over one hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface, we could look down on most of the Western Hemisphere. Affixed to the observation deck at LEO were all manners of digital telescopes and video screens which pointed at specific points of interest. Some peered off into the cosmos, toward amazing galactic phenomena like quasars and novas. Other telescopes pointed down toward the planet’s surface. We could see the ruins of the old cities. The guide showed us one city called Miami which had been flooded when the sea levels rose at the end of the 21
st
century, and only a few badly damaged skyscrapers poked their heads above the waves of the Atlantic. Many other cities had befallen the same fate, and from the telescopes we could look down on the crumbling buildings standing like tombstones over the water. Entire countries had disappeared, like a place called Bangladesh and a country called (appropriately) the Netherlands.

Our ancestors, according to our guide, had been so fixated on a carbon-based energy system that they allowed increasing greenhouse gas concentrations to melt the ice and glaciers; the result was the flooding of most of the fertile farmland and populated areas of the planet. Most of the human population was forced into ever closer quarters, and the Plague spread quickly. There have been many plague epidemics since the dawn of humanity but only one is now called “The Plague” by our society. This refers to the drug-resistant variant of
Chikungunya,
an exotic viral disease which had been held at bay by modern sanitation for centuries
.

When over four billion humans became refugees from the rising seas and pervasive droughts, they cramped into cities across the globe. Exotic diseases ran rampant. Medications were overprescribed and became irrelevant as soon as they were invented. One particular variant of
Chikungunya
became highly resistant to the antiviral drugs of the era.

Eventually, the virus evolved in the gastrointestinal tract of mosquitoes. As even the polar regions became more tropical and the temperate regions were reduced to deserts, the mosquitoes ran rampant despite all attempts to abate them. Between famine, disease, and warring over scant water and food resources, more than 95 percent of the planet’s human population perished within a few decades. The only people left were the forefathers of our modern society, and the ancestors of the zombies of the wastelands. Though the climate was slowly returning to equilibrium, the damage would take millennia to heal, so many of our predecessors had chosen a life among the stars instead of staying behind on the wasteland called Earth.

Our guide turned to show us the video screen of the deep-space freighter port just a few thousand kilometers over our heads. Some massive robotic ships were moving slowly into docking position. Through an overhead window, we caught a flash of light as one ship activated its Roberts drive and jumped into superspace: tunneling through the fabric of space-time to a destination a million light-years away. This trip was designed to get small children excited to one day get their robotic bodies, and it surely worked on me. When I got home, I worked even harder at school and spent more of my free time at Mom’s library than on Dad’s boat. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I wanted to explore the universe despite how very little I knew about the world I lived on.

We returned to Valhalla after a few days of playing around in the tropics, sweating in the warm breezy air, and swimming in the ocean. Though I liked the vacation, I missed the cool misty rains and towering trees of home. The trip had given me a purpose though: I studied even harder and spent even more of my free time learning and reading and studying.

One day, during my advanced astrophysics class, we were discussing the physics of wormholes and how one man had been the first to successfully transit one. The name in the text caught everyone’s attention: Herodotus Faustus. All eyes in the class were trained on me. I’d never known. My dad had simply told me that he’d been an explorer. Not that he held several doctorate degrees. Not that he had been the first to cross the dimensional plane. Not that he’d made huge strides in the field of galactic exploration and optimizing travel routes by skirting the edges of the slipstream tunnels through superspace. I was stunned by the revelations about my father, the fisherman.

I raced to the docks to find my father tending the boat, having just recently returned from another trip to the halibut fishery a few days away. I stared at him for a minute, realizing I was staring not at a famous explorer or renowned physicist or fisherman, but rather just a man. The man who cared for me and taught me about the world around me with careful and deliberate precision. He was never a man to spend words freely.

“Dad,” I started, quietly, “I…I read about you in school today.”

He turned his attention back to the steel mooring line.

“And what did you read, son?” he asked, tightening the cable against the steel dock.

“I read that you’re pretty much one of the greatest minds and bravest explorers in the universe. I read that you were the first person to plot a course through a wormhole in a specialized ship that you designed. That you were the first person to ever leave our galaxy.”

Dad paused for a minute, looked at me, and nodded.

“That was a while ago. A long while.”

“Why are you fishing then? Why aren’t you still exploring the stars? Why are you here instead of…well, anywhere?”

“It was really exciting,” he replied, “to wander the stars and set foot on new worlds. To stare back at our own galaxy from afar and not even be able to pick out our solar system from the window. It was more than I ever hoped for.”

He jumped back onto the deck of the boat with a thud and motioned for me to follow, which I did.

“I got lonely out there, Pax,” he continued. “I had friends and colleagues and coworkers but it just wasn’t the same. I was in my fifties then and had spent thirty years without a family or even a girlfriend. I felt that there was so much more to life. So much more life to live. I came home to find something simpler and more rewarding. I was lucky enough to find your mother when I came home from my last expedition.”

“Did you ever want to go back?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I mean sure, since then I’ve taken vacation trips to some far away places, but never really had the bug to wander. I like fishing. I like the calm of the sea and the rolling of the waves. I like the smells of the ocean instead of the sterile odor of the inside of a starship. I feel so much more complete working with my hands and coming home to your mother.”

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. Not then, at that point in my life. I thought my father was a fool.

My next door neighbor was a little raven-haired brat named Adara Goodman. Adara was very smart and had what we call “an alpha personality,” so she was the leader of our trio. She and I had been intermittent playmates since I was six, but really didn’t start getting along until I was almost ten. She was physically smaller than me, despite the fact that girls are supposed to mature more quickly than boys, and the fact that she was a year older than me. I remember disliking so many things about her—her buck teeth and her stringy hair—but she was a great companion for adventures and usually volunteered to take the blame when we got in trouble.

Semper and Adara were basically the same age, but since I was in the same tier as Semper, I never felt like I was hanging out with older kids. Adara wasn’t as smart as we were, but she was ambitious and creative. She wanted to be president since the first time she heard what a president was. She spent her fellowship months working down in the capital for various political and administrative leaders. She showed little interest in the natural world around us and focused her energy on people. Our parents all got together often, and my dad always called us Semper the Engineer, Pax the Explorer, and Adara the Great.

This part of the world was one of the few places with old-growth trees still standing. Because of the cool California Current coming down from the Gulf of Alaska, the moisture kept the forests from scorching when the rest of the planet burned. We climbed up the monstrous trees and built forts and tree houses among their girthy branches. We had rope swings from tree to tree and swinging bridges between treehouses. Semper, ever the engineering phenom, devised all manners of pulley-driven elevators and water systems. I mapped them and named them and scoured the area for new locations to build. Adara always tried the ropes and pulleys before any of us. She was fearless, quick, and strong. Our society didn’t have masculine or feminine roles like the societies of old. I’m sure if we had, we’d have felt embarrassed that a girl could best us at all things physical.

When Semper and Adara were thirteen, they were invited to “the Viewing”: the experience that finally introduces most children to life in an enhanced form. I insisted that I go along with them, despite being a year younger and technically too young to attend. I made such a fuss that my parents got special permission from the administrator of the program to go early.

We rode the train to the capital with other children our age, even if they were in different academy tiers. We arrived at a monolithic concrete building with no windows and entered the cavernous lobby which stretched five floors above our heads. This was the Bionics Research Facility. There was no décor upon the blank grey walls except a tile mosaic of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders above the doors to the visitors’ level.

We were led by a tour guide around the facility and saw new bodies being created by robotic arms and welders. We saw scientists wearing lab coats, tinkering with gadgets. The guide rambled on and on and no one was listening. We were all amazed at the spectacle. I think everyone there was imagining that the metal and composite bodies we watched being crafted were our own future tickets to the stars.

We were led to the next level of the building, which was a series of rooms, each with seven black tube-like pods arranged in a semi-circle. We disrobed as a group and put on white bodysuits with attached wiring harnesses. Then these odd metal headbands were fastened over our eyes, nose, and ears. I couldn’t see a thing. We were then guided into the tube, which was tilted backwards, to rest in a thirty-degree incline.

These were sensory deprivation chambers with a neutral air temperature, no light, no smell, and no sound. Pure absence of all sensations. Everything was black, and then after a minute long pause, there was light. It was blinding at first but the machine calibrated for my perception. I was outdoors in a walled courtyard with cars and large crates and an obstacle course. A half-dozen identical adults stood next to me; the only difference was the armbands of varying colors on their arms and legs. I looked around. Was this virtual reality? No—this was actual reality beamed into my own brain.

The smells were intense. The colors were vivid. Anything that was drab or boring in the world had new meaning and definition. I could zoom in with my eyes to the fibrous wings of a fly buzzing around in the air. I could hear each beat of its wings.

Our guide suddenly entered the courtyard from a doorway behind us. He instructed us to move around. Lift things. Run. Jump. Experience life in the body of an enhanced form.

Even though the robotic bodies all looked the same—generic, hairless, and genderless—the voice modulators identified who was who. Semper wore the violet armband, Adara wore red, and I wore blue. The other four bodies were inhabited by students from our group, and their armbands rounded out the colors of the spectrum.

It took about a half-hour to figure things out, and even then I wasn’t very adept. Every miniscule move on my part resulted in a grand move on the part of the robot body I was virtually inhabiting. Raising my arm meant flailing it. Taking a step forward meant leaping. I laughed. I learned to jump. I was ungainly but I could move around. A few times I fell trying to climb over the obstacles.

Semper just couldn’t figure it out. He kept tripping. Kicking his legs together when he walked. Reaching out for something and falling over. I heard his breath coming in ragged little gasps through his voice modulator.

“Calm down, buddy,” I tried reassuring him.

“This isn’t all that fun,” he groaned.

I spent the next few minutes walking him through very simple steps. One foot in front of the other. Balance. Gentle precision. Pinching fingers together. He finally at least reached a point of proficiency where I could leave him to his own task while I clumsily ran off to try other obstacles and games.

Adara had no such limitations. Within the first few minutes, she was jumping into the air, lifting cars off the ground, and running with agility instead of the clumsy gait that we had all adopted. She was a natural. She leapt four meters into the air and did somersaults before landing. She karate-chopped steel beam and bent it slightly. She climbed up a flagpole. While I was amusing myself with easily stacking two-ton metal crates, I noticed a group of scientists atop the wall watching Adara’s movements and taking notes with their digibooks.

The guide instructed us all to circle back up around him. We each took our place on the appropriately colored circle on the ground and then suddenly everything went black again. There were no sounds or smells or lights. Just darkness. This must have been what true death felt like if humans could still experience such a thing.

I started to get a little nervous. Though I’d been one of the last children put into the deprivation chambers, now I was the last to be pulled out. I started getting claustrophobic. My heart was racing. I shouted for someone to come let me out. Finally, the guide opened the door and I jumped out excitedly, panting, much to the amusement of the scientists in the room who disconnected me from the harnesses.

We all gathered together again in the lobby and relayed our experiences. Three other groups of seven had also been operating in different training grounds, so almost thirty of us were excitedly jabbering on and on about the things we’d been able to do in our robotic selves. Everyone except Semper, who barely smiled and looked a little bit frightened.

What was meant to get us excited for our enhanced futures was really a clever way for the researchers to run tests on our agility and our ability to adapt to the robotic forms. They kept meticulous records of our activities and used them to calibrate the bodies they began building for us. Of course, we wouldn’t take ownership of our own bodies until our nervous systems were transplanted, but the field trips secretly began building the immense dataset required to create the body that would last us for eternity.

Every year, we’d come back to the facility for a three-day reorientation. Every year, our tasks would get a little more challenging and more would be expected of us, like being able to jump the sixty-foot gap between two buildings. Every year, we all got a little more proficient at bizarre tasks like painting with feathers or building ships in bottles. This was always exciting and even Semper got to the point where he could throw the football through a tire at a kilometer away almost as well as Adara could.

Almost.