This Terrible Tale

The year 2035...

I don’t know where to start, how to begin. This terrible tale. The wanton destruction that we see all around. It was not always like this. 2035, the world had gone mad, broken into many tiny small outposts. First the fevers, the new fevers that caused death in hours had come, spreading from labs in the USA There was no antidote and within a matter of weeks more than 97% of the world’s population had died.

Three years after the fevers had run it’s course...

The smell was huge for Xtell and Mets as they picked their way through the vines and bramble that had covered the dead city. It used to be New York, and now almost completely abandoned. One of the great cities of the earth turning back to jungle. The concrete being ripped up by the growth of vegetation that had gone wild. It was home to the duo. They had met by chance while searching for food and batteries, and devices that could be made to function. Xtell had a duelle where he slept and gathered his finds, it was while on a late night mission that he first saw Mets. She was fending off two trog like men and a woman. They wanted her for their community, everyone was trying to clan up. The odds of survival were better if you were clanned up.

He strode out and said, “Release her!” They laughed at him, they began to circle. Xtell was fast, Xtell was smart, Xtell was unafraid. He had devices with him that would protect whoever it was attached to. He worked his way through until he was beside the half alive girl. she was conscious but had received a huge blow to pacify her. “Leave,” he said, “she’s not for you.”

Still they came on, he opened his coat buttons, they ran when they saw the glittering cords wrapped around his chest. This kind of tech was fearsome to the denizens of the city who had mostly retreated to a very basic existence.

He carried her over his shoulder; she was still unconscious, dark was lifting, it was time to get her to his duelle. It was another day before she opened her eyes. He had dripped water into her mouth and her body had reflexively swallowed. She was ravenous and the effects of her blow were still very painful. It was a week before she was well enough to follow him back into the streets. They only went out at night and returned at dawn, before the ravaging parties came out. There could be too many of them and they might try to overpower them to get at the tech they carried. Not too many weeks passed before they would be ready. It was dangerous to stay and It was getting time to leave the city. A few more nights and they might have enough supplies to begin the journey they had planned. There was a boat, a yacht tied up on a buoy just off the west side highway. The plan would be to take her and sail south to try to find one of the last islands that were still functioning as a sanctuary. They could use the knowledge and the tech machines that they had both made.

Xtell and Mets had collected rain water and filtered it because the dying city gave off many toxins. They were anxious to go, to search. It was a dream they had talked about, to travel to visit other locations, maybe there would be life and well people there.. She was tall and slender, he was short and thick. His uncut long hair had turned dread a long time ago, she was bald, alopecia, both had no memory of parents. They had raised themselves. He was a light skin black. She was straight up Chinese heritage. Two people thrown together. She was a weaver of spells, a healer, a sensor. He was tech savvy and a very powerful man with his great arms and trunk like legs. For all that he was light on his feet. She had a fetish to paint her toes. She had collected an endless supply of colours, raiding stores that were there for them to gather whatever they wanted. The food sources were even more scarce but if you knew where to look you could find stores that had been untouched since the fevers, since the population either died or fled.

The animals were slowly entering the city, prowling. Wolves and bobcats, even bears. The temperature had changed; it was now mostly a tropical zone. Xtell had a battered old suitcase filled with his tech, a slick console disguised inside the case. The day came when they were finally all set to leave. It was early morning, so they did not expect any trouble. As they approached the dock, they began to hear the sounds of the clans. There must be a big fight for control going on. Whoever controlled the city would have endless resources and safe hideaways way up in the crumbling high rises. They circled the sounds and took the long way to the docked boat. There was a large man with a small child waiting there. “I have been watching you,” he said. He shook slightly. He was not well. It was not the fever, but the result of a wound that seemed to have cut deep into his belly.

“Get out of the way,” Xtell warned, “we are armed.”

“I mean you no harm,” he said, “I am dying, but this young girl is my daughter, take her with you. Her name is Cly.”

He was pleading. She was clasping his hand, helping to hold him up despite her small size.

“How old are you,” Mets asked, “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe twelve.” She was wiry, she had the wide eyes, the hooked nose inherited from some long ago red man blood in her, evident in her long black hair and olive red skin. She had it tied over her shoulder.

“She can hunt, and can ferret out things. Cly can hear great distances, you won’t regret it,” her father said. “The red clan wanted her, but I brought her away because they have terrible rituals, and very tight control, there is no good future existing with them.”

The sound of the fighting was getting closer.

He pushed the girl to them, “Take her, I will hold the gang off here, I have a few charges for my gun. Go please.” The little girl clung to him but he pushed her away, “go, for my sake, so I can rest in peace knowing you may have a chance. Look for your mother when you can.”

The little girl clasped her father and with a last look she let go and hurried towards Xtell and Mets. “We must be off fast, it will take a little time to rouse out the boat.”

Running the last few hundred yards to the hidden area of the dock, they could hear the sharp shots, “That’s my da’s gun,” she said. “I know the special sound it has.” Finding the boat, they hauled it out from its hiding place and threw their cases inside quickly unloading the sled they had been pulling.

Xtell quickly cut the cords holding the stern, untying the front knots when he was aboard.

“The sails will take too long. “Quick, grab the oars and pole off the dock.” he said as he cranked the wheel. None too soon, the sounds from her father’s gun had tailed off and they could hear a raged shout as the attackers came for their real prey. Running down to the dock, the boat had only managed to get away from the land by about 20 feet, but it was enough, unless they had guns. No one in their right mind would enter that water so far upriver where the toxins were a live brew. The gang followed them a little ways along the shore, taunting jeering them as they went. “Come back, we will welcome you. You will be safe and fed,” one voice shouted out. They kept shouting until their voices were a whisper.

Night came, they had raised the sails an hour before, and as they were passing the end of the island they slowly entered the deeper draft of the sea.

The little girl was already asleep. She must have been exhausted when she came aboard. Anchoring near by the shore they were already a good ways from Manhattan. They collapsed. Mets offered to take the first watch even though she too was exhausted. She woke Xtell halfway through the night as there had been some strange sounds. He awakened quickly as was his want. He heard the sounds too, “Let’s up anchor,” he said, “We are still too close to the city, maybe there is a small boat nearby.” Even before the anchor was fully up the current had started them down the channel. Curses came from behind them. Xtell’s glass they could see a small rowboat near where they had just been. Two toothless men sat in the prows with wicked looking metal poles and an axe. It was a lesson they did not forget. Now they would travel by night and only rest when they could clearly see what might be about. Xtell rigged some motion lights round the boat and set up two guns one front and one back. One he gave to Mets and the other was in his pocket. The girl Cly had remained sleeping the whole time and awoke with a startled look before she realized where she was.

“My father is dead,” she said, “I can feel it.” “He saved us from the ambush, Xtell said, we are grateful for his sacrifice and will do our best by you.” There were charts in the boat that showed the route they would have to take. The GPS system was still mostly working and they hoped it would support them when they crossed the seas proper. They had been lucky thus far, with no further attempts to capture them. They were using their charts as a guide. They slowly shifted past Cities which had been the home of millions, alive with people, walks and amusement parks. There was a huge ferris wheel, with light still flickering from solar powered panels. There were no signs of life. Only a few mulling animals they could see. Around them, as they sailed further, the water started to clear of debris and coming to a more normal color. Still they were careful not to get it on their bodies. They knew from past experience that it would burn and create a rash on their skin if they touched it. They ate the stored food they had gathered over many weeks along with the distilled water they had stored in massive tanks. Xtell had rigged solar panels so they could charge their tech and power their lights. It wasn’t long before they had put a good distance in from New York. It was very eerie. There was no one that they could see, the land was silent and heaving and still no humans worked it. No one lived. The fevers must have been even more severe in the areas where they traveled. They could only imagine what took place in the days when people realized there was no cure for the madness that took place. The extremes that people gasping their last breath of life took. The shattered dreams, no more children. All of this started by one small mistake.

Xtell had found a memory stick in one of the city apartments he had checked for gear. It was prominently placed and labeled, ‘Please Listen’. It held the words of a scientist and his wife who tried to chronicle the aftermath and the spread of the fevers. They made the recording to try to warn the future generations of what had happened. Her name was Vera, her husband, Sam. Her voice on the stick was filled with shock, but still had the precision of a scientist’s observations.

In a soft voice she began, “So so unfair just one person, just one mistake and it almost wiped out an entire species . Maybe it was for the best. I look at this carnage. I look at the leftover. I look out from my sealed windows at the decaying city. All the things that I want to be and do, no longer important, no longer work. l wonder, was it all worth it, this building, this generational spawning, this ending. Now just us, just us, an incredibly small percentage of us living in the backwash of the DNA swarm. The countless lives shattered, cold stopped, aborted. And now just us.”

We had lively discussions about this tape that often ended in a profound silence. The amenities of the past, the aspirations of the future no longer bear, no longer wait on us. It was not our fault, we three had done nothing wrong. We merely survived. We merely adapted, us three, thrown together, fleeing the gangs that we had left behind. The distorted disgraced people, real people, who reverted to almost non-humans so so quickly. What was it to be human anyway?

The stick was a long poem, a long dive, a long investigation, a rambling, almost modeling the time, and the subject. The narration, the history, what was being said was vast, a chronicle of death, of an auto complete transformation. A slam on the brakes, this veneer of life, of civilization just a small skin sitting on another skin on top of a molten rock. You could hear Vera’s extra deep pain, her incredible muse of what was happening. They had isolated themselves in a penthouse, they saw from the last flickers of news station, from their telescopes, looking as civilization started to fall apart flickering. Their food and water became scarce. They were rich and had pantries of food and water to start with. They were unable to leave the sanctuary. All the while she kept recording on the stick, the stick that Xtell now had, telling the story, this long story of death, of change. From high up in the city that no longer vibrated with the sound of life of multitudes. One by one the stations that they listened to no longer transmitted, the isolated corners that still held life, becalmed. It didn’t take very long, just a few weeks before this whole train, this long pulling, this long drive of this life form, the product of the stew of thousands and thousands of years ending. Many animals had been reported dying. Also the very few remaining enclaves that still reported, that still broadcasted talks of people, so many people stripped of hope of possibility of meaning, now desperation, going wild. This loss of certainty, this chronicle of the end of humanity. Vera and Sam had tried to see, to understand, how many were left, was any place untouched. All the lights flickering out, all the voices ending, all the unfolding, all the giving up. The finality of it all.

We sat in our little life boat, savoring this last reminiscence of the voice of a woman, a scientist, and this last accounting. She must have spoken nonstop for hours. Xtell had downloaded it and stored it on other sticks, to preserve it in case it became lost or wet or died. Maybe there were other chronicles, maybe other people had made recordings.

All the while, their craft hugging the coast slowly passing by, nothing stirred. They never touched land. There must be more, even if only one in every ten million might have survived, it would be many. Could we find some of these survivors? Could we start again? Why were some immune? Why were there so few? Why had it happened so quickly?

They had come across it by accident almost, a swarm of tied boats, yachts of the super rich, in a graveyard of a Marina. Xtell had immediately identified a super craft as the one they would choose. They all had spent some weeks gathering supplies from all the other useless abandoned relics of money and power that were all tied up here. Cly was especially gifted at finding the secret places where the owners had hidden special things. Gold and diamonds, almost useless now, but maybe would become the basis of exchange in the future, if there is one. They kept a good watch. But what did time matter now? training to stay awake they slowly plundered what had been so carefully stored in the other nearby vessels. . Xtell slowly began to understand the full power of this life boat, of its sensor systems. They could spread a field around them and know immediately if anyone entered, if anything was a danger to them. They no longer had to keep watching, the life boat systems were always awake, fully on.

The daily tasks of survival occupied their time. Xtell had chosen this craft well. It was fully equipped. It was solar powered. It was built for survival. Someone had planned well, some very, very very wealthy people had planned to live on, in the event of a catastrophe, a catastrophe that had become real. What happened to them? How come they did not use this escape hatch that they had so carefully and very, very costly built? Xtell wondered why there was such a disparity. How could it be in the mass of humanity, that some could be so wealthy while others had very little.

The expensive automatic systems of their life boat worked the moment they were activated, it was designed to survive, to be a comfortable place. Xtell had found all of the controls and tech that had never been turned on before. There were stores of all books, entire libraries of music, of the world‘s thoughts and expressions, images, videos, movies, holograms. Biographies that helped them understand who had bought this boat, or who it had been built for, and why. There was something immense about it all. There was a family, a father, a mother, and their one child who was autistic. In all, there were 20 people connected to this boat. They had even planned for their servants to serve and take care of them. The young girl wondered, weren’t they afraid that the servants would become their masters. Xtell said,”no, they were wired, the servants were supposed have control collared, they could not make a threatening move that could not be stopped by the owners.” In life, power inequality would become translucent. Things they found in the individual cabins. Little personal touches of identity. The planned for needs and memories, the cushions of comfort. Xtell had tied the boat they had escaped from New York ito the stern of this one.

What must have happened?. Why was it all abandoned? We knew from the sStreet how incredibly fast the fevers had spread from their rooftop penthouse from their sealed chambers. The narrator spoke of the incredible speed. With some. It was just a whiff, and their systems went into shock with others. They struggled, some more fortunate or less fortunate could last for days. No one was immune except a very very small percentage, a microscopic percentage. What must they have felt as he watched and monitored everything around them crashing. Many did not survive even the ones who did survive, many took their lives. What was the point. All traditions were broken, all culture ended, and yet in their life boat, these three were surrounded with every image. Every idea every history every book every music that had been written and conjured it was like watching a play act.

Inm Xtell’s dreams he remembered. A memory like waking from a deep sleep. Not yet knowing that on that day, on that morning, the fever hadfever’s had spread. It wasit was not just the wind that carried a fever. It was something else, theelse the biology of it. The chemistry of it had changed the atmosphere instantly Everywhere he woke up to death. It was only his mother and he that had existed in his life, now she was dead. He was a bright boy Everywhere he looked when he leftwent out of his apartment, had crashed into one another, people had thrown themselves out buildings, couples had embraced in their final moments. The fevers were all internal. There was no sign of decay. No manifestation of the fevers outside their bodies, no external decomposition for the first 24 hours. You could almost talk to people that seemed to still be alive except they were slack. He wandered alone. Mets had had the same kind of experience, watching her mother and father, and her brothers and sisters die so quickly it did not even seem real. One moment they were alive, then they were in the throes of a fever, gripped. Some lasted for a few hours, others passed in seconds. Neither of the three of them knew why they had not died. It was the same for Cly, except both her and her father had survived until his encounter with the Red Gang ended his life. There was some hope that maybe her mother had also survived. She had gone on an expedition to the Galapagos to track bird migration.

They headed to the Galapagos. This, island was where they were headed. Xtell and Mets had early on thought that this might be the one place where there might be a living society. They had heard snatches of broadcasts from the island from time to time. Then it had ceased. They wondered if it was a deliberate isolation. Had the people there realized that it might bring danger if they kept showing life and survival. They had to see. If not then they would keep searching until they found enough people to start again. They all felt a compulsion to continue, to somehow rekindle the species, to save the human race.

There was a deep drive inside them when faced with extinction. It was meant to be that they would try to continue the race.

As they neared the island, they began to pick up much weaker signals, as if they were being kept deliberately small, to not travel so far. When they were within a few miles, suddenly a drone appeared in front of their boat.Then two others on either side. A wave blast hit their screens. “Who are you?” it said, and what do you want. We can eliminate you if you do not turn around, or if you do not permit our drones bots to board you and decide if you are clean and welcome.”

Xtell immediately typed an answer. We come in peace, we are clean, but we are also frightened of your intentions. I must warn you we have powerful defensive systems and we will leave if we do not feel that you have good intentions. There was silence. Cly now typed, do you know of my Mother Sahel? Before the fevers she came here to do research. There was more silence. Then the screens flooded with a large image of groups of excited people. A woman was pushing to be in front of the camera. “Mother!” cried Cly. They had arrived.

This is where their hopes for living life might find traction. From the images of the people they saw, from the kind face of Cly’s mother, they felt that sanity ruled. That here might be a place to restart. After all, humanity had held a very fragile beginning, just a few small tribes. The odds of becoming the sprawling human race was very small at the start. Maybe this time they could do better, set life in motion in an enlightened way. Maybe this time.

I wonder how many cycles of time this experiment has been set in motion. Maybe we are all a long series of conscious life rising only to fall again. Maybe this time, with history as a leveraging tool. When we don’t have to fight for fire and the basics of sustaining life. Maybe this time we will have a head start and will choose more wisely. Maybe this time.