After the Pandemic: Final Frontier (744 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: scifi
Rating: 1.92 on 20 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Coyote (View user info) at 2005-03-12 11:46:58 EST
The original idea: http://www.ubersite.com/m/61238
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Day One. Thin clouds at fifteen thousand feet. We launch anyway, not like the Cape. Was hoping to film the ground falling away for the kids but the overcast wrecks that. Sergei tells me we'll have plenty of time for videos during rest periods on the station.
Pathetic is the only word that springs to mind. Trivial thoughts, banally expressed. For all I know, this could be the last surviving written record of the old days, and it's pap. They're gonna love Day Two when I describe how it feels to get spacesick. Well, scratch the thing about the last record, anyway. Just for starters, Vlad picked up enough know-how from somewhere to hail the station from Houston. It's easier to read my journals when they're free of the burden of being the sole conduit of human knowledge from one age to the next.
Day Four. 0900 bid farewell to Jerry and Olga and sealed up the Soyuz. Undocked 0917 on schedule. Jerry's eager to be home-- his kids have the flu bad this year and they won't even be able to make it to the landing ceremony. Olga didn't want to go down. I think she and Sergei had a thing in the airlock, but my Russian's not good enough to follow their slang-riddled banter.
Two years gone, and I can still perfectly see that doelike, weepy expression on Olga's face. In hindsight, it's easy to say the Russkies knew what the plague was, and that's why she didn't want to leave. Sergei always denied it was a bioweapon, right up until the day he blew himself out the airlock. And if that's not an admission of guilt, then I don't know what is.
Vlad didn't think it was germ warfare when I asked him about it, but I think that's another one of his weird blind spots. He understands about the cities burning, and the nukes over asia, and the twenty three months of radio silence alright; but he doesn't get the darkness of North America and Europe at night. I mean, he knows about it, but he doesn't get it-- it doesn't stir anything in him. Just like he doesn't get why I have to keep calling him Vlad during transmissions. His real name is Elmer. Whoever heard of a vampire called Elmer?
Day 19. Spent most of the day repairing panel array F. Got a garbled transmit from Houston at about 2230, sounds like most of second shift ground are calling in sick, and there's some kind of rioting going on. The last thing I can make out is something about sealing the Center. Overflying Korea we saw massive fires, it looks like the whole peninsula is burning. Nothing but static on the radio.
Day 20. Houston misses their 0700 morning call. That's never happened before, and I'm none too pleased. Sergei has a hearty chuckle over it, although I'm not sure whether he's laughing more at my uneasiness or at this fresh evidence for what he calls "American softness." "In Russia we have colds and the grip, how you say, the flu. We blow our noses and get back to work". I want to talk to Kate.
Sergei was a fucking asshole. Oh, he was nervous that whole morning, because the news reports had been getting worse and worse for ten days straight, and even in Star City half the regular staff had failed to show up for work the day before. But as long as he could hide behind his bravado and the idea that this was some risk-averse American idiosyncrasy, he was happy to sit on his ass and make jokes.
Day 21. It's the end. Up all night trying to listen in on Sergei's increasingly hysterical exchanges with control in Kazakh, but half of it was too fast to follow and the other half, when I translated it, was too absurd to be true. But once I got the whole story from the guys at Parkes I knew it was the end. If anything, the Ivans erred on the side of skepticism. Last entry. I need to be down there for Kate and the boys.
So much wrong with that page; even the "Last entry" remark turned out to be false. I can't really blame myself, my naive self of seven hundred-odd days ago: I really thought I'd be able to make a difference, to be the savior, the head of family leading them through the darkness to the light. It's pretty clear now I didn't really understand the situation. Anyway, that was before Sergei went catatonic on me and I couldn't get the Soyuz undocked on my own.
For a long time I kept myself sane by using my hatred for Sergei as a focus. If he'd only managed to hold it together enough to help evacuate the station right away, everything would have been different. But he just lay huddled in a torpor. I got right down into his face and screamed at him from an inch away, but he didn't even blink. He didn't move or make a sound at all until a few days later, when a strangely guttural, lisping voice hailed us in Russian. Despite the speech impediments, I was able to catch most of the message, and the gist of it was that Russia-- and in fact the world-- was under the control of superhuman hemophages, that all the humans unlucky enough not to become vampires had become mindless hulking zombies or lawless bands of freebooting anarchists. Basically the same story I'd gotten from the Aussies, but from a very different point of view. We were to abandon the station and put our talents to use rebuilding society for our vampire masters: if we performed well in these duties we would be permitted to join the ranks of the superhumans ourselves.
I was mentally composing a reply in Russian, something dashing and defiant, in the mold of John Paul Jones or Douglas MacArthur, but I'd only gotten as far as "Get bent, you bloodsucking batfucker," when I heard the airlock alarm, and looked up at the monitor just in time to Sergei lifted out of the hatch in a little cloud of flash-frozen oxygen. I can't say I was sorry to see him go, but it did mean I'd have to give up on my plan to take the Soyuz to Australia, until I figured out how to make it a one-man job.
After that, my journal was my only avenue for venting, but it reads pretty dismally for a long time after the first few weeks. I was dividing my time between staring out at the Earth in a trance, concocting daydreams or nightmares about my family, and sketching out increasingly fantastical escape plans. I never got Houston back on the radio after that last confused babble. The Russian bloodsucker tried calling once or twice a week, but I never answered; after a month or two, he stopped. My only contact was with the Aussies, and their situation was getting increasingly desperate. The most reliable engineer at Parkes was called JP, and every time he gave me the news I was simultaneously relieved and frustrated to be six hundred miles above it all. It didn't help JP's morale that I had become his sole source of news from beyond Oz. He told me about the pockets of human resistance, about the rise of the mindless "headfulls" and their slow extermination, about the terrifying bloodlust of the vampires, and the collapse of society in fire and war. In return, I reported the fires in America, the inky black canopy of smoke covering the mideast, and the way there were no more city lights at night anymore.
One day JP told me they were lighting out in a cargo plane to the South Pole for the austral summer. They thought they'd be safe in the 24-hour daylight, and they'd try to re-establish contact with me from the antennas at the SPIREX facility. The Parkes dish was going to be dynamited to keep the leeches from adding it to their infrastructure. I didn't expect to ever hear from him again.
The station wasn't designed to last without servicing for long. As the weeks ground by, I had to get more and more immersed in the routine tasks of just keeping my environment stable. Sometimes I'd startle awake in the small hours, convinced that a relief crew had just arrived onboard and I was heading home. I can't even read most of the chicken scratch in my journal after about day 250, but at least the writing kept me sane. I had almost given up on the idea of ever streamlining the undocking procedure enough to accomplish it on my own. Only the photo of Kate, Josh and Ethan on the beach on Kaua'i, taken a lifetime ago, kept me from taking Sergei's way out. I never allowed myself to consider the reality that they were in all likelihood either dead or inhuman monsters.
I don't know how many times Vlad tried hailing the station before I realized that his voice was real and not just in my head. It was the southern, good ol' boy twang that made me take notice.
"Space Station Alpha, this is Johnson Flight Center calling, over. Y'all still up there?"
In my haste to reach a com port, I launched myself headlong through a long serviceway and bruised the shit out of my arm.
"Houston, this is Alpha. Eli Barter commanding."
"Doctor Eli Barter?" There was a pause. "Dayum Barter, I'd just about given up waitin' on y'all. Ain't there a rooskie up there name of Tomaschenko?"
"Dead. Equipment malfunction." Something about the unfamiliar voice made me want to keep the truth from him. Everything I could trust told me there was no chance this guy was still human, but it felt so good to hear another living voice that it took all my willpower not to just babble with over a year of stored up words. Carefully modulating my voice, I asked "Who am I speaking to please, and who's Flight?" Another pause, and that told me a lot.
"Well now Barter, the name's Elmer Harris, and I reckon you could say I'm Flight Control, Guidance, Surgeon, and CapCom all in one. I don' mind tellin' ya, we been having a helluva time down here. We're all real glad you're still with us."
"Harris? I gotta say, it hasn't been a real picnic up here either. Now don't take this the wrong way man, but the last I heard from you guys it wasn't looking too good down there. So before we take this any further, you gotta tell me if you're one of us or one of them."
"Shit, Barter, I figured you'd be a little more civil to the first of the new men to give ya a holler. If you knew how much work we been puttin' in down here just for the chance to talk to yer sunriser ass, yuh might be whistlin' a diff'rent tune."
"Well, that answers that question I guess. Okay then, Dracula, I-" he interrupted me before I could launch into my tirade.
"Whoah nelly there Barter, I ain't no Dracula. We ain't monsters, we're blessed, ya know. You just been listenin' to propaganda from the left behind. Shit, boy, ain't no one down here sleepin' in coffins or turnin' into bats. Let's get all that out of the way right now. Now I din' useta hold with evolution, but now that I seen it in action I know better an' I seen just how it works. Now jes' cuz you sunrisers been out-evolved ain't no cause to go spreadin' lies and anarchy. If you were down here you'd see for yourself how them animals got no respect for law 'n order or decency. Your ass is lucky us supers are here to keep things running, otherwise you'd be dead and forgotten up there. We're the civilized ones here anymore."
I have to admit he made a pretty persuasive case, and the thought of a vampire with a big cowboy hat and bolo tie spitting tobacco juice from between his pointy teeth was a congenial one. If I hadn't heard about the bloodlust, the murder and reprisals from JP, I'd have been chomping at the bit to get down there and do my part for the new nocturnal empire. One look at the photo of my boys though, and I knew I couldn't work with these bloodsuckers.
"Yeah, okay Vlad, maybe you're right about that. But what the hell do you want from me, anyway? I'll tell you right now, if you're allergic to sunlight, the last thing you guys are gonna want to do is restart the space program."
All the self-righteous anger was gone from Harris' tone now. I got the feeling he was almost gloating as he answered my question. "Don' you get it, Barter? You're the last one. You're the only man living who ain't become super or a muncher or just been left behind! There was some tribes in the Amazon, some shit like that, they was the last, 'n that was six months ago. We didn't learn nothin' from them, but we can learn from you, boy, and how."
A chill went down my spine and I had visions of some kind of Nazi style medical experimentation. "What are you talking about, Vlad? You think you can talk me down from here by offering me the chance to be your guinea pig?"
"Hell no, boy, you'd have to be dumb as a muncher for that, and you're a regular Einstein, ain't you? Medical physicist. Says so right here on your dossier. Maybe you could fill us in on your spesh-ee-ality down here?"
"Radiation sickness. Cancer therapy."
"A ha." There was a long pause, and I suddenly saw where this was going. "Kinda hard to get society rollin' agin when we gotta work at night all the time. That ol' Sun, well, it's puttin' out radiation somethin' fierce."
"You want me... to work for you? Let me understand this Vlad, you're offering to bring me down in exchange for working out how to keep the Sun from boiling your guts?"
The gloat was back. "That's about the size of it, Barter, but there's a kicker. You ain't so special that we couldn't find someone down here knows just as much as you 'bout that nuke-ular med'cine. But you got twins, boy, and they's left behind."
Between the accent and the pseudo-Christian lingo, it took me a minute to put the pieces together and figure out just what the hell he was talking about.
"Josh and Ethan are alive?"
"And how, boy! Been through it all without a scratch, done their share of zombie-killin' and even daylighted a coupla good supers before we got 'em under lock an' key. They's a credit to yer race, Barter."
"My wife?"
"Well now I don't think I should be lettin' you peek at ALL my cards just yet, boy, not until we feel like we understand each other."
"So put an offer on the table, Vlad."
"Now it's my understandin' that you cain't get off'n that station without some help, an' it's also my understandin' that ya ain't got more'n about ten more weeks of water aboard. Now due to one thing an' another, we ain't in a position to launch no supply ships, but we got some top guys workin' every night on how to solve the solo undock problem with that rooskie capsule you got. You get to work on the daylight problem, and give us the benefit of your expertise, and we'll get you offa that station. You just gotta cooperate with us, play a little ball. You get to see your boys again."
"And Kate?"
"That's the carrot, boy. You gotta show us the goods first. And here's the stick-- you wanna stay up there and die like a fuckin' animal, that ain't no stake through our hearts. We can find another medico like you, and we may be able to pull a pair of identical sunriser twins out of the databases when's we get 'em up 'n runnin' agin. So, jes' go 'head 'n give yerself to the Sun if that's your hankerin'. But... think about yer family, son. We got yer boys alive an' well down here, and let me tell you, in these unsettled times a boy needs his daddy around to teach him what's what and keep all them nasty vampires away. If you catch my drift."
"Oh, I catch it alright, bloodsucker. That's cold-hearted shit. But you're right about the water supply. And you think immunity to your fuckin' disease is genetic, or you wouldn't care about the twins. So let's play ball."
"I knew yuh'd see it our way, Einstein," Elmer practically chortled. I had a sudden view of him as played by M. Emmet Walsh in a Coen brothers film. I was already looking forward to putting a sharpened fencepost through his heart.
"Let me hear the boys."
"Tell me somethin' I don' know 'bout sunlight."
"Nain, Labrador."
"Now what the holy hemoglobin is that s'posed to mean, boy?"
"I'll tell you when I get to talk to the boys." There was a pause. Then, a voice that was so familiar it brought tears to my eyes, but deeper than I remembered.
"My name is Ash, and I am a slave."
That would be Josh. "How's Ethan, kiddo?"
"'Fraid he didn't say every last syllable when he picked up that book, dad. Whole world's full of vampires and zombies now. Sorry 'bout that."
"That's okay, Josh, just keep your boomstick handy and I'll be home for Thanksgiving."
"Uh, dad? We don't do that anymore. Not much to be thankful for."
"Fuck that, I haven't turkey and mashed potatoes in two years up here. When I get home, we're having Thanksgiving, I don't care if it's the middle of August. Tell your mother to make her hunters' stuffing." There were sounds of a scuffle and blows landed, and Nosferatu, King of the Rednecks, got back on the circuit.
"Okay, slick, that's about enough of yer code talkin'. You heard yer kin alive 'n well and now yuh'd best be gettin' to work so's we know we can start plannin' to bring you home."
The transmission cut off. For an hour I sat staring at the nighttime Earth slipping by the window, trying to convince myself it hadn't been a dream. The terminator swept westwards below, land and sea plunged into sudden light. It was a new day. I picked up my journal.
Day 729: Talked to Josh this morning. Houston wants us to work harder. Wrote Elmer's name on a sharpened piece of titanium strut. Home in a week.
User Reviews
Submitted by notyou (user info) at 2005-07-12 17:15:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2005-05-12 17:51:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have just got done reading these all and I have enjoyed them all. Great work everyone, +2's for all!
Submitted by Yankee_In_TX (user info) at 2005-03-16 11:32:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Sorry, I misunderstood "left behind." Not clear it means "group of people who were exposed but immune."
"You're the only man living who ain't become super or a muncher or just been left behind! "
The "1" was because of the writing and story content, not the details.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-03-16 11:06:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Yankee_In_TX (user info) at 2005-03-16 10:43:02 (#)
No complaints, but ONLY because you explained he really ISN'T the last man alive.
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Nowhere in the story did I write that he was. I said he was the last person
not exposed to the virus.
Submitted by Yankee_In_TX (user info) at 2005-03-16 10:43:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No complaints, but ONLY because you explained he really ISN'T the last man alive.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-03-16 10:00:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-03-16 01:51:39 (#)
So, I wander away for five days and NOW you get inspired?
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Well, it was only one day, at the time it was written...
I am the world's shittiest muse.
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Nah, just the most fickle.
The ghost of Calvin Coolidge is the world's shittiest muse.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-03-16 01:51:39 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
So, I wander away for five days and NOW you get inspired?
I am the world's shittiest muse.
Submitted by Dannie (user info) at 2005-03-14 17:33:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-03-14 14:13:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ahhh, Elmer's motivations are making a little more sense, now. It's hard to tell sometimes when a writer posts something that has a logic gap in it -- do they have a plan for that, or did they just miss it? Know what I mean?
Y: The Last Man is actually a comic book. A mysterious virus wipes out every male creature (humans and animals) on Earth except for Yorick, an amateur escape artist and his male rhesus monkey. He spends his time dodging people who want to examine him, Amazon feminists who think God wiped out men for a reason, the ramshackle government, etc. There's a portion in the story where female scientists struggle to safely bring down a space pod that contains two men and one pregnant woman.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-03-14 03:46:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-03-13 12:35:21 (#)
I liked it. Especially the setting and the concept. Reminds me of Y: Last Man on Earth.
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Not familiar with that one-- is it a series, a book, a movie?
However, I didn't like the way you formatted it as a journal entry thing, but then jumped around chronilogically. In Day 2 of his journal, he's commenting on things that didn't happen until 2 years later. That threw me off.
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Yeah, I can see that. The extra spaces between paragraphs there are supposed to indicate the switches back and forth between him reading his journal entries, and his thoughts about those entries, in the present. I probably should have set those off from each other in a clearer format.
Also, Elmer's motivations are suspect. If they really had other people they could access to help them with their problem, why would they go through the INCREDIBLE trouble of rescuing and blackmailing an astronaut? And clearly Vlad is lying, because other stories have "shown" that there are still lots of humans alive years ahead of where your story takes place.
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Yep. He's not a very nice guy. Like you'd expect from someone who has survived a traumatic, life-altering transformation, seen the collapse of his civilization, and been ambitious, talented, and ruthless enough to rise to a position of significant responsibility in the order that rises from the ashes.
Even with lots of himans around-- 1) this story is set in the roughly 2-years on time frame that Jack originally laid out. In the confusion and disorder, Elmer/Vlad and everyone else don't yet have a clear idea of how many survivors/immunes there are, and where they are in the world. But one thing IS certain: that Barter is the ONLY person who hasn't been EXPOSED to the pathogen. And, 2) I don't know if you've ever heard an astronaut speak publicly, or had the chance to meet one in person, but these folks are truly amazing people. It'd be a real feather in a project manager's cap to have one roped into working on his program for him.
Anyway, thanks for the comments!
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2005-03-14 00:57:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this was really good.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-03-13 12:35:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it. Especially the setting and the concept. Reminds me of Y: Last Man on Earth.
However, I didn't like the way you formatted it as a journal entry thing, but then jumped around chronilogically. In Day 2 of his journal, he's commenting on things that didn't happen until 2 years later. That threw me off.
Also, Elmer's motivations are suspect. If they really had other people they could access to help them with their problem, why would they go through the INCREDIBLE trouble of rescuing and blackmailing an astronaut? And clearly Vlad is lying, because other stories have "shown" that there are still lots of humans alive years ahead of where your story takes place.
That being said, I liked the dialogue, especially the vampire cowboy. The juxtaposition is cool and the idea is pretty good.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-03-13 04:28:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-03-12 22:24:24 (#)
No inspiration my delicate white ass. Bastard.
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Heh. It's amazing how your mind wanders when you're
too tired to move, your throat's too sore to talk,
and you have nothing better to do than keep drinking
boiling hot whiskey with lemon and honey.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-03-12 22:24:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You, sir, are a fooking LIAR!!!
No inspiration my delicate white ass. Bastard.
Oh, and this was really really really kickass.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-03-12 16:16:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Coyote posted!
Coyote posted!!!
FUCKIN ASH BABY!!!!
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-03-12 14:54:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Perfect.
And that makes two of you who have done offworld stuff while I'm still trying to crank on out with that setting.
Bastid!
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2005-03-12 14:34:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hell yeah, would like to see how this goes...
Submitted by creep_firebombing (user info) at 2005-03-12 14:12:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Yep.
Submitted by Avals (user info) at 2005-03-12 12:49:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Started off a bit confusing, but I like it all the same.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-03-12 11:47:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Bit long, sorry. Blame it on the cold medicine. Or the whiskey.