Charred Earth 1: The House



  Charred Earth Book 1:

  The House

  By TJ Hudson

  Copyright 2013 TJ Hudson

  TJ Hudson's Newsletter

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  Table of Contents

  Memories

  Twenty Five Years Later

  About TJ Hudson

  Other Books by TJ Hudson

  To Monique, Mom and Dad, thank you for all your help and support.

  Charred Earth Book 1:

  The House

  The final, syringe like, piece of metal was removed from the flesh. The body was left to its own survival, finally independent of technological aid.

  The man shivered and his eyes instantly opened wide, taking in the light of the stark white room. After a brief moment he decided to slowly lean up; he was expecting all manner of aches and disorientation after being out for what must have been an extremely long time. He did not know why he knew this, he just knew. Yet, as he leant up, everything was fine; no dizziness, no sluggishness and no pain. He felt great in fact.

  He was lying back in a reclining chair; it was white, soft and made out of a fabric or a plastic. He could not tell, maybe both. As he leant forward the chair moved with him, it read every movement that every part of his body, in contact with the chair, made. He worried for a second that the chair would not let him stand up, that it would follow him everywhere, wrapping around him like a possessive bean bag. But there was no need to worry, it was a docile chair, and as his naked feet touched the warm floor, the chair let them take his weight and find his balance. It then drifted away from his back, and took on the form of a normal, non-jealous chair.

  'Where am I?' he asked aloud to no one in particular. It just felt like the right sort of thing to say in a situation like this.

  'You don't remember?' a voice replied. The reply had come from all around him; a soft gentle voice. So soft he had trouble determining if it belonged to a male or female. Deciding it was more important to find out where the voice was coming from rather than its gender he fished for a reply.

  'Should I?'

  'Well, it was hoped,' followed by a frustrated sigh. The voice was still non-directional, so too the sigh.

  'Okay, where are you? Who are you? What do you want? And if I've forgotten to ask anything else, answer that too,' he asked.

  Well why not? Nothing about the room was giving anything away. It just contained the chair, a table, a hanging globe as a light source and nothing much else. The walls of the room were white. Where they met the floor and the ceiling there was a curve instead of a corner, and traced on the surfaces were various chrome and black lines. He thought these must be the outlines to some sort of doors or windows maybe.

  'Well, you are in the safest place I know. You could say that I am this place... and I want to help you. I feel I should add that you are not to worry, this is not a prison and you are not guilty of anything,' the surrounding voice replied.

  'Can you let me out of this room then? And do you have any clothes?' He was not naked, but like his surroundings, he was minimally dressed: white shorts and a white T-shirt. He was not cold, but still felt exposed. As to the answers, typical he thought, as if anyone gets straight answers in a situation like this.

  A slight hissing sound alerted him to the creation of a door in the wall, just as he had thought, that slid away between a section of black outlines. The door moved behind the wall with a quiet and calming hum, it revealed a smaller room that contained a rack full of clothes. He heard the hissing sound again and another door moved to reveal an additional room. This new room was much larger and seemed to be flooded with natural light.

  After a quick visit to the wardrobe, white trousers and a white shirt felt the most appropriate choice, he headed into the larger room. It was the same style as the previous interiors and also contained a kitchen, dining area, lounge and a further area with tables and chairs. They were all set in a long gently curved hall. As he looked to his left, stretching the entire length of the room was a window. This too curved with the long open plan space and had the same customary black and chrome lines set in to it.

  Upon entering, the first thing he did was head for the window, and was greeted by the view of a forest, an endless forest as far as he could see. The room he was in must have been high up; the forest took up the bottom third of his view and a brilliant blue sky filled the remained. As he walked along the length of the window he felt a strange sensation of the forest moving with him. Eventually he had to ask, 'What's going on?'

  'Just giving you the best view,' came the voice.

  'Well as fantastic as this view is I'd like a little reality please, don't adjust it, just give me what's outside,' and with that he saw the forest again, though this time it was of the trunks of the trees and the forest floor. It did not darken in the room though. As the light dimmed outside, the internal lights raised their ambience.

  'Can I go outside? I mean, is it safe to go outside?' he asked.

  'You're very eager aren't you?'

  'I don't care how eager I am, can I go out? It's very comfortable in here, but that's just about it, it's just comfortable.'

  'I don't know.'

  'What? The omniscient voice doesn't know?'

  'If you have to put it like that: yes. But I can find out, it'll just take me a little while.'

  'I thought I wasn't a prisoner.'

  'You're not, believe it or not I actually want to protect you, please don't go outside until I know.'

  'Well I'm not exactly in a rush to go anywhere, I can wait, though at least tell me what you are, come on.'

  'I'm.... I'm the house, I live in the core of the house, this house you are in now.'

  'And by extension you control all of it, the lights brightened just because of you?'

  'Yep.'

  He decided to end the conversation there, he did not want to antagonise the house, just in case. This allowed him to have a wander around the large internal space and collect his thoughts. There was no panic, fear or anything like that; which he thought he should be feeling. Instead there was just a nagging sense of being puzzled or inconvenienced, or both. He could not tell; his feelings did not feel like, well, feelings. I can think, and I'm thinking in the same language I talk in, he thought to himself. As far as what he could think, that only went back a few minutes. All of his memories consisted of what had just happened. What he did note was that he instantly recognised everything he saw, he knew instantly what the kitchen was when he saw it and the same for the forest.

  He walked over to the kitchen, opened a cupboard and pulled out a pan, to test a theory. As soon as he touched the pan and thought about it, he knew what it was for. Even basic recipes that used such a pan started to trickle into his mind. This just increased the mystery, he was still no closer to being scared or nervous, instead just casually inquisitive with an itch of a puzzle.

  Then the idea popped into his head, he would walk to the window and stare intently at his reflection and find out who he was.

  He stared and kept staring, gazing into his own eyes hoping for a spark of recognition to come, but there was nothing. Just the realisation that he was staring at a clothed male human, with dark brown hair, brown eyes, athletic build and height to match. He was in his early forties or so, but other than that, nothing. There was no name or memories from before waking up in the chair. He smiled, then frowned and continued to make all manner of expressions
at the window, instantly knowing what emotions they all symbolised, but none triggered a hint of who he was.

  'You can stop being silly now, it's safe to go outside,' came the voice of the house.

  'I'm not being silly, I'm experimenting, I can't remember who I am.'

  'You and me both.'

  'What?' He was genuinely surprised at this, and for the first time a little nervous, perhaps scared even, 'You're in control of everything here and you don't know what you are?'

  'No, I know perfectly well what I am, I don't know who I am.

  'Though a name has been literally etched into my memory. Someone or something has physically left the name in my memory. Not as part of my internal pathways, but externally, I worked it out from the absence of data.'

  'Go on.'

  'By being able to identify several damaged layers which I cannot read information from, I have determined the size and shape of a series of...'

  'No no no, I mean the name, what is the name?'

  'Charlotte.'

  'Well hello then, Charlotte.'

  'What makes you say that?'

  'One of us should at least have a name, and a woman's name can't exactly be used for me, so take it, be my guest. We're stuck in this odd situation together, might as well make it easier for the both of us. Unless there is someone else around?'

  'No, we appear to be quite alone, well as far as I can sense. Anyway, thank you, I quite like the name Charlotte, what shall I call you?'

  'Char. I can't think of any other names, though I know there must be many. Between us I think we can handle two variations of the same name. Right then, open the window, let me have a wander outside please.'

  He watched as a section of window slid down into the floor, then he walked over to the gap and stepped through the threshold. It was cooler outside but not uncomfortably so. He noticed it most under his still naked feet. He was stood on a narrow balcony that ran around the side of the building. Then the breeze came. A gentle gust of wind; it brought with it scents and smells of the forest. Char caught a hint of them as he was taking a breath and could not help himself take the air in deeper. A thousand different sensations fired his synapses: leaves, bark, fur, the various stages of decay from the forest floor, aromas of flowers and many more, all hitting him at the same time.

  'Wow,' he allowed himself to simply say.

  After a couple of minutes taking the scents in and savouring them, their impact and novelty started to wear off. He walked to the balcony's edge and stepped on to grass. This sent shivers of sensation up his legs and spine, again he spent a few minutes enjoying this experience. He walked around, curling his toes, enjoying the difference in texture and slight dampness of the grass.

  The logical part of his brain, which he realised he had pretty much only been using until he stepped outside, came to the fore once more. These were not new sensations, he knew what they were and was sure his body had experienced them before, just not in a very long time, maybe even since childhood.

  He walked a bit further away from the house and stared back. It curved away from him in all directions like a stretched out dome; it was hard to tell how far it went on for, or how big it was. The grass followed the contour of the house. He walked up and down the length of the curved hall's window. At some points, there was only a few feet of grass between the house and the forest. He looked through the trees; there appeared to be small clearings of short grass and meadows, there was no set pattern or order to the layout, nature had been left to be.

  After taking in the exterior of the house, Char wondered more about what was going on inside. Charlotte appeared to be friendly and entirely non-threatening, which was a very strange thought to be having about a house of all things. What did worry him was that Charlotte seemed to be suffering from some form of amnesia too. The fact she (why not 'she'? Her name is Charlotte) controlled everything in there meant he could not help thinking something very important with regards to his safety could be or had been forgotten.

  Char went back inside, 'Leave the window open please,' he stated rather than asked.

  He had not realised (he could not have realised) how odourless, still, warm and bland the air inside the house had been. The extra sensations were not something he was going to let go of right now. He decided to go all in with his next line of conversation.

  'Okay then, give me everything you've got, what do you know and what do you think is going on? We might as well work together on this, no point holding anything back.'

  The house replied, 'I woke up. I woke up and here I was, all-powerful over this little dominion, with no knowledge of who I was. I searched inside myself and found out all the what’s but no whys. It was during this time I found you connected to me. I had been keeping you alive, you were in some sort of suspended animation, your life ticking over just enough to survive. I studied you and studied your surroundings and decided to have you join me, so you too woke up.'

  They continued to exchange their experiences, which turned out to be extremely similar. Both knew what everything was, what it was for and how to use it, but neither had any memories before their waking. This led them to consider what was beyond the house, wondering if something out there had any answers to their strange existence.

  'I can't sense more than ten to twenty metres outside, it varies, but nothing has struck me as being particularly dangerous. I'm more bothered by the fact I should be able to actively sense a whole lot further away. Just looking out across the tree tops isn't enough.

  'I am connected to various types of cables and wires that run away from me, arranged in such a way that they were part of a bigger network, but they are all either severed or too damaged to work properly. I also have aerials and satellite dishes on my roof; most of these work but I can't find anything in the sky for them to talk to,' Charlotte informed Char.

  'Well there's one thing for it, I will have to go on a little walk, have a nice stroll, that sort of thing.'

  'Wait! No, don't risk it, we have no idea what's beyond my senses.'

  'Don't worry, I didn't mean now, we'll wait, take in what we can see, observe and hopefully I can get some more suitable clothes, and maybe something for my feet.

  'Bit of an over reaction just then don't you think?'

  'I just have this overwhelming urge to protect you, no matter what,' Charlotte said, for the first time the voice was softer and slightly more feminine.

  The sun and the moon passed over the sky three times each before Char set out on his first journey, they both recalled this as being three days. During this time he had familiarised himself with the house and its immediate surroundings. He did not go out of Charlotte's sense range and only ventured out under sunlight; the dark of the night unsettled him greatly. He had cooked food from frozen vacuum sealed packets, slept in the chair he woke up in and learnt more about the operations of the house.

  It was entirely self sustainable, it recycled its water, harvested rain if extra was required, had multiple sources of power: solar panels, wind turbines, ground source heat and even an underground thorium nuclear micro reactor. The house also had equipment to make Char quite prepared for his journey too: various clothes for different conditions that easily packed tightly down into a rucksack, a water bottle that purified water, binoculars with different vision modes and electronic navigation equipment amongst other hand items. There was even a weapon; it was a gun capable of acting as an electronic stun gun, an automatic projectile pistol and a highly focused tight beam laser. He wished he did not have to find out if it was effective or easy to use, there was no desire for violence but he felt comfortable and at ease knowing it would be with him.

  The only issue was food. There was enough in the house for about six months of careful eating. It did not satisfy his hunger or taste. The vacuum sealed packets were brittle and broke easily to the touch, this forced Char to spend long amounts of time picking bits of plastic out of the dreadful and barely edible food. It tasted disgusting and he felt it was n
ot doing his body any good. So far the forest had not presented any edible alternatives, which provided another reason to venture further out into it.

  On the dawn of the fourth day he set off. They had not figured out a particular destination to aim for. Even though Charlotte had sensors just above the tree line, they were purely visual with limited magnification. They could see the forest wrapped around the house and led off to the horizon in every direction. There were various patches and clearings in the forest, but none were of substantial size. The same went for hills; all gentle and rolling. So, he just stepped off the balcony, onto the grass and off into the forest. As he went he used a type of small electronic compass in conjunction with small sensors he laid down every half mile, these acted as Waypoints for navigation.

  Every so often Char caught himself standing on the spot, taking in his surroundings; whether it was standing in a ray from the sun, that had broken through the canopy above, or listening to bird song. He had not gone far when he first heard a bird's chorus, it caused him to freeze, not out of fright, but of a sudden unexpected joy. He had soon recognised the sound and smiled to himself. It was as if bird song had been something he had read about, studied and analysed the data of, knowing every detail. But to hear it was like entering another world, opening yet more parts of his mind.

  He would also catch glimpses of or briefly hear animals in the distance as they flitted in and out of various meadows and clearings in the forest. They all appeared to be grazing animals of some species or other: deer, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and others that only gave a hint of their shape in the shadows.

  With only three electronic Waypoints left, he noticed, at the very limits of his vision, a group of animals all moving in one direction. There was intent to their movement, he naturally had to go closer to find out why. As he neared he realised it was a flock of sheep. What was drawing them, faint at first but getting clearer as he walked the same direction as the sheep, was the sound of chimes. They had a metallic sound, with no particular rhythm or pattern to them, and he could not yet see their source.