Charred Earth 1: The House Read online

  'I don't want to get any authorities involved right now. We'll talk to them another day. I just want some time with you first,' she let him know.

  They walked together in a comfortable silence to the edge of the forest, 'Sorry, I have to ask. You promise you'll come back?' She looked at Char, smiling but with eyes glistening on the edge of tears in the starlight.

  'Yes, I promise, because Glen wants to, and right now I need Glen as much as possible.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last Waypoint marker; a small silver ball with a strip of translucent plastic around its equator, 'Here, take this, keep it, then I'll always be able to find you.' Part of him scoffed at this, internally laughing at himself. Oh how heart felt, what trite sentimentality. He grimaced.

  'Are you okay?'

  'Yes, yes I'm fine, in fact I really should head off now, I'm okay from here.' With that he gave her the Waypoint and was off.

  The anger was winning. He had been fighting with it until he reached the clearing where he had met Eliza. Out in the open he decided to look up at the stars and take in their awe, to calm himself in the face of eternity. There was only resentment. The longer he stared the more resentment he felt towards them and whatever else was out there; this was not helping. Looking straight ahead he picked up his pace to get back to Charlotte, his anger a rage now. It was cold and clinical, he applied it to his thoughts, racing through simulations and outcomes, working out what he was and what Charlotte had done to him.

  When he reached Charlotte he stormed in through the open window. There was no greeting from her.

  'What did you do to me? To this body!' He raged at the house in general, not knowing where to focus his anger.

  'Yes, I know, I think I've done something bad,' no emotion in her voice.

  'You think, you think?' still the rage.

  'Well, I've been exploring too, while you've been away. I've made more connections, repairing conduits to the outside, talked to more satellites.'

  'Oh well done you.'

  'And I've found certain things out; I think we've made the same discoveries.'

  'Yes, how you raped the mind of this body and put something else in it... Me! I'm some sort of construct installed by you. Going to send me off to the humans, get more samples for your experiments? But it went wrong didn't it? Glen didn't fully erase did he? He fought back!'

  'No, well, yes, but mostly no. I don't want to experiment on anyone. I never would, I wasn't built for that. But I think I did lure him here to create you, then something went wrong.'

  'Good!'

  'No. It isn't good, none of this is good. Not good for you and not good for me. I don't think I was intended to do something like that.'

  'But you did it anyway.'

  'Yes, I'm so sorry. I'm afraid I might be dangerous.'

  'You and me too, but at least Glen will save me from a life of worrying what I might do. I'll bring him back, I don't know what it will do to me or him or what, but I owe him that.'

  'I'm sorry but Glen is gone, your mind is operating on the template of his brain, you may feel echoes of his existence, but that is all.'

  'Well undo it, put me back where I came from and give Glen his mind and body back.'

  'I can't do that, there is nowhere for you to go. I could try deleting you from his mind and see what happens then.'

  A pause. Char's mind raced.

  Charlotte carried on, 'But no, you don't want that do you, even with everything that's happened to Glen. You don't want to go, don't want to die, you still want to be alive at all costs. I have the same desire to live, no matter what.'

  Char's anger diffused, he knew Charlotte was telling the truth. That quick, logical, analytical part of his mind came to the fore once more. How could she know him this well? He knew who he was; he might be young of mind and in someone else's brain, but he was Char, he was... He was Charlotte? He dropped his head and fell to his knees.

  The rage returned, 'You evil thing! You got bored so you went and found a human, poured yourself into his body so you could have a wander about!'

  'Enough!' Char never thought Charlotte could get so loud. The vibrations in the air went right through his skull. There was a synthetic element to her shout.

  Charlotte carried on, quieter now, 'You are wrong, I can't explain it, I don't have all the answers but I think I might know how we can get them.'

  Feeling numb and drained Char simply said, 'Go on.'

  'A house like me does not just exist with a mind like mine. I had to come from somewhere. There is a compartment I can't access by myself. One of my main memory cores is in there and it's only operating at it's most basic level. I've known about it since I first woke, I couldn't work out exactly where it was to start with, or maybe I didn't want to. Open it for me.'

  A blue holographic arrow erupted in front of Char's face. He got up and followed it to a section of wall. The arrow melted into the wall and morphed into an outline.

  'Cut along the outline with the energy beam set at 30%,' Charlotte smoothly asked. Char did as he was told with a certain disconnect from the world around him. Once he completed the task the new panel fell towards him landing with quite a thud. The material of the house was far heavier and denser than it originally appeared. There was a room on the other side, he felt the air from it waft out with the panel - it was stale and had a metallic tang to it. Char stepped through the threshold.

  Lights flickered on as he entered revealing a scene that at once appalled him and drove an intense sense of curiosity. In the small room was a corpse, female and every part of its surface had been burnt black. He felt sick, but still bent down to look closer at it. As he did so a cable dropped down just outside the room behind Char's back. It hung loose for a second then, like it was being pulled along by an invisible piece of string, the end of it started moving into the newly discovered room.

  'Plug me in please,' Charlotte asked.

  Broken from his trance of studying the corpse, Char spun round and contemplated the end of the cable hovering in front of his face. It hinted at feelings that it was a snake that would strike out and bite him. For a while he just stared at it, at Charlotte. She did not say anything. It felt to him as if hours had passed in those few seconds but he eventually reached up, grabbed the cable and asked, 'So where do I put you?'

  'There should be some black lines embedded in the wall like everywhere else. Just put the end of the cable to one of the lines. Most of that room is cut off from me, the cable will give me access to it; to its sensors and hopefully the rest of the memory core.' Char picked a line at random and placed the cable to it, it snagged and instantly went rigid.

  'Oh,' emitted from Charlotte as she brought internal sensors online in the room.

  'Yep. You think that used to be us?' replied Char.

  'Could well be. Look at the wall behind you.'

  Char had not taken much more in than the corpse, but now his attention was focused he was a little disappointed at himself for not noticing what was in front of his eyes. The name Charlotte was scorched into the wall and below it another blast mark started under the C. It traced a line most of the way down to the floor.

  A whirring started, followed by a gentle humming, 'I've got it, the rest of the core is coming back to me,' Charlotte excitedly stated.

  Before Charlotte had even finished her sentence a holographic image popped into the air in front of the name burned into the wall. The head and shoulders of a woman were floating in front of Char's face. She had blonde hair and looked to be in her thirties, but the eyes seemed older. She was smiling at him and kept occasionally winking. The smile was photogenic and beaming bright, but the wink was the polar opposite, it struck an ice cold fear into him. But before he could think or react any further: he remembered.

  Memories - 14,025 Years Earlier

  They took the stealth scout jet in fast, leaving rapid deceleration to the absolute last moment. It did not do any long term good for their jet or even their bodies, but they were
in a desperate rush; the world was falling to pieces around them.

  They brought the hovering jet down vertically, landing at the edge of a long deserted village surrounded by fields. The two figures removed their flight gear, jumped out of the cockpit, landed in mud and made their way to the middle of the nearest field.

  'You sure it's here?' shouted one figure to the other, making their voice heard over the lashing rain and the dull thuds of bombardment in the distance.

  'Stupid question,' was the only response. This was the fourth stop on their special mission and she had been exactly correct so far. The advantages of keeping the lieutenant around were starting to look rather weak in the face of having to put up with the junior officer.

  She checked some details on her wrist computer then held out her right hand. She pointed her index finger and middle finger out, palm facing down. A small bead of light formed in the area under the end of the out-stretched fingers and she swiped horizontally in the air from left to right, dropped her hand and took a step back.

  A second passed then a large clearly defined section of the ground in front of them silently sank down, stopped, and split into two sections that then slid apart. As this was happening she turned to the lieutenant with a look that said no further debate necessary.

  The cavern that had been created was only dark for a short amount of time. Lights came on and a smooth white structure started to rise from within. She tapped a couple of buttons on her wrist and the lights went out.

  The two figures stood staring at the structure; that in fourteen thousand and twenty fives years would call itself Charlotte. The figure, who was obviously in charge, walked up to a section of wall, placed a hand on it, waited for a door to appear and open, then headed inside. The lieutenant stood guard outside.

  It was not all of the high powered corporate, government and military hardware and software being flung about the planet with abandon that worried them. They had taken every precautionary stealth measure they could think of and even then they would be regarded as an insignificant speck of a target if they were detected. Though, the lieutenant thought that if their purpose was discovered then everyone and everything would be after them. No, it was inquisitive locals, guerrillas, insurgents, rogue robots, hybrids and everything in between; which was not part of one of the warring titanic entities (societies, governments; or whatever they had turned into now that their masters had left them), that worried the two figures. That was why the lieutenant had to guard the outside, gun at the ready, like a soldier from ancient times.

  The lieutenant was not having it this time. Her suspicions had started as early as the second stop on their so called special mission. They both knew it was not a true official mission. They were, after all, the ones who had set it in motion. They had acted very early, as soon as it was obvious that the last transport ship had left Earth, there were going to be no more transport ships and no one would come back to get them. They were going to re-instate a hidden mothballed rocket, escape the Earth in it, catch up to and board the last transport.

  They would have to fly around the world collecting specific components and software; she thought these locations would all be at old government military installations. Her superior officer said it was a plan she had been working on for a while; as soon as she thought she knew which way the wind was blowing in regards to selection for the last transport ship, in fact.

  However, the lieutenant could not understand why a private, commercial factory would hold launch keys for a secret extra-orbital class rocket. The factory had been the second stop. It used to produce top of the line holo-displays and housed the parent corporation's tertiary headquarters, complete with an executive class bunker.

  She knew enough about the politics of recent decades to know that there was no way a private company's launch keys would be left somewhere like the empty factory, especially after it had been abandoned. Any worthwhile executive or worker with the right skills had already been taken off world. Those left were either making their own grabs for power or just trying to survive. Any form or part of a corporate launch mechanism would have already been used or be under intense security. Her superior, Lieutenant Commander Cheno, had insisted that a so called abandoned factory was a form of security in its own right, but Lieutenant Saville could not help thinking that the global situation was past such bluffs.

  The factory's executive bunker on the other hand would still function, sheltering anyone from humanity's destructive convulsions. There were very few who remained on Earth who would be able to enter it, and those few who could, would already be in larger and better equipped bunkers. But someone clever, with access to certain military equipment, could access the bunker and use it to see out the worst of the wars.

  Saville feared briefly that she had been abandoned by Cheno outside the factory when she realised Cheno had gone into the executive bunker and closed the door behind her. Saville had refused to let this panic her, instead she continued to guard the entrance. Back then, guarding the factory, she had still bought the story of the special mission's details, aims and objectives that were briefed to her by Cheno.

  Twenty minutes later Cheno had reappeared holding a small grey cube, 'Got them,' she said brightly, smiling at Saville as they left the factory complex.

  Now though, standing outside the deserted village, Saville was not buying the special mission any more. The launch keys were a decoy and she wanted to find out what was really going on.

  Standing outside the house Saville took one last visual sweep of the empty fields and crept in silently. The house was obviously another type of executive safe house. Not an old military installation; enough was enough, she was going to find out what was going on.

  There were no lights on. Saville stilled herself listening for anything. There was no sound, not even from the rain outside, even though the door behind her was still open. She decided to turn on her weapon's light and scan the interior with it. There were seating areas and a kitchen, nothing of particular significance.

  She called out softly, 'Charlotte?' A gentle blue glow lit up at the end of the room. Saville approached it cautiously then relaxed when she saw that it was a holographic arrow pointing to a glowing blue button in the wall. She pressed it and a door slid open. Inside was a smaller room that contained Lieutenant Commander Charlotte Cheno lying back in a chair. She was hooked up to the house's medical equipment. At any other time Saville would have assumed Cheno was undergoing emergency brain surgery, however, knowing Cheno had been fit as a fiddle just minutes earlier she consulted the medical screens. She only had to take in the general details on the screen for her to pull back and run out of the room; shutting it off behind her as soon as she realised what Cheno was up to. She knew she could not interfere directly, the house's security would stop that, but she could create some inhibiting after effects.

  As instructed the house guided her to one of the processor rooms. Kill two birds with one stone she thought. A warning and a bit of destruction at the same time; then, she would run outside, stand guard and on Charlotte's return worry then about taking her out; maybe at the next stop. Saville pointed her weapon at the wall, knowing layers of important circuits were right behind it. She set the weapon to a concentrated beam and fired. She managed to write out the first word, Charlotte's name, and was just starting the second when pain erupted in her ribs. She had been shot. She fell to her side trying to turn but it was no use. The stun discharge was gradually paralysing the rest of her body.

  'Upload process a fair bit faster in a top of the line safe house like this. Oh, and I'm not going to let you live Maria, I just wanted you to see the face of the person who is victorious over you,' and with that Lieutenant Commander Charlotte Cheno raised her weapon and incinerated Lieutenant Maria Saville.

  Well, Cheno thought, no great loss there, bit frustrating though. She turned to look at the damage. Well, this won't be much use any time soon, it can be one of the longer ones. I should help with memory recollection t
hough. Charlotte Cheno snapped a small device off her wrist computer and held it out at arms length in front of her face. She smiled and winked at it as she took a holo-picture, then clipped it back onto her wrist and typed in some instructions.

  'Oh you're so beautiful, as always,' she said to no one in particular as she tapped away.

  Back outside she sent the house back underground for its long slumber and climbed into the jet. She closed the cockpit and looked up into the sky. She could only see the rain splattering onto the glass, though occasionally distant explosions illuminated the clouds above. The explosions did not worry her, the world may have been falling apart but there were no nukes left; they had all been taken by the bastards who left her here. She let her mind wander: seven hundred and thirty one years since humanity put a man in space and here we are, the day the people of Earth went back to square one; well if those that left dare to return to this planet I'll fucking show them.

  Fourteen Thousand Years Later

  A kind, compassionate young adult called Glen tests out this awesome bed sort of thing in this weird, but really cool, building that he has oddly enough been making friends with these past few days.

  'It's all a big secret, can't have any authorities involved, they're bound to do experiments, and we know what that means. Authorities never do nice experiments. Some things never change,' well, that's what the building told him.

  Anyway, Glen is finding the bed, or chair, amazing, it moulds and responds to his touch, 'Gwen would love it.' He decides to lie back and then it grabs him and pierces the base of his skull with a length of metal.

  However, the process does not go quite according to plan.

  Twenty Five Years Later

  'Get rid of that image,' Char insisted, then wanted to recoil from within his own body, thinking, that had sounded too much like an order.

  'Yes, I quite agree, I'm trying,' Charlotte responded, a hint of desperation in her voice.