Mercury's Son by Hindmarsh Luke E.T

Author:Hindmarsh, Luke E.T. [Hindmarsh, Luke E.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TLTQ Publishing
Published: 2017-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

†††

Satoshi topped off his flask from the water reclamator and took it over to Valko. He held the unconscious man’s mouth open and dripped water in.

Two days had passed in a blur, as Satoshi had striven to open the bunker. It was futile — Jean must have done something to the door from the outside. Thankfully, the systems within the bunker still had power. There was air recycling, plenty of potable water and he soon located freeze-dried rations, which were, in his opinion, a major improvement in flavour over the foul slop the processors in the Plena produced. Now able to remember good food, he could appreciate just how awful his diet had been for the last fifteen years.

After hours of trying, he’d gained access to the computer systems in the lab — those that had survived his berserkergang — breaking past the streaming data walls of the experiments and accessing the data behind. Old ITF training had proven its worth, though the sophistication of the programming gave him limited control. The research meant nothing to him but he’d found reams of intercepts bearing Plenum data architecture and material of even greater antiquity.

He’d sat through a recording of the last United American President, Esperanza Rosario, giving her final Address to the Nation before the bombs fell, with the aching sense of his own dislocation in time, ‘My fellow Americans. Our worst fears have come true. They have unleashed the Plague to end all plagues upon us. They have turned our technology, our protection against us. There is only one way to stop this. I hope that enough of you survive the coming cataclysm to forgive me, to forgive us for failing you. May I suggest that you pray to God, in whatever way you keep him and hold your family close. I promise you this: our vengeance is already begun. God bless America, God save us all.’

From the date stamp it was clear that her speech had come less than a month after he’d been rendered comatose by his injury in the raid on the Panasian camp, but though he’d never heard the words before, they evoked the time — his time. A place forever lost to him.

Rosario’s speech had sounded off in his ears, her English almost closer to the language of the Remnants than the Anglo-Esperanto of the Plena. When he talked now, it was with words drawn from a dozen languages, shaken together in the closed environments that had kept most of humanity secure. Trapped. Part of him longed for the old divides — the freedom to be different. Rosario had understood the need for the people of the world to be whom they chose to be. She’d known that difference could be strength — a richness in humanity rather than an inevitable cause of division. Freedom begetting freedom. He wondered how her idealism would have reacted to the conformist nightmare of the Plena.

Thinking about her brought back memories of the ITF briefing he’d been given: she’d been a candidate for first UNWG president — joint favourite with Erasmus Fisher himself.

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