Chapter 455 (1/2)
The pavement was cracked and worn, with grass, nature's shocktroop, pushing up between the chunks of ancient asphalt. Bushes were on either side of the road, rustling softly as the quartet passed them despite the still heavy air. The night sky was full of stars, many of which moved unnaturally in silent confirmation that they were man made. The air was thick and heavy, cool and crisp, with the taste of rust and growing green things that left a tang on the tongue. The road led up the side of ancient mountain that was scarred by its past. Massive craters dotted it, where in times past there had been attempts to flatten the mountain or destroy what was inside. All monuments to hubris as the mountain had ignored the attempts in the same way it ignored everything else. Vegetation had pushed into the craters, roots breaking up plasma glass, rock succumbing to root and the freeze-thaw cycle, until the floors and walls of the craters had become dirt.
Here and there the rusted out body of a ground vehicle was in the road, heading away or toward where the road led. Even heavy duty military vehicles at times, the battlesteel armor rusted somehow and crumbling. Skeletons dotted the road, and in some places festooned the bushes. Twice power armor hung in the bushes, the vegetation having managed to get into the interior spaces and wind around the bones in a grotesque parody of a body.
The quartet ignored it all as they trudged up the road.
In the lead was a heavily armored quadruped chassis, bounding forward and back, pausing to bark at bushes or hidden creatures. Pausing now and then to dig at the road, its warsteel claws ripping up the asphalt only for the cracked and faded black stone to repair itself moments later.
The trio following moved more like a gaggle. A slim androgynous man with a bald head and brown skin wearing a jumpsuit with a barcode across the base of his skull and on his forehead and forearms. A heavily muscled man with obvious cybernetic arms and legs, a set of tattoos on the side of his face proclaiming to any who could decipher them who and what he was. The last was a thick bodied matron of noticable endowment who was pretty in a severe way.
They were silent for the most part as they moved up the road, heading for a legendary area that had nearly been forgotten by the universe.
The Face of Crying Anne.
None of them commented on the fact that it wasn't any closer to sunrise than it had been for the long discussions in the parking garage, or the meandering path they had taken out of the city, or the long time they had been walking up the winding road.
According to the maps it should have only been a twelve mile walk. Easily done in a couple of hours.
Instead, they had been walking for nearly one hundred fifty miles and were only now finally getting close.
”You guys really managed to somehow make Earth even worse,” the woman sneered as they turned the corner to head for the final stretch.
”Really?” the slender man asked.
”Dimensional and temporal banding and damage, feral plantlife, a chipmunk that would like nothing more than to jab me in the spine with its stinger and lay eggs in my asshole, all wrapped together in a marvelous shit sandwich stamped 'Earth, Please Come Again' on it,” she sneered.
The heavyset man just gave a grunt.
”Mistakes were made,” the slender one said, shrugging.
”Yeah,” the woman said softly, walking through a skeleton and kicking several of the bones away.
Both of the men took note of the fact that she either didn't notice or didn't care.
”So did you ever meet anyone you didn't hate?” the heavyset man asked.
The woman shrugged. ”My children. That's it. Everyone else was more or less oxygen thieves.”
Both looked at each other then away. The heavyset one was wondering just who had drawn the unlucky straw to be assigned to her as children, the slender one wondered what kind of suicidal masochist decided that the woman would be a good sexual partner and mother to children.
”Oppenhiemer,” she suddenly said. ”I liked him. He was a skinny depressive Communist that if it wasn't for his intellect I would have slit his throat with a broken piece of glass, but I liked him for his intellect anyway,” she was silent for a moment. ”Like me, he needed physics more than friends.”
They were silent as the cracked and damaged parking lot in front of the massive tunnel entrance blocked by a heavy warsteel door.
”That's new,” the woman said.
”It's always been there,” the heavyset man grunted.
”No, it hasn't, Daxin,” the woman sneered, turning and facing him. ”I was here when it was built. The tunnel used to be open on both ends with a curve to help channel and mitigate the overpressure wave of a direct nuclear strike. Having a door there is stupid.”
Daxin just spit off to the side. ”Been there for 8,000 years, right, Dhruv?”
The slender man shrugged. ”Eight thousand years isn't forever, brother,” he looked at the woman. ”Pardon my rudeness, Dee.”
”Bah,” Dee walked toward the door. Laser targeting systems went live, painting her with a grid. It swept over her several times then shrunk down to a single dot between her breasts. ”I don't think it likes me.”
”I thought you'd have clearances,” Dhruv said.
The woman shook her head. ”You've watched too many movies,” she snapped. ”Any codes I had were scoured out of the system before they even put me in cryostasis. Hidden backdoors and access codes that go unrevoked are brain dead pabulum for an audience that needs to be reminded to put their dick back in their pants before zipping up.”
Daxin shook his head, moving up to the door. The grid appeared, scanning over him, then winked out.
”Three for entry,” he said.
The door hissed as the pressure was equalized.
”Great fucking security,” the woman shook her head. ”Three for entry,” she said in a high pitched mocking tone.
”They made us here,” Dhruv said. He stepped forward and the system scanned him. ”They remade him the first time here before dumping him at the arcology in hopes he'd just disappear.”
”Back in my day,” Dee said, looking at Daxin. ”We killed our failures and buried them in a shallow grave in the Mojave Desert.”
”Times change,” Daxin shrugged.
”Yeah, and obviously not for the better,” Dee said. She looked at the quadruped robot, who had pulled a tire off one of the many battered, rusted, and dented vehicles, and was busy chewing on it. ”Your dog looks like a fool with all that metal.”
”Well, the Friend Plague kind of changed everything,” Daxin rumbled. ”What, you don't like dogs?”
The door finally stopped hissing.
”I had a dog when I was a little girl,” Dee said. ”I shared my food with it.”
”What happened to it?” Dhruv asked.
”Arkie dusties ate him during the Dirty Thirties,” Dee said. ”Depression and dust.”
Daxin and Dhruv looked at each other again.
”I left soon afterwards, never looked back,” she said.
The door suddenly gave a loud clack and started to open. Dee moved up to look at it. ”Bolts are thinner than I'd use, spaced too close,” she shook her head. ”Probably material and engineering advances I don't know about.”
She looked down the long tunnel, where lights were finally starting to click on.
”It's a mile to the facility,” she said, starting to walk in.
”What exactly are we here for?” Daxin rumbled. ”I'm not quite clear beyond 'the Case Omaha' you stated. I doubt we'll find a box on a podium with those words written on it.”
Dee snorted as she pulled out her cigarettes. ”The War Operational Planning Response, or WOPR, is more than likely what's handling the Case Omaha. I would have figured it was replaced, but the continuing legends of Prince Whopper, Keeper of the Keys, the Flame Broiler, leads me to believe that its still in operation.”
”What if it's just confused legends? Put there for Temporal Warfare Countermeasures or just when they rebuilt history?” Dhruv asked, sauntering along behind Daxin.
”If this place still exists, unlike China's Lotus City or the Russian's GO-42 it hasn't been turned into a museum,” Dee said. She glanced back as she lit the cigarette. ”Plus, there's going to be certain things here that they won't have.”
”Why?” Dhruv asked. ”Earth is pretty much one unified organization now.”
Again, Dee snorted. ”Because the Hamburger Kingdom is 'MURICA which was America,” she said. ”Not to sound all Nationalistic, but American politicians never met anyone they didn't want to fuck.”
”And they wouldn't reinvent the wheel,” Daxin mused. FIDO came running over and Daxin scratched his petting nerve, making FIDO quiver with glee, shaking the tire in his mouth.
”Not to mention, there's some things that I know were here that they wouldn't want to move. Hell, they probably wouldn't want to admit to having it in there,” Dee said. ”Something that specifically pertains to the two of you.”
”Like what?” Dhruv asked, looking around nervously. He could feel the weight of the mountain pushing down on him.
”You'll see,” Dee smiled. Her smile got wider, showing plenty of teeth. ”Trust me.”
Dhruv's face looked like he bit into a lemon.
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Hours had passed. The hallways had been dimly lit, the polished floors having a feeling of age despite the immaculate highly polished wax. The hallway doors had plates on them that at first were interesting, then just slowly turned into a blur of letters on brown nameplates.
Multiple elevators, all of them with only numbers. Twice instead of a digital panel there had been physical buttons that had to be pressed.
Once Dee had pressed two buttons at the same time.
Finally the door slid open and Dee led them in.
”It was found in Egypt a long time ago. Moved to England, then to the US during the Second World War to ensure that the Nazis never go a hold of it,” Dee said, leading them in. ”Of course, you guys have probably seen these scattered all over the galaxy.”
”What?” Dhruv asked. He felt tired, and was beginning to suspect that Dee had deliberately led them in circles.
Although... looking around, he noticed that the tech was incredibly old. Semiconductor binary computer systems, massive server racks, steel construction.