Read The Diary of Professor Gilbert Rasher Page 18

knowing she would certainly die. I did go out for a couple of hundred yards and returned a few times. I was motivated by a story about a South Polar expedition that almost made it back to camp. If the camp had realized it they could have brought them in and saved them.

  1.3.2159:

  The storm finally abated. Two more people died, Chuck Bailey and Tam Yung. I went to find the three who went looking for worms. They were frozen solid in a huddle. I brought them back one by one, I knew they would be used for food. Cannibalism is a revolting thought but it meant survival for a bit longer. A serious leak in the roof of our building damaged one of the IBM NF84s beyond repair and damaged the neural downloading machinery. I don't have the will or the parts to repair the downloading machinery. I repaired the roof leak to stop further damage.

  5.20.2159:

  This is the first day this year where the air was modestly warm and there was no wind. The snow on the ground has turned to slush and the street is a small river. Chosen and three others have survived the terrible winter but are not in good health. We have all gone out worming. I do the digging and they paw through the turned dirt to see what they can find. We had pretty good luck today and will have enough extra worms and several egg capsules to restart a worm farm in the greenhouses. I've repaired one greenhouse, started another and am nursing a potato plant. A fragment of potato must have been missed when everyone was starving.

  6.12.2159:

  We have found plenty of worms and termites and we are building up a store for the winter. The health of the remaining four humans has improved and all have gained several pounds. I have been ranging up to 20 miles away to collect materials to repair the buildings and to see whether I could find some seeds. I did find some nasturtium seeds and some wild miner's lettuce growing in shadows which I planted in the greenhouses. The nasturtium flowers taste like radishes and with miner's lettuce makes a good salad. There’s a plant with badly UV burned leaves that might be a squash plant. I transplanted it in the greenhouse to see what it might turn into. We now have two operational greenhouses.

  Everyone, including me, is suffering from depression. No people are threatening us but this last harsh winter has taken away pieces of our life figuratively and literally and we know that all following winters are going to be as harsh or harsher. I thought if we could get enough worms we could make worm jerky and use it as a food cache and travel south.

  I fixed the pump that supplies the water tower. Not sure where the water comes from but it seems potable. Then the pump burned up in the middle of the night when the water supply ran out. The pump is cooled by the water that runs through it. It was supposed to automatically turn off when the source water pressure drops below a certain value. It didn’t. The tank is now half full, I think. Not sure because the pressure gage is erratic. Pump needs replacement but there is none. Not sure what I’m going to do when the tank runs out again.

  6.12.2168:

  It's been exactly nine years since my last entry. I'm still in Pittsburgh. Chosen has died. We ran out of tires for the bicycles so any trip south would be on foot. The nearest radio signal was 500 miles south. At an optimistic 10 miles a day that would be 50 days. We would need at least two months of food and we would need shelter and water on the way. Any path south will have to meander to find intact buildings or caves to get out of the sun during the day. This will add miles to the journey. I don't have high hopes that such a journey can be made by all three remaining humans. They are frail and have other problems. One, Marty Good, has rickets and I was finally able to locate some vitamin C, D and Calcium tablets to treat it but his bones are permanently damaged and walking is painful.

  I plotted several paths south based on old digital maps and gave them to the other two who wanted to venture south on their own. I gave them all our worm jerky and they set off looking like a pair of hikers with a bedroll on their backs. I wished them luck but was not too optimistic; they were in their late sixties and the stresses of life showed.

  I gave each a pistol and some bullets in case they ran into trouble. This still left us with an adequate cache of weapons and ammunition. The ammunition was getting old but would probably still work.

  I turned to Marty, “Looks like it's just you and me.”

  Marty, while still watching the pair fade into the distance, slowly uttered, “Yeah.”

  2.2.2172:

  Marty died today; I'm alone. Wild storm outside; greenhouses and contents destroyed. I will now put myself in standby mode and only wake when something goes wrong. The computer will wake me if there's and interesting radio contact, the sensor net picks up a person near the premises, the roof leaks, a variety of other things go wrong such as the computer failing a self-check or it’s time to do some preventive maintenance.

  5.20.2183

  Replaced a corroded power connector on the remaining IBM NF85-12B computer. Operating normally otherwise.

  4.23.2191

  Today is the 65th anniversary of the launch of the Tillian Star starship to Tillian Five. They should be arriving about now. It's five years in their time frame due to relativistic time dilation. Still five years is a long time for Maggie, the ship’s sentient computer. I worried about her on and off over the years thinking about her isolation during those years. She was isolated from human contact because the rest of the crew was in stasis. She inherited a deep love for humanity but not the experiential memories of humanitarian Gladys White. I had no way of knowing whether the ship kept in contact with anyone on Earth; you need a deep space array for that. I certainly doubt there was any contact after the WR104 event. Everyone on the planet was just fighting for survival after that.

  I reviewed a series of radio messages and decided that the population was still in decline. I wondered whether the human species was doomed. I puttered around fixing a few things and decided to return to my dreamless sleep.

  Long Winters and God’s Militia

  5.30.2200:

  Awoke on the last snowmelt. Equipment still working.

  Several religious groups claiming to be God's chosen ones have come and gone. Paramilitary groups with religious overtones and religious groups with paramilitary overtones are still rampant. The only groups I'm receiving are either religious or paramilitary. There’s no visible government so paramilitary using old military equipment is the only military remaining. By this time, these groups are composed of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who were probably US military personnel. It means that some people are procreating. I received sporadic communications from others but only the military and religious groups have anything resembling scheduled broadcasts.

  7.1.2230:

  Awoke on last of snowmelt this year. Still getting colder. I heard radio reports of several glaciers in Maine and glaciers forming in several other states. The information may not be reliable but given how cold and lengthened winters are here, it is highly believable. Some oil refining is taking place by one of the militias in Oklahoma so some fuel is available for vehicles. You need gold or storable food to purchase it. Their radio message didn’t specify how or exactly where to get the diesel fuel so it was probably for local consumption.

  The computer picked up a radio contact from a mobile unit about 200 miles southwest in Huntington, West Virginia. Clearly, it was a military unit because their message was, “Colonel Roberts, Unit 40 reporting arrival in Huntington. Looks like a very large Tornado ripped through here. You can see a swath two klicks wide. Man on road challenged us with a handgun. Tilly cut him down with a Mak 180. It should only take three days to exhaust all possible sources of tires. Heading south on 23 after that.”

  I was relieved to know they were not coming my way.

  9.1.2230:

  First snow. Spring, summer and fall are now compressed into two months.

  7.3.2260:

  Last snowmelt. Winter has progressed two more days into summer. If I walk a few blocks away, I can still find some snow in dark alleys.

  The largest colony of people
is military and these people think they are chosen by God; militarism and religion, a most dangerous combination. They have overpowered several other smaller groups with a carrot and a stick. The carrot, their ability to improve the day-to-day survival of those who join their group. The stick, death if you don't swear loyalty to the group. They have heavy weapons, mobility and communication and they now cover three states, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.

  I felt I needed to keep an eye on these developments so I was going to come out of hibernation more often. They were making excursions closer to me. They've been to Columbus Ohio and Charleston West Virginia. They've gone as far west as Denver, Colorado. They also have at least one light airplane in use. From the background sound on the radio, it’s a 2088 vintage twin-engine Beechcraft Javelin 4. So far, when they meet any sizable resistance they avoid it. That's likely to change as they get stronger. Many of their messages are now encrypted but the code was easy to break. It's a book code using Gideon's hotel Bible and that’s on our online library. I felt it had to be a book that had wide accessibility and be of interest to them so it had to be either a religious or military book. I have 416 versions of the Bible online and this one was the first one I tried. I also had the