Earthborn
Emergence
Dominik P. Offermann
Copyright Dominik P. Offermann
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Earthborn - Emergence
Social networking sites are of the age of my grandparents. A relic of a bygone age. The worldwide crisis which started two weeks ago now leaves me little other choice. I want, no, I need to contact my closest friend. I haphazardly drag the cursor with a movement of my hand, a way to communicate with computers and machines so unfamiliar I feel like a clown. I fill in the required fields.
Name: Gil Tungsten
Age: 38
Married to: Kathrin Tungsten
I wonder what use there is in writing down my family information when we stand at the brink of the apocalypse. Normally I would contact my friend, Emily Anderson, by meeting her within a holo-space on the Quantumnet. A place where we could see each other, where when we touch each other, the Quantumnet would make our brains believe we were really there, even if we stood thousands of kilometers apart.
In the last two weeks however, civil bandwidth use has been restricted to about 1 percent, just so that Artificial Intelligence constructs can use every byte of free space and processing power on each computer on the Earth to hold back a threat bound on our destruction. If not for the United Earth Government, the UEG, this could be the last day on earth, but thankfully we still have aces up our sleeves.
"Emily, I hope you get this. Kathrin and I will come meet you at your workplace." I type down before pressing the 'send' button.
"How could people ever live with such primitive software?" I think to myself.
After sending my message to Emily through my newly created social site I rise from my comfortable office chair. My holodesk instantly turns off. I stride over the self cleaning carpet and peer through the wide apartment windows, swallowing dryly.
Out there, about 60 meters above the ground, floats a pilgrim class cruiser. A spacecraft almost 2km long and several hundred meters wide and high. I have never seen one so close, the many tubes and compartments it assembles from melting together behind huge metal plates rotating slowly but steadily around the entirety of its massive body. I know that they serve to stabilize the gravity isolation field around one of mankind's latest technological miracles. However it is not the presence of the craft which causes the unusual feeling of worry surging up within me.
After all those machines are the only thing keeping the dark fog, emerging everywhere on this world, from consuming everything humanity rebuild and improved in the last century.
My wife, Kathrin, approaches me from behind and lays her hand on my shoulder. She has long brown hair tied in a beautiful lofty braid kept in place with the help of gravity isolation clips. Her skin is mesmerizing and perfect, like that of every human being since the reformation under the UEG. Her brown eyes are small, lined with thin brows. I have never seen them express the fear I see within them now. Feelings humanity thought it had overcome and surely abolished by uniting all humans on earth and solving the most difficult of problems we faced until now.
"Have you been able to learn anything about this dark fog?" She says.
"No. No one knows where it came from. If they knew, the UEG would tell us. Politics aren't governed by secrecy anymore." I say.
"So this means there really is no turning back? We have to decide?" She says.
"I'm afraid so, love." I mumble.
The choice Kathrin refers to is of course the one the UEG arranged for every citizen on Earth with the help of the AI constructs now protecting us. Our aces prepared within the two weeks since the dark fog emerged, ever since attempting to pierce through the gravity isolation barriers erected by the cruisers. We can either go board the Exodus fleet, leaving the planet we have been born on behind us and hope to find a new home within the endless realm of space, or hide beneath the surface in one of the thousands of autonomous containment installations called Sleeper shelters.
"Maybe we should leave with the Exodus fleet, we don't even know if the black fog can get into the underground shelters. I know that they have no clue where to go, but anywhere away from this darkness would be better than here, right?" Kathrin says.
I shake my head.
"I want... no I need to talk to Emily. She has volunteered to help oversee the machines setting up the projects. She must know what to do." I say.
"So you value her opinion over mine?" Kathrin says.
"In this matter, yes. She has a better understanding of the subject at hand. While you are better experienced at being my wife." I say, before I kiss her.
"Fine. But how are we going to meet this friend of yours?" She says after a long pause, staring me in the eyes.
"I already plotted a path into my mobile module. Let's go." I say.
I concentrate my thoughts to my mobile module, a small white plastic device attached to my ear. I think my way through the menus of the hologram displayed over my eye as Kathrin and I leave our apartment and board a car. Whatever choice we will make, leaving earth behind or going beneath the surface, our belongings do not matter. Both projects have been arranged to provide living conditions for humans, but are primarily concerned in trying to advance humanity through time itself. The reasons for this is the dark fog, resisting every technology humanity has attempted to apply against it.
In the first few days, the cruisers shot their impressive energy weapons at the emerging fog, but this only slowed it down. It always reassembled after being attacked, as if from nothing, restarting to consume whatever it touched. The gravity isolation barriers are the only thing able of keeping the dark fog in place, but even that will not hold it back forever. The fog seems to learn from its mistakes, becomes immune to the gravity isolation, requiring the AI constructs to remodulate the frequencies of those barriers. As there is only a limited range of those frequencies available, humanity had two weeks to come up with a solution. This was two weeks ago and the almighty Quantumnet, capable of bringing forth artificial intelligence, was unable to come up with any answers. This is why we have no other option, why humanity has to gain time to solve this problem. A solution we would be unable to obtain if not for gravity isolation once again, the greatest invention since the discovery of electricity itself.
By applying gravity isolation on humans themselves we will slow our bodies down, become frozen in time itself. We will sleep for as long as it takes for the artificial intelligences to come up with a solution, for a way to destroy the dark fog. The only question remaining for me and my wife is where we want to lay down for this longest of all nights. Upon a spacecraft carrying us away from Earth in case the dark fog can't be stopped and make us part of humanity to start over from the beginning on a new planet if they ever find one, or those who valiantly stay on the planet they were born on.
The public car we entered quickly lifts of the ground in its own gravity isolation bubble and zips past the tall concrete towers, clad in pristine reflective glass. Those that have not yet been consumed by the strange dark fog. As vehicles no longer require a driver to steer I look at the large hologram of our surroundings projected within the cabin around us.
There it is, our enemy, swirling through the streets, shattering through windows and flowing out of others, steel, plastic, glass, yes even the bodies of dead people being melted down to nothing as the fog passes over. All it leaves behind is bare concrete. If not for the AIs using the cruisers to isolate this strange plague for 2 weeks now, we would all be dead already. I wonder what would happen if we didn't have all this advanced technology to keep us safe and now plot for our survival. Then I wonder if the dark fog would even have e
merged if not for technology itself. I wonder where it came from.
Our vehicle takes us to an open military compound, yet there are no longer any soldiers or weapons garrisoned here. Were we too naive to celebrate the 100th anniversary of global peace and start disarming most of the world?
We land on the compound and Emily is already waiting for us. She waves at me as I exit the car, followed by my wife. I know Emily since education, meeting her within a holospace while I learned about quantum entanglement at the age of twelve. Children no longer need to go to school, instead learning everything from home thought the Quantumnet and choosing who they want to meet and how they want to meet them.
Emily is slightly older than my wife, has long blond hair going down almost to her hips and almond shaped inquisitive eyes. Her brows are almost invisible, her mouth wide yet thin, her nose long with a bump along the bridge. She wears a long white coat.
"I'm so glad you came, Gil. I have decided to stay on Earth." Emily says bluntly.
"Are you sure it's safe? Are you sure nothing will happen to us if we stay?" I say.
"I helped design this shelters. What kind of confidence would I inspire if I left?."
"My husband seems to put lots of faith in your abilities. I hope he is right." Kathrin says.
"I know this is the worst of circumstances, but it's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Tungsten." Emily says.
"Thanks. I guess." Kathrin answers.
"So are those suspended animation chambers we will be placed in free of side effects?" I ask.
" Don't worry this things have been tested. Volunteers slept within them for twenty years without ill effect." Emily says.
"Well at least they did wake up." I say.
"They are programmed to keep people sleeping for as long as the dark fog is around. Even if the cylinders have to wake you up, the shelters themselves are equipped with everything to keep thousands of people alive indefinitely beneath the surface. The dark fog can't reach us. There is nothing that could cause us harm." Emily says.
"So what if the dark fog can't be stopped? We will just live beneath the surface until we die?" Kathrin says.
"Oh it's worse than that. The Quantumnet is not accessible from within a sleeper shelter and you have to leave your mobile modules and any other electronic device outside for security reasons." Emily says with a sarcastic smile.
"Well maybe it's better than flying out to space without really knowing where to go. I don't envy the Exodus fleet now that I think about it." I say.
"True. Here at least we know what we have. We still stand upon the Earth. No one can take that away from us." Emily says.
We follow Emily and the others who decided to stay on Earth to the containment units of the infirmary within the sleeper shelter. They are barely large enough to fit a single person, lined up along the metal and plastic clad walls. My name is displayed on the cylinder assigned to me, printed onto it by nanobots the moment me and my wife made the decision to stay on Earth. This is why her cylinder is on the wall just opposite to mine, family staying close together. I take a long look at Kathrin, her eyes displaying the fear I feel inside me. I wonder if I would ever see her again after I close my eyes within this cylinder and let the gravity isolation bubble freeze my biological processes within time itself.
I try to arrange myself in a comfortable manner before the shutter of the cylinder seals tightly, wondering if that could prevent me from getting muscle aches after I wake up. I rub my head against the soft pillow beneath it and seal my eyes. I do not know when or how the process starts, but all eventually fades to black.
~ ~
I awaken. I feel fear rushing through me. I don't recognize my surroundings. I try to get away, try to leave, but I hit something I can't see. Suddenly whatever is blocking my way, lifts itself up and away ahead of me. I stumble and fall, come crashing on the hard yet warm surface. As I attempt to gain control of this shell I inhibit, I feel liquid rising up a tube within me, spewing out of an opening just beneath those things in my head allowing me to see. The liquid smells awful and causes me to cringe, make me fall backwards. It is then that I see a creature on the ground ahead of me. It emerged from a strange thing on the opposite side and looks at me as if it had never seen anything like me before. Is that creature something like me? It has long thin strands of a dark color hanging from her head. The creature is covered in the same substance that covers the limbs I raise in front of me.
What or who is that creature? Who or what am I?