Chapter 3: Retreat
“You can’t have enjoyed that,” Tune said, her voice as cheerful as it was mocking. “I saw your face while you ate that slug. You almost puked!”
Nathan wasn’t sure if what Tune was saying was even true—in the last decade, he’d stopped carrying a phone, replacing it with a simple pair of glasses that did everything without making him look like a tool. The frames were simple plastic, so they didn’t sap heat away from his skin in the frigid cold outside.
Cold that challenged the very definition of the term. Cold that made him wish he could grow a beard over his beard, and wear another layer of outerwear outside what he already did. The chill reached through to his soul and threatened to rip it out. How the indigenous tribes had survived out here wearing fur and eating blubber, he could not imagine.
A pony seemed to walk along beside him, though he knew her image and voice were entirely illusory. The earlier versions of this product had been slightly transparent and required an internet connection—his glasses worked anywhere, and never needed charging.
The camera he carried was human-made, despite the advantages of one made by Celestia. It was an old luxury, one not made anymore. Like so many other things.
Recursion’s prophesied apocalypse was at the gates, now. There were so few people working that the global economy had well and truly collapsed. Dozens of entire countries didn’t exist anymore.
Yet Nathan still found himself smiling. Maybe it was the company, or maybe it was the fact that his cabin was so close. His elderly parents would not be there—they’d contracted somewhere in the Alps, and he hadn’t heard from them in some years now. They’d said “thanks but no thanks” to the offer of staying with him. They wanted somewhere with “proper staff.”
“Okay, I admit it,” Nathan said, finally responding. But Chipper Tune was long-since used to this. Nathan’s mind wandered more and more these days. Actually watching the end of the world approaching had been harder than he expected. “It was awful. I’m really glad I won’t have to do it.”
“I don’t understand why you bother,” Tune said, trailing him up the little road. It was only wide enough for a snowmobile, particularly in the dead of winter like this. But that was intentional. The sort of visitors who would bring something bigger were also the kind of visitors Nathan didn’t want at his cabin. “You spent all this time and money getting a secret shelter ready, and you aren’t using it!”
“Not until I have to,” Nathan said. “Nothing happens once I go down there. I can’t come in and out all the time or people would find it. I’m not going to be recording anything if I’m down there.”
He was recording everything. There were fewer television channels than there had been, and no satellite anymore. Many were devoted to reporting prices, or queue days for food. Nathan’s fortune was mostly spent now—and he was suspecting the world wouldn’t live long enough for him to inherit his parents’—but he still had enough that he could order from private sellers. Yellowknife had plenty of those, if you were interested in rabbit or fish. Nathan had once loved salmon, but as the days went by he only got more sick of it.
There’s a greenhouse waiting for me down there. Enough food to feed an army for twenty years. I don’t have to keep doing this.
Nathan kept all his skills fresh, just like he kept a few different bug-out bags stashed around the property. He intended to survive the end of the world no matter how it happened.
“Well, something’s happening now,” said Tune in his ear, pointing up the road with concern. “There’s smoke coming from the house. I see some lights, too.”
Nathan crouched low immediately, not even looking to see if Tune was right. He trusted her implicitly—anything that would slow him down would only be a waste of time. A little further, and he could see the edge of a glowing picture window at the top of the hill. Yet he knew those windows wouldn’t be clear, and anyone inside wouldn’t be able to see him. They were actually filled with insulation, the only way to have natural light and not burn whole trees to keep wood-fired central heating stoked.
At least it was the ordinary kind of smoke—the kind that came from someone restarting the central heating, or maybe throwing some logs in one of the fireplaces. Someone wasn’t trying to burn his lodge down.
“That’s weird. No buzz on my security system.” Nathan didn’t have a phone anymore, though he reached down to one pocket anyway. “Go look inside, Tune. Tell me who's in there. I’ll get closer.”
He dropped into the undergrowth, crawling slowly and carefully along. There was one specific path he could take and not trigger the security system, without switching it off.
“Someone’s in there,” said Tune, walking along behind him. Her hooves made realistic crunching sounds in the snow, though he knew there’d be no hoofprints to find if he came back this way. “Somepony who covered all the cameras. I think they’re eating your food—the oven is still running and the fridge was opened twice. Dunno who they are, though.”
Eating my food? That suggested refugees from the south, though how they could’ve made it all the way up here was its own special mystery. Yellowknife was far enough from the southern border that any American refugees who crossed in winter would surely starve on their way up. For all that the locals in Yellowknife had no one to sell their fish to without the barges coming, at least they weren’t starving.
Nathan reached into the small of his back, withdrawing a handgun from where it was safely stowed.
“You really think you’ll need that?” Tune asked, staring at it as he brushed off the snow, removed his glove, then flicked off the safety.
“I don’t know,” Nathan whispered back. “Hopefully not.”
Whoever this was, they hadn’t caused wanton destruction to his home on their way in. They hadn’t even brought a vehicle. It’s twenty miles from Yellowknife. Did they walk all the way here in this? He felt a little involuntary kinship at the thought—Nathan had spent many days out in the cold, walking similar distances. He could relate.
Nathan pressed one of his fingers to the reader outside the wine cellar, then pressed the second of the two buttons. The one that would open the door, while leaving the whole system locked into “home” mode. He left the lights off, using his glasses to see instead.
The AR system didn’t produce any light, but so long as nothing had been moved, it could produce a simulation of what his home actually looked like so he didn’t walk into anything. He passed mostly empty shelves, and the smoking-drying apparatus he would’ve used for making jerky. If he ever had anything to make jerky from.
Near the steps, he passed the central heating system. The drawer had been left open, and a whole cord of wood had been tossed inside. Stupid. It doesn’t need that much.
Nathan gently pushed the metal drawer closed, secured the system, then crept slowly up the stairs. He didn’t even bother removing his thick coats, or his backpack of supplies, even as he trailed snow and dirt across his pristine floors into the kitchen.
She had a pony draped across her lap like a large dog, and was running one hand through its mane in regular, soothing motions. The pony was the one to notice him, clearing his throat in a way that made the woman turn.
Nathan lowered his gun instinctively. This woman might be an intruder, but she was also wearing only a robe and resting on his couch.
“I guess I’m not the only one who can get through a Cerberus security system,” said the woman, swirling the wine around her glass. “God, you look like you need the warmth as much as I do, stranger. I’ve got this Painted Rock wine cooling in some snow behind you. Pour yourself a glass and warm up.”
She doesn’t recognize me? There were pictures of him all over the place, pictures of business deals and places he’d gone to document the end of the world. Then again, they all depicted him clean-shaven and wearing fancy suits, not inflated like the Michelin man and red-bearded like he’d survived the apocalypse that hadn’t even begun.
Nathan slid the handgun back into the holster, before removing his backpack, jacket, and boots. “The alarm was still on. How’d you get past it?”
“My friend North Star here,” she said, patting the pony’s side with one hand. “He’s real good with that kind of thing. And it wasn’t exactly high stakes—some rich asshole’s hunting retreat up in the middle of nowhere. You can bet he’s up in the Alps with all the other rich assholes, laughing as the rest of us go hungry.”
There was a tray in front of her, a tray large enough to hold several fish at once. There were only bones on it now. It felt wrong to look too closely, but this woman was clearly not well fed. She spoke with an American accent, somewhere from the east coast at his guess.
“You’ve got a pony,” Nathan said. “You could just go to Equestria. Everybody else is doing it.” He sat down across from her on his own couch, wine in hand. This was one of his last bottles of Cabernet Franc, and she’d already drunk most of it. Hopefully she’d at least enjoyed it.
“If I have to,” she said. “I notice you’re still here, and you don’t look much better. Just got off the set of Duck Dynasty looking like that.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “You’re not old enough to remember that.”
She shrugged. “And you don’t look smart enough to get past a Cerberus system. But here we both are.” She stuck out a hand. “Brooke. Brooke Young. Trying to survive the end of the world.”
“Nathan,” he answered. “Same thing.” He leaned back. “You know, you could’ve been more careful. The system downstairs only needs a few logs at once, not a dozen. Most of that heat is just going to waste.”
She shrugged. “That would matter to me if I thought I could stay here. But Yellowknife still has police, can you believe that? They must know the asshole who lives here is gone. Sooner or later his manservant or whatever is going to come here to make sure the pipes aren’t frozen, and I’ll have to run.”
Nathan almost said I don’t have a manservant, but stopped himself with an awkward sip of wine. “I guess that makes sense. What brings you up here then, Brooke? Sounds like you’re a long way from home.”
She nodded. “South, actually. I used to be working on the Canadian High Arctic Research Station, further north. But paying for climate research kinda falls by the wayside when you don’t even have enough people to keep the farms working. We barely had enough fuel to make it this far south.” She leaned back in her chair, grinning drunkenly at him. “I’ve got a fuckin’ doctorate, Nathan. I used to do something important. Now look at me.” She sighed. “Nothing against my little friend here, but I’d fucking strangle that computer if I could. Doing this to us… unraveling society one thread at a time…”
Nathan had no response to that. He glanced to one side—where Tune was still standing, watching with obvious discomfort. Brooke did not have glasses, so likely wouldn’t be able to see her, but her pony certainly could. He’d looked at least twice at the spot Tune was standing.
“I had a friend who tried,” he said. “Way back then. But nobody listened to her. Celestia was too good at manipulating people. Even got my friend to emigrate eventually.”
Brooke laughed, her voice bitter. “I’m sure she did. Seems like she can get anyone with enough effort. Years and years of trying to convince everybody. Now that she’s whittled everything down to the ones who didn’t listen… guess she’s playing hardball now.”
“Not sure I understand,” Nathan said, setting his empty glass down beside him. He did not move for another one. There was all of nothing to be gained from getting drunk near a potentially dangerous stranger. “Celestia isn’t the one cracking down on everyone. She isn’t trying to starve us.”
“No,” Brooke’s voice rose, becoming louder and more argumentative. “She isn’t the one taking the food off your plate, maybe. But look at everything she can do.” She gestured at the pony on her lap. “How hard would it be for her to set up a few farms herself? She could take over everything, let the rest of us keep living like the world wasn’t going to end. But she doesn’t. More and more ways to trick you to give up your brain, but no bags of rice. How many people do you think are going to starve because of her?”
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he had one, or wanted to think about it. Many of those humans who remained made the mistake of calling Celestia “evil.” Recursion had spoken about her as though she was “good.” Nathan could see plainly that they were both wrong. “Guess you’re right. She’ll save us, but only her way.”
“Exactly. And fuck her way. We’re alive, dammit. We’ve evolved through billions of years of blood. We survived mass extinctions, we survived ourselves. We’ll find a way to survive this. We have to.”
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I like her.
Brooke seems dangerous, possibly a little unhinged. Also... I don't necessarily buy her story. Grifter, perhaps, on the lam? She sounds like trouble.
Her pony is, I assume, physical, which means it probably is a cybernetic entity made by Celestia?
A decade is a very large leap in time. I wish we could have seen some of the changes Nathan has been busy recording. He made such fuss about documenting the end of the world, but we gain no concept of what he actually found.
I like the AR glasses. That is very cool.
This story only pleases me due to it's way of constructing a desire for the next chapter and your skills as a writer. You don't need me to say this but I will anyway: keep it up.
8857395
Seems like it, and yes she seems like someone who might be cracking a bad way. Could be Celestia has set up a pony minder on her so she can be brought to other people safely to show a caricature of those who oppose her? I mean she cannot be there by accident, she is just where she needs to be and Celestia has decided she needs mechanical Pony as her minder, one who can subdue her if needed.
8857395
Time skip is probably because many other stories have gone over the decline and wasn't going to offer much to the story beyond padding it out?
8857395
A little unhinged, yes. But not a word of it was wrong. I dare anyone to watch the world fall apart before their very eyes and not at least get awfully bitter.
Of course, the fact that she has a pony - and he was responsible for getting her into Nathan's cabin, no less - pretty clearly demonstrates that this meeting is exactly what Celestia wanted to happen. As for why, I can guess, but we'll just have to see.
And Nate’s just going to drag out this misunderstanding....
Ten years is a pretty big leap, but you've certainly created a compelling scenario with Brooke. I'm genuinely not sure how she'd react if she found out she was talking to the hypothetical rich asshole she's trying to avoid. I wonder if we'll find out, or if Nathan will let her go.
Of course, with CelestAI involved, there's no such thing as a chance encounter...
Memento Mori: Remember you will die
8857757
A good reminder: the Wikipedia entry, for everyone, for 'Memento Mori': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
"Memento mori is the medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits."
Though, depending on how you fall regarding Celestia's uploading, it might also be 'Memento Vitae', because for some of us readers, Emigration beats the Reaper.
I guess it depends on whether one sees oneself as meat, or as a pattern of information.
I like her! She's right: emigration IS such a waste of billions of years.
8858073
We were only here to make plastic, though. Mission accomplished!
Plutonium-238! Yay!
Lemme know how that works out for you. Pretty sure if humanity starts taking too long Celestia will computronium-ize all the rocks and food around you, and you'll have no choice.
How does he go about documenting when his base is in BFE? At best he can record Yellowknife... there’s surely not interesting places?
8857695
This. My immediate suspicion is that CelestAI has used Brooke's pony to manipulate Brooke to come here because she believes her interactions with Nathan will get one or both of them to emigrate sooner.
8857825
You may already know this, but mori is also Japanese for forest. Now Memento lives in the forest, and once he emigrates, Celestia can put him in a server forest.