Post-Human Trilogy

a spoiled little boy,” Old-timer replied.

Outside, the general mused, “If what they are saying is true, then there is no military solution. We’re no match for the A.I.—it owns the surface.”

“But we can’t just stay underground forever, General,” replied an advisor.

“What other option do we have? We’ll have to dig in—burrow further under the surface, and start over as a community underground. We have no choice. This isn’t our world anymore. This is the beginning of the post-human era. Tell that Lieutenant—what was his name—Patrick? Put him in charge of watching over the outsiders. Once they’ve rested, I want to know everything they know.”

8

Thel had no idea what time it was. She and her companions had been alone together in a cramped concrete room for what seemed like an eternity. She lay perfectly still on a small cot and stared up into the nearly perfect darkness. The only light that penetrated the black came from the small cracks of the heavy iron door. An almost imperceptible pale blue glow came from the low-lit hallway outside. A young guard stood watch outside the room. For her entire life, Thel had been able to open her mind’s eye and check the time readout whenever she needed to. She had been able to set herself to sleep whenever it was appropriate. This was her first experience with insomnia, and to say it was unsettling would have been a gross understatement. Her disorientation, coupled with her extreme anxiety over James, was causing her real physical pain. Her head hurt from stress, and no matter how exhausted she felt, she could not sleep.

After what seemed like several hours, she got off her cot and stood in the darkness. The others were all asleep. They had been through hell that day and had all lost the people closest to them in life, but Thel had more to lose. That was why she couldn’t sleep. As horrible as the day had been, it had brought her James, the man she had wanted for years, who it had seemed would always be outside of her grasp, but it had also cruelly threatened to take him away. After losing her sister, her entire family, and all of her friends, with the exception of her co-workers, she felt she could not stand to lose James. Not James.

She walked to the door and opened it slowly. The guard was wide awake and nodded to her respectfully as she peeked her head out the door. “What time is it?” she asked him.

“It’s 3:30, ma’am,” he responded, eyeing her with fascination as he got his first look at one of the outsiders.

“My God. This day won’t end,” Thel sighed.

“Are you having trouble sleeping, ma’am? I could bring you a sedative.”

“A sedative? Something to help me sleep?”

“Yes, ma’am. A pill to help you sleep.”

The idea didn’t appeal to her. She didn’t trust Purist technology. Everything in the complex seemed archaic.“No thank you. I’d like to go to the hospital, though. I want to see our companion.”

“I can’t do that, ma’am. I’m under orders to watch over y’all while you sleep. The general wants you rested so you and your companions can be questioned in the morning. I can ask for word about your friend though, if you like.” The guard held up a black walkie-talkie for Thel to see.

She looked at the sheer size of the communication device and suddenly knew she needed to be with James. To her, the Purist technology was pathetic. It was obvious that James was in danger.

“Can you use that contraption to ask if it is okay for me to go to the hospital to see my friend?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I already know what they’re going to say. The general himself ordered that y’all be further questioned tomorrow. No one awake right now has the authority to overturn that.”

“What about Lieutenant Patrick?”

“He’s asleep, ma’am. Please just try to sleep for a few hours. It won’t make a difference one way or another. Let me order you a sedative.”

As the young man held his walkie-talkie up to his mouth to place an order for medication, Thel flashed magnetic energy from her hand and instantly rendered him unconscious. As he began to collapse to the ground, she cradled him, taking particular care to make sure he didn’t hit his head. “There we go,” she whispered as she lowered his limp body to the ground. “Just have a little nap, junior.” She picked up his walkie-talkie and sent more magnetic energy through it until it began to lightly smoke. “That should keep your friends away for a little while.” She dropped the instrument on the guard’s ample stomach and began to jog through the hallways towards the hospital.

She had paid close attention to the labyrinth inside the complex from the moment she was escorted away from James. Her thoughts had been focused on getting back to him ever since. She had no trouble finding the hospital and was there in moments. A few military personnel were still awake, but they paid no attention to her as she made her way. She was wearing a nondescript gray shirt and pants that she’d been given after she and her companions had washed up earlier in the evening, so she didn’t stand out amongst all the other refugees that the soldiers had dealt with all day. For the most part, citizens were free to come and go as they pleased in the complex.

When she reached the hospital, she walked towards the doors James had been wheeled through. A nurse’s voice stopped her before she could enter. “Can I help you?” the nurse asked.

Thel turned to her apprehensively but decided to ask for help rather than zapping her way to James. “I’m looking for my friend. He had a collapsed lung—”

The nurse’s voice was suddenly filled with what seemed to be genuine sympathy. “Oh. What is your friend’s name?”

“James Keats.”

The nurse pulled out a pocket electronic instrument that fit in the palm of her hand and began to tap the surface, inputting James’s name. “Yes, we do have a patient by that name. It says here that he’s still in the operating room.”

Thel felt her heart jump as she heard the words. An operating room? A Purist operating room? She had learned about medical operations when she was a girl taking history in school. An operation meant they had cut open his body. An operation meant James had been sliced open, and they were moving his insides around with crude metallic instruments. An operation meant he could die. “I-I need to be with him. Where is he?” Thel asked, her voice now filled with urgency.

Thel’s sudden shift was like so many shifts that the nurse had seen before in her thirty years working in the medical field. She knew Thel had instantly become unhinged like a cat feeling the first drops of a summer rainstorm. It was trouble. “You’ll have to wait until after the operation.”

“I need to be with him right now,” Thel asserted. “Please take me to him.”

“Miss, I can’t do that. I can take you to a waiting room—”

Thel snatched the electronic device from the nurse with one hand and then rendered her unconscious with an energy flash with the other. The nurse collapsed, but Thel cushioned her fall, letting the woman crumple against her. All the while, Thel’s eyes were on the screen of the device as she read the location of the operating room James was in.

“Hey, what the hell is going on?” asked a doctor as he and another doctor turned a corner and came upon the scene. Thel, startled, looked up from the screen before turning to run down the hallway toward a stairwell. The doctors followed in pursuit. “Stop! Hey!” One of the doctors grabbed a wall phone and requested security over a public address system.

Thel reached the stairwell before either of her pursuers and climbed over the railing between the flights of stairs that spiraled up the many floors of the hospital. To the doctors, this looked like a suicide attempt. “Wait! Don’t!” one of them shouted. They then looked on, stunned, as Thel began to fly straight up, four floors to where she believed James was. “Oh my God! An outsider!”

When Thel reached James’s floor, she burst into the hallway and raced toward his room.

“…455…457…” Thel said to herself as she neared Room 460, the room in which James had been cut open at the hands of those barbarians. She stood on the balls of her feet, almost tiptoeing with expectation. When she