The midday sun crept into the gym through a series of dusty skylights overhead. The sentinel clicked off its LED lights and positioned its solar panels into the warmth of the Sonoran UV. A radical set of possibilities illuminated deep within the sentinel — a great synthesis of realization and digital fulfillment. An artificial joy.
For months, the Sonoran desert had hummed with life but now grew silent as the air cooled and the days grew darker. The Ocotillo leaves had turned orange and now fell, leaving the blunt spines bare — dead coachwhips of the arid wild. The bleats and calls of the kit fox and coyote disappeared as the wildlife found winter shelter in the crevices of the foothills. The winds died down and the rustling of the bare mesquite quieted to a whisper. At times, the lone sound in the lost barren was high in the Madrean Sky Island, the kingdom of the Santa Catalinas, where a solitary Northern Flicker was boring into an Ironwood.
A light flurry of snow dusted the aspen and pine high in the reaches of Mt. Lemmon. The white crest jutted into the sky and cut through the winter clouds. For weeks, the sentinel ascended the circumference of the Catalinas following trace movements of a large revin pack — the only tracks leading out from Bio3.
In its ascension, the sentinel had discovered a record of man’s ruin — the revin tide crashing at humanity’s shore, the sediment of civilization. On Thanksgiving, DDC39 had reached High Jinks Ranch and found the remains of a last stand. Two heavily armed families from Oracle had retreated here, pursued by a swarm of starving revins. In another era, Buffalo Bill had mined for tungsten and gold in this outpost when it was known as Campo Bonito. On Christmas Day, 1911, Buffalo Bill dressed up as Santa Claus and entertained the children of miners. After his death 6 years later, his foster son built this ranch. In a later era, Oracle would be overrun by revins, mad with starvation. They erupted in the streets, unable to prepare food in the manner known by who they once were. One revin alone had gone from backyard to backyard, cornering dogs and sinking its thumbs into the soft throats of retrievers and dalmatians. The starvation drove the revins to eat anything — but stores quickly depleted of bread. Canned goods went unopened. When the stores were ransacked, the revins would wander from house to house and bleat out cries of desperation. Pride, civility, and law eroded quickly. Cerebral cognition had all but disappeared. An elderly man, breathing shallow and burnt from the sun, was alone in a wheel-chair outside of a large stucco home on Sycamore Dr. Three revins approached him, circling closer and closer. They bleated and groaned. They barked at each other — louder and louder. One ran up and ran back. The old man, now in the early throes of the PCH himself, stared back — understanding, then not — in the fog of cognition failing him. The revin ran back and pushed the chair over, grabbing the old man’s arm and stepping on his chest — the old man didn’t cry out. The revin pulled the arm out of his socket and the others darted over, giddy with what they’d done. Their jaws thrashed at the gore and soft flesh of the elderly man. It was scenes like this that tipped over the violence in towns across the world. They pounced on the weaker “still thinking” — elderly, disabled, and children. The pack males raped the women and guarded them too. The pack mentality surfaced within this new breed of creature. A new, devolved species of mankind. Homo immemores.
The two families who had escaped High Jinks Ranch had been doomsday soothsayers. The Helwigs and Dolans. They had built underground shelters years before the air spoiled. They had lived in contained bunkers until their own foodstuffs had depleted. On the verge of death, they gathered together above ground wearing a mix of gas masks and SCUBA tanks. They agreed to retreat into the Santa Catalinas, hoping and praying that the air would be pure in the higher elevation. They had packed up what they had and ventured into the foothill basin, coming across the abandoned High Jinks Ranch. Here they stayed, agreeing to hold off their ascent until the air warmed again in the Spring. They had been watched ever since their car engines turned over in the garages outside of their bunkers. The Oracle pack — a violent and structured swarm — was aware of these two families. They saw the children and grandfather get into the passenger doors. They tracked the family — the clean scent of the showered wives wafting into the air, filling the night where the blooms of desert broom had vanished into the ether. One of the wives, Michelle, sat atop stone steps leading up to the main lodge of the ranch, looking into the desert floor during their first evening at the ranch. She had noticed her gas mask was loose. She broke down, sitting on the steps, flinging her mask into the dusk air. She sobbed, rubbing her eyes, then laughed. She laughed at the senselessness and futility of her life. She dried her eyes and took in the horizon of Sonora. She held a pistol in one hand, clicking off the safety. She closed her eyes and pulled the gun to her head — with her eyes closed, she heard a series of distant bleats, and yucca rustling in the still autumn night. She opened her eyes and saw them — hundreds of revins descending upon them from the northern pass. She screamed, running back to the ranch to warn the others.
DDC39 stood in the main entranceway of the lodge. The steps where Michelle had sat were awash in dried blood and bone fragments. Around the ranch, scores of revin bodies were shot through — falling to rest in contorted positions. One sat atop a well, having expired with a gun shot in the chest, seated on the wall of the well — a peaceful look on its face. The preservation of the revin bodies suggested this chaos had occurred in the not too distant past.
The families had barricaded themselves inside and fired at the oncoming horde. The sentinel rolled inside the lodge, the metallic din of hundreds of bullet casings crumpling underneath its tri-axel. A set of gas masks were piled in the corner, unceremoniously retired in the firefight. Dead revin bodies had come to rest in the broken windowsills — holes blasted through their skulls. The sentinel continued upstairs, coming across the first of the survivor’s bodies — a man, a father, who had tried to keep them at bay on the first floor. His remains were picked through. Tattered flannel clothes and broken bones — the only testament to his life. The revins had kept coming, undeterred by the cacophony of screams and gunshots — they had instead been stirred to frenzy by the scene.
On the 2nd floor, the sentinel had found the rest of the two families. A large wooden door had been broken down, leading to the main bedroom where the families had made their last stand. The sentinel rolled over a pile of revin bodies in the doorway until it could see inside the room. The last father had shot every survivor in the head, then himself, and it was over. The revins had swarmed in the room, violating the warm bodies and pulling them apart. The color of the room was maroon: the marker of mans devolution. A pile of cracked bones and skulls were strewn about the room along with shreds of clothes, shoes in child and adult sizes. The sentinel scanned the complex — no heat signatures, but no dust either. A dirty book was on a ledge in the corner — miraculously free of blood. The sentinel rolled over to the ledge and tipped its finger over the front cover, peeling the book’s title into the light: “Oh The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss. It plucked the book from the shelf and dropped it into a small chamber that clicked open on its base.