“Are those what I think they are?” Layla whispered.
“AIs—like Timothy, only machines instead of a hologram.”
The video feed moved from city to city, all of them showing robots and humans in the streets, joined in celebration.
“Industrial Tech Corporation, the most powerful company in the world, led the charge to combat the energy crisis and rising temperatures across the globe,” said the narrator.
An image tagged “Chicago, Illinois,” came on-screen, featuring the ITC symbol and headquarters building.
“Hades,” Michael said. He would never forget the place that claimed the lives of everyone on the Hive’s sister airship, Ares. But the city looked far different from the wasteland X and the other divers had seen ten years ago.
“ITC had built facilities in hundreds of locations all across the world,” the narrator continued. Images flashed of headquarters in Dubai, Shanghai, Sydney, Mexico City. “Food production was more efficient than ever, and hunger, even in developing countries, had been all but eradicated.”
Next came the images of robots driving massive machines, harvesting vast tracts of cropland that stretched to the horizon.
Images of a laboratory came on-screen. Men and women wearing white suits with helmets and breathing apparatuses worked in sterile environments.
“Medical advances continued throughout the world, including cures for cancer and rare genetic diseases. The average life expectancy jumped to one hundred and five. Thanks primarily to the work of ITC scientists, tissues, limbs, and organs—even brains—were now being grown inside labs.”
The video went inside a hospital room, where a baby born without limbs cried on a table. The parents stood by with tear-streaked faces. Next came an image of the same parents, smiling over a bed where their child happily flailed its perfect little arms and legs.
“Amazing,” Michael said, thinking of Chloe and Daniel.
“Some of this stuff I’ve seen before, but not like this,” Layla said. “I didn’t realize science had advanced so far before the world ended, or that ITC was behind so much of it.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Michael said. “What we still don’t know is what ended it all.”
Lightning flashed outside, and he pushed the button to seal the hatch and block out the distracting sporadic light.
“Despite medical and scientific breakthroughs,” the narrator continued, “the energy crisis threatened to reverse the advances in food production. Overpopulation, pollution, and depletion of fossil fuels led to the threat of war.”
The video showed an aerial view of a desert, but as the camera zoomed in, Michael saw that it was really a farm field, its crops shriveled and the dirt cracked. Dry gullies ran through the terrain, and barns were packed with ranks of idle robots.
“Rising temperatures and drought quickly destroyed the achievements that scientists had made in the past decade. In the year two thousand forty-one, humanity was once again spiraling toward war over dwindling resources.”
This time, the video came from inside the Senate Chamber in the United States. Michael recognized the seal and the podium from his history classes.
“Today, both parties have come together to tackle the issues of climate change and the drought afflicting the southern states,” said a florid-faced senator with a flag pin on his lapel. The audience stood, clapping.
The narrator continued in the background. “Once again, governments and scientists around the world banded together, led by ITC. Within two years, they found an economical way to harvest water from the ocean by desalination.”
The video returned to the cracked fields, and in a fast-moving time lapse, the feed showed the checkered acres transforming into lush green Edens, with robot farmers harvesting bountiful crops.
“In two thousand forty-three, humanity was closer than ever before to solving all the problems that had led to war over the millennia. There was no need to fight over resources or territories. For the first time in a thousand years, peace reigned in the Middle East.”
“Sometimes, I don’t believe this world was ever real,” Layla said.
“What doesn’t seem real is that humans could have destroyed such a paradise.”
Layla brought her knees up to her chest and watched as the video continued. But Michael’s eyes left the screen and turned to his lifelong best friend. He moved over to her side, kissing her cheek, then her neck. Layla giggled and smiled the smile he had fallen for so many years ago.
Their lips connected, and a moment later they were pulling each other’s clothes off. His shirt caught around his head, and when he finally freed it, she was standing before him, naked. She pushed him back into the chair.
And for the next half hour, they ignored the video and made love in the cramped command center, their bodies sliding against each other, mouths pressed together in an act that would continue until the last humans perished.
And for that brief ecstatic interlude, Michael forgot everything that was wrong with life in the sky and the horrors on the surface.
Nature had reclaimed the derelict city. Vines stretched across the sagging, broken streets and consumed the structures. Most of the buildings were debris piles, having collapsed long ago under the sheer weight of the vegetation.
On a rocky bluff east of the city stood a single building, its ten stories still firmly supported by sturdy concrete pillars. Tenants had once lounged on its balconies, drinking cocktails and watching the surf lap against the beach.
Lonely toppled statues of mermaids and satyrs littered the courtyards around swimming pools, their hands and panpipes pointing at the dark, putrescent water.
Magnolia pulled one of two double-edged sickle blades sheathed on her lower back and sliced through a red plant growing on her path. Goo sluiced out onto the dirt.
“Careful with those,” X said. He was just ahead, with Miles behind him, sniffing the air.
She wasn’t sure what X had planned, but she wasn’t about to ask him now. He was already peeved at her. His words on the beach repeated in her mind.
I’m not going to risk Deliverance or the Hive just to save our sorry asses. We’re on our own out here, and the sooner you start accepting that, the safer humanity is going to be.
The otherworldly calls of the birds X had called “vultures” brought her back to reality. She decided to embrace their solo adventure and give X the benefit of the doubt.
“I really think we should keep an open channel to Timothy,” she said as they walked.
“So he can annoy us? I don’t think so.”
“But he’s just trying to help.”
He stopped and walked back toward her. “I don’t trust robots, okay?”
Thunder boomed over the mountain, and Magnolia glimpsed several vultures flying out of the jungle canopy. Most of them had vanished sometime during the night, when she was sheltered in the boat with X.
Apparently not that concerned about the giant birds, he jumped over the twisted guardrail along the road. He helped Miles over and moved to the edge of a jungle. A bandolier of grenades hung across his chest armor and over his back, and extra magazines were stuffed into his duty belt and the cargo pockets of his suit.
He looked like a man going to war, which didn’t ease Magnolia’s mind. She sheathed the blade and unslung her rifle as she trotted to catch up.
“We’ll have to cut through the jungle to get to that building,” he said, pointing at the hotel in the distance.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” She instantly regretted the words.