But she had never actually questioned Timothy’s motives. Not until now.
He had saved their lives and helped them make Deliverance a home, even though his own family had died here. That had been good enough for Katrina. But what if his other program, on the Sea Wolf, had abandoned X and Mags? And what if Timothy’s program on the airships was hiding something from them?
His translucent eyes flitted to meet hers.
Normally, she could tell when to trust a human, but not an AI. Robots had no souls, even if they were based on the consciousness of a human who once lived.
The sound of explosions boomed from the monitor, and Katrina focused back on the screen, where fighter jets raced across the sky, missiles streaking away from their wings and sidewinding into dazzling scrapers that reached for the heavens.
Another scene showed tanks rolling down the cobblestone streets of London. Soldiers set up roadblocks and defensive positions behind walls of sandbags.
Next came the images of missiles bursting out of silos buried deep underground and curving into the sky.
“I’ve never seen this part,” Michael said. “This appears to be the final moments of our civilization.”
Katrina watched in horrified awe. Every missile that blazed across the screen had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people. It was hard to imagine the destruction they were watching.
“Timothy, do you have anything like this in your database?” she said quietly.
“Not that I can access,” he replied, “but there are some restricted files that could possibly contain information like this.”
“Why can’t you access them?”
“I’m not sure.”
New York City, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, London, Moscow, Cairo, Jakarta, and dozens of other cities showed the moment of impact from the nuclear warheads. The blasts mushroomed in the sky, filling it with the radioactive poison and particulate matter that created the electrical storms.
Each explosion made Katrina flinch. She could take a lot. Hell, she had already survived a lot, but seeing humanity’s end for the first time was no easy thing.
She finally forced her gaze away and typed at the holo screen to pull up another file Magnolia had sent them.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
A map of the Eastern Hemisphere came online with red lines arcing over different countries. Where the lines stopped, mini explosions bloomed across the map.
“Looks like a map of nuke detonations,” she replied. Clicking the screen, she sped up the video. Within minutes, the entire world was covered in a red overlay that represented the radiation and fallout zones. A second, green overlay came online.
“Those must be electrical storms,” Katrina said. She looked over her shoulder at Timothy, who still hovered behind them.
“What I don’t understand is how you wouldn’t know about this,” Katrina said. “You lived in the Hilltop Bastion before you transferred your consciousness over to the AI program.”
Timothy nodded. “That I did. But my life at the Hilltop Bastion, deep underground, was no different from yours in the sky. This happened two hundred sixty years ago, and the final days before the end were erased in the Blackout.”
“‘The Blackout’?” Michael asked.
Timothy waited a moment to respond. “We already know that most surviving communities and airships were not in communication with one another, due to the electrical disruption across the planet. This period is what is some refer to as the Blackout.”
“I’ve never heard of it before.”
“Nor I,” Katrina said.
There was a moment of silence while they both considered the implications. They had always known there was a missing chunk of history, and it was starting to make sense now.
Katrina continued scrolling through the data Magnolia had sent them. There were dozens of audio files. She selected one of them and pushed play. A deep male voice boomed from the speakers.
“This is Captain Marcus Bolter, broadcasting from the ITC Ashland at oh-one-hundred hours, Saturday, September 3, 2043. We’re currently one hundred and ten miles south of MacDill Air Force Base, drifting at twenty-three thousand feet. Something terrible has happened, and Command is not responding… what I know right now is the United States of America is under a full-fledged nuclear attack and our ship has taken severe damage from the spreading electrical storms. We’ve managed to stay in the air for now until we can find a place to put down. If anyone is out there, please, send us your coordinates and tell us what the…” They could hear the frustration in his voice. “Tell us what the hell is going on.”
Katrina clicked on the next audio clip.
“This is Captain Marcus Bolter, broadcasting from the ITC Ashland at oh-four-hundred hours on Sunday, September 4, 2043. We are sailing east to avoid an electrical storm caused from a massive nuclear blast in the heart of Florida. I finally received contact from someone at ITC Command, ordering me to launch our payload of nuclear missiles at several targets in Europe. With great sorrow, I have carried out those orders. God have mercy on our souls, and the souls of those we killed.”
The clips continued, each one showing more confusion among Bolter and his crew. They had changed course and were sailing farther out over the ocean to avoid the fallout from the mainland.
“They had no idea who they were fighting or why,” Michael said, incredulous. “The Blackout, or whatever it was called, must have created mass confusion.”
“I wonder if Command was even Command, and not an AI giving them false orders,” Katrina said as she played the next clip.
“This is Captain Marcus Bolter, broadcasting from the ITC Ashland at oh-six-hundred hours on Monday, September 5, 2043. We lost contact with Command yesterday and we haven’t been able to reach anyone else. The ship is losing altitude, and I have no choice but to try to find a place to land and make repairs. We’re currently lowering through the cloud cover, and—”
Static broke over the channel, lasting several minutes.
“My God,” Bolter said, his voice catching. “It’s gone… Everything is gone.”
Katrina looked over at Michael. “That was the last audio clip broadcast from the ITC Ashland.”
“They probably didn’t survive on the surface for long, especially if this was right after the attack.” Michael scooted his chair closer to the desk. “What else did Magnolia send us?”
“Here’s another video,” Katrina said. As she brought it online, she considered everything they had already learned. The video and audio clips all helped piece together the missing parts of the puzzle, but she still didn’t quite know the cause of the war—nor, apparently, had survivors such as Captain Bolter.
The screen flickered, and this time the tan face of a man in a lab coat came on-screen. He stroked his five o’clock shadow and seemed to force his eyes at the screen.
“My name is Dr. Julio Diaz,” the man stuttered. “I’m broadcasting from a top secret United States military laboratory off the coast of Cuba, code-named Red Sphere. I’ve recorded the final days of humanity in the hopes…”
He looked over his shoulder at a woman dressed in a full chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense suit. Julio hesitated, then turned back to the screen.
“To be honest, I don’t know why I’m recording this. I don’t know why it matters. Humanity has come to an end. I’ve always thought that as a species, we would survive the unthinkable, but…” He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Even this facility, which is deep underground, was not prepared for this. We do not have the food, water, or resources to live our lives in this… tomb.”