Charger the Soldier (29 page)

It had been seven years since the war with
the Mahoud people ended, during which time a devastated Earth
struggled to regain its footing. Even though the descendants of
Earth had colonized a new world, Neo Terra, and technology was
expanding in all directions, humanity was still barely clinging to
existence.

What had man just triggered?

What humans always trigger, Reader.
Trouble.

>>>

Two years had passed since the signal from
Stonehenge beamed out into space at light speed and, in that time,
much of the soil covering the city deep beneath the site had been
excavated. Andy had gained a professorship and taken Mark and
Mickey as his grad students. All three joined the dig team studying
this ancient city and, almost daily, something new and important
was brought back to the surface.

On this particular day, it was an old piece
of broken pottery which brought new insight into the daily lives of
the city's people. So far, it had been learned that these people
lived much like early Romans, with the same type of clothing and
simple stone houses, and that they used pottery for cooking and
eating. The climate then had been consistently warm, with enough
rainfall that their diet was abundant and varied.

Classes were held outside, and it appeared
from wall pictures that walking and a type of bicycle seemed to be
the norm for travel. There were, however, remnants of vehicles
which had a type of ceramic combustion engine that ran on water and
radioactive particles from the earth. They were steam-powered but,
instead of piston-driven, these motors were disk-driven, like the
Wankel engine on its side, mixed with centrifugal force weights.
Roads were well-paved with a heavy, solid limestone, and buildings
were placed in accordance with the lay of the land, not in straight
rows.

It appeared to be a life in harmony with its
environment, mixed with as yet unknown technology. A central place
of knowledge was discovered, based on fossilized remains of unique
computers. Rather than copper wires and diodes, mixed with plastics
and gold, these people used a biological mass, determined from
impressions left in the fossils, much like the feather imprints in
Mesozoic birds.

The data these people had gained were lost
forever. The biomass had long since rotted away and been replaced
by minerals. But they did have writing and now Andy held a piece of
pottery made of silicate and carbon elements marked heavily with
ancient words.

Making his way to the surface and then into
the building that housed his office, he entered the small room and
spoke to Mark. "Here! See, I was right! The words on these
containers must describe what the containers hold. I found another
jug containing coal, just like the one found on the eastern side of
the city, and both have the same pattern of symbols." He placed the
piece on the table for Mark to inspect.

"Damn it, man! Why don't you start publishing
this stuff? It could help a lot of people," Mark said as he turned
the broken piece over in his hand.

Mickey came in. "Just heard from the dig
master, they got through the door to the temple complex in the
center of the city. Wanna go have a look?"

"Hell, yeah!" Mark said, and the three
hurried back down to the old city below. The center complex was
shaped like a pyramid with crystal spires reaching skyward from the
four sides, and was thought to be the point from which the beam of
light had emanated and passed through Stonehenge into space.
Gaining entrance to this place might finally answer a lot of
burning questions.

The dig master said over the loudspeakers,
"The robot has been sent in for a good look around. No one else
goes in until I say the word. And only some of you will go, based
on my opinion of who needs to see what's there. That is final."

With faces glued to the monitors set up all
around, hundreds of scientists waited patiently for the first
images. A small robot about the size of a house cat, attached to a
helium balloon and powered by small motors, hovered into the dark
room. The command was given to 'light it up,' and a few dozen small
spot lights blinked on, unveiling an incredible sight. The small
robot sent back to the monitors stunning images of pictures on the
walls. These pictures seemed to move with the motion of the robot,
as if they were three-dimensional.

Everywhere there were pictures of people
doing daily tasks. Hands outstretched seemed to welcome the viewer,
as eyes appeared to blink, and mouths moved, forming smiles.
Pictures of several cities and a map came into view, showing the
vastness of this old culture. The walls seemed endless, depicting
information that would certainly take generations to decipher. The
small robot hovered around several obstacles, small pedestals that
showcased amazing technologies. Each wall picture sent scientists
of different disciplines into raptures of excitement.

The robot went down several hallways and
finally into a vast room, almost too large to fully illuminate. At
the center stood a large statue on a pedestal. Oddly, the figure
did not look entirely human. It appeared to be something like a
bipedal dinosaur, characteristically humanoid, but with reptilian
features. This stunned the crowd to silence, for the implications
of this discovery were devastating.

O
nce the chaos of war had ended and the world started
picking up the pieces, Pam and Dieter tried to celebrate each day
of their survival in some small way. On this particular day, they
decided to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the end of the war
as well as the continuing gift of life. They drove to the coast,
which was still barren and desolate, but they were happy with each
other and with their six-year-old son, Gerry.

Therefore, the phone call that interrupted
their walk along the shore was more than annoying. Pam had been
looking forward to a day free from work.

When she arrived at the media station, Dean
said, "Sorry to spoil your day, but I need you to talk to Danny and
see if he'll release more information about the Revenge
Program."

"Why can't you do it?" she asked.

Dean shrugged. "You're his friend; I'm not.
I've tried to pry some facts out of him, but I can't get
anywhere."

Pam finally got a call through to Danny, but
she didn't fare any better than Dean. Had the Revenge Program been
delayed so long by reverse engineering alien ships that people were
losing interest? Maybe seven years was too long to maintain the
white-hot anger people had felt against the aliens. The first thing
they'd wanted when the last alien on Earth had been killed, was to
go to the aliens' planet and wipe out the rest of them. Danny had
been elected world president because he promised they could have
that revenge.

Pam sat in her car and mused for a moment on
how much Danny had changed over the years since the war. He still
had a sense of humor, but it was beginning to crack. The
conversation she'd had with him lacked even a shred of his famous
quick wit. But maybe it wasn't surprising. As world president, he
had heavy responsibilities. Only two continents were being
occupied, and the peoples of those two continents had decided that
they would be governed by a single prime minister for each
continent and these prime ministers would report to a common
president.

It began to rain again, and she decided that
going home was her best move. With the windshield wipers slapping
across the front window of her car, Pam drove into the night,
heading back to New Denver, back to her husband and son.

The main roads she traveled were almost
deserted. With so much of Earth burned to a cinder by the invaders,
cars were scarce and only a select few had the privilege of being
able to drive. Pam turned her car down the lane to her house and
slowly drove the remaining distance, staring through the rainy
windshield at all the empty or burned houses on her street.

She placed her car keys carefully on the wall
hook, and made her way to the living room. "Funny," she commented
to Dieter, who lay sprawled on the living room sofa, "I spoke with
Danny today. He seems so different now, like all the fun has been
sucked out of that playful noodle he has on his shoulders."

Pulling the bag of potato chips off his chest
and sitting upright, Dieter replied, his German accent thicker than
usual. "Vell, I guess it is to be expected. He was the one that
killed the alien leader."

"Vell…" Pam teased. "The word is 'well,' and
when are you going to learn to speak English well?"

"Ven you learn German, I guess." Both of them
laughed.

Morning came too soon. The light shone in the
bedroom window, waking Dieter first, who always staggered off to
the bathroom to gargle loudly. Pam did not mind much, but she
pulled the covers over her head again.

"Rise und shine, sleepy head," Dieter said as
he entered the bedroom.

"'And,' the word is 'and.' You are such a
blockhead," Pam said. She giggled and hid under the bed sheets.

Dieter jumped on the bed and said, "And, and,
and get up, or I slap your big round ass." At that moment, Gerry
trotted into the bedroom.

"Are we going to play today?" he asked.

That seemed like a great idea to Pam and
Dieter, and part of the remaining morning was spent rolling and
playing on the bed like three over-sized kittens.

The phone rang and, when Pam answered, Dean
asked, "Where the heck did you get to last night?"

"I didn't succeed with Danny, so I decided to
come home and enjoy the last hour or two of my so-called vacation.
Is that a problem?"

"Damn right it is. I just got chewed out for
the last few hours by General Harris. Rode my back side hard and
never even offered to kiss me after."

"Dean, this gay joke kick you've been on for
the last month is getting old," Pam said with a sigh.

"Well what do you expect? Nearly seven
billion people wiped out and almost no gay survivors. At least you
have a man!" snapped Dean.

"So what do you want?" Pam was
exasperated.

"Can you come in today? I think I found a
lead on the Revenge Program."

Pam agreed, and soon she was making her way
toward the news tower. The day was bright and the sky blue. All
seemed good in the world. She had just turned the corner, about a
block from the tower's basement entrance, when a missile screamed
overhead and slammed into the news building. A huge fireball
erupted and the blast shattered windows and doors, sending debris
and smoke everywhere, knocking her car sideways and deploying the
air bags.

When Pam regained consciousness, she was in a
stark white hospital bed, with Dieter hovering nervously close by.
"What happened?" she managed to ask.

Dieter spoke quietly. "There was a terrorist
attack. The police have already received a letter from those taking
responsibility."

"Terrorists? After all we have been through,
terrorists? What do they have against the news?" Pam managed to
squeak out as she tried to sit up in bed. She had not been hurt
badly, just a few bumps and bruises, but she winced at the
pain.

"Do not push yourself; you have been shook up
quite badly," Dieter said gently, putting a pillow behind her
back.

When she settled down, he continued. "There
is bad news I give you. Dean is dead."

Pam winced again, this time from emotion.
Dean, in spite of his foibles, had been a good and loyal
friend.

"There is more," Dieter said. "The terrorists
demand that a city a hundred miles south of here be repaired und
supplied for them, und support given by government. They seek
division. They do not wish to coexist with gays."

The shock and dismay Pam felt was written all
over her face. More than six billion people dead, barely fifty
million survivors worldwide, the number that once, at the start of
the twenty-first century, had been the combined population of just
two states, California and Texas. And now the survivors wanted
artificial divisions.

"They call themselves 'purists,' and wish
nothing to do with those they consider unclean," Dieter
finished.

The news sent Pam spiraling into a deep
depression. Yet again, humans were refusing to set aside their
differences. With the common enemy defeated, old habits of
prejudice and hatred had resurfaced.

Unwilling to be held hostage to the stupidity
of others, the government conceded, and began the slow, arduous
task of establishing cities committed to those of similar beliefs
and ideologies. With great swaths of land decimated by the
conflict, however, food crops took precedence, and only those lands
not dedicated to feeding the population were allocated for human
habitation.

Pam soon recovered from the effects of the
blast, and went back to work as head of the world media. She fought
hard to report the news with an unbiased sense of responsibility,
but eventually, even she fell into the trap of biased reporting on
the problems cities of differing ideologies faced. They somehow
seemed of lesser importance than the residents of New Denver.

Danny, as world president, made every effort
to accommodate the differing lifestyles the remaining populations
clung to, but the effort galled him.

"W
e believe that some sixty-five million years ago, the
dinosaurs and many of the other species on our planet were wiped
out by the impact of an asteroid in the Yucatan peninsula."

Doctor Curtis spoke to a group of eager,
bright young minds in his virtual lecture room. The University of
New Denver, or NDU as the students called it, was a progressive and
vibrant campus. Unlike the universities at the start of the
twenty-first century, these new campuses were designed to immerse
students in a virtual world of learning. Classes might be held in
local coffee shops, or while exercising, and sometimes even in a
traditional classroom environment. There was a greater focus on
learning in a manner that best fit each student and was, therefore,
not based on attendance in a particular building. The students were
responsible for absorbing the required knowledge, then passing the
exams. Professors no longer had to assume the duty of making sure
that students attended classes.