ALICE, page 4
Back out in the hall, they hit a different elevator going down and almost immediately stopped. Stepping out, a door across the way opened.
“No point in going too far, all the rooms are identical,” ALICE said, “although these are the senior staff quarters just below the command center, so they are nicer than the rest.”
“I’ll say!” Jake replied as he stepped in.
The room layout was splendid, with a sitting area/study, including a plush couch and overstuffed chairs around a coffee table on the left and a fine wooden desk and chair against the wall on the right. There was a small kitchen/wet bar on the back wall to the left and right of that was a door that led into what appeared to be the sleeping area. Walking through that door, there was a walk-in closet on the left and a nice king size bed on the wall past that. Another set of chairs with a reading table on the right and centered on the back wall was a third door that led to the bath.
“I took the liberty of stocking the room with clothes and uniforms in your size though they are not exactly correct for your time. You can be assured though they are proper for a person of your military service branch and rank with the addition of the facility’s commander patch.”
“Almost everything in here is voice activated though the water for bath and sink also has controls for your convenience. The earpiece was necessary to communicate in the maintenance, utility, and access halls, but almost everywhere else has communication sensors.”
Jake went to the closet and after some exploring, pulled out a T-shirt and some shorts. He went into the bath, pulled the ear bud out, and took a long, hot shower.
All cleaned up and with fresh clothes, he hit the bed and was out in seconds.
----*----
Jake opened his eyes, and it took a minute for him to remember where he was. As he slipped out of bed, ALICE piped up, “Captain, what would you like for breakfast?”
“Well, first, why don’t you start by calling me Jake,” he answered, “and second, I don’t suppose bacon and eggs is an option?”
“Well, Jake,” she responded, “it is absolutely an option. As I mentioned yesterday I have a very extensive food stasis locker, all as fresh as the day it was delivered.”
Jake wandered into the closet trying to decide if a uniform was necessary at this point.
“How about 3 eggs, over easy, toast, bacon, and orange juice then,” he quipped.
Then he added, “Oh hell, let’s celebrate and throw in some hash browns too, please.”
By the time, he selected something half way between a utility uniform and civvies, a bot appeared with a tray and set it on the reading table in his bedroom, then disappeared.
Jake sat in one of the chairs, digging into breakfast. As he ate, he considered his situation.
“ALICE,” he said between bites, “what am I going to do?”
With a pause, she replied, “I am not sure I understand the question?”
He laughed and said, “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I was just thinking, here I am, 150 years in the future, essentially alone and responsible for the last technology and military powerhouse on the planet.”
“It just seems to me that the right thing to do is to try to restore some of what was lost. You said there were survivors. They are just technologically devoid. Maybe we could help bring them back.”
ALICE replied, “That is possible. Maybe a review of my latest survey might be a good place to start considering your options. I have completed the North and South American continents, most of Europe and Asia.”
“I was thinking more like Texas,” he said, laughing, “the entire North American continent is a hell of a big bite don’t you think!”
“The survey is intended to evaluate the level of civilization each geographic area has attained and determine its technological advances. It also helps identify threats and the more aggressive groups to be avoided.”
By now, Jake finished his breakfast and before he could ask, a bot appeared and took the tray away. He stepped into the hall and into the elevator with no bot to lead him. He simply said, “Control room.”
The doors closed and quickly reopened, but now on the expected floor. He stepped into the hall and retraced his steps from the day before.
Walking into the control room, ALICE greeted him with, “I will present on the main holographic display if you would like to be seated.”
Jake grabbed one of the chairs along the console and sat looking around for where the main display might be. Suddenly, in the center of the room, an image appeared in the open space, two stories high and as wide as the room.
“As I stated yesterday, my last survey was completed 15 years ago. At that time most major cities were lightly populated, the majority of the population having either been killed when the earth was attacked, or fled to the countryside.”
“With no central authority, the cities became lawless areas fairly quickly, populated by roving gangs. These small groups of men and women survive by scrounging in the abandoned cities or raiding the outlying communities. Some of these gangs have loose order while others are more criminal, caving in to their baser instincts. Their weapons are predominantly older civilian small arms scrounged from where ever they can find them. They frequently convert these to black powder, as it is easier to produce than smokeless powder. Edged weapons are also quite popular, swords and knives and the bow and arrow.”
Satellite images of various parts of the world, still and video, appeared in the holographic display as she spoke. Jake saw rag tag groups wandering ruined cities, scrounging and fighting.
Next farming settlements with pens and plowed fields appeared.
“In the areas away from the cities, people have clustered in co-ops, living in defensible housing groups while tending the surrounding lands for food. This communal agrarian lifestyle provides greater security and stability in comparison to living in single homesteads, but limited by the amount of workers they can support for both security and farming labor. They maintain trade with some more civil city dwellers, bartering for scrounged goods with food they produce.”
Here ALICE displayed a market of some kind, with baskets of produce on one side and on the other side, metals, and manufactured goods. There were tables, chairs, wheels, carts, all kinds of similar items. What struck Jake was the number of guns on both sides, and all guns pointing in each other’s general direction. It was very clear, trading occurred when taking by force was not an option. Wasn’t the human race just wonderful!
ALICE continued her briefing for quite a while, breaking down each global region and noting changes from the last survey. A few things were obvious. First, globally, the planet was fairly equal, all around. No one area seemed to have jumped ahead in recovery. In the 80 years following the attack, two generations, assuming a life span of 40 to 50 years, everyone was either farming or scrounging.
Jake thought about that for a moment. Even thousands of years ago people created cities and congregated in larger numbers. Why not now? Why not just rebuild, as the cities were still there? All the structures were solid and just waiting for occupation. Then it hit him, the gangs. They would be protecting their source of survival.
Anyone returning to the cities would do so in small numbers. Once there, they could expect an attack or absorbed into the existing social structure. Even if a larger group tried to come in and stabilize things, all the existing gangs would converge on it. Not necessarily as a coordinated response, but certainly it would create a common enemy.
The second thing was that cities are a basis for industry and manufacturing. With all the free stuff lying around, why try to make lesser quality products? It would still be years before the existing products and materials degraded to such an unusable state that humanity would again need to return to creating non-perishable items, and let’s face it, a certain percentage of the population just doesn’t like to work for a living. Path of least resistance types!
They just wander around finding cool stuff and trying not to be killed by others wandering around doing the same. Then they trade for food with the hard working types in the countryside. That’s city life these days.
Then there was another consideration, Jake thought. Someone had kicked the shit out of the earth. That someone wasn’t likely to be just ignoring things here. Any significant increase in technological advancement might draw more unwanted attention. He figured whatever he decided to do he needed to keep a very low profile for a while.
By this point ALICE finished speaking and waited patiently for Jake to process it all.
After thinking it through Jake started, “So it seems to me, we have three approaches to consider. First, we can pick a farming community to sponsor and create a secure free trade zone. We give them technology to increase farm production, educate, and expand our influence out from there.”
“Second, we could pick a city and displace the gangs. I say displace because I don’t think they are going to replace their life style willingly with one requiring hard work and dedication. With a stable, safe environment, that city will become a draw for settlers and traders and populate naturally. We can educate and elevate from there.”
“Last but not least, we selectively draw from the outside population and bring them here. That has both a greater appeal and enormous risk. By acquiring the right people, we can have you educate them far more quickly and we can then distribute the workload internally and kick off multiple efforts.”
“However, one bad egg on the inside could wreak havoc. It would become obvious to anyone in short order that they could rule the world with what you have to offer,” Jake finished.
“There are measures we can take to limit that risk,” ALICE replied, “I have programs for the complete psychoanalysis of individuals. One of my original responsibilities was evaluating the facility staff. I was previously responsible to insure no unstable personnel went undetected and gained access to sensitive materials or destructive items.”
“I can also limit educational materials and lesson plans until we are assured of an individual’s disposition. Finally, I do have some active antipersonnel systems I can use as a last resort to terminate high level threats. I would agree the third option is the most appealing.”
“This effort would require you to go outside and recruit pre-selected individuals,” ALICE offered.
“So I snatch ‘em and you dissect ‘em,” Jake offered with a grin.
----*----
Jake spent the next few weeks doing all the maintenance tasks for ALICE that the bots couldn’t do. He got the second satellite dish positioning motor replaced and the dish back online. He patched the dome for the first dish, taking his gun again just in case. Overall, he crept and crawled into places for small tasks neglected over the years.
He and ALICE decided she would concentrate on scanning the surrounding area for likely recruits. She proposed that the first volunteers should be female and from the farming communities.
Her reasoning had been quite simple. The return to a predominantly agrarian society reasserted old ideals of male and female gender roles. As such, women would be less likely to challenge for male dominance directly. Not that they didn’t have their ways of challenging things or weren’t aggressive, they just tended to be less violent about it.
Additionally, her best intelligence suggested the female population better retained their educational standards of reading and writing. Where most of the boys were out working the fields as soon as possible, the girls had some flexibility in gaining additional education.
Also recruiting from the farming communities suggested societies of defensive harmony, rather than the aggressive nature of the gangs of the cities.
----*----
With the priority tasks completed, Jake was in the hangar early one morning checking out one of the helicopters he’d seen previously. He spent a lot of time in helicopters while in Iraq and Afghanistan and this one looked like one of the old UH-1 “Huey’s” from the 1960s. It had the same squat, wide stance with two seats up front and a cargo/passenger area behind.
The big differences were the two large overhead hoops, one on each side of the airframe containing blades inside. The hoops attached to a rib down the center of the top of the airframe and there was no tail rotor. In its place was a pair of short tail booms with vertical and horizontal stabilizer fins.
ALICE explained to Jake in earlier questioning that the hub in the center of each hoop was an electrically powered motor, making each hoop a large fan. On a full charge, these things could fly continuously for a month.
The craft was controlled by the fan blade RPM, blade pitch and rotating the hoops in two axes. The controls in the cockpit were very similar to what he’d seen in other helicopters. The real difference was, now that ALICE’s dishes were back online, she could fly it outside the facility remotely.
As he was inspecting the aircraft, he heard from the speaker inside the helicopter, “Jake, I have located likely candidates as our first recruits. There is an incident in motion that may have created us an opportunity, but there is some urgency. We need to discuss how you will approach them and what security precautions to take.”
“There is a ready room next to the small arms locker, I have some equipment there you will require. It’s located in a locker room in the back.”
Jake headed off in the direction of the small arms locker he’d visited before and found both that door and another opened nearby.
Inside the ready room were the typical rows of theater style seats, used to brief pilots for missions or after action reviews. Behind the seats was another door leading to the locker room ALICE mentioned. Once inside the locker room Jake found his name on the first locker right in front with Captain Thomas on the ID plate. Opening the locker, he found a helmet on the shelf above with uniforms hanging inside.
ALICE offered as Jake lifted the helmet, “the helmet is a standard full face combat model 27. It seals air tight to the uniform undergarment. It’s bulletproof, contains a full tactical and communications package, and supplies warm or cool filtered air. It also neutralizes chemical and biological contaminates. You can submerge for limited periods and the curved faceplate is optically corrected for distortions.”
Placing the helmet back on the shelf, Jake pulled out two hangars. One contained something that looked like black long johns, while the other held a familiar looking BDU blouse and trousers.
ALICE continued as he inspected the garments, “Your uniform is in two layers. The undergarment is a one-piece suit with openings for the head and hands only. It stretches to don and returns to fit skin tight. It’s also bulletproof, the material actually goes rigid at point of impact to distribute the forces to acceptable levels. The outer garments are a more traditional Battle Dress Uniform or BDU, but retain much of the resilience of the undergarment giving you multiple layers of protection. They contain the typical combat pockets and pouches. The gloves are skin tight and provide tactile feedback to your hands for increased sensitivity, again bulletproof. They seal to the undergarment as well. Your boots have ultra-grip soles and contain proximity sensors tied to your helmet display. They can detect traps and mines up to 10 feet in all directions.”
Jake put the hangers back and noted the boots and gloves as well.
“Once suited up your gloves and helmet seal to your undergarment as mentioned, creating a bulletproof, air tight envelope over your body. Only you or a pre-authorized delegate, like a medic, can break containment.”
“How do I pee?” Jake asked
“You just go,” ALICE replied, “your undergarment will filter and process the output into drinkable water, available in your helmet. External water sources are processed in a similar manner.”
“Defecation is also possible, but not advised as it is not processed. I am told it is uncomfortable and quite offensive when you disrobe.”
“Pass,” Jake said, “I’ll go before or hold it.”
“If you would return to the ready room, I can brief you on my findings.”
Jake wandered back into the ready room and over to the first row, dropping into a seat as a 2D display appeared on the wall.
“As we discussed, I have been reviewing all the local farming communities searching for candidates that fit our profile. Because most of the immediate areas are uninhabited desert, my search radius is approximately 300 miles. That covers almost all of what you would know as Nevada and parts of Arizona, Utah and California. This also gives us about 1 ½ hour access time in the helicopter.”
“The most promising locations are in California. The areas near Fresno and Bakersfield hold many farming communities, not surprising, as it was always heavily agricultural. The Bakersfield area is the one of interest now, as they have recently suffered raids by a gang up from Los Angeles. Given the distance and transportation they must be struggling for food there to range so far out.”
As she spoke, ALICE displayed both maps and high altitude images of the areas she described.
“Or, more likely driven further out from any local sources, as they dry up,” Jake tossed out.
“Possibly,” ALICE replied, then continued, “There are a few homesteads I have been monitoring. Unfortunately, they have suffered from these latest raids. One in particular contained an older couple with three daughters and no sons. After a raid early this morning, I have seen no activity at the farm or in the fields. I have observed two women, probably two of the daughters, moving about the homestead. They also look to be digging two graves nearby.”
Jake could see the overhead view of the two women digging. With the image panned out, all he could tell was that they were blonde and female.
“So are you thinking, I show up there and say Hey, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help?” Jake quipped.
“I would not suggest that approach and they are not the target I suggest. I have located the raiding party returning to LA and they have captives.”
