Days of Future Past - Part 3: Future Tense Page 5

  "I am Lieutenant Colonel Paul Young, United States Air Force," I gasped, "Serial number five, five six, three two, seven, seven nine."

  He beat me some more, I think I screamed when he poked me in the back with the still hot bar.

  "Tell Tormist about the Chosen!" he yelled again.

  "I am Lieutenant Colonel Paul Young, United States Air Force," I gasped, "Serial number five, five six, three two, seven, seven nine," I repeated once more.

  He beat me some more and of course I passed out again. I woke when he doused me with a bucket of water. Then I watched, as he walked over to the brazier and pulled out another rod. He brought this one over to my face and waved it back and forth before my eyes, then slowly started to lower it.

  "You will talk."

  "No, I will die." I said and closing my eyes I wondered if I could hold my breath long enough to pass out and perhaps miss what was coming next.

  "Tormist!" I heard a voice.

  "Tormist is busy!"

  "Aybem wants the prisoner brought upstairs to him."

  "When Tormist is done with him!" Tormist growled.

  "Now!" Came the response, along with a much deeper and louder growl.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the orc who was standing in the doorway. He was much bigger and stronger looking than Tormist. He also had a club in his hand and was pointing at Tormist with it.

  Tormist looked at him, then looked at me, then looked at him again.

  "Tormist obeys," he said and then hit me in the head with the butt of the rod and knocked me unconscious.

  - 5 -

  I came to as they dragged me up the stairs, through a metal fire door and into a large room. The two smaller orcs each had me by the upper arms, the larger one I guess was behind me, I really wasn't sure as I was still pretty groggy from the hit to the head.

  The room was large, but it wasn't empty. There was what I guess were tall metal closets up against the far wall. The place had that look of a lot of military control rooms, big, solid, lots of metal bracing, and only the one door we came in through.

  The walls to either side of the room were covered in what I could only guess were trophies. The typical 'I love me' military commander's office decorations taken to the extreme. There were weapons, armor, old severed heads, a hand or two. Shields, skins, some rather large animal skulls, pictures, documents, and other junk I couldn't even begin to identify.

  Scattered all along both sides of the room about three feet from the walls were machine racks, with lots of equipment in them. They looked old, because they looked worn, but they were of a design that I didn't really recognize, so I had no idea what they did. But the flickering lights on them made it clear that they were in use, so I guess they were important if they were in here.

  They dragged me to the center of the room as I took this all in, there was a huge console before me, and seated behind it was a giant. At least I guessed he was a giant as he was as tall as I was, while sitting down.

  "Doctor Livingston, I presume?" I gasped out and then gave a rather loud groan as I got hit on the head by the orc on my right.

  "Do not harm the prisoner, you will not be warned again," the giant said, looking away from the console and at the orc. He then looked at me and that was when I noticed his eyes, they weren't real, or they weren't made of anything alive I'd wager. They looked like twin black holes, no light was reflected by them, they didn't shine, nothing. It was like they swallowed the light. You couldn't even tell if there was a surface there or if perhaps they penetrated deep into his skull.

  It was rather freaky.

  "Colonel Young, I apologize for my over enthusiastic subordinates. I had no idea you were a senior officer. I thought you were just another one of those criminal lowlife scum who are currently infesting my lands."

  "Sure you did," I nodded.

  "Allow me to introduce myself, I am called 'Aybem' and I am the leader of these people."

  I snorted, my wits were slowly returning, but they weren't exactly back yet.

  "I'd hardly call them people," I snarked, and the one on my left this time hit me hard enough to stun me. But not hard enough for me to miss the loud high-pitched whine, the smell of ozone and burnt flesh, followed by his body falling over with a series of smoking holes in his chest.

  That was when I noticed that there were turrets hanging from the ceiling, four of them. Laser turrets apparently.

  "Excuse their behavior, please," Aybem said and gestured with a fairly human hand attached to an arm that had flesh missing from it and exposing the metal framework underneath. From the way the flesh was torn in places, it looked more like some sort of artificial covering. The way it moved on his face when he talked, was also more than a little disturbing.

  "As you can see, he has been punished. However, I would appreciate you not making any more antagonizing remarks."

  I swallowed and nodded slowly, "Of course."

  "Leash him to the ring in the floor over there," he said and pointed to a ring in the floor about ten feet to the right side of his desk, or command station.

  The remaining orc dragged me there, under the watchful eyes of the turrets and using a heavy five-foot long rope with eyelets woven into the ends he padlocked one end to the ring, and the other he padlocked to the chain between my manacles.

  As he did so, I took a moment to try and examine Aybem, despite my still dizzy head and slightly blurred eyesight. He hadn't stood, but if I was judging it right, he'd probably be close to eight feet tall if he did. He was seated in a chair and giving most of his attention to a series of display screen set into the consoles on the desk.

  His body looked human, sort of. There were a few spots where there were some odd bulges, and others where I could see machinery underneath. Then there was some sort of cable bundle that came down from a carrier tray in the ceiling above him, the cables from it attaching to his head, they sort of looking like dreadlocks with the way each of the black cables appeared to be braided. I couldn't tell if they were attached to something he was wearing, or if they went right inside of his skull. But the more I looked at him, the more I realized that he wasn't human. He wasn't even alive. He was apparently a machine of some sort.

  Had they discovered AI and robots? Was that what had caused the war?

  My rope well secured the orc got up and left the room, the larger orc grabbing the dead body and dragging it out of the room as he followed, closing the door behind him.

  So, here I was, in the presence of the mighty Aybem.

  Too bad I had nothing to kill him with.

  "So, we meet at last, Colonel Young," Aybem began, turning his attention back to the screens on the console before him. "I must say, you're a lot less impressive than the reports I've been receiving make you out to be. You've done a lot of damage to my forces over the last few months."

  "You can thank the gods for that," I said trying to see what was displayed on the screens he was studying. Most of it appeared to be text that was scrolling my rather quickly, faster than I could read at least. The rest I think were either maps with data on them, a few which appeared to be live feeds from some places outside, and a couple that were just filled with what I guessed where status indicators, but it was all still too blurry to be sure. "I'm just along for the ride."

  "The gods, right!" Aybem laughed. It was rather chilling to hear a machine laugh like that. It didn't sound natural; it seemed more like a placeholder stuck in the middle of a conversation, like it was scripted - 'sarcastic humor, insert laugh here' kind of a thing.

  "There are no gods, Colonel Young, they are nothing more than the myths that we tell the proles to make them do they things we need done. To get them to sacrifice themselves for the 'greater good.'"

  "Yeah, right," I said sitting down on the floor, which I found to be rather cold, but I was too tired and beat-up to stand there anymore. "You just keep on telling yourself that. Mind if I sit?" I asked.

  "By all means, make yourself comfortable," he said and wav
ed his hand at me, another almost human gesture, but for some reason I couldn't place it also seemed off.

  "That Chosen One of yours...."

  "He's not mine," I interrupted.

  Aybem stopped and looked at me a moment, "Excuse me?"

  "He's not mine," I said and then shrugged. "The gods brought him here; like I said, I'm just along for the ride. Wrong place, wrong time, and here I am," I motioned around me with my shackled hands.

  "You expect me to believe that you, a colonel, are here against your will?" Aybem gave another one of those inhuman laughs and then turned back to his console screens. "I must say that I find that difficult to believe."

  "Yeah, well, the gods are fickle."

  "There are no gods, Colonel Young. Please stop insulting my intelligence."

  I noticed the laser turrets all turned in my direction. I swallowed and shut up.

  "As I was saying, that Chosen One," he paused a moment, "Riggs I believe his name is?"

  Aybem turned and looked at me expectantly.

  I nodded, "Yes, John Riggs."

  "My spies report that they have heard you address him as a 'Major', is that correct?"

  I nodded again.

  "So how is it that you, a lieutenant colonel, are not in charge of a major? You outrank him. Therefore, logically, he is one of yours."

  Aybem's face them moved in a rather creepy parody of a smile. I was beginning to understand why very few humans would work for this guy, and equally why so many monsters could.

  "He's not in my chain of command," I said. "So I can not order him around."

  "That's not logical."

  I shrugged again, "It's the military. It's not meant to be logical. It's only meant to work. As of our last assignment, he was actually placed over me, but of course I was of a lower rank then, I've only recently been promoted."

  "I do not follow," Aybem replied, still staring at me with those black holes for eyes.

  "I was under his command, though indirectly. Because of the time that had passed from when we left our," I hesitated a moment, "home, my rank increased because of openings in the list. So while I outrank him, technically the argument could be made that I'm still responsible to him, even though he's of a lower rank.

  "That is of course, if there was anyone left to make that argument to."

  "Again, I do not follow what you are saying. When I queried the protocols about you, your name and rank was verified. However, I receive no such verification when I query the system about your Major Riggs."

  "Queried the protocols?" I asked, confused.

  "The 'Real ID Act' of two thousand and five was upgraded to allow for the identification of military officers such as you in two thousand and sixty-three. I simply queried the protocols."

  "There are government computers still working?" I asked. I obviously knew that the military computers were still working; dealing with the relay station and the armory had proven that. But still it was a bit of a surprised to know that there were other systems out there as well that were still doing their jobs.

  "Yes, they have suffered some degradation from the war, but they are still functioning. Now, stop trying to avoid my question."

  "What was the question?" I blinked and wished I had something to drink, preferably something with a lot of alcohol in it. There was a lot of information going by me here, and I was having a hard time keeping up.

  "Why can't I find any information on this 'Chosen One,' Major John Riggs?"

  I shrugged, "Probably because he goes back home and dies, or he doesn't go back home and they presumed he died. I'm still surprised that I wasn't declared dead as well."

  "Do not play games with me, Colonel Young," Aybem warned.

  I shook my head, "Now I'm the one who doesn't understand."

  "I want you to explain to me why I can verify your information, but not the major's."

  "You know where we came from, don't you?" I said as I looked around the room, trying to see if there were any places that I might at the very least hide from those laser turrets.

  "I know you arrived in a jet of an out modeled and old design. My agents have heard the claims that you came from the sky, but I know that there are no people left in the sky.

  "Therefore, I can only assume that you come from one of the remaining military installations to the east of here, either in New England, or Florida, as they were both only lightly touched in the war."

  "We came from the past. About four hundred years in the past," I stopped scanning the room and looked at him and then laughed; the expression on his face hadn't changed a bit. But I didn't need to see any signs of disbelief to know that he wouldn't believe any of it.

  "We were out of Williams Air Force base, it was an evaluation flight. Riggs was my instructor. The gods showed up, said they needed his help, promised to send him home when he was done, and pointedly made it clear to me that I was fucked. But then I was already fucked, so it didn't matter anyway, right?" I shook my head again, getting a little off track. Yeah, I had been fucked, but then I'd met the girls and gotten completely un-fucked.

  And now.

  Now they were dead and I was back to being fucked. Why was I even bothering to humor this mechanical asshole?

  "You don't expect me to...."

  "Oh fuck off!" I yelled looking up at him and glaring, "I don't give two shits what you believe. Don't like it? Then fry me!" I said and motioned towards the turrets that were all pointed at me. "I don't have to justify myself, my life, or my existence to the likes of you! Bad enough I had to put up with all of Riggs' bullshit, and now I have to put up with yours?

  "Everyone is dead. Everyone I knew, everyone I grew up with, everyone I loved, and with the sole exception of you and Riggs, everyone I ever hated. So take your condescending attitude and just stick it. You don't know why you can't find anything out about Riggs? Because he's a super secret military genius and commander! Yeah, even I didn't know that he was the next greatest thing since Patton! So put that in your pipe and smoke it!"

  I turned my back to him and curling up into a ball I closed my eyes tight and just laid there quietly crying and thought about all that I had lost. Right now the last thing I wanted was to listen to this mechanical asshole, I had Riggs and Coyote for that already.

  "I understand you've been under a bit of stress," Aybem continued in a fairly condescending voice, "being as you were being interrogated rather aggressively before I brought you up here."

  "You mean tortured," I muttered.

  "I've done to you no differently that what your people have done to mine," he replied, and for all I know, he may have been right on that. I don't think anyone really was into treating his people all that nice, considering they were all evil monsters.

  "Still, I must give you credit for trying, as I said before, Colonel Young, you have cause me a great deal of trouble up until now. But here, here you and this 'Chosen One' have met your match. This underground fortress is quite impregnable. I have spent over a hundred years building up the fortifications, installing weapons and traps. My troops have been trained extensively on repelling any attacks upon the gates, and all of the entryways have now been sealed behind doors that would have been hard to breech back when this place was built. Today's weapons are no match for them."

  "Does that include nukes?" I grumbled.

  "If you had any nuclear weapons left, you would have used them by now. Not that you could get any close enough to actually damage this control room, buried so deep inside the mountain as it is." Aybem gave another one of those ghastly laughs of his, "Then there are the thousands of warriors I have inside here with me. Even with Riggs' greater numbers, he would still lose ten of his own men to every one of mine."

  "Says the man who has had his ass handed to him in every previous fight," I said shaking my head and blocking the lights in the room by burying my head in my folded arms I just tried to fall asleep.

  "No one likes a braggart Aybem," I mumbled, "and so far, that's all you are to me. A
braggart. All talk, no action."

  "But I have conquered all of the Nevada Wastes!" He thundered loudly.

  "Yeah, you fought against savages and monsters. But what have you done lately? Other than lose?"

  He didn't have any rejoinder to that, so I just gave a little laugh and just waited. With the kind of ego Aybem had, I was sure I'd be joining the girls any minute now.

  - 6 -

  I woke up lying on the floor and shivered, I was both surprised by the fact that he hadn't killed me, and that I had managed to fall asleep.

  I shivered again. It was cold in here and of course I was still only wearing my rather ragged underwear. I guess the cold had woken me up. I knew from survival training that if I went back to sleep now, that I would probably pass out and eventually die. You couldn't freeze to death in your sleep, unless you were already cold when you nodded off.

  Sitting up I looked myself over, taking stock of my condition. I was filthy, sore, probably had a couple of third degree burns on my back from the pain I was feeling. My wrists were shackled together on a rope that was about four inches long, I was thirsty and I was hungry.

  Thinking back on it, the Navajo had never treated me this bad on my worst day. Hell, not even the Air Force had come close.

  At least I wasn't tired right now.

  I watched Aybem as he sat at the control console, the many cables leading from the sockets on the back of his head reminding me suddenly of the dreadlocks on the predator in that Arnie movie. Only these went up to a central coil suspended from an arm attached to the ceiling, which allowed him to move anywhere in the cavernous room.

  "So, are you going to feed me?" I asked as my stomach growled again.

  "Why would I feed you, Colonel Young? You came here to kill me."

  I shook my head and snickered, "How'd you come to that conclusion? That's Riggs' job. I'm just along for the ride. Hell, if it wasn't for you and your men, I'd be out there somewhere," I waved my hands at the walls around us. "Your people are the sole reason I'm here, inside this 'impregnable fortress' of yours." I added the last bit with no small amount of sarcasm.