LF Friends, Will Travel

Innovation is Impartial - Chapter 10

Date: 2424 AD

The landscape was a dead, muddy mess. Where a vibrant forest once grew, now only dirt and rock remained, battered down by the sustained weapons fire from both sides of this continued siege. The continuous battering of attackers trying to gain access and the dwindling number of healthy defenders had destroyed what once existed here.

It was nearing its end. The pandemic would eventually pass, simply due to the lack of new victims to infect. In just the two weeks since Dr Fletcher had arrived at the compound, the entrance had gone from mostly healthy people in the beginning stages of infection asking for help to desperate people deep within the throes of the God Plague demanding it.

Jonathan slowly hobbled along the walkways that overlooked the entrance to the compound, old, rusty metal passageways ringing out as he walked along the top, giving him sight of the outsiders' final literal gasps for life. He could see them amassing for an attack, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, ready to try and take what had been created here for themselves. They must have realized the defenders had run out of artillery, that they could take by sheer force and mass of bodies the salvation they'd been denied.

At this point there'd be no way to make enough stasis chambers for those that still gathered outside the facility's doors: The groups that had been running the fabricators were lacking knowledgeable manpower as more and more of them fell to the God Plague, the critically few uplifts and the half dead human workers barely able to create a trickle of the life saving machines: No new generations would be taking over the maintenance of this place: Every human on the planet was either dead or dying.

Dr Fletcher doubled over in a pained, rasping, coughing fit - blood trickling from his mouth as he tried to steady himself. Everything hurt: breathing, thinking, moving. The tumors grew everywhere, no matter the medication he took, the painkillers simply took the edge off the agony of every breath, allowing the professor to be functional. By the standard timeline of the disease he had seven days of life left, but he frankly felt dead already.

Johnathan didn't have time to die, he had work to do, he had to keep the wife he loved safe and alive. He no longer had the strength to keep the fabricators running or to build the stasis pods, but he still had his most powerful tool: his mind, and a problem to solve up here on the surface, to buy those below enough time to save a few more lives.

A terrible problem with a terrible solution.

He could see the amassing force approaching: The desperate looking for any chance at life, all as hurt and infected as Johnathan was. Desperate enough to do anything they needed to survive, including opening up the already filled stasis chambers; killing those already asleep and taking their place.

The incoming force moved closer as the full assault on the facility started in earnest, free from the oppressive impact of explosives and artillery. Of course, Johnathan didn't need artillery for his plan to work: Creating complicated explosive munitions took time and effort they didn't have, when fabricating certain raw elements was far easier, and far more destructive.

And terrible.

He looked around him, at the handful of other people helping him, less than five in total. They didn't have anyone else left to spare, less than 40 functioning people remained, guarding the remaining tombs for the not quite dead. Statistically, they'd normally never stand a chance against such an overwhelming force, but statistically, most forces didn't have someone with Dr Fletcher's knowledge

Johnathan could see the individuals approaching more clearly now, a small tinge of guilt forming in his chest as he saw uplifts among the attackers. The humans outside the facility were ethically already dead as the God Plague ravaged their bodies, but the uplifts were caught amongst a desperation to help individual friends and family survive this apocalypse. Humanity might be the ones infected but the battles for supplies and life involved all Terrans of all kinds: There was a reason the facility was disconnected from any kind of network - Otherwise they'd have to contend with AI also attempting to breach their defenses.