The CRES code

Chapter Nine - Departure

"Six hundred years," said Jane, her face pale in the ruddy red light of the small cottage's fire. "Maybe a thousand years. Maybe longer."

Wilks and Gelda were dressing in warm clothes as they got ready for another day's work on their small farm. They'd opened the shutters across the tiny windows to let in a chilly breeze and Randall suppressed an impulse to move closer to the fire. Soon, the farmer and his wife would tell them they had to leave, and the former businessman didn't want the cold outdoor air to come as too much of a shock. It was still painfully early. Outside, the sun, still below the horizon, was painting the underside of the clouds an angry red, reminding Randall of the old saying his mother had been so fond of. Red sky in the morning. Sailor, take warning. There was bad weather ahead. He told his head phone to give him the weather forecast, just as an experiment, and got the expected message that there was no network connection available.

"I don't think we should place too much credence in the words of an illiterate farmer," said Loach, though. "These folk tales about orcs and the Old Ones were probably made up by his grandfather. I cannot believe that we've been asleep for a thousand years."

"I can," said Emily. "A mere century, even two, wouldn't account for that forest. It takes time for trees to grow that large, and that was a second generation forest at the very least. At least one generation of trees had already lived and died there. It looked like ancient forest to me. Forest that's been growing wild, untended and undisturbed by humans, for at least several centuries."

"Could the hypersleep cubicles keep us alive that long?" asked Jane.

Theoretically, from what I've heard," the older woman replied. "The gel stops all metabolic activity and removes all the free oxygen from the body. Without it, there's no oxidation, no deterioration of cells and tissues, and antiseptic chemicals in the bloodstream prevent opportunistic microbes from growing inside you. Your body becomes totally, chemically inert, as if it were made of marble. Theoretically, there's no limit to how long you can lie there and be safely revived so long as the machinery keeps you topped up with the antibacterials. The machines probably only woke us up when they did because they were running low on power."

"So why did all the others die?" asked Jane. "There were twenty of us in there. Only four came out alive."

"Because nothing's perfect," replied Emily. "They probably became infected with bacteria resistant to the antibacterial chemicals in the gel, or maybe their machines just broke down over the ages..."

"Who cares," Interrupted Loach impatiently. "What matters is, if the world we knew has gone, what are we going to do now?"

"Make new lives for ourselves in this new world," replied Emily.

"As farmers? Busting our backs tossing hay and mucking out pigs?"

"It's a good life, close to nature. I've mucked out pigs a few times in my life. It won't kill you."

"The farmer said there were cities," said Jane. "Perhaps there's a better kind of work to be found there. Political work, or academic. They probably do all their accounting longhand, writing on paper. With our headphones to do the arithmetic, we'd be accounting wizards!"

"Have you got any idea what life is like in a medieval city?" replied the former crime boss. "Smell, disease..." Then he paused as an idea came to him. Another thing cities had was crime. Lots of it. Maybe lots of small gangs just waiting for a strong leader to come along to unite them...

"I will be making for the nearest city," said Randall. "The idea of life as farmer is as unappealing to me as it is to Mister Loach. The kind of life I want can only be found in a large city."