A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 17

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 17

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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Rest.

I prefer to do long bouts of rest between long bouts of lack of it. Sure, I make sure to get sleep and recuperate, but true rest comes from winding down, doing nothing, and worrying about nothing. If you’re stressing about bills, other people, and work while on vacation, then you’re not resting. In fact, I’m sure that most of the world hasn’t really ever rested in their entire lives, and probably won’t in the near future because the planet they’re living on is absolutely fucked.

However, I have a secret underground bunker, all the food I need, tons of electronics, books, games, and a cute puppy.

I can truly rest until I’m sick of it and WANT to go to work again.

In a kinder, better world, everyone would be able to just sit back, not work, and still be able to live modestly, but that wasn’t possible before the nukes dropped, so it certainly wasn’t possible now.

Did I feel bad about my ability to rest, while the rest of the planet was embroiled in conflict or preparing for it?

Kinda.

On one hand, I worked my ass off for what I had. Even before I had my powers, I was living frugally in a workhouse, after my asshole of a single-parent kicked me out the moment he could. I never had a chance for higher education, and so I had to take the aches and pains, work from a beat up truck that I had to learn how to fix or just make usable, and do my best to eat one decent meal a day.

I’ll admit that I won the lottery with my powers, but given the amount of other people who wanted to use and abuse people like me, including other people who won the superhuman talent lottery… well, I had to risk my life in war zones and keep my head down around the rest of the community. If I hadn’t, then I would’ve ended up under some psycho’s control, and even though the pay would’ve been good, I would’ve probably died in one manic episode or another.

So, before powers, I was working myself to the bone for what I wanted, and after my powers I had to risk my life with every job to avoid complications and get money.

My powers gave me a lot of leeway, more than most people would ever get in their entire lives, so I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about what I earned. Still, though, anyone who told me that I didn’t earn what I had, and I was supposed to use my powers for other people and not myself, could go fuck themselves. I helped other people what I wanted to, just because I wanted to, and not because other people told me to.

I’ve seen first hand what happened to poor kids who got caught up in that lie, and they ended up either fucked up in the head or dead.

But, enough about how I managed to secure the ability to rest, because worrying about that sort of thing was going to stop me from doing it.

I had a week before I met with an AI to start building an off-world bunker, and I was going to spend that week resting.

…

“Shake.” Jack stared at me and tilted his head. His ears flopped and his eyes glistened. Most of his focus was on the dried piece of jerky in my left hand, but I some of it was one me. “C’mon, Jack, you get the treat when you do what you’re told.”

Jack gave a few soft, puppy barks towards the pieces of meat I had in my hand, but when I didn’t move he looked back at my flat hand.

I spoke once again.

“Shake.” I emphasized the word carefully, Jack’s ears picked up, and he put together the puzzle pieces in his mind. He trundled over to me on his stubby, puppy legs and then raised one to put on my outreached hand. His paw was soft and fur cool, but better yet I could see the anticipation in his eyes. Perfect. He was really learning. “Good boy, here!”

I gave him the piece of dried jerky and he took it, before running towards to the corner of my kitchen. His claws made clacking sounds on the paneling on the floor, until he reached his little bed and empty bowls in the corner of the room. He had a little enclosure in every room of my bunker, constituting of some rubber-covered wire fencing and soft, water-proof mats. I had the incredible advantage of getting rid of feces and urine with utter ease through a glove, so clean up was very easy.

Anyway, Jack started gnawing on his treat, so I turned towards my stove just as an alarm rang out and I gave a whistle.

“Eight minutes on the dot.” I opened my electric oven and was greeted with the wonderful smell of a hunk of cooked, seared steak on a cast-iron. With a tap, I moved steak, pan, and all onto the stove and observed it. The sear looked a bit pale, since I didn’t want the outside to be overcooked, and began the next step in the process. Basting with butter and herbs. The stick of butter sizzled as it hit the hot pan and soon enough I had herbs semi-frying in the liquid indulgence, while spooning it over one side of steak and then the other. I worked quickly, with the ambient heat of the cast-iron, until I was content and poked the steak onto a rack atop a plate. “A few minutes rest… just enough time to cook up a pan sauce.”

I took out the herbs, sending them to the compost bin three stories below, and fetched the flour from the cabinet with a jaunt over there and returning to the stove. A turned the heat onto low, after putting most of the excess butter in a bowl, and added the chopped shallots garlic onto the pan. They sizzled and released their juices, allowing me to put some elbow grease behind my arm, and scrape up the tasty bits at the bottom. I had to work quickly because of the garlic, but I had experience after years of cooking for myself, so I managed. When they were done releasing what liquid they had, I added the flour and started toasting it with all the delicious bits I’d managed to grate up.

Flour toasted with shallots and garlic and steak drippings was acquired, so I moved to add some more liquid. A bit of cooking red wine and some beef bone broth swiftly raised up the remaining bits and pieces from the pan and with a few stirs, I had the toasted flour thickening the sauce, giving me the perfect opportunity to add some of the butter that I had spared earlier and a little cream. Both thickened up the sauce some more, but threatened to break against the water, so I resorted to a handy whisk. The cast iron’s walls were high enough, and I had plenty of practice, so I managed to emulsify the sauce until it could coat the back of a spoon.

Twenty ounces of recently-butchered ribeye steak cooked to medium rare with a scallion-garlic pan-sauce made from its out juices was soon before me at the dinner table. It was joined by a bowl of mashed potatoes. Given my newfound access to fresh butter and milk, I decided to go with a more French style, and so it nearly had equal parts butter and potato in its composition. Which meant that this one meal was more than enough to last me for the entire day, maybe until tomorrow even, so I would have an excess of time to do whatever else I wanted.

But that was for me to worry about later, and for now I was going to enjoy my first fresh steak and potatoes meal in a long time.

I looked over to Jack, who was still nibbling at the long hunk of jerky I gave him, and raised my glass towards him. A sharp, sparkling cider for some sharpness and sweetness against all the richness that I was going to stuff into my stomach.

“To us, my dude.”

Jack didn’t notice, but one day he’ll look up and give me a bark.

For now, him just being over there and eating, giving me some company, made things as perfect as they could.

“Let’s dig in.”

The steak had a stronger, beefier flavor to it than I was used to, probably because they didn’t have access to hormones and excess feed in order to make them grow more quickly. It was a bit tougher too, but they had a few people who knew how to store beef without it going bad or dry. It was dry aging, like how it was way back when, and that helped deal with the cows being older and I found myself liking it more. The mashed potatoes and the cider provided creamy and acidic counterbalances to the meal, which raised it from an 8/10 to a sweet 9.5/10.

A fantastic meal to start off a vacation.

Now, if I didn’t have an amazing safehouse and bunker hidden from the world, I’d probably get a bite or two in before something terrible happened that would ruin my day.

However, I did have an amazing safehouse and bunker, so I was perfectly fine despite the rest of the world probably having a lot of difficulties while I enjoyed myself.

Yep.

Without a doubt, I was truly at rest after a few weeks of hard work.

Nothing better.

…

I ate, slept, worked out, watched movies, and played games to pass the time, until I found it all boring. From time to time, I trained Jack so that he could be the best darn dog that he could be, but besides that I grew tired from my spot in the bunker. Now, that might seem strange when because I spent years in my bunker without issue, but for most of my stay in the bunker, I was sure that the world was a radioactive mess that didn’t have any threats to my personal safety.

Now there were a lot of possible threats, so I couldn’t allow myself to fall into a long-term, do-nothing fugue state. I could start eating, working out to not get fat, and go through every game, move, and show that I had from A-to-Z without any issue, but that was for when I was sure that I was safe again. Not while religious zealots were massing, survivors were preparing for wars, mutants were being fought, and people were trying to exploit the situation to their advantage to dominate the world.

So, the day before I met with the AI again, I took stock the best way I knew how.

Making a journal.

“I still need weapons to fight crazy people with.” In that regard, my India mission was a complete failure, even though I got in touch with an AI that was decent at construction. I was tempted to ask the AI for weapons, but after I spoke to it, I was sure it’d ask me a lot more than I was willing to give for those weapons. Not only that, but I wasn’t comfortable with the possibility that the weapons and armor at my disposal could get bricked by someone else. Strong, powerful weapons were great, but I didn’t want them if they weren’t fully under my control. “I should take a look at the Middle East. Maybe there’s a few nukes there.”

I didn’t like taking jobs from there, even with the vast sums of money flowing around the place, because it was where the most bloodthirsty superhumans went to kill or be killed. Between oil money, high levels of technological sophistication, and all the clandestine wetwork going on, even for all the money I could ever want, I never did anything more than deliver a package or two in the Middle East. There was just too many factions, too many vendettas, and too many people with a lot of power that could kill me if I had a bounty put on my head.

But, now, it sounded like a good place to scavenge weapons that weren’t too advanced.

I checked on my notes, when I popped over, and a few instruments that I had on my person.

“Signal was cut off completely when I went there, so there’s nothing too technologically advanced.” In India, everyone and their dog were using fancy gear, because they liked it, sold it to foreign powers, and used it against one another. In the Middle East, a few people had more funds than everyone else, and so the masses worked together to get rid of that advantage. The deserts, dunes, valleys, and mountains of the Middle East were rife with tons and tons of signal jammers, esoteric fields that disrupted chemical reactions, and even energy dispersal modules. The last one was of great interest to me. “One or two energy destabilizers would’ve let me escape.”

I spoke aloud, mulled my thoughts, and wrote them down after they didn’t sound too crazy, before continuing the train of thought.

“The conflicts there will be a problem. I’ll need to be more careful than usual… unless I ask for help.” I felt a frown form on my face the moment I said that and took note of it. I instinctively didn’t like the idea, meaning that I’ll need to go on the possible mission with someone who could I could stand and who could stand me. Only one person came to mind at that, especially when considering the dangers present in the Middle East. “Well, I guess if Walker’s not busy, I could ask her to come along as muscle. It’ll be a problem, if she decides to do anything besides do that thought.”

I was about to write Walker’s name down as a possible ally before stopping.

“Nah. She’s better off away from that.” I stopped myself from consigning Maelstrom to that hellpit out of a feeling in my gut. I felt like asking her to go there would lead in disaster, and the sensation was stronger than usual. Sometimes, I ignored my instincts and it paid off, but never when it felt like my stomach was trying to leap up my throat and throttle my brain. So, I looked for other alternatives… and frowned when the same instinct didn’t arise when I considered another possible avenue. “Fuck, it has to be her… doesn’t it?”

I questioned myself, looking for other possibilities, but found no better alternative if I wanted to do it with as little risk as possible.

Yeah.

It looked like I was going the Middle East and asking my psycho-zealot ex to come along to beat up the people I couldn’t.

Because, after all, she couldn’t get any MORE crazy.