A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 8

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 8

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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I popped over to Walker’s house and appeared before the human weapon of mass destruction without warning.

She raised an eyebrow at me in response to appearing in her home in the middle of the night, as I placed my dog on her floor.

“Need you to take care of Jack for a bit.” I didn’t bother asking if she needed sleep, because she probably didn’t. Superhumans all had their quirks. “I need to deal with something.”

Walker raised an eyebrow at me, glanced at Jack, and then turned her gaze back to me.

I got the message.

She at least wanted to know what I was doing, in exchange for taking care of my dog. Given the fact that Jack was my only possible lifeline, if the surface went to shit because of one thing or another, I caved in at the request and gave her the explanation.

“India’s got superpowered, sentient machines.” I gave her the simple answer.

“What.” I received the correct response with the correct amount of fear, surprise, and urgency.

“Mad scientist called Shiva. Used his first one to kill Pakistan and knock out nukes headed towards India.” I took the backpack off my bag and put some dogfood on the floor for Walker. The human weapon of mass destruction took in the information and was immediately ready to kick ass and take names. Even though she caused the apocalypse, the woman had her good qualities. “No. Stay here. If I fail, use it as a reason to unite the States and make a kick-ass team to solve the problem permanently.”

Lorraine Anderson was a batshit insane zealot, but she’d put superpowered AI above in the priority list over repentant villains working to regain their lives. There were few things in life more holy than killing things that you don’t understand, after all. She’d definitely wage a holy war to unite her people against an enemy that wasn’t human. Given her preferences, she’d call it a crusade, even though jihad sounded cooler… but I’m digressing.

I had a threat to proactively, decisively destroy before it fucked me over.

While I could just go back into my bunker and hide, I was certain that superpowered bodies controlled by AI out to kill humanity wouldn’t be stopped by my passive security measures. Hell, they’d probably figure out my weaknesses faster than any humans would, and I’ll be dead sooner rather than later. While I can fool and exploit human enemies, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to do the same against legions of untiring machines.

I was all for avoiding conflict and waiting shit out, but that could end up impossible, so I had no choice.

Walker looked ready to argue with me, but I raised my hand to clarify things, since she seemed to somehow think that I was going on a suicide mission.

Which would be stupid, since instant transportation would be a huge advantage in the fight against a machine army with superpowers.

“I’m going to do reconnaissance and find Shiva. He hasn’t been heard from in a long time, so I’m going to do it the hard way. You’re just going to take care of Jack until I come back.” I showed Walker the inside of by backpack. It had a camera I had made for taking aerial photos with my power, which was difficult since I all I did was fall with style and return to the ground before terminal velocity hit me. Naturally, I had a big, deep pool back in my bunker to pop into to arrest movement just in case, but I was also going to do it with a parachute and an emergency one just in case. “Hunting from the sky. Footwork. Harassing the local bad-guys and all that. Don’t worry, I’m going to keep up my end of the trade deal with you.”

I could take care of Jack, popping back and forth to my bunker to feed, bathe, and walk him around, but I was dealing with mad scientists. They could cook up some bullshit way to track me back home, or put a tracker on me, and a week later my house gets blown up by a missile from India.  Yeah, I wasn’t going to be taking any chances with morons with high intellect who made sentient life with superpowers from India.

They literally lived in Indian, watched all the shit that happened because of superhumans in their country, and they decided to build more.

I wasn’t taking any chances with these lunatics.

I started packing up my bag when Walker nodded, after understanding what I was doing. She reached into one of the cabinets of her expansive cabin and took out a bag, which she handed to me.

“It’s a survival kit filled with preserved foods. Jerky, dried fruit, nuts, and some powdered milk. All you need is freshwater, which won’t be an issue for you.” In the post-apocalypse, Walker and Anderson were both producing food, but it looked like Walker was taking the extra step of making it into a product. Even if she didn’t have food, she could base whatever economy that was coming up off the duffels of food she was going to institute and sell. Her people were going to have something tangible to work for and build on, while Anderson’s people had faith. Whatever fight was coming ahead was going to be a shitshow between two peoples just as devoted to one idea or another. Geopolitically, the apocalypse practically never happened. “If you need a resupply, we can meet where we reunited to not put anyone at risk.”

If I wasn’t about to look for a mad-scientist capable of making synthetic superhumans capable of ravaging countries, I would’ve been glad to have the opportunity to leave the continent for a while.

…

Given the fact that I worked a lot in India in my formative days, I had a few safe houses here and there to help me work in the country. I liquidated a lot of assets when I called it quits, both to retire earlier and to make sure that no one stumbled onto my stuff and got themselves killed, but I left behind basic furnishings, a few days of supplies, and medicine just in case.

I didn’t need any of it when I popped into one and found it dusty and unused, but once I started getting pictures, I made use of the table and started pouring over my aerial photographs with one of my spare laptops while taking stock.

India was a massive continent, even for someone who can be anywhere he wanted. I still needed to know where I wanted to be. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about popping into things, but that still meant doing needing to do reconnaissance. My early years in Africa and India was spent scoping out locations where I could survey areas in peace, and recall locations unlikely to be filled with people/ongoing conflicts.

Most of my work in India took place near or around the larger population centers. India’s coastline was a massive place for commerce and trade. A lot of money flowed through there, while the rest of the country floundered and eventually erupted into territories out to take what they needed from one another with force. The cities on the coast that managed to stay independent turned to trade, supplying the wars inside, and selling the weapons forged by mad scientists to the outside.

A man like me could make a lot of money in that business, so I did, and didn’t bother mapping out the rest of India. There was no need for me to explore warzones, therefore I didn’t, and so now I had to do reconnaissance and footwork. Footwork entailed making contact with the locals to narrow down his potential location, while reconnaissance involved skydiving and taking aerial photographs with my high-spec camera.

I was prepared to spend a few days searching for Shiva, scrambling for clues in order to find that no one in India wanted to keep around, and investigating those clues in the safety of my bunker.

However, as I poured over picture after picture, I got lucky with one of the rumors I’d followed and photographed from above.

…

Shiva was a grade A lunatic, even before he sent a superpowered gynoid over to destroy an entire country. He ticked off all the boxes of a person who shouldn’t have superpowers: national fanatic, innumerable grudges, and delusions of grandeur. A regular superhuman with one of those things is a problem, since they can start a lot of shit. Off the top of my head, I can recall eighteen massacres conducted by “patriots,” “saviors,” and cult leaders that happened in the opening years, just in America.

Naturally, before and after the apocalypse happened, there were places that he fought alongside his creations. The former didn’t matter much to me, but the latter did. Most of the folk that I spoke too were focused on the battles fought by his gynoids after he vanished. Every now and again, one of his creations would wreak havoc somewhere and an alliance of warlords would come together to fight against them, and go back to killing each other later.

But, again, Shiva practically disappeared and stopped fighting against his enemies and detractors later.

Which was strange for a man who names himself after a god, who wanted to rule over India, and become its savior/hero.

Men like him would never avoid gaining glory for himself at the front.

So, I investigated the last battlefields where he was last seen.

Like most battlefields in India, it was picked apart for scrap, weapons, and tech to be ferried over to the hands of local, superhuman scientists to make more of their own stuff. High-performance gynoids capable of wasting entire countries would naturally get picked up and set off. The advancements in exoskeletons and weapons over the last half-decade probably came from Shiva’s knowledge disseminating across the continent, which made India that much deadlier to spend any time with.

However, even the best scavengers left behind scraps, and some people would go out of their way to look for them. I wasn’t interested in the opportunists looking for stuff to sell off, those were a dime a dozen, but when the same figure showed up in all of my pictures of battlefields across several days all across the subcontinent?

That warranted a few questions.

I found the hunched figure in a canvas coat with a sled dragging behind them in the last battlefield I’d looked at. It was a large fight between Shiva and three warlords, as well as their entourages, that ended with Shiva retreating but with two of the three warlords dead along with their lieutenants. The battle had been bloody and the last man standing lost half of his lieutenants and his arm, which made it impossible for him to keep his territory, let alone invade the other two without protectors.

All three territories of the three warlords involved ended up getting absorbed by others eventually.

But that was beside the point, I had a few questions for the scavenger looking through the northernmost point of the current battlefield, when I saw them halfway down the continent yesterday.

I decided to start with a friendly greeting, after pulling the pin from a grenade, and throwing it the hunched figure’s way. The fact that they froze at the sound told me that they could be hurt from the explosion, and that they knew not do anything stupid while under duress. Thus, they were reasonable and could be conversed with.

“Turn around slowly. I need questions about Shiva answered, and I figured an avid collector like you can provide some insight.” The hunched figure did as I instructed. Their face was obscured in the shadows, and as they turned, I heard the whir of servos and creaking of metal. I put two and two together. “Oh. You’re not a collector. He made you.”

The thing paused and I felt whatever it had for a gaze drift over to my explosive, as though expecting me to attack it immediately. Luckily for it, I needed answers before I made any decisions about a machine that can think, repair, and upgrade itself.

“The offer still stands. I’m out to stop Shiva and whatever he’s making before it spills onto the rest of the world. If you just want to live, I’ll let you.” I lied a bit there. Since it hasn’t spoke to me, my mind was firmly on the side of “kill the dangerous thing, so it stops being dangerous.” That could change if it didn’t present itself as a crazy machine out to kill everything. “Now talk.”

It whirred in silence for a bit, before speaking.

“File number 74. High priority. Unknown foreign individual of extreme prowess. American. Brown hair and eyes. Tall. Title: Egress. Speculated power: teleportation. Usage: shipping.” It spoke with a female voice. It was English with the slightest Indian accent. The hunched figure suddenly stood up and loomed over me. Its cloak fell off. Parts of it was damaged and revealed nonsensical masses of circuitry and machinery, but the rest of it was obviously an attempt at Kali. A goddess of war and destruction with blue skin and four arms. Her figure and shape was obviously meant to evoke all sorts of fetishes, but that was as expected for a man who named himself Shiva making his namesake’s “wife.” “This unit does not know where its creator is. It was abandoned in conflict and reprogrammed to gather supplies by another.”

Tch.

So, I didn’t find a lead.

I found recycled salvage.

Unless, of course, it was lying.

“Prove it.” I gave the damaged gynoid an ultimatum. It had an empty socket where its fourth arm would be, but it was still an eight-foot-tall machine with little damage besides. It could easily crush anything in its hands, use weapons meant for humans with ease, and could travel halfway across India in a day. It couldn’t destroy a country, but depending on how durable it was, it was still a threat if it wasn’t an overridden piece of tech used as a pack mule. “You have a minute to contact whoever’s in control of you, before I show you how lethal “shipping” gets.”

The looming, sentient effigy covered by canvas over unnecessary, feminine bits and bobs surprisingly nodded at my assertion and pointed upwards to the left… where the sound of helicopter blades started to fade in.

I chanced glancing in that direction, after putting a little distance from myself and the gynoid, and felt a little calmer at the sight. The incoming helicopter was a slapdash, rickety piece of shit that was tugging a shipping container beneath it that had “scrap” written across the side. It was also very well armed and flanked by rickety drones with rotors and gas engines to deter anyone from doing its business. A superhuman with the knowledge to rewire superpowered robots, and make their own, was using their power to conduct business and fulfill demands.

For the first time since I got out of my bunker, I was going to meet a fellow entrepreneur making the most of what they had.

Finally, I was going to have a conversation with someone sane.