"The Man Who Fell From The Sky" (closed)

[CutiePie1997]

"The Man Who Fell From The Sky"

OOC Thread
(for me and my writing partner only, not for comments, please)

(closed to such_a_bad_man)​

The first indication Kara got that her life was about to change in an incredible way was when a massive, sharp boom cracked through the air from the southwest. It was an odd sounding explosion like none she'd ever hear before. She assumed it was the Mother, trying again to get through The Door.

More and more of the area to the south of where Kara now spent her time had progressively come under the control of the Brutals. They were violent, murderous slavers led by a woman who called herself Mother. Mother was an undeniably inappropriate name for the women. She was a psychopathic tyrant who didn't have a loving, maternal bone in her body. Kara would come to learn that in the most horrific and degrading ways.

After being betrayed and sold to the Brutals by a supposed friend, Kara found herself a member of Mother's harem. She'd served Mother directly in many ways, one of which had been with her head between Mother's thighs. Another way had been on her hands and knees while a man or men found joy in one or both of her two orifices. These men were often people Mother wished to thank for some good deed he or they had done. Such unwelcomed invasions of Kara's womanhood typically occurred after angering, disappointing, or disobeying Mother. Other times, they occurred for seemingly no reason at all.

Kara was and always had been stubborn and proud. She'd known that eventually she would try to kill Mother. She'd also known that even if she'd succeeded, she would have been killed. So she'd made the insane and utterly stupid choice of escaping. Insane and utterly stupid could have been the right descriptors. Being a slave with food, water, and protection from the many other dangers in the world was more often than not far better than being a Freeman out here in the Wasteland.

But Kara had somehow escaped and survived. She'd found safe drinking water, though not enough to remain in the locale where she'd found it. She'd found food, though once again not enough to remain put. She'd found shelter, but without the water and food, she'd been forced to remain on the move. She'd even found friends in the form of a couple of hamlets and small towns that would allow her to do trade or work for resources.

But it had been a friend who had given Kara over to Mother in the first place. Trust had become an issue. The lack of it kept her from feeling safe enough to remain with her friends for long. She would gather enough resources to survive for some time, then disappear in the night. That was what she'd done three nights ago. She was once again alone in the Wasteland, wondering about the blast and thinking about Mother.

Regarding The Door, the Brutals had been trying to get through it for years. It was a steel barrier three times Kara's height and twice its height wide. It was set in the face of a mountain. There had once been a road leading up to it. But 200 years of biological debris landing upon it and seeds sinking their roots in that debris had pretty much hidden the road. Mother Nature always wins, Kara's mother had told her about how the planet had been and would continue to reclaim what Man had once taken from her.

Mother, as opposed to Mother Nature, believed there was a cave -- a bunker -- behind The Door. She believed the bunker was filled with untold treasures from the Time of the Ancient Ones. And she wanted those treasures.

Mother had been using her Brains to find a way into that cave. Not the gray matter within her own skull. Mother's other Brains were the very intelligent and ingenious men and women who were helping her with their knowledge of great and wonderful things. One of the many great and wonderful things was the rediscovery of how to produce gunpowder. And how to mill bullets. The Brutals were now reloading ammunition for 20th and 21st century firearms. And they were creating explosives. And Mother was using it to expand her Empire … as well as trying to get through The Door.

Kara assumed the explosion that had caught her attention was just that. She didn't know that after failing to even dent The Door, Mother had instead turned to trying to blow away the mountain side surrounding the door. Blow The Door or blow the hillside didn't matter, though. What Kara had heard wasn't either. Something high in the sky in the direction of the explosion caught Kara's eye. She lowered her polarizing goggles from her forehead to get a clearer view of the sky. She found the object again and watched it intently. It neared her rapidly, cutting a bit right to left.

At first she thought it to be another meteor. They were common, though there were a lot more of them seen at night. But the flames caused by passing through the atmosphere ceased and were replaced with a reflection of the sun. Meteors didn't do that. Then, something came out of the back of it. It looked almost like cloth. It was orange and white, and after first billowing, it caught the air and puffed out into a semi-spherical shape. No. No, not one puffed object, but three of them!

The object slowed dramatically. It's diagonal descent slowly became a mostly vertical one. It hung from the orange and white clothes and fell slowly toward the ground. Kara just stood there silently, stunned. She had never seen anything like this in all her life. Oh, she'd seen manmade flying things before. Mother's Brains had constructed what they called a Motor Kite. (In the 21st century, it would have been called an Ultralight.) The Motor Kite had made several flights over Mother's Empire. Its pilot had drawn maps and dropped explosives on Freemen communities. But then it exploded in the air above Mother's Empire. And to the best of her knowledge, Kara didn't think another one had been built.

But this coming from the sky was no Motor Kite. Kara didn't know what it was. But she knew that it was something spectacular. And she had to be the one who got to it first. The object itself disappeared beyond the centuries-dead trees of the wasteland. A moment later, the orange and white clothes lost their puffed up shape. They, too, disappeared from view. Kara filled her bottle from the solar powered water still she'd put over a hole dug into the sand. She feared that the 1.2 liters she had wouldn't be enough. But it was all she had, and she couldn't know if anyone else had seen the object fall from the sky.

She left all but her most necessary survival equipment. Then, she jogged. She kept her pace slow, and slowed to a walk each time she felt herself about to perspire. It was Winter and not very hot, but running too quickly would cause her body to waste fluids.

[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []​

(OOC: For context, the capsule in the link below is already on the ground of the wasteland in the link above. I can't find a more appropriate image, so use your imagination.)

It was approaching day's end when Kara came upon the landing site. There was smoke rising in the air from fires which had since gone out. She couldn't know it, but the capsule had used rocket powered jets to slow it to a softer landing. Those rockets had set some of the trees and dried plants on fire.)

The cloths were whipping about in the wind between her and the object. One was full of air, wafting a few feet above the ground. A second was intact with its lines tangled in the limbs of the long dead trees. The third was in tatters, ripped apart by those limbs. Kara lifted her rifle and aimed it in the direction of the object, which the cloths occasionally revealed. She had no idea why she was aiming her weapon. She had no idea what she was aiming at! Was there someone in it? Something in it?

Kara had grown up with stories of aliens from distant planets coming to Earth. She didn't believe them, of course. She'd been told the alien monsters kidnapped naughty girls and ate them alive. And she'd always been told such stories right after she'd been naughty. So … draw a conclusion. Kara had also been told stories of how Man had left this planet in space ships and gone out to other planets. She didn't believe those either. She'd never seen any evidence of it. (Of course, Kara couldn't know that there had been a concerted effort more than a century ago to erase and eliminate such knowledge and evidence. Someone had wanted to keep future generations of Man ignorant of the past that had led to Armageddon.)

She moved slowly around the landing site. Kara didn't know it, but she took almost an hour to circle nearly 300 degree around the object. The wind had died down and the cloths had sunk to lay still on the ground. The sun was nearly touching the mountains to the west when she finally began nearing the object. Closer … closer … closer. The object was like nothing she'd ever seen before. She got close enough to tap the end of her rifle on its outside. It was metal, as she'd thought. She moved around it again, this time in the opposite direction, again about 300 degrees.

There were little round windows, but they were too high for the 5'6" Kara to reach from the ground. She found a strong, forked limb and used it as a makeshift ladder. She was careful, knowing that if she fell she could end up critical injured and dying here in the Wasteland. But she managed to reach a round window. Wiping away the burn marks from entry through the atmosphere, Kara pressed her face to the glass. She saw a lot. But she also saw nothing. There was really nothing inside that made her think wow or I'll be rich when I sell that. Kara was sure that if she could figure out a way to get inside, there would be something she could sell to Mother. Of course, Mother would want to then enslave and punish her again, so, maybe a different buyer was in order?

Shadows suddenly enveloped Kara. Looking west, she saw that the sun had fallen entirely behind the mountains. Her investigation was over for this day. Her concern now was hiding the object from others. She dropped her pack, slung her rifle, and went quickly to work. She cut the lines to the cloths and rolled all three up. They were heavy, too heavy for her to carry. She drug them to the best cover she could find, then left them laying where she'd tied them with their own lines.

Kara used her machete to cut away some branches of two trees. She used a tarp to build a small shelter between them. A small fire was just enough to keep her warm through what would surely be a long, cold night. She wrapped herself in her blanket to sleep. But she found herself just sitting there staring at the object. What could it be? Where had it come from? Who'd sent it? And where were they? Why hadn't they come to reclaim it? Or, if they were inside it, why hadn't she seen them? Why hadn't they come out?

Kara drifted off to sleep a couple of times, finally laying down and falling into a deep sleep. She dreamed of things about which she'd never even imagined. Just as the sun was coming up, she jerked awake, sitting up quickly and grasping her machete in one hand and her rifle in the other. She looked to the object...

...and her eyes widened in shock!

Pressed up to the glass of the round window was a man's face!

 

[such_a_bad_man]

((OOC: This post is not meant to make any political points. This is an item of pure fiction. It is not making any statements about religions or governments. It is merely an attempt at explaining one of the ways the world of this story came into being.))

Well, they finally did it.

Nearly a century after the weapons used in Japan, the world forgot how horrible nuclear weapons are and used them on each other. As best as anyone can figure, the shooting war between India and Pakistan started to turn against the Pakistani army and the decision was made to use tactical nukes in the passes in Kashmir and anywhere that might let the Indian army advance on Islamabad. Before anyone had a chance to digest what they had done, a dirty bomb exploded in New Dehli. The Pakistani government swore up and down that they didn’t order such a heinous attack, but the Indians didn’t care. A short range nuke obliterated Islamabad and effectively ended the war.

That didn’t really end things on a global scale, however. Hardliners in Iran saw the attack on Islamabad as a sign of the war against Islam entering a new phase. That’s what they said on the news, at least. It was widely whispered that they were looking for an excuse to fire on Jerusalem. The missile that Iran swore they didn’t have hadn’t even impacted in Jerusalem before a US sub in the Persian Gulf leveled Tehran. Russia couldn’t allow an attack on their ally to stand without retribution and fired tactical strikes on military targets in mainland USA. Such an attack brought retribution from Europe and an escalation of commitment from the US. It was an attack that required an equivalent response from the Russians.

And that was the last that anyone told the astronauts on the Eriksson about the war. The deep-space ship had been in orbit, resupplying and making preparations to be the first ship to go outside the solar system. The geopolitics below ground that to a halt. Now, all they could do was watch helplessly as the missiles whizzed by in the atmosphere below them.

At least the team still received communication from Mission Control below. If Houston survived, maybe they might still be able to launch their mission after all. Within the first few days, however, it became clear that the Eriksson’s mission would change. As the ship orbited the planet, they could put their cutting edge sensors to work and map how the radiation of all the missiles circled the globe. If humanity were to have any chance of coming back from this, it would need a bird’s eye view of how the surface had changed.

And so, Colin “Mack” McDougle got up every day and did his work. Much like other scientists, he might never see the results of his work in his life time, but that wasn’t the point. “Do the work” was the mantra of his research team in university. It was time to live by that mantra again. As days turned into weeks turned into months, it was getting harder and harder for the crew of the Eriksson to maintain morale. They were on a ship orbiting a dead planet, some would say. Others would say that it was time to return to Earth to see if loved ones still survived. Every day, Colin would do the work.

Finally, Mission Control told them that the surface was too dangerous. Radiation levels weren’t dropping as fast as they hoped. The crew gathered to vote on their options. The most logical course was to use the Hibernation Cells that the ship had on board. They were meant to sustain the crew for the long trip to the Alpha Centauri system. They could do the same now until Mission Control brought them home.

Each team reported to their module and began preparations for the Long Sleep. Each person would wear a full body suit, full of sensors so that the AI controlling the life support systems could react accordingly to each crew member’s needs. Colin wiggled a bit as the suit vacuum sealed everywhere. And he did find out that the designers were right when they said EVERYWHERE. Taking a long look at his fellow team members, Colin laid back and watched the lid seal on his Cell.

The process was strange; he heard the gases dispensing into the Cell. They were meant to induce a coma like anesthetic during surgery. He felt himself drifting off, but his body paralyzed before his mind did. It was a strange sensation, but soon, his mind quieted as you would before a dream. But he didn’t dream; Colin felt like he was switched off-

*********************************************************************

When Colin came back to consciousness, the Cell was shaking around him. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but the vestibule around his Cell was dark. All he could see was the warning message on the wall of his cell. His module was landing? Had he been jettisoned from the ship by the AI or Mission Control? Why didn’t they wake him and bring the Eriksson in for a landing?

All these questions rolled around in Colin’s head as the module tumbled through reentry. As per design, the Cells had retracted up into the walls to dock with the ship’s systems as they sustained the inhabitants. It was felt that the artificial gravity of the module spinning would hold the team in place. That feeling was gone, however. He could feel real gravity and the thrust of the ship both pressing him into the bed of his Cell. He was coming down way too fast, he felt. Then, the jerk of the parachutes catching flung him against the lid of his Cell. Colin cursed and held his head as he could already feel a lump forming. “This is not proper reentry protocol, SEVEN.” Colin called out for the AI, but the robotic voice did not answer. He chalked it up to the automated system being busy with guiding his module down for a landing.

Colin pressed his face to the lid, trying to see if the others were awake like he was, but it was too dark and the light streaming through the window of the exterior hatch wasn’t enough to push it back. He lay back, feeling Earth’s gravity through his whole body. His muscles felt so weak that it took all of his effort to even stand.

His weak legs gave out when the rocket deceleration engine kicked in below the module and it landed with a soft kiss of its landing struts on the surface of Earth again. Colin was glad to be back on the surface again, but the whole ordeal was more taxing than he figured. He lay back against the cushioned bed of the Cell and fell asleep. He wasn’t sure how long he was out, but when he awoke, his Cell had retracted from the wall and lay on the floor again. The lid was open and he breathed air that tasted like it was recycled from outside. It wasn’t perfectly odorless and tasteless like so much of his life before storage. He could smell burnt wood and other earthy smells on it.

“I’m home…” Colin sighed as he sat up and swung his legs over the side. Using all his might, he pushed himself up onto his feet. Being forced to move in gravity again was not as fun as he’d remembered. Walking over to the exterior hatch, Colin looked outside. He furrowed his brow at what he saw.

Colin reasoned that he must have come down in the desert, maybe Arizona or Nevada by the look of things outside. Even more strange, he saw that someone had built a shelter not too far from the module. It wasn’t the recovery team that he expected. It looked… well, like a homeless person had found him first. He sighed and figured he should make contact with this person. He would have time to kill until the recovery team made it out this far. Plus, he needed a situation report to tell the others when they were brought out of Hibernation.

Reaching for the door, Colin tried to unseal and depressurize the vestibule. The handle didn’t respond. He cursed, leaning back, trying to use his body weight to move the handle. Again, it didn’t budge.
“God dammit…” he cursed and went to check on the rest of his team. Maybe if he could wake one of them up, they could work together to pop the hatch. He went over to Maggie Williams. She had a knack of throwing things together to build whatever they needed. He tapped on the control panel for her Cell, but all he saw was an Error message. Switching to a display of her vitals, everything was flat lined. His heart and stomach sank at what he read.

Hustling to the emergency equipment bag in the ship, he found the crank flashlight inside. Winding it up to get a charge going, he flicked it on and scared himself as the light shown on Maggie’s desiccated and drawn corpse inside her Cell. “Oh God, Maggie… no….” Colin sighed as he recoiled from her Cell.

He went Cell to Cell, checking for life signs. He Nguyen Cho. Deceased. Kevin Parker. Deceased. Michelle le Point. Deceased. Ibrahim el-Sazaar. Deceased. Colin sank back onto his bed, his head in his hands. “How long has it been?” he asked the dead ship around him. His eyes found the window in the door again. He would not join his friends. He would not die in this place.

“HEEEEEEY!!!” Colin screamed through the door, banging for all he was worth. “IN HEEEEEERE!!!” He roared, slamming the flashlight against the window, trying to get the attention of the person in the shelter.

 

[CutiePie1997]

“HEEEEEEY!!!”

Kara could only barely hear the words through the window and walls of the object in which the man was...

“IN HEEEEEERE!!!”

...but they were definitely Human words ... coming in a Human language ... Kara's language. She didn't know that her own tongue had once been called English. She didn't know that her own tongue had once been called Americanized English by, who else, the actual English. Hell, she didn't know who the English were, or even who the American's were. Those names had been lost from her current people long ago. America, or more specifically the United States of America, had been long gone almost as long as it had been in existence to begin with.

But she knew that this man (or whatever) was speaking her language. And she knew that that was … incredible. He was an alien from outer space, wasn't he? He wasn't a Human! How could he be. Humans didn't have flying things like this. Or, was this object just a fancy, more advanced Motor Kite?

He continued to rap something hard against the inside wall as he called to her. Kara rose slowly, leveling her rifle at the man in the object's window. Again, she had no idea why she was aiming at him or it or both. But Kara had learned that it was better to shoot first and ask questions later. (She would probably be surprised to learn that that saying had originate in a time before even the birth of the man in the object.)

Kara crept nearer and nearer until she was but two rifle lengths from the object. She hollered, "Who are you? What are you?"

Remembering her mother's stories about aliens and naughty girls, she asked with all seriousness, "Are you here to eat me?"

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin furrowed his brow. The woman that crept from under the shelter was leveling a rifle of some sort at the pod. He couldn't quite tell what sort it was. It looked military. Maybe an AR-15 or some other civilian rifle that the folks out west liked to buy. Still, why would she be leveling a weapon at him?

He could tell she was talking, but the material of the window was too thick for him to make out her words too clearly. He relied on her posture and expression and from the look of things, she looked scared of him and the vessel that brought him down to Earth. "Has this woman never seen anything NASA's done?" he asked himself as he tried to figure out how to proceed with this woman's help.

"I. NEED. YOUR. HELP." Colin spoke loudly, one word at a time so she could hear him. He pointed down, indicating something below the window. "YOU. NEED. TO. PRESS. THE. HANDLE. RELEASE. BUTTON. BELOW. THE. WINDOW." He yelled through the clear plastic.

"THEN. GRAB. THE. HANDLES. AND TURN THEM. CLOCKWISE." He yelled, hoping that the manual release still worked. It was built into the pods to allow the rescue crews to open the pods from the outside if the crew were incapacitated in some way. Now it seemed like they would be his only way out of this coffin of his crewmates.

 

[CutiePie1997]

"I. NEED. YOUR. HELP."

Kara understood each and every word the man spoke. She didn't necessarily understand the meaning of what he was saying, though. Combined with the hand gestures, though, she thought she got the picture. She may never have seen a spaceship before, but she knew basic controls of doors and such.

She slung the rifle -- he was correct in thinking it was a civilian AR-15 -- and examined the controls on the door. It took a bit of finagling. The handles popped out, she turned them, and springs kicked the hatch outward a couple of inches. It startled Kara so much that she fell backward to the ground. She scrambled back to her feet, whipped her rifle back around to bear on the door, and waited. He could get himself out now on his own.

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin nodded as the woman drew closer. She was following his instructions perfectly. Granted, the markings on the exterior should have told the same story, but he wasn't sure if they had survived reentry. It felt rougher than he remembered on previous missions to the ISS. He heard her engage the manual release and the door popped out of the frame.

"Oh, thank Christ..." he sighed, grabbing the handle and sliding the door to the side now that it was disengaged from the door frame. He saw the woman had taken a spill. It's understandable; the door popping was meant to seal against the vacuum of space so all that force came out of the hinges at once.

"Sorry about that. I should have warned you." Colin said as he grabbed a handle in the door frame and swung himself down onto the sand below. He had misjudged how strong his legs felt and wound up collapsing to the sand with a curse.

"Dammit..." He groaned, pushing up to all fours before getting his feet back under him and pushing himself back to his feet. "Not how I meant to land, but I'm here at least..." Colin muttered to himself as he brushed the sand off his sensor suit. As he looked up, he saw the woman leveling the weapon at him still.

"Do you mind not pointing that at me? You might hurt me or damage the ship on accident. I'm not an alien so don't worry." He tried to joke to lighten the mood, but it didn't seem to work. Instead, Colin pressed on, explaining the situation a bit more.

"My rescue team should be here within a few hours..." Colin said, trying to reassure the scared homeless woman that had freed him. He scanned the horizon, trying to get his bearings.

"Let's see, if this is Nevada, then Nellis AFB would be closest, I think..." He said, shielding his eyes and ignoring the scared woman somewhat. In order to know his true north, he had to figure the sun's position. He checked his watch and remembered that it probably had wound down since he went into Hibernation.

"Crap... Hey..." He said turning back to the woman, surprised that she was still aiming her rifle at him. "Umm, is it too much to ask what time you've got?" He asked, gesturing to his wrist. His eyes kept flicking down to her gun, wondering why she hadn't put it down yet. "Unless, you don't feel like talking..." he said as he slowly raised his hands.

 

[CutiePie1997]

As the man fell from the object, Kara backed a step. She kept her rifle trained on him. As he began ranting about the ship, as he called the object; about not being an alien, though she was still uncertain about that; about rescue teams and something called a Nevada and a girl named Nellis and talking. Talk, talk, talk. He'd already spoken more words than Kara had during her entire three days trading at a Friendlies' post.

His attention had been shifting between Kara, the ship, and the horizon. And he looked to her rifle, twice asking her not to point it at her. But Kara kept it pointed at him. Any time he neared her, she took a step back and pointedly aimed more conspicuously at him. He seemed to get the point, raising his hands to his sides.

Then, when he took another look back at the … the ship, Kara jumped forward, pulled back her rifle, and slammed its butt solidly against the back of his thigh. He dropped to one knee and teetered forward. It was just a pain inducing strike. It wouldn't cause him any long term damage. Kara knew this. Mother's Brutals had dropped Kara more than once when she'd been disobedient.

"Stay down!" she ordered, again pointing the rifle at his head. She backed away to her tarp lean-to, dug through her pack, and came out with a rope. She moved to him again and threw the rolled rope at him. "Tie your hands together! Do it!"

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin looked at the woman grim-faced. He wasn’t sure why she was so worried about him or so intent on thinking he was a danger. Maybe if he showed her something more familiar from the ship, she’d lower that weapon, he thought. All it took was one glance at the open door of his pod for her to spring forward and jab his thigh with the butt of her rifle.

“Ah, fuck…” Colin blurted out as he toppled forward. It didn’t hurt that much, but he was already so unsteady on his feet that it didn’t take much for him to fall forward onto his hands and knees. He was about to rock back to his knees, but he felt that hard metal press to his head. Colin’s eyes widened at the sensation of having a gun put to his head. He’d never ever been on the business end of one before he left on his mission. He wasn’t even on the pilot’s track from the Air Force before he joined NASA. He was a scientist. His mouth went instantly dry at the prospect of being shot dead by this woman out in the wilds of the desert.

“Stay down!” the woman demanded. Colin couldn’t find the words; he could only nod as the woman went back inside her shelter. He dared not move; there was no telling how long she’d be gone so Colin lay there in the dirt until she came back. A coil of rope landed before him as she yelled at him again.

“Tie your hands together! DO IT!” Colin nodded, rocking back to his knees now so he could have his hands free to tie them. He wrapped his wrists as best he could and left enough space to move, but not enough to slip the knots off.

“Is this alright?” He asked, showing her his work. “This isn’t necessary; if you want to take something from the pod, I won’t stop you. I didn’t mean to nearly land on your shelter, but you should know that the rescue team won’t look kindly on you taking a hostage. You should know that before you do anything more…” Colin said, trying to reason with this woman. If she does use him as leverage when the team arrives, he can only see that going poorly when Nellis Air Force Base brings military resources to bear on her.

 

[CutiePie1997]

“Is this alright?” He asked about his tying his hands.

Kara had waited well out of the man's reach as he bound his own hands. Only then did she walk cautiously around to behind him. Kara gave him a shove with the barrel of the gun. He fell to his front, catching himself on his bound hands. Quickly, she grabbed up the rope and began wrapping it around his feets. 200 years ago, she might have won a ribbon for a rodeo event. Today, she was just trying to make sure the man went no where. To even further ensure he didn't get up and around, Kara threw the rope over the strongest branch of a nearby dead tree and pulled. It lifted his feet off the ground a couple of feet.

Kara ignored any protestations he might make. She went to the … what did he call it … ship? She went to it and peeked inside. But she didn't go inside, not yet. She returned to squat with her haunches on her calves. After studying him for a moment, she said, "I am Kara."

She gave him a moment to give his name if he wished, then asked, "Where did you come from? What is this … this ship? Is it a Motor Kite?"

He started to answer, but Kara cut him off with the question that was really on her mind. "Who is this ... rescue team?"

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin was hoping that once this woman was placated, they might sit down and talk about what she wanted or why she was willing to kidnap an astronaut. Surely she couldn't be that desperate. That didn't happen as she dumped him back on his face again. As he was recovering, he felt her jerk the remaining rope down and hogtie his ankles together. Colin was about to protest when he felt his legs being raised in the air.

"Hey... HEY!" Colin shouted as he was raised more and more to the point he was nearly dangling from the rope. He was at least resting on his shoulders so it wasn't that painful. Tipping his head back, he looked as the woman glanced inside the ship, but didn't enter. At least she wasn't in a rush to loot it.

"I am Kara." Finally, a name. Colin sighed a bit as it sounded like she was ready to talk now.

"Mack. Everyone calls me Mack." He said, sounding a bit more relaxed now that they were talking. He was about to follow with a question with the woman cam at him with one of her own.

"Where did you come from? What is this … this ship? Is it a Motor Kite?" She asked, gesturing to the pod behind her.

"Personally, I'm from Boston. As for the 'ship' behind you, it's a landing pod from the Eriksson. You may have heard about it; it was our first extra-solar.... I mean, it was supposed to be the first ship to leave the solar system." Colin corrected himself; he wasn't sure how much this woman would understand about NASA's program if she was living out here away from civilization.

That didn't seem to be what worried her, though. She cut him off with a question that told him what was really on her mind.

"Who is this ... rescue team?"

"Ah, yes..." Colin said, adjusting his shoulders so he was hanging there a bit more comfortably. "Well, if that pod behind you is here, then Mission Control probably detected its descent. We have procedures in place to respond to a landing craft descent and they will send out a military recovery team from the nearest Air Force Base to get me. That includes soldiers to secure the pod. I don't think they will like you messing with property of the United States Government." Colin said, trying to explain what trouble she is in.

 

[CutiePie1997]

"Mack. Everyone calls me Mack."

"M-m-m-ack!" Kara repeated back at him with a hard emphasis. She'd never heard that name before. She repeated to herself again in a lower tone as if she was afraid she would forget it, "Mack..."

"Personally, I'm from Boston."

Boston... she thought as he continued. She knew a woman named Boston. But it had never occurred to Kara that Boston could be a city.

"As for the 'ship' behind you, it's a landing pod from the Eriksson. You may have heard about it; it was our first extra-solar.... I mean, it was supposed to be the first ship to leave the solar system."

Kara smiled a bit at Mack's story. It amused her. As a little girl, she'd dreamed of going to the stars. All little girls did, didn't they? Boys, too. She had fond memories of laying on a blanket on the ground at night with her mother, looking up at the stars. Her mother had told her that they were distant suns, just like their own sun; that they had planets around them, just like their own planet; and that they had bountiful food and clean water and lush forests and dust-free skies … not like their own planet. Her mother had told Kara such dreamy stories as a way of reassuring her that one day their planet would once again be like those distant wonder planets.

Of course, Kara knew now that her mother had been crazy. This planet, Planet Earth, had only gotten more inhospitable during Kara's 20 years of life upon it. Water had gotten scarcer. It was water that had made Mother so powerful in the first place. She had control of the only well accessing the greatest treasure in the Southwest, a radiation- and pollution-free aquifer 100 feet beneath her Empire's capital city. It wasn't guns or gun powder or dynamite or explosives that had made Mother powerful, though, those are what had made her Empire grow. No, it had been and continued to be her control over the liquid gold that every human body needed to survive.

"Ah, yes..." Colin continued about the rescue team.

When he got to property of the United States Government, a thought came to Kara. She rose to her feet again, went to her lean-to, and returned. She had a cloth pouch, obviously recently handmade rather than manufactured in some 21st century sweat shop of a factory. She opened it and withdrew a plastic protective folder. It had once been a plastic file for holding legal papers. It was obviously old. The fold up flap had long ago broken off.

Inside it was a leather pouch. It was almost briefcase in style but smaller, like what plans or reports or surveys might be held inside of when transferring from one office or official to another. It was cracked from not decades but centuries of age. It had had a working zipper once, but that had failed. It was simply open now. But between the pouch and the plastic file and the cloth bag, what was inside had been fairly well protected through the ages.

"I found this, in the remains of a building that … well, it's very old … hundreds of years old," Kara was explaining as she stood and went to the rope lifting Colin's feet into the air. She loosened it to enable him to sit up if he wished. "Does this mean anything to you."

She pointed to the ancient artwork on the outside of the leather. It had been deeply faded by time, but it would still be recognizable to Colin as the logo of the United States Air Force. Additionally, there was more barely readable wording indicating that the pouch had come from the Commander of Nellis Air Force Base and was Top Secret.

"Do these mean anything to you?" Kara asked as she began withdrawing some pages and laying them before him. Colin had enough freedom of movement that he could pick up and read the pages if he wished. "Can I trade them? Are they of value? Will they get me food and water … bullets?"

What she was laying before him were pages of memos, graphs, projections, and so much more. The story they told was about the ship Colin had spoken of, though, the illiterate Kara couldn't know that: they spoke of how Mission Control had put the deep space transport ship Ericksson into a course that could keep it in orbit potentially for decades, if not centuries; of how Mission Control had been destroyed by a nuke that struck Houston in the second phase of missile launches; of how NORAD had taken control of the spacecraft but then it, too, had gone off line.

The last date Colin might find if he continued reading was 2052. That was 15 years after he'd been put into cryostasis in 2039. And that had been 202 years ago; it was now 2241 by the pre-apocalypse calendar, not that either Kara or Colin knew that. She would give him enough time to look through the documents and tell her what she needed to know. They were probably nothing of importance, Kara thought. But if there was ancient science or technology on them that she could trade to Mother's Brains, she might be able to get something for them.

And, of course, for Colin. Especially if he could read.

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Something in what he said, made the woman react. Colin chalked it up to her realizing the situation she was in. He sighed, figuring she was about to let him go, but, after rummaging around in her shelter, the woman, Kara, reemerged with something he recognized.

It was a plastic document folder that he saw hundreds of times around Mission Control and other facilities he visited in the run up to launching the Eriksson. It looked beat to hell and Colin couldn't help but latch onto one phrase that Kara had said as she brought it to him.

"...well, it's very old ... hundreds of years old..."

The time table didn't make sense. He had seen folders like that not 2 or 3 years ago, depending on how long he'd been in Hibernation. Kara was kind enough to let his feet down and Colin sat up, leaning against the tree. Kara took the time to lay out the documents in the folder on the ground before him and asked him about what it all meant.

There was no denying the base name or the insignia on the folder either. He checked the letter head on the documents as well to make sure he wasn't mistaken. Nellis AFB. Over and over again. The longer he looked, the more confused he got, however.

The dates on these documents were all wrong. They were scaling up through the 2040s then the 2050s. There was no way he could have been in Hibernation that long. On top of that, these documents were hundreds of years old according to Kara. It was hard to doubt her word given the age of the folders, but it didn't make sense.

Delving into the body of the text, he picked up each document and read it in full to pull as much information as he could from each document. The report about losing Houston wasn't too surprising; it was a large population center and the heart of military and NASA activities. Colin's eyes stung as he thought about all the people he used to know and worked with there. He didn't have time to mourn them, though. He had to learn what had happened.

Leafing through, he saw the discussions about what to do with the Eriksson. The ship was pushed well beyond its rated lifespan and then... the hard decisions had to be made.

There, in black and white, he saw the prioritization list. Each team broken down in importance to the mission and to the future of science. Colin's stomach sank as he saw his name at the top of all lists. His background in both engineering and hard science put him at the top of the list in the eyes of the commanders in NORAD.

Colin could only cover his mouth in shock. Kara had asked about the documents, but her questions seemed so trivial now as he turned and looked at the pod. "Oh god... I'm so, so sorry..." He whispered through his hand at the pod containing his long deceased team members, sacrificed by the cold logic of the ship-board AI to preserve energy for the life support in his Cell.

Colin blinked back the tears; he didn't want to look weak in the eyes of his captor. He swallowed and wiped his face as he organized the papers as best he could. "Ahem... no, there's nothing of use here. Just a lot of bureaucratic communication between important people that are long dead." He said, trying to downplay the importance. "Not good for much more than campfire kindling..." He said, still reeling as he considers just how long he's been in Hibernation.

"If you don't mind me asking, what year is it?" Colin asked. It had to be well past 2052 if the folder was that worn. Part of him didn't want to know; the answer would be too depressing no matter how long it had been.

 

[CutiePie1997]

"Oh god... I'm so, so sorry..." Colin whispered toward the ship. Kara didn't understand what that was about, obviously. But she could see hurt and despair in his eyes and body language.

Kara was very disappointed to hear the man tell her that the papers were of no importance. Not good for much more than campfire kindling..."

She took back the containers: the leather pouch, the plastic sleeve, and the cloth bag. They were of value to her, even if the contents weren't. She snatched up a dozen or so pages of documents, too. The felt through the fiber, chose a handful of random sheets that would serve her purpose, and repeated her unpacking procedure: papers into leather into plastic into cloth. Kara would use the sheets later to roll Smokes. The rest of the pages she left on the ground before Colin as she tossed the bag toward her lean-to. Her mood was foul after learning the pages had no value.

"If you don't mind me asking, what year is it?"

Kara contemplated the question for a moment. Then she shrugged. She didn't care, really. Today was today and tomorrow would suck. What did yesterday and all the yesterdays and yesteryears before it matter? After a moment, though, Kara took off her small handmade, leather pack and took out a small leather bound book. It was old and falling apart but not nearly as bad as the previous one. It was a day planner for the year 2039, the last year such luxuries were manufactured.

"You can read this, yes?" she asked handing it to Colin. "It is important? It must be important."

Kara didn't explain where she'd gotten this one. She'd stolen it from one of Mother's Brains before she escaped. Every day the man had taken the book and a little device outside. He would crank a handle on the side of the device (to power up the meters). The device would click sporadically for a couple of minutes. Kara didn't know it was measuring radiation. After a few minutes, the Brain would jot one number into the book, then return inside.

When Colin looked at the book, he would realize by the handwriting that multiple people had been jotting numbers into it for years. Each two pages he would see when flipping through it was a single week of the year, thus there were 52 pages of 7 days, plus a note's column on the right. And each day's column was filled with radiation readings that -- initially -- had remained fatally high for years before finally beginning to drop.

Each column -- each day of each successive year -- had well over a hundred entries!

Some of the days hadn't had recorded readings for one reason or another. But if a smart, scientific mind -- such as an astronaut -- was to spend several hours analyzing the entries, he might be able to deduce from the handwriting, pen strokes, pen color, and other details that between 180 and 220 years had passed since the end of the world.

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin was a bit surprised to see a day planner in Kara's pack. It appeared that the face of it was stitched so the year wouldn't be worn away. It also looked like it was handled with great care so the 2039 on the cover looked as good as the day it was made, most likely.

"You can read this, yes? It is important? It must be important."

Kara asked pressing the planner into his hands. He wasn't sure how to answer until he started flipping the pages. It seemed like every square inch of each page was filled in with data. If nothing else, his logical mind was thrilled with a challenge again. He would have to take the small joys these days, it would seem.

"It's definitely useful to me... not sure about anyone else..." Colin murmured. He flipped over one of the pages she left for him and looked around, gathering up pebbles. Cross referencing dates, Colin started making a log plot on the paper. Every time the reading's halved, he placed a stone, constructing a graph he could see in his head. On and on he worked. He thought back to his nuclear chemistry classes and the design work the team did on the Ion engine for the Eriksson. He pictured the species creation and how much time each half life would take. Putting that together with the number of entries, it was clear that these were daily readings and that he had enough data for 2 centuries of nuclear decay.

"Two hundred years..." Colin murmured, looking at the final entry and his make-shift plot. He could only shake his head at how unbelievable it all felt. He'd have to have a calculator and a proper spreadsheet to dial it in exactly, but that was enough of a estimate to tell him how fucked he really was. Everyone he ever knew or met was definitely dead if they even survived the missiles. There was no guarantee that anyone in his family survived; they all lived in major cities so it was highly unlikely. He was alone in the desert with Kara. It all felt so bleak as he looked out at the dead desert as far as the horizon.

But then the math caught up with him. Kara was alive. There was no way she was 200+ years old. She looked younger than he was at least. That meant she had to have come from somewhere, had parents at some point, survived to adulthood. All these things pointed to some sort of society.

"Kara... what's left? How do people live now?" Colin asked, starting simple.

 

[CutiePie1997]

"It's definitely useful to me... not sure about anyone else..." Colin murmured.

Kara watched with curiosity as Colin began playing with rocks on the sandy ground before him. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought he was playing a game. Game or not, she had no idea what he was doing. She asked, and Colin explained, but it made no sense to her. She lowered her haunches onto her ankles again and simply watched.

As she watched, Kara found herself thinking more of Colin than that of which he was doing. He was a handsome man, in the face, anyway. He wore a strange suit of clothing that hid the quality of his body. But Kara had a strange feeling that beneath all those strange layers of unnatural fiber, he might be a well fit man.

She'd get good money for him as a labor slave.

Kara was very conflicted on the issue of slavery. Before she herself had been caught and enslaved, she'd hated it, of course. While she was a slave, she'd hated it enough that she'd contemplated suicide almost every day. But since her escape, she'd come to realize how harsh life was out here in the Wasteland. She suddenly understood why her friend had turned her over to Mother. (She would kill her friend if ever she saw him again, of course. But, she understood his motivation.) Now she had her own human to trade. Kara could get more food, money, bullets, medicine, and what-not for Colin than she could earn in a year through any other form of labor other than prostitution. And she'd already had enough of licking the pussies and sucking the cocks of strangers than she ever wanted to remember.

Selling Colin as a labor slave, though...? He was the man who fell from the sky! Sure, Kara wasn't still that convinced of his space story yet. But, then, how else did he get so high in the air? She was still working on that. But for now, Kara was certain she just had to show Mother how smart and knowledgeable Colin was. She could make him a Brain, couldn't she? Maybe he could make another Motor Kite.

"Two hundred years..."

"Two hundred years," Kara repeated absentmindedly. Ignorant of his meaning, she asked what is two hundred years?"

He would either tell her what he meant or not. He had something else on his mind.

"Kara... what's left? How do people live now?" Colin asked, starting simple.

"I do not understand … we live," she answered. She chuckled softly at his ridiculous question. "We live like we always lived. We hunt … we gather … we trade. Find things, in the desert or in the cities."

She stood again and unslung her rifle from her back. Showing it to Colin, she explained, "We take things from those who no longer need them. He was dead … no need no more … I took it."

Kara's expression turned a bit sour as she recalled just how the man who had once owned the gun had died. Without explaining that the man had taken her hostage and raped her for three days, Kara only murmured, "He deserved to be dead."

Suddenly, her purpose for being here returned to her mind. Kara reached down to snatch back the book. She grasped the rope and pulled it with all her strength. Colin's feet jerked out from under him and he slid a couple of feet across the sand. Once again, his legs, his butt, and the small of his back were in the air. She headed to the ship. And this time, after some careful studying from the outside, she climbed and crawled inside.

[] [] [] [] [] [] []​

It was almost seven hours before Kara was done inside the ship. She'd spent the first half hour just staring at things in awe. The ship had mostly powered down. But there had been some switches lit up and she'd played with some of them. Kara had scared the crap out of herself a couple of times. Once, an alarm sounded until a panicked Kara hit the button again. As she'd hoped, the siren went quiet. Her heart was pounding.

You might have thought that would teach her to look and not touch. But oh no! She pressed another button that was flashing. A retro outside released a blast of air. The sound of it had nearly caused her a heart attack. Outside, the air had sent up a thick cloud of dust that washed over Colin and the lean-to. That was enough touching of controls for Kara.

She turned to pillaging the ship instead. There were so many hiding places for stuff. Some only required her to turn a lever and pull or lift. Other's had locks that she had to figure out. Still more were secured and required a little manual manipulation with a solid object Kara found. As she came across things she wanted to take, she tossed them out the open hatch.

"Where is the water?" she asked Colin at one point, sticking her head out. "You must have water. Where is it? We will die without water."

He explained how to access the pressurized water tank and fill the accompanying bottles. Her first attempt resulted in a powerful spray of water that soaked her. Once she released the tap and the gushing stopped, Kara laughed hysterically. She was soaked. It had been a waste of liquid gold, but it had been funny, too. She filled the emergency water bottles and lowered them out in a bag that had some unknown purpose.

When she was finally done pillaging the ship, Kara emerged again. She looked to the sun. It would touch the mountains to the west in less than an hour. "We will stay here another night."

As she had twice during her shopping spree, Kara let Colin's legs down to get some blood back in them and gave him some water. This time, however, she didn't string him back up again. Earlier, he'd explained what a dehydrated food packet was. It had been a strange meal. But then, she'd been living off lizards, beetles, cacti, and a variety of flowers for the last year.

"Where were you taking your dead friends?" she asked suddenly as he was rehydrating more food for them. When he looked to her, Kara gestured to the ship, asking Colin, "You were taking your dead friends somewhere to be buried, yes? Why not bury them where you came from?"

 

[such_a_bad_man]

"We live like we always lived. We hunt … we gather … we trade. Find things, in the desert or in the cities."

Colin couldn't help but chuckle. It turned out that Einstein was right about World War 3. Humanity was back to being hunter gatherers again following the nuclear war. With all of civilization gone, there was little else to fall back on. With so many people gone, humanity must have fallen back on disparate and distant communities for any sort of structure. That's why Colin wasn't too surprised when Kara strung him back out and started in on the ship. He didn't like it, but he had a feeling it was coming.

He knew enough to cover his ears for the first few minutes she went in there. The attitude stabilizers and the collison warning systems ran on the solar panels built into the walls of the ship; they had to be assured of a constant power supply so that the pod didn't do its best meteorite impression. Sure enough, she messed with the glowing switches one after the other. Colin held his breath as the plume of dust and sand passed. Luckily, they had spooked poor Kara something awful.

The next few hours were spent with Colin doing his best to explain what the more curious and esoteric items in storage were. He was glad when she pulled out the dehydrated food store. Those packets were good for another 200 years or so the food scientists assured them. That did give away the ghost about the on board water store. From the sound of it, Kara wasn't expecting the pressure of over 200 gallons of water behind the tap. He couldn't help a chuckle as he heard her laughing aboard.

Hour after hour, she unloaded the ship and eventually, he managed to talk her into letting him sit up again. Figuring she was worried he'd run he offered to let her tie up his legs. She was all too happy to do that and so was he. Having his hands free was more important as he went through the things that Kara off-loaded. In all honesty, Colin was roasting in the thick sensor suit he had to wear in the Cell; it had water tubing running through it to help regulate his temperature. It was easier to do that than heat the whole pod. Now, the multiple layers of clothing were doing nothing but slowly roasting him as he sat under the desert sun. He sighed in relief when he found a packet of all weather clothing. Things were looking up with each passing hour.

He didn't want to change yet, however. After all, his legs were tied so he couldn't pull his suit off all at once. He set the pack aside and started to show Kara how to use the water and the food packs together to rehydrate the food. There were even some pack warmers that he noticed were no end of fascination for Kara. They were really over-sized shake activated hand warmers, but packed in with the food for a few minutes and they got up to a tasty temperature. As she waited for dinner to heat up, Kara asked him a question that really stuck with him.

"Where were you taking your dead friends? You were taking your dead friends somewhere to be buried, yes? Why not bury them where you came from?"

Colin looked at the ship and sighed, remembering the shock of seeing Williams hanging loose in her suit behind the lid of her Cell. "Because my crewmates weren't dead when they entered those pods, Kara. However, if we were still up on our ship..." Colin pointed to the sky. "I think they would have been fine with being buried in space. We all worked so hard to get up there and we all came from different parts of the world, it was inevitable for us to consider space our home. No borders, no boundaries... just people working together to make something bigger than where we came from. A future for humanity beyond war and conflict and hate..." Colin dropped his chin and looked back at the food. "But that's all gone now..."

Colin sat in silence, watching the food boil inside the packet. Then, a thought came to him. "Kara, would you help me bury them? Now that they are home on Earth again, it doesn't feel right to leave them in their pods. I'd like to give them their final rest." He asked, not sure if she would understand or see it as a waste of time, but he had to ask.

 

[CutiePie1997]

Again, just as when Colin was playing with his pebbles on the ground, Kara was intrigued. The things from the ship were amazing at times. She got the biggest kick out of the food packets, once she understood what they were.

"What's this say?" she would ask, turning the side with the words to Colin. He'd tell her. Then Kara would choose another one with different looking letters, and again ask, "What's this say?"

More often than not she didn't know what that particular food item was. She'd never heard of Chicken Teriyaki or Spicy Enchilada or Strawberry shortcake or Chocolate Pudding. When he explained Pepperoni Pizza Roll, Kara literally threw it at Colin. "That one! I want that one."

Kara was enjoying herself more than she had in a long time. She was gonna be rich! She didn't know what half of the things she'd found were. But she could tell from Colin's descriptions and sometimes his reactions to handling them that they were more than just worthless weight.

Her mood dampened, though, when he explained about the bodies in the ship, though. She'd thought they were dead when Colin loaded them in the ship. After all, they were already in coffins. Kara had never seen a coffin with a clear top before, but she had seen bodies put on public display prior to burial.

"Kara, would you help me bury them? Now that they are home on Earth again, it doesn't feel right to leave them in their pods. I'd like to give them their final rest."

"Yes," she said simply after a moment of contemplation. "You can bury your friends."

Kara's hesitation wasn't about doing the right thing for Colin's friends. It was about the fact that she would have to fully release him to let him do it. Or would she? She had seen something in the ship she thought would be helpful. She told him to stay where he was and she stood to go inside the ship again. Colin's feet were very well tied, but she was being careful since she would be out of his view for a moment.

When she emerged again, she had a couple of locking clamps meant to seal broken pipes. She also had a piece of heavy wire she'd cut loose with a tool Colin had called a Leather Man's tool. She didn't understand the name, of course. What did this do-dad have to do with tanning animal hides? She let him untie her complicated knots. She attached the clamps together with the wires, directed Colin to put them around his ankles, and clicked them closed. She put the locking tool in her pocket.

"We bury your friends now," she told him. Colin would be able to take half steps but he wouldn't be able to run. Getting in and out of the ship would be awkward, but he could do it. "I will wait out here. You get your friends out … hand to me. I'll help. Friends … friends should return to Mother Earth."

 

[such_a_bad_man]

When Colin saw what Kara brought back from the ship, he had a pretty good idea right away what she planned to do with them. Once he freed himself from the knots around his ankles, he put his hands up, asking her to wait a minute before she put his new ankle cuffs on. He picked up the clothing pack off the ground as he got to his feet.

"Would you mind if I get out of this suit? It's hotter than it looks." She seemed to agree to that. Unfortunately, she leveled that gun at him again. "Not going to turn around to give me some privacy, huh?" When she shook her head, he sighed. It couldn't be helped and his modesty was a small price to pay to finally be out of his sensor suit. First, the gloves decoupled at his wrists, then, he found the zipper tab snapped to his back. Pulling it, he felt the suit open in the back and go slack around his body. With a sigh, he pulled his arms free and threw the top half onto the sand, letting his skin breathe a moment as he sat by the fire. Standing back up again, he peeled the lower half down, detaching the sleeve that collected his waste. He knew that she would see it all now, but it was better to get the suit off and into something better suited for the climate. He pulled the blue and white colored outfit on and felt more human in and instant. It even came with some decent walking shoes which was an upgrade from the rubberized soles of the suit.

Once he was changed, he didn't mind Kara's makeshift manacles being put on his legs. If anything, they felt better than the ropes did. His range of motion was limited, but they applied even pressure which felt better.

"We bury your friends now. I will wait out here. You get your friends out … hand to me. I'll help. Friends … friends should return to Mother Earth."

Colin smiled. It was more than he was expecting and a pleasant surprise to hear that she was willing to help. He managed to talk her into giving up some of the parachute material for this project. It would be easier to move them out of the ship in a bundle than dangling in their suits, he reasoned.

Despite the limited range of motion, Colin found it manageable to get up into and out of the ship. Since he knew the systems better than Kara did, he was able to find the light panels that were part of the campsite equipment. Those storage panels were in the floor of the ship so he wasn't surprised she missed them. Walking a short circle around the ship, Colin found an area where the ground was exposed through the sand. It would be easier to dig the graves in soil without the sand flowing back into the holes. He set up the panels, pleased that the on-board batteries were still good after all this time. In the morning, the solar panels would recharge them and might be a nice gift to Kara for allowing him to do this.

Colin moved the remains of his crewmates onto the spread parachute material in the middle of the ship and took care to fold over the sections to keep them separated as he folded the bundle closed. He slid it out and with Kara's help, he carried them over to the grave site. Digging 4 graves, even with the campsite tools wasn't easy. Colin's limbs were still so atrophied; Kara could see that and offered to switch off with him. Seeing Colin so worn out, even after a few minutes of digging, allayed her worries about him running off. They shared water as they dug the graves for the next few hours and eventually, Colin took the time to lay each member of the crew to rest. He even used that Leatherman that Kara found to scratch some headstones for each. Filling the holes back in, Colin stood in the light of the panels. He had no words to eulogize his friends; they felt so meaningless. He did have one thing that came to mind.

"Welcome home, crew of the Eriksson..." He stepped to each grave in turn and poured a splash of water on each grave. He knew that the gesture would mean more these days; he also wanted to show their importance to Kara. He hoped this symbol would do.

With the crew buried, Colin and Kara returned to her shelter and the fire burning before it. The pair sat down hard, worn out from digging. They sat and enjoyed a pack of dessert food as a job well done. The space between them was quiet save for the crack of the fire. Staring into it, Colin finally asked the question that had been plaguing him since she pointed that gun at him.

"So what will become of me in the morning? I'm guessing you have plans for me since you didn't shoot me..." He asked, finally turning his head.

 

[CutiePie1997]

Colin asked for privacy to change his clothes. Kara denied it. He would be unbound and free to attack while she wasn't looking. She told him with a bit of a smirk, "I'm a big girl. I've seen a man undress before, and I doubt I will be the first woman you've undressed before either."

Of course, Kara hadn't realized that Colin had to remove every thing. He had a device that fit around his groin -- for pee...? poop? -- and removing it meant he was soon standing bare naked before her. Colin's only privacy came from turning his back to her. From the backside, Kara saw what she expected, a fit man. She couldn't help herself as he began donning his next set of clothes, though. She took a step left, then leaned, trying to see his front side … his Dong. She didn't know why she was curious. Hell, in all her life, there had only been one Dong which had been invited to be near her. All the rest she would have sliced off with her machete if she'd had it then. But this was the space man, and Kara couldn't help but curious if he was like all the other men she knew.

[] [] [] [] [] [] []​

"Welcome home, crew of the Eriksson..."

Kara's eyes rarely left Colin for more than a few seconds during the grave digging. Even when she herself took up the makeshift shovels he'd created, Kara looked to him occasionally. But it was less about being afraid he would escape or attack. It was curiosity, as well as a bit of sorrow.

Kara had continued her questioning about where he'd come from, how he'd gotten here, what the Eriksson was, and more while they worked. She had questioned whether he was truly a spaceman before. But she realized now that she accepted what he was saying. He was indeed a spaceman; he had lived in space for 200 years; and now he was here once again, learning that all he'd ever known of Earth was long gone.

When Colin poured some water over a grave, Kara almost flipped out. Water was too valuable to be wasted on ceremony. But she'd only taken one quick step forward before she caught herself. It was his water, after all. Even her own bottle was now filled with his water. If he wanted to waste it in this way, Kara wasn't going to stop him.

Colin turned to head back around to the other side of the ship. But Kara remained where she was. She moved to stand near the foot of the centermost grave. Then, softly, barely over a whisper, at an unhurried pace, she began to sing...

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound
To save a girl like me...​

As she continued, Kara couldn't know that the lyrics she'd learned … well … they weren't exactly what had been written almost 500 years earlier.

I once was lost, upon this ground
What finds, I now can see.
Was Grace who brought my heart so near,
Was Grace my fear believed.
How priceless did my Grace appear,
The hour I first believed.
Through many forests, hills, and glades
I have already come.
Was Grace who brought me safe this far
Was Grace who'll lead me home.
​

She went silent for a moment. These weren't her people. And yet, Kara's eyes glazed over, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She turned her face away from Colin and wiped away the errant drop. Then, looking back to the grave before her, she whispered what she'd been taught as a little girl … "Play ball."

[] [] [] [] [] [] []​

They were a bit less chatty after the funeral. Kara had no more questions for Colin tonight. She quietly asked him some more names on food packets. As she had before, she tossed them into two piles: eat first and eat last There was no don't eat at all pile, even when the descriptions Colin gave sounded unpleasant. She chose Banana Pudding, mostly because of the man's description of a banana. "What a strange fruit."

Eventually, he asked, "So what will become of me in the morning? I'm guessing you have plans for me since you didn't shoot me..."

Kara was actually quite surprised that Colin hadn't asked that question hours earlier or even 5 minutes after she'd first tied him up. Perhaps he'd been hoping she would eventually trust him and let him go. She had contemplated it for a short time. After she'd seen the riches in his ship, Kara had thought maybe she would send him off on his own with food and water. But after he'd begun telling her about space and spaceships; after she'd learned that he was more than 200 years old; after she'd learned that so much of what she'd taken from the ship was practically magical...

"I am taking you to Mother," Kara told Colin. She was looking into the small fire. She peeked up at him occasionally, but she couldn't keep her eyes on him for long. Guilt could cause that reaction in people. "I am taking you to Mother … and … I..."

Kara was having a hard time saying it out loud. She drew a deep, calming, confidence building breath, and told him, "I will sell you to her."

She glanced up at Colin, then down again as she detailed his fate. "Mother will let you work for her on great and wonderful projects. She will take good care of you … with clean water and good food and a place to sleep that is comfortable … with heat in the winter and cold in the summer. And … and she'll give you a girl if you want one when you do good things for her. Or a boy. Or both if you are really a Brain."

What Kara was saying was true … to an extent. Mother did provide a relatively comfort level of living for her Brains. But they were still no more than Slaves. If they failed to perform, the were beaten … or worse. But some of them were practically Freemen.

She finished with, "She will give me food and water and bullets and medicine and so much more for you, Mack, the man who fell from the sky. She will give me a lot!

 

[such_a_bad_man]

Colin nodded as Kara detailed her plans to sell him to someone named "Mother". He had a feeling that whoever they were they didn't behave as maternally as their name would indicate. Still, if she had the means to buy a slave and keep them, maybe she presided over a community with access to the necessities of life. Given his options, it would be a good way to learn the lay of the land in the short term.

"Mother will let you work for her on great and wonderful projects. She will take good care of you … with clean water and good food and a place to sleep that is comfortable … with heat in the winter and cold in the summer. And … and she'll give you a girl if you want one when you do good things for her. Or a boy. Or both if you are really a Brain."

Colin nodded again. Seemed he was right. He had to figure what his life was worth for a scavenger like Kara. He didn't really listen to what she thought she would get. It had to be enough to make toting him through the desert worthwhile.

"I hope she gives it to you, but if she is as powerful as you say, I'd keep my head on a swivel. She may just shoot you and take me. I'm sure you've thought of that already though," Colin offered, looking over at Kara across the fire.

 

[CutiePie1997]

Kara listened to Colin's warning and answered as if a parrot repeating him, "Yes, I've thought of that already though."

If by keep my head on a swivel he meant keep an eye out for the back stabber with the knife, Kara had certainly thought about that. She'd been thinking about it for the last two years. After she'd escaped Mother, Kara had been pursued by teams of Brutals for three or four months. When she'd gotten too far out of their comfort zone, the Head Hunters came after Kara. A bounty had been announced, and even in the Freetowns Kara was in danger. Most Freemen would never turn in an escaped slave. But then, Kara had originally been turned over to the Brutals by not just a Freeman but a close friend … a lover. So even today, Kara was hesitant to remain in one of the isolated communities scattered about the Wasteland for more time than it took to do trade.

"It is late," she told Colin, suddenly standing over him. "Time to sleep."

Kara asked if he had a thermal blanket in his gear or something like the food warmers that would keep him warm. She had a thin Mylar sheet that would hold in nearly all his heat if he didn't have something similar. He was welcome to remain near the fire. If he asked to return to the ship, she would say no. Kara had no idea what kind of weapons he might have stashed there.

As Colin was settled in, Kara moved to the pile of pillaged goods and retrieved a 2 meter long pipe she'd hoped to find a use for later. She approached his feet, pulled them out from the warming layer, and told him, "Hold still."

She slipped it through an eyelet on one of his ankle shackles, pushed it an inch or so into the desert sand, then lifted another metal object she'd found and rapped the head of the bar hard several times. It sank almost 2 feet into the ground before it finally came against a stone or bedrock. She gave it a shake back and forth. It barely moved. Colin was going no where tonight.

"Sleep tight," she told him with a smile. Before she left, she hung a couple of curved pieces of metal on the bar's top end. With a little shake of the bar, she showed Colin how trying to wiggle the bar free would make the pieces jingle, almost like a bell. As she headed away, she said, "Don't let the sand flea bite."

[] [] [] [] [] [] [] []​

Kara didn't sleep well. She awoke at every unexpected or unusual sound. This wasn't because of Colin, of course. She knew he wasn't going anywhere. But she hadn't had a peaceful night sleep since leaving Mother. Kara hoped that if she could work out a … what was that word … a pardon? If she could make a deal to void the price on her head, maybe she could again sleep through the night.

She was up before the sun. She brought back to life the now flameless fire. With water over it in a small pot, she headed off into the desert. She'd made this same short walk last night after securing Colin with the makings of a snare. When she returned this time, she had the snare and 2 foot long, dead lizard. As she approached the now awake Colin, she showed him the two headed reptile.

"One for me," she told him, flicking one of the creature's heads, "one for you."

Kara repeated the nail flick of the lizard's head, then again, and a third time. It suddenly opened its mouth and hissed with its 4 or 5 inch long tongue trembling in what was supposed to be a scary display. In a rapid flash, Kara grasped the tongue and literally ripped it out of the reptile's mouth. She tilted her head back, popped the dismembered onto her own tongue, and began chewing. She repeated the flicks to the other head. The reptile also repeated his scare tactic, once again losing its second tongue.

"Hungry?" Kara asked, offering the piece of red meat to her hostage. She laughed, recalling a joke as old as the ages, "Tastes like chicken."

It didn't, but then, she'd never eaten a chicken so how would she know? If Colin didn't take the morsel, she would just shrug and eat it herself. In less than 2 minutes she had it cut up and over the fire on the pole that had been securing Colin in place.

"We need to leave soon … so … get packing," she told Colin. She put him to work packing up as much as they could get into the three soft sided containers that they would use to pack her treasures. There didn't have enough room by far. The rest they buried in a hole Kara made Colin did. They stopped at one point to eat the lizard and more of Colin's wonderful packages, with Kara asking What is goulash? when the space man read the packet for her. Before they left, Kara asked, "Do you want to say goodbye to your friends before we leave?"

A couple of minutes later, they were on their way back towards the building from which she'd seen him land.

 

[such_a_bad_man]

The longer he spent with Kara, the more Colin had to realize that she was more clever than his original impression. She had devised all manner of ways of making sure he didn't flee. The alarm system she set up for him while he slept was smart for a few reasons. It would alert her if he did try to break his bonds and the sound should keep animals away during the night.

Colin could hear Kara rousing during the night. It interrupted his sleep as he worried if she heard something during the night, but it became clear after the first few interruptions that her paranoia wouldn't let her descend that deep into sleep for very long. It must be hard getting any kind of restful sleep out here. Everything that might try to kill you or steal from you. Living safely, albeit under someone's thumb, didn't sound that bad.

The morning dawned dry and hot as it was the day before. Colin groaned as he sat up, refolding the heat blanket as best he could. It would take up a lot less room that way. Looking around, it appeared that Kara was away from the camp. The gun was gone as well, so she must have been off hunting, Colin surmised.

He sat down to the water and food hydrator and began preparing some packs for them both for breakfast. He didn't figure that whatever she brought back would give them the nutrients they'd need and when she arrived dangling a two-headed lizard from her hand, he knew he was right.

"One for me, one for you."

Colin winced. He had a feeling that mutated lizard had to be bad for him. "Uhh, no, thanks though. I don't think my stomach could handle solid food yet..." He said by way of an excuse. Kara seemed to take that at face value as she ripped the poor things tongue out and ate it before him. Colin retched a little, but sipped some water to settle his stomach. When Kara sat down, he handed her a prepared packet of Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal. As he did yesterday, he tried to help her read the label. She did seem to have a knack for picking things up which was a good sign. It was further proof that Kara wasn't the brute she seemed to be when he first met her.

As they sat down to breakfast, Colin did a final pass of equipment they had gotten off the ship. They might be pressed for space so he had to prioritize what they were taking. The water store was coming; that much was obvious. So were the food packs. Dehydrated, the food took up a surprisingly small amount of space thanks to the vacuum packaging. He found a portable weather station in the camp gear; he figured they should keep that to warn of any freak storms in the area. There was a tool set that he made sure they brought along; they might be able to trade some repair work for things they might need along the way. The bedrolls and tents in the camp site gear were just too bulky. Colin had tried to sleep in one last night, but it was just too hot. The heat blanket at least let him regulate temperature easier. He made sure that the binoculars would come with them as well as a radiation sensor that was built into the ship, but Kara had figured out how to remove. It was a bit more sophisticated than a Geiger counter. I was probably a necessity these days so they didn't blunder into any hot spots that might still be hanging around. There were a few more odds and ends: the Leatherman tool for handy tool work, the shovels and camp lights, etc. All sorts of things to fill in the gaps in the storage packs that Kara had laid out for him to fill.

To save space, Colin had made makeshift straps for the water store. He could carry that like a backpack at the very least.

"Do you want to say goodbye to your friends before we leave?"

Colin hadn't bargained on that level of kindness from Kara, but it was very welcome. "Thank you. I'd like to do that."

Colin walked down the dune toward the grave site, shuffling along because of his shackles. Standing before his friends, Colin folded his hands before him. "I hope that you left this world with no pain. I hope you were given that grace. I go on in your names now. I go on, hoping that your sacrifices were not in vain. Rest easy now. Take solace in knowing you don't have to face the world as it is now. I go on to try and bring back the world we left. Thank you." Colin looked from one headstone to the next, burning their names into his memory, linking their names with stories from the times they shared. They would be remembered. He made sure of that.

Clambering up the hill to Kara's camp site, he saw that she had most everything packed up for them to move. He grabbed his light jacket that was part of his clothing packet and pulled it on; he remembered enough from his survival training that he had to keep as much skin covered as he could or the desert sun would bake it right off. Grabbing a bit of cloth, he wrapped it around his head as well. His short hair had allowed his scalp to be burned many times before. He wasn't about to have that happen again.

Picking up the water store and slinging it on his back, he picked up some of the other packs. He frowned as he looked at the shackles on his ankles and the desert that lay before them.

"Look, the shifting sands are going to be unstable enough. Can you please remove the shackles? I don't want to keep stumbling and nearly falling if I'm going to be carrying so much." He asked Kara. His captor looked dubious and leveled the gun at him again. "Where am I going to go?" Colin asked, gesturing out at the featureless waste before them. Kara seemed to buy that reasoning and undid his shackles, hanging them on her pack as she didn't seem done with them.

"Thank you..." Colin sighed as he set off in the direction that Kara indicated. He wasn't sure where they were going, but she did. He'd have to follow her lead. With his legs free, Kara stayed back a good distance from him. It was clear she still didn't trust him; it wasn't too surprising.

It was slow going, carrying so much through the desert. Luckily, Colin was able to suck on the water store, drawing swallows of water from it during the day. Kara was eager to fill her belly and her canteen again when they stopped for lunch, but they didn't linger long. Colin could already see the structure ahead by then and Kara was eager to get out of the sun as he was.

A few hours later, they arrived at the building. Colin couldn't tell was it was. He did recognize the shadows burned onto the exterior walls and tried not to think of the poor people that were caught in the blasts so unprepared. Kara found an entrance, hidden along one of the walls and their pairs slipped inside. There, out of the sun, it was so much cooler. The air was a bit stale as there was no wind blowing through the building, but Colin didn't mind. He set everything down and sat on a convenient box inside the building. Sucking on the water store again, he let his body relax as Kara seemed to be looking for something. Sure enough, she did some sort of pace counting from one of the pillars and when she arrived at a crate that seemed left behind like so much else in this building, she pushed it aside, revealing a small cache of goods. "Can't keep carrying this around, so put it someplace you can find later. Nice." Colin said, bringing some of the packs over to see if they would fit.

 

[CutiePie1997]

The trek back to Kara's previous location was a casual one. Fully loaded as they were, the pair needed to take their time less they sweat and waste water. And Kara didn't want the more heavily loaded Colin to stumble, of course. If he got hurt and couldn't walk, she'd never get him to Mother. The lack of the shackles had been important, of course. Kara had been only slightly hesitatant. She had the gun and maintained a gap between them, of course. She thought later she should have carried the water herself, just in case he did run.

A few hours later, they reached the location from which Kara had seen Colin's descent to the Earth. She opened her caches to hide her loot.

"Can't keep carrying this around," Colin observed, "so put it someplace you can find later. Nice."

"A girl likes her things … and likes to keep her things," Kara said with a smile and a touch of humor. "Why don't you make some more food? Let's try something new, yes?"

She kept a closer eye on Colin now that he was unburdened by his packs and unshackled as well. Kara told him to save the food heating packets, wanting to sell them instead. She sparked a fire in an often used fire pit. It was an overturned front hood of a 1964 Volkswagen Beetle, supported by cinder blocks. He got the food started, which included a snake she'd killed with her machete on the walk. Kara finished storing the pillage from the ship, then moved closer to Colin.

"Here," she said, suddenly dropping the shackles on the cracked concrete before him. "Put those on."

She was insistent. With his ankles bound again, Kara walked to the building's wall some 40 feet away. She stepped into the shadows beyond a wall of steel mesh. With the sun penetrating the damaged, outside wall beyond her, Kara's silhouette was visible to Colin. She slung her rifle over a hook, then stripped to the skin. She used a bottle of rain water -- not Colin's pure water -- to thoroughly wet a towel. Then, she gave herself a sponge bath. She didn't mean it to appear sexy or erotic. But if Colin was looking her way, it might have seemed such.

Kara took her time, cleaning every surface and every pit. She only glanced back Colin's way when she parted her feet to clean the womanly parts between her thighs. Was he watching? If he was, she would only smirk a bit and turn away again. When she finished, she dried herself lightly. The heat of midday was already drying her. She slipped into a fresh pair of centuries old panties and a mismatched bra she'd found while searching a house months ago. She donned her same clothes, less the leg warmers. She'd only wore them to reduce the irritation of sand upon her legs during the walk.

"Is it ready?" she asked about the meal Colin was making when she returned. She was carrying the oil changing pan in which she'd been standing earlier. She tilted it on a table and washed her panties and bra in the shower water. Sitting opposite the fire from Colin to eat, she asked, "Do you want to bathe?"

She laughed, making a conspicuous sniffing facial expression at him before saying, "You haven't had a bath in two centuries. You're decaying, by the smell of it."

She was exaggerating, of course. But she was right about it having been 200 years.

 

[such_a_bad_man]

"A girl likes her things … and likes to keep her things."

As usual, Kara was crafty when it came to her survival. She had found herself a small base to use for scavenging runs and had been quite successful at it. Maybe they didn't have to go to "Mother" as soon as he thought. His thoughts were interrupted by the clatter of his shackles on the ground again.

Colin sighed; he'd hoped he'd proven he was a good companion, but Kara was right. She couldn't take chances so Colin did as he was told. It was for the best since Kara was the one with the gun after all. Once he showed that he was secure, Kara walked across the building from him. He set about making some new food packets per her request, but the drip of water caught his attention.

Colin's eyes widened as he was what was happening across the building. I may as well be taking place on Mars given the barrier between he and Kara. Still, his mouth was dry and not from the heat outside. It was hard to ignore the curve and lines of Kara's body now. Living on scraps and constantly moving had carved her body into shape and it was hard to ignore, even though she was his kidnapper.

Turning back to the food, Colin avoided her eyes as she glanced back. He decided that focusing on that was probably to his benefit. She came back wearing most of what she was already wearing. Colin was a bit surprised she bothered to wash out her underwear, but it was probably paramount to use grey water as much as you can before disposing of it.

"Do you want to bathe? You haven't had a bath in two centuries. You're decaying, by the smell of it."

Colin chuckled at her joke as he made sure to keep the packs elevated from the fire lest the packs melt from the heat. "I could do with a bath. Can you take my shackles off first?" He asked, flipping the packs over to help distribute the heat a bit. A shower would be nice; it had been years since he had one. But, the sponge bath that Kara demonstrated would have to do. The cleaning method on the ship seemed to be roughly the same as Kara's. The big difference was the feeling of all the water clinging to your body by surface tension in low gravity and then using an absorbent cloth to soak it all off.

 

[CutiePie1997]

"I could do with a bath," Colin agreed.

Kara playfully lifted her hand to squeeze her nostrils shut. She grimaced and groaned in faux-disgust, then laughed again.

"Can you take my shackles off first?"

Kara had expected that, of course. She had a bit more concern about letting Colin totally free here. The building had once been a manufacturing plant. It had been closed long before the war and most of its equipment removed. But there were still lots of mostly empty crates and barrels behind which Colin could hide, possibly even making his way to an exit. There were lots of pieces of metal, wood, and glass that made good weapons, whether edged or blunt.

She simply answered, "Yes."

She finished her meal and stood to prepare for Colin's bath. She dumped her own gray water at the base of a scraggly, ten foot tall tree. It had rooted in a crack of the concrete floor and forced the gap open over who knew how many decades. Kara empathized with the tree, living here all alone in a place where it shouldn't be. It only survived because the building partially shaded it and because Kara watered it when she periodically visited this building. She took care of the tree because it reminded her of herself. She didn't belong here in the Wasteland either. No one did.

She gave Colin the bottle of water, the oil pan, and both a wash rag and towel, both somewhat clean considering the locale. She escorted him to the shower stall, tossed him the locking mechanism that would disengage the pipe clamp shackles, and waited for him to use it and toss it back. She had her rifle, but she didn't aim it right at him. She backed away and headed back toward the fire.

But then she stopped, just halfway there. Twenty feet from Colin, she leaned back against the edge of a large crate and looked right at him. Beyond the grate, he was somewhat hidden but not enough to hide himself. Her position relative to his when she bathed was different, too. She was at a different angle, without the sun directly behind him. He'd only been able to see her in silhouette. Kara would be able to see his fairly clearly.

"I won't peek," she said with humor in her voice. "I'm here to make sure you don't get attacked by a snake or lizard or something."

She was watching, of course, to ensure he didn't run, either before he undressed or after he redressed. But Kara didn't see anything wrong with getting another look at him, as she had the night before.