Zephyr's Crossing

  Zephyr pulled the door open. Inside, a shining cylinder lounged in the darkness, full of deadly promise. Zephyr grasped its handle and hoisted it onto his shoulder. He ran to the front of the ship.

  "Let me through!" he shouted, gesturing with the large metal cylinder. The Zarx? overlords on their hovercraft backed up, and the beasts inched forward. Typical battle pattern. If they understood Zephyr's warnings, they did not show it. Instead, one large beast growled and leapt towards Zephyr. He pulled the trigger on the large cylinder, launching a pulse of energy into the creature, killing it mid-leap. He shifted it onto his other shoulder and walked carefully forward. He fired thrice more, all carefully targeted at the Zarx? nearest to him. A pungent odor had arisen from the nearest of the dead beasts, which would soon attract more. Zephyr knew he had to leave quickly, while he still had the element of surprise.

  Firing randomly into the air, he ran through the crowd of startled beasts. He increased his speed, his emancipation just over the hill. He reached his bunker in record time, regaining his orientation in a familiar environment. He noticed one item out of place: the time capsule!

  It was sitting at the bottom of his ditch, exactly where he had asked it to be placed. His heart swelled with happiness and hope.

  "I'm not alone!" He shouted to the dark concrete ceiling that hung low above him. He opened the capsule. Inside, perfectly preserved through two hundred years of stasis, was a mosaic of supplies, an artful arrangement that he beheld as the most beautiful sight he had seen in three years. As he went through the supplies sent by someone he did not know, he wondered where to go from there. He decided to find out who sent the supplies. The return of the capsule had ignited a tiny spark deep within Zephyr that he had not felt since the first days after the takeover, a tiny spark of hope. His heart was lighter than it had been in his entire life as he wrote another message for the sender.

  *****

  Anna stood awkwardly in Frank's kitchen. Leaning on his cane, Frank looked at Anna with confusion.

  "Spill," he said, his voice more certain. Anna considered what to say. Every story she could think of was actually less plausible than the truth.

  "I have been contacted by a boy from the future," she lead. "His name is Zephyr. He sent me a note asking for help in a reverse time capsule machine. I buried it with supplies at the coordinates that he requested, which happened to be in your backyard."

  "I must be freaking dreaming," said Frank in a rare display of profanity. "Anna, I've been around for seventy-three years now, and I've never heard something this ridiculous. Go home! I need my rest."

  "I'm telling the truth, Frank," Anna insisted, "Mark, Lynn and I are all part of this. The thing I was burying in your backyard is a messaging capsule from the future."

  "I am finally losing my mind!" declared Frank. Just then, the buzzing sound of the capsule filled the air. Anna saw a flicker of movement outside Frank's backdoor.

  "Come and see for yourself," said Anna, taking Frank's hand and helping him into the backyard. The glowing silver sphere was slowing its rapid vibrations above their heads, and the buzzing sound fell. The capsule dropped from the sky and landed at Anna's feet. She bent down and picked it up, as Frank stood speechless. When Anna opened the capsule, it filled the night with a golden glow, the brightness of the future. Zephyr's letter fell to her feet.

  Frank, startled, opened and closed his mouth several times. After a minute, he finally spoke.

  "Is that real?" he asked, pointing his cane at the sphere in Anna's hands. "How did it get here? Where did it come from?"

  "Like I told you, it's from the future," replied Anna patiently. She picked up and started reading the note. She wasn't sure what to think; it was the first time Anna had received a thank you card from the future. She held up the card for Frank to see, a Hallmark "thank you" kitten card to be exact, as confirmation of the realness and strangeness of the messages she was receiving.

  Chapter 4

  Zephyr and Anna exchanged many more messages across two hundred years over the next month. The time capsule had a knack for showing up at odd times, once while Anna was reading The Alchemist, twice while she was sleeping, and three times while she was out walking. Fortunately, it hadn't appeared in the presence of other people since the incident at Frank's house. Anna had decided that the capsule must have determined her to be the recipient, as she was the first to open it.

  Anna was feeling less and less helpful each time she sent Zephyr back a message. He was asking more and more technical questions, trying to determine the technology available to Anna. More to spite Lynn that out of interest, Mark had briefly dated a girl and was promptly, to Anna's dismay, quarantined with mononucleosis. Because her source of technological knowledge was asleep all day, Anna was unable to give Zephyr the information and was trying to sort it all out herself. The day after school let out for the summer, she received a message from Zephyr, and this one also contained an item.

  The capsule appeared with its usual fanfare just past three that Saturday, when Anna was sitting in her room, writing an eloquent piece on age discrimination for the county paper, which often ran her well constructed letters to the editor. As soon as it dropped onto the floor, she opened it up and found two very mismatched items, a metal contraption and a piece of paper. She opened the paper first, recognizing it as the stationary that she had sent two weeks earlier. She slowly read the note.

  Anna,

  Enclosed in the capsule is a vocal communications unit I found on a foraging expedition. It works by?

  Anna skipped several lines of extremely technical explanations for the various components to the device.

  ?Anyway, it is called an Artemis Mark 15 Vo-Com Unit, and it can transmit spoken messages through time as easily as a cell phone (if you have those, have they been invented yet?), and we can talk to each other. You just need to turn it on and wait for a while until it can find the receiver.

  Zephyr

  Anna examined the device. It looked like a headset with a microphone like those in recording studios. She turned the device in her hands, looking for an on switch. No such button was visible to her. She poked it at random places for a while, and then shook it.

  "Turn on, you," she said at the device with frustration. The headset beeped three times.

  "Artemis Mark 15 Vo-Com Unit activated," said the impersonal female voice through the speakers, "What do you require?"

  "Um, search for a receiver," she said hesitantly.

  "Within what time parameters?" asked the device.

  "Two hundred years," replied Anna.

  *****

  Zephyr's phone rang for the first time in three years. He hurriedly picked up the device, activated it, and placed it in his ear.

  "Hello?" he said questioningly. "Is this Anna?"

  "Zephyr?" came the reply.

  "Wait, you're actually real!" said Zephyr excitedly. "Are you Anna? What year is it?"

  "Yes, I'm actually Anna, and I've been getting your time capsule. It's 2014 here, June sixth to be exact."

  "It's 2214 here. I don't know the date, but it's summer."

  "How does this even work?"

  "Well, as I explained in the letter, a signal combination cross-matrix?" Zephyr began. Anna used her extensive practice in selectively listening to extremely descriptive explanations of technology to use. Her brain hurt from all of the questions swirling around. How was this real? Why was this possible? Was Zephyr even real? It couldn't be a trick. Was she dreaming?

  "So what's it like in the future?" Anna asked with a giggle of disbelief. She thought it strange that Zephyr spoke so much like her, just with a strange but slight accent and exact enunciation.

  "I don't know, different, I would guess. What's it like there? No, wait, you said it was the twenty-teens, right?"

  "Yep."

  "Well, it's about the same, except the cities are all way bigger, and we've had the green revolution. We were doing great, establishing surviving space colonies, elimin
ating most diseases. Three years ago, that all came to a stop."

  "What happened?" asked Anna, enthralled by the narrative. She was swept away by the image Zephyr painted of the future. She abandoned her questions and listened closely to Zephyr's narrative.

  "The Zarx? made landing without warning behind the western cordillera?"

  "Wait, the what?"

  "Right. They used to be called the Rocky Mountains. Anyway, first we tried to reason with the overlords, who are the Zarx? equivalent of us. Unlike the beasts, which are grown in labs, they seem to be natural, but from where is a mystery. They're an intelligent, graceful, and utterly ruthless species. The reasoning didn't work, and they sent the beasts. These six-legged rhino-like creatures, more fitting to mythology than real life, destroyed everything in their path. We fought back, but it wasn't enough.

  The Japanese were the first to send up a shuttle. It was a top-of-the-line model and over a kilometer long. It held six hundred thousand people and was packed to the brim. The Chinese were next, and then the Canadians. After two weeks, with militaries desperately holding against the Zarx? advance, every nation on earth was sending anything with a motor packed with refugees into space, headed for colonies on Mars, TIX-322, and farther. Eventually, it seemed like everyone had left, one way or another. As far as I know, I'm the last human on earth."

  "Wow," said Anna for lack of anything else to say, "but why weren't you on a ship?"

  "Please don't ask," replied Zephyr.

  "Okay, but I do have some other questions. You have been on your own for three years?"

  "Yeah, since I was twelve."

  "How have you survived?"

  "I got lucky. I found a bunker, about fifty years old, all concrete and steel. Beasts can't get in. It had a supply of food that lasted for a year, books and exercise equipment, everything. Most of it I can't get to now, because the doors can't open without power. As earth slowly died, I ran out of food that I could gather near the bunker. Back then I had a phaser, my dad's military issue sidearm. Eventually, I lost it in a fight with an overlord. I wouldn't have lasted much longer after that if I hadn't found the research lab. After days of hiding out in an alcove from an old garden, I tried to make my way back to the bunker. I stumbled across the lab instead."

  "What was in there?"

  "They were testing drugs like our soldiers took, but in a more potent form. They double speed, strength, and stamina permanently. I was looking for some food when I accidentally activated a lab bot, which shot me with a dose of the stuff. Since then, dodging the beasts has been easier. It also made me significantly more intelligent?"

  "Really?" asked Anna.

  "Try me," challenged Zephyr.

  "Okay, spell multiculturalism," she said.

  "M-u-l-t-i-c-u-l-u-r-a-l-i-s-m," he replied.

  "Now give an example," Anna challenged.

  "An example of multiculturalism is that the national dish of England, in your time, was Chicken Tikka Masala, an Indian dish."

  "Okay, I believe you," said Anna, "but it's all a little bit unreal.... Hey, wait. Earlier, you said that you couldn't get into most of the bunker because you don't have the electricity to open the doors. Should I send you a small generator? Mark made it."

  *****

  Anna walked into Mark's room. He still had mono and was asleep. Quietly, she wrote him an explanatory note and took the generator under her arm. Walking quickly, she smuggled past her parents and set it into the time capsule. That night, wearing black, she slipped out of the house and walked to the edge of town, finding the coordinates that Zephyr had told her with the Geo-locater. She buried the capsule and traveled back home stealthily.

  *****

  Zephyr woke up, swung out of bed, and immediately started digging. The capsule was at the edge of the enclosed field outside the bunker, just where he had thought. He removed the generator and studied it closely. Fortunately, when it came to technology, he was instructible, and the generator was covered in labels. He spent the rest of the morning rigging the power wires to the generator, and by midday he was ready to turn it on. When he pushed the power button, there was a short pause. Five seconds later, the entire bunker lit up. The dusty electric lights flickered on as they had not for years. Zephyr walked up to one of the doors and pushed the button. Slowly, it opened.

  Remembering the path from before the power ran out, Zephyr walked confidently towards the only door he had been forbidden long ago to open. The door was covered in keep out signs, radiation symbols, and biohazard warnings. He pushed the button and waited for the door to slide open. Instead, a keyboard slid out from the wall and an invisible speaker activated.

  "This is a restricted area. Please type your name. Do not abbreviate." Zephyr typed in his name.

  "Zephyr Athens Luca not recognized. Please try again," prompted the voice. With resignation, Zephyr typed a name he had hoped never to hear again.

  "Please provide DNA sample," instructed the voice. A tray with a synthesis pod slid out. Zephyr pricked his finger on the sensor.

  "DNA conformed. Jamie Athens Luca recognized. Welcome, Mr. President."

  Chapter 5

  The door slid open. Behind it there was a room only the size of a large closet with a single occupant: a V-12 Vis-Decem Exoskeleton. Zephyr was astounded. He had seen them before, of course. They were popular among the new aristocracy of opulent businessmen, and his dad's secret service agents had worn them. There was an instructional tablet mounted next to it. Zephyr activated it.

  "The V-12 Vis-Decem Exoskeleton is the cutting-edge of personal protection technology. It has ten tons of power per limb and automatic guns on both hands?"

  Zephyr paused the video. Nothing there he didn't know. For lack of another idea, he decided to call Anna. Five rings later, he connected.

  "Hello?" Anna said, "Zephyr, what's up? Does the generator work?"

  "Yeah, and I was able to open a door that had been electronically sealed. I found something behind it."

  "What is it?"

  "A V-12 Vis-Decem Exoskeleton, my dad's."

  "A what?"

  "Do you have Iron Man?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, it's kind of like one of those suits," Zephyr explained.

  "Oh," replied Anna. "What are you going to do with it?"

  "I'm going to go get the other one."

  "The other one what?"

  "You know that time capsule that we have been using?" began Zephyr.

  "Yeah," Anna replied.

  "We've been using the small one. There is a bigger one back in the lab where I found the other one, big enough for people. I'm going to get that. I'm going to get out of here."

  "That's great! But back up a moment. Why does your dad have a power armor suit in his closet? Does everyone have one of them in the future? If so, why did the Zarx? win so easily?"

  "Not everyone had one; they were expensive. Only the really rich had them."

  "If your dad was super rich, then why did you get left behind?" asked Anna.

  "Remember how I don't want to talk about that?" replied Zephyr angrily.

  "It's okay, Zephyr, you can tell me." There was a long pause. Anna heard a faint sigh.

  "Remember when I told you that everyone left, one way or another?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well there weren't enough spaceships for everyone. Our population was a little over ten billion at the time, having stabilized from the massive growth you're experiencing now. We only had enough ships, globally, to get eight billion safely off. Although millions died in the first assault, there were still too many of us left. The president at the time, full of his hard-nose political rhetoric, proposed a horrible plan: abandon those who were 'unfit' for survival. As an example, he abandoned me, his supposedly useless son, on live television. Dropped me in the middle of Minnesota with nothing but water and that phaser. I already told you the rest."

  "That's horrible!" Anna exclaimed. "How could he do something like that? He was your father! He was th
e president! Zephyr, that's horrible!"

  "I don't know. No one really knew what he was doing, not in the general population. He had all of the news networks convolute the facts so much that no one even considered the truth."

  "Okay. Just let me get this straight. Your dad was the president before the invasion. He decided it was in humanity's best interest to sacrifice two billion people to buy the escape of the rest. You were one of them, but found this bunker and survived. Is that all? Are you really the last one left?"

  "It's not quite that bad. As far as I know, I am the last person left on earth, but most of the two billion left also got off. Ten days after the mass evacuation, support arrived from the Japanese and Australian Mars bases."

  "Why didn't you go with them?"

  "They didn't find me."

  "So then the Zarx? won easily?"

  "Right." Both of them sat in comfortable silence for a few moments. Finally Zephyr spoke.

  "I need to go. I'm going to get the bigger capsule," he said.

  "Don't you dare hang up the phone," Anna replied. "I'm going over to Mark and Lynn's house, and you're going to tell Mark about how the suit performs every step of the way."

  "Okay."

  *****

  Anna slid out of her back door and into the dusk. She walked quickly across the street, and then rang the Dunn's doorbell. Mrs. Dunn opened the door.

  "Anna!" she began. "Are you here to see Mark? He's in his room, resting. I think he's starting to feel better. Lynn's out, visiting a friend in Princeton."

  "Thanks, Mrs. Dunn," Anna replied.

  She walked up to Mark's room, carefully extracting the communicator from her pocket. She slipped it back on.

  "Zephyr? Are you still there?" She whispered.

  "Yes," he replied. Anna knocked on Mark's door and walked in.

  "Mark," she began, "Zephyr just found the coolest thing ever. You'll want to hear about this one."

  "What?" he replied sleepily. Anna handed him the communicator and watched as he sat up straighter and straighter as Zephyr described the exoskeleton that he had found. The conversation quickly deteriorated from colloquial English to technobabble. After ten minutes, Anna took back to communicator.