After the End - Book 1: After The End, #1

By Anderson Barcelos

In a devasted world, a man rises from a deep hibernation. Without memory, he starts to find answers about himself and what happened. He is alone and there is no signal of anybody alive.

There's no Internet, no TV, no Radio and no power at all. The few information he found just showa him his name and the propably reason why he is there. He has prosthetics with advanced technology and uses them to explore the neighborhood.

While searching for survivors, he finds a way to restore partially the Internet and, while trying to do it, faces challenges that reveals to be hard. He also finds a tomb with his name in a cemetery close to the base where he woke up. Inside the tomb, a sealed coffin that he had no courage to open.

The power source that keeps him alive is running low and he needs answers fast. Fighting against a several scarcity of resources, he keeps the hope alive, not only to survive, but to find answers about him, his family and what happened since he hibernated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jul 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393825661

Book preview

Preface

How long would it take for time to cease to exist after human extinction? The concept of time would die with the last man's last breath. The fractions of time and recording of long periods of time only make sense for the human's lifestyle. Plants and animals live in cycles, eventually aging to death.

In a distant future, there are no signs of human life anywhere on the planet. Its geography is changed by apocalyptical events. The coastal cities are devastated, while the cities in the middle of the continent are desert and arid. Only a few animals insist on surviving in a world scarce of resources as a result of the warming it has been submitted to.

In an undefined interval of time, as there is no one left to count it, the cycle of global warmth is giving in to a new cycle of cooldown, which starts to reveal a new landscape and gives the remaining life under tons of sand and dust some hope to regrowth. Storms and wind start to unearth the ruins of what once was the human habitation and domain.

After a long period with no human presence, all electric energy sources slowly have worn out and stopped working, hydroelectric power plants, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants. Generators and batteries were completely depleted, not having anyone to verify or fix them.

PART 1 – Alone?

Chapter 1 – Waking up

In the middle of the north American continent, the weather cooldown brought rain, thunder, and lightning. One lightning struck right in the middle of the New Military Technologies Development Centre, in Nebraska, causing a chain reaction that turned on one of the emergency nuclear generators at the new technologies’ development wing.

Laying on a bed in this medical center, there is a body completely connected to the monitoring and controlling wires that started working again after the electric discharge. They started beeping, indicating a recharging process was going on.

At the end of the recharging process, the body slowly starts to move, just like coming out of a deep state of hibernation. He struggles to get up and out of bed and, with difficulty, looks around, trying to identify the surroundings, but has no recollection of the place. In fact, it doesn’t remember anything, not even who he is.

He identifies the messages shown by his right eye in augmented reality, an AR visor, like contact lens, that show the condition of what he identified as prosthetics attached to his body, like the power and charge left in the batteries. He looks at his reflection at a shiny surface and realizes his appearance and sensations are completely natural. The indications in the visor are the only evidence that his members are - totally or partially - artificial. He looks around and identifies what should be his name by reading code in a small monitor next to his bed: "Edward J. Simons, American Airforce pilot, Nebraska Military Base Hospital"

He then leaves the room and realizes the place is completely desert. There are no windows. He assumes he’s underground at some sort of abandoned military base. His AR visor insistently indicates: "Connection Fail". While looking for an exit, he finds a small data center and, not knowing how he knows how to operate this kind of equipment, he turns the computers on. After a few seconds, his AR visor indicates there is a connection in progress.

A few instants later, his visor shows another message: "Connection established, GNIIN unavailable. Not knowing what GNIIN" means, he goes back to his search for an exit. While walking by the wide corridors, he looks at all the doors, rooms and empty laboratories, all abandoned, apparently for a long time. He keeps going and reaches the end of the corridor, where he thinks the exit is probably located.

He finds the exit door. It's locked. He tries to pull it hard without success. He realizes that, by forcing the door, his AR monitor starts to show messages with which he can interact by eye movement. One of the options allows him to direct more power to the arm prosthetics. With the additional power, he then succeeds in opening the door. Once he goes through, he finds another door