The Last Twelve Months

By Karl Rogan

A short fictional story laden with often crude humor, takes the characters on a wild ride to a clandestine base on the Bering Sea, where an old ICMB that’s been converted to an escape vehicle is waiting. The last survivors of the outbreak of Artificial Intelligence, an insatiable gravitational energy guzzler that went mad, battle their way across the far north to their last chance of escaping dying planet. Following encounters with wild beasts and even wilder survivors Heather and Karl eventually reach the silo, however due to injuries and unable to fly they are left behind… Meanwhile some thousands of years ago, a buffalo hunter is terrorized by a space vehicle that lands on top of the herd he was after…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329725706

Book preview

The Last Twelve Months

THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS

Contents

The Exodus

The Cycle

B’hr and the Buffalo

Mammal Interlude

Jason Fries the Herd

Twenty-Eight

B’hr Runs

From The Memoirs of The Lost

Gravity, AI and the Ghost of the Past

Heather Fills Karl In

AI Sucks the Juice Out Of the Bag

B’her Finds His Way Back

Lift-Off

A Kid With a Scope

Jason Gets Off

The Exodus

‘The iceberg that carried us into an open sea was melting away and by now there was no land in sight. Somewhere halfway into the second week we managed to harpoon a small whale.

We skinned it, melted the fat for fuel and dried-up thin strips of flesh dipped in seawater. The crisp Arctic chill that descended on us with every sunset and the beating sun during the day produced delicious albeit fishy snack to chew on while waiting for god knows what.

Karl suggested stretching the skin over the skeleton to make a raft in case we had to get off the iceberg in a hurry. The semi-tropical sun baking down on us at altitude north of the fucking Oslo would not go away anytime soon except for the cooling nights when some of the outflow solidified in a ring around our chunk of ice.

The suitcase that washed up on the tail of our little iceberg contained a satellite phone, flares, a regular compass, and two H&K 9mm with spare clips, first aid and a dozen of ER’s. Not exactly standard contents of a first aid kit, as stamped on the lid of the case but, on the other hand, perhaps it was a first aid kit after all.

The voice in the receiver demanded to identify ourselves and give precise location and authorization number...

...we are floating on a large piece of ice somewhere beyond the Mackenzie delta, ten days past the Reindeer Station and into an open sea... the ice is melting fast... we are about to transfer onto the raft... authorization number is...two...there are two of us here... out. Oh yeah, come and get us fast, this ‘raft’ isn’t exactly something that can float for long... come get us out of here... now!

The voice on the other end of the connection calmly repeated: location and authorization number, no need to get excited...

...like hell don’t get excited! We are about to take polar ice swim... wait! ...our location is... 69.67.41N and 137.30.79W - according to the phone display, and we do not have authorization number, we’ve found this phone in floating suitcase along with all the other junk that washed out...’

She was in the aft of the ribcage of the raft making the rescue call when Karl spotted three black dots staring at him off the edge less than six feet away. Massive jaw sporting rows of sharp edged teeth reached out toward him.

As he lashed out with his blade aiming for the eyes he felt the ripple of flesh penetrated by rusty razor claws followed by a warm gush opening around his lower loins a moment later. 

To say that he felt it was an understatement of sort, or a misrepresentation at the very least. Presented with all five claws of bear’s paw ripping thru him from top the bottom, his system went into a shutdown mode. The only sense registering was a gradual collapse of circuits physically snapping around his brain, just like the breakers downing overloaded lines. Karl physically felt micro-implosions accompanied by static discharges inside his central processor, as he referred to ‘brains’ sometimes. His wild swing with the blade across the face of the intruder did not reach...

The knife missed its mark and fell out of suddenly paralyzed hand as the jaws of the bear reached for his throat,… he felt his life draining out...

As he was preparing to meet his maker, a deafening blast rang out in the crisp Arctic air followed by two more. In a three-tap sequence.

The beast did not seem to register the shots and kept on having the best intention on having Karl’s head for brunch, swarming bullets or not.

How, on earth, the shots missed Karl entirely in this scuffle while she was trying to hold the balance on swaying iced-up raft while plugging away moving target?

One of explanations could be that it was pure luck while another one a divine intervention.

Another explanation yet, could be that her adrenal gland, conveniently located close to her heart, pumped epinephrine into her bloodstream not in floods, but in cascades.

Niagara Falls-style cascades of hormone in fact.

Her movements were fluidly mechanical, coordinated to highest accuracy as she sighted optics of her pistol with the three dots enhanced by a grey-pinkish slobber protruding out of mouths of an industrial sized hopper fitted with yellowish teeth the size of railroad spikes.

Heather never registered any need for balancing on the rickety raft as her cerebellum took care of that without notice. All she had to do was to aim for the each one of these dots, triple-tap, aim the next one, triple tap, and repeat.

‘Three holes times three taps each equals nine’.

She vaguely remembered Ms. Kylee, her math teacher, explaining what three times three equaled to, but she doubted it went that way.