You crouch under the covers. Someone keeps knocking at the door. More and more furiously. No one should be calling at this hour. Whoever they are sounds angry and drunk. Their fist pounds the door so hard you fear it will splinter.
Eventually they stop and you hear them walk away. An owl hoots in distance. One of the farm dogs starts barking.
Did you lock the back door?
It’s rare to find an entire brain.
Even when we don’t unearth a mere picked-clean skeleton, the matter inside the skull is usually little more than black paste. The DNA is put on file and the body is buried. Little else can be done.
Those with intact brains are a rare and remarkable find but the search is still not over. Many brains are torn up with lesions and scar tissue and little can be analysed. Many fell into the bog experiencing a stroke or other major cognitive event that renders the brains structure irretrievable altered. Most bodies are never more than grey slabs on tables being probed and poked by unfeeling machines.
Rarely though, something shudders to horrible life here on the slab; unliving for nine millenia.
Nobody goes on boats now.
The transition with regards to global trade was surprisingly smooth. Electric planes pushed by environmental regulation had already looked to become the cheapest way to travel. Now that waterways were virtually uncommunicable the scales had been tipped firmly in their favour. Cargo planes whizz across the sky all day and night all across the globe.
The real difficulty was the tourists. Cruises can’t be replaced by planes. Beaches are second to none as even they are no longer safe. There were efforts at first to try and redress things. There still are sometimes. Every once in a while a politician or business mogol will suggest some bold new initiative. ‘Take back the sea for mankind’. Rarer are the diplomatic efforts. It turns out not many people are willing to vote for a guy who wants to negotiate with the sentient swarm of krill that ate their gran in the Bahamas. These things never go further than plans. The ocean is a big place and mostly unexplored. No war is more hopeless than a war against an unknown enemy.
As I write these words, I can see the ocean lapping on the long horizon out my window. I can see the seabirds which now fear the sea and try their best to forage amongst the sand banks. Little islands squat amongst the swirling warm water like frogs in a drying pond. The sea roars as dark and romantic as it was a hundred years ago.
Now no longer for us.
The azure sun rises through a thick blanket of radioactive smog. The missiles have not flown in decades but it could be any day now. The herdsmen to about their business. They know better than to obsess about the fate of the world beyond their control. Out their, sailing amongst the stars or nestled deep in ocean trenches are the God-Machines. The machines that once were men. They pursue a destiny now that is as unfathomable to the herdemen as it is disturbing to them. A profane and endless war for power as illusionary as it is impermanent.
Better not to consider their Celestial struggle. Better to keep at ones careful tendered plot of Earth and keep one’s crops sheltered from the acid rain.
WARNING: MAJOR MEMETIC PATHOGEN. MATERIAL COVERED IS LIKELY TO CAUSE EXTREME COGNITIVE DAMAGE AND EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR. DO NOT ENGAGE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WITHOUT A COGNITIVE CLEANSING CONTINGENCY OF LEVEL III OR HIGHER PREPARED. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The object, entitled simply ‘The Tablet’, is a recovered artifact from ancient Mesopotamia recently unearthed during an archaeological expedition ahead of the New Syrian Backbone network. It is approximately 16 by 8 inches and made of dried and treated clay. On its face are a set of cuneiform symbols laying out a short phrase.
The Tablet has not been destroyed so that it can be studied in the event that other copies of the information have survived elsewhere. However, extensive safety measures are employed to make sure no Institute associates can read the full phrase. Instead, associates unable to read cuneiform transcribe the symbols and prevent fragments to multiple different trained scholars who can then each work on their own part. Similarly, sociological specialists in the Institute studying the social effects of the Unplanned Emissions Period are kept under extensive surveillance to prevent them from actually being exposed to the substance of UEP material in an unsanitised form.
During the UEP, members of the public who were exposed to translated versions of the information from the Tablet unanimously displayed extremely violent and homicidal tendencies within seconds of being exposed. These tendencies did not appear to come with any impairment to cognitive or physiological functioning and did not otherwise suggest an inability of the subject to distinguish beneficial from harmful actions. Instead a perfectly rational pursuit of extreme and even lethal force towards others consumed 100% of affected subjects.
Due to the extensive purge conducted on digital and physical files following the UEP, the exact nature of the information contained is unknown to Institute scholars. However, from what can be gleaned, it seems to involve a simple and elegant rational argument which explains the moral correctness of immediate and indiscriminate mass murder. Institute Metaethicists have considered launching an expedition to learn the argument and attempt to reason with it. However, this has so far been considered far too dangerous a venture by high command.
Regardless, the Tablet and all information contained upon it are considered extremely dangerous at the present time and concerns remain about whether the current security measures will be strong enough to contain it forever.
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