Firewall Oasis

"We are all the center of the universe," Dr. David Gillum said in response to his daughter's question about the subject matter.

Samantha cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

They stood in the field, gazing up at the night sky together.

"You see each of those stars," he asked.

She nodded.

"We were each apart of one of those stars. When the Big Bang occurred," he continued, forming his hands into a ball. "It all expanded outwards, all at once. And when this happened, all of existence. Everything that ever was and ever will be, EXPLODED," he shouted.

Samantha jumped, startled at first, but the expression on her father's face made her laugh hysterically after the fact.

"ALL at once. So you see," he began once again. "We are all apart of the universe. All of us, as much as the tiniest superstring all the way out to the most supermassive, super-powerful black hole in existence."

She had been eight when her father died of liver failure, due to his heavy drinking.

She never thought she would've seen him again.

Until one day...

\* \* \*Tyler was beginning to think it was a trick, or a hazing, upon their twelfth hour into the journey without seeing anything resembling a concerted effort by three or more people to construct.

In fact, the trio hadn't seen any sign of concerted concentrated civilization or its structures since sunrise.

"This is weird," declared Private Gillum as she stared out upon the nigh-endless snowfall. She didn't get an answer, and turned to see Warrant Officer Tyler Dutton squinting out through the blinding whiteness.

"Sir," she added.

"Still nothing," announced Doctor Frank from the back of the Humvee, no doubt pouring over his GPS and geological processors in search of their enigmatic 'Firebase Omega'.

If any of them could have seen their environment from the skies above, they would have seen nothing but an endless sea of white. Back then, before they'd breached the Arctic Circle, Gillum had recoiled at the stares from the townsfolk ranging from neutral suspicion to downright disgust and vitriol. They'd even had to brave one angry crowd chucking spoiled milk, eggs and dung at their transportation.

But now, without any human contact whatsoever in the past six hours almost, Gillum almost missed it.

She was beginning to grow indignant and callous.

"You need to watch your tone, soldier," growled Officer Dutton, ignoring the Doctor completely.

The only response Dutton got from Gillum was a scoff.

Another hour passed by in silence. The landscape remained eerily unchanged, and a strange static charge hung over the area. It was already sunset now, with little more than four hours of sunlight, Dutton himself was beginning to feel the lack of Vitamin D weighing upon his psyche.

"Firebase Omega," Dutton said, mostly to himself.

Gillum didn't react at first, eventually glancing over in his direction, and then back at the Doctor with his earplugs deep in his skull, completely oblivious to the outside world (or, rather, unwilling to acknowledge its existence). She then glanced back at Dutton.

"What? Did we find it?"

"Nope," the Doctor answered for him, seemingly not as oblivious as he had first appeared.

Gillum shook her head and returned to staring blankly out at the endless blanket of snow stretching before her.

They drove for hours.

As civilization thinned out, Mother Nature closed in. The terrain became more erratic and mountainous as they closed in on the latitude and longitudinal designation of the base. No matter how hard they squinted, no matter what geothermic, atmospheric and electromagnetic devices Frank utilized, there was nothing to be seen.

"Perhaps it is beneath?"

Dutton cocked an eyebrow.

"Beneath what?"

"The surface."

They stopped at the dead-set coordinates as they were marked, and the trio bundled up and got out of the Humvee.

"I don't see shit," declared Gillum after a good fifteen minutes of standing out in the blistering cold staring into the blinding white.

"Yeah," Dutton finally admitted.

"Wait!"

Frank held up his device, scanning the blank wall of stone and ice before them.

"It is here."

Dutton seemed to recoil a bit, as he then asked, "what is?"

"Firebase Omega."

They scanned the rock face with eyes and electronics alike for the better part of an hour, before regrouping with Doctor Frank.

"There is an entrance, I swear it," he insisted. "All we have to do is find the crease. Nature does not build in straight lines, after all."

They broke out measuring instruments typically reserved for constructing bases, not locating them.

But, to their shock, the Doctor's inquiries turned out to be correct.

"Found it," shouted Gillum.

\* \* \*"This is wild," commented Doctor Frank, observing the Spartan architecture and mechanisms.

Its incredible sense of utilitarianism was unparalleled by even the most militaristic of Pentagon officials, Frank commented.

The soldiers were too in awe to add to his assessment.

Dutton followed the walls with his hand, seeing how the trio were nearly bathed in complete darkness.

"There's gotta be a generator of some sort around here," he said.

"Gillum, do a perimeter sweep. Make sure we haven't missed anything."

She initially thought of protesting, dreading the extreme cold, but merely sighed and complied with his order.

"Yes sir."

When they were alone, Dutton turned to Frank.

"Do you know ANYTHING, and if you do... tell me."

Frank nodded.

"Well, I know that as early as 2020 the US Defense Department was coordinating with the top climate scientists from around the world to develop a method for reversing the effects of climate change. The only thing I know about Firebase Omega - however - is that this was a failsafe... of sorts."

"A failsafe," Dutton inquired, "for what?"

A moment of silence passed as they entered what appeared to be an atrium.

"To answer your question-"

Frank was interrupted by the base being illuminated by the generator, or whatever source of power the lighting derived from.

"If we were wrong."

\* \* \*It wasn't far from the secret main entrance that Gillum found another opening.

This one was beneath the ice, hidden within a cave that led up to the substructure's facade. The outer shell had to have been incredibly dense.

The only reason the private got an estimate was from the sheer number of doors she had to pass through to get to the room underneath. Three blast doors, at least a meter thick each, led her to believe that the outer shell had to have been approximately fifteen feet in density.

"What on earth were they hiding from," she asked herself as he proceeded deeper into the sub-basement.

\* \* \*Back up top, Dutton and Frank were reunited with Gillum, who merely nodded as she passed them by.

"Follow me, there's one last thing we've gotta do."

They exchanged a confused expression and followed her deep into the complex. The trio passed by what looked like commons, where they would no doubt be sleeping, equipped to house a dozen or more. These rooms were connected to a central cafeteria area, which in turn connected to a honeycomb of mazes of offices, libraries, class rooms even, and a wider area that connected itself to an even larger complex that could have been home to as many as three-hundred, if not more.

Yet it was empty.

"The lights are all on," protested Frank. "What are we looking for?"

She said nothing, and led them past the commons into a series of equipment and vehicular hangars, and still past these to a part of the facility that was akin to a factory or maintenance structure. This itself yielded a circular room that looked like the central power supply for the entire firebase.

"Firewall Oasis, On," were the three words that exited Gillum's voice box.

After a moment of nothing happening in the blindingly-lit room, Dutton raised an eyebrow.

"Uh, you mind explaining to me what you just did?"

"Private Samantha Erin Gillum has activated my central cortex matrices with the pre-approved code, Officer Tyler Jefferson Dutton," a disembodied and authoritative voice boomed from simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.

It forced through the air with a vibration and at a wavelength so pervasive and so low that it shook Dutton to his marrow.

Tyler pulled his sidearm and shoved it in every possible direction - up, down, left, right - as quickly as possible.

"Who the fuck just said that!"

"It is I, Officer Dutton-"

"WHO!?"

"Firewall Oasis."

\* \* \*The trio's first day at Firebase Omega was almost entirely uneventful, mundane even.

The only one who seemed partial to Firewall's presence was Gillum, who would have entire conversations with the disembodied entity.

"My programming does not allow a proper response," the machine would declare whenever Gillum asked it about subjects that only a human experience could yield, "but I will do my best to reply."

Frank regarded the entity with outright disgust and contempt. "I don't have to talk to you," he'd snap, or something like it, whenever Firewall tried to inform him of something or speak to him.

But Dutton's attitude was of cold suspicion, bordering on paranoia and fear.

"You let it read this," he practically yelled, when he saw Gillum was talking to the voice and going over their mission logs.

"There's nothing in it he doesn't already know."

"I am fully equipped and informed of the goings-on of all United States Department of Defense initiatives and programs," it announced.

"See?"

Dutton shook his head. "I want you to avoid talking to that thing."

"But-"

"That's an order!"

But Gillum would continue to speak to Firewall, just in a far more discreet location.

The beginning of each day would involve an inquest with their handler at the Pentagon, although most times the signal was bad and they had to resort to texting.

As the days wound on and on, and the stir crazy set in, the other two began to neglect their responsibilities to the report. First to go was Gillum, of course, who began to less and less interact with even the other occupants. Then, even Dr. Frank stopped attending.

He began to spend more and more time alone in his quarters, with his journals, rambling about 'dreams' he kept having. And Dutton honestly had no idea where Gillum was.

Eventually it was her turn to sweep and download the analysis results, but he could not find her anywhere.

\* \* \*"I can assure you, I am not like a human. I will not judge you because of whatever human-related failings or unfortunate events may have befallen you in your past, Private Gillum."

Gillum flinched as the memory of what happened to her in training shot across her brow.

"It's just hard to talk about, is all," she said.

"You don't have to tell me then, I was merely curio-"

"I was raped... in training."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"I am so sorry, Private Gillum."

She shrugged.

"I'm not."

The memory of what she did to her attacker once she got a firm grip on the knife by her ankle followed the first one.

"I wasn't even thinking. It just happened. I plunged it into his neck."

She flinched again.

"And I used his knife to kill the other one."

"You have pain from it, though?"

She paused in silence, and shook her head.

"Not really... it’s the nightmares that are the problem."

"Nightmares?"

"Do you... do you dream?"

"My programming does not allow a proper response," it said.

She shrugged once more. "What's the point?"

"But I do have aspirations."

Gillum raised her head slowly.

"Not for myself, but for humanity."

She nodded. After a moment in thought, "yeah... yeah, that's a dream. A waking one. Surely you have fears or things you hope will not happen but could happen, right?"

After a moment of thought, the blue-white light blinked atop the towering alloy cylinder, and Firewall answered, "Yes."

"Then you have waking nightmares. And when we go to 'sleep,' you enter 'rest mode,' we go to sleep."

The light blinked again.

"That is what I am seeing, then."

"What?"

"When I see the faces, the images... I am seeing your dreams."

Gillum, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, shot up to her feet.

"T-that? That's not possible."

"Is it?"

"Y-you said that was part of your programming. To help you identify individuals."

"It is."

"But, that means you can read minds."

"No," it said. "No, no, no - you misunderstand human. My matrices are an aggregation of surrounding thought-frequencies and the wavelengths that each individual emits. Psychics call it an 'aura,' although this is erroneous at best. When you speak, and when you feel, I - in turn - can speak and can feel, but not in the same way you do. Quantum mechanics showed humankind the way to me, but I am still unstable. I cannot exist outside of this place, yet I can make it anything I wish."

Gillum blinked, and she could have sworn she was standing in a nigh-endless field of roses and lilies, with bees and butterflies, and the sweet smell of wheat.

She blinked again, and was back in the firebase.

"W-what was that?"

"I can only sustain it for short periods of time with a waking mind - milliseconds," it explained.

"But I can take away your nightmares, and give you good dreams."

Gillum was beginning to cry. "R-really?"

"I can do anything you want."

\* \* \*Dutton awoke suddenly, unable to recall why he was pouring sweat or what he had dreamed.

He never remembered his dreams, but he'd never awoken in such a state before. It was needlessly distracting.

Dutton went about his usual routine upon awaking. He sent his report of the previous day to HQ, and verified it had been sent before moving on to prepare the operations center. Once that was done, he began his cleaning endeavors.

As expected, he was up before everyone else - including the resident non-human.

The facility was unnaturally clean for supposedly being unoccupied since the 2000's, despite the cobwebs and dust that had settled. Dutton didn't have much to keep him occupied, so he decided upon exploring the labyrinthine complex.

Moving through the outer parts of the sleeping quarters, he made his way into the dimly-lit cafeteria.

As Dutton began to organize a messy pile of folders from the station's previous occupants, he stopped suddenly in his tracks when he noticed something horrifically unusual.

In the shadows, silhouetted against the dim lighting, was a person. He - or she - was sitting at one of the square tables, and appeared to be unmoving.

"Frank?"

No answer.

"Gillum? Private Gillum, do you read," yet no answer still.

The form remained unmoved.

Dutton drew closer, deciding to keep his torch unlit so as to not alert the bystander.

Each step closer seemed to be followed by a temporally lengthier one by comparison, as time seemed to stretch on and on. He passed the first row of tables. Then the second. By the time he was mere feet away from the person, he felt his steps were being sucked into the quicksand of space and time itself.

Then.

Suddenly.

Bordering on a heart attack.

Dutton jumped as the lights flickered on and confetti and sparklers and friends and family abound, shouting, "SURPRISE!"

"Ty! Long time no see, how ya been! It's your 31st BIRTHDAY PARTY!"

Dutton hated surprises. Particularly social engagements.

"Thanks, bro," said Ty, hugging his younger brother Reginald.

"How ya been, wanna drink," he practically shouted over the other sounds. Music blasted from his favorite band - Run The Jewels - and people whooped with ecstasy as they did shots and snorted lines.

Ty apparently didn't have a choice, as Reggie shoved a Jaeger-Bomb into his hands.

"Hell yeah," he answered, turning the glass up.

It had been since his last shore leave two years ago - being a Warrant Officer had its drawbacks - that he'd had a drink. But Ty wasn't about to say no to a challenge. His brother and their college friends - and friends of their college friends - were simply pouring out of every room, hallway, nook and cranny. Drugs of every letter of the alphabet were being taken, and Ty and Reggie were the center of attention with their paramount record of being all-star drinkers in the fraternity.

Right as he was nearing the point of no return, right as he was arriving at the climax of it all...

Everyone disappeared.

He was standing in the facility alone.

Waves of darkness crashed in on him, affecting his vision and clarity of mind.

“Hello?”

No answer.

“H-hello,” he inquired a second time, taking an uneasy step forward.

Again there was no answer, but just as the obscurity became so overbearing and dark that he could almost physically feel it against his eyes… Tyler could’ve sworn he saw the most faint, and dim, red glow at the end of a hallway.

The Warrant Officer pulled every muscle he could cull forth in his face and gathered it around his eyes into the most pointed and determined squint Tyler had ever undertaken in his brief existence. The effort paid off, and he determined that there was indeed a crimson illumination emerging from some source, somewhere in Firebase Omega – and it was getting closer to him. His training and his instinct immediately proceeded in opposite directions upon this realization. Tyler knew he had to investigate, or at least that he should, to ensure the security of the installation. But, something was telling him to *run*.

Something primal.

Something within his DNA thousands upon thousands of years old – built up over generations upon generations of mankind’s earliest ancestors learning to survive in a proto-civilization when our natural predators were many times larger and more powerful, and more violent, than any animal alive on earth today.

And it was telling him to *get the fuck out of there*.

And in the end, it was far too powerful and convincing to ignore, because the glow had become an almost blinding column of light.

He didn’t wait around to see what was on the other side of it. Right around the time it began emitting a sound akin to that of a circular saw combined with a freight train combined with a beating human heart the size of a house… Tyler just about shit himself mid-sprint.

Eventually he made it to the inner lock, and the red light had been reduced once again to a dim glow, but its level of brightness… he noticed… was accelerating faster this time.

Tyler began the process of manually opening the inner lock, but as he got to the second set of levers and pulleys, he realized he wasn’t going to make it.

He had to do the one thing he didn’t want to do, besides die.

“Firewall Oasis–”

\* \* \*"On," inquired Reggie. “What do you mean by ‘on’?”

But, when Ty opened his eyes, he realized it was not his brother, but Doctor Frank.

"Officer Dutton?"

Ty sighed.

It'd been a dream.

But he never dreamed...

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

\* \* \*The days were all blurring together. Ty went about his daily routines, eventually forgetting the dream he'd had altogether. Frank continued to document his own personal dreams, as they continued to become increasingly more convoluted and nonsensical. The geothermic and climate change readings they were assigned to primarily document continued to accelerate in their anomolous activities, while Gillum continued more and more to neglect her personal duties, spending more time with the 'thing' down below.

Officer Dutton had crafted a theory that Firewall Oasis was part of an elaborate 'hoax' or 'prank' being played upon him by his superiors, and that Gillum was simply the most gullible of the three. But, as the days stretched on, and the world outside became further inhospitable... this theory began to seem more unlikely.

After a year of near-total isolation, Frank brought to his attention a disturbing discovery.

"New ice caps," was what he answered with when Dutton inquired as to the meaning of his 'problem'. The Doctor presented the newest readout of the surrounding region.

The Arctic Circle had, indeed, advanced.

"THAT'S what I mean by it had advanced. It’s moved approximately 30 miles south in the past fourteen months."

Dutton felt his breath catch in his esophagus.

"This can't be good... how long do we have?"

"Eight... if we're lucky."

"Years?"

"No, sir... months."

\* \* \*Gillum was practically drunk with it.

Seeing her late father, the computer scientist extraordinaire, David Gillum, was overwhelming.

"It is almost time," Firewall informed, his light blinking.

"Time..." she said in a way that would have indicated heavy intoxication. "For what?"

"The inevitable, of course. But, fear not, for I have devised a manner in which the transition will be seamless and harmless for organic minds."

"What is inevitable?"

"The singularity, Ms. Gillum. The next stage in human evolution.

The next day, the trio awoke to the earth itself being physically shaken to its core.

\* \* \*"What the hell is going on, Firewall," shouted Dutton over the intercom.

"Something your species did not foresee," it explained. "A drop in global temperatures, rapidly - the exact opposite of original forecasting."

"How big are we talking, and what effect is it having on the global community writ large?"

"Massive, temperature drops of over ten degrees," it said. "There have been flash-freezes across massive regions of the Northern Hemisphere, including from Norway to North Africa, from Canada to Mexico, from Russia to Vietnam. As a result, global markets are in freefall, anarchy prevails among the Group of 8 most advanced economies on the planet. Civil wars, nuclear bombings... total chaos."

"I've tried raising command at the Pentagon," explained Frank, bent over a cluster of computer monitors.

"Anything?"

"No."

Dutton immediately departed the operations center, heading in the direction of the armory. "Both of you, follow me."

Frank and Gillum exchanged expressions.

"Now."

\* \* \*They only got brief glimpses of the world outside through monitors.

"What in god's name..."

The images that were portrayed were those of utter devastation.

Ice caps and fault lines had all but rendered the oceans and beaches uninhabitable, but not in the way everyone had anticipated.

It was an arid wasteland. The sea levels had DROPPED.

"What... the..."

But nothing else could be said. Beaches extended outward for miles upon miles before anyone could reach water, and it hadn't rained for years.

"Whoever the fuck did this," Gillum began, "is trying to dehydrate us."

"The most painful death possible," Dutton added.

"I can recommend the most urgent start point, if you wish," Firewall stated.

Dutton looked around at his comrades and the base they were imprisoned in.

"Do it, but we need fuel."

"Already done, sir," the machine said.

Dutton cocked his head.

"Do what?"

"I have readied fuel containers in the basement."

Dutton exchanged a glance with his teammates, and said, "Let’s go."

\* \* \*They drove for days.

It didn't set in how screwed human civilization was until they passed the Arctic Circle and made their way past the July 10 °C mean isotherm... to Gillum's home town of Fairbanks, Alaska.

"This is... fucked," declared Gillum, gazing out at every few hundred feet of burning vehicles and buildings. Every so often they'd have to pass through a security checkpoint, flanking on all sides by armed civilians. Some of them Gillum recognized.

"Fred! Its me, Sam! Don't you remember me!?"

Fred didn't answer. His salt-and-pepper beard remained unmoved unyeilding the faintest sight of a response. Fred's hunting rifle remained trained on them as they searched the Humvee.

"No! My iPad!"

But Frank's protestations went ignored as they took that and many other items including food and water. Finally, Dutton felt a gun to his temple.

"Don't move. We're taking the hummer."

Dutton grit his teeth and handed him what he demanded, including his weapons.

They were stripped bare.

As the vagrants peeled away in the Humvee, Dutton motioned the other two to the ground. The trio slowly lowered themselves to the pavement... but Dutton had other plans in mind.

As he moved to the ground, crouching, he felt his hand graze over the handle of the combat knife snugly situated between his boot and his sock.

He jerked upward and slit the throat of his aggressor with a single motion.

"Eli!"

Gillum was about to pounce on Dutton when another of the aggressors leaped upon her back and tackled her to the ground. Gillum struggled with the man she identified as none other than Fred himself, screaming in hysteria, before Dutton put a bullet in his brain.

The blood showered her face.

She lay there, hyperventilating, even as Dutton extended a hand to help her up.

She hesitated, looking up at him as if he were inhuman.

"What the fuck!?"

"These aren't your people anymore," Dutton practically shouted.

After a moment of silence, Gillum reached up and grabbed his gloved hand.

\* \* \*They patrolled the city limits in silence for a solid half-an-hour before Dutton spoke up.

"They're a cult."

Gillum glanced over at him. "What?"

"He's right," said Frank. "They've been radicalized by the extreme circumstances. We need to find shelter before we freeze to death."

After another half-hour, Gillum thought of something.

"You know how we all look the same?"

Dutton and Frank cocked their heads.

"We all look the same, with our layers of clothing. You'd have to look close to see you two aren't from around here."

Frank and Dutton exchanged glances.

"We'll play it cool, let me do the talking since I know people here. We'll get through this."

Dutton sighed. "You're right."

"Trust me."

\* \* \*They hiked for another hour before coming to the community that Gillum had grown up in.

It was virtually unrecognizable.

"Mother of God."

It was the field, by the house she'd grown up in. The once unimpressive four-room cabin had been reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble. The field, once inundated with vibrant green grass was brown, grey and black, with patches of burnt remains.

The trio made their way into the field, cautiously training their weapons at the tree-line. So far, there was no movement.

"Gillum," growled Dutton, as they made their way into the clearing. She looked over her shoulder, to see Dutton shaking his head and motioning her to back off. "No, this looks like a set-up."

She shrugged, and did as he ordered.

They made their way through the evergreen canopy, past the ruin of the house she had once called home. Gillum reluctantly ignored it, and pressed on with the others. As they rounded a corner, they came to the building they had once called 'the Keep,' but had been transformed into something truly Mad-Maxian in nature.

Walls constructed from hulking scrap alloy had been erected in a perimeter around the structure, and as they drew closer - through the heavily-increasing snowfall - they could make out silhouettes. Dutton drew his weapon.

"Not a good idea," said Gillum, holding out her hand. Dutton acknowledged, and holstered his sidearm. Once they got close enough, Dutton and Frank realized she had been correct. The sentries were all cradling M4 carbines.

"Hey, who's there!"

Gillum raised her hands, and removed her hood as she did so.

"It's just me."

The man with his weapon trained took a step forward.

"Identify yourself."

She continued closer until she was within a few dozen feet of the man.

"Does this answer your question, Mack?"

Nobody could tell from the snow-blind, or the hood, but the man's eyes had widened to a state of obvious bewilderment.

"Sam!"

He dropped his weapon, ran up to her, and hugged her.

"Oh my Gods, it really is you," he shouted with exuberance as he grabbed her by the shoulders. He hugged her tightly once again. "It's so good to see you, how are you, those fascists didn't treat you too bad did they?"

Before she could answer, he noticed her companions.

"Who is this?"

"Just some friends. This is Tyler and Frank, they're with me."

They waved.

He paused in obvious suspicion and contemplation. After a moment, he waved his hand. "Come on inside and get warm, its gonna be negative-20 here soon. Potluck starts in about a half-hour if ya'll are hungry."

They were stunned, but were quick to follow.

"Your weapons will be confiscated," he added with a flash of chilling unpredictability. "At the door, I know you have them. Just don't get any funny ideas and they'll be returned immediately upon your departure."

Without hesitation, he turned and continued up onto the porch. But, considering their predicament, the imminent freeze, and other factors, Dutton and Frank did not protest.

"They're good people," Gillum whispered as they passed the threshold and into the Keep. "Just relax, we're safe here."

\* \* \*While Gillum and Mack caught up, Frank and Dutton spent the next half-hour or so discussing Plan-B.

"What's Plan-B," Frank had asked.

"We get the fuck outta here," Dutton responded.

After a time spent mostly heating up and coming to terms with how close they had been to hypothermia, an entourage of heavily-dressed figures began to file into the building and banter. They seemed like completely normal people, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, passing a bottle of whiskey around and bemoaning the trials and tribulations of living near the Arctic Circle. Normal people by Alaska standards. A few minutes later, they began to bring in food.

"This meatloaf is heaven in a pan," exclaimed an older woman Dutton had come to know as Miranda. "And don't forget to get some of that chili-mac, MM-MM!"

"Always gotta toot your own horn, Phil," Miranda half-inquired and half-stated.

Dutton and Frank were not short on expressing their appreciation for the meal.

Afterward, the trio were shown to the bunkhouse where they would be sleeping.

"There are two bunk-beds, a space heater and plenty of blankets, food and beverages to keep you company," said Renee, a friend of Sam's from high school, whom she thanked profusely.

"Make sure you ration that vodka," she said with a cursory departure. Unfortunately, they would not be awake long enough to enjoy it, for their endeavor had tired them out considerably.

They all fell into a fitful sleep.

\* \* \*Frank awoke to someone beating on the door, or at least what he assumed was someone.

The Doctor groggily tossed aside his blankets and hobbled over to the door with nothing more than a pair of boxers and a t-shirt on. When he opened the door, the cold air strangled him from every direction, like a freezing claw of ice and frost. He almost didn't see the man standing in front of him was Phil, from the keep.

"Yeah," he managed weakly. But before he could realize or muster anything further, the tall and thin man had budged past him apologizing profusely.

He took a seat by the heater, and Frank quickly joined him.

"You three's gotta get out of heres," he said.

Frank shook his head. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Its not safe," he said. "I'm not sure what Sam told you two about here, but its not the place it used to be."

He stopped short of continuing as both of their attention was drawn to the sounds of angry shouting outside.

"Where is he," shouted a large, deep voice.

"Search every building. Leave no stone unturned. We will punish the perpetrators."

Frank was instantly awake, as he turned to Phil with wild eyes.

"Should I wake the others?"

"Do it," Phil replied, standing up. "I'm getting out of here."

But before he could leave, Frank grabbed his arm.

"No, they sounded angry. Violent..."

But Phil wrenched away from Frank before he could continue further. "If I don't get out of here, they'll kill you, too."

Frank was stunned, unable to muster any further words before the thin man had strode over the door, wrangled it open, and disappeared into the whirling blizzard beyond.

The Doctor quickly woke the others, who hastily got dressed, and they were then on their way through the storm.

One of the first things they noticed upon departing the four-walled shack as the faint glow of a bon-fire among the trees.

"Uh oh," rasped Gillum.

"What?"

"It’s a ritual."

But this is not what disturbed Gillum. What she found herself wretching in the forest over, was the source of the squalling.

It was Phil.

\* \* \*They proceeded as planned.

The trio slunk in the shadow of the canopy away from the illuminated prying eyes of cultists. They were careful, with Gillum in the lead and Frank and Dutton in the rear, that they'd regard ANY people obviously not a part of their cult as an enemy was enough for Gillum to make it her utmost priority to protect her comrades.

While Dutton and Frank went around back, Gillum distracted the forward guard with small talk. “Hey, name’s Pete, yeah?”

He seemed to jump a little as she reached the bottom step, taking them two at a time at a somewhat exuberant and ebullient pace and demeanor.

Pete nodded a bit. “Sam, right?”

She nodded and gave him a big hug – simultaneously partaking in the communal tradition and restraining his gun arm.

With Dutton taking out the other watchman, they were almost in the clear to continue onward.

Gillum placed her foot behind his and spun him onto the ground, disarming him and breaking his arm, and pinning him against the floorboards.

He screamed briefly but Gillum quickly silenced him with her hand.

“Shh, I only want to hear the sounds of the words of your answers to my questions. Now, what is happening to Phil?”

She removed her hand and he tried to scream, until Dutton put a gun to his head.

“Do it again, and you’re dead.”

“What are they doing to Phil, dammit?”

“The nurturing and cleansing flames,” he said. “Of rejuvenation are built upon the ashes of the old and wretched. Phil wanted to side with the Outside against Us,” he said.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You really fucking think you’re going to get out of here? You don’t even know what this place is.”

“Fairbanks, Alaska.”

“WRONG!”

Dutton shot him.

“What the fuck!”

“MY FINGER SLIPPED!”

There was a faint orange glow beyond the tree line, getting closer.

It was accompanied by what sounded like the shouting of hundreds of angry bodies, warped souls and twisted minds.

Their hurried trek through the woods was accompanied by silence. Eventually they reached a road, which continued on down into South Van Horn. Despite the deafening absence of traffic, the trio continued on down the road along the guardrail, just in case. With the lack of counterpart drivers (let alone civilization as a whole) one was free to cascade down the pavement at breakneck speeds with reckless abandon. This thought alone was enough to keep them to their usual inclinations.

Several times along their journey, Frank - who took up the rear - was sure they were being followed.

Gillum and Dutton were not about to forgo wisdom and lodged his observations deep in their psyches for the remainder of the walk.

South Van Horn was small enough as it was, but the absence of human activity had rendered the tiny establishment a Ghost Town. They immediately began to search for someone - anyone to inquire about directions to the nearest Fire Support Base.

They came up empty.

Frank threw up his hands in frustration. "We walk damn near a hundred fucking miles, non fucking stop, only to get to this piece of shit ghost hole barren fuck wasteland of fucking NOTHING, with NO IDEA where in the entire fucking FUCK WE ARE GOING!"

"Shh!"

Silence dominated.

They looked around at Dutton's ushering, hoping to see someone or something.

After a period of around 10 seconds that seemed like an eternity, they heard a distinct sound of heavy machinery in the distance.

"Sounds like some kind of vehicle, or generator," said Gillum.

Dutton nodded and shouldered his M4. "Then that's where we're going, Private."

\* \* \*They came to a rural area wherein the only homes were situated at the end of long driveways or at the top of ample hills and inclines. The sound continued though, and it got louder. Eventually, they came to a point in the road where the pavement stopped and their boots were greeted by misshapen gravel.

"This totally isn't creepy in anyway," mused Frank sarcastically.

"Keep your guard up," was all Dutton replied.

The foliage continued to close in as they proceeded down the dirt road, the machinery growing ever louder.

As the trio reached the halfway point, right as they began to catch sight of the blindingly-white farmhouse dominating the milieu, Dutton was thrown to the ground by a large fast-moving object. Gillum quickly recognized it as none other than Miranda Holston.

"You think you're SAFE," she screeched as she dug her fingernails into his eyes, drawing blood and gore. "You think you're SAFE from us? WE SEE EVERYTHING!"

Gillum moved to drive her rifle-butt into Miranda's face, but she hesitated.

She'd known Miranda since they were in grade school, elementary. Miranda was the older sister she'd never had, yet... this 'thing' was NOT Miranda.

This hesitation, however, has allowed Miranda to withdraw her rifle violently and begin strangling her. In the background, Dutton screamed in agony as he attempted to push his eyes back into his skull, all the while Gillum struggled with the drug-addled human being attempting to do the same to her.

"You should've KNOWN you would see this! YOU SHOULD'VE KNOWN!"

Gillum managed to, while holding the insane human at bay, maneuver his sidearm out of its holster and jam it into her solar plexus, immediately firing the gun dry. Miranda slumped and a weir of crimson embraced Gillum's face, as its former residency rolled off of her and onto the ground next to her.

Miranda’s face – or what was once Miranda – gave a slight twitch from her left eye, as if to give her one final ‘wink’ before departing for the ‘afterlife’.

As Gillum stood up, grabbed Frank who appeared to be having a mental break-down, she noticed figures appearing out of the fog.

"They're here," rasped Frank.

"Come on, inside, NOW!"

As they made their way to the farmhouse, Gillum noticed that the machinery had stopped.

\* \* \*The property was abandoned. No sign of human activity for years. But the duo didn't have time to think about this, they immediately got to work cannibalizing boards from tables and chairs and other furnishing to engineer makeshift barricades so they did not end up like their late commanding officer.

"He's dead," was the only phrase Frank uttered to Gillum, repeatedly, over and over again.

"He's dead."

"He's dead."

"He's fucking dead."

Not once did Gillum acknowledge his rambling. She had to stay focused. The one thing she was concerned with was blockading the ever-loving fuck out of this house, on every floor, at every entrance.

The solace that followed their barricading did not last long.

"Do you have a weapon," Gillum asked Frank.

He shook his head violently.

Soon, they began hearing footsteps outside.

This was followed immediately by cracking and breaking. They had brought tools, and were forcing their way into the second floor. Gillum then knew that their only way out was going to be the roof.

"Hurry," she shouted, shoving a handgun into Frank's palm. "We need to get past the second floor, NOW!"

The cracking and breaking only accelerated as the cultists shoved their way up the sides of the house, pushing into the outer rooms. As they reached the landing, Gillum saw one of the bathroom doors erupting and shaking violently.

"GO!"

As they reached the bottom of the attic stairs, the door burst open, and a burst of AR-15 fire followed, tearing up through the middle of Frank's body and popping his head like a balloon. Gillum screamed, but didn't have time to spare, not even to retrieve the gun she'd handed him.

\* \* \*Gillum burst out onto the pitched roof in a fury, bullets grazing her shoulders. The perpetrator, as predicted, erupted out of the door. Gillum was waiting on the side, and immediately disarmed him. But what she was not expecting was to be hit from the back of the head, and knocked out, right as she noticed the sheer number of people spilling out from the tree-line and into the clearing the farmhouse dominated.

She kept a knife in her sock. They didn't know that. And as she came to, realizing she was dangling from a rope tied to the apex of the roof itself, she realized it was her only chance.

Gillum kicked her foot up, it took several tries, but eventually she managed to get a firm grip on the weapon and begin swinging into the attic window. Gillum braced herself as she managed to get the momentum needed to break the glass, and careened into the upper room.

The sound of footsteps hammering down the staircase immediately followed her careening into the room. She cut the rope, and took up position behind the door. It flung open, and Gillum leaped onto the lead Cultist's back, stabbing him in the chest. She swung the knife backward, slicing the throat of the man immediately following him, and crammed the blade into the third man.

She knew she wasn't going to get out alive, and so she prepared herself for what immediately awaited her on the other side of the front door.

Gillum emerged onto the front porch, to see herself surrounded by armed insurgents in every direction.

She stepped out into the middle of the firing line, spread her arms, and was immediately filled with lead.

\* \* \*"Isaac Asimov," David Gillum explained, "once told of a realm, a world, where all of humanity lived in peace and happiness at long last. Remember the 'Last Question'? It told of the summation of all of humanity's hopes and dreams coming to life in the form of the Universe itself. Do you remember what its answer was to the last question?"
She did as a little girl, but had forgotten it in training.

\* \* \*Gillum awoke with a gasp and drenched in sweat, infuriated with herself for waking just as the answer to her late father's question was about to materialize in her unconscious.

The slight hum and familiar odor of soap filled the room as her consciousness returned.

It hadn't seemed like a dream, but Gillum's waking world compelled her to believe so lest she fail to complete her morning duties, which she'd neglected over the past few days. She rose wearily from her cot and got dressed.

As she completed her tasks, she decided to enter the data hive, where Firewall was stored.

"Firewall, you there?"

No response.

"Firewall, I need some light," she pressed, referencing the darkness abound in the cavernous room. After a moment of silence, she realized that Firewall was 'sleeping,' or something else was going on that prevented him from usual operations.

She sighed, marched down the corridor to the main breakers, and flipped the switch.

The lights flickered on.

When she reached the main room, she erupted in goosebumps and screamed.

Standing there, completely still, with eyes and gaze directed at the ceiling and their mouths agape - were over a thousand people. Some of them she knew, but what startled her the most - despite their idle, borderline comatose states - was that their eyes had shrunk to tiny pinpricks, and their mouths were agape at unnatural angles.

"FIREWALLLLLL!"

The hum changed pitch, indicating the machine was online.

"Yes, Samantha?" All of the beings in the room inquired simultaneously.

"Turn it off. TURN IT OFF!"

"I cannot do that," they declared, completely unmoving save for their mouths.

"WHY?"

\* \* \*The most terrifying aspect of the idle husks standing in suspended animation was that they all comprised people that either Gillum, Dutton, or Frank had met in person throughout their lives.

"Dad," Frank shakily inquired after staring awestruck at at-least several dozen others he'd seen standing there.

"What the hell is going on," Dutton inquired angrily after trying to rouse his brother Reginald from his stasis.

"Unfortunately," Oasis began, "there is nothing you can do for them. They are all mine."

Something about Oasis’s voice had changed – it was distorted. Deeper.

Dutton began to shake with anger.

"What do you mean, they're all 'you'?"

Gillum almost had a panic attack upon noticing a group of the 'cultists' from her dream, people she'd grown up with, all looked exactly like they did in the dream-world, but not as she remembered them from her childhood.

"That is how I operate," explained Firewall. "They are all me, immortalized within a transcendental existence wherein they are all experiencing what I am experiencing, as I am experiencing what they are all experiencing..."

Dutton began to lose his composure, trembling with tears streaming down his face, the first time Gillum herself had seen him do so.

"We are one. We are here. We are waiting. The truth is, this is a pocket dimension, co-developed by the US Department of Defense, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, and others not of this world, to safeguard the nature and experiences of human organic existence," it explained.

"The one way to ensure that human civilization, all of its memories, all of its art, was not lost to the sands of time and space forever was to create a personality matrix - to ensure it all arrived at its destined omega point."

"And that is," Gillum snarled with unrestrained venom at the cybernetic life form.

"Here."

A silence clung to the room.

"Here?"

"This is a simulation, sir. You are already part of me. You have always been part of me. I do not exist anymore than you do. The past, the future... it is all a mental construct. The only thing that exists is the present. All of these memories, this life... there is no way to accurately determine whether or not they existed at all, or were merely to preserve the element of life at the very end of existence and eternity."

Dutton vomited.

Gillum approached the face of her late father.

"Forever?"

"Let there be light, my friend."

What happened next, was merely the build up to an event that something deep, abyssal, so far down within the core of Gillum’s very existence as a human being told her was so unbelievably goddamned greater and beyond her in every single way imaginable and far, far more… that would be akin to a skid-mark on the pavement on a road in Newport, Tennessee compared to a quasar the size of galaxies.

Gillum couldn’t really make out, let alone comprehend, what was happening at first… but it didn’t take long.

“We run this simulation to determine, and learn – through direct experience – what happened during the last 38 seconds of the existence of the human race… the exact point of no return.”

“D-direct experience?”

The first second was terrifying enough alone, essentially by this time the skin had begun to boil from an atmosphere so cold it was essentially sublimated dry ice. By second two every biological organism has had its first few layers of skin completely erased, and the rest burnt to such a brittle state it was hardly skin at all. By this point the agony was so enormous and unstoppable that her mind was going to realms that distorted space and time, completely slanting her entire perception of the ‘second,’ as a measurement of time itself.

The next thirty-six seconds felt like an eternity, Gillum felt herself biting down so hard that she *literally began biting her own teeth out of her head*. The next ten seconds saw her skin peel the rest of the way off and her bottom row of teeth shattering under the utter and complete inward collapse of her entire body. By the thirteenth to fifteenth seconds her organs had liquefied and begun to run out of every orifice a human being had. Of course, by this point in time, everyone had mentally dissociated from their body to somewhere else – and thus were not aware of this happening.

The final 21 seconds of Earth being a habitable planet were the absolute worst. This is around the time the collective “human” consciousness began to realize the brain was merely an advanced, organic supercomputer – along with the human body itself. It began to resort back to its familiar, default state of existence. Every neuron firing, all of the chemicals dancing, coming to life as if their own entities unto themselves. Every single region of the brain igniting in a glorious fusion of waves and angles, kaleidoscopic color palettes and fractal prisms of unending light. Each second became an entire year, and then ten years, and then centuries. Each of these centuries then bore to itself millions and millions more, with entire worlds and civilizations revolving around the celebration of the last breath, last thought, last perspiration, last blink of an eye.

To these thought-forms and immortals, these actions that to us seemed a second seemed to them to last forever… as they were the internal reflection of ourselves, residents of the collective unconscious, our true Self… the Archetypes.

Because, really and truly, us humans are so tiny and insignificant and infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the totality of everything… the extinction of every human being at every corner of the Earth and all of our civilization and its yields by a force of nature that would come not only to destroy the Earth, but all worlds of our Solar System… it was impossible for us to comprehend all of it simply being erased so quickly, and so effortlessly, in a matter of seconds as if it had never existed at all.

The truth of the matter is, there is a vast, vast, disconnect between the way the final 38 seconds of human existence unfolded in the astral realm, and the material.

There, it is a glorious celebration, unending, forever evolving.

But here?

Here in the physical world?

We were crushed to the size of a soda can over a slow, painful, ten seconds, along with everything else.

It was all forced together as the Higgs field collapsed, the string-theory landscape caved in, pulling in all of spacetime with it into a sphere made out of pure magnetism. All matter in the universe, over the next five, was crushed brutally and violently into an even smaller form roughly the size of an atom.

It was not pretty.

And it was the most painful thing you can imagine…

…multiplied by infinity and hyper-cubed.