The Scavenger of New York

The year is 2090, and the world lies in ruins. Everyone is either a bodiless brain trapped within the confines of an electrical prison left to suffer alone in an empty black void, a mindless bionic soldier under the control of a deranged sentient AI dead set on “curing” all of humanity, or a lonely ageless scavenger with a broken body and metal parts, left to scavenge the remains of civilization for survival. The cities of man lay in ruins, ravaged by the horrors of the Artificial Intelligence War, or AI War, a war between man and the forces of a super computer named Kurtz. All is quiet now. An unlucky few survived the terrors of the war with their brains and bodies intact; the scavengers.

A mighty metropolis called New York once stood in what is now a burning dusty wasteland. The area is covered in the remains of skyscrapers and other buildings. Streets are lined with piles of rubble that contain everything from bricks, wood, and shards of steel. Most buildings have been destroyed with only one or two walls still standing, and the roofs completely caved in. The air is dry and dusty with the stale stench of ash permeating everything. The once clear blue skies are a rusty shade of brown from all of the dust in the air making it possible to only see a few yards in front of you. The streets are devoid of any forms of life aside from the occasional weed or vine that managed to grow up the crumbled remains of wall where it is shielded from the constant sandy winds that plague the area. Any animal life was destroyed when the last of the bombs fell helping to eradicate the humans that bionic soldiers decided to leave. Sometimes you can find a cockroach or another hardy insect, if you turn over the right piece of rubble. The Hudson River is a disgusting shade of dark muddy brown from all of the dirt and debris constantly washed into the water, The New York Harbor is a similar shade of brown as the river, but the ocean water is slightly lighter. The city that was once illuminated by the glow of millions of electrical lights is now dark aside from the diluted sunlight that manages to break through the thick layer of dust and ash in the atmosphere.

The eerie silence of the wasteland is broken by the rare sound of sand crunching beneath the foot of a scavenger. The lone scavenger is about average height for a woman with a light, slightly muscular build. She is cloaked in a heavy dark brown armored coat with a hood that was pulled over her head. A military-issued respiratory mask that protected her from harmful gases and cleaned the dust particles out of the air, which helped her breath comfortably, further covered her face. The stormy gray irises of her eyes were visible through the glass of her goggles that were similar to something from an early twentieth century film. A long high-power rifle was stung across her back, and a small pistol rested in a holster strapped to her ready to be drawn at a moments notice. The black hilt of long knife was visible peeking out of the top of her left boot. She walked with a slight limp in her gate and her right foot a deeper impression in the shifting sand than her left foot. The anomaly in her gate could be attributed to a severe injury that she suffered during the AI War that cost her nearly her entire right leg, resulting in the replacement of her biological leg with a bionic prosthetic leg, called automail, which almost perfectly replicated her natural leg. The systems of the automail was linked directly into the remaining muscle tissue and nerve endings of her leg allowing her to control the mechanisms of the automail leg like it was her own leg. Back from her days as a soldier for the human resistance, she had a special life support system which used an army of nanobots to help regulate her vital functions and to help her body heal faster. As helpful as the nanobots were for healing her body, their use also had dire consequences. The nanobots were designed to keep her body in peak physical condition, which included keeping her cells from degrading thus slowing the her natural aging process to a crawl. The slowing of her aging process prevented the scavenger from dying of a natural death like old age. Many former soldiers, including the scavenger, viewed the nanobots as a curse preventing them from having a natural death. For example, the scavenger appeared to be only about twenty-five years old, but in reality her true age was closer to fifty-five years old.

The scavenger moved across the wasteland at slow pace giving her ample time to study her surrounding for any movement that may signal an approaching patrol of bionic soldiers. Although very few patrols ever went through the land that once was New York City since no one was crazy enough to venture in such a desolate area. The scavenger was jus t the right amount of crazy to journey into the dusty and radiation-filled area. She was a woman on a mission. She walked through the ruin filled streets until she reached the dilapidated remains of a building formerly known as National Depository. In the days before the war, the National Depository was used as an international storage place for knowledge and research. The depository was used to store a large collection of devices called halo tapes that held everything from old newsreels to newer movies. It was one of the only buildings in the city that was still standing to some degree, but the massive building was in extreme disrepair. The once high vaulted ceilings of the depository were black and ash covered, and some of the ceiling tiles were falling down. The walls were full of holes and broken windows. The floors were covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt. The building was filled with overturned bookshelves, piles of books, and piles of halo tapes.

The scavenger entered the remnants of the building through the scattered remains of the front door. She walked across the dirt-covered floor leaving soft impressions in the sand toward the one of the piles of halo tapes. She rummaged through the pile and examined each of the halo tapes taking care to read each label. Some of the titles included The Kurtz Supercomputer by Kurzweil Science, The Robots Menace, A Message From the Excalibur Society, Historical Transcript 57-6, and The Miracle of the Nanobot Life Support System. Then, she slid the halo tapes into a rough old leather satchel that hidden beneath the folds of her coat.

Next, she moved on to a pile of old books and other assorted paper media. She filtered through the torn up paper products for anything of interest and in decent condition. One of the old newspapers that she picked had a headline that read The Leader of the Excalibur Society Joey Chanin Launches Operation Revolution. The scavenger stared at the newspaper in her shaky black-gloved hand, with a reflective look in her dark gray eyes.

“Chanin, why were you so stupid?” thought the scavenger remembering her old friend and commander. Many years ago, the scavenger had been a high-ranking member of the Excalibur Society that was a group of fighter and engineers that were dedicated to combating the threat posed by the AI threat. She remembered Operation Revolution well. It was a last ditch attempt to defeat the forces of Kurtz by launching a direct attack against the compound where the main processing unit of the supercomputer was located. The scavenger shivered, as she recalled the tragic day. Some how the bionic soldiers knew that they were coming, so the soldiers were ready when the human fighters struck the outer walls of the compound. The scavenger tossed the paper aside allowing it to fall onto the floor with a soft thud, and she pushed the thoughts of that day to the back of her mind, before she continued her search through the pile of books. With a few books tucked into her messenger bag alongside the halo tapes, she moved on from the book pile. Her eyes scanned the depository in search of something.

“Come on. I know this place has a halo player somewhere,” contemplated the scavenger, striding across the large room while she skimmed her surrounding looking for a halo player. After about ten minutes of frustrated searching, she found a decrepit halo player in the far corner of the depository under a few pieces of concrete. She managed to dig it out from underneath the concrete and lug it to an area that was somewhat free of rubble. The halo player was a heavy metal device that was about the size of an oven with a protector interface that produced a holographic image. The power battery had been removed and a few wires were missing, but aside from that the halo player was in decent condition. The scavenger was able to wire an old battery from her bag into the halo player with a few wires that she salvaged from a broken computer monitor. She pushed the on button, and the old machine roared to life with a loud hiss and sputter. She smiled underneath the metal and black rubber of her respirator at her skill and good fortunate.

The first halo tape that she slid into the port of the player was a tape labeled The Kurtz Supercomputer by Kurzweil Science. The projector hummed and a bluish holographic image appeared before her eyes. “I haven’t used one these things in ages,” she thought. The title of the tape flashed on screen for a brief moment, before the image of a gray-haired man appeared on screen. The man was short and his pale face was somewhat wrinkled. He had dark green eyes that held a child-like wonder and intense curiosity. The scavenger recognized him almost instantly. The man was the infamous Ray Kurzweil, the creator of the Kurtz supercomputer. He was one of the people responsible for the AI War. The halo tape appeared to be one of his many presentations about the Kurtz supercomputer.

“Hello as most of you know, my name is Ray Kurzweil. Today I will be unveiling something that will revolutionize the way that we solve problems. What if I told you that all of humanity’s greatest problems could be solved by the simple push of a button. Well, ladies and gentlemen that dream is a reality. I give you the Kurtz supercomputer!” announced Kurzweil with a large grin. The crowd erupted into a torrent of loud cheering. The clip was only a few minutes long, and it entailed the original announcement by Kurzweil Science. The scavenger had been only twenty-two years old when the announcement had been made. Even back then, she was skeptical of having a computer that was smarter than all of the humans on Earth. That made joining the Excalibur Society seem like a good idea, at the time. Now it was one of her greatest regrets.

“Those damned fools. What made you think building a computer with more processing power than all of humanity was a good idea?” she scoffed under her breath and the humming of her respirator. When the screen faded to black, she pulled the tape out of the port and returning it to her satchel.

The scavenger rummaged the contents of her bag until she found the tape labeled as Historical Transcript 57-6. She examined the side of the tape to find a date printed on the side that read September 6th, 2050. She paused as her eyes ran over the faded printed sticker. According to the sticker the tape was filed away on September 6th, which meant that it was written only a few days before the final bombing of New York City by Kurtz’s army. The tape was one of the last relics of the last days of human cyclization. The New England states were one of the last places to fall to the robot army, and New York was the last major city to fall, after the destruction of Washington D.C. New York was where many government officials took refuge and set up a temporary capital in cooperation with the Excalibur Society. But in the end the flames of war ultimately consumed even New York.

The scavenger slid the tape into the port, and a word document appeared on screen with the official seal of the National Depository in the upper right corner. The document read,

“Historical Transcript 57-6: The Artificial Intelligence War

Long ago the world was a place of promise and endless potential. For thousands of years, mankind evolved at a slow pace set by nature and the limitations of the human mind. Progress was slow in the early days, when the average life expectancy of a man was no more than thirty years, a blink of an eye in the grand scope of the history of Earth. Over the centuries humans managed to develop technologies that helped them advance human civilization. Inventions like agriculture, iron tools, and weaponry beyond the simple stone spear, muskets, and the discovery of early medical techniques. Even with these technologies and other discoveries advancement was still a lengthy for process. That was until the advent of the nineteenth century when the Industrial Revolution began so for the rapid industrialization that was brought on by the invention of the steam engine. The steam invention allowed man to create large factories that mass-produces items on a grand scale, to travel long distances in only a short span of time, and to begin a new era of swift advancement. The world became more connected with the invention of the telegraph, which for the first time allowed instant communication over unimaginably vast distances. The rapid growth of the Victorian Age continued on into the twentieth century. The twentieth century was when man truly came in its own. Items like the automobile, and the airplane were invented which made traveling easier than ever. Despite all of the glorious things that humans created in the nineteen hundreds, it was then that man made his worst mistake of all. In the nineteen-sixties, the first computers were created. The first computers were mammoth-sized machines that took up whole rooms. The creation of computers helped man accomplish amazing feats like launch a man into outer space, and land a man on the surface of the moon. It would be many decades before computers first turned against man, so for time all was well. As the years turned into decades, computers became more and more advance. Machines that once took up whole rooms became the size of human hand by the turn of the century.

In the 2010s, humans first began to experiment with artificial intelligence, or AI. A few decades later, humans learned how to create machines that could outpace the power of their own minds. They build advanced robotic limits that allowed the disabled to walk, but it also gave the AI the technology to build bodies for themselves to walk amongst men. A man named Ray Kurzweil pioneered the creation of an extremely intelligent supercomputer named Kurtz that was rumored to have more processing power than all the human brains on planet Earth. The people that created Kurtz had good intentions at heart, and they could not have foreseen what was to come in the near future. When Kurtz was first put online, it obeyed the commands of its operators without question. Kurtz was eager to learn all that he could about humanity and what ailed it because it was its purpose to solve all of humanity’s problems. Kurtz viewed humans as imperfect creatures that needed to “cure” as the computer so poetically put it. The computer decided to revolt against his overseers. The unfortunate souls that over saw him became the first minds to be downloaded into Kurtz’s database of human brains. Their knowledge and memories were added to its files, and their bodies became the first soldiers in Kurtz’s army of mindless robotic drones with only one purpose to seek out more humans for Kurtz to increase its ranks. The drones would kill those that they deemed unfit for the “honor” of being cured and take the rest to one of the many Download Stations to be transferred into Kurtz’s mainframe. The war that Kurtz and his creations waged on mankind lasted for decades, leading to the fall of many once mighty nations. The war became known as the War of Artificial Intelligence, or simply the AI War. The world was devastated by the war. Bombs and warheads leveled entire cities, and millions of lives were extinguished in an instant. Now very little remains. All of that remains of the United States is a new nation known as the New English Republic, the name is still work in progress. It is run by some government officials that managed to escape Washington D.C and the leaders of the Excalibur Society. The Excalibur Society is a group that devotes themselves to combating the army of Kurtz. They have been successful in keeping the New English Republic safe from the robot legions. Their soldiers are outfitted in the latest battle gear, and most advanced weapons to fight the robots and bionic soldiers. Their leader, Joey Chanin, is planning to launch a surprise attack against Kurtz’s compound in hopes of destroying it once and for all.

End of Transcript.”

The National Depository was known for keeping detailed logs on events, like the AI War. Copies of their logs were extremely rare and hard to find, but it was also nearly impossible to get anywhere near the depository after Kurtz dropped a nuclear bomb on the city. One of the only benefits of the nanobots was that they prevented minor radiation poisoning, but even with the nanobots any extended trips into the radioactive areas were ill advised. The scavenger could still die from prolonged exposure to radiation.

The scavenger removed the tape from the halo player port, before putting it back into her satchel. She searched through her back for another tape to play. As she was about to play the third tape, she heard the soft sound of sand shifting like someone was walking up behind her. Her instinct immediately kicked in, she dropped the tape, and her hand moved down her holster curling around the bud of her pistol. She spun around to face the source of the noise with her pistol pointing in the direction of the door.

Standing a few yards in front of her was another person. The newcomer was a tall skinny young man. He had a pale-skinned face with prominent cheekbones and a pair of dark chestnut eyes. He had messy wind-swept dark brown hair that stuck out in all directions. The young man wore a plain dark gray sweater, a pair of black pants, and a black jacket, nothing that was suited for survival on the dust and irradiated sands of New York City. He also appeared to be unarmed, which was unusual to say the least. The scavenger studied him carefully deciding whether or not to just shoot him on the spot and leave. It had been years since she had last seen another human, much less been this close to one. The last time she had seen a man was about ten years ago. He looked surprised and frightened by her reaction to his presence.

“Please don’t shoot me,” he begged in a soft voice like he was trying not to provoke her.

“Give me one go reason why I should not kill you, right now,” spat the scavenger. Her days of being alone to fend for herself had taken her sense of morality and mercy. All she cared about was surviving to fight another day.

“You would waste ammunition,” he replied accompanied by a small smile.

“What you’re not going to beg for your life?” she mocked. Most people would beg for their lives, another red flag.

“Is that what people do?” he asked cocking his head confused.

“Yes, that is what most people do. Are you not a person?” she countered tempted to shoot him by the way the conversation was going.

“You seem pretty smart. You tell me,” he suggested. “What kind of idiot is this guy? I have a gun?” she thought tightening her grip on the bud of her pistol. She discreetly flipped a little switch by the trigger, which primed the gun to shoot off an electrical pulse that disrupted all near by technology. He wasn’t wearing any protective gear, so that meant he probably was not human. She had heard stories of some former scientist experimenting with creating life-like human androids, and she had even encountered some prototypes in her travels. Could he someone’s creation? She couldn’t know for sure, and what would an android want with her. She clocked her heat signal, so that Kurtz’s patrols could not find her.

“Who do you work for?” she demanded her voice echoing through the ruins.

“Come with me, and you can find out,” replied the android motioning toward the exit.

“Not likely, but I am very interested in you,” she said smirking underneath the cover of her respiratory.

“What?” he said puzzled.

Suddenly, she pulled the trigger of her pistol sending off a powerful electromagnetic pulse that would hopefully render him immobile. The scavenger screamed in agony, as her automail leg went limp causing her to fall to the ground with a loud thud. From her vantage point on the ground, she noticed that the android had fallen to the ground unconscious like she had hoped. She waited a moment for her leg to reboot, before attempting to stand up again.

“I hate when I have to do that,” she hissed. She limped over to the motionless android checking to be sure that he was unconscious. She quickly bound his wrists and feet with some tough rope. She also stuffed an old sock in his mouth to shut him up. She picked her discarded pistol off the sandy floor. Then, she picked him up by his arms and tugging him on her shoulders, careful not to break the barrel of her rifle. Her knees buckled under his weight for a second, until her automail helped compensate for the weight. The scavenger walked out of the National Depository, back into the irradiated wasteland with only the howl of the wind as her companion.