Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

What matters now is the scene playing out before me. Arthur Willard's people are bringing the incubation chambers to meet my ground assault team holding the ruins' perimeter. The man originally in charge of the mission, John (or James? Jack? I must remind myself to find out) Bishop, did not die in the line of duty like the rest of his team, as we assumed. His wife and children were released from custody as soon as he was pronounced dead; they may even have attended his memorial. Won't it be a surprise for them when he returns to a hero's welcome?

I almost smile at the thought of it—but quickly refrain. Smiling makes additional lines fold across my cheeks.

The announcement will go live as soon as the fetuses are on board the hoverplanes headed back to the Argonaus.

Citizens of Eurasia, rejoice! The children are coming!

I clasp my hands together as tears well up in my eyes. This is what it feels like to be giddy with joy. I cannot wait to show the doctors and scientists these prime specimens, twenty infants just waiting to be born—all uninfected and without the infertility problem plaguing the United World populace.

These children will grow up to be Eurasians of the future...

My thoughts dissipate as I focus on the screen. The first of the incubation pods emerge out of what was once a parking substructure before D-Day. The figure carrying the pod wears loose cotton clothing, a quaint head covering wrapped around his face, and black goggles to protect his eyes from the sun. Another figure similarly clothed appears, carrying an identical incubation canister. Then another, and another, each figure moving slowly with what appears to be...reverence.

The last arrival is a cyborg. The massive figure carries two pods, one in each of its mechanical arms.

"Chancellor, are you seeing this?" says the voice of Captain Mutegi on my audiolink.

I nod, counting every pod in the arms of these faceless people standing among a myriad of blackened corpses, facing the armed UW troops but advancing no farther. All twenty are here.

"Where is Arthur Willard?" I demand. "They're—" I peer closely at the monitor. "These people aren't wearing ventilators!"

"Willard has not responded. No one inside Eden is answering our hails. Not even Sergeant Bishop." Mutegi pauses. "Please advise."

I narrow my gaze. "Who are they?"

One of the figures speaks up, and his voice comes through the link loud and clear:

"Representatives of the United World, welcome to what remains of the North American Sectors. We know you have traveled far to reach us, and we know why you have come." The man raises the incubation canister in his arms. "For our children."

I clench my jaw to keep it from dropping. "What is this?"

Mutegi makes no reply.

"We understand your situation, that you are unable to conceive as a consequence of your actions on D-Day," the nameless man continues. "Our Creator has blessed us with unspeakable gifts, abilities you would not understand. Not that we do ourselves." The man pauses. When he continues, his voice is thick with emotion, "We give you our children, knowing you will be able to provide them with a better life. They will not suffer the hardships we have come to expect, living on this quarantined continent. They will not know us, but we hope you will tell them about us. And if they wish, at some point in the future, to allow us to live with them in their world...we pray they will look upon us kindly."

The man falters, his shoulders trembling. Yet he maintains a secure hold on the pod.

Others in his ranks stir, but no one moves. Only the cyborg shouts, "Come and get 'em, for crying out loud. Before we change our damn minds!"

"Move in," I give the order, and Mutegi relays it to his troops.

The soldiers in armored hazard suits retrieve each of the pods and carry them to the waiting hoverplanes stirring up dust with their rotors in motion. The canisters are strapped in securely for their flight to the Argonaus where doctors eagerly await their arrival. I watch until the last pod is taken from that peculiar assembly of desert people.

They stand like vandalized statues.

As the planes eventually lift off and the ground assault teams turn an about-face from the city ruins to march westward, I dismiss the screen with a wave of my hand. It darkens automatically, and I return my gaze to the mirror. My eyes are glassy with the tears I restrained from ruining my makeup.

Citizens of Eurasia, rejoice...

Tapping my temple, I deactivate the audiolink and reach for the antique snuff box in my vest pocket. Inside the silver filigreed container sit a few ounces of dust, taken from what once were the North American Sectors. Gently I inhale just a pinch with my left nostril, then my right. I wipe away the remnants from my upper lip with a silk kerchief that I fold neatly and keep in the palm of my hand.

For a moment, there is only the silence of my expansive office. Intermittent shadows cross my window-wall as aerocars pass by, soaring over the city's splendor at the same altitude as its Chancellor.

Then the voices hit me in waves that roll one after another, people talking on every floor of this one-hundred-fifty-story skyscraper—the tallest in Dome 1. I hear them all, acutely aware of everything everyone is saying. I am able to tune into any conversation I wish, hopping from one to another, as long as the dust effects last. Often for minutes at a time.

As the citizens await my speech, one word repeats again and again throughout countless conversations, and it makes me smile broadly:

Children...

CITY OF GLASS

BOOK THREE

For Sara

"No one remembers the former generations,

and even those yet to come will not be remembered

by those who follow them."

Ecclesiastes 1:11

Part I

Awakening

1 Sera22 Years After All-Clear

I run.

Through