Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) by Colin F. Barnes
Authors: Colin F. Barnes
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Part 1 - The Journey
2153, Post-Cataclysm — Outskirts of Baicheng, China
It was a fool’s errand to cross the Baicheng expanse, they said. The radiation will kill you, they said. Gabriel was prepared for the risk. One didn’t survive by staying still. Inaction made you easy prey for the grim reaper. You kept one step ahead of him, remained a moving target.
Gabriel pulled the collar of his duster coat close around his neck, shielded his eyes by pulling his padre hat down low over his dreadlocked head. The ash particles, reflecting in the weak light, bathed the expanse of desert before him and his companion in a wash of dark vermilion.
The Geiger counter chirped like a schizophrenic budgie. Each beep stabbed yet further at his gnawing anxiety. Every step took him farther away from the tented shelter, the relative safety of the handful of survivors, and closer to a future, that much like Schrodinger’s cat experiment, could reveal either their survival, or their death upon observation.
“Is it bad out here, Gabe?” Petal said. “The radiation, I mean.”
“Yeah. Jus’ look around, girl. Tell me what ya see.”
Petal turned her head. Her pink mohican rustled in the wind. “Nothing,” she said.
“Exactly.”
The counter clicked still faster. Gabe headed away from the radiation. It was how he knew they were on the right track, on the right route to find the Tinker.
Since roads and landmarks had been destroyed by war, and ultimately nukes, traversing the desert plains wasn’t so easy. Large areas were still too contaminated with radiation to casually go trekking across.
There was a pattern though. You had to stick to it.
‘You just follow the clean spots,’ the Tinker had said in a voice recording Gabe had received the day before while at the tent shelter. They had just one working computer there: an ancient pre-quantum unit belonging to the tent-town owner, Xian.
Using his system, Gabe discovered another node on an ad-hoc network, picked up by Xian’s ancient microwave transceiver, recovered from a downed bomber some years previous. The node was the Tinker’s computer and the message was a job request.
A deal was struck between Xian and the Tinker.
Only Xian was quite happy sitting beneath his tarp tent on the coast, while he worked on making a boat from washed-up debris and eating the few sickly fish that found themselves in his ragged nets—the consumption of which were no doubt responsible for Xian’s legion of multiple idiosyncrasies. In truth, Xian was completely nuts and he didn’t want the job.
Considering Gabe and Petal didn’t want to go any more nuts than they already were, they chose to leave the poisoned fish behind and seek pastures new with the promise of better food. They accepted the job offer on Xian’s behalf.
The voice recording explained the task and the payment. To find her, the voice advised: ‘Just let the Geiger counter lead you. Eventually, you’ll see it.’
By ‘it’, she meant the graveyard—her home, a scrapyard for planes, trains, and automobiles.
Gabe would have liked something a little more concrete, perhaps some landmarks. The only information he had indicated her place lay a few miles outside of the former transport city of Baicheng. The job was to find, secure, and return to the Tinker a cache of electronics from somewhere in the ruins of the city.
Given how the despicable organisation known as The Family, the world’s largest—and now only—company and military superpower, had ended WWIII, and everything else on the planet with nukes and EMPs fifty years ago. Very few working electronic items remained.
Those who could find them could earn a great deal of money, and more importantly, food, water, and shelter. All of which were of great interest to Gabe and Petal.
Gabe strode forward, his long coat flapped against his jeans, dreadlocks brushed against his face. His heavy boots clapped against the dry earth. He chewed on a sugarweed root he found
2153, Post-Cataclysm — Outskirts of Baicheng, China
It was a fool’s errand to cross the Baicheng expanse, they said. The radiation will kill you, they said. Gabriel was prepared for the risk. One didn’t survive by staying still. Inaction made you easy prey for the grim reaper. You kept one step ahead of him, remained a moving target.
Gabriel pulled the collar of his duster coat close around his neck, shielded his eyes by pulling his padre hat down low over his dreadlocked head. The ash particles, reflecting in the weak light, bathed the expanse of desert before him and his companion in a wash of dark vermilion.
The Geiger counter chirped like a schizophrenic budgie. Each beep stabbed yet further at his gnawing anxiety. Every step took him farther away from the tented shelter, the relative safety of the handful of survivors, and closer to a future, that much like Schrodinger’s cat experiment, could reveal either their survival, or their death upon observation.
“Is it bad out here, Gabe?” Petal said. “The radiation, I mean.”
“Yeah. Jus’ look around, girl. Tell me what ya see.”
Petal turned her head. Her pink mohican rustled in the wind. “Nothing,” she said.
“Exactly.”
The counter clicked still faster. Gabe headed away from the radiation. It was how he knew they were on the right track, on the right route to find the Tinker.
Since roads and landmarks had been destroyed by war, and ultimately nukes, traversing the desert plains wasn’t so easy. Large areas were still too contaminated with radiation to casually go trekking across.
There was a pattern though. You had to stick to it.
‘You just follow the clean spots,’ the Tinker had said in a voice recording Gabe had received the day before while at the tent shelter. They had just one working computer there: an ancient pre-quantum unit belonging to the tent-town owner, Xian.
Using his system, Gabe discovered another node on an ad-hoc network, picked up by Xian’s ancient microwave transceiver, recovered from a downed bomber some years previous. The node was the Tinker’s computer and the message was a job request.
A deal was struck between Xian and the Tinker.
Only Xian was quite happy sitting beneath his tarp tent on the coast, while he worked on making a boat from washed-up debris and eating the few sickly fish that found themselves in his ragged nets—the consumption of which were no doubt responsible for Xian’s legion of multiple idiosyncrasies. In truth, Xian was completely nuts and he didn’t want the job.
Considering Gabe and Petal didn’t want to go any more nuts than they already were, they chose to leave the poisoned fish behind and seek pastures new with the promise of better food. They accepted the job offer on Xian’s behalf.
The voice recording explained the task and the payment. To find her, the voice advised: ‘Just let the Geiger counter lead you. Eventually, you’ll see it.’
By ‘it’, she meant the graveyard—her home, a scrapyard for planes, trains, and automobiles.
Gabe would have liked something a little more concrete, perhaps some landmarks. The only information he had indicated her place lay a few miles outside of the former transport city of Baicheng. The job was to find, secure, and return to the Tinker a cache of electronics from somewhere in the ruins of the city.
Given how the despicable organisation known as The Family, the world’s largest—and now only—company and military superpower, had ended WWIII, and everything else on the planet with nukes and EMPs fifty years ago. Very few working electronic items remained.
Those who could find them could earn a great deal of money, and more importantly, food, water, and shelter. All of which were of great interest to Gabe and Petal.
Gabe strode forward, his long coat flapped against his jeans, dreadlocks brushed against his face. His heavy boots clapped against the dry earth. He chewed on a sugarweed root he found
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