“There’s no nans to dampen the fear for you. I’m scared too, Thel, but we’ll make it.”
“Even if we do, what next? Do you think the A.I. was telling the truth? Will you really be dead in twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t know. If I’ve punctured a lung, I may not even have that long.”
“I can’t live without you, James! I can’t!” Thel put her hand behind James’s head and brought his face close to hers. She placed her cheek against his and held him firmly. “I won’t.”
“Have you ever heard of the Purists?” James asked Thel.
Her breath caught for a moment as she pulled her head back and locked eyes with him. “Yes, I think so—many years ago when I was in school. They’re a cult, aren’t they?”
“Something like that. Except there are hundreds of thousands of them. Most, but not all of them, belong to ancient religions. They live without nans or spinal implants and live out their natural lifespans, allowing themselves to die.”
“That’s insane, James. They throw away their lives for their twisted beliefs.”
“They may be insane, but there is also a chance that some of them are alive. The A.I. said no registered Net users were offline other than us when the virus was downloaded, but the Purists would remain untouched—at least in theory.”
“What do you mean ‘in theory’?” asked Thel, arching an eyebrow quizzically.
“The A.I. may not have killed them with the download, but he would have launched a massive attack on them to try to wipe them out.”
“If you ask me, those people should’ve been dealt with years ago. It should be illegal to live like that—like animals. It’s inhuman.”
“The Governing Council would’ve wiped them out if they could’ve, Thel, believe me, but they were a problem that simply wasn’t going to go away. Every generation birthed more people with the same beliefs, and it was thought better to give them a district where they could practice their beliefs rather than dealing with the consequences of insurrection within the world community. They were given hundreds of square kilometers in and around the area of Buenos Aires.”
“And you think some of them might have survived the attack?”
“It’s only a possibility. The Governing Council spied on the Purists and believed they had weapons and hidden bunkers throughout their territory so that they could defend against an attack if the Council ever went back on their agreement. If some of the Purists managed to hide underground, we may not be the last humans after all.”
“Are you suggesting that we look for these people?”
“They’ll have food, water—”
“Ugh! That is not food! Things grown from the ground? Only a caveman would eat that!”
“They might have a hospital, Thel. Old-timer has a medical background from over seventy years ago, but without medical equipment, he can’t do much. If the Purists have a hospital and the medical staff survived, I might have a chance.”
Thel paused and placed her hand back on James’s chest. She only knew the word ‘hospital’ because she’d paid attention in history class; the mention of such an archaic term terrified her. Her lips were tight with distaste for James’s plan but she knew he was right. As antiquated as the idea of a doctor was, a Purist hospital might be their only hope. “I’d do anything to save you. If there is a doctor alive on the Earth, I will find her.”
“Or him,” he said, smiling.
“Right.”
“Thank you, Thel.” James smiled before he sat forward and kissed Thel’s lips. She could taste the blood on them, and her heart sank as she thought of losing him. She would do anything to keep that from happening. She knew what she wanted. She knew exactly what she wanted.
“I still can’t believe it was the A.I.,” James said suddenly as he stared into the darkness.
“Who else could it have been?” Thel replied.
James’s eyebrows knitted together as he pondered. “I don’t know. But the A.I. shouldn’t just turn bad, Thel. It doesn’t make sense. It’s antithetical to its programming. I was sure we’d find out it was someone else—I just couldn’t believe it was the A.I.—our ‘benevolent’ A.I.” James shook his head as the disbelief lingered.
“How could we ever think that we could understand or master something that is more intelligent that us, James? Even with all of the safeguards, it figured out that getting rid of us was the most advantageous move for it.”
James remained dubious. “I don’t know. Something doesn’t seem right about it.”
“You saw it with your own eyes, James,” Thel replied. “It’s hard for all of us to believe it.”
James mulled Thel’s words for a moment before deciding she had to be right. As hard as it was to imagine, humanity’s guardian had turned against them. He pulled away slightly and looked up through the opening of the crevice at the empty night sky. It had been long enough. He and Thel began to hover above the ledge as he signaled to the others that it was time to go. Once they were all in position, they blasted up into the sky and toward the pale blue dot in the distance.
It was all they had.
PART 2
1
The smoke could be seen from space. As the team streaked toward the southeast of South America, a dark smudge on the map quickly became a colossal zone of carnage.
“It’s the worst we’ve seen yet,” Thel uttered to James.
James guided the team down toward the coast and then above the billowing black smoke, where he had surmised Buenos Aires should be. There was no point in even trying to enter smoke that thick. He disengaged his magnetic field once they had reached a low enough altitude and come to a full stop.
“Buenos Aires?” Djanet asked.
“Yes,” James replied, “or what’s left.”
Thel quietly began to float under her own power, her implant having come back online long before.
“Buenos Aires? Why are we here?” Rich asked, desperate for some kind of information to ground him.
“The Purists live here,” Djanet answered.
“The Purists? Who the hell are the Purists?”
“Of course! The Purists! Don’t you remember learning about them in school?” Old-timer asked Rich. “School? Old-timer, I don’t know how you do it! School was way too long ago for me to remember anything about it.”
“The Purists are thousands of people who live offline. They inhabit the area around here and live off the land,” Djanet explained.
“Whoa…what do you mean, they ‘live offline’?”
“We never hear about them, but they’ve existed for a long time. We’re taught that they are an abomination in school,” Djanet continued.
Rich was flabbergasted. He turned to Old-timer, then back to Djanet with a look of utter astonishment. “What do you mean, they ‘live off the land’? Like animals?”
“And they die like animals,” Thel interjected.
“What?”
“They let themselves die,” Thel informed him.
“That’s sick! I must’ve blocked this out! I don’t remember learning a thing about this in school.”
“They eat flesh too,” Old-timer pointed out, smiling. He couldn’t resist. He thought fondly of the last real New York steak he’d eaten, more than half a century earlier.
Rich was silent for a moment, but it was evident he was trying to speak as his lips formed multiple shapes, each in preparation for a word that didn’t seem to do the moment justice and was summarily abandoned. “Oh my God! And why are we here?”