Doomsday Hunter 2, page 2
part #2 of Doomsday Hunter Series
“Don’t you see?” the Scavenger chuckled as she grabbed one of the knives from my hand. “She wants us to practice our ability to hold our breath! Remember the lab, when we first came back from my dimension?”
Natalie was right. Dr. Nash had made us hold our breath to test out our lung capacity, and we apparently passed with flying colors.
Now, Karla must have wanted us to do the same thing.
“Eight minutes,” I reminded the Scavenger. “That was all I could do last time, so we need to try and make it to the other side in under eight minutes.”
“We’d best get to work, then,” Natalie proclaimed before she turned to the pile and started to carve away with her knife.
I walked up beside the woman and tried to help her. However, our rhythm was way off.
“Watch it!” I gasped as her knife nearly stabbed through my hand.
“Sorry… ” Natalie frowned. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I promise.”
We both looked at each other, took a deep breath, and then tried to compose ourselves.
“Let’s try this,” I finally commanded, “we’ll do it in time until we find a good rhythm. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Suggestions?” Natalie pondered. “For what?”
“Beats we can use.” I smiled at the Scavenger. “Something we can move along with, something that’s hopefully kinda catchy.”
The blonde woman racked her brain as she tried to think of any songs or tunes or rhythms she’d encountered in the past.
“Aha!” She raised her finger into the air in victory. “There was one William and Harrison always wanted to sing, when we were out sailing on the lake.”
“Excellent.” I grinned. “Teach it to me.”
“Okay… ” Natalie murmured, and she scrunched up her face as she tried to remember the tune. “It goes something like this--”
Then she started to sing.
Ohhhhhhhh, scavenge here and scavenge there, our job’s never done/
The Rubberfaces has come for us, the best we can do is run/
The wastelands are a-bountiful, the smolder it does glow/
But if you stay back home with Marcus, chance is you’re a hoe!/
Scavenge here and scavenge there, our job’s never done/
The Rubberfaces has come for us, the best we can do is run/
The world has a-gone to shit, that bombs they have a-dropped/
Used to eat some wine and cheese, now all we have is slop!/
Scavenge here and scavenge there, our job’s never done/
The Rubberfaces has come for us, the best we can do is run.
“Huh,” I mused once the song was over. “I never knew you had such a good singing voice.”
“Stooooop.” Natale slapped me playfully on the shoulder, but I just smiled at her warmly.
“Alright,” I announced as I raised my knife, “in time with the beat. You want to go first?”
Natalie began her song and then struck out at the first “here,” and then I lashed out at “there.” She continued to sing as we alternated between blows at each half-verse, and soon we were making progress into the hill.
As we got more and more in rhythm, I began to join in with the singing. It was a pretty dark song, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t catchy.
Soon, we were inside the hill, in a tunnel the width of our bodies. We continued to chip away at the icy snow beat-by-beat, until we were nearly ten feet inside.
Then the tunnel collapsed behind us.
Natalie’s face stretched into an expression of panic, but I simply shook my head to calm her down. My heartbeat started to increase rapidly as I took a deep breath, and then I motioned for us to continue carving.
The air around us was now scarce, and we didn’t need to literally waste our breath talking.
I just hoped the abrupt halt hadn’t completely thrown off our rhythm.
We kept carving away at the tunnel in time with the tune, though I could see we weren’t as in-synch as we were at the beginning. However, it would do for now. We were making progress, and soon, we’d be out the other side of the hill.
My lungs started to ache like crazy after another minute or two, but I couldn’t stop now. If we didn’t break through to the other side, we were going to suffocate in this place.
And Hunter Bragg didn’t save the freaking world just to die in a pile of snow.
Our motions became more hurried and abrupt as we got completely out of sync. Both of us scratched at the front of the tunnel like we were rats trapped inside of a closed-off sewer tunnel, and much like the metaphorical rat, we were desperate, tired, and running out of oxygen.
My vision began to tunnel around the edges as I grew more lightheaded. In my chest, my lungs were now practically screaming for air, but I didn’t dare exhale.
If I did that, it gave us even less oxygen to work with.
Then I saw the light.
My heartbeat hammered in my ears as I threw aside the knife and started to claw at the tunnel with nothing but my bare hands. I punched the wall, scratched at it like a feral cat, and even tried to headbutt it a few times.
But nothing was working.
Finally, I turned around, laid down on my back, and curled my feet up to my chest.
This was it. One shot. The exertion of this motion would probably knock the air out of my lungs, so if we didn’t break through to the other side, it was curtains.
I let out a frustrated yell as I thrust my feet down as hard as I could. The flats of my boots slammed into the side of the icy hill, and much to my surprise they broke right through.
“The exit!” Natalie gasped as she dove forward.
The Scavenger threw her body against the weakened spot in the ice and promptly fell out into the fresh air. Then I felt a pair of hands grab onto my ankles and give them a good tug.
The bright sun nearly blinded me as I was dragged out into the air and instantly took the biggest freaking breath of my life.
“You held your breath for nine minutes!” Karla’s voice proclaimed. “I knew you could do better than eight.”
Once I caught my breath, I looked up to see the brunette woman was standing over me with a stopwatch in her hand. As always, Miss Nash was dressed in her trademarked black turtleneck sweater, the one that hugged each and every one of her precious curves like a wet blanket. On her bottom half was a pair of dark green tights, her feet covered by thigh-high black boots. Karla’s tan skin made her stick out from the snow like a sore thumb, and her piercing green eyes stared into my soul.
“Y-You were here the whole time?” I grumbled.
“Of course, I was,” Karla noted as she scribbled something down in her notebook. “What kind of a proctor would I be if I wasn’t watching you at all times to ensure your safety?”
“Safety?” I chuckled. “You call that ‘safe?’”
Karla just glanced over at the hole in the mound and shrugged.
“You were never in any real danger,” she explained. “If I really thought you were going to suffocate, I would have pulled you out. You both are far too valuable to risk accidental death!”
Gee, that was good to know.
“How did we do?” Natalie asked as she bounced on her toes excitedly. “Better than last time?”
“Much, much better than last time.” Karla confirmed. “You’ve both made great progress in your agility, dexterity, and survival instincts. Not to mention, you worked in near perfect unison for a moment at the end. Do you have any idea what sort of implications that might have in the study of Wayfarers?”
“Not really,” I admitted as I sat up and rubbed at the back of my head.
“It could mean many things,” the brunette explained. “It could mean you and Natalie are even more closely bonded than we originally thought. Or it could indicate all Wayfarers share a psychological connection on top of their physical one. This could help us save other dimensions. More research will be needed, of course, but I’m excited about all the possibilities.”
“Well, when you want us to be guinea pigs again, let me know,” I chuckled and then pulled myself up to my feet. “But for now, I think I’m going to go take a long, hot shower. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”
Karla simply clicked her tongue and frowned.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she sighed, “but you’re not going anywhere at the moment. Actually… let me rephrase that. You’re not going home at the moment.”
Natalie and I exchanged a knowing glance. Then the Scavenger’s face lit up with glee, and she bore an expression I knew all too well.
The blonde was ready for adventure.
“Where are we going, then?” The Scavenger grinned.
“That’s for my father to know and you to find out.” Karla winked at the blonde woman.
“So, does that mean what I think it means?” I asked hopefully, and Miss Nash nodded in response.
“My father has found another dimension, and another Doomsday scenario,” she explained. Are you ready to save the world again?”
Chapter 2
“How did the training go, Wayfarers?” the glowing, mustached face of Dr. Nash greeted us as we entered his laboratory.
It had only been a few weeks since I’d returned from Dimension Nine-Fifty-One. Only a few weeks from that fateful day when I’d fallen through Karla’s floor and accidentally reactivated her father’s dusty old lab.
However, in those few short weeks, Karla had completely fixed up the place, so much so it didn’t even look like the same lab anymore.
The machine that housed her father’s AI had remained relatively unchanged. It still stretched across the entirety of the back wall, with its flashing lights and buttons and monitors that displayed what looked like gibberish. The only major difference was it had been cleaned and was now missing all of the cobwebs and dust that made it so decrepit in the first place.
The rest of the lab had been given a bit of TLC, from the cracked concrete floors that had been filled in to the lab equipment that was now so clean you could eat off it. Every bit of metal inside of the Nash lab was shiny and polished to the point where I could see my own reflection in it. I also noticed a few framed pictures of Karla and her father were sitting on the main desk, but I wasn’t going to draw any attention to them.
Karla always liked to play it tough, so I figured she wouldn’t appreciate getting called out as sentimental.
Last, but certainly not least, was the Interdimensional Future Doomsday Radar, the IFDR, or “the Roosevelt” for short. It had also been completely sanitized and polished, and so now the flashing red lights and many levers and switches seemed all the more tempting to press.
“The training was most excellent, Father,” Karla proclaimed. “They were able to hold their breaths for a full nine minutes, and they escaped all of my traps with nothing more than a few scrapes and scratches.”
“Impressive.” The virtual man nodded on the screen. “Your enhancements are beyond anything I could have predicted, and soon you will both grow even stronger. I trust Karla told you why I have summoned you both?”
“You have another mission for us,” I said.
“I can’t wait!” Natalie exclaimed as she cracked her knuckles. “What’s it going to be this time? More mutants? Another nuclear disaster?”
“Not quite.” Dr. Nash clicked his virtual tongue. “This time, you’re going into a much brighter future.”
“A brighter future that’s encountered Doomsday?” I raised my eyebrows at the thought.”
“We figured we’d change things up for this one,” Karla noted. “Dimension Fifty-Seven hasn’t experienced Doomsday yet. Instead, it is on the cusp of its Doomsday scenario, and it will be your job to stop it.”
“Much like Natalie’s dimension, Dimension Fifty-Seven is fairly similar to our own,” the elder Nash added. “There aren’t any lizard people or killer robots, just regular humans living their day-to-day lives like we would here.”
“So, what’s the twist?” I mused. “What’s going to push them over the edge and send the world spiraling into apocalypse?”
“Get ready for this.” Karla nudged Natalie and chuckled.
“The situation is… ironic,” Dr. Nash admitted. “In this scenario, the world is going to be taken over by a hyper-intelligent AI, created by a man named Dr. Merrick, that will hijack all of the military’s drones and then turn them all on humanity.”
Uff-da. That was pretty ironic.
“And you want us to stop this… AI?” Natalie nodded. “Destroy it before it has a chance to take over?”
“Not simply destroy it,” Dr. Nash corrected. “Rather, I want you to create a back-up and then bring it back here, to Dimension One.”
“Isn’t that counterproductive?” I asked. “Won’t that just put us all at risk here in this dimension?”
“Ye have little faith, Hunter.” The face on the screen furrowed his brow. “Though Dr. Merrick’s AI is highly-sophisticated, it is nowhere near as sophisticated as my own. If he were to dare try anything, I would shut him down before he could type the first line of his code.”
“If you’re already more advanced than this AI of Dimension Fifty-Seven,” I began, “then why do you need us to bring it back? Shouldn’t we just eliminate it from existence?”
“I will concede that, though Dr. Merrick’s AI is far inferior to my own in terms of pure computing power, security, and sustainability,” the face began, “he does have an advantage over me in terms of his algorithm. Particularly when it comes to predicting human behavior. But only slightly.”
“What my father is trying to say,” Karla interjected, “is that by bringing back the AI from the alternate dimension, it will help my father upgrade his algorithm.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Nash’s face confirmed. “Not to mention, if you find the Wayfarer of this dimension along the way, bring her back, and then impregnate her, you will all get ‘upgraded’ as well. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
“Sounds fun.” Natalie grinned. “I can’t wait to get started. We’ve been training for weeks, but I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been dying to get back out into the field. It’s just not the same beating up on dummies, you know?”
“Easy there, Rambo,” I joked, even though I was fully aware she wouldn’t get the reference. “We need to know more about this new dimension before we just dive head-first into danger. What can you tell us about this place, Dr. Nash?”
The face on the screen disappeared for a moment as the massive monitor began to flash with binary code. Then the horseshoe-haired man reappeared with a grin.
“Thankfully, this dimension is much easier to read than the last one,” he admitted. “Natalie’s dimension was rendered almost impossible to scope out, mostly due to the fact Doomsday had already happened and there was no modern technology to hack into. Then there was the fact that anytime you add nuclear radiation into the mix, it messes with my algorithms… Which is why it is so integral you bring Dr. Merrick’s AI back to me, Hunter.”
“Let’s start with this Merrick guy.” I nodded. “Who is he, and why is he the one to take over the world?”
“According to the medical records I’ve found, Jackson Merrick is ex-military,” Dr. Nash explained. “He was some sort of computer engineer for the Army and was dishonorably discharged in two-thousand thirty-four for redacted reasons. But he didn’t seem to stay off the grid for very long. His name pops up in a popular job search site only a year later, applying for a software engineer position at a giant tech company called Deltacorp. He must have gotten the job, because the next reference I find of him on the internet is an article from twenty forty-one entitled ‘Deltacorp’s AI Could Be a Game Changer.’”
“So, Dr. Merrick did all this for revenge?” I pondered aloud. “Against the military?”
“Perhaps.” The face on the screen nodded. “There isn’t a conclusive motivation for Merrick’s turn to evil. His military records are either redacted and heavily encrypted, or somehow deleted entirely, though I did find several anti-government and downright fascist posts on his social media accounts.”
“I’d say it’s a pretty open and shut case,” Karla interjected. “You’ve got a radical who does something stupid while serving, gets discharged, and then goes full dictator. Only this guy seems super-smart, so he went about it in a completely ingenious way.”
“Karla.” Dr. Nash looked over at his daughter and frowned. “What have I told you about making predictions based on anecdotal evidence?”
“It’s not backed up by data.” Karla rolled her eyes like a scolded teen. “Even though some of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history were hypotheses formed by anecdotal evidence.”
“That’s not the way we Nashes work!” the face on the screen proclaimed. “We are a data-driven family, damn it!”
Natalie looked over at me for clarification, but I just shrugged.
I didn’t know what I was witnessing, either.
“What does the data say about Dr. Merrick, then?” I cleared my throat to get them back on track.
“Well, here’s where it gets somewhat… fuzzy,” Dr. Nash calculated. “In twenty forty-eight, there’s another article that explains how a dying Merrick uploaded his consciousness into a computer. Another article from a year later explains how the AI was being further developed by Deltacorp, and how they were in talks with military contractors. Then, later that year, we get the first reports of drones disobeying their operators and turning against their humans. After that, there’s nothing to be found but pro-Merrick propaganda all around the globe.”
“Which implies he takes over the world in twenty forty-nine,” Karla finished. “And we’re going to send you two straight there to stop him.”
It seemed pretty straightforward. All we had to do was go into this alternate dimension, find Dr. Merrick’s AI, and then take it out.
However, there was still one piece of the puzzle missing.
“One question,” I chuckled as I raised my hand up into the air. “How exactly do we plan on getting a super-smart artificial intelligence across interdimensional lines? I thought the only thing we could bring with us were organic materials?”
