SK: Well, most thought they were just propaganda put out to show how tough the northern people are.

JS: Yeah, right. Periodically, some of the ice containing the virus either melts or breaks off in one of those big icebergs. It floats to the new south, melting along the way. Any animal that drinks the contaminated water can carry the virus for years without obvious harm to themselves. Even fish can carry it. Once the carrier is eaten by a human, it begins the cycle again. Cities and villages are spread far enough apart up north that a single infection case doesn’t spread outside but it does tend to kill everyone inside that village.

SK: How is it you are still alive and older than anyone else?

JS: I was never infected. My family saw what was coming when the Microsoft Wars started and we built a bunker to hole up in. I almost didn’t bother to finish the bunker, though.

SK: And I’m supposed to take this bunker story of yours on faith?

JS: No. At the rear of this house is a very large steel door, which reveals steps going down. While it may seem like a large place, it really sucked being trapped in there for ten years, waiting for everything to settle down.

SK: So, you and the founders of Fieldspring have common ancestry then?

JS: Fieldspring?

SK: You mean to tell me you live two days’ ride from the second largest city in our country and you’ve never heard of it? They claim their ancestors came out of a bunker, as well.

JS: Oh. You mean Springfield. At least that’s what it was called before the war. Their ancestors were elected officials, who used taxpayer dollars to build a bunker to preserve the government.

Because they didn’t manage to even preserve the name of the city, I feel it is safe to assume their bunker was a typical government-funded project.

SK: Typical government-funded project?

JS: Overpriced hunk of shit built by construction companies that paid a lot of bribes to get the contract, then used substandard materials, like what happened with the tollway system.

SK: Tollway system?

JS: Never mind. It is best that term never see the light of day again. It was a bad idea from the start and turned out to be its own form of virus, spreading corruption and lousy work ethics to the world.

SK: If this bunker saved your life as you claim, why did you almost not build it.

JS: There was little point once it got down to me and my grandfather.

SK: Please explain.

JS: I buried my father six weeks after I buried my mother. Both died from that virus you think is a myth.

SK: Oh, sorry to hear.

JS: We were lucky. Our bunker was built on land that survived the realignment. A good number of bunkers were built in places that are now under the various oceans.

Well… I was lucky. The one thing we didn’t design into our bunker, mostly due to the time constraint, was something to deal with dead bodies. My grandfather died two months after we sealed the door.

SK: From the virus?!?

JS: He was a very old man. Quite honestly, I think he gave up. He did his best to carry on for his grandson, but in the end, the loss of his son and daughter-in-law weighed heavily on him. So did taking care of a preteen boy while being trapped in a bunker, I imagine, but he never let on. I was the last of his bloodline after all. He was very proud of his bloodline.

SK: Okay. Perhaps you could explain what you meant by “brine of life”? Was this “the wemdies”?

JS: <chuckle>W. M. D. Weapons of mass destruction. These were weapons that, ultimately, could allow 15 people to take over the world.

SK: Oh come on, 15 people? Seriously?

JS: At first we created nuclear weapons that would atomize everything inside of one square mile, destroy property and kill most people within six miles, while leaving toxic radioactive fallout for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. Eventually, we progressed to nuclear weapons, which could be launched on a single rocket that would travel around the world and have a blast radius of roughly 60 miles.

Others perfected toxins and poisons so deadly that a tiny grain, so small the human eye could barely see, when allowed to evaporate in a room with a drop of water, could kill over athousand people. Like the nuclear weapons, once these weapons were created, there was virtually no safe method of disposal or long-term storage.

Most believe the final group of WMDs were biological. Various scientists worked to weaponize common bacteria and viruses. What I mean by “weaponize” is they made them intensely resistant to any known treatments, increased their longevity and created various methods of dispersal, be it airborne, direct contact or via a city’s water supply.

SK: You said “most believe.”

JS: Nice catch.

SK: Thank you.

JS: Science fiction writers had toyed with various planet- cracker-type bombs and planet-eater-type doomsday scenarios for decades. Some even wrote about massive energy weapons, which could fire a beam of energy that looked like light so big and powerful that it could vaporize a planet just like the inner blast radius of a nuclear detonation.

Of course, various scientists poo-pooed the very idea of a planet-cracker bomb. They always stated that the gravity of a planet would prevent it from ever being destroyed by an outside force. They also scoffed at the amount of energy that would be required to vaporize a planet.

SK: I take it not all scientists felt that way?

JS: No. Gravity, that thing which makes an apple fall from a tree to the ground, could never be explicitly defined or replicated. When we launched people and satellites into outer space, we proved the existence of gravity. Various vehicles and amusement rides of the day could temporarily simulate the weightlessness of zero gravity. But we had no device or method of creating gravity in outer space, where little to none existed.

SK: So?

JS: Furthermore, we had ample evidence that planets could be destroyed.

SK: I still want an answer on this gravity thing but what evidence could you possibly have that planets could be destroyed?

JS: What do you see when you look up into the sky on a clear night?

SK: The moon and stars, like everybody else.

JS: And what do you occasionally see on very special nights?

SK: What? Do you mean a shooting star?

JS: Those aren’t stars. Technically they were called meteorites, unless the rock you found wasn’t, then it was called a meteor wrong.

SK: Huh?

***********************
You are reading a special promotional version of “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars.” This is the third book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:


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