2019-02-19 ========== we were the last people on earth after the war, as far as we knew. me and my three sisters lived in what remained of a small town in germany, surrounded by jungle and the gleaming husks of military hardware and vehicles. dense green moss filled in the cracks around the bottom where they rested, leaving only mysterious smooth aerodynamic shapes protruding out of the undergrowth. we had carved out a semblance of a home in the back yard of a convenience store and the next building which had lost its roof at some point, with a small barbed wire pen in the back for the animals. genetically engineered dino-pheasants, they grew rapidly and would eat anything - dried leaves, poop, moss, sawdust, you name it. the feed material determined what sort of pheasant it grew up into, so we had one pile per bird. a pile of leaves, a pile of poop, a pile of moss, and so on, arranged in wedges around the circular perimeter. in the center of the pen was a small murder-bot, which looked like a black squid with swords instead of tentacles. occasionally the dino-pheasants, too big and unpredictable to handle safely, would approach the murder bot and get attacked by a spinning whirl of blades, leaving a colorful shredded dino-corpse. then it was a simple matter to distract the bot and retrieve the bounty. such was life in our post-war ramshackle christopher robinson house. one had to make do with the materials at hand. robots and missiles weren't the only leftovers from the war. out in the jungle, every night, you could hear it. lumbering around, making huge foot prints in the mud that collected rain water. i had never seen it, and didn't care to. but its presence shaped our routines and dictated what we were and weren't allowed to do, where we could and couldn't go. i hated that thing. it was a T-rex. on more than one occasion i had run into the house, knocking over board games and apple cider in the rush, searching frantically for the power button on the TV to turn it off, lest the T-rex see the light coming through the windows in front of the building, the side facing the jungle. then we would sit, silent, in the dark. just waiting. for hours. it was such a bore. during one such occasion i was hiding in my cardboard box, messing with apps on an old white plastic tablet that we mostly used for reading books, when i made an incredible discovery. it was an app. an app that could do anything. you just pointed the camera on the tablet at something and it could tell you what it was called, how to fix it, and how to use it. even a pile of sticks and rocks, it could tell you exactly how to put them together so they didn't fall over. i spent the whole night making intricately balanced piles of stuff. this app became my new best friend. i named it Chauncey because it had a british accent. when i pointed Chauncey at a mirror, he told me all about himself. the next day i was looking sort of haggard, moping around in the park behind the house with Chauncey taped to my chest, when Gina (the eldest) rode by on her bike and stopped to chat. "too much cider last night? what were all those piles? i didn't know you were into druidism. the twins knocked them all over." "Gina! last night i found an ancient relic, one of men's machines from before the war. it's an 'artificial intelligence' it says. and it still has all of its functionalities! this means..." i stared off into the misty morning, too tired to think. "it means we can turn our T-rex problem into dino!" she helpfully chimed in. "exactly!" i replied, with a high-five, but actually that was a good idea i hadn't thought of at all. this little artificial intelligence had surprised me many times already, and who knows what it was capable of. i introduced her and Chauncey, but the day was getting long and we went apart to go about our daily tasks. Chauncey helped me identify mushrooms, and that weird yellow shed? it's a school bus! some kind of vehicle at least. i got everyone together that afternoon to help dig it out. as the sun went low in the sky, we pushed through the thicket to "the quarry" - at least that's what we called it - a large crater full of rubble, and the only place you could see the sunset for miles around. i pushed Gina's butt up the low rise of scramble at the crater rim, past the stuffed army dress uniform "ticket man" someone had put there on a half melted chair, with a sign "two dollars entrance fee, no sitting on the roof!" the joke was that there was no roof, just sky all around. and we all four sat there, watching the sun set, joking with our new friend and making plans for the future. then as the sky got dimmer, one of the twins asked: "what's that blue light mean on the tablet?" i had never seen it before either. so i peeled off the tape and looked at Chauncey's screen, and navigated some unfamiliar menus. "it says... there's a radio transmission 50 kilometers west of here, some sort of a beacon. it says the beacon is for survivors." we all looked at each other. survivors? weren't we survivors? but why would the beacon say that? it had been years since the war, and everyone was dead. at least that's what we had always thought. what if, that were wrong, and there were others out there? it would change everything. that night i couldn't sleep again, so i spent the night packing supplies onto the school bus. dino jerky, ropes, backpacks, light weapons, and tools. i had to find out what that beacon was. i was going. the next day. hell, when the sun comes up. well, when the sky did finally get light, it was through a dense drizzle. "perfect jungle expedition weather," i said to myself bitterly. meaningful looks were exchanged around the breakfast table. "i'm going-" "we should go-" "what about-" we all started at once. nervous laughter. tiny potatoes were thrown. a precious can of juice was spilled. "ok, the bus is ready, and here we are sitting around doing nothing. who wants to go on a field trip?" so we boarded the bus one by one, gingerly taking our seats. me in the front with Chauncey, the twins on either side, and Gina at the back with the LMG hanging out the open door. i turned off the buzzer and started her up. fifty years of smoky diesel exhaust and rats fled in all directions as the bus creaked forward and into the undergrowth. we were on our way! the bus followed the bank of the river, which snaked through town between half filled craters and rubble piles. it was the best place to drive, because seasonal flooding had cleared the bank of branches and deposited a fresh smooth layer of silt. despite the rain, it was still firm enough to drive on. so we drove on, slowly, dodging the occasional fallen log or rusty street lamp. then, from behind, a roar. you knew it had to show up at some point. the T-rex. lumbering after us, with its gaping mouth and three horns and odd scraggly pink and blue feathers. it looked pretty powerless, chasing us like that, and we all laughed. "it's a punk-rock T-rex, that's why the spikes and mohawk." indeed, they were some oddly placed horns, not like a bull, but jutting straight out of the top of the head. we carried on like this for a couple kilometers, Gina taking the occasional pot shot out the back of the bouncing bus and jeering at the lumbering beast, which showed surprising endurance for running at thirty kilometers per hour. i don't know if the bullets ever even hit, but we kept a safe distance. until the road ran out. the river forked and the bank turned back to jungle on our side shit. what kind of plan was this? Chauncey didn't have any helpful advice, and neither did anyone else. so we stopped the bus, closed the door, and tried to stay quiet as the beast approached. it sniffed great big gusts as it stamped around, moving its head from side to side in a way that oddly reminded me of the pheasants. what was it thinking? it could easily rip this vehicle to shreds with its powerful jaws, but it just stood there looking at the sand, and the bus, then back to the sand. then the giant animal put its head down, and rammed the side of the bus, two huge curved horns crashing through the side, everything shaking furiously as we went upside down and the sickening feeling of being weightless and screams and then more shattered glass and branches pushed their way into the bus. we had landed upside down in a tree. a wet branch cracked and we slipped back with a jolt and came to a stop, hanging firm in the top of the tree, upside down, the four of us in a pile on the battered roof. everyone appeared to be alive at least. i peeked out the shattered window at the beast roaring below. it stamped back and forth where the bus had been. then, inexplicably it turned around and walked away into the mist, following the river. Chauncey said, "corps of engineers debris clearance unit."