The End Has Come

PROTOTYPE Sarah Langan

My transfer orders arrive nine months early, and I’m not happy about it. Can I have more time? I request.

Radio silence.

So Rex and I pack my best prototypes, break down my lab, and wait. He licks too much, but otherwise he’s a good dog. The second-best I’ve ever had.

A few hours later, a sand ship’s masthead pokes up from the desert horizon. I pull Rex close. He’s been showing his age lately, shitting in odd corners, eating just half his food, needing his name called more than once. I’ve overlooked it until now, just like I’ve overlooked the bald patches on his scalp, poor guy.

The rig floats closer. Its sail, about eighty feet tall and Mylar coated, is embroidered with a Kanizsa Triangle, the emblem of the Pacific Colony. A Class C driver waves from the deck. He wears a modern sand suit with liquid stitching; much better than I’d expect for his low rank. The colony must be thriving.

I bend down next to Rex and take his jaw between my thumb and third finger. Turn his head to one side. I cleaned his breathing apparatus just yesterday, so it doesn’t make those bark-sounding exhales that dogs are known for.

“They have no respect for the past in the city. No one there knows what they come from. They’re not like us, Rex. We don’t belong there.”

Rex laps my thumb. I lean into his wet nose. “You think we’ll be okay?”

Rex nods. People think I’m crazy, but I know he understands me.

The ship pulls astride my laboratory’s dock. Rex and I walk along the clear, sand-proof gangway, and board.The hull’s enclosed in porous, wind-resistant plastic, with holes about ten microns wide. It’s great for short trips, useless for long-term survival.

Pretty vehicle for Nevada, I say.

My driver shrugs. Class Cs are literal half-wits. They follow orders and that’s about it.

He drives. What he lacks in social graces he makes up for in creepiness. Most of us add a little personality to our suits. His is shining black with just a single C-Class insignia across his left breast. He looks like a six-foot tall, man-shaped oil slick.

We head up a wide dune, pumping the wind-powered engine as we crest, then letting momentum ferry us down. Sand spits from the spiked wheels like fountain water. Its grit drifts, little by little, inside the ship.

“’S okay, boy,” I say. But we both know it’s not.

A mile out, we pass a giant crater that used to be Lake Mead. It was man-made, its edges smoothed, its color indigo-dyed blue. I’ve seen pictures and every time I pass, I imagine how it used to be. Did people marvel, or did they take for granted man’s dominion over nature?

This whole area used to belong to the American Air Force. Nukes were tested to the north and east. The Underground’s still radioactive. I picked this abandoned military base for my lab because it’s as far away from the city as my superiors would allow me to go. Some of the hangars survive, still stocked with planes. Rex and I like to sit in this one B-2 together, looking out over its needle nose. We imagine flight.

I spend my days testing lighter and more graceful Above Ground suits in my lab. It’s the kind of engineering that requires A-Class creativity. If I wasn’t so good, I’d have been decommissioned long ago. I’m past retirement. I’m probably the oldest person in the entire colony.

My suits have to be sand-proof, yet porous enough for respiration. Remember that sand gets as small as one micrometer — just 20% larger than an oxygen atom. Not a lot of room for error. If my designs fail, we get brain sickness. I’m the best in Pacific Colony, which is why they let me live like a hermit. Every few years, I get transferred back to the city to oversee mass production. But other people make me anxious. The roughness of this world has hardened them in ways I never want to be hardened. Take Rex: Animals disgust them. But what’s the point of living if we can’t protect the things in this world that are weaker than ourselves?

Now, Rex licks my Driver’s sand-proof Mylar boot. It’s a way of letting the guy know he’s not a threat — he respects the chain of command. He hunches his forearms and play-barks, forcing extra air through his breathing apparatus.

Keep your animal to yourself, my driver warns. Why isn’t he wearing a suit?

What do they fill C brains with these days? Dogs can’t wear suits. Their skin’s too porous. They’d suffocate, I answer. And then: So, what do I call you?

Nothing, he tells me.

I’ll call you Linda, I say.

I’m male.

Great. Progress. Then I’ll call you Linus, after Linus Pauling. He liked Vitamin C, so I’ll keep an eye out for lemon concentrates for you.

Linus sneers. I can see the hint of it through his skin-tight sand suit.

I laugh, and decide I’ll spend the rest of the trip needling him. At least one of us will be entertained.

Sand blows against the hull. The boat speeds. My smile fades. I can smell electricity in the air: a storm’s coming. Trouble. I should have stayed home and ignored my orders. Screw these guys.

But maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe it’ll pass us over.

We’re not lucky. By nightfall, the wind hits fifty knots. Hurricane. I finger a heap of sand from Rex’s ears, then cover his orifices with tightly woven gauze. He’s trusting enough to hold still for me. “Don’t bite at it, Dog. It’s medicine,” I say. And then, “Good, good, dog.”

It’s dark except for the bow’s navigation lights. With all the airborne sand, I can’t see what we’re driving through. Lightning keeps flashing, but not for long enough. And then, suddenly, the whole sky goes ablaze with a loud crackle. A dozen sand devils whirl across the flat plains. They’re three-foot-wide, six-foot tall cyclones.

One of them scissors straight for our bow. I push Rex down and cover him with my body.

Slam!

Sand breaks through the plastic like a giant wave. Rex tries to jump out. I noose him to the seat with a rope. He struggles, rope tightening against his neck. The barking starts: Aaaackp! Aaaackp!

We need shelter, I say.

Linus ramps the engine to full power. We don’t speed up; instead we just groan and rattle. We push ahead like that for another half-mile, tacking hard to avoid the brunt of the sand-devils. We’re not sailing anymore, but boring like worms. Rex’s heart beats twice as fast as it should. At the bottom of his bark comes this mechanical grinding of interconnected metal gears that have lost synchronicity.

Stop the ship, I say.

Linus ignores me. He’s got orders, and Cs can’t think in abstractions.

There’s a way-station at Red Rock. Looks. . . due one hundred meters East. If you don’t stop I’m jumping out.

The dog is not essential, Linus answers.

I untie Rex and stand, trying to figure out how to jump with him in my arms, neither of us getting hurt, when Linus jerks the wheel and drops anchor.

Fine! He says as he seals-up the sails, secures my prototypes, and jumps off.

Rex and I follow.

We trudge through a skyscraper canyon. The wind’s worse here, focused. We walk with our backs bent eighty degrees. Sand pelts so hard that my joints feel like gristle. I hold whimpering Rex tighter, my lips humming against his warm, knotted hair. All around us are thousand-foot tall buildings with empty windows and smashed neon signs that used to read Gambling! Live Ladies! Las Vegas!

I’ve seen pictures. There was even a rollercoaster.

The manhole radiates a signal. It’s marked by triple orange triangles arranged in a circle like a cut-up pumpkin pie. Linus and I work together to lift its cover. He goes down first. I follow, carrying Rex. With my hands full, I can’t pull the cover back over us. I consider asking Linus for help, but the bastard’s already two flights down.

“Come on, Boy. ’S okay.”

Rex barks air: “Clk! Clk! Aaap!” The new clicking means his left lung has locked. The sound echoes, lodging into my spine.

“Stay with me boy. We’ll get through this.”

He looks at me with a wise and weary expression, then snuggles against my chest as if to say, Okay, big guy. Whatever you say. Just, please, make this better.

Fairy lights in plastic, wind-powered packets glow as I pass down the first, second, and third flights, where Linus waits. We’re deep down enough that our signals don’t connect.

Old tunnels like this cover most of the globe. People hid inside them when the asteroid Aporia first hit. Their design was pretty uniform — narrow openings that headed down a few hundred or thousand feet, then a flat base with tunnels spiraling out like plant roots. The roots kept fallout to a minimum. People expected Above air to clear up after a decade. To be safe, they took enough supplies to last twenty years. But the air never did clear up. Not even a hundred years later.

The things they did to survive. It’s good no one took pictures.

We descend to the wide bottom base. Rusted, illegible signs point into the mouths of eleven darkened tunnels. Nine of them are caved in. The other two need clearing. This shelter is shallower than I’d expected — just two hundred feet. There must be a granite bedrock.

Graffiti’s scrawled all along the walls:

Linus and I take off our suits and shake the sand out, then reapply. The fabric is sturdy and sheer, sticking like liquid paint once it’s on. I’m wishing Rex’s body would take to it as I bend over and pet his grumbling belly. He’s too tired to stand. But his color’s still pink, so at least he’s getting oxygen.

“Do you know when they cleared this place of survivors?” I ask Linus. Our ports aren’t connecting, so I actually have to use words.

“They didn’t clear it,” he answers. His voice is sand-clogged. “Not worth the effort. The specimens down here all had radiation poisoning. Genetic abnormalities. F-Class brains. Let ’em rot.”

So there might still be a few hanging around.

I look to the ceiling. There’s a crude old drawing up there of a town with a main street and stick figure people waving outside old-fashioned ranch houses. I remember the designer: Frank Lloyd Wright. A tempura yellow-white sun shines bright. It used to be such a wonderful world.

I remember the musician: Louie Armstrong. He sang happy songs, even when he didn’t have much to be happy about.

I clear the sand from Rex’s ears. I don’t dare touch his nose: He’s bleeding at the fusion sites where his metal respiratory tract and his organic tissue meet.

A gust of wind rushes down from the manhole. It ushers a sand devil with it. The whirling monster bears down. I’m knocked to the ground.

Stunned, eyes closed, I count to three. I dig at the mound I've found myself buried inside until I’m out. I keep digging, frantic, until I feel him. Rex!

“Help me, Linus!” I cry.

“No, it’s just a dog.”

“Fuck you.” I climb back up by myself.

Sand has collected on the steps. I crawl to get to the top. Then I grab the edges of the iron cover with joint-achy hands and use the soft part of my head to balance it closed.

Click! The wind’s shriek hushes to a whisper.

I go back down to find Rex laboring on a bed of sand at the bottom, but Linus is gone.

“Good boy. Hold on.”

I pull one of the metal rebars peeling down from a caved-in tunnel and gong it against the graffiti wall. The sound echoes all through. Linus, that jackass, doesn’t come back. Maybe he got scared. Maybe the sand got into his brain somehow and he went crazy.

I hate Class Cs.

Yellow goop has glued Rex’s eyes closed. His nose is clotted. I need two things: a medical kit, and water. I’ve got two tunnels that I can check for old supplies. I pick the left one, because I figure warriors always go right, artists left.

“I’m going to find medicine,” I tell him. Then I scratch under his chin, the only place where it looks like he’s not hurting. “I love you.”

Rex nods, and I swear to God, it’s because he wants me to know he loves me, too.

The tunnel’s too caved to walk through, so I crawl. Granite rocks fall around me, heavy enough to break my back. I know it’s stupid to do this for a dog. Rationally, I belong in the city with a modern lab and assistants. I ought to get over this disdain I harbor for my own kind and make real friends. If I did that, I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wouldn’t talk to myself and imagine that my dog understands me. Except, he does understand me. And they don’t.

I keep crawling.

Rocks fall behind me, blocking my way back. It gets dark so I shine a light. I go another few feet before a boulder stops me entirely. I’m strong. Under ordinary circumstances, I could lift it. But not here, without leverage.

I hear a scraping from the other side of the rock. Something digs. A mole? A mouse? A survivor?

God, please help me, I say as I try to roll the rock. I manage to push it a millimeter. It rolls back into place. I punch it. I punch the wall. I punch myself. It’s so dark in here. I’ve gone mad. What the hell do I care about a dog?

I try one more time. Use my legs as I push. The rock shifts. I keep pushing, groaning. I’m clear. There’s nine inches. Maybe I can squeeze.

A face appears on the other side. It’s got albino red eyes. “Ugh!” it grunts as it jabs an arrowhead through the crack, right into my shoulder.

The staff it’s using is made from a human tibia. I yank the tibia, get hold of the things’ skinny arm, and tear it off.

By the time I get back out, Linus has returned and is bent over Rex.

“Leave him alone!”

Linus stands back. Rex’s eyes are bandaged. He’s breathing better now, but coughing sand.

“Found a medicine kit,” Linus tells me. “He’s blind and deaf but he might live if we get him to the city and replace his respiratory tract.”

I drop the gristly arm I’ve found in front of Rex’s mouth. He tries to chew just to please me, but he’s too sick to swallow. I get on the ground and hug him so he knows he’s not alone.

“I thought you ran off,” I tell Linus.

“Class As are so neurotic,” he answers. Charming.

We wait out the storm down there, and don’t head up again until first light. I cuddle Rex for most of that time. His company calms me.

Up above, I pretend that the cave ceiling is a perfect blue sky. There are birds cawing. I’m playing catch with my shiny-pelted Collie while my wife and family watch from the windows of our beautiful ranch house in a town just like the drawing.

Wonderful World plays and I hum along.

The woman’s name is Lorraine, I decide, and she smells like tea. The child is a little girl. I imagine their warmth, the feel of them, and remind myself that this is love.

I remember.

I use my shoulder to shove the manhole aside. Then we’re out. The sand has shifted, obscuring the entire west side of the skyscraper canyon. Old balconies with rusted terraces peek out as if etched from stone. A sulfur red sun beats down. I check for a signal. It’s weak, but back.

Ship’s buried over there, I say.

Linus hurls himself like a burrowing crab into the great sand mountain where I’ve pointed.

It’ll take a day, at least, for him to find and repair our vehicle. By then, Rex will be dead.

I pick him up. It’s a few hundred miles to the city. On foot, we’ll make ten. But we can’t be the only people on this strip of road. I should be able to flag someone down. I start walking.

We’ve gone less than a mile in the hot sun, Rex slack in my arms and worrisomely heavy, when the droning starts. It comes slow from the direction of Las Vegas. As it gets closer, I recognize the Kanizsa Triangle.

I stop, more tired than I’d realized.

Linus pulls up. Sand weighs the ship low to the ground. He kicks down a rope ladder and I carry Rex with one arm and hold the ladder with the other, my stabbed shoulder screaming. Has it been hurting all this time, only I haven’t noticed until now?

Sand’s gotten inside my suit because of the hole. Linus looks us both up and down. I should change into my prototype, I say.

Yes.

I change. We sail.

It takes less than a day to get to the city, where the Pacific Ocean ushers a welcome rain. Sand’s less of a problem here than ultrafine particulate matter. Animal lungs turn to soup up here in just a few hours.

The city of the Pacific Colony is built in a semi circle around one of the last survivor tunnels on the West Coast. The genetic pool down there is fantastically diverse. Class As have been manipulating DNA for ages and have developed all variety of neural matter.

Linus docks our ship. The signal is strong with exactly the kind of chatter I despise, only more nonsensical than usual. They’ve found an old song they all like. They keep replaying it to different beats and instruments. Someone resurrected old photos of the first Above shelter and we’re supposed to have a moment of celebration at mid-day. Lastly, there’s been a survivor revolt in the Atlantic Colony.

The first thing we do, at my insistence, is head to the medical center. A pair of Cs carry Rex to a gurney. I hold his forearm as comfort as they inject the morphine-oxygen IV, then pull out his sand-crusted respiratory tract. They keep this morphine-oxygen IV handy, just for me.

Have I mentioned that this is not my first dog? Nor even my hundredth?

Will he be okay? I ask.

None of the Cs answer, because they’re not smart enough to draw conclusions.

Once I’m out, I’m met by the team of Class As that run the Above Survival Apparatus division. They ask for my latest prototype and I point at my own body. I explain: It’s better than the previous, because it allows for more sensation of physical touch. For instance, I can feel Rex’s warmth, and that signal carries through my nervous system. I can also feel cold, though I find that less pleasant.

They nod with excitement.

In addition, I’m looking into gonadal sensitivity. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

The head A smiles, to be polite. Plastic stretches across his metal teeth in a phony way. I’m reminded why I hate it here: They think I’m crazy.

You’ll make the appropriate modifications for mass production?

I always do, don’t I?

I spend a week in the city. It’s a terrible, loveless place. The houses are sleep chambers. No one touches. The only people who feel this lack are the As, and none of them will admit it. Instead they conduct more experiments. They keep trying to find the right combination — the thing that sparks our evolution. But it never happens. We don’t change. We can’t. It’s our nature. We are always the same.

The revolt in the Atlantic Colony is quelled. I find myself sorry to hear it. In what dreams I still have, I imagine them rising up. I’ll find them when that happens. I’ll help them.

On the last day, I collect Rex from the medical center. One look and I know it’s not my dog. You cloned him, I say. He won’t know me. Now he’s just a sick, old dog.

The C walks away.

Show me his body.

Incinerated, Linus tells me. He’s wearing a shining new suit. It’s agile. Slightly more human in appearance. In a way, I envy Cs, and even Bs. They never kill themselves. They’re not smart enough to juggle oppositional perspectives.

My last stop is the survival tunnel over which the city stands. We spray it at night so they don’t wake up when we experiment. It would be kinder to clone them from parts, but we want the variety that environmental stress provides.

I was one of the first to discover this particular tunnel a thousand years ago. I came down with another A class, and there they were. These blinking, beautiful creatures who’d turned pale and waiflike in the dark. They hadn’t interbred or poisoned their cells with prions like so many others. They’d stayed strong.

As I’d looked at them, I’d thought that we could live together. Or maybe we ought to act as the cyborgs they’d created us to be, and serve them.

They fired the first shot. In return, we slaughtered all who resisted, and took the best brains for our pool. A thousand years later, they’re sickly things who’ve lost the use of language. Their mutations, which we’ve stimulated, are at turns sublime and grotesque.

I go down to the lowest part of the tunnel. I pick a C class human. She’s pulled from the stocks for above ground respiratory tract insertion as my new dog. I always pick children, so they grow to love me.

I head out the next day. The forecast is clear. I’ve got a Class D driver this time. It speaks in binary code. The dog whimpers at my side. I pat its head. “’S okay, Rex. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll tell you so many stories,” I say. “Did you know? I had a house, once. I had a family. I had a dog I trained to fetch. This was before the asteroid. This was when the world was wonderful . . . I used to be human once, too.”