FICTION
Dome Nation — The Ark
Part four
In the first, second, and third parts, Elea, a freshly graduated, guardian of the Ark, is tasked with staying watch at her outpost. During a ruthless attack by End Cult soldiers, their outpost, along with two others, is destroyed. Somehow, the End Cult manages to deactivate the Iron Pathway — a road filled with traps, preventing anyone from accessing the Ark. Elea realizes it was her map, received during a shift change and left behind in the outpost, that showed the End Cult how to disarm the road and access the Ark. The remaining Guardians from the Keep near the Ark try to stall the End Cult, while Elea rushes to sacrifice herself and close the Ark from the inside. Trapped, she embraces what she believes to be the end. However, the end is not yet to come.
Elea slowly rolled over and rose to her feet. She approached the light in the wall.
A tiny touch-activating button was blinking on the wall. Elea gave it a slight tap and the room blazed with eye-piercing artificial white light. When Elea finally opened her aching eyes a moment later, she saw a small opening in the wall, no bigger than a doorway. Elea peeked inside. It was a tiny metal box, just enough to fit two or three people. Curious, Elea took a step inside. The doors behind her slid towards each other, cutting her off, from the large entrance hall. Elea rushed to open them, but they were locked tight.
Then the box started moving.
After a few seconds, the doors opened once again, and a path lit with floor lights unwrapped in front of Elea. Carefully, she took a step into the unknown.
Elea entered a spacious room with large screens hanging on the wall and a metal pod in the middle. None of the temple drawings described anything like this room.
“How strange,” she said, walking along a long flat table with a parade of knobs on it. It took her a minute to notice another unusual thing about this mysterious place.
It was warm.
She couldn’t see her breath anymore. Elea took off, the heating vest, leaving only the dark blue guardian robe. She came to the pod and touched its upholstery. It felt like her own skin, soft and smooth.
Carefully, Elea crawled into the pod.
The screens turned on, revealing strange calculations and numbers going up and down. Then some charts appeared. Elea threw a fearful look around and sank deeper into the pod, gripping the armrests. She felt a sting in her finger. A small needle retracted back into the pod.
“Welcome, a descendant of security officer 434, Colin Turner, military rank — corporal. Your blood sample was scanned and accepted. You can now take control of the Ark,” a soft woman’s voice came from every corner of the room. Elea threw her head around, breathing heavily and trying to find the voice owner. But she was the only person in the room.
“Control?” She said without the slightest clue of what was going on.
“The Ark systems check — done,” the cheerful voice appeared once again. “Energy source — full, Solar batteries — operational. Weapon system — operational.”
“Weapon system?” Elea repeated in disbelief. Tens of images with data on them appeared on the screens instantly. Elea’s eyebrows slowly went up. There were unknown pictures and schemes. She could swear she saw a sword and a whip among them.
The whole room turned red.
“Alert,” the voice now sounded serious. “Protective barrier disarmed. No response from command center two. Switching to cameras one, nine, eleven, fifteen.”
Four windows appeared on the screen. Two of them were plain white and no longer functioning. But right there, on camera with number nine, Elea saw her outpost.
“How is that possible,” she barely moved her lips.
She turned to the tab crowned with number one. Bodies in blue robes in the snow. The remaining cultists gathered the fallen guardians in one big pile. Elea covered her mouth, trying hard not to scream.
“They lost,” she whispered, crying.
“Activating The Ark control panel. Mode — stand by. Waiting for the pilot’s commands,” the woman’s voice was cheerful again, breaking the heavy silence.
A new image appeared on the central screen. It looked strangely familiar. Elea saw those human-like structures in the ancient books.
“You are not just a storage room.” She began to realize everything. “You are one of the War Machines!”
A scheme of a giant robot, a Goliathan model, was displayed on the main screen.
The whole, Ark they’ve been protecting for five centuries was just the tip of the iceberg. It was never a vault or a sanctuary. Everything valuable left of humanity rested intact deep inside the robot’s heart.
“The Ark doesn’t need protection,” Elea repeated her master’s words. “Of course. You don’t need our protection. You were built to protect yourself. And now you are awakening, a beast from the old times.”
Elea bit her bottom lip.
“S…Stand up,” she said, unsure if her command would work.
But it did. The room started shaking, and soon Elea saw images on cameras from the main gates moving up. Gliders became small, and the cultists, first confused, now scattered in terror, throwing away their sickles and sticks.
A giant Goliathan rose from its icy grave.
A hundred meters of steel, wires, and weapons. An unstoppable, brutal machine of destruction, reprogrammed to be a gentle protector, hiding the future of the human race.
Elea figured out the controls quickly; they were pretty simple. The robot responded to her voice commands and added its pre-loaded patterns. One step — and every cultist in the area was crushed under the machine’s inevitable might. She asked for a map. Blue laser beams flew in every direction, scanning the surroundings. A three-dimensional map appeared on the left screen. Elea saw the path to her village.
The village!
Her eyes opened wide. She forgot about the rest of the cultists, who headed towards her home. By now they’ve probably reached their destination and began the massacre. Daniel. A tear fell from Elea’s eye and left a dark drop on her robe.
“No. Not this time,” she said through her teeth, ruthlessly wiping another tear away. “Turn left, south, towards the path in the snow.”
“Destination confirmed,” the voice responded cheerfully. Elea grabbed the armrests.
“Now, you run.”
A cultist threw Daniel down on his knees, along with the other villagers. Bodies of the fallen guardians and monks from the temple were scattered on a small battlefield the temple’s square had become.
“See the future! You will all join us in the holy act of liberating death!”
The Cult Leader growled, raising his rusty sharpened club.
Just come closer, pulsated in Daniel’s head, as he slowly reached for a hunting knife hidden in his boot.
A loud noise, coming from afar, interrupted his attack plans. One more time. Thud, Thud, Thud, as if mountains were jumping and landing back on the ground. Daniel raised his head, trying to locate the source of the sound. Captured villagers shared confused glances.
Finally, Daniel saw it.
Far away, rising from the horizon was the Ark, running to save them, humans.
In a dystopian, totalitarian future, humans live amidst ice and snow. Those who can afford it stay in warm, enormous Dome Cities. Those who can’t — survive in small villages and gather scrap metal left from the War of Machines in exchange for food.
Nick H. Struutinsky © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
