ENTRY 44:
I had no idea what to expect from this “library”. But even that didn’t stop me from feeling surprised when I finally saw it.
Crane walked me over there after I'd told him that I wanted to see it. On the rather long walk over there, he asked me about my past. What I’d been doing before meeting him. Now, it’s obviously a long story… and one that’s quite hard to explain, but I gave him the gist of it.
I told him about the Earth I knew. The clear skies, nature, civilizations, all of it. He probably thought I was mental. That I’d been through so much, I’d created this fictitious utopia in my head. He didn’t say any of this out loud, but I could tell that he didn’t believe a single word I said. In all honesty, I couldn’t care less. None of it really mattered, anyways.
He led me to a singular, small unassuming building surrounded by nothing. It almost looked like a ticket booth. I looked at him, questioningly. He just gestured for me to go in.
“It’s all down there. All that you want to know. The password is crisis.”
He walked away after saying that, leaving me alone to stare at the peculiar structure in front of me. I walked in through the small entryway and was faced with an opening in the floorboards. There was a ladder going downwards. I took it, descending into the darkness for about twenty minutes.
As I hopped off the last rung, I found myself in what looked like a lobby with metal walls and floors. In front of me were large iron doors with an alphabetical panel to the side. There were overhead lights, but they weren’t on. Instead, everything was illuminated by large candles. I entered the password and they slid open
I can barely even begin to describe what I had saw. It was… beautiful, to say the least. There were rows and rows of books and manuscripts stacked on pristine white shelves. There were breathtaking glass structures of historical figures set up on the sides and spiral staircases leading down to other floors. Again, the only sources of light here were candles and lamps, so it gave off an extremely ambient vibe that just made everything feel more stunning and surreal. I snapped back from my trance into reality when I heard a voice call out from somewhere behind me. I turned around, seeing a meek looking thirty-ish year old man staring at me in confusion.
I struggled to spit out the words, but I finally got an introduction out.
“I haven’t seen you before.” The man responded.
“Yeah… I uh… just got here, I suppose”
He nodded. “Well… I’m Voynov.”
After that brief exchange, we just stared at each other for a while. Eventually, I piped back up:
“So… what do you do?”
He smirked, gesturing to the books around him.
“I’m learning. Constantly. Piecing together the past, if you will.”
“It’s just you here?” I asked.
He nodded. “Didn’t use to be. I had friends down here… but they’re all gone. Monsters, disease… it’s tough to survive, you know? And the guys on the surface... they all got bored of this place. Can’t read too well either. So… it’s just me.
"You said that you were piecing together the past" I asked him "So what happened?"
He went on to explain everything to me. Well… everything that he’s figured out from reading, archiving and analyzing the books and documents down here, anyways.
Apparently, the Soviet Union never dissolved in 1991 here. You see, in this timeline, the USSR didn’t only take over Eastern Europe… most of the west also went with it. In other words, they didn’t grow weaker over the years... only stronger. And the cold war… it wasn’t only between the US. The Soviets also had China to worry about. The Kuomintang had actually won the Chinese civil war here. That meant the Chinese communist party never came into true power. But even the Kuomintang didn’t last too long. In 1995, China officially became a liberal democracy – meaning they had a lot more in common with the US than with the USSR. This was also around the time where the Soviets really stopped treading lightly. They were beating America in the space race and were now trying to beat them in the nuclear arms race as well.
When China established democracy, the Soviets took this as a direct threat from the US and claimed that they were trying to impose their will on the rest of the world. Even though China had come to this consensus all on their own, the Soviets used this as an excuse to bolster their nuclear arsenal even more. Things were starting to become very dangerous. In response to this, China increased their own nuclear firepower and officially allied with the US. This move was highly contested by the Western European countries that remained free – notably the UK, France and Ireland. They claimed that this would cause the Soviets to officially try and invade them.
The situation started escalating even more. In this timeline, the Americans hadn’t gotten a man on the moon until 2001. The Soviets did it two years later, in 2003. The problem was… they had set up their moon base dangerously close to the US one – only about two hundred meters away. They claimed that this was by accident, but nobody believed them.
Things really started going to shit in the winter of 2007. France had been keeping the details of their own nuclear arsenal under wraps, in order to avoid spite from the USSR. However, all of their plans were leaked by a Soviet spy working discretely in Paris. To them, a hidden nuclear program meant war. They moved into France just a month later. News about the invasion spread across the world like wildfire. The Soviets ordered that the French give up their weapons and sovereignty, becoming part of the USSR. However, they didn’t comply. The invasion lasted three months and would eventually be recognized as the inception of the apocalypse. The US - along with the UK, Ireland, Korea and China, all sent troops over there to aid the French. This is when they realized that the Soviets had been keeping secrets of their own. With such a large portion of their national budget going towards the military, they had developed new ground war weapons that caused ungodly devastation. Things like automatic rifles with explosive rounds, power armor, electric bombs, noxious gas that would spread too fast to be anticipated etc. Because of this, the Soviets managed to take France with minimal casualties, even with international help.
Things started to look terrible. In 2011 they followed up by also forcibly annexing the UK and Ireland. They even moved into the Middle East, destroying all of America’s already established military bases there. World war 3 was imminent.
About three years pass where no major occurrences take place. The Soviets knew that if they made a move on China, the US would be right on their heels. In addition to that, they would also be backed by Japan and Korea (which unified the same year that China turned to democracy).
However… the peace didn’t last. The following details were murky. All that can be confirmed was that when the Soviets decided to simultaneously send troops to China and America sometime in 2014, the Nukes started flying. The East coast and Midwest of America were destroyed, along with central Canada. All the provinces in western China, as well as the entirety of Korea, were decimated. The Soviets also suffered heavy casualties. Ukraine, Belarus, and a quarter of Russia were irradiated. In addition to that, there were also some botched nuclear strikes that went haywire, hitting North Africa, India, and Central America.
The world population plummeted that day. All in a nuclear war that lasted under a day. An estimated 2.8 billion people died. Hundreds of cities were destroyed. The radiation ended up killing even more. The years that followed were miserable for everybody involved. The Soviet Union disbanded almost immediately after the war, and the mass rebuilding of countries and cities went underway. Everybody tried to recreate a sense of normalcy in the world, but it could never really be the same. The apocalypse had essentially occurred.
But… that wasn’t even the worst of it. In 2015, a high ranking Soviet general was found hiding in a town in Eastern Germany. His name was Elias Richter.
He didn’t put up a fight when apprehended by the newly formed international commonwealth. His trial was set immediately and televised all across the world. During the entire duration where the judge was reading out his war crimes, he remained stone-faced.
That was until the very end. As he was about to be led to the electrocution room, he burst out laughing. It was a hysterical, nearly sadistic laugh. Everybody watched in shock as he began to speak. This was the gist of what he said:
Apparently, the Soviets had been developing an extremely experimental weapon since 1964. It was projected to be finished around 2035, but the sudden breakout of nuclear war caused them to consider deploying it then. They held a vote within a 7 person committee involving some of the top scientists who had been working on the weapon at the time. A vote on whether it was time to use it or not.
All 7 scientists voted against it. They claimed that the weapon was unfinished and therefore too unstable to be utilized. That it could lead to unfathomable consequences if something actually went wrong. The plan was seemingly scrapped.
That was until Elias decided that wasn’t an acceptable decision. Most everybody, including his superiors, tried to stop him. But in his intense, psychotic, militant desire to win the war, he started a mini coup with a group of like-minded soldiers and launched it, to the dismay of everybody. So what was this thing?
Well… it was an antimatter weapon. A particle missile, or something to that effect. The details of what it really was remained a mystery for all time. The world would only know of its consequences.
Apparently, this one weapon was enough to wipe out the entirety of America, most of Canada, and all of Central America as well. It was the endgame for the Soviets. With the US out of the picture, China likely wouldn’t be able to handle them on their own.
But… something went terribly wrong.
The launch was botched and it landed somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Everybody went in the courtroom went into collective shock as he said this. If a weapon of that magnitude exploded underwater… then that could mean the apocalypse wasn’t over.
But Elias was quick to correct them. Supposedly, it wasn’t an explosive… it was something else. Something that humanity wasn’t ready to understand. It wasn’t supposed to blow up America… it was supposed to get rid of it. He also didn’t know when or if it would activate. But if it did… that would the true end of the world.
He didn’t elaborate on what that meant. His laughter started up again, but it quickly turned into desperate sobbing. Tears streamed down his face as he repeatedly muttered out the words:
“I’m sorry”
They interrogated him for a few weeks, trying to squeeze any info out of him. However, he just sat there and said that he couldn’t help them anymore. They even tortured him, but to no avail. He died in 2018.
The world feverishly scoured the Atlantic Ocean for years, but the task was seemingly impossible. They had an imprecise location, and they didn’t even know what they were looking for.
That was until 2022. There was an object, about the size of a small car, lodged into the seabed somewhere in the northern Atlantic. The first thing that they saw was the red and yellow of the USSR flag. This was it.
But, nobody knew what to do with it. Upon closer inspection, the device almost seemed alien. Nobody wanted to risk touching or operating on it. Things still weren't looking good. It was in the summer of 2026 when a breakthrough finally came. An American physicist/cryptologist by the name of Daniel Buchanan had discovered how to sift through the general logistics of the weapon without it activating. And in fact, he’d found something interesting. But it probably wasn’t what he, or the world, was hoping for. There was a countdown timer embedded somewhere deep in the code of the device. It read:
11:07:53:22… 21… 20… 19
11 days. This thing was set to go off in just over 11 days. The world fell into a frenzy. Everybody was at a loss for what to do. Beyond discovering the countdown, Buchanan hadn’t managed to discover an “off” switch, or how to even begin to defuse it. It was just too complicated. And he was the brightest that the world had to offer.
As the days leading up to the inevitable started winding down, a mass evacuation into underground shelters went into place all over the world. Nobody knew what was going to happen. People were still trying to defuse the weapon just four hours before it was set to go off, but they had made zero progress. All they could do now was to wait and hope for the best. A few military aircrafts overlooking the Atlantic stayed out, in order to provide a live-feed of what was about to happen.
The helicopters didn’t notice anything during the first few minutes after the timer hit zero. But then they realized something. The ocean surface was getting farther and farther away from them. That wasn’t even the weirdest part, however. The water was also getting darker for some reason. They soon figured out why. Something was rising up from beneath the ocean. It was a land mass. An unfathomably large one. As it ascended towards them, they got a good enough view of the surface. It was nothing that should’ve came from this world. The structures, plants… creatures on that place, they all looked absolutely alien.
The helicopters decided to take off, fearing what else could happen. What else they could come face to face with. However, as soon as they started flying off, a wicked roar could be heard coming from somewhere right below them. The pilots frantically shouted a few words before the feed turned into static.
Now, only the top ranking government officials ever saw this, so the general populace was still in the dark of what was happening on the surface. Again, nobody knew what to do. There was no way in hell that the depleted world militaries could have any hope in quelling whatever the hell had leaked into the world. So they just waited. But for what? Nobody really knew…
At that point, the history became hard to track. There were scattered reports of strange occurrences happening in the shelters. Things like the ground splitting below them, strange creatures breaking through the ceiling above and even other people morphing into otherworldly beings.
The last recorded document present in the library was sometime during 2035. This is all that it read:
“We can’t stay in here anymore… we just can’t. The air’s getting thinner down here for some reason, and we’ve been hearing these fucking moans coming from somewhere below us for months now. Yesterday the floor started cracking, and a bunch of fucking eye stalks poked out of the rubble. They retreated back once we shot at them, but we know that it isn't over. We’ve decided to leave soon. Franklin’s sending up a nine person unit to map out what the fuck’s happening on the surface. I’m a part of it. But to be honest… I don’t have high hopes."
I was floored after hearing all of this. I mean, I had no idea what to make of it, you know? What the hell are you supposed to think about something like this? God…
I asked him about him about this library as well. It looked so nice… I don’t see how they could’ve built it in such a place. He said that they didn’t. Apparently, they’d stumbled upon this settlement about 4 years ago. When they got here, nearly everybody was dead. The ones that were still clinging onto life told them the password. They told them that the history could not be lost forever. Somebody had to know.
This is so fucked. If those documents were accurate… it means that the world in this timeline was essentially ruined by one singular person. I'm going to need some time to process all of this.
--
ENTRY 45:
Shit, I don't know what's going on right now. It's the middle of the night, and I just heard the loudest fucking sound ever coming from somewhere outside. I can't even describe it.
I know that I'm pretty lucky to be alive at this point, but I don't think this is sustainable.
Wait, I hear gunshots now. Shit.
--
ENTRY 46:
Well uh... it's been crazy since that last entry. This is what happened:
At first I thought about just hiding in my bunker when I heard the commotion outside. Just wait it all out, I thought. But then I realized something. If this settlement was destroyed, and I was the last one left alive, well... I wouldn't be lasting long after that, would I?
Conversely, if I decided to hide and they won, then Crane and the rest of the guys wouldn't be too happy with my cowardice.
I made a decision, grabbed the assault rifle under my bed and decided to head out there. If I died then I died. Was this life really worth living anymore?
As soon as I poked my head outside, I was hit with the sharp smell of metal. I looked around, seeing blood everywhere on the ground... but no bodies. That's when I heard a deafening stomping coming from behind me. I turned, seeing what looked like a MASSIVE humanoid walking around. And when I say massive, I don't mean 10 feet tall. I mean over a 100. It was picking up soldiers and crushing them in its gargantuan hands before slurping down their entrails. And its face... well it didn't really have one. Its entire head was just one giant, spherical mouth.
As I watched it, I also noticed that it had scaly skin that seemed to be shedding off as it moved. But no. It wasn't shedding. There were things, falling off of it. I watched in horror as they spotted and started crawling towards me. As they got closer, I recoiled in horror. They were also humanoids, crawling on all fours. They looked feral, with sickly grey skin. Like the giant behemoth that they came from, their heads were also just one large mouth. They also seemed to be emitting some black gas that I didn't to risk breathing in. I shot down about four of them before seeming to attract the attention of the big guy.
I thought I was fucked.
It leaped towards me, but I managed to duck into a nearby warehouse. After scrambling around in there for a few seconds, the creature ripped the roof off and tried swiping at me. Fortunately, I rolled away just in time. However, I sprained my ankle in the process and was left trying to scoot away, helplessly. That's when I noticed something extremely disturbing about this thing. It had eyes... in the back of its throat.
They seemed to be connected to some kind of appendage as it bulged out at me. I locked vision with it for a second before it reached out again. Not knowing what to do, I just closed my eyes.
However, instead of feeling my body being crushed, I heard an explosion followed by an ear-splitting, unnatural roar. I opened my eyes to see that one of the creature's giant eyes had essentially burst open. Another rocket from an unknown source hit the creature in the chest soon after. While it was distracted, I managed to get away.
I must have killed three more of those smaller creatures before I ran out of ammo. I was limping around, trying to find somewhere to go. That's when I saw the pit that I had encountered when I first got here.
I don't really know why, but my mind started racing and I hastily made my way towards it. Once there, I collapsed and peered into the murky mist below.
Wait I thought. Mist? Or was it fog. It looked so familiar for some reason.
Another roar from behind me caused my mind to sift through my memories even further. Why was this so damn familiar?.
And then it hit me. How we first got here. Rust. The plane. The fog under the clouds
At that moment, I could swear that I heard something coming from the pit.
Was it?
Birds I was hearing a bird chirp. I felt the ground start shaking from behind me and knew that this was my last chance.
I pulled myself over the barricade and into the pit.
I couldn't tell you how long I fell through the grey void. All I know is that things went suddenly dark at one point and I felt an impact. But it wasn't hard at all. The area around me was soft and wet. I felt my hand come into contact with something slimy squirming around and got worried for a second. But that's when I saw what it was.
An earthworm. The stuff around me must have been dirt.
I started looking around frantically, trying to place where I was. Eventually, I spotted a light above and started crawling towards it. I was on what seemed to be an upwards incline, so the climb wasn't too hard. Eventually, I broke out and found myself in a place that felt alien to where I had been for the last few years.
Nature
I was in some kind of forest and had just crawled out of a hole in the ground. It was foggy as hell, but I could see the trees, the bushes, the shrubs, the birds, all of it. I laid down for a while and fell into a state of euphoria.
I guess somebody thought that I was crazy and walked over eventually, because I heard a voice speaking to me some while later. I opened my eyes to see a middle-aged man looking at me with an extremely concerned look:
"Are you alright? What in the bloody hell are you doing?"
He had what I assumed was a British accent. I would later find out that I ended up in Wales. Cardiff, to be exact.
I tried to make some story up in my head, but it all came out in a jumbled mess. He walked away soon after that. Can't really blame him, though. I must have looked and sounded like a madman.
Eventually, I found my way out of the forest and onto a city street. I stumbled upon a public washroom and cleaned myself up as best as I could in there. I wasn't really sure what to do beyond that, though. I sat outside on the street for a while. Even though I had no sign, I was tossed some change here and there. Eventually, I'd mustered up enough cash to buy a bag of chips and a prepackaged sandwich at a convenience store.
It tasted like absolute heaven. I devoured it in the store, right in front of the cashier. I guess he saw my filthy, tattered jacket and my general unkempt appearance and felt sorry for me.
"What's a young guy like you doing homeless already?" He asked me.
I made up some story about how I flunked out of college, while still owing massive student debt and that my parents wouldn't take me in anymore for that reason. I guess he bought it, because he offered me a job and a place to sleep in one of the backrooms.
I started yesterday. However, I still had my suspicions about the world, so I did some research at a local library. I've gotta say though... the Internets changed quite a bit while I've been gone. Cell phones as well. It's kind of fucking insane, actually. I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Anyhow, my research yielded history that seemed to align with what I remembered, so that's excellent news. Out of curiosity though... I searched up my parents names.
There were a few articles that came up. My dad had been killed in a workplace accident and my mom had died a few years later from an apparent prescription drug overdose.
Maybe it's better for me not to think about that too much. Actually, I think I'll end this entry for now.
--
ENTRY 47:
I've realized that I need to get back to California somehow. That shouldn't be too hard. I'll make enough money here to buy a plane ticket and then fly there. I'm not so sure where I'm going to stay, however. Hotels have gotten a lot more fucking expensive. I never even had many friends before I left. Well... I do have one. I don't know if he would want to see me, though. Or if he would even recognize me. But, I'll give it a shot.
--
ENTRY 48
I'm currently on a plane headed to Burbank. After that, I'll need to head over to Sacramento. However, I'm not sure if James still lives there or not. Hopefully he does.
--
ENTRY 49
As it turns out, he was still there. I really wasn't expecting it but... it's great. Even better was that he welcomed me with open arms. God, he hasn't changed at all. As it turns out, his parents had moved back to Australia and they'd left him the house here with all the mortgage paid off. Lucky bastard.
However, I wasn't sure how I was going to approach our first meeting in around 7 years. Obviously, I had a lot of explaining to do, but I wasn't sure if I was going to tell him the truth or not. Eventually, I decided to.
I could see the shock and disbelief on his face as I told him what had happened to me. But... I could also tell that he believed me deep down. He knew that I had no reason to lie to him.
I barely got through any of my story before I felt the drowsiness hit me. James was nice enough to offer me a bed here, and that's where I am right now. I guess I'll continue explaining everything to him tomorrow, but for now I'll rest.
--
ENTRY 50
I told James a bit more about where I'd been before he had to go to work. But now that I'm here alone, I'm left to contemplate something that I don't really want to do.
You see, before we left Rust had told me to do something in case we ever got separated in that world and I found a way back here without him. I would need to go back to Cal-tech. There was this one lecture hall where he'd hidden something in a secret compartment in one of the walls. There were supposed to be either one or two items in there. A box, or a box and a note. If there was no note and only a box, that would mean that he had not made it back to our world. If that was the case, I would have to deliver the box to a specific address. It was his family.
You see, as eccentric as Rust was, he still loved his them deeply. Enough to ensure full financial stability for them before he left. However... he didn't tell them the truth about where he was going, just that it was a business trip. He always assumed that he was coming back. However... it turns out that wasn't the case.
I went to Cal-tech in order retrieve the box before coming to Sacramento. I found it, but my heart dropped when there was no note. I opened the box to find a hand written note directed towards his wife by Rust, as well as some addresses.
He told me that after I'd delivered the box, to explain everything to them. And to tell them that he was truly sorry. It looks like I'm going to have to do that soon. I've never been good at breaking bad news.
--
ENTRY 51
James, this last entry is for you. I know that you're probably confused right now, but the best way that I can explain all of this is if you read this journal. I'm about to head off right now. I've taken some items from your house in order to help me on my journey, but I promise that I'll get you back later. You know I'm good for it :)
I'm sure that I'll see you again, my friend... but it might not be anytime soon.
You see, there was somebody else Rust had told me to contact if he didn't come back. He was a physicist who had known Rust since they were in college. But he wasn't based in Cal-Tech. He worked for the government. For the "higher ups", if you will. Although he was also interested in the notion of a parallel reality, he wasn't ready to take on Rust's offer when he'd told him about his discoveries. It just sounded too far-fetched, and he didn't want his superiors to think that he was crazy.
If I ever came back, Rust wanted me to convince him that it was real. Now, I always thought that this was an unreasonable request. After all, how was I supposed to change his mind? My journal entries probably wouldn't have even helped. I could've made it all up. However...
I found something in my jacket pocket that I had somehow forgotten about during my hectic stint on Heaven's Curse. It was a small piece of one of those shards that we had mined in the prison. I'll go to the other address(The physicist) that Rust had given me in order to demonstrate the shard on myself in front of him. I don't see how he could doubt me after that. He'll probably even give me a job.
You see, even though I never want to go back to that place myself, researching it from afar is still something that I want to do. Despite all that I've seen, all the places I've been too... there are still so many questions that have been left unanswered. I feel like it's my duty to find out. And also... to find Rust, if he's still alive in there.
***
Well that was it. That was the end of the journal. What am I supposed to think about it? I don't really know. But I guess that the world out there... it's a lot bigger than I had originally thought. And I'm not so sure if that's a good thing.
---
Credits
Comments