Jon helped me outside, the world was in chaos. The dark was lit yellow by scattered fires. I could hear the purists voices in the dark barking out orders. Groups of purists ran past me and off into the dark. I walked as fast as I could as Jon gripped my upper arm, rushing me through the city streets.

“Where are we going?” I asked him trying to catch my breath.

“I’m taking you to central Maintenance.” He said looking around in the chaos.

“Why?”

“There is a terminal there, I can power it with the battery in my scanner, but I can’t scan it at the same time. I need your inputs.” He replied.

We weaved through the streets past people who were panicking, crying, and leading. We came to a wide road. There were several purists helping a man out of his collapsed EC. He was panicking, he was yelling and begging them not to take him away from his EC. He was in pain, a pain that I knew well. The backup power system on the EC failed, instead of power, it burst into flames. It was never designed for an outage like this. There was never supposed to be an outage like this.

We traveled a few more blocks but were blocked by burning debris that had fallen from a building.

“Crap, we can’t go this way,” Jon said, “We got to double back.”

He turned me around and we limped back. I looked up, the buildings were tall, immense and the flames were working their way up. Smoke billowed out of the vents and occasionally flames shot out of them. There had to be a thousand residents in the buildings. There was no way out for those souls. I was overwhelmed by sadness, my heart swelled, tingled, and felt heavy and there was a hopelessness I have never felt before. My eyes blurred as I felt a tear run down my cheek. I had only heard about tears, I have never seen one, let alone created one.

Jon pulled out a rag from his pocket and handed it to me.

“Hang in there, wipe your face,” He said, “We got to keep moving.”

It seemed like it took forever. I was being overwhelmed by what I heard in the darkness, the crying, the pleas, and the fear. I was fighting all these feelings inside of me too. How could Jon keep his focus? How could I tune this out? Feelings are as much of a burden as they are a miracle. This was the darker side of my choice.

We made it to the steps of a building with large doors, all have been slid open. There were purists in utility outfits running in and out of the building.

“Jon,” A purist waved as we approached.

“Max!” He shouted, “Take Rico here down to the terminal, I need to grab my tools.”

“Right!” Max responded as he threw my arm over his shoulder and rushed me away.

Max took me through one of the large doors and past some large construction vehicles. There were a lot of people in here, working and yelling. They were trying to get the equipment running and they looked frustrated as they failed. Max juggled a doorknob and force the door open. He tried to drag me in. I pulled away.

“I can walk,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Ok, Follow me.”

I kept up as much as I could, he was rushed and kept looking back to make sure I was there. I pushed myself and then we arrived, sweating and breathing heavily. It was a computer room. Large systems lined the walls, all dark and motionless. There was a bank of terminals on the opposite wall. In front was a bay of docks for EC's, but there were all empty. Max grabbed a simple chair and put it down in front of one of the terminals.

“Here you go,” He said looking at me with promise. I sat down, sweating and my legs hurt. I sighed as I caught my breath.

We waited. We heard the yells and the bustle of the facility, but still no lights. It had been many hours by now. Jon, out of breath, had made it and put down his toolbox. He tried to speak but had to swallow first. He knelt down and pulled out his diagnostic device and opened up the back. He plucked out a couple of wires. He then opened the side of the terminal and pulled two wires out. He grabbed another tool from his toolbox and soldered the wires together. He turned on the Diagnostic device and the terminal flickered on.

“Quick,” He said breathless and pointed at the input cables sitting on the ground. I plugged them in. The terminal was in emergency mode. A menu of functions appeared.

“Check the error logs,” Jon said as he pointed at the screen.

I looked through the list of choices and selected the Error Log.

“The log is huge. The system went down, and then it was isolated,” Jon read out loud, “This terminal has been sealed off, it cannot contact the network, it cannot see The System.”

"Look here," I focused on a record and brought up the details.

“This System was compromised, hacked." He read, "That impossible, this only allows access to the Power Grid and to the Systems security. The systems were systematically pulled down. "

“Looks like there were payloads, worms, and the system was riddled with them. They sat dormant until they were triggered. The system did not even know about them. We were compromised and we were clueless. The System returned the attack with its own payloads. This was not the government, this was corporations. This was mutual destruction. There’s more but I’m too isolated to see it.”

I tried to override it, but I was blocked, locked out.

“Who could have done this?”

“They all did, the fuckers,” Jon replied.

Jon slid back and sat down on the ground. He looked distraught. The lights on the Terminal flickered as the battery drained. It went dark. I reached up and unplugged the inputs.

“Well?” Max asked.

“This is bad, really bad,” Jon looked up, “Go to code red, and we need to get the lights back on. Tell everyone, we have to do this manually.”

“Shit, really," Max replied, "How in the hell are we going to do that?"

"Get all the engineers here, find them all," Jon said.

Max pulled himself together and nodded. He left.

Jon lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

“What going on Jon? What can we do?”

Nothing right now,” He replied, “I don’t have the slightest idea what to do. Every bit of training was still dependent on something the System provided.” Jon tried to hold it together. But he couldn’t any longer. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

# The sky was illuminated by the orange of the fires, the building black and ominous. There was nothing I could do. I was in the way and exhausted. I made my way back to the park. I sat on a bench in the dark. Temporary, lights were scattered here in there.

Bodies are laid in rows. People writhing, screaming, and convulsing. Some had stopped moving, even breathing. Liz and a handful of helpers were trying their hardest to comfort them. They kept coming, people ejected from their EC’s, from the system. Purists brought them on stretchers, dragging them, carrying them.

I tried to get up, but I was still weak. I sat there watching. I could do nothing. Two exhausted purists carried a limp woman close to my bench. They laid her on the ground and ran off. The woman was in shock, she stared at me.

“It will be O.K,” I said.

“Kill me,” She replied and closed her eyes. She started to convulse and foamed at the mouth.

I slipped off the bench and crawled to her. I rolled her on her side. The convulsions subsided. Her breathing labored. I stroked her hair. Her breathing stopped. She went limp, she was gone. I sat there staring at her. A tear fell from my eye onto her cheek.

The sky lit up as I sat there holding her. First orange and then yellow, the sun’s rays illuminated the walls of the white buildings. The greens became vivid. The haze from the fires clouded the tops of the buildings and the dome was barely visible.

I looked across the park. I could see hundreds of people. Laying on the ground, most were dead. I looked at Liz as she fell to her knees.

I got up and walked to her, my legs shaky and exhausted. I kneeled down to her and touched her shoulder. She looked up and stared into my eyes.

“I can’t save them,” she muttered.

“You can’t,” I replied, “but you saved me, and you will save others. I was not the first and I will not be the last.”

We held each other tight. The future will look different. I don’t think any of us can even fathom what it will look like.

END.