Cealus here! Man, this story is getting some recognition! I normally post it as a solid book, but I decided to post it on the internet first. Good thing I did! This book sold less than a hundred copies in each of my older loops! With just this much I am getting word of my travels out faster than before! Plus, I don’t really need the money anyway. Lottery remember?

Loop 12 Year 12 Day 365

We are ready to go out into the wild city. Heh. It’s not really that big of a deal. We are armed to the teeth, but that is just to help some of the more frightened people. Like I said before, the robots kill anything that gets too close to the base. This area hasn’t had any actual tribes of people in a while.

We leave through the back exit. Most of the people are surprised there is even a back exit. Chelsea must have figured it out already. She seems like something was just confirmed. She’s smart, especially for not having a power that increases intelligence.

As we leave, we are nearly blinded by the bright rays of the sun. The visors we are wearing quickly tint darker to protect our eyes. The sound of wind blows past our ears. The group looks at each other with goofy smiles. After all, it’s been more than a decade since we last saw the outside world.

We roam around the area. The supplies are already scavenged. Mostly by the robots, but I tell everyone that the other people probably had a lot to do with it. For all they know there have been slavers and raiders living here until yesterday.

I am equipped with the best gear, as is Chelsea. We each have a special gun. The guns we are using shoot the APG directly at someone. The trigger mechanism actually de-bonds a small section of the gel. When that small section encounters something… Let’s just say that the power of a concentrated nuclear bomb is impressive.

Everyone is wearing full bulletproof suits. Visors included. We look like an elite swat team. Most of our group are carrying various rifles, and pistols. They all use gunpowder. It’s not that I don’t have enough materials to make more super-weapons, but if I hand those out like candy people might get ideas. Hell, that’s what happened with Chad. I am not about to repeat that again.

The city is in ruins. The buildings were not all destroyed by the anti-matter bombs. Some only had large pieces missing. Those that were left, must have been inhabited. Now they all show signs of a decade of neglect. Without anyone watching out for the buildings, vines grow over the walls. On the streets grow long grasses and thorny vines.

Plants of all types seem to be trying to reclaim the city left over by humans. Animals roam freely, but flee when they see one of the robots. They have been trained well. The robots have been patrolling this area for a while. Even powerful guns will have trouble piercing their armor. Claws and teeth won’t do anything.

The air is crisp. After a long time of only breathing recycled air, it feels good to breath air heated by the sun. The amount of air produced by the farm region is enough to sustain us, but it has a different feeling to it than outdoor air.

The sun is warm. We can feel it even through the suits. The group isn’t very careful though. They are being too loud. I have one of the robots not in our group shoot at us from a hidden area. The group instantly snaps to.

I signal for us to hide. Without waiting to see if the others are following my order, I pack myself tightly against a wall. After that I look at the group.

The group are still standing there, doing nothing. I give AI the signal to make the robot attack again. As soon as she hears me whisper the request, the robot shoots again, this time hitting one of the women in the leg. Thankfully the leg is protected by the suit. She will still have a nasty fractured bone. The weakest gunpowder-based weapon on my robots is akin to heavy artillery.

After that everyone runs into hiding, a few even push each other out of the way. What cowards. Seriously. Dying isn’t that bad. You’ll just come back in my next loop. I unconsciously look down on the group. Secretly scoffing at their attempts to save their own lives.

One of the men was pushed out of the way, and is on the ground. I sigh as I rush forward to drag him to safety. AI has the robot narrowly miss hitting me. It makes it look more authentic.

I hall the man behind a building, and huff. He must weigh at least three hundred pounds. I am going to start a program where adults have to exercise daily. These people are all out of shape. I’m out of shape too, but I was like that from the start. At least I know how to carry myself. These people have done nothing over the past decade, and are slowly getting more fat and lazy over time.

I yell for a retreat. The robots start herding us back towards the vault. The people don’t want to go. They haven’t seen the outside for years now. Another few well-placed shots from the sniper helps to convince them that inside is better.

The detox room takes about ten minutes to completely rid us of any bacteria or germs from the outside world. We have to drink a disgusting concoction of science. It kills every type of non-beneficial bacteria or germ we may have gotten. Down in the vault, even a single strand of a disease can be catastrophic.

Loop 12 Year 13 Day 1

We are all prepared again. This time only a few of us are going. The rest will have to stay and watch through the camera I brought.

The area I choose to go through is one of the few areas I had the robots broadcast from. To show the times when the area didn’t have people trying to mess everything up.

To decide who gets to go, we hold a lottery. I use my power to rig it though. That way Chelsea and I are both in the team. It is only a minor abuse of power anyway.

This time the group is a bit better prepared. They don’t just go around causing a racket at least. With the more cautious people with me, I feel that Chelsea and I can relax a bit and enjoy ourselves.

The group finds a school building. The building itself is only missing the top layer. The first two floors seem to be unaffected by the bomb. Although the vegetation around it is still trying to reclaim the poor building.

This place must have been teeming with life at one point. As we get closer I begin to think of the experiences of my own high school. I reminisce until we get to the actual building.

After hacking away at a few vines, we finally locate the door. We split up into two teams of four, and search the building. Chelsea and I are on the top floor with two others. Chelsea and I look through the library, while the other two go off to a different section to look through the smaller rooms.

I used to love to read. Back when I was in high school, that was all I did. My grades were good enough that I even just read through some classes. Only math though. I loved the smell of books. This place smells of ‘outside’ though. Nothing like what a library should smell like. In the next loop, I’m going to make an intensive library.

The excitement of being back in the place we used to live, makes us both excited. We were in a school with no one around. After a minute, I convince Chelsea to … um to ‘enjoy’ ourselves for a bit. The people shouldn’t be done with searching their rooms for at least a half hour after all.

My stamina is great. Hehe.

Me make passionate, raunchy, love. It feels wrong doing it in a school, but that just adds to the excitement.

With that out of our systems, we still had ten minutes until I predicted the others would be done searching. We began to quickly scan through all the books in the not-so-large library. We picked out some of the best ones. Of course, my hacking computer had most of these books stored in one loop or another, but I didn’t have them this time.

It comes to me that AI is seeing everything I am. I wonder how she feels about seeing me have sex with someone? Now that I think about it, it’s kind of embarrassing. I lock the memory away.

After collecting some of the more entertaining books, and those that would look to provide the most beneficial growth for the vault’s children, we go to start searching the other rooms.

In an hour, we are all done. The most numerous thing we find is dry erase markers. Although the boards are too big to take with us, so we leave them for now. They are probably dried up anyway. Something else to look into making.

There are mostly just things you would expect to find in a school. One teacher had apparently left their playboys locked in a drawer though. The decade of rust made it easy to break open, says the guy holding the dirty magazine. It is a ‘school girl’ edition. Fucking creep.

The entire school looks like people just randomly vanished. I guess the bomb dropped when school was in session. I can’t be bothered to figure it out. I haven’t been to public school in ages. Or maybe not. Thinking back on it now, I realize that many people had abandoned their everyday lives at that point. Who would bother coming to school? This must have been one of the hideouts for the raiders!

The raiders were all dead now though. And the school looked like it hadn’t been too terribly disturbed since the bombs dropped. Maybe a group of survivors made this their home before setting out again?

I don’t know the answer, but I don’t really need to. The question isn’t all that important anyway. The important part of this day is that Chelsea and I made passionate love in a school library! Hehe. This memory is going to fuel more than a few solo ‘cook-outs’ if you know what I mean.

Getting back on track. We spend the rest of the day going through different buildings to scrape up anything that might prove useful to the vault.

Suddenly my eyes zoom in on a distant object. Yes my eyes can zoom. Actually, it is pretty simple when you let a super advanced AI take control of your eyes for you. At about a mile away, there is something on a roof of a building. I have AI enhance my vision a bit more.

There, standing with an intimidating aura, is a man with a very large sniper. Of course, I am confident that he won’t be able to hit any of us, but I am still cautious. Better safe than sorry.

I yell for the group to get behind cover. Knowing what happened last time, they comply right away.

A long way off I hear a firing sound. My eyes go wide. A single bullet is moving in slow motion towards me. Everything is slower than it should be. A large funnel of wind is being created by the bullet. Bullets shouldn’t be able to do that.

Is that another power user? Maybe we can talk about how we got our powers?

Those are my last thoughts as the bullet curves slightly to enter my skull. Just as I am dying, AI forces me to look at all of the coding changes in her programing that have happened until that point.