Kristeen couldn't wait for Brin to finish so she could get the book back in her hands. While she waited, she flipped through the plastic pages of the re-Charge. Now that she looked at it more closely, she realized it wasn't a comic book at all, but a very clear guide to demonstrating and recreating simple technologies. The book was heavily based on the idea that survivors would find abandoned cities and could use what they found there as resources. It started with simple things, but the knowledge it contained could be enough to restart a civilization.
Brin's tension slowly faded. As he was archiving the book, he could focus on other things again.
"There were several editions of the re-Charge. There was a basic book, which you're holding in your hands," he explained. "But anyone could make extra pages and have them printed. So, there are quite a lot of unique copies. If someone puts all of them together, they could get as far as genetic engineering," he explained. "This way you don't have to rediscover why you should boil water, or that women, despite being physically weaker, have the same intellectual capacity. It saves a lot of time!"
"But if we did everything the same way, we'd end up in the same place, wouldn't we? Technology is what led to the destruction of the Earth."
"Not entirely. Technology is humanity's only chance for survival. The danger lies in the idea of unlimited growth. Ideas are hard to draw, but I think there were pages like that, too."
When he was done with the photography, he gave the book to Kristeen.
"Take care of it, this is still the only one of its kind!"
Kristeen held it to her face and sniffed it. It had an "old-book smell" mixed with a little food odour.
"What makes it so valuable?"
"If we read it, we'll find out," Brin replied, as he looked at his own copy on the console.
"'How to Apply Unknown Things?' - the title's a bit flat."
"It is," Brin said, immersed in the table of contents, while Kristeen flipped through it randomly.
"'Electricity as an Unknown Force; Gravity as an Unknown Force; Magnetism as an Unknown Force; The Brain as an Unknown Computer'," Brin read aloud. "It seems like a cliché."
"Maybe that's why it's not found anywhere, because they deemed it unnecessary."
Brin flipped back.
"Over 10,000 copies were published. They were all digitized, no questions asked."
The carrier shook and began to sway. The hard braking sent Kristeen flying off her seat. Everything happened incomprehensibly fast. After braking, the carrier turned sideways, but its speed was still too high, and it bounced along the road, spinning and rotating. They didn't even have time to recover. Brin managed to brace himself, but Kristeen was thrown back and forth in the passenger compartment. With the second bounce, the passenger compartment inflated, securing its occupants.
A few spins later, the carrier came to a halt on its side. The inflated passenger compartment relaxed. Kristeen was gasping for air, but every breath burned her lungs. The inside of the cabin began to melt. In an instant, Brin pushed open the door above his head and threw out everything he could get his hands on, then he climbed out himself. Standing on the side of the car, he turned back for Kristeen, who followed him dazedly. Brin moved quickly. He yanked open the trunk and threw their bags far away. The car body was already glowing.
"Run into the woods!" he shouted at Kristeen.
"What's happening?" Kristeen didn't understand.
Brin wrapped his towel around his neck, then put his arm around Kristeen's shoulder, pushing and nudging her towards the forest. A bubbling sound and a thin wisp of smoke rose from the carrier.
"Go!" Brin shouted, practically shoving Kristeen into the woods. "Get down!"
Kristeen didn't understand what the man wanted. Brin tripped her and then threw himself on top of her. At roughly the same moment, the bubbling sound from the carrier changed into a strange whistling sound, and then there was only heat, scorching air, and the all-encompassing noise of an explosion. Then, a dark silence.
Kristeen tried to crawl out from under the man's massive, limp body. Brin lay unconscious, his blood seeping from a thousand tiny cuts. The shockwave had hit her with small stones and branches. Kristeen couldn't hear anything from the explosion, and a sparse fire burned in the forest in front of her. She crouched on the ground, confused, shaking all over. She shivered as if it were already winter. "Fire... danger... zone..." the words hammered in her head. The fires slowly died out, unable to take hold on the damp, late-autumn forest. Brin stirred, which brought Kristeen out of her paralysis. The man took her hand, squeezed it gently, and said something. She couldn't hear a thing. Instinctively, Kristeen tried to help him sit up, but it was no use. Brin rolled onto his back. There were no injuries on his stomach. He sat up very slowly. He cautiously checked himself for injuries. Despite the blood covering his head and shoulders, he didn't seem to have any serious problems. When he took off the towel wrapped around his neck to wipe himself, finger-thick pieces of wood and pebbles fell out. Brin fumbled in his pocket, pulled out his flask, took a sip, and then handed it to Kristeen. Kristeen slowly began to hear again.
"What the hell was that?"
"The Bhicoog or the AP. We'll find out, but for now, you need to collect everything I threw out. Then, gather thin, finger-thick dry branches. A lot of them! A lot."
Kristeen didn't want to ask why anymore. She just stood up to get started. Everything was so confusing. She started shaking again as she thought back on what had happened. If it weren't for Brin, she'd be dead, or lying wounded on the side of the road until she bled out. Tears started to flow. She couldn't move; she felt her legs give way.
She watched the smoking wreck on the deserted road, in the middle of nowhere, and sobbed. Everything: her life, the world, the carrier, all of it was in ruins. Broken, turned to dust. She didn't even notice when Brin hugged her. She clung to the man's torn clothes and sobbed. Brin held her tightly. Kristeen's pain slowly subsided. Brin was huge, warm, and safe.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"We don't have much time. Start collecting the branches, but don't mess up the forest!" she heard again. Kristeen pulled herself together and started gathering. Fortunately, there was plenty of wood in the area.
She gathered a large pile of twigs. Meanwhile, Brin, still moving cautiously, brought their belongings to one place and then began to examine the remaining parts of the carrier.
"They're hunting us, but they can't do it openly. It has to look like an accident."
As he spoke, he looked at the burnt-out interior of the carrier and pulled out the re-Charge.
"See, this even survived that. We might need it!" There was bitterness in his voice; the book they had come for hadn't fared so well. It had turned into a pile of black charcoal.
Brin poured something into the passenger compartment. He hit the front of the carrier with a stone until it opened. He connected his reader to the small computer and transferred the data. He worked with calm, practiced movements. 'Intelligence agent. Of course. He was reading books in a dark room... And I was born yesterday... Or at least that's what they think.'
Kristeen watched Brin's movements.
"Put the twigs in the passenger compartment. Please!"
When they finished, Brin doused the carrier again, then closed the cabin door. He piled the remaining wood next to the fuel tank that was still intact.
"What are we doing?" Kristeen managed to say.
"Making the accident a bit bigger. Get away from there!"
Brin backed up to the edge of the road, lit a branch, and threw it onto the pyre. The fire blazed with such destructive intensity that Kristeen could feel the consuming heat on her face from several steps away. Brin scooped up their remaining bags.
"Let's go! A rescue team will be here soon, and it's better if they don't find us!" he commanded.
They turned their backs on the fire and hurried to disappear into the forest. The fire behind them grew stronger. They could still hear the strange groaning sounds and small explosions from a distance. Kristeen was cold, her head was pounding, and she didn't understand much. She walked mechanically, watching her sneakers and was glad she had listened to Brin.
They skirted around the trees for about an hour, moving roughly perpendicular to the road. The forest closed in behind them, swallowing them up like its wild animals.
"All right, we can stop now," Brin said in a small clearing.
Kristeen slumped onto a fallen tree.
"What was that?"
"We'll find out soon."
Brin pulled his console from his bag and started scrolling through the saved data.
"Now that we had the treasure, they had to destroy us. But for that, someone or something had to meddle with the system. They had to access the operational network. Unfortunately, when we went to the data centre, the carrier automatically connected to the operational network and the Knowledge Network. Sometimes all it takes is one message. It was a mistake to allow it. From then on, they were watching and listening to us constantly. A carrier is normally very safe; it's rare for one to have an accident," Brin explained, looking at the data. "Well, let's see! The story of the final moments. The carrier sensed a huge tree in front of it, tried to brake and turn sideways to avoid a head-on collision. That's when it flipped over. At the same time, it sensed that the outside air had become dangerously cold. They didn't mess around, it measured zero Kelvin cold, and it tried to compensate for this, so it put all the heat from the engine compartment onto the outer walls and the interior, which caught fire by the time it stopped the heat pump. The burning car body reached battery number one, which exploded. Then the piled-up sugar burned. There wasn't much of it this time, because a lot had been used up on the long journey. That's why we had to help with the pyre. To finish what they started. That's what happened."
"But there wasn't even a tree!" Kristeen blurted out.
"Of course there wasn't. But a sensor can be fooled. More specifically, the unit that receives the sensor data. A beautiful, sophisticated operation. But what else can we expect from the church? The Inquisition is out of fashion now."
"You think it was them? Because of that stupid thing?"
"It was definitely them. And they might not know what we found, just that we found something. That was enough."
Kristeen didn't want to accept this explanation, but she saw no other option than Brin.
"But you said it was a soft prison. That whatever we found, they'd deny it anyway."
"Well, I was wrong. This seems to be faster. Maybe they haven't gotten soft after all. We have to get back to the library, and from there I can call Daan. He can protect us. Maybe."
"Do you know which way to go?" Kristeen asked, scared.
Brin fiddled with his handheld console for a bit, then pulled a strange, showy device from his pocket. After a little fussing, he extended his arm and showed her the way.
"We should go that way, but we have to find water and get some rest. I'm deadly tired. And it's getting dark soon. So, we'll go this way," and he pointed a little further away.
"Let's go!" Kristeen agreed.
They didn't have to walk for even half an hour before they found a clear stream. Kristeen washed her face with such joy, as if she hadn't bathed in a hundred years. Brin was more careful. His clothes had dried to his wounds. He hissed as he pulled them off. Kristeen tried to help him, but she didn't have much experience.
"The towel, it really brought you luck, there's no injury on your neck. But your back..." Kristeen said, horrified, looking at Brin. Then she remembered something. "That white book. Did you bring it?"
Brin rummaged in his bag and handed it to her. Kristeen flipped through it. She remembered well that there was a separate chapter on injuries. One of the pictures showed a tree on a riverbank, with longish leaves and thin, drooping branches.
"Do you recognize this tree?"
"Willow. Yes. Look, there's one right there," Brin pointed a few meters away.
"Do you have a knife?" Kristeen asked.
Brin fumbled for a while, then pressed a pocketknife into Kristeen's hand. Kristeen followed the book's instructions, peeled the willow bark, and placed it on Brin's wounds.
"It says this will make it better!" she poked at one of the pictures.
"Well, I'd be happy with that," sighed Brin, who was now overcome with fatigue. "It'll be dark soon; we need to make a place to sleep! Come on, help me, I'm not very quick right now!" Brin looked at the ground, kicking the fallen leaves with his huge boots. The ground was soft, and the leaves scattered everywhere.
"This will be a good spot, if I'm not mistaken, there are no ants nearby. It's expected to get cold tonight, but we can't make a fire, because they'll find us immediately, so we need to gather branches and leaves, lots and lots of dry leaves."
"You want to sleep in a pile of leaves?"
"Better than freezing to death. Just as 40 degrees is enough to cook you, 24 is enough to freeze you. And it's colder now, so we need to create an insulating layer, and leaves are excellent for that. We'll make a mini tent out of branches, cover it with leaves as thickly as possible, maybe inside too, and we'll ride out the night there. Fortunately, there's plenty of raw material."
Brin still moved with difficulty, but he did his part. He stuck a thick, forked branch into the ground and propped several thinner branches against it. Kristeen carried the fallen leaves both into the tent and onto the thin branches. Soon the pile was so big that they could comfortably hide in it.
"It'll do for one night. If we had more time, we could make something better, but this is what we have. Come on!" Brin crawled under the roof and covered himself with leaves as much as he could. Kristeen followed him, having no better option.
It was quite warm among the leaves. But the sounds of the dark forest grew louder. The stream, which had been murmuring silently until now, became annoyingly loud. The wind would pick up and then die down. Trees creaked, birds shrieked nearby, and the arrhythmic, smudgy noises kept Kristeen awake. She felt like she'd never fall asleep, but she tried to lie relaxed and still as much as she could. She listened to Brin's breathing. Fortunately, he didn't snore. It was reassuring, she didn't want to wake him. When sleep finally pulled her in, the past day came crashing down on her. The carrier's lurching, her helplessness in the passenger compartment, and the heat that had seared her lungs. She was drenched in terror as she crept to the edge of the dream. 'I've picked up some good PTSD,' she thought. 'Judy would definitely have some pills for this too.' But for now, she had to rely on her own mind. 'This isn't going to go away on its own.' She tried to consciously imagine all the horrors. Slowly and carefully, always keeping control, gently rationing the accident. Until suddenly the world slipped away from her, and she finally fell sound asleep again.
