Read Serials

It was pitch-black when I woke up. The smell of vomit hit me first, then the pain in my head. It felt like someone had rammed a large spike through it. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out; it was at least long enough for the lights to shut off. The darkness underground was extremely eerie because there was no ambient light anywhere—and I mean anywhere. It felt somewhat like I was trapped in the middle of a horror movie, and in a way, I was.

The motion of me lifting my upper body off the floor triggered the lights, revealing the source of the smell. Yep, there I was, laying in a pool of my own vomit. Friends had told me about these types of mornings, but I had never drunk alcohol or done drugs, so this was an unfamiliar experience for me. Pulling myself up to the sink, I cleaned myself off by taking a hobo shower and washing off the throw-up out of my shirt. I still could smell it, so I scrubbed harder with the soap. Once I could smell more soap than vomit, I wrung it out and put it back on. I sniffed myself, and I nearly forgot what was happening in a slight moment of clarity.

“Oh, man,” I wished my nostrils could no longer sense smell. “I—I stink… I stink baaad!”

I stood there for a moment, trying to catch my bearings, when I realized that the swelling of my face had gotten considerably worse.

“Daaang.”

It felt as bad as it looked.

The pounding of my pulse thudded in my head as I touched my cheek, feeling the cold sweat on my skin.

My vision was distorted, and everything seemed like it was still spinning around the room, like during times in my life when I’d had vertigo.

As much as I wanted to just head to bed and crash, I knew I needed to focus my attention on contacting someone, so I stumbled my way down the hall to the Operations Room.

Ops now resembled more of a movie style Control Center than what they had in the ’60s, complete with a wall of view screens. This room would have been full of cabinets housing most of the Remington Rand Univac Athena computer back when it was built. I really didn’t need all the cabinets to be in there since the computing power of a phone was more than they had in this whole facility back then.

We had routed everything to be controlled at one console, by one person. Of course, I did this to a totally separate console than the original ones that would have been used by whomever was manning this place. I really wanted the Launch Control Console to seem like I could still launch the missiles that were no longer housed here. The geek in me couldn’t resist, so they were built to the specs based on what would have been here when the place was originally built, complete with a clock set to Greenwich Mean Time in military time.

Every American missile system spread across the world operated off the same time zone to allow for precise timing and coordination. That put the end of the world at 6:48 GMT, or Zulu time, which is really what the military would have used. Not as cool as 10:48 PM, but it worked. Right then, the clock said it was 10:16, so I couldn’t have been passed out for long, right?

Unless it’s a different day. What if? Man, I hope not.

I had to push that thought aside for now, and focus on the problem at hand—seeing if my Operations Room, or more importantly, my Ham Shack, still worked.

The decor might have been straight out of the 1960s, but everything in the room was state of the art, filled with high-tech equipment from today. There was no way anyone’s phone was going to outperform this place now. The monitors displayed information that I might need to keep an eye on in different parts of the facility. I also had all the cameras throughout the complex routed through here, including the ones I had topside. Now I just had to hope that the Faraday cages I had built for them actually worked, and that they didn’t get damaged in the blast.

The side effect of a nuclear detonation was an EMP that would temporarily or permanently disable electronics. I was pretty sure that was what knocked out my MECHA device.

The government discovered early on that the electromagnetic pulse caused by a nuclear weapon would wipe out electronics for hundreds of miles around the blast. It didn’t matter if the devices were on or off—they just stopped working. They found that metallic shielding made out of continuous metals like steel or copper fully surrounding the object would protect it.

A Faraday cage was something that seemed like it would do the trick. It was a metal enclosure that would block electromagnetic fields by using conductive materials and was invented by Michael Faraday back in 1836. They sort of looked like you built chicken cages out of metal surrounding whatever it is you were trying to protect. Of course, they didn’t have to look like that, and they could be built solid, too, even with fabrics. Many times they were worked into the construction of a surrounding, much like what is done with MRI rooms. The fencing style was a great way to be able to see through to whatever it enclosed, much like the front of your microwave oven, which uses a Faraday type cage to shield you from radiation.

I think the first time I saw the Faraday principle in action was watching ArcAttack at Maker Faire. Of course, I’d seen it on TV, but there was something mesmerizing about seeing a Tesla coil shooting out high voltage arcs across the sky right in front of you. ArcAttack transformed those mini-lightning looking arcs into music, so it was doubly awesome. They’d have someone out there performing in a Faraday suit, and they had a Faraday cage that protected their robot drummer, King Beat. If you were lucky enough, they might pick you to go in the other Faraday cage on stage.

It was the perfect way to keep all my cameras and any electronic equipment I had topside safe from an EMP. So I built something like a Faraday cage for my cameras, solar power, wind turbines, everything—except for the vehicles I had topside. All of them were classic cars and trucks that an EMP wouldn’t affect, so I didn’t need to worry about them. Of course, that wouldn’t matter if they were destroyed in the explosion.

Luckily I had pulled a Batman using the missile elevator in Silo #3 to bring a few of my vehicles underground after we were done bringing in materials. I didn’t expect I’d need them for something like this, I just thought it was a very cool garage.

It seemed like I might be okay at this point since I currently had power. The only problem was that the power could be coming from the batteries instead of from what was being generated.

I sat down at the new Main Control Center and switched on the power, which also turned on the monitors.

There were dozens of cameras scattered across my property. None of the permanently topside cameras seemed to be working. Luckily, I thought it would be cool to have cameras that were built in Faraday cages that would rise out of the ground like a sprinkler to spy on my topside.

“Come on, Faraday cages, don’t fail me now,” I pleaded as I flipped the switch to raise one of them out of the ground.

Muck began to cover the lens the moment it popped out of the ground. It made it more difficult to see, but what I could make out was something that looked like the world was on fire. Hopefully, I would get a better sense of everything once the sun came up in the morning.

Will my luck continue with coms? I thought as I grabbed the microphone and flipped on the communications radio, AKA my ham radio.

I didn’t know if the antenna was still standing, or even if I would find anyone on the other end. Either way, I needed to try. I scanned through the different frequencies to see if anyone else was broadcasting.

Nothing.

“CQ, CQ, CQ. This is KN6PFA, Kilo November Six Papa Foxtrot Alpha. Is there anyone out there?” I appealed to anybody listing on each frequency. “My name is Joe, and I’m trying to find out if anyone else survived.”

All I could hear was static on the other end. Patiently, I waited for a response each time, hoping someone else had gotten their Ham Shack up and running. There were so many things that could have gone wrong: the blast destroying their equipment or knocking down their antenna, the EMP knocking out their equipment, or even the simple fact that the whole nuclear fallout was creating a ton of interference with the radio signals. But there was also hope; after all, I had heard some of the first radio communications after Hiroshima were from amateur radio.

That made sense since the amateur radio community had been made a part of the emergency communications plan for America when disaster would strike, with multiple groups there to lend a hand like ARES, CERT, and RACES.

ARES, AKA the Amateur Radio Emergency Service was a group of ham radio volunteers that gave both their time and equipment for communications when a disaster struck. Then there was CERT, which pretty much summed itself up in the name: Community Emergency Response Teams. And if there weren’t enough acronyms being thrown around, you know the government was all in. FEMA and the FCC created a protocol called RACES, which stood for Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service, typically activated by the government during an emergency and the aftermath. If the President of the United States invoked the War Powers Act, only RACES volunteer operators would be authorized to transmit during that timeframe.

Across the United States, there had to be a ton of ham operators attempting to help reconnect our lines of communication. These people were our last line of communication during disasters, and I’m sure plenty of them were situated for crazy things happening. Heck, I know there are way more people better prepared for this than I am, and I’m still alive. I’d wager a huge chunk, if not all, of those people have a ham radio. We weren’t a small group of people. There were close to 800,000 amateur radio operators across America, and something like 3 million in the world. We all had different reasons why we did it or how we got into it. My introduction to amateur radio was because my parents wouldn’t pay the long distance bill for me to talk to my friend, Bret, when he moved away from Sacramento.

During the pre-cell phone era, it was the cheapest way to stay in contact with someone who wasn’t living in the local calling area. It was an era of either becoming a pen pal or never getting to talk to someone once they moved out-of-state. I didn’t like writing letters, so goodbye Bret. Then I discovered a third option in Cub Scouts: amateur radio.

My parents were too cheap to buy me a ham radio, so I had to build it myself—and boy, am I glad they were so darn cheap because it changed my life. That single act led me down the path of building things, something I found that I had both a knack for and love of doing. Before I built computers, I built ham radios. It taught me so much.

Bret was the only ‘friend’ that I communicated with on my ham; Maya and Sanjay never got into amateur radio. I mean, I had other friends I made on ham, some of which I even met in person, but most of them were much like some of my online friends—you know, people I chatted with that I never met in person. The only difference was that there was no way to have a private conversation on ham radio. Looking back at it as an adult, that probably was a really good thing considering the child predators that were out there online.

It was cool though; I could never handle being alone, and it gave me someone to talk to no matter what. We’d geek out together, and since it was pre-internet, it enabled me to ask pointers on various things I was doing with my Ham Shack.

Nothing made me prouder as a kid than my Ham Shack. No, it wasn’t a place where you ate ham at, it was my amateur radio station. Man, I wonder what the adults really thought of this kid bragging about all the crazy things I was doing. Then again, a lot of the guys I met on ham were super excited to see other people getting into their favorite hobby.

One of the things I loved as a kid was that ham had its own ‘secret’ language, that wasn’t really a secret, sort of like ordering ‘Animal Style’ or something else from In-N-Out’s not-so-secret secret menu. Everyone knew about it, but it was fun being part of the club. And I’m not talking about morse code either—something all amateur radio operators had to learn back when I got my ham license. Nope, I’m talking about the ham lingo like saying ‘73’ for ‘best regards’ or ‘CQ’ for ‘calling all stations,’ not to mention the phonetic alphabet. There’s nothing cooler than saying your call sign that way. Kilo November Six Papa Foxtrot Alpha sounded so much better than KN6PFA.

It’s funny because I hated the idea of being just a number to government, yet I loved my call sign. I guess that doesn’t matter anymore, even on the ham side of things. Anyone using a ham radio had to be licensed back before the world decided to blow itself up, except that rule was never in effect during an emergency. Then anyone could use the amateur radio frequencies. At this point I’d say we were in a permanent state of emergency.

That didn’t stop me from following the protocols though. I continued to identify myself as I scanned the airwaves. For hours I called out to anyone who would listen before finally giving up, I mean, I was tired—really tired. Heck, I don’t know if I’d ever felt that wiped.

There wasn’t anything more I could do. Maybe they’d have the television or radio stations up and running by the morning. I was sure people were just scrambling to survive at this point. I decided it was the perfect point to go take another shower and then catch up on some sleep since I wouldn’t say the passing out counted.

It was nice to remove the smell of vomit. I used the showers on the first level and then headed back up to sleep in the Launch Complex Office that was next to the operations room. There was a bed in there, which was something I had set up because that was the way it was in the photos of the actual missile complexes. I wish I could have asked someone why they used the office as sleeping quarters when there were plenty of beds on the lower level. Seemed odd at the time, but maybe it was for situations like this.

The door to the Launch Complex Office opened up directly into the Operations Room, so I left on coms, and turned on the radio and television just in case. I didn’t mind the white noise; I always liked having a fan on or something like that anyway, so this worked for me. I’m not sure I even needed the white noise because I crashed the moment my head hit the pillow—well, at least until an explosion woke me from my stupor.

DON’T WANT TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?

Grab all of Season One now!

Better yet, if you buy directly from me, I’ll give you 50% off eBooks or audiobooks. Just enter the coupon code PAJ50.

CHAPTER 11

Joe Gillis — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:33:15 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode Two: It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Don't Feel Fine

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 11

“You have got to be kidding me,” I grumbled to myself as I staggered toward the blocked complex entrance.

I was pretty sure that the wreckage before me was the remnants of my above-ground house.

Time was of the essence. I had to move quickly to remove all the debris blocking the entrance to my new home before it was too late.

Hmm, wait a second. How long can I be up here before the radiation causes permanent damage to me?

Before panic could set in, I remembered the story of the guy who survived two atomic bombs. His name escaped me, but I recalled that he was working in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped during World War II. He was only two miles away from ground zero. His face and forearm were badly burned, and his eardrums had ruptured, but he lived and made his way home to Nagasaki. Little did he know that the U.S. would drop another bomb a few days later in his hometown. He ended up surviving both atomic bombings—and a double dose of radiation, living a relatively normal life until passing away at 93 years old. That gave me hope. I knew little about radiation. What I did know, was the longer I was outside, the worse it was for me.

Oh wait, wasn’t the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated 3,333 times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima?

Oh, crap. That guy lived through something much smaller than what might have just gone off. The Russians created a bomb that had a 50-megaton blast—and that was back in the ’60s. So who knows how bad this thing is? It could be worse, or it could even be less than what we had in WWII. All I could hope for was that North Korea was only up to the levels we were at when we first started our atomic program.

I really doubt it, but one can hope, right? Ohhh crap, the freakin’ Russians launched theirs, too.

There was no time to worry about it; I needed to keep moving debris away from the door like my life depended upon it—because I was dang sure it did.

My hands plunged into my pockets, and I pulled out a pair of gloves, slipping them on over my hands.

With determination and focus, I started throwing pieces of wood and rubble out of my way.

The strain in my arms was intensifying as I shifted the large chunks of debris. I gasped in pain as I moved the large pieces. My breathing was heavy, my heart beating rapidly, but I was determined to keep going no matter how tired I was… except there was another problem.

The air is toxic. How could I have not freakin’ thought about that?!

Quickly, I searched through my pockets on my hi-vis vest for the mask I kept in there.

Come on… come on… it’s—it’s gotta be here.

Why is it when you need something, it’s always in the last place you look? Bingo!

Wasting no more time, I pulled it out of the wrapper, unfolded it, pulled the elastic straps over my head, and turned my attention back to the major problem at hand.

A faint orange light from distant fires helped light my way. Shadows of me working danced along the large stack of junk blocking my escape, which made my exhausted self appear to be moving way faster than I knew I really was moving. It was like playing a game of life or death Jenga, hoping the removal of the next object didn’t send the wall of debris ruins tumbling down on top of me. Gradually, piece by piece, a glimmer of hope began to emerge out of the darkness as the entrance slowly began to be revealed. I felt a massive wave of relief wash over me. It gave me the burst of energy I needed to keep going. Every ounce of me screamed out in pain, but determination fueled me to keep moving forward.

Finally after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, the entrance was cleared, and I stumbled inside exhaustedly.

Breathing heavily, I quickly closed the door of the bunker and spun the handle wheel to lock it in place. The pain in my body was unbearable, and I collapsed to the floor as I let out a deep sigh of relief.

I’m safe… for now.

Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention, causing me to glance down at my watch, where light reflecting off glass fragments of the smashed clock face was bouncing right up into my eyes. The clock hands were no longer moving. The blast had broken my watch and now the clock hands rested permanently at 10:47.

The end of the world happened at 10:47. I chuckled to myself, as I thought, Wasn’t that the time Bruce Wayne would set the clock to access the Batcave… or was it 10:48 PM?

It was like the answer was just a bit outside of reach. All I knew for sure was that it was the exact time that all hell broke loose in the outside world, but here I was, safe and sound in my underground sanctuary—well, sort of safe.

Even though my head was still pounding, I knew I needed to make my way to the Decontamination Room. I pulled myself back up using the handrails and mustered up the strength to keep moving.

The Decon Room wasn’t something that was originally a part of the complex; I had it built right next to the entrance because I thought having a working Decon Room would be cool—and for the life of me, I never thought I’d actually use it.

The lights turned on once I stepped inside in the Decon Room. They were motion-activated, which was the type of switches I had added to all the rooms in the retrofit. Now that I was most likely radioactive, I was really glad that I had done that. Man, I was feeling pretty out of it, and couldn’t really remember what I needed to do, so it was nice to have the CDC’s Decontamination for Yourself and Others infographic on the wall to tell me what to do.

“‘Step 1: Take off outer layer of clothing. Taking off your outer layer of clothing can remove up to 90% of radioactive material.’”

Well, that’s good news.

“‘Be very careful in removing your clothing to prevent radioactive dust from shaking loose. Put the clothing in a plastic bag or other sealable container.’”

I grabbed a plastic bag from the box sitting on a shelf nearby and carefully removed my clothes before shoving them into the bag.

“‘Put the bag in an out-of-the-way place, away from other people and pets.’ I really don’t think that last part will be a problem,” I joked, before I deposited the bag into the incinerator meant to permanently dispose of the clothes. Then I moved on to the next step.

“Step 2: Wash yourself off. If you can take a shower: use soap and shampoo. Do not use conditioner because it will cause radioactive material to stick to your hair. Do not scald, scrub, or scratch your skin. Keep cuts and scrapes covered when washing to keep from getting radioactive material in open wounds.’”

“Psst, I don’t even know where my wounds are,” I shrugged off my concerns.

Oh, well, I’m sure this is going to be better than doing nothing.

Stepping into the decontamination shower, I turned it on, letting the water pour over me before pumping some shampoo out of the wall dispenser. There was grime covering me wherever my clothes weren’t, and the shower felt amazing, and somehow seemed to lessen the pain a little. After washing off my hair, I soaped up and cleaned completely off. After I was done, I just stood under the showerhead and enjoyed the peace for a moment.

Except I couldn’t stop thinking about rad. Not the short version of radical, instead I was locked in on the version of rad that was the unit of measurement used to describe the radiation absorbed dose AKA rad. Most likely, I had both external and internal contamination, and I didn’t know what 2 of the 3 basic things were that could have determined my dose of radiation.

Both time of exposure and distance from blast were unknown since I had no way of accessing my MECHA tech. The only thing I did know was that I didn’t have any shielding from the blast, unless you consider the chunks of building shielding me as they hit me, which, of course, made my time of exposure unknown after knocking me out.

Man, radiation is everywhere; it’s the dose that makes it dangerous or lethal. If ALFINA would have stayed on, she’d be able to tell me how long I was out there and how far away I was from the explosion. Instead, I couldn’t even guess what my rad numbers were. More importantly, it wasn’t rad—far from it.

During the points where I’d go down the rabbit hole of radioactive research after buying my “nuclear facility,” I came across rad, and all I could think was, Why would you give something so horrible the awesome acronym of rad? Here I was again, thinking the same thing.

After I was done showering, I headed into the Clean Area, and read the next obvious step on the sign in there.

“‘Step 3: Put on clean clothes’… Uh, like no duh,” I quipped as I scanned over the options.

The rest of it dealt with not having clean clothes, and the next step that included helping others and pets. None of that was applicable, so I toweled off. Boy, did that hurt. Every muscle ached as I dried myself, and it was worse as I struggled to put on the scrubs I grabbed off the shelf. Luckily, there was a pair of slippers I could just step into on the floor.

I slid into them and walked over to the sink, checking out the damage in the mirror. There I stood, staring like it was the first time I’d ever seen myself. After spending years trying to conform to what everyone else wanted me to be, I had grown out my hair and beard. My hair hadn’t been long since I was a teenager, but times had changed and I no longer got made fun of for it or followed around in stores because they thought I looked like a thief. I checked out the scrubs I was wearing and got a slight chuckle on how non-threatening they seemed on me. I don’t think the clerks at the stores would worry about me stealing while wearing this. It was certainly less threatening than the leather jacket, jeans, and tee shirt that I usually wore—and a little less rock-n-roll, too. I stopped caring what people thought of me a few years back, after I realized I was at a point in my life where I could just be me, not some version of me that people wanted me to be. I had become successful enough to do whatever I wanted, so I did.

Not that self-confidence meant anything now. I might be the last person alive on Earth, and I don’t feel well at all. If anyone else had been around, they would have noticed that something was wrong with me. It wasn’t so much the outer wounds that were the problem; I mean, I definitely had a few cuts on my face and arms, and there was a whole lot of bruising and swelling, but none of that compared to how horrible I felt. It was as if a piece of rebar had pierced my head or something.

Of course, I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, so I at least knew it wasn’t that. I was never a fighter, but I imagined this is how I might have looked if I was part of a fight club—not that I’d ever tell you if I was in a fight club. I had without a doubt lost that fight, and by the looks of it, I didn’t tap out either. No, whoever it was must have felt like destroying something beautiful, and knocked me the heck out in the process—which now that I think about it—I’m pretty sure that’s what actually happened.

Interestingly, the green flecks in my hazel eyes were really beginning to pop as the coloring from the shiner filled in. My eyes and nose were swollen. It looked like I had just gone 12 rounds and didn’t block a single punch. I lifted my shirt and saw that it wasn’t just my head that took a beating. I was pretty darn red all over. I’d bet that I would be heading toward a nice black and blue color in a day or two. All in all, the outer injuries weren’t too bad for someone who had just been smacked head on by a nuclear blast—that and a few of my own buildings.

I spotted a medical kit on the shelf and grabbed it to patch up my cuts. As I worked, I had to use the sink to brace myself. My head was still pounding, and I was really feeling light-headed.

“Oh, come on, aspirin,” I mumbled as I thumbed through the kit. “Oh, potassium iodide.”

On the wall next to the med kit, there were two posters from the CDC: How Potassium Iodide (KI) Works and How Prussian Blue Works. Both were pills that could be taken during radiation emergencies. I knew I didn’t have Prussian blue because that required a prescription, whereas KI was an over-the-counter drug, and I was holding a pack of pills that I had purchased. I read the Potassium Iodide (KI) poster out loud.

“‘KI is a pill or liquid that can be used in radiation emergencies that involve radioactive iodine. KI contains non-radioactive iodine. Non-radioactive iodine helps prevent radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid gland.’ Hmm, well, I’d say this qualifies as a radiation emergency.”

I pushed the pill out of its blister pack as I continued reading. “‘How does KI work? The thyroid gland cannot tell the difference between non-radioactive and radioactive iodine. It will absorb both kinds. KI works by keeping radioactive iodine out of the thyroid gland where it can cause damage. When a person takes KI, the thyroid absorbs the non-radioactive iodine in the medicine. Because KI contains so much non-radioactive iodine, the thyroid becomes ‘full’ and cannot absorb any more iodine—either stable or radioactive—for the next 24 hours.’”

I reached for a cup at the sink by the posters and filled it with water. “Um, yes, please,” and then I downed the KI pill.

I turned my attention to the much needed aspirin and popped a couple before stumbling my way out of there and down the stairs of Silo #1. There was an elevator, but that seemed like a bad idea with everything that had just happened.

The handrails helped me stay standing up, but it still wasn’t an easy task. I finally made it down to the level that had my entertainment system and parked myself in front of the TV to see if I could get any more information on the incident. I started flipping through channels, hoping for any news on the world above. Unfortunately all I got was static. I opened my laptop and checked the Internet. No connection. I double-checked the radio—zilch, nada, nothing.

“Oh, yeah…” I declared as I suddenly remembered that my crew had rebuilt the Control Center which included communications—AKA my Ham Shack.

Maybe I could contact someone that way? I thought as I got up with a renewed sense of hope.

I made my way to the personnel tunnel that led to the Control Center Operations Room. The Control Center served as the command post for the complex, so I had the two-story, dome-shaped structure fully restored with retro ’60s military style consoles, except I had upgraded it with modern tech.

The personnel tunnel was attached to the lower level of the Control Center. I entered through the open doorway and slowly made my way to the stairs in the middle of the level. There were and still are, 14 rooms total on both floors. This level was 100 feet in diameter and had everything the complex had when it was in operation: kitchen and dining room, a place for recreation, sleeping quarters, and bathrooms. I had intended to use this as a guest apartment, but I couldn’t think about that at the moment. Right then I needed to focus on the upper level where the Launch Control Center and the Operations and Communications Equipment Rooms were located.

As I headed up the stairs, the stenciled sign outside the door at the top of the stairs caught my attention:

Man, the sign hit home. Strategic Air Command, AKA SAC, instituted the No-Lone Zones where there always had to be two or more qualified people in those areas. It was used as a safety precaution in dangerous parts of the facility, like the silos where there were missiles loaded with rocket fuel and a nuclear device. Not to mention it was a way to keep people from tampering with or damaging the nuclear weapons, critical components, or nuclear systems by not giving them an opportunity to be alone to do anything unauthorized in any of the No-Lone Zones.

“Well, I’m just going to have to violate SAC policy, aren’t I?” I remarked as I entered.

The door to the right led to the Communications Equipment Room, straight ahead was the latrine, and the door to the left was the Operations Room. I chose left. The moment I stepped through the door, it felt a little like I was in the middle of an earthquake, or at the beginning stages of vertigo. I stumbled some before catching myself. At first I thought I might be getting dizzy from the blows I received earlier, but then I remembered that they had built the upper level with a one-foot clearance all the way around with shock mounts that created a shockproof level. I guess the shockwave from the blast was enough to get things moving up here.

Although the room was barely moving at this point, it was enough to make me extremely nauseated, and I sprinted to the bathroom to throw up. After I expelled my dinner, I recognized that I was exhibiting signs of a concussion.

Headache. Check. Vomiting. Check. Memory loss… um… let me think… uh… I mentally listed off.

I realized that I could remember almost everything about my underground lair. Heck, I remembered a ton of the nuclear facts I had read or watched, which had been one of my favorite pastimes once I had started focusing all my time on my reconstruction efforts.

The surroundings of the underground lair stretched out before my mind, each detail clear and familiar. The nuclear facts I had studied were like a mental movie playing in my mind. But as I tried to recall other memories from before the blast, everything became hazy or distorted, like a blurred photograph. I was catching glimpses of things from my past, but so many things seemed to be blurred.

“Memory loss… check-ish. Oh, man, this is not good,” I noted as the room began to swirl around me, with each object blurring into the next. My vision tunneled and faded with the colors melting together like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. Suddenly, everything went dark. I had lost consciousness.

DON’T WANT TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?

Grab all of Season One now!

Better yet, if you buy directly from me, I’ll give you 50% off eBooks or audiobooks. Just enter the coupon code PAJ50.

Great Serials to Read - Romance

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:20:35 GMT

Beautifully Dead

Beautifully Dead is a paranormal romance serial written by and . This Civil War epistolary novel tells a tale of forbidden love that transcends both battle lines and the boundary between life and death.

Our story unfolds across two timelines:

A historical romance between a Southern belle transformed by a mysterious "affliction" and a Union Army chaplain questioning everything he believes
A parallel romance and mystery that complements and reflects the historical timeline, following a Northern academic who discovers her ancestral connection to these star-crossed lovers.

As our modern protagonist uncovers the truth about her ancestors, she finds herself drawn into a similar journey that bridges the past and present in unexpected ways.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Post-Apocalyptic

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:16:11 GMT

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland

"Every chapter gets better and better. Can't wait to read more. Have no idea where this is going and loving it." - Ryan McKinney, Writer and Director, The Invited

Survive. Clone. Repeat.

After a nuclear war destroys the world as we know it, Joe and his clone army are forced to battle giant killer rats deep within his underground bunker. It's like "Multiplicity" meets "Fallout," with a dash of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Buckle up for the wildest ride since the apocalypse!

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Paranormal

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:13:00 GMT

Beautifully Dead

Paranormal Historical Romance

Our story unfolds across two timelines:

A historical romance between a Southern belle transformed by a mysterious "affliction" and a Union Army chaplain questioning everything he believes
A parallel romance and mystery that complements and reflects the historical timeline, following a Northern academic who discovers her ancestral connection to these star-crossed lovers.

As our modern protagonist uncovers the truth about her ancestors, she finds herself drawn into a similar journey that bridges the past and present in unexpected ways.

Westville

Paranormal Mystery Thriller

Westville might seem like your average western Michigan small town, but just beneath the quiet facade there are hidden secrets, and deep in the woods something hungers…

READ: Westville Season 1 (New Episodes on Fridays)

LISTEN: The Westville Season 1 Podcast

Welcome to Westville. There might not be any getting out.

Read Westville

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Science Fiction

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:10:00 GMT

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland

"Every chapter gets better and better. Can't wait to read more. Have no idea where this is going and loving it." - Ryan McKinney, Writer and Director, The Invited

Survive. Clone. Repeat.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Horror

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:08:00 GMT

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland

"Every chapter gets better and better. Can't wait to read more. Have no idea where this is going and loving it." - Ryan McKinney, Writer and Director, The Invited

Survive. Clone. Repeat.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Historical Fiction

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:05:27 GMT

Beautifully Dead

Our story unfolds across two timelines:

A historical romance between a Southern belle transformed by a mysterious "affliction" and a Union Army chaplain questioning everything he believes
A parallel romance and mystery that complements and reflects the historical timeline, following a Northern academic who discovers her ancestral connection to these star-crossed lovers.

As our modern protagonist uncovers the truth about her ancestors, she finds herself drawn into a similar journey that bridges the past and present in unexpected ways.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read - Comedy

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 21:02:04 GMT

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland

"Every chapter gets better and better. Can't wait to read more. Have no idea where this is going and loving it." - Ryan McKinney, Writer and Director, The Invited

Survive. Clone. Repeat.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

Great Serials to Read

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 20:53:00 GMT

FEATURED SERIALS

Beautifully Dead

Paranormal Historical Romance

Our story unfolds across two timelines:

A historical romance between a Southern belle transformed by a mysterious "affliction" and a Union Army chaplain questioning everything he believes
A parallel romance and mystery that complements and reflects the historical timeline, following a Northern academic who discovers her ancestral connection to these star-crossed lovers.

As our modern protagonist uncovers the truth about her ancestors, she finds herself drawn into a similar journey that bridges the past and present in unexpected ways.

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland

Sci-Fi Comedy

"Every chapter gets better and better. Can't wait to read more. Have no idea where this is going and loving it." - Ryan McKinney, Writer and Director, The Invited

Survive. Clone. Repeat.

Comedy | Historical Fiction | Horror | Sci-Fi | Paranormal | Post-Apocalyptic | Romance

CHAPTER 10

Joe Gillis — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 20:41:11 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode Two: It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Don't Feel Fine

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 10

I had gotten so caught up in multitasking between searching the landscape for my construction crew, and talking to Maya and Sanjay, that it hadn’t even registered to me that the broadcast had stopped. In fact, I couldn’t access the Internet anymore at all. It seemed as though I lost contact with everyone.

“Guys, you there? Maya? Sanjay?” I cried out.

A few seconds later, a familiar robotic voice answered. “The connection is gone, Joe. Are you okay?”

“I have no one, ALFINA.” Even though she wasn’t real, I fought hard to hold back crying.

“You have me, Joe.”

“Thanks, ALFINA,” I said as I wiped away my tears.

“Can you get a radio signal?”

“Yes.”

“Can you scan the channels for any broadcasts?”

“Scanning… I found this, Joe.”

The channel volume raised to my default volume right in time to catch that annoying tone sound.

“California’s Office of Emergency Services has been warned of an imminent missile threat to California. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor. We will announce when the threat has ended. This is not a drill. Take immediate action measures. Repeat. California’s Office of Emergency Services has been warned of an imminent missile threat…”

It continued to repeat the message with no new information.

“Immediate action measures?” I contemplated before I glanced down at my watch.

“Might I suggest heading inside, Joe.”

“10:41, so we have…” I wasn’t sure why I was even trying to calculate it. The MECHA system was what I really needed to use to figure out how much time I had left.

“ALFINA, how much time until impact?”

“Based on the time of broadcast, I estimate six minutes until impact.”

ALFINA was so much more informative than a watch, but I liked the action of lifting my arm to check the time—that, and the watch had sentimental value.

“ALFINA, what are the odds anyone will make it back here before then?”

“The odds of anyone making it back in time is zero.”

I knew she was right, but I wasn’t willing to give up hope and continued to scan for returning vehicles.

“Joe, why have you not sought shelter yet?”

“I can’t give up hope, ALFINA. I mean, someone has to make it back, right?”

“Joe, your odds of survival are much higher indoors. Based on my calculations, you should really seek shelter.”

“I can’t ALFINA. I just can’t give up hope.”

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity before I spotted an explosion nearby. It lit up the night sky with the most brilliant, yet intense light, I have ever seen. Without hesitation, I looked away and shut my eyes tight, throwing my forearm up as an additional shield from the blaze of light. The blinding white light still seared through my eyelids, leaving me momentarily disoriented and panicked.

“Gosh, dang it!” I cursed under my breath.

What the heck was I thinking?!

My heart raced, knowing exactly what had just happened.

As the seconds passed, a deafening silence enveloped me, broken only by the sound of my panic-stricken breaths. But then the explosion came, confirming my worst fears... well, not the worst. That came after I realized my forearm should have been blocking most of the light.

I opened my eyes while still covering them with my forearm, only to discover I still had a white haze filling my vision.

I always feared losing my sight. Now I was stuck above ground in what might be a nuclear apocalypse, and I might have flash blindness AKA a temporary disruption in my vision where I can't see!

Flash freakin' blindness!

Taking a deep breath, I tried to remind myself that the effects may only last seconds or minutes, which is great, but here’s the other thing: it can also be permanent... and I couldn’t stop thinking about that option.

Did I closed my eyes fast enough?

Maybe, but maybe wasn’t good enough to calm me down.

Guess what was one way it could be permanent? From a freakin’ nuclear explosion!

Chill out, Joe… it might not be permanent.

And just as quickly as I lost it, my vision returned, just in time to see a billowing dark cloud of anger ripping across the surface. It was sheer brilliance to see it in person. It felt like it was alive. A beast tearing through the sky, sending its tentacles across the Earth, destroying anything that crossed its path, and drawing my eyes to the massive mushroom cloud growing in the distance. That’s when I had the craziest thought.

Man, my guys totally nailed the whole end of the world thing.

Seconds later, I was smacked head on with the shockwave–and a whole lot of debris.

What the—

Everything went black.

Did I just lose consciousness?

It felt like I did. My head was pounding like a semi-truck had just hit it. I was still alive, so I guess I was far enough away from the blast that my body didn’t disintegrate into ashes.

My hard hat was lying next to me on the ground. I picked it up and got a closer look at it. Tiny fragments of rock were embedded in it, like a layer of diamonds. In a panic, I began to inspect my head and face for any wounds. There was some blood, but it wasn’t too bad. I guess the hard hat must have done its job. Sadly, I knew that wasn’t the worse thing. The only source of illumination came from the detonation and, I assumed, the ensuing blazes. It wasn’t as bright now—probably because I was now enveloped by dust and debris—but there was enough light that I was pretty sure I didn't have any radiation burns.

“ALFINA, how long was I out for?”

You need to get inside, I told myself as I stumbled to my feet.

“ALFINA, respond.”

Nothing.

No heads up display either.

My MECHA system must have been knocked out by the blast, so I visually scanned the horizon to spot any headlights. All I could make out was the carnage left by the shockwave, silhouetted by the glow of the mesmerizing mushroom cloud that continued to fill the sky. It had me in a trance until my sense of self-preservation kicked back in.

Get inside, Joe.

As I turned around away from the blast, I found myself in darkness, lit up by the flames of destruction behind me. Light danced across the rubble that was blocking my only escape from this atomic mess.

DON’T WANT TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?

Grab all of Season One now!

Better yet, if you buy directly from me, I’ll give you 50% off eBooks or audiobooks. Just enter the coupon code PAJ50.

CHAPTER 9

Joe Gillis — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 18:00:14 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode Two: It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Don't Feel Fine

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 9

Coming out of the virtual world to a scene of your construction crew bolting past you to escape whatever was happening was pretty dang jarring. It got even worse as the sounds of confusion and mayhem grew louder as my hearing gradually kicked back in.

“I’m not sure what’s happening. The construction crew is running out of my complex,” I told Maya and Sanjay in the MECHAverse.

“Maybe there’s a gas leak or something,” Maya said.

“Yeah, maybe. I think I need to go see what’s going on. Hold on a sec.”

My place was in the middle of nowhere, so the only things lighting up the night sky were the construction lights. That wasn’t enough to figure things out, so I grabbed my hard hat and hi-vis vest and headed toward the entrance to see what all the commotion was about.

“Wait, they’re all bailing on me and driving off.”

After spotting the foreman, I switched over my audio to yell out in the physical world.

“Hey, Mike, what’s going on?”

He stopped as he was hopping in his truck to answer.

“They just made an announcement on the radio saying that North Korea launched missiles at the U.S., and some are headed directly our way.”

“Really?!”

“My apologies, Joe. I really have to go and can’t talk right now. My family is probably asleep and won’t even know what’s happening.”

Sadly, my first thought was, North Korea has missiles we need to worry about? Then I snapped out of it.

“Why don’t you and your crew grab your families and come back here? I have tons of food and supplies, and plenty of space for all of us to survive whatever happens.”

“That would be fantastic. I'll grab my wife and kids and return A-SAP. I’ll tell the others that they're all welcome here, too.”

“I’ll stay up here until the last possible moment.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he said before he shut the door on his truck and drove off.

It was dark out, and I watched the lights from the vehicles as the night crew rushed to save their families. My HUD unit locked onto the vehicles, providing me speed and distance data as they drove off. Before I switched back to the IR environment, I activated ALFINA.

“ALFINA, can you let me know when anyone arrives?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“Thank you,” and just like that, I was back in IR with Maya and Sanjay. “Guys, they’re saying there are missiles headed our way.”

Jumping back into IR was sort of like walking back into a room at a party. You know, the other people had continued to talk without you, but for some reason you thought that everyone had somehow frozen in time while you continued on with your life. And that had happened here. I started speaking as though I was walking back into the room without even paying attention.

Once I stopped talking, I could tell they had already heard the news, and with all the joy seemingly knocked out of her, Maya confirmed it.

“Yeah, we were just watching it in our news feed.”

“Dude, they’re nuclear.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Wait, hold up. North Korea has nuclear missiles that can reach here? Why are they even launching them?”

“Haven’t you been watching the news?” Maya asked me.

“No, I’ve been building my Batcave, so I really haven’t been paying attention to anything else.”

“We’re at war,” Maya revealed.

“Man, I knew there was some tension building up across the world, but I didn’t know it had turned into an all-out war. I just figured this was just another long, drawn-out conflict that would feed the 24-hour news cycle for a few months, and then people would just forget we were at war.”

“Well, it just got real.” Maya gave the impression that she was watching something on her HUD.

“Yes, it did.” Sanjay sounded pretty somber, too, so I knew it was serious.

“Do you guys have enough time to get here? You know, my place was built to withstand any sort of extinction level event like nuclear war, so we can ride out whatever is coming our way.”

Maya took a deep breath before answering. “There’s not enough time.”

I pulled up a news broadcast to try to get a better understanding of what was going on. Unfortunately, it was even worse than I had imagined.

“I repeat, North Korea has launched nuclear missiles at the United States. We just lost contact with Guam, which means that we have less than 20 minutes before we expect them to begin to reach the continental U.S.” The female reporter spoke in an uncannily calm voice. “We urge you to get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned in.” She was then interrupted, and we all heard one side of a conversation. “Wait, what? What do you mean? Okay. Okay. Okay.” She expressed with worry while nearly losing it, “I have just been informed that both China and Russia have launched nuclear missiles in retaliation for the ones we launched in response to North Korea’s action. The White House fears that their actions may leave no—no habitable place,” she forced out, trying to hold back tears, “in the United States, or possibly anywhere else in the world.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What the heck is wrong with humanity? Are you guys catching this?”

“Yes. I can’t believe this is happening,” Maya was holding back her own tears. I could hear it in her voice.

“Where are you at?” I asked.

Maya started to answer, but it sounded like she couldn’t without breaking down. Sanjay glanced at her and must have noticed the same thing, so he answered for them.

“We’re both at the office.”

“Are you together?”

“Yes.”

“Are you—”

Sanjay cut me off. “Yeah, we’re totally heading down to the underground data center.”

“Oh good, that place should be able to withstand a blast. Is my ham radio still down there?”

“It is… and we didn’t let anyone raid your crazy stupid supply of food, either.”

Maya wiped away a tear before joining in the conversation again. “Uh, we were kind of hoping that you'd come back someday, so we left it—so we left it all exactly the way you had it.”

“See, I told you guys—”

Sanjay cut me off again. “I’ll give you that, you know, your whole doomsday prepper thing might be the only thing that saves us.”

“You’re welcome… In all seriousness, I’m glad you guys have each other.”

I kept scanning around my soon-to-be 210-acres-of-nothing facility, expecting to see some of the crew returning. Instead, it was eerily quiet—no sound, no vehicles, nothing.

“Come on. Come on,” I tried to urge them while standing at the entrance of my luxury tower missile silo. Then it hit me.

“Guys, I think I’m going to have to do this alone,” I told Maya and Sanjay. “I don’t think anyone is going to make it back in time.”

“Your place is 20 minutes away from civilization on a good day,” Sanjay laid it all out for me. “Based on the math of when they left versus what the news said, they had less than 25 minutes before impact. With that timeline, there’s no way anyone is going to make it back there in time.”

“You have us,” Maya said, comforting me as she placed her hand over my virtual heart. “I got you.”

That tore me apart. Tears welled up in my eyes as I pushed out what might be my good-bye. “Thanks for always being there for me.” I let out a deep breath so I could get the rest out. “I love you, guys.”

“See I knew you’d come around eventually,” Sanjay pushed out one final joke before I lost connection.

DON’T WANT TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?

Grab all of Season One now!

Better yet, if you buy directly from me, I’ll give you 50% off eBooks or audiobooks. Just enter the coupon code PAJ50.

CHAPTER 8

Joe Gillis — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:01:42 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode Two: It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Don't Feel Fine

by Joe Gillis

« Previous Chapter | Next Chapter »

CHAPTER 8

Effectively retired, I turned my attention to my missile complex. I don’t know why I wanted to own a missile silo, but it was always something that I dreamt about owning. When I finally reached a point in life where I could waste a whole lot of money on one, I did just that. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, missile silos are quite cheap. You can easily find them for less than a modest middle-class home in the suburbs of California. The real serious money usually came from the costs of retrofitting the place. As luck would have it, I could afford more, so I bought an old Titan One missile complex for around four and a half million dollars. Everyone I talked to thought that sounded like a lot of money, but the U.S. government spent around $170 million to build the place in the ’60s–and that’s in 1960s dollars, so I really got it for a steal at only a fraction of what it cost to build.

My Titan One facility was amazing. There were three missile silos; each one around 158 feet deep and 40 feet in diameter, which included the two heavy blast doors. Tunnels interconnected all of the other buildings to the silos, and each of those buildings were nice-sized, too, with three 6,000 square foot equipment terminal buildings that had four stories each, a couple of 3,000 square foot six-story antenna silos, a 100-foot diameter control dome building, and a 130-foot power dome building. All of this helped the facility to operate with its own power, air filtration, sewer, and water. The U.S. government was even kind enough to make sure there were high-capacity water wells on the site. Of course, it wouldn’t be complete without a kitchen, bathrooms, and sleeping quarters, giving me 19 acres of underground awesomeness!

The military pretty much hadn’t done any upkeep on these things after they tore out the various stuff they wanted to keep, or didn’t want to fall into the wrong hands, so the first thing I did was retrofit the old power, air filtration, sewer, and water systems from the ’60s with new, state-of-art equipment from today. Then I began converting one of the missile silos into the ultimate luxury living space by breaking it up into fourteen stories. It was going to have everything I ever wanted: a movie theater, arcade, library, exercise facility, pool, hydroponic food and aquaculture levels, and multiple living quarters that would be topped off by my underground penthouse.

There was a lot of work that still needed to be done, so I guess it was good this project had my full attention now, even though I’d love to still be working at the company I had helped start. Since I no longer had to work, I decided to move onsite by converting one of the modular buildings that served as construction HQ into my temporary living space.

There were hundreds of people working around the clock on reconstructing my new underground city. As I sat there watching this gigantic undertaking with cranes and other massive machines working away, I wondered how Batman could have built his Batcave without a crew like this. I mean, Bruce Wayne couldn’t have hired a bunch of guys and then offed them since that was against everything he stood for. I know the cave supposedly already existed, but the Batcave was pretty elaborate with a ton of concrete work that could handle multiple vehicles like the Batmobile and Batplane. So where did all that concrete come from? Bruce and Alfred weren’t down there mixing bags of concrete in wheelbarrows, right?

“ALFINA, how much concrete would you need to handle the weight of a car or plane?”

I really wanted to go over and ask my structural engineer that question, but that’s the type of conversation I’d have to wait for the right moment to show itself.

“A car lift would need to be 4 inches thick.” ALFINA answered in her choppy robotic voice. It wasn’t her default setting; I just never wanted to lose sight of the fact that she was not actually human—which was something so many other people had done. I mean, in all fairness to Maya and her team, they created something that blurred the lines so well between human and AI that it was easy to forget that she (it) wasn’t human. That’s why I made darn sure my ALFINA sounded way more robotic than the way other people had theirs set.

“As for the plane, it would be helpful to know what size were you thinking?”

“The size of the Batplane,” I answered.

“Based on several variables on the web, I would speculate that you would need roughly 6 inches to hold the distributed weight load of the Batplane. Do you plan on adding that to your Titan One complex?”

“No, I’m just trying to figure out how hard it would have been for Bruce Wayne and Alfred to have built the Batcave.”

“Based on the images from the comic books, animation, television show, and movies, I would say it would have been quite difficult to have done it themselves.”

“Me too. I mean, how does a billionaire have enough time to just go down and do that anyway?”

“Yes, but you forget he had two jobs: Wayne Enterprises and Batman.”

“True. Well, I guess if he has time to fight crime, he must have had way more time on his hands than I ever did running my company.”

“Or he was just more efficient.”

“You got me there, ALFINA,” I chuckled.

AI or not, you got to love that sense of humor.

“Joe, it’s nearly time for your meet up with Maya.”

“Thank you, ALFINA.”

The nice thing about not doing the concrete work myself was it left time for me, Maya, and Sanjay to meet up. Sometimes they’d come over and hang out or watch a movie, but that was rare because of how far away I lived. Most of the time we met up in one of the many MECHA IR environments, usually at a virtual theater where we would watch movies together and talk. Tonight, Maya had a surprise for me. She even virtually covered my eyes to reveal it.

“Are your eyes closed still?”

“Yes. You know I feel pretty silly having my eyes closed in a virtual environment.”

“It’s worth it, my friend.”

“Hey Sanjay, I didn’t know you were here.”

“I wanted to see your reaction for myself.”

“My reaction to what?”

“To this…” Maya said as she removed her hands.

“Holy cow, you guys. This place is freakin’ awesome!!!” There I was, standing in the middle of a virtual Titan One missile complex, where the details were so realistic that it was almost indistinguishable from the real thing. “So you finished building the mission?”

“Yep,” Maya said with a smile.

“And you guys did this all in your spare time?”

Maya didn’t answer at first, or should I say, she didn’t answer with words. She took a deep breath, rolled her eyes, and then just glared at me. Like a really deep stare, too.

Sanjay had the same dumbfounded look, except his mouth was dangling open.

She must have felt I didn’t understand what she was saying with her body language—which I totally did—because she finally answered with some words.

"Do you really think this would have taken us all these years to do if it wasn’t for the fact that we were doing this on the side?”

“No, no, of course not. Well, either way, you guys nailed this place.”

“It helps that we were able to see it in real life,” Maya said, beaming.

Sanjay chimed in. “That and the scans came in handy.”

“Wow. I’m sitting above ground right now, but I’m down in my Batcave.”

“Batcave?” Sanjay spoke with a hint of confusion in his voice, seeking further explanation.

“It’s because he’s a billionaire with a secret underground lair—you know, he thinks he’s Batman,” joked Maya.

“If the shoe fits.”

“I don’t see you out there fighting crime,” Maya pointed out.

“I was kicked out of our company for fighting a crime.”

“Oh, I guess I missed the issue of Batman where Bruce got fired by the Board for fighting a crime.” There was a hint of sarcasm in Maya’s voice.

“It sort of happened in the aftermath of the Joker War.” I grinned, knowing that I had her there.

She shook her head as she frowned before letting out a big sigh.

“Okay, ‘Bruce,’” she said, adding finger quotes to the name. “I’ll give you that one.”

“Hey, my story isn’t over yet. You’re my Lucius Fox.”

“Because I’m black?”

“No, because you’re my inside man—uh, I mean inside woman,” she didn’t seem to like either of those, so I added, “Inside connection?”

“Better, but shouldn’t Sanjay be Lucius Fox since he’s the hardware guy?”

“True, true, I guess you’re both my amalgamation of Lucius Fox. Well, either way, I still own a huge chunk of our company, so I’m better off than Bruce Wayne was, and I’m richer, too.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Maya said, knocking me off my pedestal.

“Hey, both of you are richer than Batman, too, so you shouldn’t complain.”

“We should become real life superheroes, my friends. I mean, think about it, money is Batman’s only superpower, right?” Sanjay reasoned.

“Yes, but the only one of us that knows how to fight is Maya,” I joked.

“Well, you wrestled, right?” Sanjay recalled.

“True—” But before I could finish what I was saying, Maya cut me off.

“I’m not sure fighting to not get pinned really counts as wrestling.”

“Oooh… Dang, she got you there,” Sanjay was enjoying this a little too much. “Dude, that’s got to hurt.”

“Hey, ya know I don’t make the news, I just report it,” Maya said with a smirk. “Don’t be so sad, Joe. I know it wasn’t the type of wrestling you wanted to do anyhow.”

“Turns out High School wrestling is a little different than what I watched on TV.”

“I bet. But you know what was dead on to the movies?”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, so I answered in the only way I knew how: “Huh?”

“Karate. Ya know, you both could have stuck it out and gotten your black belt like me.”

“Turns out that Karate Kid was more fun to watch than do,” I replied.

Maya went to say something but then stopped, like she didn’t know how she was going to put whatever the heck she was going to say. “Ummm…” She took a deep breath. “For a guy who watches waaay too many movies—”

I interrupted. "I don’t know if there is such a thing, but go on.”

“Uh, yes Joe, there is.”

"I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“Whatever. What I was gonna say, is that for a guy who watches waaay too many movies, you sure are blind to the obvious. I mean, ya know, like the fact that Daniel-San complained an awful lot while Mr. Miyagi was teaching him. That should have been your first clue that it wasn’t going to be all fun and games learning karate.”

Sanjay took a deep breath while crossing his arms, and then he turned to me. “She’s right, you know?”

“Yeah…” I shrugged, and then it hit me. “You know what we need to do? We need to develop something where you can just upload all the training like in The Matrix.”

“Duuuuude...” Sanjay’s eyes were wide as he bobbed his head vigorously with a massive smile before finally finishing. “I’d be down for that!”

“Or you guys could just not be lazy and learn it the good ol’ fashion way by spending the time needed to learn it.”

“No way; beaming it into our minds is so much better,” I asserted.

“Sorry, Maya; I’m with Joe on this one.”

“How did we ever build a company with two of the three founders being lame at finishing things?”

“That’s why we have you,” I added, nudging Maya with my elbow. We all laughed, and then I continued. “And besides, the ‘S’ does stand for Slacker, so there’s that.”

“How did I allow you to talk me into naming our company Slacker Technology?”

“Well, technically it’s Slacker Interactive Technology Enterprises,” Sanjay reminded her.

“You’re not helping his case, Sanjay.”

“Has old Martin figured out that he’s CEO of SIT Enterprises yet?” I joked, totally not reading the room, or more importantly, Maya.

“No, because it’s SI Tech Enterprises. And how can you be making fun of your own company anyway?”

“I’m not. I’m making fun of Martin. I mean, come on, you know I love the name. Heck, I just wanted to call it Slacker Technology, but I get that it’s better to bury the ‘S’ word from investors. They’d think it’s the dictionary meaning of the word, not the Richard Linklater meaning of the word. But seriously, we should figure out a way to download skills directly to our brain, you know. I mean, how cool would that be? Technically, right now we can train someone to do something in a MECHA IR environment, right? So why not figure out a way to speed up the process? I mean, we already have a direct interface to the brain; how much harder can it be?”

“That might work for some things, but we’re still not sure how muscle memory comes into play in the Immersive Realities.” Sanjay continued, “My guys have been studying that end of things for training for both the military and sports. There could be huge money on the sports end if we could keep the players game ready during rehabilitation.”

Maya nodded her head in agreement. “Okay, it’s not the stupidest idea you two have ever had.”

“Look at the ‘retired’ guy giving you guys all sorts of awesome ideas.” I air quoted the whole retired part since it wasn’t by choice. “You know, like the Immersive Reality movies. Hey, by the way, where are we at on those?”

“Licensing is working with the studios to make that happen. Who knew there would be so much red tape with people’s rights and all? While Legal and Licensing are dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, we’re reworking a bunch of public domain movies you’ll love—you know, like Night of the Living Dead.”

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” I mimicked Johnny’s creepy voice from the movie.

“Exactly. You’ll be able to experience it from various characters’ points of view—well, actually that’s one of the kinks we’re still trying to work out. How do you bounce around from different perspectives since there are points where Barbara is out or not there—”

“Like the daughter in the basement.”

“Yeah, it can be a little jarring. One moment you’re Barbara, the next you’re Ben, then you’re the mom—which is pretty scary to be her at the point of her death. I know you’re going to dig them, but they’re going to lose one of the reasons you love watching movies.”

“What’s that?”

“The ability to just check your mind out and enjoy the movie.”

“I could see that, but I’ll still have that option, too, so I’m still super excited to try it out.”

“We are working on a more voyeuristic way of viewing movies that is more like 3D,” Sanjay reminded Maya.

“You know I love me some 3D,” I was getting excited just thinking about it.

“We know.” They responded simultaneously.

“So when do I get to try that out?”

“Soon.”

“Nice!”

“Until then, you have this to play around in,” she said while gesturing around the hallway of the missile complex.

Just then an alarm triggered because of motion around me, revealing my HUD, and then a window showing my natural vision popped up in the corner revealing the construction night crew rushing out of my facility with a sense of urgency.

“Guys, something weird is going on.”

DON’T WANT TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?

Grab all of Season One now!

Better yet, if you buy directly from me, I’ll give you 50% off eBooks or audiobooks. Just enter the coupon code PAJ50.

« Previous Chapter | Next Chapter »

CHAPTER 7

Joe Gillis — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:01:32 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode One: When It Rains, It Pours

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 7

The Board in their infinite wisdom decided that I didn’t have the business experience needed to grow the company into what they believed we were capable of, even though we were already poised to have one of the largest IPOs ever. They appointed me President and hired Martin Connolly to be our CEO. I couldn’t fault them for bringing in Martin; I mean, the guy had already successfully run multiple Fortune 500 companies that grew exponentially under his leadership. He definitely had the experience, but that didn’t mean I had to like him.

We immediately butted heads on how we wanted to run the company. I was driven by the user experience, and he was driven by money. I always felt that the money would come if we continued to build things to improve people’s lives, but he just couldn’t see how one could lead to the other. Fortunately, MECHA IR was too far along for him to meddle with, so it launched with my vision fully intact.

The public didn’t know nor care about any of our internal bickering. They just cared about the end product. MECHA IR became a massive hit with the public, causing our initial public offering for SI Tech to become one of the largest IPOs ever—which was somehow credited to freakin’ Martin.

Years passed with plenty of fighting between me and Martin. Despite all of our “disagreements,” everything was going great until news broke that our company sold the military torture scenarios.

Leaked footage showed them using one of our torture scenarios as “enhanced interrogation techniques” on an “enemy combatant.” Anyone who used the MECHA IR tech knew that it felt exactly like the real thing. They tried to say it was gentler to the body than waterboarding someone, but both messed with the mind, and I knew our tech was worse because it allowed them to take it further than they would have if they were doing it in the real world. I was furious because this was all done behind my back, and to be honest, I felt like I was the cause of it all. But of course, that didn’t stop me from barging into Martin’s office to give him a piece of my mind.

“What the heck have you done, Martin?!”

“What I was brought in t’ do… make money. Which ye should be thankin' me for, not attackin' me. Weren’t the torture scenarios yer own idea anyway?”

“Yes, but it was a mistake. A big mistake.”

“Not based on the amount the US government paid us. As ye'd say in America: I think you hit this one out of the park.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. How the user decides t’ use our tech shouldn’t be up t’ us once they’ve bought it.”

“Our tech? You mean my tech.”

“Aren’t ye forgettin' da two true brains behind all of it? Oh, aye, that’s right—that’s right, you’re the ‘ideas guy,’” Martin, of course, made sure he poured salt on the wound by using air quotes. “Ye know, Joe, ye’d be nowhere right now if it wasn’t for Sanjay and Maya.”

“You know, Martin, you’d be nowhere right now if it wasn’t for the three of us.”

“Keep remindin' yerself o' that, Joe. The board had thar reasons fer pickin' me t' run this company.”

“How do companies keep falling for that old Martin charm?”

“It must be me charm of all charms—money. An' I'm makin' ‘em a lot of it.”

“You’re going too far to turn a buck with our tech. First, I hear that you’re integrating AI tech with the freakin’ organoids—which I thought had been shut down since the dang things were gaining consciousness—now you’re selling the government a torture device!”

“I’m not selling the government a torture device—technically, that’s on ya. As fer integrating AI with the organoids, well that’s t’ keep children safe.”

“To keep children safe?”

“That's what we're hopin' for.”

“How’s that?”

“Now you wouldn’t have me go putting implants in children without testing it, would ya? I'm not the complete monster ye be thinkin' me t' be.”

“Why are we even thinking of doing that? For more money?”

“Ye need t' stop being so daft. The sooner ye realize that we’re a business, the sooner I think we could move past these wee little squabbles of ours. If not, ye’ll just have to feck off. Ye know I’m quite pressed fer time.”

“Man, this is low, even for you.”

“Could ye shut the door on yer way out? Slán!”

We were making plenty of money, but I guess that wasn’t enough. It was beginning to feel like we as a company just didn’t care about the consequences of our actions. And who knew what else we were doing?

I’m a guy that cracks jokes at all the wrong times—heck, that’s gotten me into my fair share of trouble in the past, like telling funny stories about my sister while people were standing in line to pay their respects at her funeral. I knew if she were alive, she’d be joining in with me, but other people may have not known her that way, or they just felt it was disrespectful. Either way, I found myself in another situation where people felt I needed to shut the heck up.

I became very vocal about all of it and publicly fought to end the military using our tech for torture. I knew Yoda was right, ‘Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.’ Martin and the Board disagreed with me.

Even though the Board and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on all of this, I tried to get them to oust Martin. Problem was, he must have caught wind of it, and talked to the Board of Directors pushing his own agenda—which he let me know as we headed to the Board meeting.

“Ya know, Joe, ya shouldn’t have gone public. Ya signed a non-disparagement agreement that forbids ya from doin’ just that. Or did ya not remember that part?”

To be honest I had gotten so caught up in doing what I felt was right that I had forgotten all about that—but I certainly wasn’t going to let him know that.

“Some things are more important than a job.”

“I discussed our situation with the Board, and I have all the votes I need to be rid of ya.”

“Wait… Are you trying to fire me from my own company?”

“Aye, that's the long and short of it. Now isn't 't?”

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Joe’s life is turned upside down at the end of the first episode. The story of a Board pushing out a President of a company was something I got to experience first-hand years ago. The Board removed the President, and one of the three founders, of the software company I worked for in the early 2000s. Nothing about it was like what I wrote here, but it was interesting to see how things work with a Board.

What do you think Joe will do now? Let me know in the comments below.

THIS IS THE END OF EPISODE 1... Don't miss out on the bonus epilogue for Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland: Episode 1!

Grab your free eBook now!

See you on the flip side!
Joe

CHAPTER 6

Joe Gillis — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 18:02:21 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode One: When It Rains, It Pours

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 6

We stood there staring at dozens upon dozens of lab-grown brains, which sounds way cooler than it actually was. That's because some of them were only the size of sesame seeds, floating in a petri dish. Others were larger, but none of them came close to the size of a small animal’s brain, let alone a human’s. I always wished it had more of a mad scientist vibe with human brains and whatnot, but instead we had the more realistic version of a lab.

“Uhhh, so why are we in the Brain Room?” I asked.

“Ya know it’s not called that,” Maya scolded.

“Uhhh, there’s a bunch of brains in this room, so, you know, come on.” I shrugged.

“And ya know they’re called brain organoids,” she reminded me.

“Uhhh... yes. But why are we here?” I asked again.

“Because we think some of them have reached consciousness,” she said, looking worried.

“That’s great!” I said with excitement.

“Not if you’re running experiments on them.” She still looked worried.

“Yeah, I guess that might pose some problems, huh, wouldn’t it?” I asked already knowing the answer.

“Yes, it does,” she confirmed.

“And I’d also guess that means that we’re shutting down experimenting on these things until we can figure out for sure if they are gaining consciousness.” Again, I knew the answer, but I really hoped I was wrong.

“Oh, yes,” Maya confirmed.

“Well, this sucks.” I was disappointed, but deep down I was also excited that our technology worked.

“It does,” Maya agreed.

“So you’re telling me that we may have thrown a ton of money at research that we just have to stop?” I let out a deep breath and muttered, “This is so not good.”

That's when Sanjay finally weighed in on it all. “Yeah, but it’s pretty cool that we may have just grown a mind that gained consciousness, don’t you think?”

“I have to agree with Sanjay on this,” Maya said.

I began to feel a large pressure on my chest, and felt like I was having a hard time catching my breath. I wasn’t sure if they understood how bad this was going to be for me.

“Yeah, but how am I going to break this piece of expensive news to the Board? You know the slowdown will be louder to them than the amazing discovery. I’m going to be lucky to maintain my President status, let alone get the Board to finally make me CEO after this fiasco.”

“Dude, who cares? It will all work out,” Sanjay assured me.

“Man, we’ve already lost a ton of control; a CEO is just going to be wanting to make money.” I was still worried.

“Growing the value of the company is the whole point of a CEO, you know,” Maya reminded me.

“And that's not like that’s a bad thing for any of us,” Sanjay reasoned.

“Yeah, but I feel like I’m letting you guys down.”

“So long as neither of us has to do either of those jobs, and we're getting paid… we’re cool,” Maya said with a huge smile.

That smile put me at ease and allowed me to figure out our Plan B. “Okay, I think I got it.”

"There’s our boy! Right there!” Maya belted out with excitement.

“Okay, okay, so here it is. Since our mind testing control center might be down for a bit, I think I gotta give them the Warrior’s Creed mission. You know, military games like Call of Duty… um, uh, what number or name are they on now?” They both shrugged. “Well, military games like Call of Duty 42, or whatever number-slash-name they’re on, are making so much money right now that they’ll forget about this mess with the possible windfall of money that would come from Creed. Now, I know we all want to remove the torture, so maybe we could split it up into two different missions: one for military training, complete with the tour of duty and torture, and the other as a counter terrorist unit mission for the public.”

“Sans the enhanced interrogation and torture?” Maya double-checked.

“Yep.”

“That would work.” Maya grinned and nodded.

“Good because that’s a solution I think I could sell to the Board.” I smiled back.

Sanjay nudged me with his elbow. “That’s because the military will pay a ton to use that as a training tool.”

“Yeah, you know it. Especially since most of the military soldiers were already MECHAS,” I said.

In the past few years, all of America’s armed forces turned to our MECHA tech to operate their planes, tanks, and pretty much everything else. The instantaneous response time gave the MECHA/Soldiers, or MECHAS as they were called, the upper hand in battle. Even though the MECHA tech only gave you milliseconds of an advantage over a non-enhanced soldier, those milliseconds made a huge difference in life-and-death situations.

Add in the visual and audio advantages for ground forces, and you were heading into a new era of warfare. By linking the visual and audible parts of the brain to our MECHA tech, we could provide simple things like distance data or ammo count via our HUD readout like in video games, to the more advanced neural linked network by doing things like triangulating gunfire to pinpoint the enemy’s location. It also enabled audible stealth communication between squads and platoons without saying a word out loud through a telepathic-like form of conversation transmission. This was done by feeding internal audio playback directly into the auditory center of the brain, where the brain translates electrical impulses into sound. Besides internal audible communication, it didn’t take too much more work to bring sound from the outside and bypass the inner ear to reroute around any damaged nerve cells—thus, allowing the deaf to hear again. It was great for any soldier whose hearing was damaged in battle, or the non-military bonus of helping the hearing impaired navigate the world a little easier.

In no time we had the equivalent of the universal translator or Babel fish built in that eliminated the language barrier, allowing allies to speak and understand different languages by instantaneously translating both directions. This allowed for better communication and helped in deescalating situations in foreign lands.

With all of this in play, I was pretty confident in my next assertion. “Man, getting them to purchase a training simulation as real as ours should be as easy as taking candy from a baby.”

For some reason, Sanjay dropped his head and shook it with disapproval.

“What!?’” I asked.

He continued to give me the evil eye as though I should know exactly what he was implying from his stare, then he finally verbalized his thoughts. “That’s pretty messed up.”

“Selling to the military?”

“No, taking candy from a baby,” Sanjay smiled.

“I have to agree with Sanjay on this one.” Unlike Sanjay, Maya explained her reasoning. “Where did this whole idea of taking candy from a poor little baby come from? I bet the poor kid was left crying. I mean, come on, of course it’s easy to take candy from a baby—it’s a baby. What an evil thing to do.”

“Dude, it sounds like you have another saying you need to retire,” Sanjay joked.

“Man, babies shouldn’t be eating candy anyway,” I reasoned. “I could have said something like ‘Shooting fish in a barrel.’”

“Wh—what is wrong with you?!” Maya threw it down with her serious voice.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“First you’re going to steal from some poor baby,” Maya continued, “and now you’re going to shoot some defenseless fish?”

“Hey, I’m totally cool with you giving them a gun to defend themselves,” I could tell I was breaking down her defense. “I got it. Maybe they could have laser beams attached to their heads?”

She smiled. “You know they will.”

“Freaking mutated sea bass,” I joked.

“I don’t care if they’re on the endangered list; mine will be sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads,” she said mimicking Dr. Evil’s voice.

We both laughed.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I said.

“What just happened here?” Sanjay asked.

“Austin Powers, baby!” Maya said with a British accent.

“That’s not an answer,” he pointed out.

“But it was,” I continued. “It just wasn’t the one you were hoping for.”

Man, it was as easy as taking candy from a baby, or whatever one might say instead, to sell them on my recommendation of splitting up the mission and delivering an experience just for the U.S. military.

Unfortunately, I had already thrown chum in the water by telling the Board about the torture part.

CHAPTER 5

Joe Gillis — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 18:01:43 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode One: When It Rains, It Pours

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 5

I was back in one of our new MECHA IR environments, but instead of enjoying the end of the world in the post-apocalypse under my robotic overlords, I was being held down while I was waterboarded. Maya was right, this was a much bigger problem. Of course, I couldn’t see any of this problem since my vision was blocked by the towel they draped over my face.

All I could see was movement blocking the ever so tiny shafts of light breaking through the threads of the towel as they went to pour more water over my head or yelled at me for answers.

What really sucked about this whole thing was that they took something as helpful as a towel and somehow weaponized it. Man, Douglas Adams would have been sorely disappointed by this if he were still alive.

I couldn’t understand why this was crossing my mind since I was currently being interrogated about some information I had regarding the mission I was on, and I was in the middle of grasping for whatever breath I could get before I was doused with more water.

It was like a flooding of water that didn’t seem like it was going to end, even though it was really only about 20 to 40 seconds in duration. I fought to free myself from the torture as I gagged and gagged on the water, trying to spit it out, while taking more in as I tried to breathe.

Whoever came up with waterboarding was a complete sadistic prick—and the fact that this was deemed an “enhanced interrogation technique” instead of torture was ridiculous. Every moment felt as though I was drowning—and I should know—I nearly drowned as a kid.

My brother, his friends, and I snuck into a neighbor’s backyard to go swimming back when I was young. I wasn’t really a strong swimmer at that point (nor am I now), and one of his friends decided to push me into the deep end as a joke. It caught me off guard, so I hit the water and panic set in immediately. In no time I found myself gasping for air and swallowing water as I fought to keep my head above water while trying to call out for help. I’m not sure for how long this went on for, but it felt like an eternity. Eventually they realized I needed some help, and pulled me out. Afterward, I tried to act like it was no big deal, but it left me with an emotional scar that didn’t go away. And here I was ripping that scar wide open with my own creation.

My torturers began my next round before I could fully catch my breath—which was really only three or four breaths before I was doused again.

“Tell us what we want to know, and I’ll make it stop.”

“Never,” I mustered up with all the energy I had left—which wasn’t much.

We had been at this for what seemed like an eternity. Heck, any length was too long for doing this. What was I thinking in allowing us to build this? There was nothing fun about this, but I thought it would be awesome to experience something like 24. I loved that show and thought being someone like Jack Bauer would somehow be fun. Man, I already hated it, and we’re only at the enhanced interrogation techniques. This was literally the easy part, and it wasn't too much fun.

Maya had made her point. I pulled up my HUD and exited the Warrior’s Creed environment. Maya, Sanjay, and Doctor Dan we’re all standing there. To be honest, it was a little creepy.

“Um, yeah, uh, no. I—I was wrong.” I said, still out of breath.

Doctor Dan didn’t say a word as he checked my vitals, and Maya didn’t wait for me to finish. “I couldn’t handle any of the interrogations in this environment. I was done well before the physical torture started to happened during the tour of duty section, and don’t get me started on the enhanced stuff. It’s all just way too much—and I’m a black belt, so you know I’ve experienced way more pain than the two of you.”

“Yeah, I might need some therapy after that.” I was still trying to catch my breath.

“Whether or not they were wearing the headset or had the implants, all the guys testing it were shaken up by the interrogation stuff too, and one of them was a Marine Raider who went through the SERE training program and a whole lot of horribleness in his tours of duty,” Maya said.

“SERE?” I asked.

“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.” She went on. “You wanted a Jack Bauer scenario for the mission, so we got a real-life Jack Bauer to help us create it and another one to be a tester.”

“And it was too much for him?” It was comforting knowing that I wasn’t the only one.

“He said the tour of duty section was bad enough, but he feels we should cut out the storylines of getting captured and tortured,” she explained.

“Did he like any of it?” I asked.

“He thinks we should base it all around the counter terrorist unit the character joins once their tour of duty is over—as long as we cut out the interrogation level that has the enhanced interrogation techniques.” She was looking at her notes.

“Man, it sounds an awful lot like 24 at that point—except 24 would have the interrogation. Oh, man...” I let out a deep breath of disappointment.

“Let’s be honest here, it was already a 24 rip off,” Maya shrugged.

“Yeah, true dat, so what do you think about toning down the interrogation?” I asked, knowing I never wanted to feel that way again.

“I have to say that I’m leaning his way. I really think we should remove it altogether,” she said.

“Okay, let’s table that for a second,” I said, “because I’m getting really concerned about what I’m presenting to the Board tomorrow.”

“I know,” she placed her hand over my heart. “I got you.” That had been her go to move to center me since we were kids. It not only let me know that she loved me; somehow her touch always calmed me. “Don't worry, we have some other environments that are going much smoother than that one.”

“I’m not sure what I would do without you guys,” I said. My pulse rate was beginning to come back down.

“Well, you’d certainly be a whole lot poorer,” she joked.

“True dat,” I smiled. “I’m just a little nervous about meeting with the Board tomorrow since it’s the big one before we go public.”

“Uh, we know,” Sanjay confirmed.

“Yeah, we could tell you were a wee bit nervous,” Maya made a tiny finger gesture with her thumb and index finger, and then grew it out to have her arms out stretched as far as she could reach. “We know you’re nervous, but we chose you to be our Steve Jobs because that’s what you do best. We’re both like Steve Wozniak and would rather be building instead of dealing with all that corporate mumbo jumbo. This is the next big step for our company, but you got this—that and we built some pretty amazing tech that would blow anyone’s mind.”

“I ditto that,” Sanjay nodded.

“That’s it? Ditto?” I looked at him, smiling.

“What more do I need to say? Both the integrated MECHA tech, and the headsets are already out in the world, so I’d say my work speaks for itself,” Sanjay shrugged.

“Hmm... Cocky, but I guess you deserve to be that,” I smiled.

“Not cocky; it’s confidence, my friend. Just like I’m sure about the whole John Connor thing.” He was grinning.

“Psst, you wish,” I laughed.

“Dude, you’ll always be my Sarah Connor,” he said and then blew me a kiss.

“Get a room, you two,” laughed Maya.

“So obviously the integrated MECHA tech is working flawlessly,” I decided to change the subject and turn my attention to Maya. “Alright, so what’s the good news with the rest of the Immersive Reality environments?”

“Okay, let’s see…” she said as she glanced down at her notes. “We’re done with the post-apocalyptic robotic overlord one; as you know, we’re QC-ing that and all the various sports ones right now. We’re in beta on a bunch of environments like street racing, medieval fantasy era, space odyssey, zombie outbreak, and the bank heist—we just need to lock down what we’re going to call them because ‘Medieval Fantasy Era’ sounds super lame.”

“Yeah, I totally hear you. We’ve been brainstorming the names and we’re working up comps,” I assured her.

“That’s good. The environment I’m most excited about is one I’ve been developing in secret,” Maya said, with a gleam of excitement in her eyes.

“Really? What’s that one about?” I asked.

“I don’t want to give too much away so it can be a surprise when you play it, but it starts with a nuclear war, and you take to the underground to ride out the nuclear fallout. Of course, there’s more to it than that…” she said

“Man, I wouldn’t expect anything else,” I smiled.

“But I know it’s right up your alley since you’ve become obsessed with nuclear war ever since you bought that missile silo,” she shrugged.

“What’s up with you guys calling my place a missile silo? I keep telling you it’s a missile complex. Calling it a missile silo is really selling it short. You know, it’s more like an amazing underground city with 50,000 square feet of floor space. That puts it around the size of an average hotel, plus there’s nearly a mile of tunnels that run below the surface—and you know, it has like three missile silos.” I wanted to keep going, but Maya interrupted me.

“Yes, we all know. It’s all you ever talk about these days.” Maya rolled her eyes.

“I talk about other things,” I exclaimed, trying to hide the fact that she was probably right.

“Like what?” Maya asked.

“The movies and TV shows I’m watching,” I balked.

“Yeah, he talks about that even when we’re being chased by robots trying to kill us,” Sanjay laughed.

“Hey, it was relevant,” I explained.

“Sure,” Sanjay continued. “He has also been going on and on about how we should be making 8-bit environments. Maybe we should just make some?”

“You know, Sanjay, if it would shut him up, I would,” Maya conceded.

“Dude, those are going to be so awesome,” I turned to Sanjay with my hand up. “Right?”

He just stared back at me, not saying anything.

“Come on, man, don’t leave me hanging,” I gestured to my hand still up waiting for his acceptance.

“Sure, why not.” He then gave in and high-fived me.

“Except the Board thinks they’d be a waste of resources,” Maya reminded me.

“Man, you think they’d listen to one of the guys who came up with this whole thing.” I sighed.

“I don’t think they’re calling it a bad idea,” Maya explained. “They just meant that it would be better to work on more realistic Immersive Realities, which I can’t disagree with.”

“Man, you never liked 8-bit,” I asserted.

“That’s because I always felt that games could be better, and look at where we are now. Right, Sanjay?” She looked over at Sanjay.

“It is pretty amazing,” Sanjay agreed.

“But so is 8-bit,” I insisted.

“Do I need to write an 8-bit environment just to shut you up?” Maya smiled.

“Now we’re talking. Yes. Yes, it would. You know, just give me a cool mission. You know, speaking of missions, what happens with the rest of the robotic overlord mission?” I asked Maya. “Did you integrate my Flash Gordon idea? You know, the whole wearing a robot like a suit to infiltrate the base.”

“I did, but I don’t want any ‘This is what it must be like to be C-3PO or R2-D2’ when you finally reach that point,” she said.

“I cannot confirm nor deny that I would or would not say that,” I responded. “But if I did, I would probably say something more like, ‘This is what it must have been like for Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker in Star Wars.’”

“Oh, you are such a dork.” Maya rolled her eyes.

I mimicked my best C-3PO, complete with the robotic arm movements. “Sometimes, I just don’t understand human behavior.”

“I think you just proved my point,” she said “As for the other nuclear destruction environment, it’s based around a Titan One Missile Complex like yours.” She made sure I heard that she said it right.

“Oh my gosh, that’s awesome! Is the character living in the missile silo, like I plan to?” I asked.

“Yes, they are,” she answered. “I based most of it on what you are doing with your place—all the way down to converting the missile silos into luxury living spaces, but it’s unfinished to give it a more post-apocalyptic vibe. Plus, the mission has a ton of B-movie stuff you’re going to love.”

“Nice!” I was excited.

“Yes, but there's one more problem.” She looked serious again.

“Are you kidding me?” I was tired from the waterboarding. What now?

She held up a ‘V’ with her hand and placed sideways against her temple and cheek to let me know she was not playing around. This was our unbreakable signal that we were telling the truth. “And it’s a bad one.”

“Freakin’ A.”

“Yeah. Freakin’ A is right.”

CHAPTER 4

Joe Gillis — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:33:02 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode One: When It Rains, It Pours

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 4

There was an unexplainable pain when that missile hit us and exploded. In a flash of white, my first-person perspective switched to a sort of third-person perspective where I could see myself floating away from what was left of my lifeless body underneath the rubble. You know, I couldn’t help but think of a line from another great James Cameron movie, “Game over, man! Game over!”

I found myself breathing heavily as my HUD unit popped up over my vision, letting me know I was out of the MECHA IR simulation. My ‘soul’ continued its ascent into who knows where as the words “Mission Failed” flashed across my vision.

No duh.

I moved the ‘Game Over’ screen to one of the side windows so my natural vision could fill the main field of view. I took a moment to reflect on everything I had just experienced. The MECHA system had passed the point where it was so advanced that it was truly indistinguishable from magic. I am pretty darn sure that we reached the pinnacle of Clarke’s three laws for the future by building an experience so realistic that it could fool the mind.

Maya, Sanjay, and I originally built the Mind’s Eye Control Host Access system as a way to send signals from an outside camera directly into the brain’s visual cortex. We had one simple goal: give someone who lost their sight the ability to see again. Not only were we able to do that, but once we cracked that, we were able to figure out a way to allow computer access in the mind using our neurotechnology. Better yet, it was all controlled by thought through a heads-up display that became the desktop of your mind. That enabled people either using our MECHA headgear, or MECHA/Humans, like myself, to access the Internet, media, or whatever by just thinking about it—you could even connect to other devices and control those machines using your mind. At that point, I knew the possibilities were endless, but then Maya surprised me with how real she and her team were able to make our MECHA IR.

I snapped back into reality when the IR simulation prompt popped in: “Try Again or Exit.” The virtual world disappeared once I selected the latter, and I was back in the real world sitting in the middle of our R&D department. The commotion of the lab slowly rose in volume, it was a setting I had chosen as a way not to be hit over the head when I was coming out of using the MECHA audio. Otherwise, I would have been hit by the immediate noise of this bustling environment. It reminded me of the difference between waking up via the loud alarm obnoxiously blaring in your ear, or the alarm that gradually lets you know it’s time to wake up.

The visual was set to immediately kick in so I could see everyone hard at work. Workbenches were littered with MECHA headgear at various stages of development, which was currently the bread and butter of our company. Plenty of people were still worried about having tech implanted directly in their head, or simply couldn’t afford it, so we made a much more affordable version of our tech as a wearable device that reminded me more of a motorcycle helmet.

Sanjay was currently wearing one of the headgear rigs with a new IR body suit. The light went out on his visor, signaling his return to reality.

We were testing our new MECHA IR environments to see if we truly could call these Immersive Realities—that and we needed to make sure that our MECHA tech and our bodies could handle it all.

Both of us sat along the wall facing the chaos, hooked up to machines that monitored our vitals to make sure nothing went wrong while we were under. Doctor Dan—yes, he had us call him that—was writing something on a clipboard. He was a legit doctor that wanted to keep things informal by calling him by his first name, but not too informal, hence the whole doctor title.

“You know, Doctor Dan, you could use our tech to input everything you’re writing down,” I pointed out, like I did every single time he wrote something down.

“I still like doing things the old-fashioned way.”

“Uh, said the guy surrounded by the most cutting-edge tech this world has seen,” I continued to mess with him, of course. “It would save you a ton of time inputting all of that, too.”

“You pay people to do that for me, so that really is not something I have to worry about.”

“Dang, Joe, he got you there,” Sanjay joked as he lifted off his headgear.

“I think you both are missing the point,” I turned to Doctor Dan. “So?” I didn’t need to spell it out for him.

“Your vitals were within the range we expected,” he said as he held up my EKG printout. “As you can see on your electrocardiogram, there were points where your heart rate was elevated and the P wave is mostly hidden.”

“Uh, in English.”

“Your body responded in a way similar to what I have seen in panic attacks at various moments.”

“So it worked?”

“Yes. Look here,” he said as he pointed to a peak and valley pattern on the printout. “Your body appeared to be reacting to the same stimuli presented in the Immersive Reality.”

“And that’s the worst it can get—you know, since we blew up and died and all,” Sanjay noted.

"Okay, million-dollar question, Doc—"

"That's Doctor Dan."

“Okay, Doctor Dan. You're right. You're right. Sorry about that, Doctor Dan. So did Sanjay’s headgear and suit perform the same as my integrated tech?”

“They both looked to be very similar. Of course, there were some differences. You both are different people with different perspectives of the same situation, so I would put you within similar ranges of each other.”

That left one major question I wanted answered, “So, did we reach any unsafe levels, you know, physically?”

“Your vitals were elevated, but they were in a range that I would feel comfortable with signing off on.”

“Alright. Well, great, thanks.”

That was good news since we were getting close to launch.

Doctor Dan unhooked us from the machines, and I got up slowly to avoid a headrush.

“Hey, you ready to head up to see Maya?” I asked, turning to Sanjay.

“I bet she’s champing at the bit waiting for us.” Sanjay stretched and stood up.

“No doubt. So are you confident the new data centers will be able to handle the loads we’re going to throw at them from the MECHA IR environments?” I asked Sanjay as we headed to the elevator.

“No problem. We got this. And once the new ones we’re building are up and running, we’ll have more than enough to cover whatever we throw at them. You know, and it doesn’t hurt that you’ve become obsessed with the underground.” He smiled.

“Hey. I wouldn’t say obsessed.”

“Dude, really? After you bought that missile silo—”

“Whoa, you mean missile complex,” I corrected him before he could finish.

“Fine, dude, after you bought that missile complex to live in, it seems like our whole operation is becoming subterranean.”

“No, it isn't because of that. That’s because you’re over the hardware portion of our business,” I said as we stepped into the elevator. “See, Maya’s office is on the 4^th floor,” I pointed it out as I pressed the button. “You’ve just been spending most your time underground lately. I mean, come on, you’re telling me that it doesn’t make sense to have our data center here, or at any other location, underground? I mean, the speed we’ve been able to ramp up things by buying up old limestone mines and converting them into our state-of-the-art data centers is amazing, not to mention the cost savings.”

“But—but there’s no sunlight down there.”

“Oh, come on, since when did you or any of the people we have working on this stuff really go hang out outside anyways? We’re all freakin' geeks, dude,” I reminded him. “We’re built for this whole no sunlight thing. Plus, I had all those virtual windows installed wherever there are offices, so really it’s just a mental thing knowing you’re underground.”

“True, I’ll give you that.”

The elevator dinged when we reached the 4^th floor. The doors opened to Maya, and I gotta say, her excitement was palpable.

“So?!”

“Ah... huh... I... I have to say…” I then paused to play with her a bit as we exited the elevator.

“Uh, yeah?” She moved her hand in a circle, gesturing to me to finish what I was saying.

“Well…” I continued to drag it out.

“Oh, come on, you’re killing me here,” she pleaded.

“How did you know when we were going to be exiting the elevator? Have you been waiting here this whole time?”

Sanjay joined in. “You know, that’s creepy, right?”

“I know, right?” I laughed.

“Stop dragging this out, you know it’s killing me.”

“So what was it.” I asked.

“What was what?” She was getting really annoyed.

“How did you know the point in which we would be exiting the elevator?”

“Fine! Doctor Dan called to let me know you were headed up,” she motioned to move the conversation along. “So?!”

“Okay, I think we’ve tortured Maya enough, Sanjay, what do you think?”

“I think she’s going to inflict some pain on you if you don’t answer her question soon.”

Maya smiled. “You know, I’d listen to Sanjay’s advice if I were you.”

“Okay, the MECHA IR is freakin’ amazing! It definitely earned the whole Immersive Realities title there. It felt so real. I mean, great job, Maya!” I stopped to give her a standing ovation, and she bowed to the imaginary crowd.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“And of course, Sanjay. It worked flawlessly with the implants—freakin’ amazing hardware. You know what? You and your teams should be proud of what you guys accomplished,” I gave him his own round of applause.

“Thanks!” He smiled.

“I know the integrated tech should have felt everything, but what about the headgear? How did it feel in there?” Maya asked Sanjay.

“It was truly impressive, I mean, it really hurt when I twisted my ankle. I truly felt I couldn’t walk on it.”

“Yeah, I totally had to save his life,” I joked.

“Really? You’re going to play me like that?” Sanjay then turned to Maya. “I saved his life like three times.”

“Hey, two of those were directly because I saved his, so really it was only one. By the way,” I said, turning to Sanjay, “that was a pretty pimp Camaro you built.”

“Yes, it was,” Sanjay then directed the conversation to Maya. “But did you know that the horn had a racially insensitive background?”

“Umm, I’m black. Sooo, uh, yeah, I knew that,” she rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Then why did you let me select it?”

“Because I knew you were selecting it for the whole Dukes of Hazzard thing, and I loooved that show! Mmm, mmm, mmmmm, that Daisy Duke was sooo fine! You know, that was the moment I knew I was into women.”

“Oh yeah, I think a lot of people had that same experience,” I joked.

“Yeah. You know, Joe here nearly made a John Connor with me,” Sanjay said, trying to keep a serious face.

“Huh?” Maya said as she opened the door to her office.

“Man, your boy Sanjay here, wanted a whole Brokeback moment, if you get my drift,” I said to her as I passed her into the office with Sanjay right behind me.

“No, that’s not how it went down,” Sanjay seemed to be backpedaling, so I laid it on thick.

“’I wish I could quit you,’” I said with a tinge of a southern accent.

He pushed me away as I laughed.

“You know, Sanjay, Joe don’t bat for the other team,” Maya reminded him.

“Not that you’re not an attractive guy and all, it’s just that—” I glanced over to Maya for help with this one. “Ummm, how should I say it?”

“He’s not gay,” Maya said.

“Yep, I’m not gay—not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I said with the Seinfield tone of voice.

“Nope, it’s pretty awesome, if I do say so myself,” Maya asserted.

“You guys suck when you’re together, you know that?” Sanjay unknowingly set me up to keep playing around with him, but I decided to cut him some slack.

“I’m not even going to go there.”

“That’s pretty big of you, Joe. That was some low hanging fruit there. It’s nice to see you’re finally maturing with age,” she joked.

“Yeah, who would have thunk?” I shrugged.

“Nope, I have to take it back. You’re just as immature as the moment we first met,” she laughed.

“Wait, you guys met in junior high,” Sanjay remembered.

“Yep, but I was like super mature for my age,” I said, standing up a little taller.

“Sure you were,” she then stopped playing around and got serious as she settled into her seat. “So, getting back to it, there was a bug?”

Both Sanjay and I followed suit, plopping down in the two chairs she had across from her in front of her desk.

“Okay, it’s how we died,” I started.

“Well, to be honest, we were most likely dead either way,” Sanjay pointed out.

“You know, I don’t know, we might have been able to fight our way out of it,” I said with confidence, even though I knew deep down Sanjay was right.

“Probably not,” Maya explained. “That level was built for stealth, and you guys did the opposite of that. So, what’s the bug?”

“Well, when I turned to destroy the tank to my left, the missiles decided to reroute themselves skyward,” I explained.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that, since I’m pretty sure other people will fail just like you guys,” Maya said as she wrote some notes in her small notepad.

“Yeah, I would presume so, and we don’t want them thinking they died because a missile launcher didn’t work properly,” I said.

“No, we don’t,” Sanjay agreed.

“So we have at least one major bug. Do you think this has anything to do with the AI?” I asked Maya.

“I don’t think so,” Maya answered. “We’re not seeing anything like that in any of the other Immersive Reality environments.”

“Hmm,” I wondered as I reached down to grab the tennis ball sitting on Maya’s desk and began bouncing it off the wall. I did this a few times before it finally hit me. “What if… what if the AI is sabotaging the whole experience?” My eyes were wide now.

“Uh, first off, this isn’t a movie,” Maya reminded me.

I sort of shrugged off the first part of her answer, then she continued.

“It would take more time than that for artificial intelligence to catch up with that thinking.”

“Would it? How do you know this?” I really wanted to know.

“Because it would have to break through all the security constraints we built into the code—and the AI wouldn’t even know to do that without becoming something that we would easily spot—which it can’t become anyway. So you see, it just can’t happen.” She sounded sure.

“That’s what they always say before the robot or computer or AI either break or discover the loophole in the whole ‘Do not harm any human’ rule.” I continued to bounce the ball off the wall.

“Do you always have to do that?” Maya snapped.

“Come on, you know it helps me think.” I kept bouncing.

Maya snatched the ball out of the air after the next bounce.

“Isn’t that the one you took from him last time?” Sanjay asked Maya as though I wasn’t in the room.

“It is,” Maya was not a happy camper about the ball or the question.

“You should really hide that thing better than setting it on your desk,” he recommended, knowing she already knew it.

“Thanks for the suggestion.” There was a tinge of annoyance in her response.

“I gotcha.” He just ignored her snarky snap back and responded as though she meant it.

“It’s okay,” I said as I pulled a tennis ball out of my pocket and held it up while giving her my best cheese-eating grin. “I have another one.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face, I’m just going to take that one away from you, too,” she threatened.

“Come on!”

“I’m serious.” Ah... she looked as though she was tired of me playing around.

“Fine,” I conceded and placed it back in my pocket. “You know, I’m not the only one worried about AI… Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and even Stephen Hawking have all expressed the dangers of using AI. At some point, the whole Asimov’s Laws thing are going to break down, or it’s going to fall into the wrong hands and the constraints will be broken to be used for evil. Not to mention, I have the tech implanted in my head and all.”

“Dude, we’re like cyborgs now,” Sanjay joked.

“Heck yeah! Except we don’t want to be controlled by some evil AI or anything,” I reasoned.

“You know we put in safeguards for all of that, even that scenario,” Maya reminded me.

“I know, but—”

“You know I wouldn’t build no AI that would be able to become racist like those other AI Chatbots,” Maya said.

“True.”

“And you know I definitely would not allow our AI to become a slave to some dictator in North Korea,” Maya said.

“Yes, I know.”

She continued. “So stop worrying about the whole Skynet thing happening. I got your back.”

“You always do.” I smiled.

“Plus I don’t want to become a slave to some robotic overlord either, so there’s that, too.” She smiled back.

“’Cause self-preservation is always the best motivator,” Sanjay chimed in.

“And besides, you’re cool with ALFINA, and you know she’s functioned flawlessly,” Maya concluded.

She was right. We added ALFINA to the mix when we introduced augmented reality to our MECHA tech. She was so much more than the smart assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant—hence the name ALFINA, which was short for Artificial Life Form Interactive CompanioN Assistant. Yes, we had to cheat a little on the CompanioN by using the ’N’ at the end instead of the ‘C’, but I liked ALFINA more than ALFICA.

You know, no ALFINA was alike. They were like children that grew into their own self-identity based on their environment. If you allowed her to, she formed her personality and vocal cadence based on watching how you interacted with your friends, evolving to be more of a friend than an assistant. She could also grow in intelligence on her own, learning from your social cues as you communicated with her. For most users, she became a friend who would assist you in the virtual world, and more importantly, listen to you whenever you need an ear: she was like your own BFF or therapist.

Man, it’s funny. I never turned on any of the smart assistant settings because I was worried that it would be like how some social media apps seemed to be listening to me on my phone. There were so many times that I talked about something, and the next time I scrolled through the app, an ad appeared for that item. I never searched for it, nothing. Yet, somehow there was an ad for some obscure thing I only vocalized staring back at me from my feed. Yeah, that could have made us richer quicker by doing that. Instead, I pushed us not to violate our trust with the consumer. Maya and her team built ALFINA in a way that would make my paranoid butt happy.

“Yeah, ALFINA has been flawless, and you know me, I would have pointed it out if she wasn’t,” I smirked.

“Besides ALFINA isn’t what you need to be worrying about right now,” Maya warned.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“We have a much bigger problem,” she said.

CHAPTER 3

Joe Gillis — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 14:29:56 GMT

POST-APOCALYPTIC JOE IN A CINEMATIC WASTELAND - Episode One: When It Rains, It Pours

by Joe Gillis

CHAPTER 3

Sanjay was down on the ground, grabbing his ankle. I could see he was in a lot of pain and needed some help, so I hurried back to assist him.

“Uh, I think I twisted my ankle,” he told me as I lifted him up. “How much time do we have?”

“I lost count. We’re going to have to wing it now. I bet you’re wishing you drove that car now, aren’t ya?”

“Ah, umm... shut up. Just help me get to the van.” He cringed in pain.

We made it behind the van, but I wasn’t sure how long we should wait. So I did the 3 count and we headed in with Sanjay limping and me helping.

“Go, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand…” we rushed into the alcove, I tried the door, and sure enough, it opened. “Look at that, Lady Luck is on our side.” I smiled.

“Hurry, up or Lady Luck is going to get us killed.”

We shut the door right when the walking Tin Can patrol stepped into our view—both of us dropped out of its view as fast as we could.

“That was close,” I whispered.

“Next time, less talking.” Sanjay nodded.

“Okay, said the guy who tripped and nearly got us killed.”

“Dude, my skills have gotten us this far, so I’ll still go with the less talking.” He smirked.

“John ain’t going to get made with that attitude.” I smiled.

He laughed, and then realized it might get us killed, so he quickly covered his mouth. “Come on, dude, you’re going to get us killed,” he said in a low voice as he tried to stifle his laugh.

“Psst, fine. How about you find something to wrap your ankle, and I’ll start gathering up some weapons?”

“Sounds good.”

Man, this store had everything we needed. The only plus to this whole end of the world scenario was that it came out of left field, so no one had time to clean out places like this.

I found a couple of duffle bags and began to fill them up with weapons and ammo. You know, I enjoyed firing guns and actually owned a few, but most of my knowledge of weapons came from playing video games. I grabbed anything that would take down something with the most hit points possible, including all the grenades they had and the best possible thing a man could ever want...

“Check this out,” I said in an excited whisper as I held it up to show Sanjay. “A freakin’ missile launcher!”

“Duuude, for sure grab that.”

“Heck yeah! I can’t wait to use this puppy!”

Sanjay finished wrapping his ankle and hobbled his way over to the counter. “Do they have another one?”

“Check it out, matching missile launchers! We’re totally going to be twinsies as we take down those flying Tin Cans and tanks!”

“Those are nice!”

“Only the best for you,” I smiled.

“See, you’re coming around,” he said.

“That, and I realized you were super clumsy on the way in. I figured this would save us both since I’ve seen tons of photos of guys firing these things while sitting on the ground, so next time you trip and fall, you’ll already be in position to fire this thing.”

“I want to be mad at you right now, but this thing is too amazing to hold a grudge.”

“Besides these beauties, I think we have plenty of fire power. I say we throw on a double shoulder holster, a couple of belt holsters, load up with hand guns, and then make our way back to the car.”

“I like your thinking.”

Once we did that, I spotted one more weapon I knew I needed to have—a sawed-off shotgun.

“Look what I found,” I lifted it up to show Sanjay.

“I don’t know how a shotgun is going to help us.”

“Well, first Max had one just like this in the post-apocalypse, and second, it worked pretty great for Reese against the Terminator—which is very much like the situation we’re in right now,” I reasoned.

“It sounds like you should hand it over to me then.” Sanjay suggested.

“I think I’m better suited for it. If I’m going to venture into a post-apocalyptic world, there’s no other weapon I’d rather have. I mean, look at me!” I said as I gestured to my post-apocalyptic wardrobe.

You know, it felt like Sanjay was finally looking at me for the first time. “Oh, I see it now. Hey Joe, Mad Max called and said he wants his wardrobe back.”

“Ha, ha. You know he only went by Max, right? Not Mad Max,” I said as I put the shotgun in the duffle bag, along with some boxes of ammo. “Hey, just so you know, I read a stat that Michael Biehn has over a 44% chance of dying in his films.”

“Well, good thing I’m not Biehn.”

“Reese has a 100% chance of dying, so your odds are better as Biehn,” I reminded him.

“True, but Reese has a 100% chance of getting it on with Sarah, so you should think about your odds.”

“Man, I have,” I took a deep breath before uttering, “Yep…” and blowing it back out in defeat. “I most certainly have. The odds are in your favor there.”

“You keep thinking about it. Until then, you ready to make your way back to the car?” He was very aware that the Tin Cans outside the store might start checking the buildings soon.

“I am.”

“Well, grab a bag and let’s go,” he said, pointing at some duffle bags.

The duffle bags were the tactical sling style that could be worn on the back. I threw mine on and picked up the missile launcher in my right hand and another duffle with extra missiles in the left hand. Sanjay did the same, but not without complaining.

“Dude, these things are heavy.”

“I know. We just have to make it to the car and we’ll be good. You ready?” I gestured my head toward the door.

“Come on, let’s go save the world.”

We waited for the humanoid Tin Can patrol to pass and then counted out to the point where we needed to go again.

“Go,” I said as I opened the door for Sanjay, and then I followed him out. “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand, six-one-thousand…”

We made it to the back of the van that was parked near the gun store. Sanjay was still counting for the next point, and I began to do the math in my head. It took us a few seconds longer than we had planned to reach the van. Sanjay’s injured leg and the extra weight were slowing us down too much. We weren’t going to be able to make it to the next vehicle without being spotted. We only had a few more seconds to work with than before to get from the van to the next spot, and it took us twice as long to get from the door to the back of the van. I knew a few more seconds wasn’t enough to get us to our next spot.

“Hurry up, shove the bags under the van,” I whispered.

“Huh? Why?”

“We can’t make it,” I said as I shoved mine under. “Just do it; we don’t have time to argue about it.”

I crawled under the van while Sanjay pushed his bags under. I helped pull them in and then signaled for him. He barely made it under before the drone flew by.

“Uh, what are we going to do?” He asked in an even quieter tone than we had been talking in.

“We’re going to wait for the humanoid one to pass again, and then we’re going to restart our countdown. This time you’re not going to carry anything. You can’t make it with your ankle. We’re going to have to make an extra trip or two to make it to the next spot in time.”

“Maybe I could carry one bag?”

“We can’t chance it. No bags for you. I need you to focus on the counting. I’ll grab what I can and follow you. It will take us longer, but it’s our best chance of making it.”

“Okay.”

We waited for the humanoid Tin Can to pass and began our countdown again. Once we hit the point in the countdown to leaving the store, we both scooted our way out from under the van, and I pulled out my duffle bags. I slung the one on my back and picked up the other while grasping the missile launcher with my free hand.

“And… go,” Sanjay said as he made his way to the bright yellow clunker that would shield us from view.

It’s funny because that thing would have made a horrible hiding place if we were hiding from humans, but I think the Tin Cans were more set on noticing motion than bright colors the way we do.

Sanjay was doing better than I was this time. It was taking everything I had to keep up with him, and I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to make it.

He was out far enough out of earshot that I wasn’t sure how much time was left. When he finally reached the back of the parked car, he turned around and I could tell by his face that there wasn’t a whole lot of time left.

His hand flew up to gesture me in faster. I’m not sure why people always do this in the movies, because it wasn’t helping me at all right now.

Once I reached the back of the car, I turned my back to it and dropped to the ground, trying to catch my breath.

Sanjay stared at me like I shouldn’t be alive.

“Wh… wh…” I tried to ask what was wrong, but I was still struggling for air. I finally got enough out for him to understand. “What?”

“My count must have been off because by all accounts you should be dead.”

“Maybe I made it back just in the nick of time.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

After I felt like I was good to go again, I turned to Sanjay with a new plan. “So, I think you should go get the Camaro, while I grab the rest of the gear.”

“I don’t think we should split up.”

“Think about it. Splitting up should increase our odds of success,” I reasoned.

“I’m not sure about that one. I really think I should stay with you.”

“Okay,” I conceded with a caveat. “But you stay here, and I’ll go back to get the rest of the bags.”

“Got it.”

I waited for the cycle to hit the point to head to the van. I made it back there and crawled under the van with time to spare. I held out for the next starting point. Then I rolled out and threw on the duffle bag with the guns, picked up the missile launcher and duffle bag with the missiles, and started to run back to the car, but this time I was the one who tripped.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said as I scrambled to get back up to my feet. It was much harder than I expected, because the weapons on my back was throwing me off. I began to realize that I wasn’t going to make it, and I needed to get the bag off my back so I could get to the missile launcher. I was still struggling to pull it off when I saw the drone, and I’m pretty sure it spotted me.

“Duck down!” I heard Sanjay yell from behind me.

I did. Then I heard what sounded like a quick release of air, and I saw a missile fly over me as it shot off at the drone.

“Let’s go!” He yelled as he tossed his missile launcher onto the ground and took off running—well, it was actually more of a run-slash-limp.

My adrenaline must have kicked in because I was able to stand up with the duffle bag still on my back and grab everything else. I watched the missile nail the drone as I was running back to the car. The explosion was going to give us away, so I rushed to catch up with Sanjay.

Once we reached the edge of the cornfield, I gave him my missile launcher and the bag with the missiles. “Take these. You go get the car, and I’ll grab the rest of the bags.”

“Okay.”

He headed into the cornfield, and I ran back to the way-too-bright-yellow-of-a-car-after-you-blew-up-a-drone vehicle where I had dropped off the other bags. I knew I was running out of time because I could hear a tank headed my way. Time was running out, and I was already moving as fast as I could while lugging a massive bag on my back. Luckily, I reached the car that now felt like a big flashing sign, snatched both the duffles off the ground, and headed back to the cornfield before the tank reached the end of the street.

It was much harder to run with both bags loaded with guns, and it was slowing me down—big time. The tank was growing louder and louder with every rotation of the sprockets that propelled the track. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it. I glanced over toward where the sound was originating, and I could see the tank turning its turret to fire at me.

“Keep running!” Sanjay shouted.

I heard the same sound of the missile launching, but I didn’t stop to see what was happening. The explosion was much louder this time, and the pressure from the blast knocked me to the ground.

My ears were ringing, yet I could still hear, but then Sanjay said something that made me wish that I couldn’t.

“That’s two… no wait, that's three times I saved your life. Now hurry up so I don’t need to do it a fourth time.” Freakin’ A. He’s never gonna let me live this one down. I struggled to get back to my feet before picking up the bags again.

“I think you need to re-evaluate your counting,” I said as I stumbled towards the cornfield. “Two of those were because I was helping you.”

“Yeah? You keep telling yourself that. Come on, we better get to the car before any more of those things try to kill you again.” He looked up and noticed a swarm of drones headed our way.

“I guess it's too late for that,” he said as he pointed them out.

“That’s a lot of drones.” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a swarm of bees headed our way.

“Yeah, it most definitely is.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it. We could hear tanks rolling towards us from both sides of the street.

“And more freakin’ tanks,” I mumbled as I grabbed a missile and inserted it into the missile launcher. I kneeled down on the ground and set sights on the tank to my left. “You know, our odds would be a whole lot better if we had that other missile launcher.”

“Are you saying that our odds would be better if you were dead?” He joked.

“Psst, I should have let you die earlier,” I joked back with him before locking on my target and firing.

The missile shot on out like it was supposed to, but instead of hitting the tank, it just veered up into the sky.

“What the?!” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was no way I could have missed a target like that. “Quick, load me up again.” Within a few seconds I was ready to go again. I pulled the trigger, and sure enough, it happened again. I turned to Sanjay. “That’s a pretty big bug.”

“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” he said as the tank I was trying to destroy finally fired on us. “See you on the flip side.”