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From the Diary of Ivan Rudnev
2062

 
I have come to the conclusion that I need to make records. It will help me collect my thoughts and be my insurance in case something happens to me. I am not the first person who has tried to uncover the truth about the 2032 Disaster, but I am probably the only one still alive. And I'm alive because I haven't gotten too deep into this investigation yet. All I have is the evidence of three witnesses and one newspaper clipping. How they came into my possession is a long story, enough for an entire book, but it would have many gaps.

For example, I don't know why the Franciscan monk kept a printout of the anonymous letter to Cardinal Alfonso Ferrero. I assume he was searching for the author. This monk was not lucky with his choice of transportation. The caravan he rode in was laden with Gerrium. This was one of the minerals that appeared on Earth after the disaster. It is used to produce explosives which make it highly sought after among bandits. The monk was in the first car and one of the first to die when bandits attacked. His private items were picked up by one of the raiders who told me the story three years later. In exchange for the letter I did not smash his skull, though I had many reasons to do so.

The diary of Doctor Arthur Frobenius came to me in a less cruel way. In the first paragraph he mentions nurse Teresa caring for him during his illness. Teresa later found his notes under his mattress and kept them. She didn't know what happened to Frobenius. One morning, a carriage arrived and took him away. Teresa kept the diary for twenty six years. When she died, it was passed on to her friend, my mother. My mother gave it to me.

 
 
However, it was not the only thread linking me to the heroes written about in Frobenius's diary. My father had listened to the doctor's lectures while on an internship in North America. He wasn't sure but he thinks he even met a man named Ernie. Frobenius had used that name to refer to one of his colleagues. My father's internship ended two years before the disaster. On the fateful day, my father was on a research submarine three miles under the sea. It saved him. That lucky crew included my mother as well.

Frobenius did a lot to help survivors. He developed a rehabilitation technology for "Mankurts" as they came to be known - people whose mind was affected by damaged nanobots and implants. After the disaster, the estimated number of Mankurts was 10-100 million people. At the same time, the number of normal people did not exceed one million. Most of them belonged to underdeveloped populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In Europe and North America, there remained only a few thousand normal people and their survival was in question. At the same time, Mankurts were not as helpless as Frobenius made them out to be. They started to bunch together into swarms that looted and hunted the normal people. Frobenius himself made it his goal to rehabilitate them. For the first generation of Mankurts it was easy, but their children were more difficult. The Mankurts' offspring were born with a genetic aberration. We learned to fight it only three years ago. Since then, we have rehabilitated several hundred of them per month in our quarantine zone.

 
 
Of course, don’t harbor any illusions. Most of the world's population found a different way to survive. Tribes of people from Southern areas once considered “under-developed” are now spreading their influence on a very large territory. Sometimes I feel like they will be the future masters of Earth – no matter how hard we are trying. They are pushing Mankurts further to the north, where there is continuous fighting between those of us who are trying to rebuild the civilized world and gangs of violent looters. As we fight with evil people, Mankurts are entering the fray.

If the information about Frobenius and the unknown astronomer came to me “by itself,” the letter left by O’Raily required a lot of hard work to get. A man calling himself Tom Jones (there is no doubt that this was an alias) appeared out of nowhere in our city of Lugansk-27 one day. He offered the letter to me at an excessively high price.

When he realized I didn't have the money, he hired me for overtime work. At my day job, I am a security guard for residential properties in Lugansk-27. For Mr. Tom Jones, I also did security. Fortunately, it was not to protect him from other people. He wanted to visit our "cyber-jungles" - territories full of wild robots. These robots were once domesticated, but mankind became too busy with their own problems to take care of them. They became wild, out for revenge against humanity. They learned to reproduce by themselves in old robot manufacturing factories. Frankly, I suspect that there is someone controlling these robots. They adapt too quickly to our attacks.

During one of these journeys I saved Tom's life. This deeply affected him. Before he left Lugansk, he gave me a copy of the note. Unlike his name, I feel that the note is genuine.

 
Prehistory - Ivan Rudnev
 
The last item I received was a clipping of a news story from the Financial Times. At that time, I was already working hard on the “Problem of June 6” and in my spare time I browsed through a library that has survived all of this time. There I saw the older editions of the newspapers. Among the foreign press articles, I found the one by Rita Lynch.

I talked with parents of my contemporaries and other people who survived the catastrophe. They didn't give me many clues. Many culprits have been blamed, including military units, people from other dimensions (with the names Nikola Tesla and Mihail Filippov,) clandestine societies of misanthropes, and personally Arthur Frobenius and Ernie Kirh. I’ve noticed that the survivors feel guilty about the dead, so they do not speak publicly against each other. They feel guilty for having survived and that guild is more than enough for them..

Something went wrong in our world. A foundation that had made the world understandable and stable had shifted. Chaos entered our house. Natural landscapes have lost their usual look. Former plains rose to volcanoes. Sultry deserts now nit next to jungle wetlands. Seas have dried into prairies. The fauna is full of never before seen creatures. Are they mutated local animals or new arrivals? Nobody knows. The creatures are not surprising, as even natural elements have changed their chemical properties! Our soil is filled with new compounds that need new names.

We humans give the name of Chaos to anything we can't find a reason for, in which the impossible happens. I refuse to acknowledge its power over me. I believe these four documents came to me for a reason. Fate ordered that I become the one about whom Frobenius wrote at the end of his diary… the one who will disclose the secrets of June 6, 2032.

 

 
 
     
 
 
Shot 16
 
 
 

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