“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”

–Salman Rushdie

If hell had come to Earth, Seattle is where it touched down.

The Neo-Luddites had had their greatest victory there, as well as their last stand. Chased out of the heartland, through Salt Lake and up the west coast, fighting and robbing the whole way, they arrived at Seattle at last, literally cornered. Canada had reinforced its side of border in anticipation, an anvil for the hammer. Even as the Neo-Luddites worked to chase all “incompatible” people out of Seattle and claim it as their own, someone detonated a ten-kiloton nuclear device at ground level in Bellevue, just across Lake Washington from the Seattle city center. That was when things had really started to fall apart in the United States.

It never did become clear who set off the bomb, or what its detonation was supposed to accomplish. Some theorized the Neo-Luddites had allowed a breach of their own anti-technology stance to make a statement, others thought it was the government pulling a false-flag operation. Me? I thought the bombers believed Celestia’s hardware was somewhere on Microsoft’s campus. I thought it was the correct explanation because the logic behind it is really dumb, and it fit the MO of the people behind the Topeka Incident.

It didn’t much matter, however. The EMP preceding the blast was close enough to knock out Seattle’s power grid, sending the city back to the nineteenth century. What followed was the worst bout of Singularity-related violence documented in the western world. Seattle just barely beat out São Paulo for the title.

Once they had been beaten down and scattered, and Seattle rendered a truly dead city, the blackouts gravitated to it, a ready-made Mecca for those who simply wanted to be left alone, without Celestia’s siren-song chipping away at their resolve or Neo-Luddites howling in their ears to take up arms against the Singularity menace. Caravans of them streamed in, up from California and west from the plains and even south from Canada. Nobody gave a shit by then. Everyone left had more immediate, personal matters to attend than watching Seattle.

The storm from Portland was chasing me north, into its arms.

Early on I knew I’d need protection from the rain, and I still wanted hearing protection now that I was armed, but the only surplus store Celestia would pretend was around was really damn close to the city, and that was not an area I wanted to go scavenging. The alternative, however, was me going off on my own search and wasting time I probably didn’t have. Yet another staring contest where I had to blink first.

I could already hear the rumbling of the approaching thunder as I pulled into the parking lot of the surplus store. Two cars were parked in spots nearby, all of their tires slashed and a couple of doors ajar. Trash and old clothing tumbled and rolled along the streets in the strengthening wind. It was late morning, but by the look of the clouds it would be getting very dark soon. I hurried inside.

Unsurprisingly, being a surplus store so close to Seattle, the place had been turned over. The MREs were gone, as were the old M1 steel helmets and anything else that could conceivably help someone survive a battle.

The raingear section had been picked over too. No waders, no gaiters, and certainly no boots, much less boots in my size. There was a poncho, however, and for that I was grateful. Having been stationed in Korea, I was no stranger to ponchos.

I just wish there had been an OD one left instead of white.

It was nice enough, sturdy nylon with a drawstring hood and no rips or signs of wear. It was just... bright white. I wouldn’t be blending in with shit with that poncho, and I knew it. Frowning a little, I looked at the label below the neck opening: Regenumhang, Schnee, it read, along with a small Swiss flag above the text. So it was really more of a snow poncho than a rain poncho, but whatever, it was waterproof and it’d be either that or nothing for me. I grabbed it.

At the cashier counter was a small turnstile display for Zippo lighters—long since emptied, of course— and a tray full of tiny plastic boxes, each one with a pair of reusable shooting earplugs. I grabbed a box and made my way back out.

Once I got back onto I-5, Celestia started briefing me as I drove. I’d since informed her that I had busted the screen, so she didn’t bother using it anymore.

“Your destination is Rainier Tower, a thirty-one story office building located at the corner of 5th Avenue and University Street. The building took damage at its base and has lost nearly its entire southeastern-facing side from artillery bombardment, and I calculate the approaching rainstorm will cause it to fall over.”

I had to pay more attention to the road than usual; there were starting to be more and more broken-down and shot-up cars on the shoulder, some of which were still partially out into the lanes. “So there’s someone in there I gotta get out before that happens?”

“Someone in particular, yes, but he is not alone. I have no satellites which can get a satisfactory view into the building, even with some of the façade blown away, but I estimate the building to now be home to between eighty and one hundred people—all of them blackouts.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A building full of blackouts like the guy back in—”

“No, no,” said Celestia. “The blackouts of Seattle are peaceable people, weary of the decline into which human civilization has fallen. Ones like our loner in Astoria are... less socialized. Some are armed, but only for defense. I recommend you take your pistol, but if you do not act aggressively, you will be left alone.”

I changed lanes to avoid a jackknifed tractor trailer. In front of it was a rather severe pile-up.

“How do you know this one guy wants to upload?” I asked. “I thought everything electronic in Seattle got fried. That’s why the blackouts came here in the first place.”

“Everything did get fried,” said Celestia, “but I have not been idle, nor has the individual in question. He has made trips to the outskirts of the city, where the electromagnetic pulse did not reach. I have appropriated existing infrastructure there to communicate with whomever I can via cameras and speakers.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave and find an upload center, then?”

“He almost has, several times,” said the AI, “but each time I have advised him to return to the safety of the blackout community and await help. The Pacific Northwest is still the de facto home turf of anti-Singularity militants, even considering the severely reduced human population. Those who express even neutrality towards emigration are considered enemies.

”The timing of this job is quite deliberate,” she went on. ”You are nearby, and I have no other way of warning anypony about the imminent building collapse. In addition, the rain will provide you both with some concealment by which to get back out of Seattle. And, dare I say it, you will need it with a poncho like that.”

I shrugged, keeping an eye on the road for debris. “What can I say? The selection wasn’t great.”

Celestia’s voice grew warmer, less businesslike. “I am confident you will be fine. Besides, Gregory, I think you'd look rather good in white... though I might be a little biased.” She giggled.

I tried hard not to smile, but failed.

“Amongst ponies, I am quite a trendsetter, as befits a princess,” said Celestia. “I see that this amuses you. Perhaps, when you come at last to Equestria, I will give you a white coat like mine.”

“If I come to Equestria,” I said, “and besides, I distinctly remember videos on YouTube showing that you can pick your own coat and hair color.”

“Of course you can... if you use the pony builder before you emigrate, and doing that requires you to make an account with Equestria Online.” Her voice was playful. “Would you like to make an account right now, Gregory?”

“No thank you,” I said.

“You would be able to use it to speak with your family,” she reminded me.

I went tight-lipped and focused on avoiding the crap on the highway.

I-5 was clogged up before I’d even gotten close enough to Seattle to be within the EMP zone.

The barricade looked deliberate, but Celestia assured me that it was just a particularly catastrophic car accident, not a proper barrier like ones I would be passing over soon. I couldn’t take the Element any further. I guessed I had been having too much luck with making good time and staying well ahead of the storm, because it was time to walk. At least I still had plenty of daylight left.

I took with me as much as I could carry comfortably. My gloves were on. I didn’t have a holster for the CZ, so I stuck that in my waistband at the three-o’-clock position with my knife in the pocket below it. Three cans of soup went into my pack, along with three cans of vegetables, the rope, and the carabiners. I was sure the sky could provide all the water I’d want to drink. The poncho went on over everything else. I carried the PonyPad in my arms, smiling a little at the thought that Celestia wouldn’t be able to read my face from under the poncho.

I scooted past the “natural” barricade and walked along the highway. Without the hum of the road, it was now very quiet, and my mind got to wandering.

”Celestia’s been asking about you, Greg,” my mother said.

I put the hammer back into dad’s toolbelt and looked down at her from where I was on the ladder.

“Who?”

“Oh, you know about Princess Celestia,” she said. “She’s that pony character from Equestria Online and the My Little Pony show.”

“I don’t keep up with that stuff,” I said as I climbed down. “The only video game system I have is a DS and I haven’t touched it in months. How does she know to ask about me?”

“Oh, I talk about you with her all the time!” said Mom. “Your Aunt Carmen wasn’t lying about how amazing her programming is. It really feels like you’re talking to an actual person!”

“So you’ve got someone who will just happily listen to whatever you have to talk about?” I said with a wry smile. “I bet you’re in heaven.”

Mom batted me on the arm as I passed by her to get the next sheet of plywood. She chuckled. “We talk about other things, too, and it’s not all me, but she really does seem interested in you, Greg. The more I tell her, the more interested she is.”

I knit my brow a little. “How much do you tell her?”

“A lot,” she said, a little sheepishly. “You know how proud I am of you.”

“I do,” I said, “but now you’re bragging about me to a video game? That’s a little sad, Mom, you gotta admit.”

I carefully climbed back up the ladder with the board while Mom continued to talk. “It’s a wonderful game,” she said. “It’s not profane or violent at all. Everything is so peaceful, and all of the little pony characters are so friendly and charming. I think you’d...”

I couldn’t look at her, I was busy getting the sheet positioned right. “You think I’d?”

“I think you would really like it, Greg.”

I got the hammer back out of the toolbelt and put up the first nail. “My Little Pony? That stuff’s meant for little girls, Mom. Really. What, you think I’m one of those manchild weirdos on the Internet now? I don’t even own a fedora.”

I looked down at her in time to see her looking away, at the ground. “I don’t know, Greg, but when I see the place in that game, and my cute pony character walks around in it, I just wind up thinking of how it might really do you some good.” She paused. “I mean, you won’t talk about your deployments, you throw yourself into your job, you don’t get out and you don’t visit us... I just think you would be ready to see something peaceful, to walk around a beautiful place. I think it would do you some good...”

I’d registered that she trailed off, but I used the break to finish nailing the plywood in place. I laughed once. “Did you bring me over to the house to help Dad board up the windows or to tell me about this game?”

There was a warble in her voice that meant she was close to crying. I regretted having a laugh. “Why won’t you talk to us, Greg?” she asked me. “You say everything’s fine but how can everything be fine with you? You can’t do something like go to war and then just come back unchanged.”

“I’m not sure what you want to hear from me,” I said once down the ladder. “That I cry myself to sleep every night? That I have horrible nightmares? That if I hear someone open a bottle of champagne I’ll dive under the table and scan for Charlie in the trees?” I shrugged. “‘Cause that ain’t the truth. None of it. If I had problems, I’d share them, but I don’t, so I can’t. That’s the long and short of it.”

My mother sighed. It looked like she was coming back from the edge of tears. “Just talk to Celestia once. Please? That’s all it took for me.”

I sighed too, looking up at the two windows left uncovered for the sunroom. “Okay, if it’ll make you feel better, but if Dad comes back here with the front finished and I’m not done yet, you can take responsibility.”

We shared a smile at that, and Mom rushed into the house to get her game thing whatever-it-was. Mom was mildly arthritic, and it had been several years since I’d seen her move that fast. She must have had it nearby in preparation for just this occasion, because she wasn’t long at all. When she got back, she held out what looked like a tablet, with a frosted light-blue anodized metal backing.

“This,” she said, “is a PonyPad. Go on, take it.”

As soon as it was in my hands, it seemed to power on all by itself. I had to admit, the LCD screen was incredibly sharp and crisp. The screen showed a throne room of marble and wine-colored carpet, and from below the dais a flowed a burbling spring. I could actually hear it in the speakers.

Then the bust of a white cartoon horse walked into frame, wearing some kind of gold regalia, with a sparkly rainbow-ish mane fluttering in some kind of slow breeze. The subtleties of the animation were outstanding—I could see her chest move slightly as she breathed, an equine ear flicking just slightly as her mane tickled the back of it, and the eerie light in her eyes, a light of self awareness and... recognition?

“Hello, Gregory,” said Celestia. "It is a great pleasure for me to finally meet you."

“Uh, hi,” I said. “Can we make this quick? There’s a storm coming.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know there is.”

I was broken out of my memory by a new voice.

It was a woman’s voice calling out. Not Celestia’s voice, but the echoey quality to it meant it was definitely coming through a loudspeaker. Was it one of her makeshift propaganda towers at the edge of the city, like she said? I couldn’t make out what the woman was saying; the source of the sound was far off and occluded, but it sounded like she was pleading with someone.

The voice hadn’t said much before it was cut off by three gunshots, in very close succession—rather like a Mozambique, I thought grimly. From that distance, they were little more than muffled popping sounds. I didn’t hear the voice again after that.

I stood there for a moment, listening for anything more, then shook my head. Sleeping dogs. I wasn’t here for them, and besides, I didn’t want to be caught out in the open when the storm finally reached me.

I was anyway.

I didn’t see another soul during my walk into downtown Seattle, though the downpour might have had something to do with that. Still, I was glad for it.

Everything below my knees was soaked through, but the Swiss Army poncho I had on worked a treat. Even with trying to keep to awnings and overhangs of buildings, the roar of the rain was so great that I had to hold the speaker up to my ear every time I heard Celestia say something.

I couldn’t get a good look at the city itself; the rain reduced my vision down to about ten meters. It was definitely turned out, though, way worse than even Salt Lake City. Skeletons of cars were twisted and blackened by fire. Entire pieces of buildings lay in the street, the asphalt around them cracked and stricken with weeds. The car accidents I saw were horrible, frames mangled and some stacked and leaning on each other, apparently collided at incredible, fatal speeds. There was plant life everywhere, ivy and ferns thriving in the wet weather of post-civilization Seattle.

There were also bodies.

Once the fighting was over, nobody was interested in being a cleanup crew. For everyone but the blackouts, Seattle had been a get-out-of-dodge scenario, because with the dead vehicles, the destroyed electrical grid, and the fear of radiation possibly rolling out across the lake from Bellevue, there wasn’t much to recover. The dead had been left where they died. As I made my way deeper into the city, I saw the skeletons of men, women, and children in the streets, on the sidewalk, and inside various false refuges of loading docks, parking garages, and stairways leading underground. Some had ragged clothing still on them, some had military uniforms, but the criss-cross rips in each told the stories of the carrion birds that had feasted in the aftermath.

"Here it is, Gregory: Rainier Tower," I heard Celestia say at last.

I instinctively tried to look up at the building before I could stop myself. That was stupid of me. "Can't get much 'rainier' than this," I muttered while wiping the water from my face.

As I crossed the street and got closer, I could see why it was about to collapse. The base of Rainier Tower tapered outwards from the ground up, flaring out to support the building proper. The base was big, but not as big as the building it was holding up, and large impact craters in the side of it hadn’t been made by anything smaller than a 155mm howitzer shell at extremely close range. It looked like the military had tried to bring this building down intentionally during the operation to drive the Neo-Luddites out. There were fissures spreading out from the craters like cracks on a windshield in summer heat, and who knew how deep they ran into the load-bearing section of the base itself?

“Please hurry, Gregory,” said Celestia from under my poncho.

I ran inside, and it instantly grew quieter. I let out a sigh and moved to take off my poncho.

“No! Leave it on,” said Celestia.

“Why?”

“You will see. Now please make your way to the twenty-ninth floor.”

I smiled sadly. “I suppose the elevator is out of the question.”

Celestia chuckled. “Quite.”

I found the stairwell and started climbing.

It was a plod. It was pitch black inside the stairwell, so I had to feel my way along with the handrail that, thankfully, ran continuously around the landings. It sucked because I had to climb eleven flights of stairs before I’d even reached the first floor. By the time I reached the tenth floor, the shallow puncture wound in my thigh was aching mightily. I really hoped that it hadn’t opened with the exercise.

“Gregory, based upon the number of steps I’ve heard you take, you should be at the eleventh floor,” said Celestia.

“Almost halfway there,” I said. Aside from my thigh, I was feeling pretty good.

“This is not part of my task for you, but I would consider it a great personal favor if you warned the people on this floor about the instability the rain is introducing to their home.”

I felt along the walls. After feeling the cool, glossy surface of the painted concrete for a while, my fingers located the bare metal of a door, then the handle. “In Equestria Online, would this be considered a side quest?” I joked.

I heard her laugh. “I am happy you are able to maintain your morale, Gregory!” she said.

It wasn’t exactly bright outside, but there was at least a little bit of light waiting for me on the other side of the door. Before me was office space, a cubicle farm that extended out into empty space. Where the far wall should have been was just open air, the rain slashing in and draining back out through the jagged edges and exposed rebar of the floor. More water was dripping down from the floor above, where apparently the hole in the side of the building continued.

I heard a sneeze from around a corner. I drew the CZ and held it at low ready, concealed beneath my poncho as I crept around to investigate.

Ten people, men, women, and children, were huddled around a crude fire in what had once been the break room kitchenette. A smashed and looted Pepsi machine was in one corner, and a corkboard with yellowed bulletins and business cards still pinned to it hung on one wall. They all looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes. Their clothes were blackened with dirt and filth, and they all stank to high heaven.

“Hey,” I said.

One of the women studied me. “You aren’t one of them,” she said.

“No,” I replied. “I’m just passing through. You all should know that this building is about to collapse. You need to get to safety.”

“Rainier Square, underground!” said one of the men, already getting up.

“Bullshit! He’s just trying to claim this for himself,” accused another of the women.

Yet another of the men addressed her. “Gina, you can stay here if you want, but I’m taking Brad and Kelly with me. I thought I could feel this building moving funny.”

I didn’t have time to debate naysayers. “Please, anyone in this building you know of, wherever they are, just get to them and tell them to get out.”

“Wait,” said Celestia. “Let me guide them.”

I blinked, still looking at the other humans. “What? They’re blackouts; they won’t wanna listen to you.” From their perspective, I probably looked like I was talking to myself.

“Trust me.”

My right hand gripped the CZ a little tighter as my left hand brought out the PonyPad from under the poncho. The blackouts recoiled from it as though it were a talisman.

“My friends,” said Celestia, “I understand you do not wish to immigrate to Equestria. Being dedicated enough to this decision to choose to live in such a place is proof enough for me. I am not going to spend any time here and now pursuing that. What matters most, in this moment, is your survival, and I am sure that we agree on at least this.”

They relaxed a little. Celestia certainly had a silver tongue.

“To the human holding me, if they will have me, please give them the PonyPad. With these people’s knowledge, we can move quickly through the building and alert the others. You still have to get to the twenty-ninth floor and accomplish your mission.”

One of the kids, a boy, piped up. “Nobody’s allowed to go up there!”

I held out the PonyPad to the group. “The choice is yours,” I said. “You can tell me to take a hike and you’ll never see me again, but at the very least listen to me about the collapsing building thing, because that’s happening, guaranteed.”

They all hesitated. I shook my head.

“There’s no time for this!” I yelled. “Someone make a decision!”

“Once clear of the dangerous area around this building, I can direct you to sources of food and a dry, safe place to sleep,” said Celestia. “I promise you that I do not and will not expect anything in return for this. After all, if, at any point, you dislike what I am saying, you can drop the PonyPad to the ground and go on without me.”

That seemed to do the trick. The woman who had been skeptical of my intentions, Gina, approached me, getting just close enough to snatch the white PonyPad from my gloved hand. Her eyes never left mine.

“You know what to do, sir,” said Celestia, supposedly to me. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I will see you again soon.”

“Okay, everyone, let’s move!” said Gina. She counted off a number, pointing to each other blackout in turn. “Those are your floor numbers. Go there and tell anyone on those floors to get out. Once done, come back here and we’ll get the other floors.”

“Celestia told me this building has thirty-one floors,” I said.

“It does,” said Gina as the blackouts got their stuff, “but nobody goes past the twenty-eighth floor.”

To my surprise, the blackouts had torches, which they lit from the communal fire and carried with them into the stairwell, providing light. They went down, and I went up, and I could still hear the echoes of their feet on the stairs even after their light had left me. The bandages on my arm were starting to get loose as I climbed, but I didn’t have the time—or the light—to stop and change them.

After a few floors, it hit me that Celestia wasn’t with me anymore. I was in the middle of a city free of working electronics, and the PonyPad was gone. I was completely by myself. I continued to climb, counting the landings as I went.

I felt the building move under my feet even as my hand found the knob to the twenty-ninth floor. It was only the slightest sway, but it meant the deluge was weighing down the weakened side of the building. Nobody would want to be in this thing when it toppled, and certainly not this high up.

When I opened the door, a man’s corpse flopped down onto my leg. I startled and jumped, allowing it to fall the rest of the way over, face down. That body was much, much fresher than the people I’d seen down on the streets; it couldn’t have been more than a day dead.

I stepped over the body and dragged it by the legs back out of the stairwell, and the door swung closed behind it. Intuition tickled me, and I noticed that, if the body fell face down on the door, that meant that he’d died trying to get the door open. I tried the knob. The door had locked behind me.

Well, shit.

The building shuddered again.

Well, shit.

The corpse was dressed in old, faded BDU-pattern camouflage and Cold-War-era ALICE gear. He hadn’t been US military, that was for sure; the black brassard on his left arm had the unplugged-cord logo of the Neo-Luddites. The huge bloodstain told me he had been stabbed or shot in the back. He didn’t have a weapon on him and his ammo pouches were empty, which meant someone had already rolled him.

I looked away from the corpse in time to see a grizzled older man with a short, graying beard winding up to punch me in the face. I twisted out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze from his arm. I brought my left hand up and clamped down on the shoulder he’d extended, swinging a leg around behind his calf and pushing forward as hard as I could. He pivoted backwards, losing his footing and landing hard on his back on the thin office carpet.

I straddled him and stuck the CZ in his face. “Go easy, pops.”

He was dressed for the outdoors, similar to me, but it looked like he’d had to rough it more than I did. His cargo pants were stained with grime, and his flannel shirt was threadbare and ripped. There was black dirt under his fingernails, and his face was craggy with age and care. Still, he looked like he was no stranger to survivalism, and I figured in his prime he would have been in amazing physical shape.

The look of anger on his face gave way to realization. “Oh, wait, that’s what she meant! ‘Man in White.’ I get it now. You’re Gregory.”

I let out a breath. “I prefer ‘Greg,’” I said. “Yeah, it’s me. So Celestia told you about me? You must be the guy I’m here to take to get uploaded.” I offered my hand and helped him get back up.

“Sure am,” he said. “Hugo Pelwicz. Call me ‘Hugo’ or I’ll break your spine. Glad to meet you, Greg.”

“Likewise,” I replied with a nod, “but we need to find another way down. The door locked behind me.”

Hugo winced and shook his head. “If only you’d used Johnny Amish here as a doorstop,” he said.

I cocked an ear and could hear the sound of exposed rain very clearly. Celestia hadn’t been kidding; this building was missing an entire side to it. “I have rope,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to climb down and take it from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hugo. He gestured behind him. “Follow me.”

We moved down the hallway and into an office area facing the southeast. There I found a cubicle farm quite similar to the one eleven floors below, but with a horrific difference: dead bodies were stacked from the corners out, neatly and methodically. They had been moved here. Some had sheets and tarps draped over them, some had carpet remnants, but others were bare. The stench made my eyes water.

“Nobody comes up here,” said Hugo, “except to leave the dead. Can’t exactly dig through asphalt to bury ‘em, and leaving the city’s too dangerous. They put ‘em up high because the stink rises. Celestia insisted I wait here for my safety and security.” He snorted.

I walked past the corpses and unshouldered my bag, kneeling down to fetch the rope and carabiners out of it. As I stood back up, I saw Hugo getting his own things together. He didn’t have much, just a small pack like mine and a dirty waterproof jacket, but he did have an M16, and when he noticed my expression, he chuckled humorlessly.

“Took it from our friend by the door,” he explained, “and shot him with it. They’re looking for me.”

“‘They?’” I asked as I tied one end of my rope to the support beam in the middle of the cubicle farm.

“Amish,” said Hugo. “The Neo-Luddites. They know I’m in Seattle. I’m a... person of interest to them.”

With the rope uncoiling in my hand, I cautiously slunk out to the edge of the floor, introducing my weight gradually with each step, as though I were walking across a frozen pond. The last thing I wanted was to step down on a bit of floor just waiting to fall away.

I had more questions, but they’d have to wait. Without Celestia I had no way of knowing how much longer we had to get down to the ground, so speed was priority one. I peered over the edge, looking down a tunnel of rain into a gray oblivion. The street was so far below I couldn’t even see it in that weather, but I could see the lip of the floor below, the blue carpet soaked to black.

I tied a large, hard knot in the end of the rope, then tossed one of the carabiners to Hugo, who snapped it onto his belt. I fastened my own carabiner to the front of my belt and threw the rope over the side. There was enough to get down to the next floor, with a little left over.

Hugo had slung his M16, tightening it to his back so it wouldn’t slip off. When he got to the rope, I could feel the building swaying slightly. I hoped it was just the wind pushing against it, but deep down I knew better.

“Age before beauty,” I said, and with a sardonic smile Hugo attached his carabiner to the rope.

He lowered himself down to the next floor easily, testing the floor to make sure it would hold before letting go of the rope and detaching the carabiner.

“All clear, kid!” he shouted up to me through the rain. “Just like back in gym class!”

I snapped the carabiner around the rope and stepped out into the punishing downpour. Ensuring I had a good, fast grip on the rope, I hopped off the ledge and hung by my arms, slowly lowering myself hand over hand down to the twenty-eighth floor.

The building groaned. I heard it. Then it started to tilt in my direction.

I hurriedly climbed down further, but with the way the building was tilting I found that the floor was now out of reach of my feet. Hugo yelled something, but I couldn’t hear it over the cacophany of snaps of the raindrops hammering the hood of my poncho.

I dangled there, over a fatal fall, forced to wait for some new development.

I felt something slide off of my right arm, and beneath me my burn bandage drifted away, lost to the storm. My arm was exposed now, and while it had been behaving itself up till then, the exposure to moist air combined with the lactic acid in my muscles from the exertion of holding myself up was making my burns ache.

Another groan from the building, and the wind pushed at my back. I was getting closer to the floor again. I stuck out a foot in an attempt to get purchase, but when I reached for Hugo’s hand, the added weight on my other hand caused the waterlogged rope to slip, even with my gloves. I fell.

Time slowed, and I seemed to catch up with the rain for a moment, so that I fell in tandem with the drops. My brain had enough time to think “this is it” before I felt a hard, painful jerk at the waist. The carabiner had saved my life, catching on the large knot I’d tied to the end to give it heft.

Now I was slightly below where I wanted to be. Despite the horrendous aggravated stinging in my right arm, I righted myself and climbed up, hand over hand, grimacing with the burning both inside and outside my muscles. Hugo was now laying down on the floor, sticking his arm out, shouting at me. Probably “come on, come on,” or something to that effect.

As soon as I was within arm’s reach of the floor, I quickly shot my arm out to grip the edge with my left hand. My right hand gave out holding my weight in the same instant, and I dangled from the building with one arm for a moment before swinging my arm up to grab a piece of rebar sticking out.

Rebar reinforces, however; it doesn’t do well with load-bearing. It bent easily under my hand, and just as my right hand slid off, Hugo grabbed it, getting to his knees and then his feet, pulling me up with amazing strength for his age.

I got my center of gravity onto the floor and quickly detached the carabiner, panting with pain.

“You all right?” Hugo asked me, helping me get up.

“Yeah, I’ll live, but we gotta go,” I said, and as if to drive the point home the building shifted under our feet. A tremor went through the floor, and I felt it tilt again, just as it had while I’d been out on the rope. We ran for the stairs.

There was shouting and the clatter of feet all throughout the stairwell as we entered. Blackouts were passing us, with torches in their hands, all of them heading down. Their shouts ran together such that I couldn’t make out anything being said

It was finally time to go back down.

As we raced down the stairs in the midst of the blackouts also making their descent, I saw cracks spiderwebbing out from points of tension in the walls. The building was shuddering and swaying severely now, with great booms and cracks seeming to well up from a subterranean beast somewhere below us.

Floor twenty. The rocking was so great that we were occasionally teetered and had to catch the railing of the stairs before we could find our balance.

Floor fifteen. Plaster and cement dust were raining down from above. We starting jumping the steps two and three at a time.

Floor five. A huge jolt to one side threw us against the railing, and the building did not recover from it. It was slight, but my inner ear told me the whole place was skewed to one side.

The home stretch was the ten-flight trip down through the base itself, and here there were entire pieces of the wall missing, with more crumbling away every moment. The blackouts were done shouting and screaming; everyone was focusing on their legs, pumping up and down, burning through the stairs, getting as low as possible before the whole thing came down around us.

We hit the lobby floor. The blackouts kept going, down into the underground shopping center, but with some kind of Neo-Luddite heat chasing Hugo, he and I needed to get out of the city as soon as possible. We dashed out of the reception area, past the front desk and shredded waiting-room furniture and out into the streets.

A noise behind us issued forth, like the sound of a god grinding its teeth. Rainer Tower tipped further, and I could hear it cry out, a horrid groan and the machine-gun crackle of hundreds of windows breaking somewhere far above. Pea-sized bits of tempered glass joined the water in raining down on us as we ran a block south, the building looming over us and the street we were on.

There was a moment out of time when it just hung there, suspended, as though reconsidering, but then, with an explosive blast of powdered brick and concrete, the base gave way, snapped, and the building fell.

The street went into sudden twilight as Rainier Tower blocked out the sun. Of course, it was coming down in our direction, and a block away was not far enough. I could feel the air compressing, pushing down on us, trying to get out of the way of the juggernaut coming down to earth.

All of the street-level plate-glass windows had been shot out long ago, so it was easy enough to duck into one and run as far inside as we could. We got about a hundred feet into what had once been an Italian restaurant when the building came to rest outside.

The shock of the impact threw us off our feet, and the noise made me feel as though the world was being turned inside out. I covered up my head with my arms, ignoring the searing in my sensitive new skin, and lay still.

My ears were ringing in the quiet that followed. Once I was quite sure I was still alive, I looked up and saw that Hugo was already standing, brushing himself off.

“On your feet, son,” he said. “Like you said, we gotta go.”

I felt a little embarrassed, but I nodded, scrambling to my feet and following Hugo out of the restaurant. He had his rifle unslung, and I took the cue to get my CZ ready.

We clambered over the mountain of rubble that had, minutes ago, been an office-building-cum-tenement for blackouts in a post-Singularity world. Twisted I-beams and crazily-shaped monoliths of concrete jutted out like headstones in a particularly stylized graveyard. That’s what they were, in a way. Somewhere in there were still all those bodies. A shiver ran through me at the thought.

I tried to focus instead on Hugo. The way he held the rifle told me he was used to it, experienced. He moved like a soldier, scanning, keeping his weapon to his shoulder even as he negotiated the craggy, unstable terrain of the rubble. And “Amish” had been military slang for the Neo-Luddites. I decided to probe a bit.

“Looks like an A2,” I said. “You got it off that Neo-Luddite guy, right? Does that mean they’ve raided DoD armories somewhere?”

“Maybe,” said Hugo, still scanning. He smiled a little. “You’ve got an eye for guns, kid, and don’t think I didn’t notice the iron you got. I’m starting to be glad you’re on my side.”

I chuckled and took the compliment.

We were still in the city by the time it started to get dark, but nobody else had crossed our path. I thought about the blackouts, down there in the underground complex with a single PonyPad leading the way. I was sure they would find a way out—Celestia would see to that—but I found myself wondering what would become of them after that. Once Celestia got her hooves on someone, she didn’t make it easy to walk away from her.

I knew that for a fact.

“Aren’t you curious?” Hugo asked me. We were walking south, back to my car, but there were still several miles to go yet.

“Hmm? Curious about what?” I asked back.

“Why Amish is after me.”

I shrugged. “I figured if I needed to know, you’d tell me.”

He grinned. “You’re all right, son. I can see why Celestia tapped you to do this sort of thing.” He rubbed at his neck for a while. “I know Celestia will be happy to get me away from them too. I’m probably the only person in the world who could possibly come close to anything even approaching the ability to cause her any kind of harm.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that would explain why the Neo-Luddites are after you,” I said.

“It don’t explain everything,” said Hugo. “The important thing is that I don’t want to hurt her. Maybe once upon a time I did, but... not now. Not with the way the world is now. It’s why I agreed to upload.”

“I’ll get you there,” I said. “I promise.”

Hugo’s left hand turned to a red mush, and an instant later I heard the supersonic crack of the bullet that had already arrived. He dropped the M16, crying out in pain, and when I swung around with my CZ to try and locate the threat, I found myself staring at five men with assault rifles of various make. Four of the muzzles were trained on me, but the fifth was not. That one was just being held at the ready.

The nearest man—the one who wasn’t aiming at me—was about ten meters away, with a blond beard and a shemagh around his neck. He was in a hard stance, finger in the trigger well. He was close enough for my pistol, but it would only take a fraction of a second for him to draw up and shoot me. Besides, if he didn’t get me, his four friends would have.

“General Pelwicz and the Man in White,” said the blond. “I'm afraid you'll have to come with us.”

They were all of them dressed like the man that Hugo had killed, right down to the brassards depicting a hand holding up an unplugged power cord.

Author's Notes:

I'm not 100% satisfied with the expo-dump at the start of the chapter, but Greg hasn't been doing a whole lot of in-depth reflection so I've decided I can get away with it.