From the article archive
World A Week: Nuclear Winter II
The ten foot tall polar bear towered over the door to my igloo, and the igloo iself as it roared at me. My M-5, an advanced automatic rifle that fired fletchettes, lay fifteen feet away on the snow. And my back ached where my body had served as a scratching post for Mr. Bear as he hooked me in a neat ambush when I wandered outside like a stupid tourist.
I was dead. It was a simple as that. No magic, no psionics, a pair of extendable finger claws, and a lightweight grav-pulse hold-out pistol that probably would not work in this tech bias anyways(my cybernetics did not.) against a thousand pounds of speed, claws, and terror.
The sprint toward my rifle which had fallen off my shoulder when I was flung through the air got Bear's interest. He watched me sprawl and lurch on the slick ice, and then halfway there he decided to stop me.
Thwump. His clawed paw smacked me in the left shoulder, and yes, learning to fly is the hardest thing.
Like a nimble juggernaut he rolled along on his four feet toward me, picking up speed, and his mouth opening to go for the first real bite. Bear played a game with me. Guess, the Artic Circle is short on amusements.
My grav-pulse slapped him and stopped him in puzzlement, and then it refused to fire. Warning lights ran up the sides of it. Something had gone phoeey in its guts.
A mad idea occurred to me, and since madness held more cards than nothing, I tried it. My gleaming metal claws popped out, and I knifed them into the energy cell with no effect. Nervous, I did it again, and a charge ran up my arm to temporarily paralyze my right arm. So I tossed the pistol with my left, and scrambled away frantically.
Destabilization of the grav matrix occurred, and my body got picked up and flung about to see a collapse inward of snow and air, and Bear that all tried to get into the same foot cubed spot at the same time. I came almost to the effect edge, and versing out, and then the grav matrix which supported the high-end curvature of space-time was permanently and physically disrupted. A block of red "snow" clumped down in front of me.
I'd heard of people suffering similarly destructive versing outs who were literally reborn as if the multiverse sort-of lost track of their body.
I went back and lay down inside my igloo with the M-5 by my side. And I tended the peeled skin on my left hand which had frozen stuck to the metal housing of the pistol.
A humming woke me, and I went outside to look. A bright, yellow school bus rode in a somewhat straight line many miles away. Jumping around enthusiastically, I packed and headed out after it.
Day turned to night, but not before I found a road, and a battered sign saying "Duluth 30 miles" facing the other way.
Depressed at the seeming tragedy, I hollowed out a snow cave alongside the road, and went to sleep.
A chugging and a roaring woke me, and I scrambled out to see vivid yellow in the white and overcast landscape. The schoolbus came back my way.
So I hopped out, and stood in the middle of the road between the tracks the bus made the day before. It stopped a hundred feet away, and men pointed rifles at me from windows on either side of the bus.
I put my hands up, and my visible weapons down. They scooted forward.
"No handouts." A lyrical female voice sang out from the stairs at the front of the voice.
"Trade?"
"Whatcha' got?"
"Little gold, some soup, a swiss knife, a computer."
"Computer! Does it work?" I heard a man say, and then the female negotiater said "Hush."
Interesting, the lady seemed in charge. I knew I had them, unless they decided to rob me, but they seemed respectable sorts.
"Played a game of solitaire last morning." I said calmly.
"Let's see it."
"Whatchyou got?" I shot back.
"We can offer residency in Duluth Community College City-state if it actually works."
"Is that all?" I said knowing that the first offer is rarely the best even if I did not know the value of the item on this market.
"You won't have to stay out her to be banditti or iceman fodder. That's something." A man interjected, and I nodded. It was the best deal I could get.
Upon climbing on the bus which was full up with trashed wooden desks, and tires, and telephones, and a Seventies era satellite receiving disc, and a dozen well-armed and fur-coated people, the lady in charge demanded to see my computer.
She was pretty and smart and harsh.
"Just a second." I tested their responses.
"Now, or by my oath as a Selected, I'll have you fed to our dogs." The dogs in back of the bus started to howl with the mention.
So I pulled out my wallet, and thumbed through a half-dozen things that looked like credit cards, until I got to the right one.
It was the thickest, and the lowest tech of the lot which meant that it should work here. I had it specifically made in a high-tech world to work in a lower tech bias world. I pulled it out to general shock, and then scorn, and then distant pity.
"He's mad; throw him off, Selected."
"Activate." I said, and a shimmering holofield appeared above the card. "Display 'Solitaire Game Three'." And the picture changed to a somewhat murky view of the game. My Windows PC in my homeworld had better resolution, but it was not powered by the warmth of my hand, and you could not drive a car over it without damaging it.
"I prefer 'genius' rather than 'mad'." I said quietly as they took the card from me.
"Okay, you're in. Welcome to Duluth City-state, citizen. We'll be there in about four hours." The Selected said, and they ushered me to a seat as she tried to figure out my device.
The theory du jour seemed to be that I was a lucky scavenger that had found a top-secret government project from before the Spasm and the Frost. They had smart people back at the College(they said with reverence) who could figure it out. Nobody asked me how to work it. So I sat there and listened to them talk, and pieced together a history of a world gone wrong, and the effort to fix things while we shimmied and slid and occasionally pushed toward Duluth Community College.
Taduesz
I was dead. It was a simple as that. No magic, no psionics, a pair of extendable finger claws, and a lightweight grav-pulse hold-out pistol that probably would not work in this tech bias anyways(my cybernetics did not.) against a thousand pounds of speed, claws, and terror.
The sprint toward my rifle which had fallen off my shoulder when I was flung through the air got Bear's interest. He watched me sprawl and lurch on the slick ice, and then halfway there he decided to stop me.
Thwump. His clawed paw smacked me in the left shoulder, and yes, learning to fly is the hardest thing.
Like a nimble juggernaut he rolled along on his four feet toward me, picking up speed, and his mouth opening to go for the first real bite. Bear played a game with me. Guess, the Artic Circle is short on amusements.
My grav-pulse slapped him and stopped him in puzzlement, and then it refused to fire. Warning lights ran up the sides of it. Something had gone phoeey in its guts.
A mad idea occurred to me, and since madness held more cards than nothing, I tried it. My gleaming metal claws popped out, and I knifed them into the energy cell with no effect. Nervous, I did it again, and a charge ran up my arm to temporarily paralyze my right arm. So I tossed the pistol with my left, and scrambled away frantically.
Destabilization of the grav matrix occurred, and my body got picked up and flung about to see a collapse inward of snow and air, and Bear that all tried to get into the same foot cubed spot at the same time. I came almost to the effect edge, and versing out, and then the grav matrix which supported the high-end curvature of space-time was permanently and physically disrupted. A block of red "snow" clumped down in front of me.
I'd heard of people suffering similarly destructive versing outs who were literally reborn as if the multiverse sort-of lost track of their body.
I went back and lay down inside my igloo with the M-5 by my side. And I tended the peeled skin on my left hand which had frozen stuck to the metal housing of the pistol.
A humming woke me, and I went outside to look. A bright, yellow school bus rode in a somewhat straight line many miles away. Jumping around enthusiastically, I packed and headed out after it.
Day turned to night, but not before I found a road, and a battered sign saying "Duluth 30 miles" facing the other way.
Depressed at the seeming tragedy, I hollowed out a snow cave alongside the road, and went to sleep.
A chugging and a roaring woke me, and I scrambled out to see vivid yellow in the white and overcast landscape. The schoolbus came back my way.
So I hopped out, and stood in the middle of the road between the tracks the bus made the day before. It stopped a hundred feet away, and men pointed rifles at me from windows on either side of the bus.
I put my hands up, and my visible weapons down. They scooted forward.
"No handouts." A lyrical female voice sang out from the stairs at the front of the voice.
"Trade?"
"Whatcha' got?"
"Little gold, some soup, a swiss knife, a computer."
"Computer! Does it work?" I heard a man say, and then the female negotiater said "Hush."
Interesting, the lady seemed in charge. I knew I had them, unless they decided to rob me, but they seemed respectable sorts.
"Played a game of solitaire last morning." I said calmly.
"Let's see it."
"Whatchyou got?" I shot back.
"We can offer residency in Duluth Community College City-state if it actually works."
"Is that all?" I said knowing that the first offer is rarely the best even if I did not know the value of the item on this market.
"You won't have to stay out her to be banditti or iceman fodder. That's something." A man interjected, and I nodded. It was the best deal I could get.
Upon climbing on the bus which was full up with trashed wooden desks, and tires, and telephones, and a Seventies era satellite receiving disc, and a dozen well-armed and fur-coated people, the lady in charge demanded to see my computer.
She was pretty and smart and harsh.
"Just a second." I tested their responses.
"Now, or by my oath as a Selected, I'll have you fed to our dogs." The dogs in back of the bus started to howl with the mention.
So I pulled out my wallet, and thumbed through a half-dozen things that looked like credit cards, until I got to the right one.
It was the thickest, and the lowest tech of the lot which meant that it should work here. I had it specifically made in a high-tech world to work in a lower tech bias world. I pulled it out to general shock, and then scorn, and then distant pity.
"He's mad; throw him off, Selected."
"Activate." I said, and a shimmering holofield appeared above the card. "Display 'Solitaire Game Three'." And the picture changed to a somewhat murky view of the game. My Windows PC in my homeworld had better resolution, but it was not powered by the warmth of my hand, and you could not drive a car over it without damaging it.
"I prefer 'genius' rather than 'mad'." I said quietly as they took the card from me.
"Okay, you're in. Welcome to Duluth City-state, citizen. We'll be there in about four hours." The Selected said, and they ushered me to a seat as she tried to figure out my device.
The theory du jour seemed to be that I was a lucky scavenger that had found a top-secret government project from before the Spasm and the Frost. They had smart people back at the College(they said with reverence) who could figure it out. Nobody asked me how to work it. So I sat there and listened to them talk, and pieced together a history of a world gone wrong, and the effort to fix things while we shimmied and slid and occasionally pushed toward Duluth Community College.
Taduesz
Recovered from the Gaming Outpost database backup. Original wording is preserved; damaged punctuation and presentation markup have been repaired. Historical links without a local match point to the Internet Archive.