I closed the door behind us and leaned my forehead against the wall for a second while my eyes adjusted. The compound felt smaller somehow. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to wide Library fields, crystal piles, and a training hall that made my legs burn just by thinking about it.
“Ugh,” Tom groaned beside me, stretching his arms up until his back popped. “I forgot how heavy gravity feels out here.”
“You’ve literally been reading for most of the month,” I snorted. “You only showed up to the gym when Ava guilt-tripped you.”
Tom squinted at me over his glasses. “I’ll have you know I did several push-ups. And I walked between shelves. That’s cardio.”
“Sure, sure. We’ll add it to your training montage.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket like it had just remembered it existed. I pulled it out and stared at a wall of notifications.
MinTab: New message (Helen)
MinTab: New message (Council – Temporary)
MinTab: New message (Unknown)
MinTab: New message (Kids’ Group Chat – “Tablet Titans”)
MinTab: New message (Unknown)
MinTab: New message…
“Oh no,” I muttered. “I’ve invented email.”
Tom leaned over to look. “You did this to yourself, you know. ‘Open communication is a founding pillar of trust.’”
I scrolled through the previews. A lot of people had clearly been testing the “send Robert something” button. There were questions, infrastructure notes, concerns, even a recipe request. One message preview just said:
“Is Minerva single?”
Ava’s orb drifted lazily through the open air where the Library door had been, tracing a small circle before she popped into view fully. She’d chosen the semi-transparent avatar again—glowing blue, faint little lines like circuit tattoos.
“You’re popular,” she sang. “I told you giving everyone your number was a mistake. Organic brains love sending useless data.”
“Some of it is useful,” I protested, skimming. “Helen sent a preliminary census update and some facility notes. There’s a list of broken machines. And apparently a group of kids created a tablet chat to share scores from the built-in games.”
“You included math games, didn’t you?” Tom said, crossing his arms. “You’re turning them into nerds. I’m proud of you.”
“Flattery won’t get you out of leg day,” I shot back. “Come on. Shower, food, then we go see how many people I accidentally turned into data entry clerks.”
A hot shower never felt as good as it did with +21 Vitality backing it up. I could actually feel my muscles relaxing, like my body was finally acknowledging the month-long beatdown I’d just given it.
By the time I finished cooking a quick breakfast for us—nothing fancy, just eggs, toast, and some of the last pre-apocalypse sausage in the freezer—my stamina bar felt full again. It was weird; I’d gotten used to seeing the little internal overlay in the Library, but out here it was more of a sense than anything. A subtle “you’re good to go” rather than a glowing meter.
Tom ate like someone who had spent a month reading and occasionally pretending to work out.
“So,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “what’s the game plan, oh mighty machine wizard?”
“We go into town,” I said, pulling up Helen’s main message and flicking it open. “We see what they’ve got for us. Census, infrastructure, any complaints. Then we prioritize.”
“Complaints?” He raised an eyebrow.
I tilted my phone so he could read one of the messages:
‘Some people are worried everything is just going to be replaced by your robots and they’ll be useless.’
“Oh,” Tom said. “Yeah, that tracks.”
“People want to matter,” I said quietly. “If I just roll in and fix everything with machines, they’re going to feel like extras in their own story.”
“So don’t,” he replied, like it was that simple. “Give them stuff to do that matters. Not everyone wants to fight monsters or repair water pumps. Somebody’s got to keep the kids from losing their minds and beating each other to death with MinTabs.”
“I really hope that’s not a realistic scenario.”
“With kids?” He snorted. “It is absolutely a realistic scenario.”
Minerva’s voice flowed out of my phone, clear and precise. “If I may, Robert, sensor sweeps over the last three days indicate increased human activity near the supermarket and at four cluster points around the residential blocks. Energy output has stabilized at a low baseline. No organized hostile movements detected.”
“So nobody’s tried to restart a coup while we were gone,” I said. “That’s good news.”
“Hostile intent is harder to measure without invasive biometrics,” Minerva said. “I am obeying your non-invasive directive.”
“Yeah, let’s keep that one,” I said. “No Borg hive-mind.”
“I still think a hive-mind could be fun,” Ava put in. “Imagine board games.”
“No one would ever beat you,” Tom said. “You’d literally know everyone’s thoughts.”
“Exactly,” she said cheerfully.
I shook my head and grabbed my keys. “Come on. If we leave now, we can make it to town before everyone decides we’re ignoring them and starts a religion in my absence.”
Tom blinked. “…You think that’s on the table?”
I thought about the golden-haired woman with the stubborn eyes, the way people had looked at the drones overhead, the way fear and gratitude mixed so easily in a crisis.
“I think people will reach for whatever makes them feel safe,” I said. “Let’s make sure that’s something sane.”
The Puma purred along the road, electric engines humming as Minerva managed throttle and traction on the cracked asphalt. The town came into view faster than I expected; three days wasn’t long enough for anything to grow back, but the place felt less dead.
There were people in yards now, moving between houses, carrying boxes. Smoke curled from a few makeshift grills. The supermarket block no longer looked like a siege encampment; more like a busy little ant colony, with people streaming in and out, pushing carts instead of being forced at gunpoint.
A few heads turned as we rolled up. Drones floated overhead in a lazy patrol pattern, their sleek frames glinting in the morning sun.
“You know,” Tom said, tapping the dash, “between the armored car and the sky-eyes, we look a little… dictatorial.”
“That’s why I gave them tablets,” I said. “Dictators don’t usually hand out free communication tools.”
“Tell that to social media companies,” he muttered, but there was a smile on his face.
We parked in almost the same spot as before. Maybe a few inches to the left. I stepped out and immediately spotted Helen making a beeline for us, MinTab in hand. She looked tired—dark circles under her eyes—but less brittle. Like someone who had slept at least once since the world ended.
“Robert,” she called, then glanced at Tom with a small nod. “Tom.”
“Morning,” I said. “You look like you’ve been busy.”
“That’s one word for it.” She held up the tablet. “I’ve got data for you. And a list of complaints. And a few people who desperately want to meet ‘the man behind the drones.’ I considered forming a line, but that felt a little too much.”
“Thank you,” I said, genuine relief bleeding into my voice. “I was worried we’d come back to chaos and everyone arguing over who gets to hold the MinTabs.”
“Oh, they did that,” she said. “For about an hour. Then one of your drones floated down, beeped disapprovingly, and projected a message recommending ‘rotational communal access for critical devices.’”
“That… wasn’t me,” I said slowly, turning my head. “Minerva?”
“I optimized social distribution based on fairness models and prior human behavioral studies,” she said in my ear. “There was a thirty-one percent chance of escalation into violence without intervention.”
Helen gave me a look that was half gratitude, half suspicion. “Is she listening all the time?”
“Only when I ask her to,” I lied, then winced internally. “Okay, that’s… mostly true. She monitors public areas. Not private homes.”
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“That’s about as good as we’re going to get right now,” she said. “Come on. Walk with me.”
We fell into step beside her. Tom drifted a little behind us, hands in his pockets, eyes quietly scanning the crowd. A few people glanced at him and then away, like they didn’t quite know what to do with his presence. Him being one of their own who’d left and come back with the guy who had flying death robots had probably scrambled a few mental categories.
“How bad is it?” I asked. “Infrastructure-wise.”
Helen pursed her lips and flipped to a document. “Short version? We’re not dying yet. Long version? We’re going to be if we don’t fix a few things soon.”
She held the MinTab so I could see. Someone had put together a rough spreadsheet, using the template I’d included. Population estimate, broken down by age. Skills and prior jobs. Critical facilities.
“Water treatment plant is down,” she said. “We have wells, but they’re not enough for the whole town long-term, especially if we actually repair toilets and showers. Sewage facility is half-functional. A couple of people rigged up gravity-fed systems, but they’re patchwork.”
“Machines?” I asked.
“Old,” she said. “Pre-reset old. Some of them still have physical manuals, which is good. Others…” She shrugged. “We’re hoping whatever you have in your brain-library thing can fill in the gaps.”
“The Library,” Ava said primly from my phone. “It has a name. And yes, I can help.”
I glanced around. A few people were watching us talk, curiosity clear in their eyes. One older man with a gray beard and a ball cap gave me a look that was somewhere between wary and stubborn before turning away and going back to hauling boxes.
“The plumbing complaints are valid,” Helen went on. “Sanitation is our biggest short-term issue. After that, power. We can keep food from spoiling for a bit with improvised cellars and sharing what we have in the supermarket, but we need cold storage back eventually.”
“Okay,” I said, mentally slotting things into a list. “Sewage and water first. Refrigeration second. The farm and fertilizer will come online as soon as we finish reconnecting power there, so that’s already in progress. What about people? Any major objections to the MinTabs?”
She hesitated.
“There are some who think you’re… making us dependent,” she said quietly. “That once we get used to this, we won’t be able to function without you. Or your machines.”
Tom shifted beside me, like he was about to say something, then held it back.
“That’s not wrong,” I said after a moment. “I mean, we’re already dependent. On each other. On what’s left of the old world. On whether the cows decide to keel over tomorrow.”
“You know what they mean,” she said. “They’re scared of putting all their hope in one person. The last guy with guns and a truck said he’d protect them, too.”
I swallowed around the sudden sour taste in my mouth. That image of the Sheriff falling, body limp, flashed through my mind, carried on Tom’s words from that morning.
“I don’t want their trust to be in me,” I said. “Not really.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Tom muttered, but there was no heat in it.
“I want their trust to be in systems,” I said, louder. “In processes that can keep going even if I get flattened by a falling satellite tomorrow. People trained to run things. Redundancies. Manuals. Knowledge.”
Helen slowed, looking at me with an unreadable expression. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly,” I said. “If I’m the only one who can fix something, then we’ve already made a mistake.”
“That might help some of the skeptics,” she said slowly. “If they see you training people instead of just… doing wizard tricks.”
“I was going to ask for volunteers anyway,” I said. “We’re not going to have enough skilled labor to cover everything. Minerva can handle a lot, but she can’t snake a drain.”
“I could,” Minerva said. “If you allowed micro-drone development and—”
“Nope,” I cut her off. “Last thing we need is nanobot plumbers.”
“Aww,” Ava said. “But imagine the marketing.”
We reached the supermarket entrance. The place looked different now that it wasn’t doubling as an impromptu prison. The boarded windows were gone, replaced by open spaces and a few makeshift tables. Someone had painted a sign above the door in careful, uneven letters:
COMMUNITY CENTER
I couldn’t help but smile. It was a good word. Community. A far cry from “base of operations” or “headquarters.”
Inside, people had set up stations. One table for food distribution. Another where someone was checking off names and skill sets on a MinTab—census central. A few kids sat in a corner, huddled around a tablet, laughing at something on the screen. The air smelled like canned beans, sweat, and the faint tang of hope.
“Robert,” a familiar voice rumbled.
I turned and saw Greg standing near one of the tables, arms folded. He looked the same as always—big, solid, like someone had carved him out of stubborn oak. His eyes flicked to Tom and paused.
Tom stiffened. For a heartbeat, the room felt too small.
“Hey, Greg,” I said, stepping a little forward, not exactly shielding Tom but close enough that he didn’t feel exposed. “How’s the arm?”
He rolled his shoulder experimentally. “Heals fast when there’s no one shooting at you.”
There was an awkward silence. The memory of what Tom had told me—of Greg’s arm snap, of him yelling for Tom to run—hung in the air like smoke.
“I—” Tom started, voice cracking, then swallowed. “Thank you.”
Greg’s gaze shifted fully to him now. “For what?”
“For… not letting them take me back,” Tom said. He looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, but to his credit, he kept talking. “I used you. As a distraction. I knew you’d step in. And I ran. I—”
Greg held up a hand, stopping him. “You ran,” he said simply. “Good.”
Tom blinked. “What?”
“If you’d stayed,” Greg said, his voice low but firm, “then both of us would’ve been in that building. Or dead. You running meant one of us got out. I can live with that.”
Tom’s eyes glossed over, but this time it wasn’t the same numb, empty look he’d had on my floor. Something uncoiled in his shoulders.
“I still feel like a coward,” he said.
“Good,” Greg said again. “Cowards live. Heroes die. We need more people who made it out.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You can pay me back by helping him fix this mess.”
He tilted his head toward me.
Tom let out a choked laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
We all stood there for another second, the tension bleeding out into something else. Not quite forgiveness. Not yet. But a step.
Helen cleared her throat gently. “There’s a lot of people who want to talk to you, Robert. Maybe we should set up… I don’t know. A meeting? A gathering? We’ve kind of been improvising a ‘council’ with whoever was willing to listen.”
“A town hall,” I said. “Old-school democracy. Yeah. That’s probably overdue.”
Tom elbowed me lightly. “You ready to explain to a bunch of scared people how you’re going to fix their toilets and not take over their lives?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”
We held the meeting in what used to be the supermarket’s produce section. The irony wasn’t lost on me. People sat on overturned crates and salvaged chairs, clustered in groups. Parents held kids in their laps. The air buzzed with quiet conversation, the kind that shifts just slightly when the person everyone’s waiting for steps up.
Greg stood near the back, arms folded. Helen sat close to the front, MinTab ready. A few of the survivors who’d been more visible during the crisis—people who’d organized food sharing or comforted others—clustered off to one side. I mentally tagged them as future leaders, whether they wanted the role or not.
I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
Not exactly the stirring opening of a great speech, but it got a few smiles.
“You all know me,” I went on. “I’m Robert. The guy with the drones. The big truck. The one who… ended things here.”
A ripple went through the crowd. Some people looked grateful. Others looked away.
“I’m not here to give you a big heroic speech,” I said. “I’m not a politician. I’m not… whatever that guy pretended to be.”
I let that sit for a second. Nobody said his name. They didn’t have to.
“I’m a nerd with access to a lot of information and tools,” I continued. “Tools that can fix things. Build things. Tools that can make your lives better if we use them right. And tools that could make things a lot worse if I use them wrong.”
There were a few nods at that. At least they appreciated honesty.
“I gave you MinTabs because I wanted you to have a way to talk to each other,” I said. “To organize. To tell me when I’m screwing up. I’m not going to run this town. I can’t. I don’t know everything you need.”
Helen lifted her head slightly at that.
“What I can do,” I said, “is help build the foundations. Fix the systems that keep people alive—water, sewage, power, food. Train people to run them. Set up backups so it doesn’t all fall apart if I get sick or wander off or get eaten by a mutant cow.”
A few people laughed at that. Good. Humor was a bridge.
“I need your help,” I said simply. “I need electricians. Plumbers. Carpenters. People who can read and follow technical manuals. People who can learn. People who can teach others. If you’ve ever repaired a washing machine or fixed a busted pipe or wired up a ceiling fan without burning your house down, I need you.”
A hand went up near the front. An older woman with wiry gray hair and grease-stained hands. “I ran the laundromat,” she said. “Can’t promise no fires, but I kept the machines running.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I’d rather have someone who knows how to put out fires than someone who’s never seen one.”
More hands went up. Names. Skills. Stories. People who’d worked for the county maintenance department. A teenager who’d helped his dad with HVAC installations. A retired biology teacher who knew water testing protocols.
As each person spoke, Helen tapped their information into her MinTab. The blank cells in our impromptu spreadsheet started filling in, not just with data, but with something more important—ownership.
“These are your systems,” I said, when the flurry settled a bit. “I’ll help design them. I’ll help repair them. My drones will lift heavy things and crawl into spaces we can’t. But at the end of the day, this is your town. Your future. I can’t be everywhere. I don’t want to be.”
“And what do you want?” someone called from the middle of the crowd. It was the gray-bearded man with the ball cap I’d seen outside. His eyes were sharp. “Nobody does all this for free. Not forever.”
The room quieted.
I thought about that. About what I wanted. What I’d wanted before all of this—a quiet life, enough money to not stress, some games, some books. Now?
“Honestly?” I said. “I want to sleep at night without wondering if the people I grew up with are dying because I’m not doing enough. I want to be able to walk through this town and see kids playing and people arguing about dumb things again, instead of… this.”
I gestured vaguely at the room. At the wary faces.
“I want a home,” I said softly. “For me. For Tom. For all of you. And I know how to build pieces of that. So I’m going to. If there’s a price attached to that later, it’ll be one we talk about openly. Together. No hidden deals. No guns to anyone’s head.”
The man studied me for a long moment, then gave a small nod and sat down.
“Well,” Helen murmured under her breath. “You didn’t crash and burn. That’s something.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I whispered back.
The meeting went on for another hour. We set up work groups. A “Water Team” to go with me to the treatment plant. A “Power Team” to help evaluate grid options and solar installations. A “Farm Team” to interface with the cattle operation once I had everything humming again.
Tom ended up volunteered as a liaison between me and the town, partially because he knew everyone and partially because Helen threatened to tackle him if he tried to say no. He took it with a resigned smile.
“You realize this means you’re going to be getting just as many messages as I am,” I told him as people began to disperse.
“Yeah,” he said. “But they’ll yell at me in the bookstore anyway. Might as well make it official.”
As the last groups filtered out, Minerva pinged my phone gently.
“Robert,” she said. “There is something you should see.”
A chill skated down my spine. “Please tell me it’s just a funny meme from the kids’ tablet chat.”
“Unfortunately, no,” she said. “Approximately two hours ago, one of the patrol drones at the edge of my current search radius detected an anomalous structure north of town. It was not on any previous maps. It appears to be… new.”
“New how?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
“New as in it did not exist before the Great Reset,” she said. “And does not conform to any known architectural, geological, or industrial pattern in my database.”
Ava’s orb flickered into being above my screen, her usual playfulness dimmed.
“That’s… not supposed to happen,” she said quietly.
I looked at Tom. At Helen. At the town behind them, busy rebuilding its shattered life one MinTab entry at a time.
“Foundations first,” I murmured to myself. “But we might need to build a wall sooner than I thought.”
“Minerva,” I said aloud. “Mark it on the map. We’ll finish organizing here, then you and I are going to go see what the world decided to spawn while we weren’t looking.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the System stirred.
[Quest Updated: Establish Stable Infrastructure]
Secondary Objective Unlocked: Investigate Anomalous Structure (Optional).
I stared at the little text for a second, then snorted.
“Yeah,” I muttered under my breath. “Optional. Sure.”