End of the World Tourist

His current radioactive protective suit certainly wasn’t bulletproof though which would lead to some issues if he was shot at mainly because he wasn’t going to keep asking Casey to make costume repairs for an outfit that was built to impress the locals and possibility act as a sort of trading item once he’d found a nuclear bunker or secure facility to enter.

Dress to impress. He thought to himself. He’d do that often unless he was accompanied by his friend stroke servant Casey. In this case, he simply voiced his inner thoughts aloud as much as possible and then ended up never thinking to himself. On any job, it was far better to have a companion to talk to so the audio quality of your videos didn’t drop too much, you didn’t want people to listen to you talk in a monotonous voice after all when they were trying to create tourism marketing material for another dead or dying world after all.

Being a freelancer was hard work on the whole without having too many thoughts. In part, his luggage was designed to keep him emotionally and mentally stable and make sure he didn’t lose his temper and do his job the wrong way as he had done when chased by crazed cannibal glowing assholes who wanted him for breakfast. They’d been wiped out in minutes and the bad smell had taken a dozen more to wipe away. The luggage had done a good job as a personal cleaner that day without a single complaint.

It may not matter for most professional post-apocalyptic tour guides but for the man, he always wanted to get a better feel and know the planet that had been recently destroyed. By making sure that he was dressed he felt as though he could almost be an inhabitant there and it made interviewing with the locals easier as well.

People freaked out when you looked out of place and if he was caught wandering around here without a protective radiation suit, filters, and emergency supplies than any locals might just decide to run or assume he was an alien. Or it a hallucination, he’d been mistaken for that a few dozen times now when he’d lost patience and walked across boiling lakes of lava naked except for a pair of bright red boots. In this situation, he was going to do his best to be a scientist with a radioactive protective suit and a mission. To have the role in his heart and act out to the best of his ability.

His mentor had always stressed to him the importance of acting as a tour guide being when you wanted information and you were going to sell the package to others then you had to get yourself into a role. This time he was going for the lone radioactive survivor who just happened to have experimental treatment for an enhanced form who fought radioactive lifeforms and just happened to have become a superhuman in the process. Wait, no, he was meant to be a pacifist scientist. He was getting bored already, it wasn’t a good sign in the mind of the man. Whatever scientist with superhuman powers was the same as one who was on a mission for the last of his crew. He didn’t think anyone would mind too much as long as he talked about science jargon and made up some secret mission from the last leader of the country before war broke out.

Or it was total bullshit and he’d had to start over with something else. Despite his mentor stressing acting to him, Horus was still pretty crap at pretending to be anything other than what he was. His acting abilities were worthless due to his fairly short attention to detail when it came to roleplay scenarios. Horus was a man who was entirely honest with himself and he knew exactly what he was and who he was at all times. Self-delusion for him was happily not in the cards.

Horus was a currently freelance post-apocalyptic tour-guide operator who scouted out decent locations and sold them on to large tour guide companies in exchange for a small cut of the profits. He also got to travel to various dimensions and destinations for free but lacked the steady salary and additional benefits that a company employee would have had. Freedom with a taste of spice his old mentor used to describe him when she wasn’t trying to beat rules and patterns of behaviour into his poor bruised head. He’d never been a good listener either.

‘Casey?’

The suitcase hovering above the ground had been keeping pace with the steps of the man, occasionally navigating its way past any obstacles in its path. Any debris that fell from the sky mysteriously avoided the both of them by at least several metres each time crashing onto the broken road surface or cracked rocky soil instead. Floating towards him it turned in his direction and spoke politely, the surface of its case lightly shimmered in the radioactive haze. Dust clouds rose with each step the man made on his journey along the broken highway, cars lying around with corpses barely rotted due to the amount of radiation they had absorbed.

A massive shadow appeared around the both of them as a noise was heard in the air, far, far above. It was Casey who heard the sound first, his awareness reaching into the atmosphere as he paid attention their immediate surroundings at all times. Horus feeling his connection with the sentient suitcase felt a sense of wariness hitting him. He turned his gaze towards the darkened radioactive clouds and saw a huge shape within that was moving rapidly similar to a shark swimming in an ocean.

He began at a light jog before his body shifted into a faster pace and he had run across the width of the broken apart Highway into a patch of wilderness. The radioactive protection suit billowed around him slightly as his rubber boots hit the floor and left indentations.

‘There, can you hear it clearer Casey?’

[Sir? Yes, judging from the sound and my immediate scan upon detection twenty minutes ago it is a long-range strategic heavy nuclear strike bomber. Damaged and low on fuel. Crew: Five injured. Two dead.]

‘…And you didn’t think to tell me about it?’

[I do believe Master Horus that you are more of a man who likes to experience rather than have a surprise ruined. Besides, it can always be placed inside a temporary time loop for the convenience of the Tourism Board. Ah, the pilot has died, and I do believe that the air crew will attempt to land it safely or reach their original point of departure. Would you care to follow Sir? It will soon appear in average visual range in 5….4…3….]

Horus heard the noise first before he saw the movement in the radioactive dust clouds far above his head. It was a military type of plane, a massive one covered in damaged marks with smoke coming out and a screaming noise as the engines failed to keep it aloft. He recognised it as one of the bombers that had been used in the conflict that had destroyed this world, Casey have been correct. The type that this world would have used to drop their nuclear weapons other countries.

‘You know me well enough Casey. A surprise is as welcome as a bowl of fresh soup noodles.’

The massive bomber veered in the sky for a moment before he saw a flash of light and smoke billowing out of one of the back engines. Horus saw that the direction it was heading in was further down the badly broken Highway, the momentum of the giant bomber decreased as another engine blew out and more smoke poured into the ash-filled sky.

‘Casey, follow me. We’ve got an interview to make. You think it’s still holding nuclear munitons?’

[I will follow along promptly Sir. I thought you said you didn’t want spoilers?]

The man shook his head, then stretched out his arms and gave his legs a little shake. The yellow radiation suit crackled slightly from his movements.

Horus began to run forwards and jumped over abandoned cars and vehicles and paths of debris in his way. His rate of acceleration rapidly increased. It would be brilliant opportunity if he was able to interview any survivors. Even if they had all died he could always ask Casey to throw out a quick reverse time loop. It didn’t matter to him if he dragged them back from their afterlife, only if the were going to be worth his time.

Horus ignored the sound of dead bodies and irradiated windows of vehicles shattering beneath his feet as he kept his gaze fixed on the bomber which was now slowly drifting down over the edge of the horizon. The crunch of bone and flesh alike followed his swift movements.

Shifting his body into a crouched position Horus bent down, rubber boots crunching into t the asphalt and leapt fifty metres into the air and landed on the top of a van crunching it beneath his feet. Tensing himself he launched his body even higher in the air before landing in a sliding tackle which knocked a nearby passenger car screeching across the Highway and through the metal railings on the side where it flew smashing to the ground.

‘I’m not going to make it with all this junk in the way. Casey?’

[Yes Sir, how might I assist you?]

‘I need a localised gravity lift in this vicinity. Just enough to let me build some speed to get back this traffic jam. I’m not going to keep trying superhero jumps. A wide time reset is a hard no, but we can get away with temporarily breaking the rules of physics for a few seconds.’

[Master Horus, are you quite certain? Alteration will be a minor breach of rule 9.16 paragraph four, sentence fifteen.]

‘Just lift the vehicles up for eight seconds Casey. No, give me four seconds. This highway is boring enough and a little bit more mess won’t make a difference. Everyone who would have seen us is dead remember?’

[As you wish Sir. Localised gravity lift will activate in 5...4..3..2..]

Horus got into a race posture with his radioactive suit gloves touched the ground as he felt a shift in the air with his senses as though a god was waving their hand. Even before Casey had enabled the effect he sprinted as fast as he could, air resistance heating up the suit. He felt the heat increase surrounding him and slowed himself slightly as he ran forward to a now clear section of highway. Vehicles, empty suitcases, clothing, and debris and more than a few dead bodies rose several meters into the air above the Highway.

If anyone had been watching they wouldn’t have understood exactly why the rules of physics on this massive stretch of road for several hundred metres had been broken. The best opinion from any educated scientists would have been that the fabric of reality would have been thinned from the nuclear radiation released from the bombs. None in their right minds would have considered it to be the action of a single floating suitcase.

As quick as the effect had taken place it soon passed and local laws of gravity kicked back in as metric tons of metal, rock and flesh came smashing down into an already damaged stretch of Highway. Horus had sure to limit the effects of the heat and speed on his suit to prevent it from being overly damaged. Casey had made efforts to make it suitable for his currently superhuman frame while trying to keep in with the aesthetics of the current technology level of this planetary reality.

The eyes of Horus beneath the filtration mask were fixed on the sight of the massive bomber as it dipped lower in the sky above the horizon. He pondered for a moment if there was in fact a military or aircraft base further ahead. Now that he’d cleared a large section of the Highway, he could see a vague dirt path in the distance where the asphalt ended as various connecting junctions connected.

‘Casey. Is there a military presence that you’re not telling me about again? I remember that sign I saw a while back. The one that said that civilian traffic would be banned. It makes me think how many of the bodies in the car died of bullet holes rather than shockwaves or radiation.’

[Master Horus. The Tourist Agency pays for eyes on the ground rather than a terrestrial scan. If you were a visitor, would you prefer spoilers?]

‘No. Still, it makes me wonder. I’m going to carry on walking for a while. That nuclear bomber seemed to be heading straight forwards. It makes me think what we can find at the end of the road.]

[An ending Sir.]

Shaking his head Horus just carried on walking. This place was getting to him. Too many dying survivors without any means of help, the place would improve though after a few months.

He recalled how one of the other freelancers had gotten in trouble for forcefully creating an artificial apocalyptic world when he decided it would be a good idea to throw down massive asteroids from space. The effect was the same but you just couldn’t fake the realism that came when a society collapsed through its own means or just through the natural effects of the universe.

Yeah. That idiot had gotten fined badly and faced charges for that one. Rush jobs got you nowhere, Horus would take the slower path this time and make sure that everything followed protocol. A few accidental rescues of someone suffering from severe radiation poisoning and malnutrition wouldn’t get the tourism agency on his back but he’d check with Casey just to be sure.

‘Casey? You still around?’

[Yes Sir. How may I be of assistance to you on this fine summer afternoon?]

The man in the radioactive protection suit looked up at the sky again before he realised that nuclear war did have a slight tendency to mess up weather patterns and also planetary seasons. He couldn’t see the sun, he might have enjoyed to stare at it for a while to see who blinked first. It was unlikely that this one was sentient though. The strong winds blew past him, but he ignored the dust that blew into his suit along with minor debris.

'I’ll accept your word on that one Casey. And yes, I do realise with my enhanced senses I could work out the time and exact date on my own. I just have a load on my mind right now. You know how it is. Gotta keep to schedule; freelancers need to make money when they can-‘

[Where they can. Yes, Sir, you’ve repeated that phrase exactly 340 times since we’ve landed on the planet. If I may Sir, you appear displeased. Would you care to share? I am, as always, here to listen.]

‘I know you are. Let me walk a bit more though, really get a decent feel for this reality.’

Horus continued walking, he let one hand trail on the remnants of abandoned vehicles and tried his best to avert his gaze when he saw human remains within them. He knew that he should do his best to ignore it but not being native born he lacked the same distinction between realities.