Tools

Betty Miller felt the rumble in her old bones, but she felt plenty of those theses days. She ignored it and kept working. She had one of the little Roomba bots in pieces scattered across her workbench. She noticed it glitching yesterday when it brought her coffee.

Lucas, her grandson, always gave her a hard time when he saw her taking something apart. That's why she set up the shop in the basement—she thought back to that conversation again and it still disturbed her.

"Granma—why don't you let the robots fix that? They probably could do it faster and better than you can—what if you mess with it and it never works again?"

"You do remember that I'm a robotics engineer, right…"

"You were a robotics engineer, Grans…" he put emphasis on the 'were'… "a long time ago. Everyone knows the Older's lose their memories after their fifties."

"Besides, you should enjoy your golden years. Join an affinity group. I hear there's a group of Older's much like you over in Wallingford; you know, that retirement neighborhood where dad lives? The taxi could fly you over and back in a blink."

Betty kept working. She hated that term, 'Olders'. Whenever Lucas said it, she hummed to herself to keep from snapping at him.

"Let the robots repair robots, that's the way it's supposed to be!"

"Don't you ever worry that if the robots are making and fixing robots that something could go wrong?" Betty asked.

"Of course not! Doctors are people, right? Which means people fixing people, so why not robots?"

"Robots fix people now." Betty responded.

Lucas shook his head and turned back to his computer.

After that, Betty stopped bringing things to the condo to fix. It was his home, after all, and she felt lucky that he agreed to let her stay with him after they tore down her house to build more condos.

She felt the rumble again. Some of her tools bounced off the shelf. She grabbed the side of the table to steady herself. She heard something terrifying—a roar—as if the gods were angry and about to the destroy the world.

Before she could react, the ceiling and walls seemed to fold in on her. Part of a pipe broke loose above her and knocked her unconscious.

________________________________________

Doc Connor was on his daily walk with his dog, Baccus. He went twice a day around the track at the park. He took that time to let his mind wander, thinking about whatever popped up.

On this beautiful spring day, Mt. Rainer looked so close, like he could almost walk there. His brain, long ago, managed to filter past the hundreds of delivery drones cluttering the sky.

He remembered, as a young man, streets crowded with the homeless and the hopeless. If you didn't have a job, you had nothing. The social safety nets were long gone.

The air used to be thick with smog. They had heatwaves in December and snow in June. A lot of those homeless came from around the world escaping fires and floods and pestilence—the Climate Refugees.

The Pacific Northwest fared better than most. Climate change made a lot of places uninhabitable. But by the time Doc entered college, the flow of refuges funneled to a trickle and now—well, Doc couldn't remember the last time he heard about climate refugees in Seattle.

No one worked, at least not at jobs for money—that's what the robots were for. Sure, some people—software and prompt engineers—worked from home. And booksellers and writers—they worked because no matter how hard they tried, software and prompt engineers still couldn't get A.I. to spit out decent novels, or non-fiction, or journalism. The A.I. behind the robots did an adequate job with sentence structure though, so, ironically, grammar improved.

Robots ran hospitals, the car mechanics were robots, the gardeners, and the bakers, the lawyers, and the doctors, the chemists, and the pharmacist, and, well, all of it—done by robots.

The malls and the shopping centers were gone, except for the Bellevue shopping center. The people on the eastside still wanted to go out for clothes and food and sunglasses and movies. Distribution centers and robot factories replaced all the other shopping centers, strip malls, and big box stores.

Doc lived in Wallingford—the largest retirement community in the state. Most people his age did if they wanted continued benefits.

A few Older's lived on the east side with children or grandchildren. No one over fifty went into downtown Seattle—they weren't welcome.

Doc didn't see the appeal of living someplace surrounded by towering buildings and robot factories. He wasn't against technology, he just preferred the simplicity of life without it. And they had plenty of conveniences. For example, all the cars were self-driving. No one in their right mind would try to drive manually. (Except for that one affinity group he heard of that drove vintage motorcycles. They had to get special permits though and could only ride on the roads between ten pm and midnight, when most of the cars were out of service.)

The cars on the east side and downtown could fly—glorified drones. They got people around faster and they could pick you up right out your door—even if you were twenty-five stories up.

And of course, the Eastside had more robots—every home had a Household Robot (HR)—most had more than one.

Most Older's in Wallingford, including Doc and his wife Jenny, didn't have an HR. They didn't need one. They had the little Rombas that brought them their mail and would bring coffee and muffins from the bakery downstairs. But the dishwasher and washing machines worked as well as they did before robots and Jenny enjoyed doing the housework and Doc loved to cook, so they didn't need one.

It freed up credits they could use to travel. Last summer they flew to Geneva for a conference all on credits saved that would have gone to pay for the HR.

When the robots (including the HRs) were first introduced, people pushed back. Especially the Unions. Generation Gamma didn't care about unions. They cared about their video games and YouTube and TikTok and they loved their robots. So now, robots everywhere.

People lived lives of leisure. They traveled. And went bungy jumping and read books and met with friends in cafés. Affinity groups popped up for every imaginable hobby or idea.

They had a universal stipend, enough to support a pleasant lifestyle with some left over to save. They had universal health care and universal food and universal housing.

Edward Connor used to be a pediatrician. He resisted his retirement at first. He couldn't see how a robot could provide better care than he could. Jenny pointed out that he might as well accept the inevitable. The young couples having children today preferred the robots. He could change his specialty to Geriatrics, a few people his age still didn't trust robots, but he didn't think so few patients would be worth the trouble, and anyway, Jenny was excited to have him home. They never had kids of their own, so they didn't have grandkids to occupy them. So he got a dog and joined a Travel Affinity with Jenny. His friends still called him Doc.

Doc was on the last round when Baccus let out a little cry. He pulled on his leash and gave Doc a sharp single warning bark, his ears back, and his tail between his legs—tugging towards home. Doc reached down to pat his head.

"What's wrong Baccus buddy?"

The ground moved. Then it moved again, this time so violently that Doc fell to his knees. He heard a roar unlike anything he'd ever heard before. He looked at the sky in the noise's direction. Mount Rainier Exploded.

One group of geologists warned the region was due for a major earthquake, and another group warned that Mr. Rainier would erupt soon. Doc didn't think anyone imagined they would have them at the same time. One of them must have triggered the other.

He gathered himself up and he and Baccus ran back toward their condo faster than Edward Connor had ever run before. The ground kept shaking and tree roots were coming up out of the sidewalk. He cleared the first couple of them before finally tripping over one. Baccus pulled him forward and just in time too, as the tree itself started to come down on top of him.

Doc scrambled to his knees and stood and ran again. He could see the windows explode from the shock wave and he stopped short.

Then, quiet. He couldn't hear the buzz of electrical activity. The moment lasted seconds before Doc heard cars crashing and alarms going off and people crying out. The earth moved again.

Jenny!

Doc couldn't get to the condo before windows started bursting out. He and Baccus pulled away from the building and ran for cover at the library next to the school.

He watched the world fall apart out the library windows. The shaking stopped long enough that Doc took a chance and stepped back out. He was relieved to see the high school still standing when he remembered from the old emergency plan that the neighborhood should meet at the high school in an emergency.

People were climbing out of rubble. Doc almost passed out with relief when he saw Jenny and her friend Carol running out of the bakery. Carol clutched her little Yorkie to her breast so tight he worried the dog might suffocate.

They ran across the street when they saw Doc. He gently took the little dog from Carol so it could breathe and led her and Jenny to join the others, making their way to the designated gathering place at the school.

The ground continued to convulse and Doc watched as most of the houses around him seemed to fall into themselves.

Once all the shaking stopped, people milled around for a bit in the street and parking lots, waiting for the emergency services to kick in. Robotic personnel should have been on the scene immediately, but that wasn't happening. Doc looked into the bakery and could make out the robot service workers inside. They seemed frozen in place. He turned to Jenny.

"Jenny, where are the robots?"

The group looked around them. They expected robots and service vehicles surrounding them, instead only a small group of robots were standing, frozen, at the gas station. Doc and Jenny pointed out other little groups of statuesque robots all around the neighborhood. As one, the group slowly moved towards one of them.

The robots wouldn't be helping. "… probably from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)." Doc heard someone say.

A scream pierced the air from a partially destroyed house. Doc and Jenny, and another neighbor, Sonya, ran toward the sound.

"Come, Help!" Yelled Doc. Sonya, Jenny, and Carol helped him dig through the rubble. They found a man, severely injured and unconscious, and a woman, barely conscious. As they pulled their neighbors out, the ground moved again and the mountain roared. Everyone stopped moving and ducked.

When the movement stopped, Doc shouted for them to follow him and he headed to the old high school. Miraculously, the building stayed standing.

Doc asked the growing group to wait outside and he took Sonya, who used to be a nurse, and Beth Carlson and Carol Kristofer, former mechanical and electrical engineers, with him to checkout the high school infrastructure.

It had some damage and Doc could hear water flowing, which meant there might be a water main that needed fixing. The high school had an old generator that hadn't been used in years, but Beth was confident she could get it working again. People got to work. At first, it looked like they might be out of luck because they couldn't find any tools.

"I know" said Jack Denny, a retired lawyer. (Despite being the youngest among them—he was only fifty-three. A.I. put him out of a job long ago.)

"I saw an exhibit at the Science center—they had a number of dioramas of people building the city. The wax people were wielding all manner of tools."

"None of the cars or buses are moving—power is out and I don't think we'll be getting it back anytime soon. How are you going to get there and back? Doc asked.

"I'll take Peter, Alan, and Sylvester with me", said Jack—and he pointed to three men who were helping clear away debris. They were all over fifty, but large and strong. They were members of the same body builder affinity group as Jack.

Beth interrupted. "You are welcome to head down there, but I know I had a toolset—I probably can't get to it since the condos are rubble now, but I can ask around, I'm sure other people have tools."

A couple of people followed Beth out to go looking.

________________________________________

" Doc, I would love to stay and help out, but I need to get to the east side," said Alan Miller (another lawyer). "My son and mother-in-law are over there. Bellevue isn't a retirement community, so they aren't going to have anyone who knows what they're doing. "

"Isn't she a robotics engineer?" asked Doc. "She might be more of a help over there than we are."

"You know how Lucas is—she'll have a hard time getting anyone to listen to her. I need to get over there. I'd like a group to come along if that's ok. I can see what they need and maybe bring over any injured."

Doc pointed at Thomas Budenger, Patty Bruhn, and her wife, Beatrice, and Carol Kristofer—you all go with Alan. We can set up a central hub here to coordinate rescue efforts. I'm going to get another group and see what's left of the medical center in the District.

There wasn't a U-district anymore in the strict college town sort of way. No one went to college and most of the buildings were torn down to make way for new condos and robot factories. The only part of the old university to survive, Vista Park, was a historical landmark.

The regents kept the medical center open to train the newest generation of doctors on how to assist the robots. They were more like glorified technicians, not doctors.

The high school in Wallingford had several delivery bots—some old enough to have wheels—and each group grabbed a few and spread out. Doc and the others didn't have time to think about anything other than survival.

Small groups went out from Wallingford to assess damage, find tools and see how they could help. Each group included an electrician, a mechanic, a plumber, a doctor, or nurse, and an engineer, any type of engineer, electrical, mechanical, civil, and robotic. Eight people per group.

Jack and his group made it back with a few tools. But they didn't have the opportunity to find much more than a few screwdrivers, pliers, and a hammer before they were chased out by a gang of fifteen-year-olds.

________________________________________

Back in Bellevue, Lucas, and a small group of brave young people were in the basement looking for Betty. Her groans led them to her. Most of them had their cell phones out. They were useless for calling for help, but they all had flashlights and they could see as long as the batteries held out.

She was laying on the ground with a pipe across her legs but she was upright and rubbing her head. Except for blood oozing down her forehead, she was OK. Once she was free of the debris, Lucas gave her some water while the others used their phone lights to look around.

"I've told them you're a robotics engineer and that you can probably help us fix the robots." Said Lucas.

"No one's fixing robots for a while, sorry." She said.

"Why not?" all of them mumbled and Betty could sense some panic.

"The EMP—it took out the electrical facilities. And it sounds like we need to find the water main—I hear water. There's an old generator down here, let's see if we can find it and get some power to the building. Do we still have a building?" she asked them.

"Well, that depends, most of the upper floors are gone. The top two floors are still intact, but no, there aren't any buildings still in one piece that I can see."

They got Betty up and she had them look for her tools. We'll need a pipe wrench and some screwdrivers and a shovel. She said.

All of them stopped and looked at her, dumbfounded.

"Sorry Grans—what do you need?" Lucas asked.

"What's a pipe wrench" asked someone.

Betty sighed, unsurprised. No one learned trades anymore. Why should they? The robots did it all.

One of them held up his phone. "Hey, we can go on YouTube and see what those are. I follow a hobbyist who builds things and fixes his own motorcycle."

He looked down at his phone and a few others gathered round. However, there wasn't YouTube and almost before he realized he couldn't get a signal, his phone died.

Betty ignored them while she rummaged, lifting fallen panels and debris to find the things she needed. She found a pipe wrench and a small ratchet set. She knew they would need a Torx screwdriver for priming the generator, but she couldn't find her set.

If it were a flathead, she could get away with using almost anything, a coin, even a butter knife would work. She often cursed the designers of those older machines. They didn't want people to mess around with their toys, so they made them difficult to fix.

The newest bots and machines didn't have that problem. A lot of them were snap-together. The robots didn't care; they wanted stuff to be easy to fix. Betty shook her head at the thought of it.

So much for the perfect society. The birthrate went way down and crowding wasn't a problem anymore. No one worked. All citizens had a place to live: food, hobbies, and affinity groups. The robots, they did the work. But it meant no one knew how to do anything.

Betty remembered the turmoil of the transition. The unions went crazy and tried to start a civil war that no one wanted. The generation that brought the changes, Lucas's mom's generation, didn't want to work or fix things. They wanted to play video games and have TikTok accounts and enjoy coffee and travel and bungy jumping and reading books—on their devices. The only thing that survived the changeover were books, surprisingly.

Reading a book, the physical thing in your hands, remained universal. Sure, plenty of people preferred reading on their devices, but enough older folk still loved books and bookstores. There were affinity groups for Science Fiction and Mystery and Fantasy and every other genre imaginable.

She found the user manual for the generator in a cubby behind it. It was moldy and swollen and some pages were smeared, but as she flipped through it, enough of the instructions for getting the generator primed were intact. She handed it to one of the young men, Liam, who looked the least shell shocked and told him to read through it and get the generator fixed.

His mouth dropped and she let him stand there while she walked away, helped by Lucas.

"How am I supposed to know how to do anything with this?" He asked their backs.

Lucas turned around. "You do know how to read, right?"

"Well, yea, of course, but I've never had to read instructions before. Where do I start?"

"At the beginning!"

Betty shook her head and led the way out as the young man and a couple of friends gathered around him to read the manual.

"Hey…" he called out… "it says here we need something called, Kero-shine?"

"You mean Kerosene?" Betty stopped and turned around.

"Yea," he nodded eagerly.

"Lets cross that bridge when we come to it." She said. She continued down the tunnel. Betty wasn't about to turn over a can of kerosene to a kid who never heard of pliers before.

They found the water main and the valve to turn it off. Betty described what to do to Lucas while the others watched, fascinated.

They made their way back to the workshop. The three people they left, Liam, Millie, and Stacey, were all sitting on the ground looking at an exploded view of the generator. Betty nodded at them; at least they were trying to understand the thing.

Her leg and hip were burning in pain, making walking uncomfortable. She looked at Lucas and before she could say anything; he said.

"Come on, lets get this stuff and Grans upstairs."

"Its heavy, how are we going to get it upstairs?" asked one of them?

Lucas looked at his grandmother quizzically.

Betty sighed and pointed at the cart next to the door.

"Put it on that." She said.

They looked at the cart and at Lucas and Betty.

Betty got the cart and moved it next to the generator.

"OK, two or three of you, the strongest—grab under the generator—right, place yourselves equally around it, now lift with your legs—with your legs! Not your back she yelled at one of them.

"Stand straight up." She maneuvered the cart under the generator.

"Now set it down."

They managed to get the generator on the cart, and Lucas led them to the elevator.

Betty stopped. "This won't work."

"Why not? Asked one of them.

"Notice that there aren't any lights on?"

"Yea?"

"That means there isn't electricity. The elevators run on electricity like the lights."

Betty tried her best not to sound sarcastic or judgmental. It wasn't their fault they had no idea how things worked. They reminded her of the Eloi from HG Wells book the Time Machine.

"We'll have to take the stairs." Said Liam.

"We can't roll this thing up the stairs." Said Millie. She rolled her eyes.

One of the smaller ones, a young man, raised his hand — as if he were in class.

"You don't have to raise your hand, speak up boy." Said Betty.

His face turned bright red and Betty worried he would pass out.

"There's a loading dock on the other side of the parking lot—I think we can walk out that way."

"Lead the way young man." Betty said.

They walked from the light of five cell phones. Then four. Then three. They made it to the loading dock to find a closed electrical door.

All of them stopped and turned to Betty to tell them what to do next. Betty shook her head, hoping the darkness would hide her expression.

"We will have to get the door open manually." She said.

"Won't that break it?" asked Millie.

"Yes." Said Betty.

She limped over to the mechanism that controlled the door and, for the second time, she was thankful they lived in an older building. The loading dock door was an old-fashioned chain and motor type.

"Here, Lucas, pull this as hard as you can."

Lucas grabbed the chain. He abruptly jerked his hands away.

"Eww it's all greasy" he said.

Betty rolled her eyes. This time she didn't care who saw it.

Millie stepped up. "Here, let me do it." She said.

Lucas moved out of the way, and she grabbed the chain and pulled. After some loud creaking, a bit of light peaked through the bottom.

Lucas got over his initial qualms and grabbed the chain above her, and they pulled together.

They opened the gate enough for the cart and the generator to fit through, and they all climbed out the door and up the ramp to the street.

Devastation stretched in all directions.

Across the street, a couple was running through black ash, their faces covered.

Betty knew immediately what had happened.

"Cover your faces. Don't breathe this in. Its ash."

Another couple ran past them on their side of the street.

"Wait. Where are you going?" Lucas called out.

They didn't stop running, one of them turned and yelled, "We … heard the shopping … standing, and that … shelter there." They said breathlessly as they continued to run.

Betty's little group stood gaping in all directions. Unable to determine what to do next.

"Well, that's as good a direction as any," she said out loud.

They hurried after the couple towards the Bellevue shopping center. The oldest building in the region.

________________________________________

Alan, Beatrice, and the others made their way past the destruction throughout the old U-district. They crossed the small park where the old Denny hall used to stand, past the cherry tree stumps down to the Burke Gilman trail, littered with debris from fallen buildings.

They didn't see any people. They reached the medical center and were pleasantly surprised to find part of it still standing. Over the years, people used it less and less and robots more and more. The newer construction was underground, but inaccessible. The two floors above ground appeared intact.

Alan noticed a black cloud making its way toward them.

"Cover your nose and mouths!"

Alan hoped they would find supplies that included masks inside.

They walked through the double doors and found a sterile and empty place. Their feet echoed up and down the long halls.

"Thomas, have you ever worked here?" Alan asked.

"I did, it was before it was rebuilt though—I don't know if anything will be in the same place. Its worth a look. Follow me."

They followed Thomas (a former hand surgeon) down the hall and into what looked like a storeroom.

"I guess there isn't much you can change about a hospital storeroom." Thomas said.

"Well, lets get what we need for now. I'm sure Doc will send another group here soon. I want to try to get across to Bellevue--now."

With that, they spread out and started rummaging through the supplies. They found some first aid supplies and masks.

They made their way out to the 520 bridge. Alan wouldn't let himself think about what to do if the bridge were out. It floated. It could have survived.

They reached the overpass and looked out across Lake Washington.

No one spoke for a few minutes. They all watched Alan as he took it in. It looked as if a bomb went off in the middle of the bridge. Probably a giant rock flung out of the volcano. There were still cars on the bridge. None of them moved.

Alan didn't flinch.

"This way," he said.

They made their way back to the Burke Gilman trail and twenty-five minutes later arrived at the Sandpoint resort.

It used to be a neighborhood a long time ago. Being close to the water made it an attractive alternative to downtown as a place for adults to come and play. Today it was empty.

Alan led the small group down to the Marina where he had a small boat. It had sails and a motor.

Alan hoped it still had enough fuel to at least get them to Kirkland.

________________________________________

Betty and her small group of budding mechanics made it to the shopping center and indeed found it standing. People from all directions were making their way to it. Somehow, through word of mouth, people knew to come here. The ash was coming in thick now and they were choking by the time they got inside.

It was dark—the only light coming from the broken windows high above—along with ash.

"We need to get into the shops, away from this ash." Betty told them. And we need to hook up the generator so we can plug in some lights.

As she directed people on what to do and where to find things, her small group of helpers grew. Before long, she had multiple groups opening doors and pulling out drawers and climbing ladders, looking for the supplies she asked for. She had her small set of tools, but in order to get lights and water, she was going to need to get tools into more hands.

She asked Lucas if he knew of any affinity stores. They were in luck. They found the motorcycle affinity store and the model drone store and a craft store. They should have at least some tools. Betty asked around, hoping someone from the Motorcycle Affinity group was among the survivors, but there weren't so far. So she did a quick tutorial on tools for whoever would listen.

She had Millie, who wasn't afraid of dirty chains, to help her organize the workers. Especially since more of the people finding their way to the shopping center were injured. Betty knew a little first aid, not enough if someone came in unconscious or bleeding profusely, and that worried her more than fixing generators.

She sent Millie out with her phone, still powered, to use as a notebook and had her ask the survivors about their 'Affinities.' She hoped there might be some medical geeks and maybe an engineer or two. She wished her son Alan was here. They had something of a falling out ten years ago when her daughter-in-law Emma died. But he was family. They should be together at a time like this and he had an authority about him she knew would put these kids at ease. They broke her heart with their ignorance and wide-eyed fear.

Mille came back thirty minutes later to find Betty had dosed off. Betty lost more blood than she cared to admit—the pain in her leg came from a nasty gash. Thankfully, it wasn't anywhere near a major artery. Still, the blood seemed to pour from it. She had a tourniquet applied as soon as they got to the shopping center, but it was soaked, and she knew she would need to change the cloth soon.

Millie shook her awake. "Betty—Betty, are you OK?" Her voice full of worry.

"Yes, I'm OK, a little tired is all." Betty said. She tried to stand, but the room was spinning, so she sat back on the floor.

"Betty, tell me what to do, we can't loose you!"

"Its ok, Millie, what did you find?"

"Well, we have a lot of software and prompt engineers. But no matter what the engineering field, its still problem solving, right? "

Betty chuckled.

"Maybe, but if you don't know what a screwdriver is there will be a learning curve we might not have time for. How many software engineers did you find? Not including the Prompt Engineers. I don't think we can call making up questions to ask A.I. problem solving."

Millie looked a little sad. "I'm a prompt engineer." She said.

Betty stared at her a moment.

"I guess Prompt Engineers can solve problems too—good for you."

Betty patted her hand to comfort her. To her credit, Millie let the insult go.

"OK, what else do you have."

Millie sat on the floor next to Betty and showed her the list. They had several travel and extreme sports affinities. And like Millie said, plenty of software and prompt engineers. No medical, or engineering, or motorcycle affinity members, which surprised Betty because they all had stores here.

Millie suggested they were out of town on one of their rides or at a conference.

Betty heard a rumble and smelled fresh burning kerosene, and all the lamps in the store flickered on.

Lucas, his face smeared with sweat and grease, came up to Betty and gave her a big smile. "I did it!" he said. The generator sputtered and shut off, throwing them back in the shadowy dark.

"Did you prime it first?" Betty asked.

"I guess I didn't do it right."

Betty began to stand, but Lucas told her to stay put.

"We will figure this out."

Betty watched him walk back to the two friends that Betty gave the book to.

She had to revise her opinion of these kids. They might not have the slightest clue how things worked or what tools were, but they were willing and able to learn. Betty put her head back and closed her eyes. There might be hope for the human race after all.

________________________________________

Alan had the motor on his boat quietly humming and they all climbed in.

They made it about one-hundred yards from Settlers Landing before it sputtered out and they had to use the oars to get there. But they did get there. Alan tied off the boat and held it still as the others climbed out. Ash was coming down like a heavy, black, sticky snow.

They climbed up 58th to Lakeview and started walking.

About two hours, and three masks each later, they made it to the shopping center. Alan didn't know for sure if it would be standing, but if it was, he hoped Lucas would make it there like he told him. He knew the structure of the old building was solid and would serve as an emergency shelter. It looked like most of the town had the same idea. He joined other groups coming from multiple directions to the center.

Under the large open roof, a pile of ash continued to grow. Alan looked around and smiled to himself. He knew his mother's handy work when he saw it. Young people were running in and out of a furniture store. "This way." He said to the others.

Inside, they found Betty showing a serious-looking group how to use a screwdriver.

Alan cried with relief when he saw Lucas.

Father and son hugged, and Alan pulled away to look at Lucas. "I'm so glad you're OK," Alan said.

"I'm glad you're ok too dad." He lowered his voice and turned his dad away from Betty.

"Granma isn't so good. I think she's lost a lot of blood. She's trying to hold it together—she's the only one here who knows anything about anything—she saved our lives dad."

"I think I can help," Carol said. Alan nodded, and she went over to introduce herself to Betty.

Thomas joined them and soon had Millie and a couple of others looking for first aid supplies—they discovered the main center office had a small clinic.

He sat down next to Betty and asked to look at her leg.

________________________________________

It took outside emergency services a month to dig out the greater Seattle area. Multiple EMPs from the disaster took out every electronic device within a seventy-five-mile radius. They didn't have electricity or robots or cars. It took out the communication towers and the emergency response system. The mountain exploded and lava and mudflows (lahars) covered the I5 corridor—walling them in.

Drones eventually would fly in supplies like water and food. Until then, communities had to make do on their own. Most didn't have tools or generators. Water mains were out, and they lacked tools or expertise to cap them off, so many of the would be shelters flooded.

Doc's community comprised about five hundred Older's—and the only people from Shoreline in the north, to Redmond in the east and Kent in the south who were from the time before the Great Retirement. And of those five hundred, only a couple hundred used to be engineers. Doc sent more teams from his groups to the east side to work with Betty.

About a week after the disaster, a few groups ventured south to Kent and north to Everett. Only a couple of people made it back from Everett. People there suffered, but their offers of help were rebuffed and in once case, tragically, violently rebuffed. One person from the southern group came back, but only to let them know their groups were staying there to help.

On both sides of the lake were specialized groups tasked with finding tools. They found ratchet sets stuffed away in closets of the oldest buildings and general-purpose tool kits under rubble in mechanical rooms and affinity stores throughout the region. The most valuable commodities—after water—were tools—shovels, screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and socket wrench kits. Battery powered drills were especially valuable—until the batteries ran out.

A few days after the initial disaster, once Betty trained her neighbors well enough to be useful, there were still people confused about the tools and how to use them. She sighed, exasperated, when Liam asked for a wrench. She asked him which kind and he gave her that blank look again, and said, "the regular kind." She had to sit him down and go over the types of wrenches with him again. But he didn't forget after that.

Betty couldn't fault them, how were they supposed to know if no one taught them? None of them ever had to do anything like this. They had the robots doing it for them. She was hopeful though, some of them caught on fast, they had an affinity for it. She was grateful when Millie found a craft affinity store with a label maker so they could identify the tools they found.

Three of the regions' Cooking Affinities were in Bellevue that weekend for a conference. But Betty still had to show them how to boil water so it was safe to drink. They didn't know much about tools either, but Betty helped them find emergency stores of canned goods and they even found an old handheld can opener that she showed them how to use.

The cooks set up a food and water distribution center in the Cooking Affinity store in the mall. Doc's side of the water didn't need one. Everyone in Wallingford did their own cooking most of the time, and they still had the ancient grocery distribution store.

Betty and Doc did their best to focus on the skills and resources they had and tried not to think too much about the ones they didn't, like medical facilities, grocery stores, and simple survival skills.

Most of the survivors didn't know how to start a campfire, or how to boil water or how to clean and wrap a wound. There was a hiking affinity group who had, as one of their affinity relics, a copy of the Mountaineers Guide. But sadly, none of them had read it.

That so many of them survived was a testament to the human spirit. Most people agreed Doc and Betty and their groups of Older's saved them. It was a hard lesson. A robot could store many billions of bytes of information and save and pass that information to the next generation of robots. But human beings didn't have that luxury. When everything else failed, all they had was whatever knowledge lived inside their individual heads.

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By the one-year anniversary, the region had recovered some basic infrastructure. The emergency response robots restored communications and deployed throughout the city. Food and water flowed in from around the state. But most residents knew that their home would never be quite the same. A lot of them didn't want to go back to life run by robots.

New affinity groups emerged, The Educators and The Trades. They gathered at Gas Works park for a day of celebration and robots were not invited.

After the festivities, Doc took Baccus for a quiet walk around the park. He looked for a view of the mountain still obscured by dark clouds and imagined it there, angry smoke still spewing out of its belly. The weather would be overcast for a long while. The primary eruption lasted for days and spewed an unprecedented amount of ash into the sky—much worse than Mt. Saint Helens over a century before.

In an already underpopulated region, they felt the additional loss of life. Much of the electronics didn't come back because they weren't EMP hardened. And much of what might have reset failed because of the ash covering power lines and transformers.

But some good came of the disaster. They turned the old high school into an actual school and started classes for hands-on trades and how to use tools.

By the end of the year, the school graduated the first class of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and mechanics. A few of the software engineers, led by Lucas, created a charter for a new university and Beth and Betty taught the first Mechanical Engineering held there in over eighty years. It included Lucas, Liam, and Millie, and the others who helped pull Betty out of her shop all those months ago.

Fifteen new members joined the community—seven boys and eight girls, all born in the same month. Patty Bruhn and her wife Beatrice opened a day care and made sure they had plenty of toy tools to play with.

Doc didn't know about how the rest of the world would do, but he felt confident that if they had another disaster, Seattle would survive at least. They had the tools.