Dime Novels From Oblivion

(This photo was borrowed fromhttp://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skeleton-lake-of-roopkund-india)
"Keep praying. I think God is about to change his mind."
The only refuge from the rain of fire was a narrow slit dug into the earth. The soldiers cowered against blood splattered dirt walls writhing with arterial flesh colored earthworms tunneling around them. Joachim after earlier expressing a curiosity to see the thunderstorm of fire and shrapnel of an artillery barrage was now in the midst of one crouching in the mud. His fingers were laced behind his head, and his shivering body was seized by shivering convulsions every time a shell exploded too closely. His weapon lay flat in the dirt next to him. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and he begged to go home.
He was not the only boy at the front to find out, that despite all the bravado were not a natural fit for combat.
The stony-eyed combat hardened veterans huddled down and medicated their rattled nerves with chain …

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to evolve faster than the human race. Beneficially AI could co-exist with humans,” but there must be a line drawn, Hawking said. “Once machines reach the critical stage of being able to evolve themselves, we cannot predict whether their goals will be the same as ours." Stephen Hawking 

This is the beginning of a new epoch in the evolution of a nano drone that evolved into an intelligence with the potential to become omnipotent. Humans, the species that created its mechanical ancestors will become the vessels that will facilitate the metamorphosis of the new nano parasites. The advent and growth of this new form of cybernetic life is chronicled in "The Bug" and "Bumble." 

The cloudy eyed stone-faced man limping his way through the maze of idle machines was the first person to set foot in the facility for some time. The automated production line was all but forgotten after the skeleton crew of specialists who monitored t…

(This image is from: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/6/30/headlines/report_us_led_airstrikes_in_iraq_kill_250)
This is a rewrite of a story called LSD I posted some time ago. I wasn't happy with the way it came out so it has been reworked and in my opinion much improved!

The heavy bullet-ridden troop transports bumped along the crater scared State Street. The one-time oasis of wealth was all but abandoned. Shimmering shards of glass from the large windows displays of the burned out storefronts was spread along the deserted sidewalk like snowflakes that glimmered in the high afternoon sun.
The trucks were something from military antiquity. The conscripts were loaded on the flat beds and carted to the front like bewildered cattle being offered up for slaughter by the mechanized death machines.
The convoy took a sharp turn down Madison, and the giant tires rolled over some corpses softening in the summer sun, the treads ground the flesh into pulp and smeared their red and black ent…

Elizabeth held up her battery-powered lantern above her head just high enough so its light just barely touched the steel hatch at the summit of the dark cement cylinder. The trembling woman took a step forward to the first steel bracket drilled into the wall that made up the ladder to the surface.
She nervously clenched her stomach and gritted her teeth determined to choke back her tears. With a trembling hand, she reached out and gripped the metal of the ladder in her cold sweat soaked palm. She looked up again and froze when she saw the impenetrable black that obscured the reinforced seal.
Lt Elizabeth Luna and her partner Lt. Edward Adams had been stranded in their reinforced concrete den by an apocalypse that came and went very suddenly. The phone never rang with an order to turn their keys. The computer announced the missile was being launched at a preselected target.
The sirens and the flashing red lights announced the end of the world had come. After a while, the rhythmic scre…