After the Fall

“All right, I think that’s the last one,” called David from behind the rack. His voice was almost lost in the constant rushing of the HVAC, but he saw Merrin’s nod through the tangle of Cat-6 flowering out from the cable harness into the server blades. He sneezed again in the metallic-smelling chilly draft blowing up from the floor hatch, and looked up at the flickering green and amber link lights. Almost no activity now—just the heartbeat of routing and address-resolution packets, maybe some SNMP; no real active sessions anymore. No downloads. No late-night attempt counters ticking down. The auth servers were down, the call center closed. It was quiet—inasmuch as the server room was ever quiet with the fans and disk spindles and HVAC all turning and turning in the widening gyre…

Merrin’s keyboard clattered staccato, punctuated by the plack of her thumb whacking the space bar and the authoritative tock of the Enter at the end of each line. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ve got rsync running on that rack. The script’ll shutdown-dash-H when they’re done, and then you can do your thing with the cables.” She pushed her chair back from the table with the KVM switches and the big flat-panel scrolling with file copies, stretching and twisting her arms. “Meantime, do you still have that bottle of Scotch you used to keep under the floor?”

David laughed, “You knew about that?”

“I saw you checking on it, the week of the BC launch, when we kept having switch failures and the CSRs were breathing down your neck about queue times and latency.” She smiled. “I figure you probably still have one. Don’t suppose you’d be willing to get it out now—for old times’ sake?”

He shook his head, still grinning, “Guy can’t get away with anything ’round this place. Yeah, I think there should be a little bit left.” He scooted his way down the aisle and popped up one of the floor-tiles with a suction grip. “Sure enough,” he said. “Aged fifteen years, sherry casks, the whole nine yards.” He drew out the bottle and held it up, the red amber liquid a warm and homey contrast to the sterile fluorescents. Merrin slipped between the racks and slid down to sit against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest against the dry chill.

“It’s weird that it’s ending,” she said, brushing a stray wisp of hair back behind her ear.

He nodded in agreement, and pulled out the cork. “I guess we don’t have a glass.” He started to get up, but she waved him back.

“Don’t bother, just give me that,” she put the mouth of the bottle to her lips and took a long gentle sip. “Hope you don’t mind my cooties,” she added, handing it back.

He smiled, and shrugged, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” he said. He took a drink from the bottle, and looked up. “Looks like Anub’arak is done.” He squinted, “And Cenarion Circle…” He sat down with his feet in the floor well, rested his head against the cool black metal of the rack, and handed the bottle back to Merrin with a sigh.

“To the end of an era,” he said.

• • •

After two weeks with no recruits, Douglas McBride was beside himself with boredom. To hell with military discipline, standing around in the sun outside the Abbey all day is bad enough, but at least the volunteers made for a diversion. He slung the shield off his back and set it against the cool grey stones beside the door, and sat down in the shade of the Stormwind recruiter’s awning. The recruiter herself was asleep at the table, her head cradled on her folded arms and her empty register fluttering gently in the breeze.

The usual hubbub of fighting was blessedly absent; the Marshal knew the footsoldiers were derelict, and that he ought to go and do something about it, but he hadn’t the heart for it today. He sighed, and watched the birds wheel and dart among branches overhead, and the wolf-cubs slinking and tumbling and playing in the grassy fields beyond the Abbey, and decided the world would probably survive anyway. Despite all rhetoric to the contrary, the kobolds hadn’t shown any inclination to assault the Abbey in force, maybe it was all right to just let them have their cave.

Footsteps awoke him with a snort and a start, not realizing he’d been asleep. He scrambled to get on his feet, silently cursing himself for setting a bad example to a new recruit—only…

The new recruit was an Orc.

No. That couldn’t be right. This had to be an invader. Marshal McBride shook his head to clear the cobwebs and groped for the hilt of his sword. But instead of roaring or charging or attacking or—whatever it was Orcs are supposed to do—this one just stepped back a pace, and lifted his open hands in a gesture of calm.

“It all right,” said the Orc. “No…me no attacking.”

The unexpected surprise of understanding an Orc’s speech froze McBride in place, and it took him only a moment to realize the Orc’s intent probably couldn’t have been hostile. He had no weapon—only a much-worn fishing pole slung at his back. He wore no armour—he was dressed in trousers and a tunic of simple homespun cloth, and a pair of too-large leather boots, and a low slouchy hat with a broad brim better suited to tending crops than bashing heads. True, he had apple-green skin and prominent fangs, but his eyes were warm and brown and curious, not red and seething and angry, and his black hair was neatly braided. And he was carrying a basket…

“Me bored, and no humans come’d to vineyard since many days,” said the Orc. His speech was gruff-sounding, accented, but surprisingly clear. “I Grosh, son of Mo’goh. I bring food and we swap news, ha’?” He prised up the lid of the basket, and McBride smelled some kind of delicious warm food inside, like new-baked bread or a mince-pie. He could see the top of a brown earthen bottle, plump with the promise of the Orcs’ superb brewing craft.

McBride relaxed, and took his hand off his sword. He looked around in the vain hope of an explanation—soldiers chortling in the underbrush, or perhaps something more sinister. But there was only the day and the sun and the smell of the wildflowers and the buzzing of bees and the birds overhead, and the faint yipping of wolf-cubs and kobolds in the distance. What harm could it do, after all?

“All right,” he said at last, with a sigh—partly of resignation, but mostly of relief. He unbuckled his sword-belt and set the old thing down beside his shield. “I am Douglas, son of McBride, and that smells bloody delicious.” He gestured to the table where the recruiter was still snoring over her book. “Let’s sit.”

• • •

“Really, Valanar? Really? ‘Naxxanar was merely a setback?’” Keleseth banged his goblet on the table and shook his head in disgust.  “Couldn’t you think of anything more original to say than that?”

Valanar rolled his eyes. “Are you still going on about that, Kel? For the love of the Sunwell, let it rest. It was the heat of the moment.” He looked pleadingly over at Taldaram, who was studiously ignoring them both, peeling grapes one at a time and stacking them like cannon balls on a salver. “Can’t you reason with him, Tal? It’s been literally months, and he just won’t let it go.”

Keleseth grumbled and refilled his goblet from the enormous carafe he’d arrogated to himself at the end of the long trestle. “No I won’t let it go,” he insisted, his eyes struggling to focus. “It was a joke. You made us look like a bunch of clowns in front of those people, and now they won’t ever take us seriously. All I eh…ever wanted,” he sobbed now, wiping his nose on his long, embroidered sleeve. “All I ever wanted was…”

“There, now, brother,” said Taldaram soothingly, looking up from his grapes. “Just calm down, it’s not your fault. It’s going to be all right.”

Valanar crossed his eyes and looked away, beckoning a servant to bring a bucket. Keleseth glared at him through a haze of tears, and gestured vehemently with his goblet, sloshing blood-red wine all down the front of his robe. “It’s not going to be all right!” he wailed. “Nobody’s come in months now. Months, Tal! They don’t take us seriously, and it’s Val’s fault with his stupid jokes and those stupid bouncy balls he threw at them! We’re a laughingstock!”

Taldaram sighed, plucked a grape off his pyramid with a critical eye, and ate it. “Look,” he said. “I know you’re angry with Val, but I don’t think it’s really his fault. Yes, it was a stupid joke,” and here he carefully avoided meeting Valanar’s sharp glare, “…but people kept coming for a long time after he said that.” He ate another grape. “And anyway, it’s not as if Himself has been doing His job so much lately,” he jerked his thumb meaningfully upward toward the top of the citadel. Kel’s eyes widened a bit at this blasphemy, and he looked around furtively.

After a long moment, Valanar took his long-toed silk slippers off the table and let his chair fall forward onto its legs again. He looked at the other two with a conspiratorial glint in his eye. “Hey now. What do you say we get out of here,” he said quietly, “Go into Dalaran, see the lights, do some dancing, have a little fun?”

Keleseth stopped blubbering and gaped. “Are you out of your mind?” he hissed. “You know we’re not allowed to leave! He’ll hear you!” Taldaram sat listening, silent but attentive.

Valanar shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “You said it yourself, Tal. We haven’t seen hide or hair of the Big Guy in ages now. No orders. No presence in the mind, no ravage the living, nothing.” He held up his hands, “Even Queen Crazy upstairs hasn’t been on our cases. If you ask me, he’s napping, but who cares? We could be back before morning and if we pay off the Nerubians downstairs, nobody else needs to know.”

A hush fell over the room as they considered this. The usual knots of guards patrolling the Crimson Hall had been more and more sporadic of late—they could slip out without anyone seeing. Even the Professor’s freakish hulks were gone. The prospect of a night out, doing something—anything—besides sitting around in the Crimson Hall, was an unspoken craving they’d all shared. The silence wore on, as they considered it.

Finally Valanar broke the spell. “Let’s go,” he said firmly. “We aren’t getting any younger just sitting here.” He stood up, and put out his hand to Keleseth with a kind expression. “Come on, brother. Let’s get you a clean robe. You wouldn’t want Lady Jaina to see you with wine down your front.”

“Are you sure this will be all right?” said Keleseth plaintively.

Valanar shrugged. “Who can say? But after all, what have we got to lose?”

• • •

The wind howls bitterly through the abandoned houses of Darrowshire, and the sky is the colour of a morbid stain. The Plague has come and gone years hence, and yet still nothing will grow in that barren earth but the greying stalks of rot-gorse and moss. Pamela doesn’t mind the wind, but she often misses the green grass and the warm sun and the laughing sound of water running down the brook. And her doll is missing again, like always.

She leans against the broken doorframe in her threadbare cotton dress, looking out over the valley. She wishes Father would come back again—but she knows he will not come ’til she has found and mended her doll. She holds up her hands, ghostly in the sallow light, and tries to remember how it had been before…when she ran on the real grass, and played in the real light, and when dolls and Papa and Mama and Jessica all stayed where they were supposed to be.

Pamela is still a little girl, her hair in pigtails, but she doesn’t feel like one. She feels like a thousand years old and cold and lonely, even though she can’t feel the wind that shudders and tears against the rotting lath of the old, forgotten walls. She never learned to count, but she knows it has been many, many seasons since anyone came to help her find her missing doll—her doll, and her Papa. Oh, Father—why must you always go?

The world runs in cycles, she knows. Night follows day, and day becomes night; the rain falls, and the clouds rise. The living die, and the dead rise from their graves. And her Papa goes away to war, and her doll is lost and broken, and living people come from lands far away to help her find them, and mend them, so she can see them—until they are lost again. That is how the world goes—and yet, it has been so long now, so long since Father’s ghost once again kissed her forehead and bid her be brave, and strode away up the road with his grandfather’s rusty sword slung over his shoulder.

Perhaps the world has changed? What if this time, Father really is gone?

Tears sting her eyes, or the memory of tears. Pamela suddenly recalls a thing she had long forgotten—from before the war, before the Plague, sitting at a table in the Harvest festival, with food and music and laughter. She remembers a moment, tussling with her cousin over a bit of ribbon, and knocking a milk jug off the table. It was blue—beautiful, captivatingly blue glass from Theramore—and it fell for what seemed like an eternity and smashed into a thousand blue shards on the floor. She cried, she was so sad and afraid and ashamed. But Mama was not angry—they just swept up the shards into a bag, tossed it in the corner, and it was done.

Where is the jug now? Is it there again, on the table, waiting for the next cycle?

Pamela has tried to go exploring before, and she knows she cannot go far: This, too, is a truth of her world. The further she goes outside the village, the more grey it becomes with mist until she can barely see, and she always gets turned around and winds up back at the old house. But she can go down into the village, she knows, and look among the houses. Angry spirits live there, and they can hurt her if she isn’t careful—but she knows now that most of their power is in fear alone. She wipes at her eyes, although they are already dry, steels her heart, and steps out the door onto the path.

The village well is crumbled and dry. The paving stones are dark with lichen and old blood, and the houses glare at her with windows like black eyes. She creeps quietly along to the house where they held the harvest feast—the door hangs now by one hinge, and inside it is grey and silent. She can see well enough, though; here is the table, there the benches—still miraculously intact. She closes her eyes—remembering how it was then. There was the jug on corner of the table. The beautiful blue glass on the rushes. The bag tossed into the corner—

There. She walks to a place beside the chimney, beside the coal-bucket. There is a lump of burlap there, wrapped up and pinned under the corner of the shovel and tongs. She reaches for it, but she cannot move it—her hand only rustles the dust on the surface. Frustrated, she leans closer, getting down on her hands and knees. Even now, she worries that Mama will chide her for getting dirt on her dress, an old reflex never unlearned. She leans closer.

And there, peeking out from a fold, she sees it—a little triangular shard of blue glass.

So maybe now I too am shattered, she thinks. Perhaps my doll is really broken, and she will remain broken forever. Maybe Father really is gone, and he will not return.

Perhaps it is my turn, too.

• • •

David woke up because it was too cold, and too quiet. The empty Glenmorangie bottle lay defeated on the floor, and Merrin was still asleep, curled up with her head in his lap and his jacket draped over her. Above them was the relative silence of the powered-down server blades, their final backups complete—only the HVAC’s persistent roar remained.

He ached from sleeping against the wall, and was creeped out by a rack with all its machines powered off. He pulled out his cell phone to check the time: Only 9:30. It felt like he’d awoken in another century.

Merrin turned her head and looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “Is it…they…is done?” she mumbled?

He smiled wistfully at her, and nodded. “Yes, I think so. Everything’s shut down.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and made a little noise of complaint. “Umf,” she grumbled. “Guess we should get up and start pulling those cables.” She sat up halfway, swaying a bit, and pulled David’s jacket tighter around herself. “S’cold.”

“Yeah, I guess the HVAC is set for all the machines running. So now it’s really cold,” he agreed.

She got up, still wrapped in his jacket,  squeezed back between the racks to the console, and slumped down in her chair. “Okay, just give me a minute to wake back up, then we can do this.”

David stood up, and stretched, and looked around. De-cabling those racks was going to take all night. And anyway, they weren’t coming to haul the blades out ’til Monday.

“You know what, Mer?” he said. “Screw this cabling thing. I’ve got a better idea.”

She looked at him, askance. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Let’s go dancing.”

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