K.E.E. A Bit of Apocalypse

1 Masturbation in the archive

Maximilian kept his gaze fixed on the monitor of his workstation. Surrounded by pale green screens that had protected him from the gaze of his colleagues more than thirty years ago, he flattened himself into the comfortable office chair of his former shift supervisor. He gleefully slid his hand under the waistband of his workout pants and looked forward to the welcome change.

In the open browser window on the screen of his work computer, a voluptuous blonde appeared, completely unclothed, and with purposeful steps entered a very luxuriously furnished living room. The young woman looked around searchingly and approached a huge sofa on which a buxom brunette had made herself comfortable. Inconspicuous and girlish in appearance, this woman possessed considerably less sex appeal than her friend, who, in addition to a curvaceous, athletic body, also had a very even and attractive face.

Nevertheless, Maximilian was interested exclusively in the brown-haired girl, following her surprise and gloating over her pleasure when the blonde bent over the back of the seat with wet hair. The women began to kiss passionately, holding each other in their arms. Max felt a profound excitement inside him as he watched the two, especially at the moment when the wallflower groaned under her friend's hand, which began to knead her left breast.

With trembling fingers he searched for his member, straightened its semi-erect shaft and stroked back the foreskin with his fingertips. What had it been like the last time he had made love to Mara? How had it felt to him when he had pushed himself between her thighs to feel the tightness of her vagina?

The blonde came around the sofa, lay down at her friend's side and unabashedly opened her pants. She watched her with a look that clearly reflected that this meeting was not a first one and that she knew exactly what her friend was going to do with her. So she lifted her upper body to kiss her, supporting herself on the sofa with her left hand to caress her beloved's cheek with her right. She seemed submissive and passive, in contrast to her playmate, but it was precisely this trait about her that Maximilian particularly liked.

Finally, the blonde helped her partner out of her clothes, then pushed her back onto the bed with a whirling gesture, and then sat astride her face.

A hoarse moan dang from her mouth and it was not difficult for Maximilian to imagine the way in which the woman with the short brown hair was at her girlfriend's service.

How much this actress resembled his former girlfriend. How often she had helped him to renew his memories of that love. Sometimes, perhaps today, details from the past would surface, brief moments when he thought he felt the presence of his dear Mara.

Now came the part where the blonde devoted herself to her large pear-shaped breasts, began to massage them and finally lifted her abdomen to give air to her partner. She then pushed her play partner's lush thighs apart and sank her face into her lap.

Maximilian gasped as his movements became more and more frantic. Forming his hand into a fist, he held his member captive in it, squeezed it, rubbed it and thus gave himself an intense horny stimulus. In his mind, however, it was this brunette who was at his service, or else Mara, his girlfriend.

His mind seemed to literally stumble over this question and old fears pushed back the lust that he convulsively tried to preserve. Thirty years!

From now on the two women had lost their meaning for him. They were dead, annihilated, like everything else up there above him. Tears formed in his eyes, the brief moment of relaxation, it was now finally over for him. Instead, it was his worries, hardships and fears, as well as the shame of still not having the courage to put an end to his miserable life, that took possession of him in this moment.

2 Power outage

Frustrated, he took one last fleeting glance at the monitor, watched the blonde pull her partner's labia apart with her fingertips, and summarily moved the mouse pointer to the upper right edge of the window to close it. The brief moment of happiness was lost on him, as it had been so many times before.

Maximilian got up from the comfortable armchair, left his cubicle and searched his way through the corridors of the open-plan office. Two hundred employees had once controlled and maintained the mainframe here, fed it data and kept it up to date. In passing, he glanced at Elsa's cubicle. A colleague ten years his senior, she had helped him through his rookie years and had become his friend along the way. Photos of her family still hung on the partitions of her cubicle, as did the colorful paper flowers one of her daughters had made in daycare. Like this small plot, all the others told a story of his former colleagues, and Maximilian had helped them preserve it over the years. It was one of his many jobs that got him through his dreary day.

If you stepped out of the office onto the main corridor, you could walk down its opposite side, directly into the restrooms. If you went down it to the left, you came to the airlock, access control and the elevator shaft; if you went down it to the right, you found server hall A and the data security department, as well as section B with the area of the Federal Intelligence Service. It was thanks to the latter that he was still alive, because the service had created a retreat in this bunker system that would have offered its employees protection and shelter for many months in an emergency. Ironic, as Maximilian found today.

Section B also contained the small canteen, where breakfast had been served in the morning and a hot meal at noon. Everything needed to cook a hot meal was located there. So Max prepared canned food, which even now, after more than thirty years, remained edible for him.

He didn't have to look for the can openers, there were several and so he had never had to worry in that direction until now. Fortunately for him, almost everything was available several times over and so, even in the event of damage, he had so far been able to keep his losses within tolerable limits for him.

Tangerines?! He held the can in the glow of the overhead light and prudently examined its shell. The walls appeared to be in good order; there was no rust or damage anywhere to be seen. He turned it once more in his hand, shook it, and finally opened it carefully. The fruity scent that rose to his nose reawakened his spirits, so he got a bowl to put the fruit in. What would he eat tomorrow? Maybe crack open an epa? These army rations tasted only moderate, but reliably met his needs. They had also proven to be very durable and so far he had not been able to observe any signs of deficiency, let alone illness, in himself.

The moment he dipped his spoon into the deep plate and fished for the first piece of fruit, the ceiling light began to flicker, went out completely for a brief moment, and shortly thereafter became bright again. It hadn't been just one of the tubes, they had all gone out at the same time, including the one out in the hallway. This was unusual, because both lighting systems were separated from each other by different fuses.

Maximilian fell into a kind of paralysis of shock, from which he could only extricate himself with difficulty. In all the years, individual light sources had broken down from time to time, but there had never been a total failure like this one.

Food was forgotten, despite his appetite, despite the hunger that had just dominated all his thoughts and actions. Something was wrong! Hectically he got up from the table and hurried out into the hallway. There was a control terminal in the server hall that converged data from all the environmental sensors and system monitoring modules in the bunker. It would reveal to him where the problem lay, although there was little he could do to fix it if necessary.

No sooner had he entered the hall and crossed it with hurried steps than he stopped, startled, in front of the console with the dozen monitors embedded in it. This could not be true! Slowly, he approached this control and switching center as if it was the one from which danger could have emanated. Monitors seven, eight and nine showed a picture! Maximilian could not believe his eyes. Had everything gone crazy today? First the light, now the monitors?

The battery! It showed ninety-nine percent. That, too, had never been there before. Power fluctuations, yes, even a short power plant failure, but never a situation that would have cost one hundredth of the battery capacity.

Worry spread through him, accompanied by a deep sense of unease. Something must have happened, and he had no idea what it might have been.

He took a closer look at the three otherwise inactive displays. They showed him rooms he had never seen before! On the first two, he could see a laboratory area, and the third showed an operating table that didn't even exist here, in the part of the bunker he knew.

In his head it began to work. Why were there surveillance cameras there? And why had they been activated at a time when there had been a power failure? Maximilian looked up at the ceiling. Light! If it were to go out, his life would have come to an end. His gaze remained fixed on the monitor, which, among many other values, also showed the energy reserves. Ninety-nine percent, unchanged. Didn't they start practically immediately if not enough energy was produced to charge the accumulators? Even at the smallest consumption of capacity?

The power plant was operating normally; it would surely replace the lost power. But what had been the trigger for the total failure? The whole system had shut down and then restarted in a controlled manner. All the emergency systems had kicked in.

An operating table. Maximilian thought feverishly and searched desperately for a connection. What could this have to do with the archive or the intelligence service? Perhaps as an emergency medical facility? But then why was it kept hidden? And where was the access to him?

3 The search for the unknown

For the first time in many years, something like a glimmer of hope crossed his mind. If these rooms had not been entered through the airlock he knew, perhaps there was a second elevator to the bunker system. This possibility seemed plausible to him, for as far as he knew there had been two shafts when the mine had been in operation. Perhaps it had been he who had used the extra energy? Perhaps someone was on his way? Maximilian did not know whether he should be happy about this possibility or rather fear it. Everything above him had been destroyed, and perhaps there were now survivors who had ventured back into the area to plunder it?

He stepped out into the corridor and walked down it to the left into what had once been the spearhead area of the Secret Service. At the time, one had only been allowed in with an appropriate access card, yellow for the intelligence officers, white for the archive staff. Storage, office, administration and the common canteen were located here. At the time, it had seemed like a miracle to him that he had been able to use and utilize everything in this area for himself.

Maximilian looked around searchingly. Nothing indicated a change, and yet he felt threatened. Why was that? Only because of these anomalies in his otherwise so dreary and repetitive life? There were weapons, he just needed to get some. He had practiced with them and by now he knew how to handle a pistol as well as a mpi and an assault rifle.

If these exercises were more out of boredom, he really felt safer at this moment when he went to get one of the weapons. So he ran back to the warehouse, unlocked one of the steel cabinets there and took a then very modern submachine gun, along with three magazines. The compact weapon was quite sufficient and would not hinder him further in his search.

He had to find those rooms. Somewhere there was a hidden door or moving wall. Carefully he measured the rooms with his steps, made a sketch and made his reflections. He had a gift for focusing on something and not letting it distract him from an endeavor. All the more frustrating for him now was the lack of results. No matter how he twisted or turned it, the bunker would not give him its secret.

In the administration of the intelligence service he sat down at one of the workstations. Here, too, everything still worked, except that he had no access authorization. Even with a hack tool, he had not yet been able to break the system's encryption. Would there perhaps be an explanation on the computer in front of him?

Maximilian rubbed his eyes. He had actually wanted to go to bed hours ago. Should he give up? Anger rose up in him, the whole thing just didn't leave him any peace! What was going on here? Why hadn't everything remained the same as in all the years before? Once again he stroked the cold plaster with his hand. And what if there were cavities behind it? He just needed a suitable tool to look for them. There were a few of them in the warehouse, including a medium-sized hammer. Maybe it was enough to spot something behind the walls?

He retrieved it, pulled his sweater off his torso, and positioned himself against the east administrative office wall. He would probably work up a good sweat now, because he was not used to hard physical work. So he took a swing and let the hammer head crash against the wall for the first time. Half an hour later, his body actually seemed to have been bathed in sweat. Maximilian's hair hung soaking wet down into his forehead, and his undershirt had also become stained and damp. His wrist hurt like crazy, and so he gave up his research work for now, having now tapped the entire east side of the bunker tract. Everywhere the concrete had sounded dull, without having changed even once in the counter sound. There really was only rock and earth behind it, it seemed; his hopes had been in vain.

"Time for bed." He said to himself. Sometimes talking to himself helped him to calm down.

Briefly, he wondered if he should return to his workplace one more time and look at the brunette porn actress. Maybe it would work now? Excitement rose in him, it wasn't like he didn't need to.

At the moment he was about to head back into the hallway, he heard something behind him, soft and muffled sound coming from the wall. It had been barely audible, perhaps he was imagining it all? He froze, shaking with excitement all over his body, and turned back to the wall.

Nothing! He stepped closer to it, pressed the left side of his head against the wall and listened.

THERE! He could hear it again! A dull thud, followed by a scratching. Was it perhaps trying to free him? Maybe the conditions on the surface had cleared up by now? What an illusion! As if this was about himself. No. It had to be the archive! After all, this was where the entire, globally available Internet was backed up. A huge data set of inestimable value.

Another four or five jolts, then it got quiet again. Did they give up? It was not to be! It was his chance for liberation! He raised the hammer to the wall, took a swing and struck powerfully. Forgetting the previous efforts, he let the head of his tool crash powerfully against the wall four times in succession. Then he listened strained, pressing his right ear against the wall.

He could hear them, the blows. They were there again and the scratching was also noticeably louder now. It came out of the wall at a shorter interval than before, so he had been heard.

How far away might his rescuers be? A question he found difficult to answer. Stone normally absorbed any sound, that it nevertheless reached his ear could only indicate a powerful tool, or just a short distance.

"COME! PLEASE! DON'T GIVE UP!" He shouted. Silence fell on the other side of the wall.

The beating, it had stopped. Had he been heard shouting?

"HELLO!? DO YOU HEAR ME?"

A dull thud, followed by a loud trickling sound. Maximilian listened spellbound for any change, however small. They could not be far away. Half an hour later, he could hardly believe his eyes, plaster was crumbling off the wall. In addition, it was developing cracks, which seemed to increase with every further loud push. Tears stood in Maximilian's eyes. FREEDOM!

"HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

The blows died away and the old insecurity immediately returned to Maximilian's sensibilities.

"WHO ARE YOU?" He asked again.

No answer. Or one after all? Maximilian looked down at the gun lying on the floor beside him. Hectically, he pulled it toward him by its strap and considered getting more ammunition. What if they didn't want to free him at all? Maybe it was about something completely different?

4 Mysterious apparition

"Hello!?"

Maximilian flinched. A strange voice! A female one at that! He had heard it exactly, even if very quietly.

"I CAN HEAR HER!" Maximilian shouted madly.

"Don't be so loud! Your voice hurts my ears!" Came back softly.

Had he really understood the woman correctly?

"BUT I CAN HARDLY HEAR YOU. CAN YOU MAYBE SPEAK LOUDER?"

The woman on the other side of the wall answered only after a long moment. She, too, seemed to wonder.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME BETTER NOW? CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK MORE QUIETLY, THAT WOULD BE LOVELY."

Maximilian did not believe he could believe his ears. Had this woman really said sweetheart to him?

"CAN YOU MAYBE HELP ME? THEN IT WOULD GO FASTER." The stranger asked him.

"But I don't have any suitable tools. The wall is much too hard." Maximilian replied in frustration.

"AND WHY DOES IT WORK ON MY SIDE THEN?"

Maximilian's stomach cramped and nausea spread through his abdomen. A thousand questions he wanted to ask this woman who came to free him and yet he had to be patient until they came face to face.

"I'M ALL ALONE HERE, YOU KNOW? I HAVE NO HELP!" Maximilian explained his situation.

"YOU SHOULDN'T SHOUT LIKE THAT, YOUR VOICE HURTS MY EARS."

Maximilian grabbed his forehead. He encountered the first woman after the apocalypse and thirty long years and already he was overwhelmed by the situation. He preferred to say nothing more and just wait. It could not be long before...

He recoiled from the wall as a silvery-metallic claw pierced through the plaster. Pointed and looking like an elongated fingernail, it seemed to have taken no damage at all when its owner had pushed it through the stone.

Crumbling around the small hole, two more fingertips then became visible. They, too, possessed this probation and seemed at all oversized and strangely mechanical to Maximilian. They did not appear to be human, encased in a honeycombed shiny material and protected at the joints and backs of the fingers with struts and protectors similar to those of a police glove.

"Hi. I'm the Wanda. Nice to meet you."

Urged the woman's voice now clear and distinct to Maximilian's ear.

"What are you?" He couldn't hide his uncertainty in front of this strange apparition and kept the machine gun hidden behind his back.

"Excuse me?" The stranger asked back with a puzzled expression.

"Are you human?" Stuttered the bunker dweller, anxiously seeking distance from this strange entity.

"Well, I hope so. You too?" A cheerful laugh reached Maximilian's ear. "Won't you tell me your name? That would break some of the ice." She suggested to him.

Maximilian was completely overwhelmed by the situation. After thirty years he met Leben and this chatted with him as if they had just met in the pub.

"Are you coming to free me?" He asked the stranger.

A picture-perfect woman's face was now visible behind the wall opening. Blue eyes with long black lashes, fine-limbed eyebrows, snub nose and high cheekbones. It was rounded off by a luscious kissing mouth and thus represented one of the most beautiful appearances of this kind that Maximilian had seen so far in his life.