Delete

The mule slowed its pace and finally came to a stop. With Ben’s urging she struggled against her harness a few times, but the wheel she was attached to refused to budge.

“Take it easy, girl,” Ben said, scratching the mop of hair between her ears. “We must’ve hit a slab of rock. I might have to get Maria’s mule down here to help.” He unhitched Daisy from the wheel harness on the drilling rig and led her to a patch of grass outside of the circular track that she had worn around the well site so she could have a snack while he inspected the shaft.

He walked over to his horse and retrieved a three-hundred foot coil of nylon rope with a lead bob the size of a baseball attached to one end. He lowered it down the hole to see how far the drill had gotten. He marked the rope when it hit bottom and discovered that the drill was stuck just over 200 feet down. He turned Daisy’s harness the other direction on the wheel, strapped her back in and had her start walking the opposite direction.

As she trudged back the way she had come, pipe started rising up out of the hole in the center of the wheel. Ben unscrewed each ten-foot segment as it appeared and stacked it outside the circle until he had a pyramid of 20 segments. He looked at the bit that had been attached to the bottom segment and examined the tip. There were traces of concrete and steel. Whatever was down there was man-made, from before The Collapse. 

Ben secured the rope to the stout wooden frame that supported the drilling wheel and lowered himself into the hole. There were only a few inches of clearance between his shoulders and the dirt walls. He held on tight with his gloved hands, sticking the tips of his boots into crevices as he descended. Finally he hit a flat concrete plinth and let go of the rope.

Half-covered by one of the dirt walls was a metal disc that was coated in rust. He dug into the wall to expose it and found a lever. He pulled it and the metal disc slid open, revealing a steel ladder and electric lights. He had heard of them before and seen plenty of pictures in old books, but this was the first time he had seen them in person. His boots made each of the steel rungs ring as he climbed down. At the bottom was a passageway that led to a steel door. He turned a wheel and it emitted a hiss when it popped open.

Inside there was a computer bank. A button blinked green. When he pressed it, a voice emanated from a speaker: “Here, preserved in their entirety, are the intellects of the greatest industrialists on the planet. Use this repository to rebuild our nation’s glory.” He looked for the appropriate button and pressed it. It was marked “Delete.”