K.E.E. A Bit of Apocalypse

"I free her?" Came from her the counter question.

The young woman's features looked uncertain at this moment.

"I'll free her!" she now pushed her whole arm through the hole, seeming to enlarge it without effort in the process, and with her left hand bent aside a couple of steel struts as if they were florist's wire.

Maximilian could not comprehend what he was seeing. Frightened, he backed away from the hole and would have preferred to run away. The being there, which squeezed through the gap at that moment, could not be a human being. It was much more like a robot or a droid from a science fiction movie. The entire skin, all the way up to the neck, was formed by this black material, divided into small pores, which he had already noticed on her hand. As with the fingers, it was also protected on all important body parts and limbs by matte black fittings, edgings and protectors. This seemed to be a veritable exoskeleton. The figure of a woman was not only preserved, no, the female body was exaggerated and presented only for a sexual effect. Huge breasts, a much too narrow waist and a very wide pelvis reflected the idealized idea of a fertile woman. The abdominal muscles and thighs were defined by fittings, as were the shoulders and calf muscles. Thus, on the one hand, this figure looked like a machine man to Maximilian and, on the other, like a naked bosom wonder. Even the pubic region had been replicated by a metal shield.

"Why are they staring at me in such astonishment? It would be nice if they helped me up, as befits a man of good breeding." Whined the stranger after she sank down to her knees. She seemed to have problems coordinating her movements.

Maximilian could not help but comply with her request. He felt like a little boy helping his mother up. For this strange creature was huge!

The woman also seemed surprised, looked down at him questioningly and fussed.

"I don't want to be insulting to you, but are you a small person?

Maximilian stared at her in amazement.

"What, me? No!"

He looked down at himself and then back up at her. She towered over him by two heads!

"I am one meter eighty-four tall." He stated, aghast.

"Now don't talk nonsense. I'm just one meter sixty-four, how can you..."

Maximlian pointed his right index finger at the ceiling above them. The woman was wearing a black beret and it was already rubbing against the brickwork.

"You've got to be kidding me!" In disbelief, she raised her right hand to the concrete ceiling, stroked the stone with her index finger, and then looked ahead of her, almost falling. She looked awkward and wobbly on her feet.

Maximilian sensed that her excitement was not an act. She gave him the impression that she could do even less with herself than he could and seemed to realize that something was wrong with her.

"Do you think I could change somewhere here?" She finally asked him.

The Archive's resident scratched the back of his head thoughtfully.

"There are toilet and shower rooms here. But what do they want to wear?"

The woman looked bashful at that moment.

"I'd just like to get undressed first, you know?"

She was at first embarrassed and then quite openly showed her insecurity.

"That sounds kind of strange now I know."

Maximilian's gaze lingered on her huge decolette. What size would it make? G? Maybe H as well?

"Don't stare at me like that! It makes me uncomfortable."

Maximilian startled, and blush rose to his face.

"Come on! I'll show you around." He tried to distract from this embarrassing moment.

The giantess swayed and slowly and strangely reverently put one foot in front of the other. She almost tripped and fell lengthwise. Her gait resembled that of a disabled person or drunk at that moment.

"Are you hurt?" Maximilian asked anxiously.

The strange creature answered in the negative and propped herself up on one of the desks, as if she were moving on the deck of a ship in a storm.

"No, but my nerves seem to be going crazy. I try to move my legs very gently, and they really kick out when I do. It's similar with my arms and fingers, like I can't get my strength right."

A tear ran from her right eye, which she embarrassingly tried to wipe away with her left forearm. In doing so, she performed this movement so violently that she hit herself in the face with full force.

There was a loud scream, then her massive body crashed down to the floor.

"Ouch!"

Maximilian jumped to her aid, wanting to examine her face and head, but finding both completely unharmed. Following this, he tried to take the barrett from her, but it would not budge a millimeter.

"Help me, please. I want to take this off."

She cried and it hurt Maximilian to see her like this. He gently stroked her cheek, marveling at how smooth and hard her pore skin felt.

"That means they looked different before?"

She looked at him, startled.

"What do you mean?"

Maximilian sought not to overwhelm her and asked differently.

"What is the last thing they remember? I mean, when everything was still going on for them in the usual way.

"I had a job interview last month and was supposed to start in the U Tower secretary's office. The last thing I remember was the medical aptitude test. I was supposed to lie down on a treatment table and answer a few questions. After that, it would have been my body's turn. There was talk of the Workers' Compensation Board or something like that..."

"And then?"

"I woke up in this operating room. I couldn't move because my arms and legs were being held by these clamps. I was shouting and screaming for help, but there was no one there to hear me."

"You were lying tied up on this table the whole time?"

The woman looked at him strangely.

"What do you mean by 'all this time'?"

Maximilian supported her powerful body as best he could and helped her stand up.

"What is the date?" He asked her in a broken voice.

She smiled pityingly, as if doubting his sanity.

"I don't know if I slept a few days away, of course, but it would have to be December 20, I think."

"And what year?"

The woman froze.

"What's that funny question about? Two thousand and seventeen, of course."

Maximilian thought. So this woman, in her mind, was still living in the time before the nuclear catastrophe. And she saw herself as a normal person; her whole demeanor and also the dialogue so far spoke for that.

"Come on! We'll get to the bottom of this now."

He guided her as best he could, trying to support her weight and giving her the time she needed to put one foot in front of the other. Things were going a little better now than before and after a few minutes they reached the sanitary facilities of the bunker complex.

"We're here, they need to get in there."

He pointed to the door of the ladies' room.

"Aren't they coming?! I don't know if I can undress by myself." She asked him very directly.

Maximilian remembered how the woman had slapped herself in the face. Similar to a spastic, she seemed unable to control her muscles.

"You want me to...?" He asked, puzzled.

She smiled.

"There's no other way, is there? You make a reasonable impression on me and surely you will have seen a naked woman before, won't you? You might as well help me and cover my nakedness. Do you have some towels?"

He answered her question in an uncertain tone, helped her sit down on a narrow wooden bench that groaned under the weight of her heavy body, and then left the room. He boiled his laundry in the canteen's kettle and hung it out to dry there as well. To do this, he had stretched cables throughout the kitchen and hung his pants, shirts and towels over them. All Bundeswehr stock he had found in the Secret Service storage inventory.

"Are they enough? They're actually too small for their size." He asked his new acquaintance after retrieving what he had asked for.

Her blue eyes shone at him at that moment, showing her gratitude.

"They are sweet, do they know that? I don't understand all this. I was rather small, you know? And now I'm such a baby elephant?"

She held one of the cloths in front of her mighty cleavage and indeed it covered only half of it.

"How can I help them now?" He asked her uncertainly.

She looked at him in amazement. After all, she didn't really know herself.

"Can you perhaps see a zipper or any buttons?"

Maximilian examined her body closely, but found nothing of the sort. Instead, he became intoxicated by her scent, which seemed flowery and distinctive to him.

"You smell good, do you know that? Did they find that perfume somewhere?"

"I don't use any." She smelled her wrist and looked at him skeptically. "Honestly, I don't."

Slowly, he stopped wondering about something.

"Well, I don't see anything that suggests a mechanism. And when I look at the transition on her neck..., to the facial skin I mean."

Her pore skin seemed to transition seamlessly to that of her face.

"But that can't be. Help me out of this thing, please!" She pleaded with him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Wanda! Calm down. We'll work this all out, okay?"

He grabbed her by her forearm and gently stroked away at that strange pore skin.

She startled, withdrawing it from him so forcefully that she nearly slid off the bench.

"Excuse me, I didn't mean to..." Maximilian tried to apologize to her.

Her bright blue, heavily reddened eyes stared at him in bewilderment.

"I feel them!"

Maximilian stumbled.

"What do you mean?

"When they touch me! I didn't even realize it before, but I feel their touches very intensely."

She looked around searchingly.

"Is there a mirror here where I can see myself?"

Maximilian's gaze wandered over to the small mirrors located above the sinks on the other side of the room. In fact, they had been placed much too low for Wanda to be able to look at herself in them without hindrance.

"No, one suitable for her, unfortunately. But I have an idea how they can still get a good look at each other."

Wanda gazed at him silently, emphatically cautiously raised her forearm up to her face and wiped her eyes, as if in slow motion. Her tears ran incessantly, while she herself tried with all her might to keep her composure. At least this time she didn't beat herself in the process.

"Come with me. Maybe they'll feel easier if they can see themselves as a whole."

She took a deep breath and nodded at him. Even now sitting down, she was almost as tall as he was.

"I'll have to get used to their size. Are you okay?" He asked her.

She stood up carefully, letting Maximilian help her, and continued to hold his hand. It now fully looked like a little boy walking next to his mother.

"Your hand doesn't feel cold at all. In fact, very warm."

Wanda didn't seem to want to hear any more of his observations.

"Please, can we not talk about it anymore for now?"

Maximilian promised her and led her into a small room that had served as a conference room before the disaster. He asked her to stop in front of a screen, retrieved a laptop from the open-plan office, connected it to a power outlet and flipped it open. As he did so, he pointed the small webcam at Wanda, hoping its quality was sufficient for the purpose.

"It will be a little while longer, then you can look at yourself."

She did not answer him, but indicated by nodding that she understood him.

Slowly, the projector lamp of the beamer heated up, then cast a glow on the wall, first very dull, then progressively brighter. Its fan started up and let out a soft hissing sound. Already pale shadows of a woman's body became visible, then the first clear contours.

"Who did this to me?" Wanda asked, distraught.

Maximilian had watched her every reaction closely. First she had stared at her likeness in shock, then turned away in disgust.

"I don't know. But maybe we'll find out?"

Wanda hesitated, then turned once more to her reflection on the wall.

"My face, it looks pretty good, doesn't it?" Her voice sounded more conciliatory.

"It's very pretty, yes." Stated Maximilian.

Carefully, she raised her hand to her forehead and stroked her eyebrows.

"I can feel and sense everything. That thing there, that's actually me."

She had a hard time coming to terms with this realization.

"Do they find my body attractive?"

Maximilian looked at her in surprise.

"Why do they ask me that?"

"Well, they were staring at my breasts earlier and..."

He fumbled, not knowing what to say to her in reply. Finally, he struggled to stick to the truth.

"They pretty much fit the ideal, yes."

Wanda took it, turning her torso in a little sideways and stroking her expansive hips.

"I was more of a little plump, you know? Not much, but maybe I would have liked to look a little like I do now."

She pulled one of the chairs away from the conference table and settled down on it, but it immediately gave way with a loud crash. Again she fell and remained sitting on the floor, puzzled.

"I don't believe it!"

Maximilian helped her up again and suggested that she sit on the massive table. Wanda cried and held both hands in front of her face.

"I can't stand this. I wish I were dead." Her voice sounded broken and tearful.

Maximilian could understand her well. How many times in recent years had he felt similar to how she was feeling at that moment. Overwhelmed by the circumstances, which he had only slowly learned to accept for himself over time.

"You gave me a lot of hope and happiness today, do you know that?"

She lowered her hands and looked over them at him.

"How so?"

"You're the first person I've been able to talk to in thirty years."

"Thirty years?" The giantess looked at him as if doubting his sanity.

"Wanda, I don't want to torture you any further, so..."

"Tell me! What happened?" She finally asked him.

"There has been a nuclear war, that's all I know myself."

"I can't believe it, I mean how..."

Maximilian interrupted her and told her, in brief summary, about his company's Christmas party. All his colleagues had stayed upstairs to celebrate with each other and enjoy themselves in the old clubhouse. He alone had stayed behind, with the promise of his closest friends to relieve him two hours later. Two staff members from the Secret Service also shared his fate, but after no news was received from upstairs, they went up in the elevator to check. They left him behind because they had expected a terrorist attack and he had no military experience.

In a shaky voice, he told Wanda about the key moment.

"As soon as the airlock door closed behind them, I got the message from the environmental sensors. Within a short time there had been five huge temperature spikes, as hot as the surface of the sun. As of this point, there was no sign that anything above me was still alive.

"We're underground here?" Wanda asked in shock, instinctively looking around for windows. "Didn't they try to get back up?" Her voice rolled over.

Maximilian replied in the negative.

"No. The way to the airlock is blocked. The doors won't open anymore."

"Can't it be that these sensors..."

Maximilian shook his head. He already knew all these questions. He had asked them himself often enough.

"I'm afraid not. There are no more connections to the outside, despite quadruple redundancy. No intermediate point answers anymore, nor do any of the network nodes."

5 Investigations

He regarded the machine woman thoughtfully.

"Wanda? Do you think we might want to take a closer look at the area they came from? I think we'll find answers to questions about them there."

She seemed stunned at him and only responded to his suggestion after a few minutes. Motionless, she stared at the floor in front of her, then directed her gaze at him and asked him to be quiet for a while. Later, she would gladly follow him.

Of course, he gave her the time and also granted her the opportunity to process this news without his presence. But Wanda did not want to stay alone and so he waited patiently until she had caught herself to some extent. She cried uninhibitedly during this time, and it was precisely this emotional outburst that calmed Maximilian. Even though her body seemed more like the fantasy of a filmmaker, her face clearly reflected her feelings.

Two hours later, they went back to the intelligence area and stopped there in front of the narrow wall hole.

"I'll make it bigger for you, wait." Wanda asked him, bending over slightly to place her right hand on the wall gap.

Without any apparent effort, she broke chunks out of the wall and seemed to have no idea what she was actually doing there.

"Doesn't that seem strange to you?" He finally asked her after watching her work in amazement.

Wanda paused and turned to face him.

"What should seem strange to me?"

"That power? I mean, they're tearing down a bunker wall right now."

"Bunker wall? I thought it was something like sheetrock here."

Startled, she looked down at her fingertips with their monstrous fingernails. They were covered all over with white dust.

"That's impressive. Really." Maximilian revealed his amazement to her.

Wanda seemed to see herself much more soberly.

"It's nice that they can at least get excited about my situation." She stated, frustrated.

"Please bear with me! But I've never seen anything like you before."

"Something?" She asked him sullenly.

"Excuse me, I, I..." He guessed what he had done to her with his words.

She waved him off and didn't elaborate. Cleared the way for him and then let him step past her, into the wall opening. He himself hadn't been able to knock even a crumb out of the wall opening, and to Wanda it seemed similar to a curtain that you simply pulled aside.

"The wall is ten feet thick!" He looked back and could hardly process this statement. This being had to be able to unleash incredible power.

"I heard them knocking. I can't tell them how relieved I was at that moment." Wanda replied, pressing her massive body through the gap in the wall. Chunks came loose from the concrete and steel mixture as she did so.

"Do they know why they tied her to the table?" Maximilian finally asked his companion.

She answered in the negative, but told him that she had been connected to a large apparatus by a multitude of wires. She had disconnected them the moment the clamps opened and she had uncoiled from the table. Maximilian speculated that Wanda had the power failure to thank for her release; it couldn't really be otherwise.

"In any case, this is a scientific area that neither I, nor any of my colleagues, had suspected." He looked around the large laboratory, where a variety of instruments, containers and vessels had been placed. There were also a large number of computers and apparatuses whose function he could not even begin to guess.

"I'll take a closer look in a moment, let's see the other rooms first!"

"Do they know their way around?" Wanda asked hopefully.

"With computers a bit, yes."

The tall woman nodded and stumbled after him. Despite her awkward-looking movements, she seemed a little easier with her body now.

The next room looked more like a workshop than a laboratory. Similar in size to the previous one, it had been equipped with many tools and precision instruments. From welders, to mills, saws, and lathes, to an industrial 3D printer, everything seemed to be there.

"That computer there!"

He pointed in a certain direction and rushed toward the device.

"What about it?" Wanda wanted to know, stumbling after him.

"The diode! It's on fire!"

Sure enough, the device seemed to be active.

Maximilian could hardly put his happiness into words. The device had not been locked. No matter who had been working here, he had stopped caring about any security guidelines.