[ WP ] Civilization has fallen , but brave treasure hunters have heard the legend of Ft. Knox . The automated defenses , however , are still online .

It started with a rumor, out in the badlands. 
 
 A place where the Light still shone. Where the old things still moved. And so the Learned Men went on the journey, through the choking dust storms and biting whirlwinds of glass shards, peeled from the Mirrored Planes. They slathered on the brown iodine tincture, to protect against the Heat, and slowly, eventually, made it there. 
 
 Past gnarled, red-brown rust piles, and the fallen bones. They heard the whine of the turbines, their near-frictionless bearings still turning, with a sound like the long-gone blue whale. They looked at the sunbleached signs, consulted their old guides, and puzzled out their meaning. 
 
 Their eyes widened, with the realization. Wealth. True, endless wealth. The photos in what was the gift shop, printed on lithographic plastic, buried under debris, still showed the row upon row of golden bars. 
 
 As the day grew long, and so did the shadows, there was a strange flicker in the many, many lamps and walkways. Many lightpoles stayed dark, but a surprising number of them brightened, casting out their dirty blue circles onto the ground. 
 
 They left the next day, to bring the news. 
 
 `` You are sure about this?'' their chieftain said, anxiously. 
 
 `` Yes. We saw the bars. We saw the lights, and read the signs. It is still there.'' 
 
 ``... The last crop failed. We have to be sure.'' 
 
 The wise men were sure. 
 
 `` Dangerous?'' 
 
 The wise men nodded. `` Old-world dangers. The lights work, the rest might, too.'' 
 
 The chief subconsciusly touched a round, puckered scar on his left pectoral. He had seen what even a small piece of the old world could do, could still smell the *burning*. 
 
 `` We have a plan. The ground has buckled in places. There was a cave-in. We will dig to there.'' 
 
 The chief rubbed his stubbly chin thoughtfully. `` That will exhaust the last of our supply.'' 
 
 `` After we have the treasure, we wo n't need to worry about that any more.'' 
 
 The chief, draped in scrap leather, pondered in silence. Then he nodded. 
 
... 
 
 They lost many on the trip. And, the first =two weeks of digging were the hardest. There were still many hidden bombs in the blasted earth, and the soil was loose, and flowed easily back into the hole. 
 
 Sowly, agonizingly, they made it closer and closer. Deaths mounted, supplies grew thin. There started to be murmurs of discontent, of unrest. Distrust. They hit a small, filled-in bunker stockroom on the way, and the gifts of canned heat and real shovels, not crude wooden mattocks, lifted spirits somewhat, but still, on they dug, until their hands blistered from the grainy twist of the handle, and their backs to the sun. 
 
 At last. they made it to the vault door. 
 
 Massive, wedged open by the structural collapse of the walls around it, covered with the red-brown rusty stains of forgotten rain. 
 
 The men were at their breaking point. Slathered in sweat. Enfeebled beyond all reason. 
 
 The chief sent in a scout, thin-bodied, to squeeze inside and bring back what he found. He was trembling himself from exertion. and tearful, now that the ordeal was at it's most crucial point. 
 
 He asked them, as he had a hundred, a *thousand times* throughout it all, `` Learned ones? Are you sure?!'' 
 
 And as before, they nodded. `` We saw the ancient images. This was a place of soldiers, where they kept their'Strategic Reserve'. We saw the bars. Covered in that yellow foil, just as all of their meals, ready to eat, were, the ones made to last, that *have lasted*, all the years since their fall. What could be more precious to men, as food that does not spoil?'' 
 
 And the chief nodded, though in his heart, that voice of doubt still cried out it's thin reedy call. 
 
 And the scout returned, holding a shiney bar, and his cracked lips split into a wide grin. At last, they would be rich! They would need not fear starving! But that joy turned to puzzlement, as he saw the body of the thin boy bent almost double at the weight of the thing. 
 
 Puzzlement, which turned to horror, and an animal howl of rage and despair, as he realized the nature of the gleaming lump. 
 
 *Of course*, the chief, in frenzy, thought to himself. *They took the world. What is one more tribe? * 
 
 And he threw the bar, with as much force as he could, back into the stygian halls of the past. 
 

