Kaesong, Republic of Korea
March, 2040

Inside a pit lined with concrete barriers on all four sides, a row of artillery shells had been stacked neatly in the middle. One on top of the other, these artillery shells were hand placed by a pair of men in bright yellow exoskeletons. One of the two held a bundle of half a dozen shells in his arms like comically oversized firewood while the second stacked each one gently on top of the other. A row of rounds twenty-long and stacked two-high had been carefully placed down after a careful few minutes of work by the mechanically-assisted workers.

Outside, a group of figured huddled around a folding table where a soldier in a sage green digital camouflage uniform carefully jotted down calculations on a sheet of paper. He punched in numbers to a calculator on his cell phone according to an equation on a laminated card in front of him. On his head was a lazily perched black ballcap that read “Explosive Ordnance Disposal.” An old civilian next to him in a high-visibility vest studied the EOD soldier’s equations carefully. After some quick math checking, the civilian gave the EOD soldier a thumbs up. His demolitions calculations were good for the ordnance in the pit.

For another twenty minutes, the EOD soldier went back to his waiting truck and withdrew all the tools he needed for the operation. Packages of C4 explosive in neat blocks, sandbags, and blasting caps for initiation. They wordlessly retrieved their kit from the seats of the armored car: plate carriers, helmets, eye protection, and ear protection. Munitions disposal at the pit was a routine operation, but safety always came first when working with explosives. Under the watch of their safety inspectors, the EOD soldiers got to work placing blocks of C4 in carefully measured amounts along the line of ordnance. Sandbags were emplaced carefully to help direct the blast.

After a once-over by the safety inspectors, the EOD soldiers trudged their way through on a path leading up a slight hill to a concrete bunker a hundred meters away. One of them unspooled a shock tube spool behind him as he walked up the dusty slope until he reached the bunker. A civilian, the range manger, was leaning up against the bunker and nodded as the EOD soldiers reached him. He checked off once more on the initiator before the soldiers and civilians herded themselves into the cramped bunker. Inside, they all put on their ear protection and sat down on wooden benches behind the ballistic glass window.

The range manager, Mister Yim Nam-gi, was an old veteran of the Korean Army engineers and an old hand with explosives. While he had retired before the war, he was brought back in at his former rank of Lieutenant Colonel as part of Korea’s general mobilization. He ran a munitions depot in Chuncheon during the war, behind the front lines but close enough to see combat with North Korean infiltrators seeking to disrupt supply lines. He did his job and hung up the uniform shortly thereafter. Upon his second retirement in 2033, Mister Yim was offered a special job with the Ministry of Unification.

He had worked in Kaesong since 2034, overseeing the Ministry’s largest munitions disposal facility. Located on the outskirts of the town’s old industrial district where environmental studies had determined that the land wasn’t fit for pollution rehabilitation, the government had deemed it an acceptable spot for the detonation of millions of tons of bombs and ammunition. Mister Yim managed the throughput and destruction of large depots of the former KPA’s stockpiled ammunition. Many facilities, often underground and heavily camouflaged, were still being located nearly a decade after the war. Their tanks, shells, and bullets mostly came to Kaesong to be destroyed.

With a quick call to the main control center, they requested a blast window. One of the EOD soldiers pulled the initiator from it housing and grasped his hand around the plunger. With a practiced shout, he yelled “fire in the hole!” three times before depressing the plunger into the tube. Instantly, a jolt of electricity was sent through the shock tube down the hill and into the blasting caps nestled inside the C4. All of them detonated flawlessly, the stockpile bursting into a gigantic ball of flame shooting up into the air. The shockwave, mostly contained by the concrete pit, still washed over the edges and broke up against the bunker where Mister Yim waited out the blast. An instant later, a trickle of dirt and sand rained down on top of their roof.

After a moment to check if all the explosives had properly detonated, the EOD soldier yelled out “all clear!” to Mister Yim. The range manager and his civilian cadre emerged from the bunker and thanked the EOD soldiers. They were already starting to pack up their equipment and collect the dunnage from their explosives: they had other ranges to go to and more explosives to dispose of. One of the safety inspectors would stay on site to make sure all of the debris was cleaned up while Mister Yim bid the soldiers farewell and walked out of the range.

Down the dirt road and past the gate where an EOD soldier stood guard, Mister Yim’s SUV waited. Out here in the north, especially in the rugged terrain of the hills around Kaesong, SUVs and pickup trucks were a favorite of Korean government workers. His grandkids, urbanites in Seoul, were driving tiny cars or not even owning a vehicle at all. They didn’t like the outdoors much either, he found; nobody ever wanted to go camping with grandpa. Maybe he was old, but the feeling of hopping into his two-door truck and flying down the bumpy dirt roads of Kaesong was liberating to him.

The five minute drive back to the command post passed by a flurry of activity. A train bearing munitions from the far north, a former KPA munitions depot south of the Yalu, had just arrived. Army trucks loaded with stacks of bombs and shells were crowding reservations at the Kaesong disposal site’s ranges. His staff were working overtime to get through the rush: none of the Army commanders wanted to store KPA ammunition in their depots for an extended period, as they all had their own concerns to manage in garrison. The government, too, would rather not have to deal with storing old captured ammo when their budget was on the line.

Mister Yim wheeled his SUV into the gravel parking lot of the command center, the crunching of gravel underneath his heavy-duty tires drowning out the electric whining of his truck’s engine. He cut it off after pulling into his parking spot with a distinctly marked yellow curb: “DIRECTOR.” He emerged from the truck and stretched his legs, arthritis be damned, before heading through the headquarters building and up to his operations center. Inside, an innocuous group of old civilians just like him were sitting around typing on computers or talking on the phone. Each of them had their own sections of range to report on and manage, all feeding information to a central registry of what came in and what was destroyed.

Mister Yim greeted each one of them with a crisp good morning, instinctively heading over to the coffee machine in the corner. A full pot had been brewed by one of the other civilians and he poured a cup into his thermos. Another quirk of an office filled with old retirees: the smart coffeemaker that recognized an individual by facial identification and prepared a custom mix had been replaced by an industrial-sized pot of steaming black coffee. With his priorities in line, Mister Yim redirected himself to the adjacent office where all munitions were tallied up on a spreadsheet projected to a monitor on the wall.

“Mister Yim!” came a familiar voice, speaking in accented English. As the range manager turned a corner, he nearly ran into Suzie Grimm in her characteristic khaki photographer’s vest. Velcroed to the front was the baby-blue crest of the United Nations. Despite her name, Suzie was one of the most cheerful Germans that Mister Yim had ever met. With no shortage of chatter, Suzie was eager to keep up with the goings-on of the facility. To be fair, it was her job: Suzie was the appointed UN inspector for the destruction of excess war armament in Kaesong. “How was it? You haven’t been to a range in a while, right?”

“I always think it’s fun,” Mister Yim grumbled, “but it’s a lot more of a pain in the ass than I remember. You know, back in my d-“

“Yeah, yeah, back in your day you used to blow everything up you saw wearing shorts and a t-shirt,” Suzie finished. She had heard the old man’s ramblings before. “But that’s terribly unsafe,” she said as she wagged her finger.

Mister Yim rolled his eyes. That’s just what he had grown up with in his old Korean Army days in the early 2000s. There was word back then that robots would replace humans for demolitions tasks precisely due to their propensity to do dangerous things like that, but nobody had quite been able to make a machine that replicated the human touch when it came to explosives handling.

“So anyways, how many was that?” she asked. “I mean, I’m sure the report will come in eventually. But I figure I’ll just update the sheet while you’re here.”

“Forty rounds of 152mm howitzer shells… M-1985 type,” Mister Yim rattled off, referring to the artillery rounds fired out of the KPA’s copy of a towed Soviet howitzer. They were everywhere in the underground facilities, portable enough to be trucked or rolled through incredibly restrictive terrain and housed in compact bunkers. Many were left behind by the KPA’s collapse and even interrogated veterans of the war had no idea where all the underground bunkers were.

The greatest fear of the military and the government were that KPA holdouts, communist sympathizers, and other disaffected northern Koreans could find and use these weapons to harass Korean Army soldiers stationed in the north. Incidents involving small arms and IED attacks were uncommon but not unheard of, but access to heavier weaponry like howitzers and tanks could cause dramatic casualties in a region already struggling under the weight of North Korea’s collapse. Mister Yim set his coffee down as Suzie went into the spreadsheet on the screen with her laptop and quickly changed the numbers. All of the data was sent to a weekly presentation to UN officials about the process of disarmament.

She finished quickly: Suzie had finished her degree in computer science in Germany, accepting a scholarship to work with the German government in exchange for tuition money. Her work later found herself taking an assignment to Korea as a “data analyst” for the UN mission there. Somewhat to her chagrin, data analysis often turned out to be updating a spreadsheet for other people to draw conclusions from. But it paid well for a new university graduate and gave her plenty of time to explore Korea. She had already submitted a leave packet for the next week so she could go to Seoul with her boyfriend for a concert.

Before Suzie could reengage Mister Yim in another bout of conversation, another boom sounded in the distance as another cache of munitions was disposed of. The windows of the thickly built headquarters facility rattled slightly and after a few minutes a phone went off in the other room. Mister Yim returned to his regular office, brushing past another official who had jotted down a new number of munitions that had been detonated: apparently the range officer had just decided to call his friend in the headquarters instead of report to Suzie directly.

So Mister Yim sat down at his desk and set his coffee aside once more, sighing as he leaned his sore back against the lumbar support of his office chair. The fingerprint sensor embedded within his mouse button instantly unlocked the computer for him, displaying a stock government wallpaper and two dozen notifications on his email client. With a sigh, he clicked open the window and checked his email. Mister Yim shook his head slightly and took another sip of the hot coffee. Explosives might be boring nowadays, but email and desk work was even more so. But what is a government without paperwork?

March, 2040

---

The little air taxi banked, hovered for a brief moment, and then darted in to claim a small yellow circle marked out in the taxi landing zone. The little tires squeaked as they landed, the loudest part of this all electric flight, and the doors opened without prompting. Lucy Aharish thanked the pilot, tapped her phone on the payment machine, and stepped out into the harsh sunlight that beat down on the Eilat Ramon Airport. Four passenger hurried past her from the que and climbed in. The taxi was airborne and rising away before she had even reached the sidewalk.

She paused, pulled out her camera, and quickly snapped some photos of the furious activity around her. An air-taxi arrived or departed every thirty seconds here, making it the busiest airport in Israel outside of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A large Solar-Glider passed overhead and she felt a strange pang of longing at seeing something so familiar, and yet so modern. The advent of the climate change crisis had brought an end to the development and use of massive commercial airliners. The new reality was smaller aircraft, no more than fifty passengers, that could manage 500 miles, hoping their way across the world. The use of Solar-Riders was limited in Israel; you could move a lot more people just as quickly by train now. The new four rail express train that ran north out of Eilat was proof of this.

Lucy tucked the camera away again and stepped into the airport terminal. It had been built to handle two million passengers a year and that number had certainly been reached. After the government essentially banned all personal vehicles, everyone turned to trains and the increasing number of electric air-taxis and air-buses that replaced their former carbon fuel compatriots. Banks of solar panels, fed by Israels nearly endless sunshine, was a testament to how successful it had been.

Trains departed from a terminal beneath the airport now. Express trains went north, and smaller commuter trains went south into the city proper, linking up with the port and city centre. It was here she headed next, riding the escalator down into a terminal that bustled with folks coming and going.

She stepped up to one of the ticket terminals and the camera at the top took a photo of her, paused for a few moments, and then her image appeared in front of her, along with a welcome message providing her name. She clicked the button confirming the ticket was for her, then selected her destination as Jerusalem.



She sighed and tapped "accept". Jerusalem was suffering an excessive number of storms as spring approached. The absolute rule of the desert beyond the Border Wall was causing problems across many fronts and she only hoped that the rains did not begin at the same time. Mud storms, a new term for when rain and sand storms collided, were the worst.

Her timing was perfect as the express train for Jerusalem slid into the station a few minutes later. The hiss of the magnetic propulsion shutting down was matched by the soft "clank" as the train settled onto the tracks. The doors opened people swarmed out onto the platform. Above them, ever watching, were dozens of security cameras that scanned the crowd; AI looking for anyone wanted by the authorities. Security seemed light in this new age of technology but she knew that that armed security staff were never far away.

The crowd thinned and she stepped onto the train, glancing around for her seat. These new trains, installed in the last five years, were comfortable - windows stretching from floor to ceiling - allowed an unobstructed view of the surrounding terrain which, at this moment, was nothing but concrete. She took her seat and was relieved when no one sat next to her. The seats in front of her were occupied by a young couple with a sleeping baby, those behind her by a pair of giggling university students.

"Next stop, Mizpe Ramon. Please remain seated when the train is in motion." A pleasant male voice came over the intercom and the doors closed nearby. She felt the train vibrate as the magnetic system turned on and the train rose slightly off the ground. "Please ensure you are seated. This train departs in thirty seconds."

Digital screens in the back of every headrest began to count down from thirty and she watched several folks scrambling to get seated.

"Ten seconds." The voice continued politely.

The numbers ticked down in front of her face and then, after a soft "Bing" sound, she could feel the train begin to accelerate; she could feel the force pushing her back in the seat as it did and the wall beside her turned into a blur.

The track rose, climbing out from under the airport terminal, and then they burst into the sunshine. It was always a surreal experience at first, the huge glass windows giving you a real scope on the speed you were going. Sand whipped by in a golden blur, anything close to you was nearly impossible to focus on. In the distance however, rising black against the sand, was the Border Wall, stretching away to the North without an end. Beyond that, bathed in golden sunlight, was a never ending, and growing mass of sun dunes. The Jordanian City of Aquba had once been over there, but after the war the Israelis had occupied the city and then walled themselves off from the rest of the Middle East. Now it was nothing but ever shifting sands with many of the local populations reverting to nomadic camel herding, more climate refugees in a world gone to hell.