I hadn't heard or seen any signs of soldiers for days. No rapid-fire commands in clipped Saopaulian dialect of Port'gesh, like the commando that had nearly stumbled upon me four days ago; no sound of airships, no distant rifle fire. And certainly no sign of any rescue from my own unit. Starving, filthy, and in mild shock, I fingered my dog tag as I stumbled through the sweltering jungle. Texan Imperial Special Forces, Genetic Extraction Team. Dropped off in a leaking boat on the coast, into a no-man's land north of Saopaulian hegemony. A forced march through miles and miles of terrain to the jungle, where it was hoped genetic material unaffected by fallout would be found. Ambush. Narrow escape. And now this. Alone in hostile territory, unarmed, without provisions. I am going to die out here, I thought.

I felt something skitter away as my foot knocked against something under a layer of dead leaves. Instinctively I recoiled; mutant or no, it seemed like every damn thing in this jungle was trying to kill me. But my eye was caught by a flash of something glinting in the dim forest light. A weapon? A machete left behind by some commando? I knelt down to look.

It wasn't a weapon. It was some kind of old tech. A rectangle, with a square reflective surface of some kind, looking vaguely like the solar cells they use on the Imperial palace back home. Small buttons with writing on them, under the square. I turned it over. Nokia 3310, I read. Nokia. Where had I heard that term before?

Suddenly it struck me. This was a communications device. Certainly from before the War; the Saopaulians didn't have any tech like this. I was pretty sure the eggheads down in Austin didn't even know how to make these any more. Might be valuable. How did these work again? Some kind of signal flying through the air, invisible. I fingered the device, tapping some of the buttons out of curiosity.

The screen lit up. I jumped back, still staring. A faint sound reached my ears -- a low tone, repeated over and over. After about 10 seconds, it stopped.

The device was still operational! But where would it be receiving a signal from? I looked around, perplexed. Someone nearby? But no -- how could that be?

Then I realized the significance. The signals, I remembered, used to be transmitted by satellites: machines that used to fly above the atmosphere, with all kinds of jobs, back before the War. But all of them had been shot down. The scientists had searched for decades, trying to locate any remaining satellites. But this device....

There was a satellite remaining in orbit. It was the only solution.