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The Broken Man


camelund

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It's true what they say about pivotal moments becoming burnt into your mind.  Some moments are filled with joy, like the day I got married, the day my son was born, even the day I got my pilot license, or the day I landed my first job.  Other memories are tarnished with pain, like the day the authorities showed up to tell me my whole world had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.  I remember opening the door and them asking for me by name.  I remember being concerned that they were here to arrest me and that maybe my last job hadn't been as successful as everyone had assured me, but no, they were here to inform me that my family was gone.  Tragedy, industrial accident, no amount of safety regulations could have foreseen, it was an unfortunate accident wrong place, wrong time.  The outcome to me was the same, wife and son killed, by a runaway mining drill.  I thought about the possibilities, the what-if's, the if only's, for what seemed like an eternity.  What if I'd of driven them myself?  What if I'd of paid for the more expensive security conscious hopper, one with reinforced plating in front and back?  Would they still be alive?  I sat for a long time after the statements had been taken and I was given the reassurance that they would investigate 'just in  case', but the way they had said it, made me realise that this was never about comforting a grieving father and husband, but more about trying to prevent a claim before it began


 


Life took on a bitter taste from that day.  As if the water I had been sipping from for so long had suddenly become tainted.  Friends and family tried to console, tried to heal, tried to pick up the shell I had become and fill my life with something, but truth be told I had always been more of a lone wolf and many of those friends were more Holly's than my own.  It was draining for me as much for them, I just wanted to be left alone and eventually I got my wish, as soon one by one the close friends and family become more distant, the personal visits become less frequent, then replaced with vid comms and finally no contact at all, and I was left alone in my anguish, guilt and pain.  My job was mainly freelance, so I had no boss to chase me back to work, our home had all been paid off thanks to some speculative lucrative trading, so equally no banks came asking for money and payments.  So the universe continued to dance around me, the same waltz it had before, but with me sitting on the sideline isolated in a protective vacuum of nothingness.


 


I was dreaming again, I knew it was a dream because Holly was in it, she standing side on about 10 feet from me holding Ben tightly to her chest, they were both facing away from me and looked so at peace.  I'd had the dream many times, and knew the ending so desperately tried to wake myself from it before it could continue further, but it was no use.  In the dream, I started walking towards them as if to catch them up.  As I reached out a hand I was screaming stop, this was the part they turned and I saw their disfigured faces and bodies, only this time as they turned something was different.  They looked like the Holly and Ben that I knew, the one's I had shared my life with.  It gave me an enormous sense of tranquillity, but also wonderment.  In the dream, Holly seemed to pick up on this "Time heals John.  Even in dreams.  It's time you healed yourself."  She turned and lowered Ben down to the ground.  The whiteness we had been shrouded in morphed into a beautiful clearing surrounded by deep lush forests and mountains in the distant.  Ben turned and looked at me, a vivid life displayed upon his smile.  "Goodbye Daddy, I'm going to go play"  His smile grew deeper and the joy showed in his eyes, I wanted to stop him and hold him, but my mind was giving me a gift I didn’t want to wake from.  Ben ran off into the distant spinning and singing gleefully as my wife turned towards me again.  Her smile appeared forced and I knew it well.  Many a time she had given me this smile and then scolded me away from prying ears when the time was right.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  "Your love for us is a wonderful thing, but it serves no purpose John."


"But I…"


"No.  Listen to me.  You need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on.  That was your mantra, that was what made me love you.  Your natural resilience,   there wasn’t a thing that could ever beat you.  You would move mountains with your head and shear determination if you needed to.  But now look at you.  Where is the man I loved?  Where is he John!  He appears to be as dead as I am."  Holly turned her head slightly away from me, and a lone tear formed in her eye and glided down her check.  I instinctively reached out to wipe the tear away and my hand past through the offending tear and face as easily as passing through a cloud.  She reached up and dried the tear with the sleeve of her jacket before she continued.  "We don't have much time John, you must listen to me.  What I am about to say is going to hurt you, but you must hear it, and you must become the man you were.  Are you ready John?"  She looked at me, and I nodded.  "Our deaths John, they were your fault, just not in the way you think."  It was as if life was playing a cruel trick on me, showing my wife and son in glory and then giving me a sucker-punch of blame to take it all away.  I shook my head, devastated by the news, it confirmed all my fears and my mind started going overdrive, I could see Holly growing concerned.  "It was no accident John.  It was Terran Union, they were after something you stole.  Something they wanted back.  We weren't the targets John.  You were."  I could feel my heart start beating faster, the dream started to fade as if going through interference, it started to fade to red which matched the rage I was feeling.  In the dream I started to glide backwards and Holly started to run with it, trying hard to keep up with me and the elastic force that was gaining momentum pulling me back to reality.  "Answers are coming John.  Be open to them.  Be the man I married.  Be the Father your son deserves, and know this John.  We don't blame you, we only love you."  I felt an enormous force yanking me on my back as if pulling a -10g high-speed manoeuvre and I felt wind rushing past my face and hair.


 


I screamed for them, only my vision was no longer of the forest clearing, it was now back to my bedroom wall.  I was sat bolt upright in bed, my body dripping in perspiration and my breathing laboured and heavy.  The dream remained vivid and clear, and I replayed the conversation through my mind as my heart rate normalised.  Was my subconscious trying to tell me something?  Had I missed something?  Many of the statements rang true, my last employer hadn't named the target as TU, but the label on the package had clearly stated it, along with strictly confidential and priority 1 clearance only, but how could they know it was me?  And if they had killed my family why?  Why not kill me?  One thing I could not deny was that I was no longer the headstrong unstoppable force I had once been.  I had been sailing through life at speed and with purpose, like an asteroid that did not deviate from the mission it had been assigned and smashed through any obstacles with either guile or brute force whenever the need arose.  That mission that purpose seemed to burn new life within, if there were answers to be found and if they were coming, then I better be damn ready to receive them when they did.  And if Terran Union had indeed killed my wife and son, then a whole lot of pain was going to be coming their way.  For the first time in a long time I felt alive, as if the chains that bound me had relinquished their hold and I was free to move again in whatever direction of my choosing.  Free to live,  free to die, sure, but my freedom would be focused on the pursuit of the truth, and if TU were behind this, then I was also free to start a war.


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Chapter 2


 


I got out of bed and quickly made it again. It'ss funny how the married traditions which had once annoyed me I now clung to with vigour.  I'm sure Holly would have made it in half the time and done a better job, but maybe she would give me some pointers if I saw her again in my dreams.  I knew I would never forget this dream, the impact it had had on me as real and impactful as any real situation I had been in.  I had little information to go on and little time to do it in so decided to do what my wife told me to, dust myself off and get going again.  It's what she wanted.  It's what she deserved.


 


I showered in quick succession and started to plan my next steps.  I needed to remember where I'd hid that package. I'd never handed it off and my contacts had never come asking for it so it was in limbo somewhere, I just needed to find out where.  Actions performed around the time of their loss had been done on autopilot, looking back now, most of the things I'd been doing since had also been done on autopilot, but now I needed to be at the helm and setting the course.  With the neutron star inbound, there was an expiry date on Earth like never before and Arkships had already started to leave the system for planets new.  News flashes which had been background noise started to replay in my mind and I saw my same emotions mirrored in the masses with no hope of redemption and an inevitability in death.  Increasing numbers of the population had even used their government endorsed euthanasia pills in advance and the world as many knew it was quickly descending into anarchy as more and more services shutdown.  I wasn’t even aware that the government was sanctioning euthanasia and in a way was glad that this information hadn't sunk in before today as I probably would have taken them up on their offer.  Maybe I still would but first, there were answers and questions and the truth, and that package, but before any of this I found an unrelenting desire to get something to eat.


 


People had said that the skies were once filled with hoppers and other passenger carrying crafts, and whilst the documentary film evidence was there for all to see it still felt quite alien to me and not real.  I guess it's because your perspective is somewhat limited or skewed to the world around you.  At the peak of its ascendancy mankind had marvelled in its technological advancements, none of which could save them from their first glimpse of the neutron star heading for earth.  That was in 2027 and most of the world rejected the notion that in a little under 500 years everything we knew and loved would be dead.  Hell even with the age-prolonging treatments as they were, your children's, children's children would have also died of old age.  Let the next generations deal with it.  But something was different about this particular event from others which had gone before it, in that it was a problem that mankind had been unable to solve.  The greatest minds set to work for decades on trying to solve the world's puzzle, to no avail.  The world had an expiry date and that expiry date was 2538.  Now in 2535 those 3 remaining years seemed such a short breath away.


 


When you are born into the generation that will see the world fall, you quickly get used to the stares of the generations which came before you.  People were discouraged from having children as what kind of a world would they be bringing them into,  but to not procreate would as equally be signing earth's death sentence, the world needed workers and engineers.  So my mother and father made the conscious decision to create life, and I'm still thankful for the life they provided me.  I wish the same could be said for Ben but he had been a happy/unhappy accident, depending on how you viewed it.  I remember having the conversation with him, it was a rite of passage that everyone had to go through, like the birds and the bees, and I remember him approaching it calmly simply stating "Some life is better than no life" and this statement reinforced the decision Holly and I had spent months debating.


 


I stopped realising I'd been on autopilot again.  Thinking about happier times which still carried an undercurrent of pain.  I was in my hopper speeding through the outskirts of my neighbourhood.  It was a strange combination of high-rise, low-rise and rubble all within eyesight of each other.  The rubble was winning this war however and it wouldn’t be too long before there would be little left for the star to destroy.  I felt and heard a few pings in the rear section and checked my sensors.  Sure enough I was taking fire from the surface, people either seeing a meal ticket or a means of causing more destruction.  I debated about turning around and firing back, but the joy of killing them would be short lived, even if they had scratched my paintwork, which I doubted.  I went back to the question of where I could have hidden the package and smacked myself in the head.  How could I be so stupid?  I could use the coordinates from the hopper and see if any jumped out.  Scrolling through many were contact points, drop off locations, even an occasional megaplaza, I remember as if a lifetime ago, eating some of the best family meals at Marco's Pizzeria and wondered if it was still open, my stomach grumbled again as if to inform me that the morning sustenance failed to adequately provide what it required.  Eventually one of the last entries was for an old storage locker to the north of the city.  It was a converted warehouse and he'd managed to secure the long-term services at a very reasonable price, after all, who needed storage when the world is about to end in the coming decades.  None of them provided protection for gamma rays and immense gravitational forces that earth would endure when the black hole formed.  Not to mention the sudden drop in temperature as the sun disappeared.  I selected the storage locker as my only viable lead and promised my stomach I would find something more substantial afterwards, adjusting the flight path accordingly as my HUD gave a vector and safe route to the destination and started to make my way towards a life I had long forgotten.


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Chapter 3

 

If my neighbourhood to the east was in turmoil then the north section would be classified a disaster zone.  Everywhere the eye turned was ruin, like a great cyclone had travelled through and left a trail of rubble and destruction.  The infrequent buildings which remained standing all had parts missing of them, I marvelled that some were even still standing with the lack of foundation and support structure.  The marker for the storage locker was 100 yards ahead, but all that remained was a toppled perimeter fence and a few burnt out garage lots.  The once busy hauling pad was empty except for a few vines and weeds which had started to take advantage of the lack of upkeep.  Nature always found a way I thought as I made my way to land.

 

As I touched down I placed the engines into a low power mode so if I needed to make a swift exit I wouldn’t need them to warm up and enabled the self-defence mode before popping the canopy.  I'd not detected any signs of life on the way in, but one can't be too careful.  As I switched the marker from my craft to my personal HUD I could see the neon blue marker indicating the entrance.  What was once an old brown brick factory unit was now brown rocks on the ground.  I remember at the time the sales person stating that the unit he had given me was bomb proof, and whilst the unit itself may have been what was clear was that the outer shell probably wasn’t.

 

Even though the sun was directly above, the air had a chill which was difficult to place.  It was a palpable message that even the sun knew its time was nearly up and was deciding to relax in its usual role of 'giver of warmth'.  Hey everyone needs a break every now and again, who was I to judge.  I stood directly on the marker and looked around.  I didn’t feel a shred of resemblance and desperately scanned for anything that might spark some recognition.  The wind picked up and howled off the surrounding debris blowing bits of dust around me, and stinging my cheeks with the tiny pellets of brick and biting cold.

 

After 3 minutes of twirling around and cursing, frankly I'd had enough.  The fall at this first hurdle was a cruel blow to my waning morale and I kicked a rather larger piece of rock to vent some frustration.  Rather than moving and obey the laws of physics, the rock stayed where it was and my boot bounced off it, "Son of a…" I cried as pain shot through my ankle.  It was an expression my grandfather had taught me and his grandfather before him.  I'd often thought it needed an ending, but it was something about poetic license so that it could fit every situation, or something.  I still didn’t quite understand if I was being completely honest with myself.  I blamed the education system, with each generation becoming slightly more stupid than the previous, we never stood a chance of fixing anything.  I dropped down, landing and sitting next to the offending stone.  Rubbing my ankle I promised it I wouldn’t be asking it to kick anything for a while as recompense, and whilst it did appear to ease the pain it demanded retribution and my eyes once again fell on the stone.  I sighed and wondered if I could hop to my hopper, I surmised that I probably could but if anyone was watching I would look like an idiot.  Reluctantly I closed my fist and hit the stone rather half heartedly, not doing any noticeable damage to the stone, but equally not damaging my hand either.  My ankle pinged my pain receptors for my half arsed attempt, as if to say that wasn’t what it defined as justice and to try again.  I sighed again at the absurdity of it and lifted my hand again for strike number 2.  As my hand accelerated down my brain remained focused on the brick, only it wasn’t a brick and my previous half arsed attempt had managed to push some of the dust from off it.  What I was looking at was some kind of button and it reasoned perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to hit it, but it was too late and my hand rather clumsily depressed the button and it lit up. There was a strange stillness for a second and I breathed a sigh of relief but then felt something give under me.  What swiftly followed was pain across all parts of my body as I bounced down a flight of metallic steps landing in a crumpled pile at the bottom.  I felt the need to cut off my ankle for the transgression and mess it had gotten us in, but then remembered we had gone down a flight of steps very similar the last time I came here.

 

I stood up righting myself and was greeted with a hallway of lots in a somewhat impressive state of cleanliness given the surroundings it lay in.  Lights flickered as if fighting with the grid for the power they requested before eventually illuminating a passageway of doors with keypads illuminated.  I made my way down checking for my lot number, it was B1X1Y72, meaning basement level 1, 1st row 72nd lot.  I checked my positioning relative to the co ordinates and slowly rather gingerly continued.  As I approached I noticed that none of the vandalism and destruction prevalent in the other parts of the city was represented here.  It was like a treasure trove of normalcy in that regard, and because of this it felt oddly sterile and troubled me somewhat.  As if this level of normalcy was no longer normal.  As I came to my locker I was relieved that at first glance it also appeared to be untouched and quickly entered the 16 digit key code, the steel enforced blast proof door started to lift and I ducked under it making my way inside.  I was eager to see what would greet me and it had been so long since I had been here I honestly couldn’t remember what was actually in it.  Today had also provided me with a much needed distraction from what my life had become.  Even if my journey ended here, it had been the most fun I'd had in a long time and I took a little comfort in that.  Sure my body would have bruises and I felt a substantial lump on my brow, but hey, at least I've had fun.

 

The single tube light above came on, and the room was sparse in its contents.  There was a metallic table and chair, which was my old office stuff.  My wife hated it when we got married and demanded I get rid of it, replacing it with a warmer version preferring form over function.  I loved this desk, I couldn’t believe I still had it.  On the table was a box, but apart from those items the room was completely bare and I marvelled at the amount of space which was available in these rooms.  Families could live in these rooms quite comfortably and no doubt there were homeless people above right now who would see this space as a palace to see out there remaining days.  I contemplated taking the table and chair but realised that getting it up those stairs and somehow fitting it into the hopper was going to be no easy feat, so grabbed the box quickly confirming the TU logo and started to make my way back to what little civilisation remained in the hope of fresh food.

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