Rainy Day Revelations

 

 

Saturday morning began like all the others since the divorce. Still half-asleep, I rolled over towards what had been her side of the bed not truly conscious of the fact that she was gone. At least the drowsy sense of panic only lasted a second or two before my brain fully rebooted for the day. The worst aspect of the situation was now just the unending silence making the house seem like a tomb.

Kathy let me keep the house in the divorce settlement, quite the consolation prize for a failed marriage. As a kid, I would stay with my grandparents for a week or two during summer vacation. In the afternoons my grandmother would makes us lunch and we would both sit in front of the television and watch game shows.

I enjoyed this time with her and we would talk about the various constants and how some succeeded where others failed. We would also laugh at their reactions to the contests the host put them through. Of course, the big winners at the end of an episode jumped around frantically as the off-screen announcer listed off the various prizes, cash, and trips they were taking home. As the closing music played the host and the big winner would then cross the stage to the glamorous models standing next to the various prizes or posing in front of the elaborate displays showing the exotic tropical destination the lucky guy or girl would enjoy.

For a brief second or two, the camera would flashback over to that day's runner-up contestant. He or she would still be standing behind their assigned podium with a stunned and dismayed look. The announcer would then quickly say that the runner-up, meaning the loser, would receive a year supply of Rice-A-Roni for their troubles. That's how I still felt, I got the house while the woman I loved had moved out and taken up residence in one of her parents' fancy downtown condos.

I laid there in bed for a minute feeling the loneliness closing in and again started thinking about getting a dog. Kathy was severely allergic to dogs, something that I had accepted when we married. Kathy also hated the sight of dog shit when we went walking in the park. The offending dog and its lazy, irresponsible owner could be long gone but she acted like we had stumbled across some disgusting alien monster struggling to free itself from its slimy birth pod.

Getting a dog was a definite possibility. My parents and former in-laws still chatted and even had the occasional Sunday brunches even though blood loyalty to their children had strained their sickly sweet friendships. As the eggs benedict and mimosas are served I can see my ex-mother-in-law asking the perfunctory question about how was I doing. I can then see my mom answering in an equally offhand manner that Steven had adopted some mutt from the shelter. The two couples would then smile and maybe even laugh a little then go about their usual, more important discussions.

Just for shits and giggles, I then imagined my former mother-in-law telling Kathy sometime later that I was destroying the house she had so perfectly decorated by bringing in some furry mongrel to chew up the furniture and shit all over the carpets. Kathy's hatred for dogs went beyond simple allergies, it was more based on her belief that any animal would destroy or spoil her masterwork of style and balance.

After talking with her mother, Kathy would then fret for days before finally calling me at work to ask about some item of hers she couldn't find and that was probably still stored up in the attic. During our stilted conversation, she would mention that she heard I had adopted a dog. And I would casually mention that yes, I had a dog and that it had unfortunately laid some turds in the living room and foyer but that you couldn't really see the stains. The tone in her voice would then drop giving away the fact that she was upset.

Yeah, whenever I decided to get my ass out of bed I would look online for the biggest dogs up for adoption.

It took several more minutes but eventually, I did get out of bed and went through the motions of taking a shit, showering, and shaving. Yes, I also brush my teeth, no need for tooth decay to interrupt my post-divorce malaise.

Coffee was the next goal and with a cup of steaming hot good stuff in my hand, I opened the kitchen window shades and looked outside. It was pouring rain, the skies were a dark gray pretty much guaranteeing it would stay that way all day. The lawn desperately needs cutting but the rain was making any yard work impossible. I'm sure the Home Owners Association wouldn't see it that way but since the divorce, I didn't give a fuck what they thought.

Still, I needed something to do for the morning before pet adoption places opened. Then it occurred to me that Kathy did have a huge amount of junk stored in the attic. While her condo overflowed in luxury and comfort, storage space was at a minimum. I had agreed to let her keep the crap here, mainly out of some ridiculous idea that she might realize her true feelings and come back to me and her precious house. It might be fun to look through the vast amount of stuff she couldn't part with but yet didn't want in her new home.

That was eighteen months ago and before I learned about Chad. When Chad entered the picture I wondered for a few days if the suddenness of Kathy's decision to end our marriage was because they were having an affair. That they would stay apart for over a year before announcing their relationship. I looked into the matter and learned that Chad had never stepped foot in Atlanta until his company transferred him here. It was Kathy's sister, Jenny, that confirmed to me that they hadn't made the beast with two backs until well after the divorce.

Jenny had always liked me and after we bumped into each other at a coffee shop told me that it was true love at first sight for the two. It was at a work-related party and apparently, Cupid's arrow had a direct hit on the two on the first try. Jenny then laughingly confided that they were soul mates because they were both extreme compulsive-obsessives.

Climbing up into the attic I was sort of stunned at the amount of stuff she left behind. Being the last survivor of our failed endeavor I didn't have any reason to visit the attic. My extraneous crap was all down in the extra, unused bedroom.

Looking things over Kathy's boxes were of course labeled and neatly organized like toy soldiers. Poor Chad, I hope the bastard was truly in her anal-retentive league. I opened the box labeled books and wasn't surprised to find a collection of hardcover and paperback novels arranged in neat order, like puzzle pieces. It wouldn't have surprised me if Kathy had organized them into some sort of secret code like something from a Dan Brown ancient conspiracy novel.

The selection of books did seem unusual for her. They ran the gambit from the typical romance novel, spy thrillers, to science fiction and even horror. It was almost bizarre on a certain level. Other boxes had papers from college, clothes that I never saw her wear, and even pictures from her family that had to date as far back as the 1930s.

Several hours passed with me going through every box. As her now ex-husband it was wrong for me to go through her stuff. One box even had love letters to a high school sweetheart that was now some high-level advisor to a US senator. This guy's existence was old information, Kathy told me about him while we were dating. But as I read the ancient letters that were sent during their junior year of high school I discovered the old boyfriend had admitted to her that he was bi-curious and had a crush on some guy on the football team. I found this revelation hilarious since this old boyfriend worked for the right-wing asshole from Texas.

After going through the last box I was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that everything here made up the entirety of Kathy's life. There was even a copy of our divorce papers. But the one group of items missing was anything from our almost six years of marriage. No box containing pictures of our wedding, various vacations, or mementos two stupidly in love people give each other. It was a true gut punch to think that down in the spare bedroom I had a box storing all the birthday cards she gave me from the time we meet till that last year of marriage. Other boxes I kept had all the pictures I took of her, including the topless one she posed for on a beach in Puerto Rico.

That's when I noticed one last box in the corner. It wasn't labeled but when I picked it up I heard items sliding around. I lifted the lid off and saw five leather-bound journals inside. I picked up one and flipped through the pages, it was filled with her expertly neat handwriting. The leather cover of each journal had the year embossed in gold so it was easy to see where they began. The last one had the year she asked me for a divorce.

I flipped through the pages of that last journal to find the last entry. Sure enough, it was dated the day Kathy called me at work asking to meet her at the deli I liked for lunch.

Sitting on the floor of the attic I had a sudden flash of the emotions I felt as Kathy calmly told me in that deli she had hired a lawyer to draw up divorce papers. There wasn't any need for marriage counseling nor talking, she wanted a divorce. It would happen one way or the other and it would be best if we parted on friendly terms.

Sitting in that booth waiting for our order I felt the pit of my stomach sink into a churning, sour abyss. I looked at the woman who I loved more than anyone in the world numb from the shock of her words. There was no denying the reality of the situation. It was totally unexpected but I knew it wasn't some nightmare, it was real.

Some would say I was too shocked to agree with anything but I said yes to everything. I agreed to the divorce and didn't make a scene as my world collapsed. Kathy left a few minutes later leaving her lunch order untouched. Like a moron, I stayed behind and ate mine as if nothing weird had happened. I even left a tip on the table for the waitress as well as Kathy's untouched order. I'm sure the waitress asked me whether or not I wanted it packed up to go but I didn't hear her.

I never got any answers from Kathy as to why she ended it. And I'm sure if I had forced the situation and demanded them like some macho guy from the movies she would have refused. Her only response would have been a look of disappointment and heavy sighing like a parent might give to a slow child.

But now with these journals, I know the answers will be in Kathy's exact handwriting. Still sitting in the attic feeling the sweat pouring down my face and body, part of me knew I wouldn't like what I read.

That the answers I deserve would come with pain.

That same part of me said I should quit right there and forgot everything I had already seen. But it was too late for that, I was a true graverobber who had disturbed the ancient tomb and let loose all the cursed spirits.

I took the box down to the living room and began to read.

Inconvenient Estranged Parent

 

Writing Prompt- Your main character is approached by their long-estranged parent who wants to reconnect. How do they react? This started out as fiction with only a little bit of real life thrown in. Unfortunately past history started seeping into the story creating a hybrid mix.  

 

 Early February at Fort Carson, Colorado isn't a good time to be stuck outside working in the motor pool. The only thing worse than the motor pool is being down range out in the field during a field training exercise. But then there were rare occasions when dealing with hardships out in the field were preferable than getting tangle up in old family issues.

“Specialist Vaughn,” my platoon sergeant called out while walking up from our company's motor pool repair bays. “Lieutenant Chase is on the phone, he wants to talk with you ASAP. Haul ass up to the office and find out what he wants.”

“Roger that, Sergeant Blackledge,” I said taking just enough time to put away a couple of pieces of equipment back into the platoon's storage container before double timing down the line. My seemingly responsible and prompt response still earned me a hateful glare from the man.

My platoon sergeant, SFC Blackledge, was a huge, African-American guy with a baked-in bad attitude when it came to anything I was involved. To this day I never really understood his dislike for me. I definitely wasn't the platoon fuck-up, we had three new privates fresh from Advanced Individual Training (AIT) who were all competing for that title. The general consensus among the other members of the platoon was that if you combined the intelligence of the three new guys a squirrel would probably still beat them at tic-tac-toe.

At the time my best guess for why Blackledge enjoyed hassling me was that I was the perfect average soldier. I was almost three years into my enlistment and my gung-ho mentality had long since died. It had been replaced with a new perspective of doing just enough to keep the NCOs and officers above me happy. I had one year and a couple of months or so left of active duty and my ass would be going home.

As most things go, the army during the late-1980s was pretty cut and dry. This is a gross simplification but as long as you shined your boots, performed basic hygiene, and could read a map most American males could be a success in the United States Army. But for me the glamour had long since died and whatever Rambo-esque dreams I might have entertained had long since been crushed by your basic standard issue reality.

Thinking on it now, my carefree attitude may have been the source of Blackledge's distaste for me. In all modesty if I had stayed motivated and played the dog and pony game by looking good and performing beyond basic standards, I'd probably could have made promotion way beyond just sergeant (E-5), which I would unexpectedly make the following month.

After arriving at the repair bays I stepped into the office and was handed a phone by one of the people working there. “Specialist Vaughn reporting, sir,” I said or something similar.

“Vaughn,” LT Chase said in a tone of voice that betrayed a touch of annoyance, “your dad called the company commander. He's in town and wants to see you.”

“Ah yes, sir, did someone die or something?” I ask back confused. At that moment I couldn't remember the last time I had talked with my father. My mom and dad's marriage and their final divorce back in 1977 had been Chernobyl-like in its messy, complicated nature. So bad that one of the few absolute certainties in this universe is the fact that those two fucked up individuals should have never been allowed to live on the same continent, much less marry and have children.

My mother had legitimate mental issues that in South Carolina went unrecognized and, of course, totally untreated. She was the child of hard working but poor parents whose education never went beyond a couple of years of high school. South Carolina was, or still is a backwater provincial land with a grossly under-educated population lacking any true idea of how mental health can affect individuals and society as a whole.

Mom's way of coping with her issues was to drink. She was a chain smoker as well, which brought on a whole other series of problems. Finally there was infidelity, something she would actually talk about to us kids once she had a few drinks in her system. Her other favorite subject of conversation was to tell her children how much farther she could have made it in life if she had never had us.

Dad's issues were a little more abstract but he was also a product of Southern society and culture. He was a hard worker but showed next to no emotion to his kids other than rage when they did something bad. Beatings with a belt were the usual punishment for infractions raging from not doing homework to breaking one of his possessions.

There was also more than a little resentment when he had to use his money for us kids. I clearly remember department store trips to buy new clothes for my siblings and I with him whining about how much money was being wasted. Adding more insult to these injuries, after mom and dad separated he got us for the weekends. Which most of time had us hanging out in his mobile home as he worked on cars outside. I vaguely remember catching him telling a neighbor, who had asked him to go on a fishing trip, that his damn kids were here so he couldn't do anything this weekend.

“Don't know Vaughn,” LT Chase answered bringing me back out of my memories. “But prepare to copy this phone number.”

LT Chase calls out the phone number to a local motel and the room number. I write it down on my notepad sort of figuring this meant no one was dead. My father had always seemed a few french fries short of a full happy meal when it came to common sense. But not even he would travel from deep in the bowels of bumfuck Texas and come to Colorado Springs just to tell me some member of his family was dead.

“Tell me something Vaughn,” LT Chase interjects without warning, “why haven't you talked to your father in several years?”

Whoa, that was the other thing about dear old dad which I had forgotten, he loved playing the victim. “It's a long messed up story, LT,” I respond wearily.

“Okay, I get it, Vaughn.” He says before hanging up.

The rest of the day plays out as usual with me wondering if I should contact my father. Got to admit I was more than slightly pissed with him playing the abandoned and forgotten father. Dad had promptly gotten remarried suspiciously fast after my parents' divorce was finalized. Can't really fault him for that with mom long experienced in blazing new trails in roadside motel exploration.

His new wife brought with her a couple of daughters and by all accounts he was a great step-dad to his new kids. My siblings had spent some time with them a few summers back while I was over in West Germany playing soldier. The reports I got from them about a happy, affectionate man was a truly alien concept considering the sullen individual I remember that only reluctantly took his own kids fishing.

After the company's final formation and being released for the day I found myself drifting towards the rack of payphones in the barrack's day room. With mixed emotions I dialed the motel number and asked for his room when the desk clerk answered.

“Hello,” a lady said in a sweet voice.

“Yeah, this is Eric. I got word that my father was staying there.” I replied figuring I was talking to his new wife, my step-mother by default.

“Oh Eric,” the lady said, “we've been hoping you would call. I'll get your father, hold on.”

A second or two later he picks up the phone. “Hey Eric, it's your father,” he says like there was some question who it might be. Remember, a few fries short of a full happy meal.

“Yeah...dad,” I say hesitantly not really comfortable labeling him as such. “You're in Colorado Springs, what's up?”

“Lisa has a band competition here tomorrow, and we decided to see if you wanted to have dinner with us tonight.”

Running this information through my brain, I had to figure that 'Lisa' was my step-sister, someone who I had not only never met but didn't have a clue what she looked liked. Full disclosure, I didn't know what his new wife looked like either because I had literally never been in the same location with the lady. When my parents officially divorced, dad stayed in Texas and my mom and siblings and myself went back to South Carolina. Dad's new family life began about three or four days after everything was finalized.

Being the oldest of my siblings, I knew neither of our parents were worth much in the way of consideration. Going with our mother back to South Carolina was the safest course since we had her family to fall back on for support. But I admit, I was considering his offer of dinner. Part of me thought it would be interesting to meet at least a couple of members of his new family.

“So how about it?”He asked in an upbeat tone that I found both curious and slightly irritating. Past experience had taught me that my father expected instant acceptance and that any hesitation on the part of me or my siblings was a personal insult to him. There was way too much baggage in our past for me to have any enthusiasm about this reunion. I wasn't a kid anymore, I was an adult in my twenties and the few times I remember talking to him in the previous years he clearly still thought of me as a child.

Out of nowhere a question popped into my head that I had to ask before giving him my decision. “How long was this trip up to Colorado Springs planned? I mean you guys didn't just receive news about the band competition the last couple of days.”

“Oh, its been in the works for the last couple of months.” Dad replied offhand not realizing what it meant for his own flesh and blood to be an afterthought. Such actions were typical for him, for some reason his own kids were never a priority. Truthfully, it bothered me a lot that he somehow expected me to drop everything and rush across town to see him. He served in the army himself and knew the end of the duty day didn't necessarily mean a soldier was free to leave the post. It was either that or his offer for dinner was never be meant to be accepted. That he would use my refusal as yet another example of him being the victim. Given that the trip to Colorado Springs had been months in the planning, the fact that he didn't call me until the day they arrived tended to support my conclusion.

I simply didn't feel like being played that day. “No,” I said to him, “had you called and arranged something in advance it could have happened. But no, I'm going to the mess hall and then hang out with a few friends.”

“Okay,” he said in a tone that I felt was indifferent. He started to say something else but I cut him off.

“Look, it was great hearing from you,” something I didn't really mean, “but your arrival was totally unexpected and, honestly more than a little inconvenient for me. How about we try this again sometime in the future.” After that I hung up and didn't think about him for the rest of the night.

Was I cruel? Probably. Should I have given the man the benefit of the doubt? Maybe, if the weight of too many disappointments wasn't bearing down on my shoulders at that moment. The one good thing out of this cluster fuck was that I learned to treat my own kids completely different.

The coming years would bring my father back into my life. Namely him showing up unexpectedly at my house a couple of weeks after the birth of my son. My wife made me play nice. But dad never really changed and my patience with him only got shorter. My brothers somehow developed a phone relationship with him over the years with nothing but silence between him and myself.

Recently, I got word from my brother, Wilson, that dad asked for my phone number. Thankfully, Wilson told him he would have to ask me first. As I talked with my brother I thought about it for a couple of minutes. My decision was ultimately no, curiously there is no bitterness on my part. I found myself indifferent to the man and his life. Whatever relationship we might have had has long since passed into nothingness.

Glimpses of the Dark Side

 

A new take on "It's a Wonderful Life"

 The aerodrome was playing nothing but celebration music observing the centennial of the Global Accords. John Powell mostly ignored the music and just sat quietly at his small table outside cafe sipping his coffee. His attention directed at all his fellow travelers. The sun had just risen above the crest of the large east-facing windows casting a warm, golden glow on the several hundred people all waiting in the airship departure lounge. Powell was most taken with the family groups as different children played with each other as parents watched.

Everyone seemed content, if not actually happy, which Powell guessed came largely from one-hundred years of a growing world peace. John Powell, being a psychiatrist instead of a historian or politician, didn't really think all that much about how the Accords hadn't reached their final form until 1977. And while the Federal League was celebrating one-hundred years of peace, most people understood that war didn't really end in 1921. The “conflicts” that erupted in Africa and Asia in the intervening years weren't as big or bloody as the 1914-1919 Last War, but the deaths were just as real. Being American, he refused to think about the Backlash Uprisings in the southern states that had occurred in the 1980s. After one of their radical groups assassinated President Kennedy, those neoconfederates got what they deserved.

Giant screens mounted opposite of the eastern windows showed the departure times of airships heading out to Europe or west to the provinces of Canada or the western states. Powell's airship to San Francisco wasn't scheduled for another three hours. As much as he hated reading patient files outside his office, it was better to do it now instead of on the flight when he could take advantage of all the airship amenities.

Powell loosen the buttons on his left sleeve pulling it back exposing his wrist computer. The all purpose computer was attached to his arm by two straps, one at the wrist and the other mid-forearm. Similar devices had existed since the early 1960s taking the place of wrist watches and small radios. The addition of wireless communication and access to the global library network had finally made them ubiquitous to daily life. As the technology advanced, the devices came to host thousands of different applications from entertainment to business and health.

Most young people had long since developed the habit of shoving their wrist computers in the pockets of their clothes. Not Powell, his was a Rolex wrist comp and the idea of losing it, like a lot of youngsters do with their cheaper models, was a nightmare he didn't want to realize. Wearing it on his wrist was cumbersome, and it made using the camera difficult but the alternative was worse given how many times a day he had the access the network to review and update patient files.

That morning there was one patient John Powell was concerned with, and it was the reason he was going to San Francisco.

***

“Good morning, Dr. Powell,” his cabin steward said up entering after knocking on the door to make sure he was awake. Powell had been up since his courtesan for the night had departed and was again on his wrist comp reviewing his files.

“Hello Ernest,” Powell replied trying not to frown in reaction to the steward's southern accent. Powell had no reason to believe Ernest or any of his family members might have taken part in the Uprisings. But it was hard to forget the videos of southern radicals screaming they wanted to Make America Great Again as they committed terrorism.

“What would you like for breakfast this morning?” Ernest asked as he straightened up the cabin.

“Just bacon and eggs with juice and coffee. Are we still scheduled to land in Frisco on time?”

"Yes, sir on both,” Ernest said imputing the food order on his own wrist comp before leaving.

Powell could tell Ernest was holding some sort of resentment, whether it was related to the now defeated and disorganized neoconfederate cause was impossible to tell. Most neoconfederates had fled the country and moved down into the Central American Federation territory. To them the area from Guatemala to Colombia was one of the last bastions of real freedom in the world.

To the rest of the civilized world the Central American Federation was a huge shit hole of violence, corruption, and oppression. And neither the United States government nor the Federal League had the will or resources to tackle that area right now.

But all things considered Powell realized that even though most of the world was now peaceful with the vast majority of humans no longer worried about food or homelessness or oppression there were still some who felt shorted. Maybe for the time being it was best to leave the radicals down there alone until other areas like central Africa and south Asia were more stable.

***

Gracie Hensley was in her room laying on her bed asleep. A small camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling relayed video to her caregivers sitting in a nearby room. Gracie wasn't in restraints, mainly because there was nothing in her room that she could easily use to harm herself. But nonetheless, orderlies were just seconds away if she showed signs of trying to commit suicide.

Powell had read her case file dozens of times. A normal teenager from a middle class family with no discernible psychological or physical issues. Until a couple of months ago when she started having dreams of an assailant coming into a school with military assault weapons and killing anyone they encounter. From her files, the dreams are incredibly detailed with Gracie able to name off the people being killed. She can also describe the location with exacting detail as well as the surrounding area.

The dreams always resulted in her screaming in terror and unable to leave her room. Needless to say, they were taking a heavy toll on her emotional well being and that of her family's.

One of the many problems with Gracie's dreams was that the school the shootings take place isn't the one she actually attends. The school in her dreams exists, down to every detail she described, but in Colorado. The other problem with Gracie's dreams is that in reality civilians cannot own those types of weapons. The idea that a civilian could purchase anything than a normal handgun or bolt-action rifle or shotgun is ridiculous. Owning such weapons was difficult even before the Backlash Uprisings, afterwards the only way the average American would even touch one was to join the military.

But somehow, the assailant in Gracie's dreams owned such weapons, as well as an ungodly amount of ammunition.

“Dr. Powell, you've reviewed Ms. Hensley's condition.” Dr. Linda Banks said after turning away from the row of screens showing the inside of patients' rooms. “I'm very interested in what you might have to add, especially since you've flown across the country.”

“Truthfully Dr. Banks, Ms. Hensley isn't the first time I've seen a case very much like this. In fact I have personally encountered seven such individuals. Five of them were of a similar age to Ms. Hensly but the other two were adults in their thirties.”

“The violent encounters,” Powell continued, “their dreams all took place in locations they never actually visited but gave incredibly accurate descriptions. Also, these homicidal assailants all possessed military grade weapons used with the dreamers somehow certain they owned them.”

“That's all well and good, Dr. Powell. But were you able to help these earlier patients? The stress and fear Gracie is going through is getting worse. Gracie already can't function outside this facility and I fear she might have a total and permanent break with reality if it continues for much longer.”

Powell grabbed a small tablet from a table and began writing down a list of psychotropic drugs and their dosage. “There medications have dampen the dreams in the other patients.” He said to the other doctor. “But they never completely ended the dreams, about all we can hope is that she outgrows them in time.”

“Dr. Powell,” Banks said eyeing the man intently, “I can read people just as well as you and I know you're not telling me something. And I'll be damned if you'll leave this facility before I know what you're not telling me.”

“Just how open is your mind to out of the box thinking, Dr. Banks?” Was Powell's response.

Dr. Bank's office was a testament to 1950s extravagance. The décor and artwork were relics of that era and was looked down upon for the most part now. Powell was even surprised to see an ancient tabletop computer sitting on the desk. Just for a second he wondered if the tabletop was real or if she used a holographic interface like everyone else when working in the office.

“Now Dr. Powell, please tell me your secrets.” Dr. Banks said after she took her seat behind the desk and he in the chair in front.

“Dr. Banks, how much do you know about quantum mechanics and hyper-gravity theory?”

Powell realized it was a risk to tell her everything but his team was almost done with the first of their papers to be published and who knows, she might sign on to the study.

Powell began by telling her how just ten years ago one of the particle accelerator labs in the asteroid belt had confirmed that the force of gravity does bleed over into other universes. That the data clearly suggests gravity isn't something from anyone one universe but affects the entire multiverse.

“Here's where things move into the metaphysical realm, Dr. Banks.” Powell said in a deadly serious tone. “What if the multiverse does contain a near infinity number of parallel universes where history can play out almost exactly to ours or go the opposite way? And lets say that since gravity permeates through the multiverse why can't other forces?”

“That's quite a lot to think about, Dr. Powell,” Banks said wearily. “But what about proof, that's where science begins.”

Powell went to explain that these murderous dreams were not a new phenomenon. That back in the 1940s there were numerous reports from Germany of Jews having dreams that a totalitarian regime was systematically murdering them. That this regime was being lead by a megalomaniac with dreams of world domination.

“Well that's ridiculous, Dr. Powell. The Germans have a checkered history with antisemitism in the past but they would never systematically try to murder whole populations.”

“That's the whole point. In our reality history and events played out differently.” Powell explained preparing to explaining his theory. “In our world the Spanish Flu forced and end to the Last War. So many people were dying from the flu that both sides were forced to help each other. All talks of victory and revenge gave way to tolerance and negotiation. Yes, it helped that certain leaders fell victim to the Flu allowing new voices to emerge.”

“I've pieced together a history of this darker world from reading the journals of individuals that suffered from these dreams,” Powell said. “Their Spanish Flu wasn't as bad and their Last War had already ended. This allowed the Allies to impose a harsh peace of Germany that bred a sense of revenge among the population. So instead of the first treaties that form the Accords, their peace set the stage for yet another, more horrible war.”

Powell cued up his wrist computer to transfer hundreds of files to Bank's computer.

“I still don't understand, Dr. Powell. How are just certain individuals having these dreams and not the entire human race?”

“I don't know,” he replied. “But I've cross referenced hundreds of different locations where these dreams took place and the vast majority of individuals had no idea they existed in real life. But I've conferred with a several physicists and we're rehashing an old theory that events can echo from one universe to another. How the actual mechanics of this echo works is something we're working on.”

I've talked with both Ms. Hensley and her parents,” Banks said while looking off into the distance while unconsciously shivering. “This alternate United States where Gracie's dreams take place is a violent, paranoid place and it's getting worse. Gracie has related to me insane ideas about corrupt and incompetent politicians, corporations running roughshod over individual rights, and a growing global environmental disaster.”

“I know,” Powell said. If this theory is correct that world is a nightmare. Our world and nations are far from perfect but it seems like a paradise compared to the stories I've read and heard.”

The two doctors discussed Ms. Hensley treatment for a few further minutes and then went their separate ways. Dr. Banks was still doubtful on the outlandish theory of echos of despair crossing realities. But she was thankful that she existed on this side of that divide.

Latter-Day Prometheus - See Fan Fiction

 

From space the Earth looks beautiful, the blue of the oceans the green of the forests and the browns of the deserts all teem with life. But I find myself circling the world of my birth seeing it as a graveyard. I arrived home to find the greater mass of humanity having been killed in a plague that my instruments and sensors tell me happened over six-hundred years ago after my recruitment into the Cohort.

From a population that must have peaked at over eight-billion human souls before the plague, my sensors say there is only a little under ninety-million people now scratching out a near neolithic existence on the surface. After analyzing my findings, the simulations I've run suggest that the human population more than likely dropped to around two-million at its lowest point.

I came home believing I'd find my species having expanded out into the solar system. That given what the Cohort had judged as Homo sapiens probable technological growth rate, that humanity by now should have primitive starships running between the Sol system and several of the nearby stars with planets that could easily be colonized.

Instead, I find my species on the edge of extinction with no way to protect itself from what fate or circumstance might throw their way. Any number of events could occur and end all hopes for humanity eventually reaching its potential.

My Cohort training comes into effect and I send dozens of sensor pods down to the surface to try and find out what happened. As the pods descend into the atmosphere, they release billions of tiny sensors no bigger than motes of dust. These instruments would float on the wind and embed themselves on anything they touched. This included all living things and especially human bodies. In the span of days I would have a comprehensive genetic analysis on everything living.

The results come back as expected but they are horrifying nonetheless. It was a virus that destroyed civilization by killing billions all across the planet. No surprise there, but what was unexpected was that of those very few that survived the initial outbreak it burned out the visual centers of their brains leaving them blind. Worse yet, the virus was still active and is passed from mother to child. Except for the possible but rare mutant immune to the virus, the entire human race on Earth is totally blind.

The sensor dust I released is also able to record video and audio signals. With that data I am able to determine that a sight-less culture has naturally emerged among the various survivor communities. Something that could easily be predicted but the as with everything else involving my species it gets complicated. In all these blind cultures the very concept of sight is something akin to myth. In others, namely the North American continent, the blindness is considered a punishment from God for Man's sins.

From this video and audio data, I learn that fanatical groups of religious zealots scour the countryside looking people who might be sighted. The similarities to hunting for witches in North America and Europe are haunting. My sensors collect video of people having been burned at the stake.

Curing this virus-imposed blindness isn't a problem, my medical systems can analyze and develop a safe cure in a few weeks. Synthesizing the counter-virus and deploying it across the planet could be done with the dust sensors. Adults humans wouldn't regain their sight, but young children and everyone born after deployment of the cure would would be able to see.

The problem is all these blind cultures, especially the religious ones. Thousands would die at the hands of the fearful believers in God's wrath, especially the children born to sight.

It is a conundrum my Cohort mentor, Janai, would find funny in a cosmic way. It reminds me of a situation we found ourselves in just a few years ago in another part of the galaxy.

***

Janai found me on the shore of one of the lakes of liquid mercury the Sgrang use to breed their young. The Sgrang are a species composed largely of mercury and other elements housed in a silicon/carbon matrix and require exacting conditions for successful reproduction. Out of trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, their home world was incredibly unique. It had evolved a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere, something quite rare by itself, but what really set it apart was its geology. The planet was improbably rich in heavy metals all the way up to uranium and other heavy elements that didn't exist on Earth.

The evolution of life on the Sgrang home world took advantage of both the heavy metals and its above average vulcanism. So much that when the Sgrang realized one of their neighboring stars would go supernova they called for the Cohort to help them find another planet to live. The coming supernova, less than three lightyears away, would utterly sterilize their world.

The conditions on the Sgrang home world didn't allow either Janai nor myself to set foot on the surface. The Cohort had environmental suits that could stand the incredible pressure and heat, but it simply wasn't worth the risk. Instead our minds were linked to mechanical avatars allowing us to interact with the Sgrang. Beings that looked like stone caterpillars with spikes of clear crystals for eyes covering their bodies.

“Has the council come up with any ideas on where the Sgrang can go?” I ask after turning towards the ridiculous looking mechanical cephalopod standing beside my equally weird looking humanoid form.

Despite her extremely alien shape, both mechanical on the surface and biological up on the orbiting starship Janai chuckles just like a human. “The council is dumbfounded, twenty-million worlds extensively cataloged in this section of the galaxy alone and none meet the requirements. The planetary vulcanism isn't a problem, it's the Sgrang elemental composition. None of the known worlds have quite the exact composition, most have too little of the heavier elements. Too much and the young Sgrang emerge from the lakes of mercury without the normal mental capacity.”

“Has the ship contacted the Cohort Motherbases, maybe one of the central libraries knows of worlds in the one of the smaller satellite galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud or even all the way to Andromeda?” I ask my mentor as I watch Janai dip one of her ten tentacles in the mercury lake.

Unlike the fictional interstellar governments from the science fiction I read and watched on Earth, the Cohort is not based inside the galaxy. The Cohort mainly existed on gigantic bases built out in the intergalactic void. Most advanced intelligent species consider galaxies insanely dangerous places with all sorts of disasters ready to befall any lifeforms unwilling to think beyond the surface of their home mud balls.

Membership in the Cohort, something humans would not be ready for probably a millennium, required a mass relocation to one of those bases. The benefits included technology originally developed by the Elder Races and exposure of cultures of hundreds of other species. Living condition are idyllic on the residential Dyson Spheres with the extremes of planetary weather carefully controlled. Plus each member species gets living space of about the surface area of ten Earths. As long as the members behave like rational beings and control their numbers, everyone get along quite well. Plus evacuating the planetary home worlds gives evolution a chance to proceed allowing near intelligent-species to make the jump to full sentience.

After a long silence Janai finally gives her answer. “ The council is purposing a different solution.”

“What other solution is there besides seeding the Sgrang on another world?”

“Ah, my young protege, you need to stop thinking so three dimensional.” Jania says in her soft voice that usually means I'm about to get a lecture.

After she tells me her answer it is my turn to be dumbfounded. What the council wants to do violates everything I understood to be right and wrong. Janai reminds me that to be a successful Cohort diplomat I have to reserve the right to change the rules of any game I find myself playing.

I protest, but being the only hairless primate from an insanely primitive planet in the Cohort, I am ignored. At least Janai sees fit to give me several decades to think about the situation. After all, the Sgrang are vital to the science of thirty dimensional physics.

Several days later, Janai is at the main hangar of our starship to see me off for my sabbatical. “Where will you go Jacob Reese?” She asks obviously worried over her sad protege.

“Probably Earth, my dumbass people should well off the planet by now. Who knows, maybe they've crossed the threshold point for initial contact.”

“Remember Jacob,” she says stroking the hair on my head with one of her real tentacles like any concerned mother, “the universe loves to play practical jokes that cross all of spacetime.”

***

That memory occurs to me as I run the simulations on my ship's main computer. Despite my ship's small size the hyperdrive it uses to cross interstellar space is no different from much larger cousins. Instead of using it to cross distance though, I am forced by the situation on Earth to consider crossing time.

Deploying further dust sensors on Earth allowed me to access century old records sitting on the hardrives of ancient computers rusting away in forgotten facilities. This has allowed me to narrow down the year and month the plague first emerged.

The main purpose for the Cohort's existence has always been to reduce suffering among intelligent species and promote the expansion of life and civilization. And in the case of the Sqrang, that even means going back in time and altering their biochemical evolution just enough so that one of the cataloged worlds meets their requirements.

The science of temporal adaptation is what the Cohort calls it. Being that the Cohort is over two-hundred millions years old means they have plenty of experience in closed-loop time travel.

I am still uncertain though, if I alter time and prevent the plague from occurring I will effectively kill millions of people dooming them to a form of oblivion incomprehensible to most thinking beings. On the other hand, if I introduced the cure now it would almost certainly cause untold bloodshed with the newly emerging sighted people being persecuted by superstitious and religious types. Because if there is one constant in the universe it is backwards ignorant beings believing they know the mind of God.

In the end, saving the billions who perished during the plague and those that would have been born after is my first priority. And yes, I am not blind to the knowledge that my actions are more than a little self-serving. I want the civilization that produced me back probably most of all.

With one touch to the command screen, I bring up the holographic display and input the required codes to initiate temporal travel. I input the destination going back two-years further for a safety measure.

The holographic icon that will activate the hyperdrive floats a few centimeters in front of my hand. Swiping left will begin the operation, to the right will cancel it. My certain falters, I think of all the humans on the surface living and loving, making the best of their lives. Do I have a right to wipe them all way, not even leaving a trace that they ever existed?

Clearing my thoughts, I swipe left sending my ship and myself to that critical pivot point in human history.

Author's notes: Yes, this is a form of fan fiction and yes, my wife and I spend way too much time watching television. Our explorations of the internet entertainment channels and their offerings is embarrassing even in these Covid-dominated months. Still though, it was subscribing to Apple TV that I stumbled across one of their original shows called “See”, staring Jason Moma. The show's premise is essentially what I wrote in my humble story.

A plague sometime this century kills off the vast majority of humans. The survivors, about two-million, are all blind as a result, and so are the children that comes after them. As apocalypse entertainment goes how the producers go about building this blind world is fascinating. The viewer gets incredible hints at the complex cultures and adaptations that would arise if such an event every happened.

Humans are highly adaptable creatures but a state of blindness effecting the entire species is a form of Hell all by itself in my opinion. On the show most humans appear to live in a near neolithic state with any leftover technology akin to sacred religious relics. Even worse, being blind the sun is technically unknown to them and is worshiped and called the “God Flame” for the heat it produces. It goes without saying the survivors have no idea the moon nor stars exist. Leftover metal is called “God Bone” and is highly prized. No, there isn't any evidence that they can produce metal themselves.

My attempt with this story was to create an ethical dilemma for my character. That given the ability to change history and save billions of lives is condemning millions to oblivion less of a crime? I obviously made my choice, I'd like to hear what others think.

A Troubled Bridge to Redemption

 Author's notes: Excuse the typos, it's late and I'll do my usual proofreading later.

The Entity had existed for so long it didn't know what it was or how it came to be. Not that it worried over such trivialities, its one overwhelming need was to feed. In some ways it wasn't much different from common bacteria, as long as it found sustenance to insure its continued survival nothing else mattered. It had no dreams for itself, no aspirations, no desire for love or to improve its condition.

Understand, the Entity was intelligent, in a sense, because it knew of humanity and the slice of reality the scurrying, glorified bags of water occupied. Because the Entity fed exclusively on their fears, their darkest emotions. It would latch on to a damaged soul and twist whatever nightmares or dark memories played in their minds to the point nothing would be left. The usual result for that person was death with the Entity satiated for what humans perceived as decades.

Not that it left humans alone until it hungered again. The Entity, and those like it, were often the cause for a sudden bad feeling someone would get for no reason. The basis for the bad memory, long forgotten, to suddenly resurfaced. In the worst cases, the Entity and its kin were the reason for a totally unexpected and horrific crime of passion. Something that would leave the perpetrator claiming he or she had never in their wildest dreams meant to hurt the victim.

Not that it and its kind were to blame for all human failings. Humanity was an unfinished product with enough inherent flaws to make its long term survival highly questionable. It went without saying that humanity's worst enemy was always itself. That was what made humans an ideal source of food.

The Entity had for years resided in the house of its last meal. There was no attachment to the construct any human would understand. Structures were just convenient vessels to given them a physical form in the human universe because the Entity had no real substance they could easily call upon.

Years before a family of three, father, mother, and young son had moved into the house. The father, a newly wealthy businessman wanted nothing more than to expand his riches. The mother's chief desire was to achieve social standing among the other wives of her husband's business circle. At best, the two ignored their young son who suffered from loneliness and cruel treatment by his cold nanny.

The boy offered such an abundance of fear that the Entity was almost gleeful as it fed like a bloated tick on a dog. As the boy grew older and became a teenager, the Entity twisted his fears into rage and hate. The Entity grew so strong from its efforts and the purity of the boy's dark emotions it gained the ability to physically manifest itself in the human realm. But even for the Entity, all good things must come to an end.

One winter morning the boy took an ax to his nanny and fed the pieces of her body to the basement furnace. The mother came home early from a church meeting that day and came close to suffering a similar fate. She escaped the house and ran out into the snow covered street drenched in her own blood. When the police arrived to take the boy into custody he offered no resistance and peaceably went off to jail. Later that night he hung himself in his cell, but not before telling his court appointed attorney that a voice in his head prompted him to murder his nanny and attack his mother.

Days after the boy kills himself, the father and mother mysteriously die in their beds. Autopsies of the two are performed but fail to determine what caused their demise. Word does slip out to the community that the medical examiner made an offhand comment saying that if he didn't know any better its seems something scared them to death. Like all bizarre incidents, the largely rational people of the community soon move on with their lives and forget the event ever happened.

The Entity, fully satisfied, will spend years alone in the house only leaving to take advantage of any troubled human it might stumbled upon. Things do change and eventually someone does buy the old house with the intent of returning it to its full glory.

Noah James unlocks the front door and enters the foyer wondering if his plan made any sense. The house, largely empty for twelve years, is in far worse shape than when he initially looked at the place. Most notably, there is a clearly defined crack running along one of the living room walls. The house has major foundation issues, Noah mentally kicks himself for not noticing it until now. Such an issue might make profitably flipping the house impossible.

Noah sighs, and resigns himself to another possible huge failure. His worst still being the death of his wife and daughter while he was deployed to Iraq. With nothing left in his life but to move on despite his deep desire to just quit, Noah walks back out to his truck to unload his tools and supplies for this hopeless project.

The Entity is overwhelmed at its luck, this new human was surrounded by raw despair. Another tortured soul so soon after the boy is incredible. Still powerful from twisting the boy into a murderer, the possibilities with this new prey are nearly endless. That night as Noah slept in the living room on a recently bought cot, the Entity touched his mind to begin feeding.

The Entity perceived a wealth of pain unmatched in its long history. His new victim had seen unparalleled cruelty and even taken part in a few events. But what mostly haunted the man was the loss of his wife and young daughter, and the fact that he had been with another woman in Iraq almost the exact moment they were killed in a car crash back home. There was so much to feed from this mind, the Entity thought to itself, that it might be able to permanently take physical form in the human reality. An achievement for its kind that that had pushed the world towards madness several times over the centuries.

But there was a problem, his victim wasn't connected to his emotions. It was as if the Entity was facing an unscalable wall between it and something close to infinite treasure and power on the other side. It frustrated the Entity, something it had never in its memory felt before during its long existence. But if anything the Entity was patient, it had infiltrated cleaner human minds and been well rewarded for it.

Weeks went by as Noah methodically gutted most of the house's infrastructure barely leaving anything but the basic frame in some places. The man remembered the horrific dreams that plagued him at night but he refused to succumb to the despair they tried to inspire. Noah wanted a fresh start to his life, and even though he wasn't religious in any real sense, he wanted a path to redemption from what he had done and who he betrayed.

While the Entity didn't perceive time as humans, several months passed with it still unable to touch the core of his new prey. It raged inside its dark realm unable to find a way to tap into what amounted to its victim's soul. So the Entity renews its assault, this time playing to the human's self-pity. It whispers to the human's subconscious that his actions in Iraq were justified and that his wife had probably been cheating on him while he fought overseas. Worst of all, the Entity tried to plant the seed that his daughter hadn't really been his, that at birth the baby looked a lot like one of his wife's old boyfriends from high school.

These nagging falsehoods took their toll, but Noah refused to yield to their self-deception. Noah understood the hurt he had caused in Iraq and while others had written off his actions as the normal costs of war, he refused. As far as the possibility of his wife cheating and his daughter not being his child, that was simply not conceivable.

This enraged the Entity, throughout its existence all its other prey would have long since fallen. This troubled human's embrace of its faults had become the bedrock of its strength. The prey even refused to indulge in self-pity and irrational justification, something even the best human's normally took part.

Had the Entity not been a creature of chaos and destruction, it might have given up on the human and just used it huge surplus of energy to survive until another victim appeared. But this human radiated such dark emotions and despair the reward for sucking his soul dry would be like none before.

That left the Entity one option, it would have repeat what it did to the parents of its last victim, a physical manifestation that would drive the human insane thereby destroying its mental defenses. Such an action would spoil the taste of the prey's emotions but the energy it would reap would be monumental.

As the day progressed Noah perceived something was off with everything and nothing. It reminded him of some days back in Iraq when the village locals did their best to act normal around the Americans but knew that insurgents were going raise hell that night. Noah tried to shake it off but long ingrained habits and outright instinct told him something bad was coming.

He called it quits a little earlier than usual and decided to get cleaned up and grab a burger at one of the nearby diners. It would do him good to get away from the house, even though he finally could see the finished line and hopefully a profit from his efforts.

Noah returned to the house a few hours later feeling slightly better about the world and himself. That ended as soon as he stepped inside, a sense of doom overwhelmed his mind and for a moment he seriously thought about turning around and running away. But he shook off the feeling subconsciously knowing that he had to face whatever was about to happen.

The house was dark except for a lamp in the now finished living room and a halogen work lamp in one of the bedrooms. Noah walked down the hallway connecting the two areas looking for the source of his unease. He half expected to find someone hiding in the house, whether taking refuge from the cold or trying to steal his tools or supplies. But the first floor of the house was empty and there was no evidence anyone had been lurking earlier.

Grabbing a flashlight and going upstairs to the second floor, Noah calmly checked out every room until he came to the master bedroom. Its door was shut, something he didn't remember doing as he went about his work. By this time in his search, Noah expected to find nothheing and no one in the house. It has to be my work schedule, he thought to himself as he opened the door and stepped inside.

The master bedroom was still very much a work in progress, The walls had been stripped down to the frame leaving old wiring and pipes exposed. A pile of both sitting in one corner of the room.

Noah stepped over to one of the work lights and turned it on so he could access the hatch leading to the attic. The next and last place in the house that anyone could hide. That's when the Entity chose to reveal itself.

As Noah moved toward the ceiling access hatch to the attic he detected motion to his right. Turning around he what looked like a dark cloud spinning in one itself. For a moment Noah figured it was some play of shadows combined with the harsh light from the work lamp. That was when the scream issued forth from the bizarre cloud.

Noah was both fearful and entranced by the spectacle, it was nothing like he had ever seen before. Terror started to grow in his mind though as he began to see a form take shape in the cloud, it seemed vaguely human but twisted in on itself. Part of Noah's subconscious recognized what was happening but the larger part refused to believe the event was really occurring. It has to be all the bad dreams and the overwork, he thought to himself. That is until the apparition's finally form came into view.

The Entity now looked at his prey with something approaching physical eyes. Yes, it thought to itself, the human's mental defenses were weakening, it would reap the reward of sucking his soul dry. The Entity then began moving towards its prey, physical contact would ensure entry into its mind. It cried out in victory as each step brought it closer.

Noah was frozen in terror, the thing moving towards him looked like a human skeleton covered in tar. Where the eyes and mouth were supposed to be located on the skull, a bright orange and red light could be seen. To Noah, the thing looked like it was having a hard time moving, as if the action was something it hadn't done in a long time or never done at all.

“You have resisted me long enough, human,” The thing crackled. “I will feast upon your soul and grow so powerful I will make millions fear my chaos.”

The Entity had made the first of two mistakes, the first being entering physical form allowed its prey to see inside its own mind. It was there that Noah sensed all the death and destruction it had caused over the centuries. Noah could also perceive what it meant by making millions fear its chaos. Things like it had sown death and destruction all through human history. Noah also suddenly realized why he could understand the thing coming towards him. Because he had caused his own share of death and chaos in the world without any regard to the pain it produced.

Not that this knowledge was going to do Noah any good because the thing had grabbed a hold of him and was trying to sink his claw-like fingers into his head. That's when Noah learned of the Entity's second mistake.

Taking physical form also made things like the Entity and his kin vulnerable to harm and even susceptible to being killed. That knowledge freed Noah from his terror.

Using all his will and strength, Noah broke away from the Entity and scrambled to the other side of the room. The Entity, now moving more freely, immediately pounced on its prey producing a scream that to Noah seemed like something from the bowels of hell. But Noah fought back throwing his entire body at the thing knocking it backward a few feet.

“None of your kind has ever escaped me, human,” it screeched again not for a second realizing that entering the physical realm had compromised its plan.

Noah didn't have a plan but he was now angry at all the suffering the thing had produced. So many deaths and hate and fear that it was a wonder humanity had survived this long. He had to figure out a way to kill at least this evil.

As the Entity came for Noah again he realized that the thing would eventually wear him down. Noah looked around the room hoping there was something he could use as a weapon. His only option appeared to be a section of iron pipe off in the corner.

Noah jumped around the room and snatched up the pipe. As weapons went it was pretty sad but like he learned in the army: improvise, adapt, and overcome. There was a moment between the two beings as each prepared for the final assault. It was then that the Entity realized it had once been human, a time so long ago it was meaningless given the eons it spent outside this reality. For Noah, he realized that he was about to die, but fighting such a creature was a good way to make up for his own sins in this world.

They charged each other with Noah swinging the pipe and catching the Entity's torso. Chunks of something akin to charcoal flew out across the floor leaving the Entity surprised and, amazingly, hurt. Only a second passed with each realizing the tables had been turned. Noah started pounding the Entity sending chunks everywhere to the point it collapsed on the floor. The Entity tried to reassembly but the human was giving no quarter and worst of all, it was getting weaker with each blow.

Noah fell across the creature and began pounding its head wanting to extinguish the hellish light coming from its eyes and mouth. He didn't stop until the thing was just motes of dust drifting across the floor. Noah knew the thing was dead as even those motes could be seen flaring like matches and then fading away.

As the sun began to rise hours later the house went up into flames. Noah knew the Entity was dead but he couldn't take the chance that one of its kin might take up residence in what he now considered unholy ground. More to the point, burning the house was a symbol him of moving on with his life, of letting go of his faults and sins.

Epilogue

The fire department arrived in time to see the shell of the house collapse. It was a total loss and given the house's condition most everyone assumed it was faulty wiring that had started the blaze. That is until the fire department investigator showed up and found several empty gas containers behind the shed. The police were brought in and were about to arrest Noah when a representative from the insurance company drove up.

“Hello everyone,” he said in a booming friendly voice after getting out of the car. “Where's Mr. Noah James?” he asked to the crowd who looked on in awe of the man.

“Yes sir,” a police detective said standing next to Noah, “we're about to arrest the owner for arson.”

The insurance man laughed, “Now why would you go and do such a thing. This is clearly an act of God and troubling this young veteran would be the only crime.”

“But sir,” the fire investigator said, “we've found empty gas tanks in the back and they're fresh. We believe Mr. James burned down the house to cover his failure to successfully renovate the structure.”

The insurance man walked up and put his arms around both the police detective and the fire investigator. “Now gentlemen, would I be about to offer Mr. James a nice check to cover the damages if I suspected he burned his house down.”

Both said, “No” much like an errant child might.

Noah was released and once the ashes were extinguished, both the police and fire department drove away not thinking anymore of the event.

Even Noah was dumbfounded as the insurance man drove away after telling him there were huge opportunities out west. That a man like him would find a lot of peace and happiness on the coast of Oregon. So that was what Noah did after getting rid of his tools and buying a new truck that could make the trip.

The next day another man drove by the now empty lot. He went to several of the nearby houses saying he was from the insurance company out to investigate the fire and the policy holder. The neighbors smiled and said someone from the insurance company had already talked with the owner of the house. They said the owner had driven off without stating a destination.

A trip to the police and fire department got similar disinterested answers so the insurance man closed the case and started the long trip back home. His wife was making meatloaf that night and he wanted to get some before it got cold.

At the Fall of Night

A prequel to the recent Destiny's Path short story. 

The creature had died on a rocky outcropping next the cliff. Its remains looked human but Jacob could see the rainbow hue of the nanites embedded in the bones. He wondered if the creature had been one of the fanatical followers of the Teachings of Parr, or a poor soul that had been forcibly exposed to the corrupted nanotechnology. Not that it mattered, either way once the nanites invaded living tissue the infected person became a nightmarish creature that was anything but human.

Surrounded on two sides by boulders and large rocks, the remains had been sheltered from wind and rain for decades leaving the bones largely in the same place the creature had died. Jacob could even see small strips of cloth tangled among the bones and what looked like hair attached to the skull. In the back of Jacob's mind, he could almost imagine the creature had willfully chosen this spot to die. As if some shred of sentience had returned after all the humans it could hunt down had either been converted or torn to bloody shreds.

Jacob stood more than a meter away from the remains trying to dredge up some sort of emotions. He thought of his lost wife and daughter, the former having been forcibly exposed to the nanites while the latter had been killed as the two fled from their home. That had been more than sixty years ago and Jacob hated himself for his inability to picture his wife's face or the sound of his daughter's voice.

Jacob was pulled back to the present to find the young man, Stephen, standing beside him. “Mr. Jacob,” Stephen said, “are the tiny machines still active?”

“Probably not,” Jacob responded, “but it still wouldn't be a good idea to touch anything.” Jacob noticed how the nanites had leached out of the bones and into the rocky surface looking for another host to infect. That had to have occurred right after the creature had died. But there was no reason to leave it to chance.

“Stephen,” Jacob said, “go find Iliza or Michelle and get one of the bottles of stove fuel. We need to sterilize the area just to be safe.”

Stephen ran off to find the fuel leaving Jacob again with his thoughts. Both of Brigham's moons were visible in the afternoon sky and as Jacob looked down to the valley below he could almost imagine the last sixty years hadn't occurred.

The city of Sego looked just like it did right after he graduated from university. He was twenty-three years old and ready to start his life. He married Emma the following year and they had Madison two years later. A month after turning thirty-one was when it all fell apart.

***

From the moment the Senior Council of Brigham was established four-hundred, fifty years before the Fall, the leaders had kept the artificial wombs brought from Earth on the seedship pumping out babies. The goal being a human population on Brigham that could support a technological civilization equal to Earth, Mars, or Titan. The Senior Council talked of colonizing the other planets of the Brigham system and even building seedships and sending them out to other nearby star systems.

So even after the optimal population of sixty-thousand souls had been reached, the Senior Council expanded the number of producing artificial wombs. These children were raised by robot caregivers, as the first colonists, and upon reaching maturity were sent out into the wilderness areas of the planet to push the boundaries of settlement.

The plan worked fine until being raised in the creche became a social stigma. “Creche-born” became a slur among the human-born population that translated into a form of discrimination back in the developed areas. Creche-born children disproportionately suffered emotional and psychological trauma from being raised by robots. This promoted a certain percentage to adopt destructive behaviors and substance addictions to compensate for the lack of human contact in their early years.

Where the human-born people of the developed areas truly failed the creche-born brothers and sisters was understanding the stress and dangers of being pushed into the frontiers regions. The human-born were raised on stories of their courageous ancestors who turned a barren rock into a living world. They didn't realize that the early colonists suffered greatly with many utterly failing to live up to the standards demanded of the creche-born.

As the decades passed, creche-born people began illegally returning to the developed areas becoming an underclass without access to the services the human-born took for granted. Supremely organized and clean cities across Brigham sprouted slums and even homeless folks living wherever they could. Urban crime penetrated deep into the cities with the human-born beginning to fear and then hate the men or women they saw lurking in the shadows.

There were attempts at societal reform but the underlying problems of the system were always ignored. The poor and under-educated creche-born were cheap labor easy to exploit. For the human-born, life was good and Brigham had a Manifest Destiny to take their branch of human civilization back out to the stars. That's when Thaddeus Parr appeared and started his movement.

***

Stephen eventually returned carrying a squeeze bottle of cook stove fuel. Jacob took the container from the young man trying not to think about how Stephen looked. Jacob was ninety-one but appeared to be in his early forties. The benefit of being born when medical technology guaranteed every baby a long healthy life. Stephen was in his twenties but would have been confused with a much older person before the Fall. With technology corrupted and people living only slightly above a Stone Age technology, Stephen probably wouldn't make it much beyond fifty years old.

Jacob sprayed the liquid over the bones and the areas where the nanites had leeched into the rock. He used a pocket igniter to start the fire. As the bones turned black from the flames, the rest of his small group gathered around without saying a word.

“Alright people,” Bruce Carter called out as the fire began to die. “We need to get down this mountain to the refuge and we're losing daylight.”

Bruce, the de facto leader of the group and the one man beside Jacob who understood the dangers they faced leaving the protection offered by the high mountains. A child when Parr's Plague swept the colony, Bruce's family already lived in one of the villages established on a plateau nearly unassailable by anything except aircraft and heavy-duty, off-road vehicles.

As the nanite infected roamed the planet someone realized that they never went up into the high mountain settlements. Even with all forms of communication down, word got around to the few survivors that it was safe up in the mountains. While some survivors from the lower altitudes eventually reached these settlements, their numbers were exceedingly small.

For decades the uninfected hid in the high mountains never considering going down to the lower levels. Cut off from one another, these isolated pockets of humanity looked down from their hideouts and watched as bands of the infected moved across the valleys and coastal regions. Eventually though as the years passed the infected, unable to have children, began to die off allowing the mountain peoples to come down for limited periods.

The next day the group entered the dead city of Sego. While the infected no longer moved in large groups, smaller clusters and the stray individual was still a possibility. Even worse, the corrupted nanites that turned humans into ravaging monsters were ubiquitous to Brigham technology. Any computer-based item almost certainly carried infected nanites, which if touched could enter a person and begin building copies of itself. After entering the human body, it took a little under 48 hours before the person went insane.

Bruce Carter walked point going down the deserted streets with Michelle and Iliza pulling rear guard. All three armed with projectile assault rifles that worked without the aid of any computer assistance. The stated reason for the expedition, a search for needed non-perishable items such as low-level medical kits, hydroponic supplies, and anything else that might aid survival up in the mountains. However, the expedition was also meant to see how much of the nanites remained active after six decades.

The city of Sego didn't look abandoned except for all the computer tech laying in the streets and the occasional human remains. When people realized it was the tech spreading Parr's Plague, everything based on nanite computing was throw away in a panic. By that time it was too late, infected humans were already forming groups with the sole purpose to convert or kill everyone else.

Jacob cringed passing a reading tablet laying in the street, probably dropped there in the opening moments of Parr's Plague. It was the exact model like the one he stored his personal library on before the Fall. Like the remains of the creature they saw up in the mountains, the nanites from the reader had leached out into the substance of the street itself. What made this instance worse though was that Jacob could see the rainbow-hued nanites pulsing confirming they were still active. The pulsing, active nanties confirmed the group's worst fears, that it would still be many years if not decades before they could safely leave their mountain refuge. This information made their true mission even more important.

Barely two hours later the group leaves Sego behind having found all the items they needed to survive just a little longer. More importantly, both Jacob and Bruce retrieved what they needed to implement their personal project, a sort of gift to the future.

***

Their refuge didn't have a name, it was just a collection of cabins made of wood, stone, and metal storage containers. For people who had grown up around holographic entertainment systems, semi-sentient personal computers, limb and organ regeneration hospitals, and nanotechnology that could fabricate just about any item the refuge was tantamount to a Neolithic existence. Even such mundane services as running water and working toilets were the stuff of fantasy to the small collection of children born since the Fall.

But to the ones like Jacob and Bruce, who had seen everything fall apart and be replaced with death and chaos, the refuge was a chance to carry on and maybe rebuild one day.

“Jacob,” Bruce Carter began while taking a seat in his friend's small hut made of piled stone and particle board, “how will we organize this project?”

On Jacob's table, which had once been a packing crate, were eight items that any human would have recognized whether they had been born in ancient Rome to the late twenty-first century. The eight items were thick, unused leather bound journals. The unused journals were the result of a colony-wide fad of people wanting to leave some physical mark that didn't involve computers. The producers of the journals went as far to make them with paper and fake leather covers that were supposed to last centuries.

“I figure the first volume will be a basic history of humanity,” Jacob said feeling the weight of the task and its importance. “We won't have room for much detail and in-depth analysis, but enough for our descendants to understand where they came from. The other volumes will deal with science and engineering, enough to help whoever comes after us to leap frog the barriers that held Earth back for so long.”

“What troubles me, Jacob is that do we really need to do any of this?” Bruce asked.

“Bruce, all of our records and information is either lost or stored in systems that would turn us into monsters if we tried to access it. Our civilization, hell our entire existence was made possible by the computing power and storage capacity that damn nanotechnology made possible.”

“Thinking more to the long-term,” Jacob said after a long silent pause, “without some form of written record it won't take long before our civilization and its accomplishments become like the myths of ancient Earth. I can imagine a few hundred years from now people coming to believe humans originated from this planet.”

“Goddamn Thaddeus Parr and his terrorists,” was all Bruce could say.

“I knew Thaddeus Parr,” Bruce said in way that conveyed both a sense of sadness and anger. “Parr was truly insane and his corrupted nanites killed millions, but we created him. We built a society that thrived on the suffering of a people us human-born didn't really believe were on our level. Now like many times before back on Earth, we'll have to start over. Hopefully, our descendants won't repeat the same mistakes.”

Bruce wanted to believe his friend, that another, wiser civilization would rise in the place of the dead and decaying one down in the valleys and coasts. While Bruce didn't have the education of Jacob, he knew enough of Earth's history to have a cold chill of dread run down his spine. 

 Author's Notes:

One of the periods of human history that fascinates me the most involves the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations around 1200 BCE. With the exception of Egypt, which was greatly weakened and never recovered, most of the empires and kingdoms during that time utterly collapsed. The best examples being Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite Empire.

The crash was caused by several factors but the most mysterious in a historical sense were the ravaging "Sea Peoples" that attacked both coastal cities and those far inland. Much debate and head scratching by academics has gone to determining where the Sea People originated. 

I had always wanted to incorporate the concept of a Sea Peoples into a futuristic setting. 

I also wanted to create a setting where the bizarre human need to create an underclass raised its ugly head again. And yes, I touched on certain social issues that really piss me off.