When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.
On this gloomy day I sit at my desk and scan through old photographs. Images as gates into past futures, each a dimension unto itself... for what really is yesterday if you can never travel back?
I feel a thud and instinctively look to the wall, but am confronted by the mural I hung long ago to shut out the view of massive Centwerp. An ironic painting of a fearsome dragon, one of my fascinations since childhood. Only now do I realize that the gaping jaws of that elegant lizard were there because subconciously I feared the expansive maw of that window, and all that was beyond it.
A slight sizzle eminates from the vent over the desk, and it sends a shiver down my spine. Followed by a thunderous pounding that was apt to send my soul into flight, but the old marine deep inside was awakened as I went to the next page of the album.
Snapshots from the Leviathan War, where I served in the Marines. I settled on the smiling face of Jim Murwin, we were in the same regiment and were good friends from our youth in Orlean. Most of the times were good, even though they were scattered amongst that terrible conflict. They were all good men, everyone a hero who would give their life for the team.
Jim Murwin died in the war, during a hopeless skirmish where he held his ground until improbable victory. I missed that battle, having been injured in a previous engagement. He was still alive when my new regiment arrived, but too far gone to save.
I was the first to see him, squirming on the ground in the direction of the enemy as if to pursue their retreat. I ordered the men to help him back to base, they defied the order saying he was too exposed. I was angry, I didn`t listen to them any further. There was such a thing as unity, and I was apalled that these men did not have that value.
Recklessly I raced out of cover and across the field to him. He started to crawl even faster, looking at me in fear. He gestured me to go back, but I didn`t care whether the entire enemy force was in wait, you do not leave a man out on the field. I had reached him and started to pick him up, and he punched me and tried to push away. I was knocked back for a moment, and then approached him again and he leveled his gun at me.
Instinctively I ducked, and then I looked at Jim again. As I did so shots came from a distant building, a sniper left behind by the enemy. It was a near miss, Jim had saved my life, but he didn`t know it. I jumped up and was about to run to him, but I knew the sadness in his eyes.
He shot himself, I felt a bullet tear through my arm to join the one already flying in my heart. I managed to stumble back to the lines as my regiment provided cover fire.
I had made a pact with Jim, if one of us were to die the other was supposed to go home and marry a beautiful Winlanese woman. Make a family to balance the books with Death, neither of us wanted that grim bastard to get a total victory.
Poor Jim Murwin.
Another thundering had passed, preceeded as the last by thud and sizzle. It sounded almost like artillery fire, and I knew where I could find shelter. For a moment I pondered the strength of resolution, determination faced with defeat and destruction. But, our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
It took a few moments to reassure myself of my chosen course, and by the next thud I was still hesistant. But that sinister sizzle, like the lisp of a deviled tongue slithering across the lips of a villain demanding my surrender, summoned forth my courage. I pushed onward in my study, another drumbeat signaling that the final battle was but a few stories away.
The next page was my wedding, and it was astonishing how mere colored pixels could be more vivid the finest holo-recordings. When viewing something in a three-dimensional studio there is almost a detachment, a sense of not really being the person that you are seeing. The most accurate of reenactments will not bring back a moment, something so precious can only be remembered.
My wife, Janna, is indeed very beautiful. Great in most every way, except sometimes I doubt she understands how I can get so attached to things... like old photodisks for instance. She knows though that my habits are inseparable from my self, and is usually forgiving. I should probably check on her (thud) as time is quite limited, (sizzle) and surely she wants to see me.
A clap of thunder, louder than all that came before.
Perhaps a few more minutes.
Here is a picture of my apartment complex, taken about forty years ago. A truly beautiful building, we were the first couple to move in after it was built.
It was a very large apartment, since leaving the Marines I had become fairly wealthy. I traded futures for the Republic Interdimensional Bank, quite successfully. I`ve always had a knack for predictions, perhaps too much as I have a tendency to fiddle with what-ifs. In any case, we ended up in a building the marketing campaign called "the home of the future".
Where better to raise a family? To create so many wonderful futures, each branching off from its own little photo in my digital scrapbook.
I wasn`t much of a decorator, my wife took care of most of that. Save for the study, my office away from work that I`ve since redecorated into a small gallery of my wealth. Together though... together we assembled the nursery in the room next door.
Thud, sizzle, boom-boom-boom. Quicker, louder... closer.
Such noise is certainly maddening, making silent thoughts so less sweet.
I get to the picture with us in that empty room. Despite hundreds of year`s of psychological study proving otherwise, we still couldn`t settle upon a color for the room, in fear it wouldn`t match the gender of our child. We decided to wait until we had more information before we made a decision.
I cycle through the pictures faster now, so many good times in these slides. I realize that life is like an infinite spectrum along which we are all traveling, and that every moment along the way is a new place we have never been before and will never be again.
Even knowing this I am not moving forward, and even as the images flash before me I find myself stranded in that empty room and all its past futures.
I`ve progressed 20 years in the album before I finally stop at another instance of that awful racket. It was practically deafening, and afterward I heard a cry.
I turned off the monitor and took a deep breath. I then went to the door, keyed it open, and stepped into a room with blank gray colored walls. He looked at the tear-streaked face of his wife, and closed the door behind him.
-----
Janna quickly jumped up from the floor and ran to me, screaming "What are you doing Bil? Please, please open the door."
"You know I can`t dear." was all I could say. She was pounding my chest with one arm, and holding me with the other, while sobbing into my shoulder.
"You can, you can, Bil, please, you must. While we still have time."
"Th-they can`t. Not while we`re here..." I broke away from her, the tears felt as if they were soaking into my skin. She fell to the floor crying, to her side she looked at a candlestick holder on the table. I knew it, I also knew that she only needed my retinal scan to get out of the apartment.
I turned my back to her and walked to the crib. I smoothed out a few wrinkles on the sheets as I heard her get up.
"There are laws, the Code, they can`t demolish this building if we`re still in it. Don`t you love me, trust me?" She had stepped close and wrapped her arms around me, I wasn`t sure if I was relieved or not.
"I love you Bil, you know I do. But..."
"Where is truth if there is no self-trust? No, no, n-n-no. I`m not going. I will not be forced out of my home by you or them." Why couldn`t she understand my committment.
The building was only forty years old, forty, and they were demolishing it for some new office skyscraper. My home, the home of the future, with a lifespan of only forty years. I don`t live for forty years, you can`t build a family in forty years, it`s just not enough time. There is so much future value left in it, and they might be able to buyout everyone else in the building, but I`m not budging.
"We need to give it up Bil, time to start over somewhere new."
This is where I promised her the world. Everything she ever wanted.
"We`ve got plenty of money, and they have really nice places these days."
I gave her all I could.
"It doesn`t have to end here, not like this."
A present future? I`ve since long lost sight of such a thing.
"I need you Bil, here and now, please."
I look upon the crib, and all I can see is who I need, who I lack... and have no hope of ever meeting.
It`s been about forty years since I`ve learned I will never have a child. That no union of me and my wife will yield a life.
In a way I`m stranded back on that battlefield, as doomed as Jim Murwin was. Ever since I touched him, when that unnoticeable burst of radiation eminating from his shattered combat gear rewrote all that I am.
I`ve made so many promises, and I`ve kept all but two. A matter of honour I guess, and if I lose mine honour, I lose myself. I prolong myself through possibility, the collection of what may have been, but will never be. Inevitably I am defeated. How to tell Janna this though, even now eludes me...
It is as this moment that I realize how much a fool I have been, and turn to kiss my wife. She is surprised and frightened, but she thinks I`ve gone insane, which I`ve done, and is offering me this last one comfort. I then grab her hand and run with her to the door, scanning it open with my eye. I lead her through the study to the exit to the hall, and beyond them the stairs. I open the door for her, and she is yelling "thank you, thank you...".
There is a loud thud, as a hole is punched through the building. A gust of air blows around me as the wall between the nursery and study disappears and I look out into the cityscape of Centwerp. I turn back to my wife who is pulling at my arm, she only has about five minutes.
"Go Janna, quickly."
"Come on Bil...", she has almost dragged me through the door. I shake my head, "Leave Janna, this is my problem. I`ve been a terrible husband, and have not right to hold you under seige like this."
"Don`t say that, your a good man, Bil, please..."
"I hope that you can condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? Praising what I lost, may make the remembrance more dear."
She lets go of me, and I move back into the room, turning out to face the great void. There is nothing out among that thriving mass of humanity that I want, but it is easier to confront then what is behind me. Its time to face the future, my future, and to take my unsatisfied dreams with me.
The large vaporizer is slowly lowering into position at the gap that had been created. For a moment Bil could swear he saw a sneering phantom within the barrel of that gun. He reflexively started moving to his knees to get down, and then felt a soft hand curl around him.
He stood tall.
On this gloomy day I sit at my desk and scan through old photographs. Images as gates into past futures, each a dimension unto itself... for what really is yesterday if you can never travel back?
I feel a thud and instinctively look to the wall, but am confronted by the mural I hung long ago to shut out the view of massive Centwerp. An ironic painting of a fearsome dragon, one of my fascinations since childhood. Only now do I realize that the gaping jaws of that elegant lizard were there because subconciously I feared the expansive maw of that window, and all that was beyond it.
A slight sizzle eminates from the vent over the desk, and it sends a shiver down my spine. Followed by a thunderous pounding that was apt to send my soul into flight, but the old marine deep inside was awakened as I went to the next page of the album.
Snapshots from the Leviathan War, where I served in the Marines. I settled on the smiling face of Jim Murwin, we were in the same regiment and were good friends from our youth in Orlean. Most of the times were good, even though they were scattered amongst that terrible conflict. They were all good men, everyone a hero who would give their life for the team.
Jim Murwin died in the war, during a hopeless skirmish where he held his ground until improbable victory. I missed that battle, having been injured in a previous engagement. He was still alive when my new regiment arrived, but too far gone to save.
I was the first to see him, squirming on the ground in the direction of the enemy as if to pursue their retreat. I ordered the men to help him back to base, they defied the order saying he was too exposed. I was angry, I didn`t listen to them any further. There was such a thing as unity, and I was apalled that these men did not have that value.
Recklessly I raced out of cover and across the field to him. He started to crawl even faster, looking at me in fear. He gestured me to go back, but I didn`t care whether the entire enemy force was in wait, you do not leave a man out on the field. I had reached him and started to pick him up, and he punched me and tried to push away. I was knocked back for a moment, and then approached him again and he leveled his gun at me.
Instinctively I ducked, and then I looked at Jim again. As I did so shots came from a distant building, a sniper left behind by the enemy. It was a near miss, Jim had saved my life, but he didn`t know it. I jumped up and was about to run to him, but I knew the sadness in his eyes.
He shot himself, I felt a bullet tear through my arm to join the one already flying in my heart. I managed to stumble back to the lines as my regiment provided cover fire.
I had made a pact with Jim, if one of us were to die the other was supposed to go home and marry a beautiful Winlanese woman. Make a family to balance the books with Death, neither of us wanted that grim bastard to get a total victory.
Poor Jim Murwin.
Another thundering had passed, preceeded as the last by thud and sizzle. It sounded almost like artillery fire, and I knew where I could find shelter. For a moment I pondered the strength of resolution, determination faced with defeat and destruction. But, our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
It took a few moments to reassure myself of my chosen course, and by the next thud I was still hesistant. But that sinister sizzle, like the lisp of a deviled tongue slithering across the lips of a villain demanding my surrender, summoned forth my courage. I pushed onward in my study, another drumbeat signaling that the final battle was but a few stories away.
The next page was my wedding, and it was astonishing how mere colored pixels could be more vivid the finest holo-recordings. When viewing something in a three-dimensional studio there is almost a detachment, a sense of not really being the person that you are seeing. The most accurate of reenactments will not bring back a moment, something so precious can only be remembered.
My wife, Janna, is indeed very beautiful. Great in most every way, except sometimes I doubt she understands how I can get so attached to things... like old photodisks for instance. She knows though that my habits are inseparable from my self, and is usually forgiving. I should probably check on her (thud) as time is quite limited, (sizzle) and surely she wants to see me.
A clap of thunder, louder than all that came before.
Perhaps a few more minutes.
Here is a picture of my apartment complex, taken about forty years ago. A truly beautiful building, we were the first couple to move in after it was built.
It was a very large apartment, since leaving the Marines I had become fairly wealthy. I traded futures for the Republic Interdimensional Bank, quite successfully. I`ve always had a knack for predictions, perhaps too much as I have a tendency to fiddle with what-ifs. In any case, we ended up in a building the marketing campaign called "the home of the future".
Where better to raise a family? To create so many wonderful futures, each branching off from its own little photo in my digital scrapbook.
I wasn`t much of a decorator, my wife took care of most of that. Save for the study, my office away from work that I`ve since redecorated into a small gallery of my wealth. Together though... together we assembled the nursery in the room next door.
Thud, sizzle, boom-boom-boom. Quicker, louder... closer.
Such noise is certainly maddening, making silent thoughts so less sweet.
I get to the picture with us in that empty room. Despite hundreds of year`s of psychological study proving otherwise, we still couldn`t settle upon a color for the room, in fear it wouldn`t match the gender of our child. We decided to wait until we had more information before we made a decision.
I cycle through the pictures faster now, so many good times in these slides. I realize that life is like an infinite spectrum along which we are all traveling, and that every moment along the way is a new place we have never been before and will never be again.
Even knowing this I am not moving forward, and even as the images flash before me I find myself stranded in that empty room and all its past futures.
I`ve progressed 20 years in the album before I finally stop at another instance of that awful racket. It was practically deafening, and afterward I heard a cry.
I turned off the monitor and took a deep breath. I then went to the door, keyed it open, and stepped into a room with blank gray colored walls. He looked at the tear-streaked face of his wife, and closed the door behind him.
-----
Janna quickly jumped up from the floor and ran to me, screaming "What are you doing Bil? Please, please open the door."
"You know I can`t dear." was all I could say. She was pounding my chest with one arm, and holding me with the other, while sobbing into my shoulder.
"You can, you can, Bil, please, you must. While we still have time."
"Th-they can`t. Not while we`re here..." I broke away from her, the tears felt as if they were soaking into my skin. She fell to the floor crying, to her side she looked at a candlestick holder on the table. I knew it, I also knew that she only needed my retinal scan to get out of the apartment.
I turned my back to her and walked to the crib. I smoothed out a few wrinkles on the sheets as I heard her get up.
"There are laws, the Code, they can`t demolish this building if we`re still in it. Don`t you love me, trust me?" She had stepped close and wrapped her arms around me, I wasn`t sure if I was relieved or not.
"I love you Bil, you know I do. But..."
"Where is truth if there is no self-trust? No, no, n-n-no. I`m not going. I will not be forced out of my home by you or them." Why couldn`t she understand my committment.
The building was only forty years old, forty, and they were demolishing it for some new office skyscraper. My home, the home of the future, with a lifespan of only forty years. I don`t live for forty years, you can`t build a family in forty years, it`s just not enough time. There is so much future value left in it, and they might be able to buyout everyone else in the building, but I`m not budging.
"We need to give it up Bil, time to start over somewhere new."
This is where I promised her the world. Everything she ever wanted.
"We`ve got plenty of money, and they have really nice places these days."
I gave her all I could.
"It doesn`t have to end here, not like this."
A present future? I`ve since long lost sight of such a thing.
"I need you Bil, here and now, please."
I look upon the crib, and all I can see is who I need, who I lack... and have no hope of ever meeting.
It`s been about forty years since I`ve learned I will never have a child. That no union of me and my wife will yield a life.
In a way I`m stranded back on that battlefield, as doomed as Jim Murwin was. Ever since I touched him, when that unnoticeable burst of radiation eminating from his shattered combat gear rewrote all that I am.
I`ve made so many promises, and I`ve kept all but two. A matter of honour I guess, and if I lose mine honour, I lose myself. I prolong myself through possibility, the collection of what may have been, but will never be. Inevitably I am defeated. How to tell Janna this though, even now eludes me...
It is as this moment that I realize how much a fool I have been, and turn to kiss my wife. She is surprised and frightened, but she thinks I`ve gone insane, which I`ve done, and is offering me this last one comfort. I then grab her hand and run with her to the door, scanning it open with my eye. I lead her through the study to the exit to the hall, and beyond them the stairs. I open the door for her, and she is yelling "thank you, thank you...".
There is a loud thud, as a hole is punched through the building. A gust of air blows around me as the wall between the nursery and study disappears and I look out into the cityscape of Centwerp. I turn back to my wife who is pulling at my arm, she only has about five minutes.
"Go Janna, quickly."
"Come on Bil...", she has almost dragged me through the door. I shake my head, "Leave Janna, this is my problem. I`ve been a terrible husband, and have not right to hold you under seige like this."
"Don`t say that, your a good man, Bil, please..."
"I hope that you can condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? Praising what I lost, may make the remembrance more dear."
She lets go of me, and I move back into the room, turning out to face the great void. There is nothing out among that thriving mass of humanity that I want, but it is easier to confront then what is behind me. Its time to face the future, my future, and to take my unsatisfied dreams with me.
The large vaporizer is slowly lowering into position at the gap that had been created. For a moment Bil could swear he saw a sneering phantom within the barrel of that gun. He reflexively started moving to his knees to get down, and then felt a soft hand curl around him.
He stood tall.