A Bite-Sized Story: Hello

Happy Easter!

If you're not in to that sort of thing, happy Sunday!

I wanted to post something more from The New Age of Steam, but at the same time I don't feel there's anything from Beyond the Horizon I want to put up here just yet (maybe next week...) and there's nothing to say about Maiden Voyage at the moment (waiting on the final round of feedback). Instead, I dug up an old story I wrote a while back during the first draft of Maiden Voyage.

Similar to The Deadwater, this piece is set in the same universe as all the 'New Age of Steam' stuff. However, this one is set before the time of Maiden Voyage. Well before. This piece is a soldier's thoughts on the last day on earth. A window into the apocalypse. Enjoy.

Hello

                Yesterday there was gunfire. Today there is none. We salute the oncoming silence with a silence of our own, as though this lame last-minute peace will bring change. We fought too long, losing our morals bullet by bullet. We can blame every man above us in the chain of command, and somewhere at the top they must blame God, but it's the truth now, here at the end, that we are all at fault.

                I'm leaving this out of blind human hope in case there is someone here after all of us have gone, in case there is anyone left. I had a squadron, and a commander, and an enemy. Now I have myself and my thoughts having wasted my life on begging for permanence. I've been holed up here for three days, holding this building to my last because until today I could justify what I was doing. It appears everyone else is the same way as me now, because the fighting is over.

                If there was a man at the right desk we might hear sirens soon, but why would you turn up to your job on your last day alive? That being said, I'm not sure what else that man would do. There's nothing worth anyone's life left to see here, we bombed the city to rubble, then bombed the rubble for good measure. Then we marched in and fought over it tooth and nail. I thought I was fighting to prevent them from doing the unthinkable. It turned out we were thinking the same as them. In the end, we both became so convinced the other wanted to press the red buttons that we did it ourselves. I counted the first few minutes, but now I don't know how long it is until they arrive. This is more important than counting.

                When I last looked up I saw a chain of ropes and airbags floating off into the distance, like the city was a mother casting her last child adrift out of desperation knowing it wasn't safe here anymore. It wasn't safe anywhere anymore, and the people in those balloons would learn that soon. I've sat in this room for many hours now, suitably alone in my final moments. The silence is still alien to me. I have a window in my roof, where a bomb brushed concrete some weeks ago. I want to look up and see the last of the sky, but I know what it looks like already. It's a permanently overcast shadow of its former bright blue self, and it will stay that way for years to come. Whatever plants survive the big bombs will die out in the coming months. Nobody will make it through.

                I had thought of praying, but if I were God right now I would be looking upon the earth with disappointment and contempt. To pray on this day would be to mock God himself. I can barely believe there still is a God, for days now I have been thinking that there is only men and our history of mistakes.

                I can see a trail now in the sky, a line of slightly darker grey. I have seen my reaper. The bomb will drop soon, and I'll see the hints of a distant flash. The shockwave will hit me first, and I will hope with the last hope I have that this building stays upright. Then I will become ash, and it's likely this last record of myself will too.

                Goodbye, and if you are reading this, hello.