Joel Adrian - A Shattered Future

“Since we’ve been eating canned beans every night, tonight I thought we’d try something different. I cut up the rabbit Tom caught, and I had a can of peas and corn. Thought I’d try my hand at a stew.”

Lily motioned to the oven. They’d cleared out the insides of it and made a makeshift stove with a log fire inside. The window adjacent to the stove was open, pushing out the smoke. Mona coughed but forced a smile. “Smells good.”

She always took it easy on Lily. The girl was upbeat, even after losing both her parents to the bombs. She kept the place up, cooked, and had nursing experience, which was enough for them. Tanner and Lily had always gotten along great, like a brother and sister. Mona’s heart sunk at the thought of Tanner, and how much he’d meant to her.

Stop it! She straightened her spine, and mentally tore herself apart for thinking of him again. It had been a week, it was time to move on. Thompson and Lily had.

In the room next to the kitchen, Thompson was working on fixing one of the beartraps he had. A wrench and a screwdriver were strewn across the wood table in front of him.

Thompson looked much older than his 39 years. He had a grizzled appearance, muscles defined under his tight green t-shirt. His beard was growing in, black splotched with patches of gray. He’d tried cutting the hair atop his head once it grew in, but he decided he didn’t have the patience for it.

He glanced up at Mona with his steel gray eyes and grunted. “Evening.”

She glanced at the sometimes-right clock on the wall. “From out there, it felt more like early morning, but… evening.”

He set the bear trap down and stood. “You got it?”

Mona reached back into her pocket and pulled out a small bag. “This is it. Just like Tanner and you told me.” She slipped before she realized it.

Thompson glanced up. It had been something of an unspoken rule between all of them to not speak about Tanner. He grabbed the bag and emptied it into the palm of his hand. The red gemstone fell out. He tossed the bag aside and raised it, looking it over. “That’s our Requiem gem all right.”

“You’ve got the activator?” Mona asked. She’d seen him use it a dozen times, and he’d even been teaching her how to program it, but she asked anyway. Her paranoia had been slipping through the closer they got to her mission.

He grunted and reached into a mess of mechanical parts piled behind him. He pulled the activator free. It was a small black box with a cord dangling out of it. Then he pulled out the Requiem case, which was a black fixture with a fitting just the size of the Requiem gem. He pulled the case into the cord and set the Requiem stone inside.

Thompson powered on the activator. A holographic display popped up. Blue text read off the status of the activator, and holographic prompts, keys, and dials below it allowed him to communicate with it. Fine military tech , Mona thought.

“Gonna take me a day or two to get her situated. So let’s just—”

The crackle of gunfire stole their attention.

Thompson, Lily, and Mona all rushed to the open kitchen window. They glanced outside to see the three remaining bandits in their truck. The two that weren’t driving were aiming their assault rifles out the window, firing right at them.

“Get down!” Thompson shouted, tackling both Mona and Lily to the ground as a storm of bullets punctured the window.

Lily scurried towards the bathroom. “How’d they find us?”

Glancing down, Mona scowled and pounded a fist into the floor. “My fault. I was bleeding. Damn it!”

Thompson pulled a pistol from his ankle holster and started raising himself from the floor. He poked his head out above the window and fired two shots towards the bandits. They responded with more shots to the window, destroying the wall piece by piece.

“Mona, you gotta go, now!” Thompson roared over the gunfire. He slid the pistol to Lily and ran into the main room. “Come here!” he shouted, “watch me do this so you can get back!”

She turned and watched Lily take aim with the gun. She was a decent shot, but against three heavily-armed men, anyone would struggle.

Mona rushed to Thompson. He pointed to the keys and the dial. “You put in the GPS coordinates here. It shouldn’t be off if you do it right. The dial should always be kept at 75000, if you go higher, you’ll end up transitioning faster but you’ll be out for a day or so. 75000 and you’ll be up within minutes. Got it?”

She nodded as the gunfire rang out from the kitchen.

He pointed to the interface keys. “They never finished the menu, so a lot of it’s inoperable. But you can go forward and back. We never got to test the live teleportation function, but I wouldn’t go screwin’ with it. Give a berth for the coordinates in case something goes awry, and always give yourself time to get there.

A cascade of bullets stabbed through the walls of the living room. Thompson ducked and pressed a key on the activator. A second later, and a faint clicking was heard under the gunfire.

“Stay here,” Thompson said. He grabbed an assault rifle he had behind the couch. He slapped a magazine into it. “I’ve got to get Lily away or we’ll be caught in it. Warn them, Mona.” He turned to face her. “You stop this war, no matter the cost.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mona watched Thompson reach Lily, and pull her into the bathroom. Mona turned and sucked in a deep breath as the clicking continued. She ducked down as more bullets broke through the wall, shattering their base apart.

She knew her entire world was about to be ripped apart. She could barely recall what she was like 20 years ago. Tanner had instructed them that whoever went, they needed to find their older selves, and leverage it as proof of the concept. Then they could warn the government, and with any shred of competency or luck, they’d be taken seriously.

Mona felt like puking her guts out.

The clicking stopped, and the world she was looking at started to fragment and fall away.

Emersyn Berg was never one for confrontation. She realized this every day, and wished even more she could change it. But the courage, the desire never came. She pushed past the set of doors that led into her own personal hell, the Atriarch call center, and tried to force herself to appreciate the setting sun and being free of the shackle of her headset.

Her weekend plans were ruined again by her boss, which reminded her how much she hated herself for not saying “no.” He’d become so dependent on her to work the weekend shift that it was almost a running office joke. “Emersyn’s life is Atriarch,” her coworkers joked both behind her back and to her face.

It hurt. But she wouldn’t correct them, or her boss. She’d smile, maybe laugh along or agree, then go about her day just as she’d done for the last six years.

She walked toward her beat-up Chevy Beretta. The once-white car was graying from the dirt and wear, and rust had set it on the underside, creeping up onto the edges. She unlocked the car and tossed her black bag into the passenger seat. She slumped into the vehicle and turned her key in the ignition. After several sputters, the engine rang to life with a screech, begging to be serviced by a mechanic.

Just one more thing to add to the list , Emersyn thought. She had too much on her plate right now, her car was going to have to wait. She plugged her phone into the car adapter to breath more life into it and backed out of her parking spot.

Two female coworkers of hers, Anne and Whitney, were crossing to the other side of the parking lot as Emersyn shifted her car from reverse to drive. She let her car crawl towards them, imagining how much she’d like to run them over. They couldn’t be faker: between their gossip, their ploy to use their charm and innuendo to advance their careers, and their constant passive-aggressive comments at Emersyn, she’d had enough of them years ago.