The Journey

Chapter 2

I suppose my journey started much like everyone else. I woke-up unsuspecting yet paranoid just like I did every day that year. As the day progressed I foolishly dropped my defenses. Then, BLAMO! Hit like a ton of bricks right in the money maker. As normal as it started, however, I do promise my journey itself was far from normal.

Reality took two steps to the right and then perhaps three steps to the left as soon as I got the package. Yes, a package. Let's think about this realistically for a second. You don't think the government is really some omnipotent being that can just zap our materials to us when they decide we are ready do you? Magic or not, everything the government does is carefully planned by some big wig from start to finish. Every time a baby was born they were registered. Their registration number was then sent to bureau of cataloging and from there sent to the Federal Bureau of Population Control, FBPC. At that point some guy behind a desk then decides the fate of a person by creating a journey for them. I wondered at times if he had some sort of criteria to follow or if he simply said, "I think everyone should have an impossible journey today!"

Once the initial journey was drafted it gets sent to another guy (presumably the boss of the bored guy) to be given approval. Shortly after, it gets revised for integrity and purpose and edited when necessary. When those steps are completed, the plan is then set in motion. Items are gathered. Packages constructed. Instructions are written but promptly forgotten. Catalogs made and then boxes stored in large warehouses until a small reminder pops up on the shipping department's computer to remind them to send the items for the journey which will most likely end in a poor soul's demise. I've been told the entire process can take a week. One week and some bored guys behind desks decide the fate of many. Again I pondered whether this life was worth living after all.

I finished my short walk home and pulled off my head phones and back pack unceremoniously dropping them by the front door.  Fifteen steps to the living room later and I find myself plopped on the couch, remote in hand flipping through the channels trying to find something decently mindless to watch. We have over one-thousand channels and still I can't find anything to watch. Smut, child exploitation for parental gain, hunting expos, and people purposefully hurting themselves or others thinking it would be funny; you think there would be something on the television with all these different stations. I continued to flip through all the different shows until I finally settled on the news. Even the news was awful today and I nearly turned it to cartoons having caught the tail end of a segment about some comedian's show the night before. Is that really news? I grabbed for the remote and the reporters announced the next segment. It was another report about the rapid decrease in population and why kids are not completing their journeys like they used too. They do the same report every month. Loads go to the culling and little return. Then some crazy economist comes on and whines over one millionth of a percent.

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with the journey but everyone has to do it and the numbers aren't so different from when it first started. The report was different this time though. This time there was no economist. There was a mother. No one I knew, she was half a country away, but a mother none the less. Her eyes were blood shot from tears and her face was gray from her apparent lack of sleep. Her long brown hair was tousled and knotted as if she only had time or energy to run her fingers through it before she spoke to the reporters. As she spoke her chin trembled and her voice broke as she told her long, hard tale about her son. It was apparent that she was fighting back tears and attempting to keep whatever bit of dignity she could while the world watched her on screens in their homes. The entire scene was hard to watch but I couldn't take my eyes from the television.

Apparently her son had left for his journey five years ago and had not returned. Death on a journey was not unusual and neither was a long journey but 5 years was very long for a journey and normally they can recover a body and bring it home so the family can hold a service. The woman's pleas brought tears to my eyes. My mind replaced the woman in the screen with my mother and she was begging for my body and my life. What about next month? Would my mother be the next tearful person on the news asking the community for my return?