Type 88

Part 6 - Crunch Crunch, Chapter 14

14

Five Days until the Deadline

The Athena Prison was a healthy distance from the first strikes of the day. The guards gave up hours before the destruction reached the prison grounds. Most prisoners had left as well. Those who found God during their stay kept to their cells, praying.

For Shiro, it stopped the daily torture regimen. At least this would be quick and painless. Perhaps he had found enlightenment as well.

After the prison cleared out, he wandered into the general cellblock. He wasn't sure what he was looking for.

When universities had asked him to give commencement speeches, his message had centered on modesty. Kids were invincible at that point in their lives, and that often led to colossal disappointment. Goals had to be built and then reached, from the ground up. They became unstable near the top. Ambition was a risk-and-reward game—the higher the goal, the shakier the tower.

He had never expected to realize his life's work, but he had not expected it to carry out like this either. He knew he wouldn't see the fruits of this labor, but he hoped the seed of an alternative to conflict and destruction would grow over generations to come.

Tearing each other down was not progress. Conflict could be framed against diplomacy to lift both sides up and achieve something greater than the task at hand.

Shiro now resigned to the likelihood that humanity was not destined for that fate at all. We were meant to die. Earth would churn through what we left behind and move forward. It would choose its next seeds, plant them, and bury the food. The great garden—death and rebirth.

Life was cruel.

***

Not finding anything in the general cellblock, Shiro wandered onto the grounds. As he stepped outside, he heard an enormous locomotive approaching from afar.

The prison sat at the top of a cliff that overlooked the picturesque city of Athena, across the lake from Scipio. He made his way through an open gate and followed the prison walls to the back, where the activity grounds overlooked the valley below.

From the cliff, Shiro had a formidable view. In the deep background of the valley, a mushroom cloud reached into the sky. A tidal wave of humanity rolled forward. As it approached, buildings swayed forward like bowling pins before exploding into the wave. It consumed everything in sight.

***

    He walked back the quarter mile to the prison gates and ducked into the yard. He crossed the blood-stained quarter leading to the garden. As he entered, the sky changed from a comforting blue to a deep brown.

The tidal wave crept around him, its fingers tickling his back with microscopic debris. Shiro closed his eyes. The wind howled, covering his face with his long gray hair.

    He started the daily garden routine. He walked to an overturned bench and propped it back up. He picked out a handful of healthy seeds. Many had already blown away in the approaching wind, so there was little left to choose from.

He walked halfway down a row and knelt down. He sprinkled the seeds in the ground, covering them to keep them in place in the whipping wind.

The prison collapsed. Shiro closed his eyes and put his forehead to the ground. A corner of the prison's western wall toppled onto the garden, burying Shiro underneath.

A few minutes later, the deep brown cloud swallowed Shiro, the garden, and everything else.

Nothing stops this.