TIMESCAPE

I

It was just another false alarm. Dante heaved a sigh and climbed back onto the fire truck. Some kid had pulled a fire alarm to get attention, and had once again wasted the taxpayers money to bring the firemen all the way out to....well, wherever this was. Pulled alarms were the most common type of alarms the station got. Add to that the burned dinners, close calls, and car accidents and you had yourself a career in which you responded to everything and managed to do almost nothing significant. You could only say "Try to be more careful," so many times. The engine started. Dante slapped the side of the truck and it pulled out onto the old Vermont road and began the long ride home.

Dante Howard had been a firefighter for 2 years now. 2 years and he had yet to see a real fire. Then again, he was living in Vermont, the state with the second lowest population in America. As such, it made sense that there were less fires than in other states. He'd dreamed of being a firefighter ever since he was a kid. The career had seemed so exciting, you got to ride along on a firetruck and feel the wind in your hair. You got to run into burning buildings and save lives. He'd imagined he'd save hundreds of lives, maybe even thousands during his career. How many had he saved so far? None. Dante shivered. The wind on his face was freezing. He must be the world's biggest idiot for ever thinking this was going to be fun.

But Dante wasn't suited for much else. He'd tried college and hadn't even made it through one semester. College was boring. College was for adults. So what does that make me? Dante thought. A kid? His dad had always said that adults were nothing but big kids. Dante certainly didn't feel like an adult. He still loved the same things he always had. He still held the record at the laser tag place down on main street (and often still went there when he had a spare evening). He still watched Indiana Jones. He still read Batman comics (his collection had now grown to several shelves in his small apartment). And he still wanted to be a...

Dante sighed again. Did he still want to be a firefighter? In his experience, firefighting was a combination of being bored, sitting around the firehouse waiting for an alarm to go off, and chasing down meaningless alarms that were either false or else you had to sit back and let the police do all the real work. Was this the life he wanted to live? He was basically here just in case something bad happened. But something exciting was bound to happen eventually. According to the odds, it just had to. He tried not to complain. He had a job, it paid well, certainly well enough for him. He got good benefits, he had a savings account. That reminded him of another thing his dad used to say "Life is just a hole that you choose to fill with the least boring activities you can find before you die." Now that he thought about it, his dad said a lot of depressing things. Dante just hoped that he could find some fulfilling things to do with the hole that was his life.

Dante held on tight to the fire truck as it turned a sharp corner. They passed a sign that said Welcome to Underhill, as he considered alternative careers. He could be a policeman. They got all the action anyways. But that would require more training and he didn't want to get shot. He just wanted to help people. He could pursue a career in medicine. Firemen did receive medical training and he'd sometimes had to use that on the job. But what would he do? There were so many options he couldn't pick just one. And that would require more school, something Dante dreaded. No, for now he would tough it out and stay where he was.

The truck pulled into the station. His buddy Rogers was leaning against a wall waiting for him. Dante liked Rogers. He was the one friend Dante really had in the small fire department. Sometimes they'd spend hours playing Call of Duty together while they waited for a call.

"That was fast." Rogers smiled. He looked like a fox, like he was always up to something.

"I'm always fast," Dante shot back. He hopped down from the truck and hung up his helmet on the wall.