After Earth

Chapter 1: Warmth (Present)

          Once, I sat on an aero-car with my wife and son as an occasional gift to see the ocean that separated America from the rest of the world. The broken world. Europe and Asia and Australia and Africa and anywhere that wasn't the U.S. was reduced to a void of dark. The living were mutant rats without voices. They cried collectively to be saved, but America would always leave them to rot in their Hell. We tried keeping that locked out, I knew, but it was hard. Very hard.
I tried to keep Acki from finding out he was born in a shit-hole until he was six. He was devastated to know he would never see the Eiffel Tower or see Venice. He was shattered so young, but he had hope. It made him smile even brighter, talk even louder. My only regret was killing Rentie for nothing but selfish reason. Had I thought of him, I might have just divorced Rentie instead.
          But now, with my memories a half-baked solace, the aero-car had no one but me. Just me, flying over rustic America, Arizona completely gone and miles away. Fuck Arizona. Fuck Rentie. Fuck District 72. God, I had a list of things that deserved Hell faster than the few minutes the aero-car had left to the DC District. The aero-car left my tongue in a bad way, tasting of boiled lobster. The last thing Rentie would ever cook anyone.
          Tayas, it's not what it looks like!
           I blinked. They should have just killed me. Given me a bitter end. The Attas Project didn't need me, didn't need my hands that crushed her there in a memory too dark to erase without scars. And Nolam was stupid, anyhow. Not dumb-stupid. Moral-stupid. Would he not see how my eyes would flash back to memory? Would I not become violent and kill someone? Nolam couldn't understand even that, I suppose. He was a man of science, and I knew he didn't have a single notion of care in his body. About me.
          The ground shined the concrete back into my eyes as I entered the DC District. The DC District, full of army nuts and a broken government that only held remnants of a crackling peace no longer able to hold its ground. I once heard a story that the last president before the attack on Houston had hid in the caverns of darkness and never came out. Body lost. Now the government was just army personnel, protecting us as best as they could before Project Africa came to strike back at us.
          A man scanned my retina, told another that I was clear for the go ahead, and then I was strung through and old airport for planes without any idea whose face belonged on which body. I was given a brief explanation of housing and how I was to hold personal possessions. What possessions? I hadn't a bag to my name. I roiled through the airport exit with just myself, shaggy hair and drudgery on my face. On the other side, eleven other people stared blackly into the void of me, seeing the darkness as it came frothing at the mouth.
           "There the fucker is," one of the men spat in my direction. I recognized by his nameplate on his chest that he was Olman Bada. I knew it from stories that he was a bad-ass. And a smart-ass. And just like everyone else who seemed to be trying to ignore my presence, he hated my ass.
           I smiled, returning the gesture with a gait of laziness. "Here I am."
          Olman scowled, attempting to raise his voice before a woman squeezed his shoulder tightly. He yelped- actually yelped! The woman was Nashi Mati.
         "Leave it, Olman," she growled. Her eyes of fury turned to me. "I take it you're Tayas Votipae, number twelve in the second installment of the Attas Project?"
         Her voice was deep and accented. African decent, I knew. My eyes stared into her chocolate skin for a moment before smiling.
         "I guess I have to be," I told her.
         "I guess you do."
          Then silence took over everything. It seemed to stop time before I noticed that everyone was looking through me to the man behind me. Agitit Nolam. My hero. I cascaded into the back of the soldiers, and Nolam spoke with a smile too broad to shut down.
          He talked of what was to come, of the chances of survival, of being Attasians, of everything in the known universe leading up to this moment of escape. Because all we were doing was escaping, making plans to leave Earth forever. And after Earth, there was just Attas, and we were going to let the mutants who screamed keep on screaming. At nothing. At everything. Not one soldier objected, not one voice receded from the idea of forced evolution or leaving behind a broken reality that plagued us everyday. I stared at my hands. I remembered what it felt like to be all powerful the way we thought we were, and our hands faltered. Hiding in the walls, in the skin, in the vicious world of broken everything. Broken life, broken relationships, broken government. We broke that. We broke all of that without glory. Attas was our final wave before the Earth we had cherished for billions of years, the land we studied and kept on studying, was left to rot the way it was meant to. And while no one objected, the cataclysm of voices in my head was enough. I objected everything.
         "We can't leave home," I whispered to myself.
         "Mr. Votipae?"
         They heard it. The objection. The swirling of thoughts only became more of a spiral that led me down, down, down, until I was shattered into pieces of myself. Rentie used to tell me that I overthought the vividness of being alive, that I kept thinking of all the bad before the good could seep into my being. Maybe that was true. Maybe I was just a shattered thing unfit to exist and grow. Would I let scientists turn me into something alien if I wasn't ready to live as a human? I thought I was ready.
          Rentie proved me wrong.
         "Tayas?" Nolam asked again.
           I blinked. "Sorry. It was nothing."
           But it was everything, and I didn't have the soul to tell him that. He continued, and he told that everyone had their own houses with their own families. Until, when his voice had reached a low point, where he addressed two people. Tayas Votipae and Nashi Mati. When I heard my name, I stared at the ground. Nashi, however, scoffed as if she was above the laws.
           "You two are the only ones without family on base," Nolam stated while looking at a clipboard. "As stated by the U.S. Head of Human Affairs, you must have someone to rely on in these times in case of emergency. I understand Tayas has a kind of parole with this, but I was sure you had a family, Nashi."
            Nashi grimaced at his words. "I... did. Not anymore."
           "You'll have to bunk with Tayas, then. No objections."
           "I wasn't."
            She bit her tongue, staring at me with a fury too gentle to actually burn anything. A part of me was glad it was her, another screaming to get out. Always screaming. I didn't have to ask Nashi about her dead family because I knew the eyes of loss too well. No one else saw it. No one else had noticed her hands in rapid fervor of being afraid and scared of being anything but strong and broad shouldered.
            And when Nolam dismissed us, keys had suddenly gone into my hand, and I was being guided by Nashi to a home that held no memories. Maybe I was just overreacting about it. They keys didn't appear- they were handed to me. And of course the house had memories. It once housed a family before us, and the kitchen was proof of that.
            Nashi took to the first, smaller room that was on the first floor, and I stood tall as I stared upstairs to where another, bigger bedroom was. And many other things. There was a swimming pool outlined in florescent lights that had a window to look in. It was more than Arizona ever had. IT was more than I could ever think of. My hands caressed the silky sheets of my new, large bed until I fell into the expanse.
            And I closed my eyes without a single memory of Rentie to haunt me.