The Shortest War

Not a piece I'm confident with, but got me a B at Advanced English so I must have done something right. And who is confident about their work anyway.

The Shortest War

Now there was nothing but darkness and ash that covered the barren wasteland. Indeed it was the reality that humanity had feared now realized, and it was every bit as horrifying as anyone could have imagined. And worse still than that.

All had been consumed by fire in a mere two days. The blazing white clouds had incinerated entirely everything it touched until only the charred remnants of the world remained. The final act of pollution against the world.

Adrian was not awake, not entirely. He hung in the limbo of being awake and being in hell; in his dreams where everything was worse. Not bad like the life he lived now was: but worse.

The stars, still and haunting stared at him as he lay in his bed. They shined whilst constantly burning in their suicidal fire that was their only way of living and their only method of dying, by slowly, over the process of several million years, burning gases. He hated stars, Adrian did. They were too dangerous and far away for him to like them, and he had seen enough fire to do him a lifetime. All stars do is burn and die, slowly, he thought, like they did. Like we will...

And that is the other sight he wakes to see: Earth. Not quite her former glory, actually now she has no glory left, instead she resembles the stars that hang on Adrian's port-side window. Constantly burning and dying.

When Adrian Shepard took the job of Captain on the “Salvation” Earth Orbiting Space Station he got the privilege of choosing which room was to be converted into his personal living quarters. He chose the room with a view of Earth and the stars behind her on one side of the small square room, whilst on the other side of his room he saw more stars from other Solar Systems and Nebulae. But that is not the view he wakes to see now. Now he wakes to see stars and cardboard hastily thrown over the window- he no longer wishes to see the ruins of his home world.

It's too painful.

He rose slowly and painfully, like we all do in those early hours in the morning and he gracelessly wiped the sleep from his eyes and threw his gaze at the cardboard over the window. Eyes that burned with the same fury and ferociousness as the stars in the adjacent window, eyes with such heat that could melt the cardboard, then the two feet thick glass sheets that keep the hollow void, not unlike the one in Adrian's heart, out of the “Salvation” Space Station, lest they all die again.

He rose (still gracelessly) and flicked a switch on the wall. Four lights in the roof responded by casting their vicious light upon the room which Adrian was now proceeded through. He dressed, ate, showered and brushed. Yet all seemed to be done in darkness. Wherever Adrian went, darkness just seemed to follow, like a horrible spectre both gloom and misery seemed to follow in the desolate captains wake.

The worst of this however was the contagiousness of these moods. The rest of the crew could not stand to be near him, lest they become infected further by the disease of depression and the general feeling of solitude. None of the crew had taken the sight of Earth being destroyed well, but they had all taken it better than Adrian had.

Adrian, finally ready for the day, turned his cheerless glare to the cardboard once more. He stared at it. He could still see the light from the fires illuminating the gaps in the cardboard sheets. His legs suddenly collapsed under him and he fell to his knees. The fire in his eyes spontaneously began producing tears in great torrents. Flowing from him in seemingly unending waves. The uniform shirt he wore, bearing the American flag, turned a darker colour as it was stained and saturated with this liquid of life.

The only kind of life that seems to be left in him, even to this day.

Adrian then gathered himself, changed his shirt and forcefully marched out his room towards the Control Centre. His blue uniform reflecting of the silver panels that constructed the majority of the Space Station “Salvation”.

Most of the lights flashed green, except the ones that turned red two days ago. The red seemed ironic, it showed that all of humanity were dead , except those aboard the fully self-sustainable Space Stations, (of which ten are completed and two more under construction, although now it seems as though they will never be completed). Yet all on Earth had died in fires incalculable and unimaginable. They had all perished in great red and orange collages of horror and terror.

Adrian stood at the window of the great viewing platform. He looked out onto the Space station “Faithful”, which floated crippled in space. It had been damaged in the “Great End” as it had come to be known. She retained her coarse, and most systems still worked. But she had lost all hull pressure and she had been abandoned entirely. It was to be decided today what to do with her, whether she should just be left alone, repaired or whether just to abandon all hope of her being of any use and either eject her from her orbit or destroy her entirely.

Adrian then turned his gaze toward Earth and then saw it. New York's fallen metropolis. The city of lights was now an unrelenting inferno, never-ending and furious. A giant pillar of fire that glowed in the darkness of space and illuminated the entire city. A ward, not a signal.

The Intelligence System on the “Salvation” had estimated that New York would be under the Space Stations course every orbit cycle, unless great amounts of energy were spent in recalculating orbit patters for all the Space Stations and then altering them all, which would take days of constant effort and time. It was not worth it. Not for anyone.

Adrian would have to deal with seeing the skeletal ruins of the great city protruding from the Ocean that surrounded it, like the hand of the Reaper himself, with a thousand metal, bony fingers sticking out at him. Reaching for him, to drag him down into the fire that would rage for an entire century. Into a city that would burn in a fire consuming everything. Including his wife's body.

His Wife. Adrian's poor wife.

He suddenly collapsed dejectedly into a seat and remembered all the times he had had with his beautiful wife. Her long brown hair that drooped down over her slim shoulders. Her eyes, the same shade as her hair with that glow of innocence and purity. Her soft, delicate skin, and her swollen belly, which held his son inside. His son. His poor son. His poor wife.

He recalled the conversations he had with her; choosing baby names, choosing the colour of the babies room, discussing how much further the corruption, insolence, lies and deceit within Cabinets, Dictators and Democracies could continue. Not long it would seem.

Adrian seemed to relax, peace seeped easily into him as he thought tranquilly of his wife. The times he had spent with her. The nice romantic meals at restaurants at which the best part was her. The long winter nights that were neither long nor cold. The hours upon hours of conversations over video calls and in person he had spent with her.

And then he remembered the last one they had had. They were discussing what to call the baby boy that grew within her. They had come to a decision. Patrick. He would be called Patrick Shepard, after his grandfather. Then a great flash blinded the world and a ploom of smoke rose from the ground miles in the distance. Yet even though the explosion happened miles away, she still felt the shock waves and the temperature rising- steadily and rapidly.

She screamed as her hair turned black. Her eyes dried and became glued to the insides of her eyelids. Her skin turned to paper and her clothes ignited. As the heat became greater, objects in the room around her became deformed. Plastic melted, glass warped and wallpaper turned to dust. She screamed again in pain and agony as her skin ruptured like a nut that had cracked open and in places pealed back like a bruised banana skin. Black scorched blood dripped and poured from her wounds as her skull tilted back... and became still.

Her screams stopped. Her hair itself caught fire. The clothes had withered to nothing and her skin was gone. Charred bones remained where his wife once sat, her hands clutched to where her womb used to be as she had tried through instinct to protect her unborn child. Her bones had melded together in the heat and she lay in the exact position she was in.

The plastic around the video phone had warped and melted along with everything else, and in the window at the back of the room, he saw the blast wave coming.

Adrian woke, sharp and darting forward, emerging from the scene of his wife's death. That is all he dreamed of now, one recurring moment in his life. Those twenty seconds in which his wife had died and he watched powerless and useless, unable to help her or stop her death.

He was panting heavily, trying desperately to calm down. He pealed himself from the seat and noticed that his uniform had turned black from the sweat which had rushed from him in gargantuan volumes. His fingers had left powerful and deep indents in the seat's armrests, his jaw was also clamped shut with enough force to bend iron. He stood up slowly and resiliently, trembling and panting still. It would haunt him for the rest of his sleepless, miserable life: the image of his wife, pregnant with his son being cooked alive in their own home by temperatures that had turned everything to ash and dust by one of the hundreds on Nuclear Missiles that fell upon the Earth two days ago. Two lifetimes ago.

With a cold efficiency, the metallic doors of the Control Room slid open and a man stood, doubled over in the doorway as his lungs clawed for air. He was an engineer on the Station, and he should have been at work.

“What is it?” Adrian demanded, still soaked from his own sweat, but holding his back to the Engineer so that he would not notice.

“It's Lillian sir.”

“What about her?”

“It's happening.”

Adrian suddenly turned and, in an instant was out the door and halfway down the hall. He had to get to the Medical bay, before it was too late. Before he missed it.

Lillian was a billionaire. Actually she was one of several that had been lucky enough to make the life saving investment of deciding they wanted to live in space for a few days. It was a money con for N.A.S.A. They send a billionaire up into space for a few days at a ridiculous price per day and then bring them down again. And where did this money end up?

Funding the Space Station project was obviously deemed unimportant as the extra money went to the company owners, to be generously given to themselves. This is just a small token of the staggering numbers of corruption and greed within humans in power.

But one of these billionaires was different from the rest. Most of them only tried to throw their useless, outdated and seemingly never-ending supplies of money at crew members in vain attempts to gain extra food, or resources. But Lillian was different. She was young, only about twenty-five or so. She was also incredibly important, as she was pregnant. She had paid a great deal of money so that she could go down in history as being the first woman to give birth in space. She realised a long time ago that life was meaningless unless you made an impact or did something memorable, her plan was to go on record as the first space age mother: and now she was in labour.

Adrian was sprinting now, his sweaty body glistening a bright silver as he assaulted the corridor floors in an all out charge down them to reach Lillian. His sweat reflecting the wall and floor's colour.

He would be there. He had to be.

The slow doors of the Medical bay hissed open and a world of sterile silver suddenly encased Adrian whilst scientists and the “Salvation”'s doctor all ran in hysteria and panic. Bewilderment was the scent that stifled the air, and confusion was as much a part of the room as the extra powerful lights, or the cold metal floor. As their captain entered, all the members of the room came to standstill and appeared mesmerised by his movements as he commanded his way across the room. A sharp scream shook the room and it's inhabitants out of their stuper and Adrian recoiled in reaction to Lillian's pain.

It was like his wife's screams, but Lillian was giving life, not having hers taken from her. He walked slowly over to her and put his hand on her shoulder as she continued to bellow her anguish and pain at volumes that not only stirred the crew's panic, but also the confused Intelligence System which was unsure of what was happening. The doctor asked everyone to step back as Lillian yelled once more in pain and then her world went black.

The doctor suddenly attacked her with an IV drip and wired her to life support, which gave the horrible monotonic sound of a patients death. Lillian's heart had stopped.

She woke later that day, revived and alive. The complications sorted and the child surgically removed from her, she lay in her room still attached to various bleeping machines. Adrian stood to her right, holding the youngest living human being in his arms. They had both survived the complicated birth, due no shortage to Doctor White, and his remarkable skills as a doctor and a surgeon. Adrian had commemorated him after both were declared to be all clear of problems and had given him a major prize for his work- one of the final bars of chocolate in all of existence.

Lillian lay still for a moment staring soberly at Adrian's face, and she could see something there in his eyes. A glimmer, a shine. It seemed like nothing more than a single star on a cloudy night in November, but it was there.

Lillian asked Adrian to see her child, and he gladly gave her the bundle of blankets and delicate skin. She held him close and tight, wrapped in the first morsel of love to be created on over three days, since her coma had lasted all through that night.

“Any ideas for a name yet?” inquired Adrian. Lillian did not reply. She simply stared at her son, analysing every detail of his face, trying it would seem to burn the image into her brain forever.

Adrian tried again. “Any idea for a name yet Lillian?”

She slowly cast her gaze to him, looking up at him as tears ran down her face.

“I want you to name him sir” she breathed delicately. Adrian was dumbfounded, shocked entirely and taken back. He asked why he was being given such an honour as this.

She replied “My husband was going to choose his name if our baby was a boy, I would get to decide if it was a girl. Well sir, my husbands dead, same as most people, so I want a man to name my son.”

“Why not ask doctor White? He birthed him, so to speak.”

“I know he would refuse. He would never allow me to give him such an honour, so I want it to be you. Adrian Shepard, name my son.” Adrian was overwhelmed with thoughts. Should I? Why me? What should I call him? But whilst he asked himself, only one name spiralled in his head. Round and round, screaming at him. The only name in the world that mattered to him.

He reached for the child and carefully lifted him from his mothers grasp. Their eyes met and as the baby's soft brown hair whisped slightly and Lillian stared anxiously at them, the clouds parted and glowing stars of hope shone out brighter than all the stars in all of heaven.

“Patrick” he said gently “Patrick it is then”. Lillian nodded and as they continued to stare at each other, Patrick smiled innocently. And Adrian smiled back.

It had been a week since Patrick's birth, and so much had not changed. Earth was still dead, white mostly due to Nuclear Winter and pollution with only little pockets of resistance which were nothing more than fires. The “Salvation” was still a cold metal ship with a cold metal crew in the deep void of space. Adrian still grieved his wife's death greatly, and his sons. Although he had in a sense, been given a son- and in that a new chance.

Patrick seemed to get along with Adrian rather well and him and Lillian talked well together too. The repairs had began on the “Faithful” and things began to look better, but it was still bleak.

The long term survival of humanity was more than uncertain, limited highly by their extremely shallow gene pool. Only 300 people were left in space, doomed to circle a dead world for centuries. Yet there may be hope.

Adrian stared down out the window of his room to Earth, the cardboard thrown into a corner. He looked down upon his home planet.

New York still stood, nothing more than the last remnants of Titan towers and their almost ancestral brethren, Skyscrapers. A golden, glowing Byzantium of burials that would burn unrelenting for a hundred years. The final flicker to be consumed in unrelenting fire before the Earth finally, it's torment ended, falls silent.

Reviews

[Celeste]

Loved this from the start until the end. ;) You have a few run-ons and grammatical mistakes, but that's not really some major errors.

Also, I liked how you compared the stars with the life of humans: "All stars do is burn and die, slowly, he thought, like they did. Like we will..." Just beautiful!

Great piece. Keep writing!

[Robert The Frank]

great piece of work