Departure

by Travis Hill

“Yep,” I answer. “Now that everyone could travel the stars, colonies were set up on hundreds of planets, and wars were soon a distant memory. There was no more America. There were no more of the other nations either. There was only Unity. Things were good for almost two centuries, until one day the humans ran across an alien race that they called the Arans. The Arans were from another arm of the galaxy, and were exploring near our outer colonies. The Arans and the humans clashed for some reason or another, the records don’t say why, and there was another terrible war.

  “This war though, was with a race of aliens that were more advanced than humans. Their ships were faster, their weapons deadlier, their reach much greater than ours. However, humans were able to have children at a much faster rate, and we were far more strategic and cunning. The Arans killed tens of billions of humans, and the humans killed billions of Arans. War raged across our part of the galaxy for close to one hundred years. The Arans were soon concerned about their inability to replace soldiers and colonists as fast as the humans could. They were also finding out that we were intelligent enough to quickly reverse-engineer Aran technology and use it ourselves.

  “This frightened the Arans, as they knew humanity could now match them with weapons, ships, and technology, and could breed fast enough to easily replace losses with net gains, while their numbers were declining to alarming levels. The Arans finally realized their inability to defeat humanity, and offered peace. But humanity declined, drunk with power and glory at their chance to completely vanquish a foe that had killed so many of our kind. The Arans decided then to use their secret weapon, one so powerful it could eventually eliminate all life within our arm of the galaxy by forcing stars to go supernova.

  “The Arans began destroying entire star systems with the weapon, causing the humans to panic. Humans worked feverishly to develop a weapon that could create a miniature black hole, and they figured out how to mount the weapon on one of the drive systems they used to jump ships around the galaxy. They tested it until the drive would shift out of whatever phase or dimension it went into to travel, inside the core of a planet or star, and at the exact instant the drive and the weapon shifted into normal space, the black hole weapon would detonate. Within hours, entire planets and stars would be ripped apart and sucked into wherever black holes lead.

  “The archives say it was a time of madness unlike any other. Humans and Arans were in constant fear of their sun or their planet suddenly being destroyed. The terror of knowing such weapons existed was unimaginable. The terror of knowing such weapons had been used on a star or a planet less than three light years away was…well…whatever is even more unimaginable than unimaginable.”

  I pause, and it looks like they’ve forgotten to breathe. Even Cara is entranced by the story, even though she’s read it herself. It’s part of the reason why I love her so much, and why I’m doing my best to not let her or myself think about what will happen in a few hours.

  “Just as it seemed like humans and Arans would completely destroy each other,” I say, finishing the story, “another race of aliens, the Jurda, arrived. Their technology was far, far advanced beyond anything humans or Arans had. They intervened and put a stop to the massive destruction. They had to kill many Arans and humans before the war ended, but it was the only way to get both species to stop fighting. The remaining Aran and human leaders were forced to sit down with the Jurda and agree to the terms of a treaty.”

  “What were the terms of the treaty?” Kelle asks.

  Kelle isn’t anything like her brother other than her intelligence. Cara and I guess that she’ll be an engineer, or more likely, a doctor or nurse. She’s great with numbers, but she’s also great with science, and even better, she’s empathetic enough to care for people who are in pain or near death. She’s always been sensitive, but when she hit puberty at seven, her ability to empathize with those who were hurting from either physical, mental, or emotional trauma began to develop. Both of my children were going to be great. Both of them already made me proud. They would make Cara even more proud in the time she had left with them.

  “The treaty created The Law,” I answer. “The one that says when we reach our fortieth birthday, we have to depart from this world.”

  “But what happens?” she almost wails. “Do you die? Are you killed?”

  “I don’t know, Honey,” I say, reaching over and cupping her cheek, feeling tears beginning to roll across my fingers. “No one knows. We get our last day on Earth, and we get to do almost anything we want. We can’t commit crimes or anything like that, but we get a day to take our families to do whatever we feel like doing, to spend the remaining hours with them, making memories and saying our goodbyes.”

  “But where do you go, Dad? What happens? Will you just disappear when it’s time?” Jason asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say and put my arm around his shoulders. “When it’s time, we walk into the Departure Center, leave all of our belongings behind except for the uni-suit they give us, and walk through the portal. No one knows where it leads. The only portal that we know the destination of is the one in the Upperjustice Ministry that they put criminals and deviants through. We don’t know exactly where it goes, but the Pact says the Jurda promised it would be worse than being violently killed and resurrected every second for all eternity.”

  “What happens if you don’t go?” Kelle asks, hopeful that she is able to find some loophole to keep me from going, starting with the obvious one.

  “I have to go. There’s no other choice.”

  I don’t want to tell her. She’ll find out when she’s thirteen. They make everyone watch the video. There’s a reason almost no one refuses.

  CHAPTER 3

  I feel my arm trying to fall asleep, but I don’t care. I feel the grass make my bare skin itch like mad, but I don’t care. I can even feel an insect or six crawling around just inside the leg of my pants, but I don’t care. Not even when one bites me. I can’t stop looking at the sky. Neither can my children. Cara is having a hard time paying attention to it because she’s staring at me for long stretches. I look over at her, her head resting on my arm, and smile. She’s in misery, but I’m not. Not yet. I’m enjoying the blue sky, the feel of her soft skin and even softer hair on my arm. I’m enjoying the silence that is rare with two young children.

  But that’s what a blue sky does to people. We’ve been lying in the grass on this low hillside for two hours. I don’t know what will happen to me, so I want to get my fill of it. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, easily trumping the few days throughout my forty years that the sky within the city cleared enough to see it. If I look behind me, I will see the city, enveloped in its dingy, permanent blanket of…whatever it is.

  When I first looked back, before I became entranced by the clouds and the way the sun’s rays create ethereal patterns across them whenever they come together or break apart, I wondered if we have to depart when we turn forty because the air we’ve been breathing our whole lives makes our bodies begin to break down, making it too painful for our families and friends to watch as we slowly wither away and die. That led me to wonder why we are forced to live in the city with its brown, hazy air when there is an endless horizon of blue sky surrounding it. The archives don’t have an answer.

  I only spent a few seconds looking back at the city. The rest of the time I’ve been watching clouds come and go, breathing air that smells and tastes foreign. Sweet, fresh, cool, but strange, almost unnatural. Twice I’ve seen sub-orbital drones pass overhead, the flash of sunlight briefly nullifying their invisibility. I wonder if humans will ever fly again, ever leave the surface of the planet and break through the blue sky and out into the blackness of space.

  According to the pact, it will never happen again. According to the law, it will never happen again. I can’t help but think that eventually men who know their species has been to the stars will be unable to live forever grounded to the earth. The archives tell of a few who tried to leave the ground
, building homemade planes or retrofitting a rusted, abandoned shuttle that everyone had forgotten about. The archives don’t give specific details, but the mindless, autonomous drones that the Jurda left behind did their jobs quickly and efficiently.

  “I love you so much,” Cara says into my ear as she snuggles closer.

  I can feel her tears, and they make mine begin to pool in the corners of my eyes, eventually overflowing and joining hers as they roll down our cheeks and onto my shirt. We cry together for a while, silent, clinging tightly to each other, hoping Kelle and Jason don’t hear. I can’t remember any other two entire hours of silence with both of them awake, but something about the clear blue sky has hypnotized them. I hope it burns into their minds and that they never forget it, spending their entire lives working towards getting back here before their time to depart comes.

  I can even hope that somehow they find others who want to live under the clear skies and can make it happen. But it’s illegal to leave the city without permission, and only the Departing and their families get permission. Better that my kids live to see their fortieth and maybe a clear blue sky one more time than to risk having to walk through the portal for criminals.

  I could stay here all day and into the evening, but that’s not going to happen. I look at my chron and see it is just after two in the afternoon. I gently detach Cara from my arm and sit up, looking at the kids to make sure both are still alive and breathing. Neither says a word, but both turn their heads to watch me. I smile, and get one in return from each of them. I’ve no doubt they would stay here all day and into the evening if they could. We could only stay until six even if we wanted to stay later. The punishment for attempting to leave the city is the portal in the Upperjustice, but the punishment for actually leaving the city is vaporization. No explanation, no warning, just instant vaporization from the Jurda turrets that surround the city.

  We extricate ourselves from the grassy hillside and walk back to the shuttle in silence. Cara holds my left hand, Jason has my right since Kelle got to hold it on the way to our little spot of heaven. The shuttle door closes behind us, waits for us to buckle in, then begins its silent return to the city. I lean back, one hand on my wife’s leg, the other around my daughter. When I glance over, I see Jason resting his head on Kelle’s shoulder. We are silent for the entire ride back to our sector, none willing to break the memory of what we’ve all just shared.

  The shuttle drops us at our PAD, leaving in a whisper the instant we are on the curb. It’s keyed to my chron for the day, and will arrive in less than a minute when paged. It’s programmed to take departing citizens anywhere they want within the city. We could even go to The Bower if we wanted to, but I’d rather take my chances with whatever lies on the other side of the portal than go down there. The Bower is possibly the only place in the city where the automated deputies have all been deactivated.

  Living deputies never venture below the Carvin district, which is about three rungs lower on the socio-economic scale of the city than where we live. I’d opine that The Bower is about a thousand rungs lower than where we live. There’s no law there, except for the departures, but no one is going to chase down a departure and remind him that it’s time to go. We all know what happens if we are late.

  Only the Guardians step foot inside The Bower, but even that is rare, as sometimes the Guardian never makes it out again. It’s a rough place, full of rough humans who can’t accept their role in society. I once asked Cara why it was allowed to exist. She didn’t have access to the answer, but she thought it was a necessity, that the city needed a no-rules district as a sort of pressure valve. The Guardians made sure none of the lawlessness made it outside of the district, but any citizen was free to enter The Bower of their own free will, knowing that there would be no help for them should they meet up with trouble.

  The shuttle is also programmed to take us to Tidewater, and better yet, Gem Island. Gem Island is an artificial island, a giant building really, built in the middle of the city’s reservoir. It’s the most upscale district in the city, and normally closed to anyone who doesn’t have specific business there if they aren’t one of the city’s elite. Rumor has it that the district is a ghost town beyond the areas that they let departures into. There aren’t that many elites left.

  “You kids shower up and change, and let your mom and I have a few minutes alone, okay?” I ask, though they know it isn’t really a request.

  Jason looks like he’s about to argue, but Kelle grabs his hand and they head to their bedroom, if you can call it that. It’s just a room that has two fold-down beds and half a meter of space to move around in between them. Our bedroom isn’t much bigger, but at least it has a bed big enough for two. I lay Cara down on the bed and begin to remove her clothes. At first she resists, and it hurts to watch the battle of her conflicting emotions. I wink at her, and it breaks her resistance. She helps me get her clothes off, then mine. We don’t have much time, but I need this. We might not get a chance to do it later.

  It is the slow, intimate, passionate way we move together that is what I will remember the best. My children, I love them more than life itself, but no memory will equal these moments. The ten minutes we spend becoming a single, white-hot star before exploding like simultaneous supernovae feels as if it has stretched into hours. Every nerve fires in bursts at each touch. The world becomes as hazy in my vision as the sky outside our compartment. Cara can’t help herself, a soft moan rising in pitch to become almost a howl as she climaxes seconds before I do. This time I don’t care if the neighbors hear it. I hope my children don’t, but at the moment, I don’t care if they realize what we’re doing.

  They don’t hear us. Kelle is busy trying to get Jason’s formal shoes laced up when Cara and I emerge from the shower. As a Departure, I could take us to any hotel in the city and get a suite, one that has real showers where hot, clean water stings your skin as it sprays out of a head under high pressure. The sonic shower that is in every PAD compartment is good enough, and quicker, but there’s no comparison to the few water showers I’ve taken.

  Once everyone is dressed in our formal clothes, I page the shuttle. It is waiting at the curb when we finally make it to the ground floor. I instruct it to take us to Tidewater. Gem Island is the most luxurious, most decadent area of the city, but Tidewater is where the real action is. It’s more real. Tidewater is full of nightclubs, eateries, entertainment venues, sports, almost everything a person could ever want to experience. It’s a mirage to forget for a while the sameness, the futility of attempting anything new or special because of the looming departure in everyone’s life. There are even prostitutes, men and women, that live and work in little glass booths along Cer Dakkan, the main street that goes through the redlight sector of the district.

  Since the kids will be with us tonight, we’ll be avoiding Cer Dakkan and the redlight sector. Our destination is The Colony, an all-in-one luxury eatery, entertainment, and gaming area. Everything we do is free. The instant the service personnel tag my ID, they’ll see it’s my day. I glance at my chron. Three o’clock. Not much longer. I’ve kept my mind off the ‘later’ things, but now I’m worried that every time we enter an establishment I’ll be reminded that it’s my departure day.

  None of the service personnel will say anything, they’re too discreet for that. We’ve been ingrained with the need to be polite to departees. But I’ll see it in their eyes. Eyes that are normally reserved for regular customers, the smiles that accompany them genuine once the ID tag is verified and the credit limit is displayed on their little screens. But not for me, not today. Today will be full of eyes full of that smile until the tag comes back. Those same eyes will widen ever so slightly, then avert, looking at anything but my face.

  Once or twice those averted eyes will meet my wife’s, and they’ll exchange a sorrow so deep it will make Cara’s breath catch in her throat, or they’ll meet one of my children’s eyes, and the more sensitive personnel will be unable to stop the single tear tha
t will escape and roll down their cheek, too polite and professional to wipe it away lest we notice and it makes us cry. Maybe because most departures flock to the Tidewater on their last day, the service personnel in the district will be immune, able to shut away the emotions with professionalism from overexposure.

  I don’t know any of this for one hundred percent certainty, but based on the few interactions where we’ve had to tag our ID before arriving in Tidewater, it seems so likely that I’d bet everything we had that it will happen just like I imagine. The first girl does exactly what I hoped to avoid seeing. The Colony’s hostess gives me a cheery smile, then one to my children. She looks down as I press my finger to the credit pad, her eyes widening so quick that I almost miss it before they draw back into professionalism. She’s looking at the floor, or the bottom shelf of the counter she’s standing behind. It doesn’t matter. She exchanges the look with my wife, but thankfully doesn’t look at Kelle or Jason. This one isn’t as professional, but she’s more human than most, as she does wipe the tear sliding down her cheek. Maybe I’m wrong about each generation becoming more desensitized about departures.

  The hostess leads us to our table. It’s in a private corner, with a privacy curtain that can be drawn around it. She seats us, calls up the menu on the holo cube in the center of the table, then walks away. She’ll go straight to the kitchen and let the cooks know that my family is a departure, and they’ll do whatever they can to make it the best food they’ve ever prepared. I wonder if they’ll think about what I’m going through while they are making everything ‘special’ for me. I wonder if they’ll think about their own departure.

  CHAPTER 4

  We watch the orchestrated battles on the field below, twenty men with wooden swords, padded armor, and a helmet with a face cage. Cara holds my hand with an iron grip, knowing our time together is slowly ticking away, each second that passes becomes one less second we’ll ever have to try and make up this moment with something more private, something more intimate. The kids are seated in the row below us, entranced by the choreographed dance of the fighting style known as Surnara that became popular during the long war.