The Past

by Kenneth Thomas

  Upon reaching the top of the ladder, he notices the chirping noise has changed to a loud humming, which ominously echoes across the chamber, not too dissimilar to that of the farm, but this sound is much more menacing. VanWest slowly turns his head to find a huge cockroach rising up from the water behind him. This one is neither timid nor tame, it’s a whole lot meaner looking than its cousins in the farm. It remonstrates angrily, waving its powerful long front legs at him.

  By its size, this is one extremely peeved Queen cockroach, likely the mother to all these smaller bugs crawling over him. He has disturbed her nest! She pins him against the wall with her front legs, whilst snapping her pinchers, readying to slice him in half. In a scene strangely reminiscent of the spider in Pytheas’s Labyrinth, it looks to be that a giant insect will be his undoing, his end.

  Fortune favours him again, there’s some unexpected help. Before the Queen snaps at him, a bright bolt of light illuminates the tunnel and strikes her - scattering her black goo across his face and onto the wall behind. Five armed fighters emerge from the adjacent sewer tunnel. To his astonishment one of them is Nurse Rose, from Ward B, recognising her by her frizzy hair and bluish-green emerald ring. She appears to have come out of a nasty firefight. Her right arm is badly burned and face blackened, typical of injuries caused by the blast of an Enforcer’s incineration grenade or a patrol android’s laser.

  ‘Thank you, you saved me… Nurse Rose is that you’? He calls out to her.

  She doesn’t seem to recognise him, pointing her rifle confrontationally at his head. Walking closer to get a better look, the air so steamy and his clothing so odd, her face changes, now returning a look of surprise as she lowers her weapon.

  ‘VanWest, is that really you’?

  ‘Yes’, he replies.

  Slightly taken back by her next question, he doesn’t quite know what to answer, ‘Are you enemy or friend’?

  VanWest hesitates. Taking stock of the situation, he notices that one of the fighters is severely injured and struggles to walk, this woman and these people are rebels, more than that, they are NEA rebels! VanWest finds himself conflicted. The feeling of a warm connection to Nurse Rose, especially after saving him, pitched against his strict Enforcer training. His first thought that of his commandment to destroy all those that defy the Universal. These commandments are his reason to be, to exist, However, he can’t destroy them. Unarmed, he reasons that his only option, for now, is to befriend them all.

  He replies to Nurse Rose, ‘I don’t know what to say but let me help your friend up the rusty ladder’!

  ‘Everyone, help LuLu around the pool and to VanWest’! She instructs her fellow rebels as VanWest opens the access point and then helps to lift the injured fighter up.

  They enter into another chamber, this one even more full of hot steam, which rises towards a series of turbines, rotating them anti-clockwise. This steam must come from the cooling of the fusion reactors, steam that, in turn, causes the turbines’ rotators to spin and charge a number of electric generators. Its power used to keep Queen Elizabeth, its many buildings and installations, running.

  ‘Is this safe’? VanWest asks Nurse Rose.

  ‘Yes, this reactor always runs below capacity’, showing him a Geiger counter reading with a low radiation level.

  She elaborates, ‘Not harmful to humans… We are safe to hide-out here until your pals the Enforcers leave the area’!

  ‘Ok then’! He replies awkwardly. It’s for the best, dressed like he is he would risk being shot on the spot.

  ‘Did they not recognise you in your 1950s attire’? Nurse Rose asks sarcastically, with a half-smile, indicating too that she knows of his time-travel mission to the city of light, Paris.

  VanWest eyes open wide trying not to act surprised, ‘Guess not’!

  ‘I told you, the Universal Council would try to use… ’ she stops herself from finishing. She knows that VanWest won’t be able to fully understand what she means.

  All power stations in the settlements are fusion, creating energy from colliding and fusing together atomic nuclei much in the same way the sun does. It is preferred to other types of power because it produces a large amount of clean energy cheaply. Compared to fission energy in particular, it produces much fewer radioactive particles. However, despite the United Nations Nuclear Deactivation agreement of 2095, that ended their use in powerplants, fission reactors found a new use as nuclear collider propulsion engines, fuelling the rapid growth of long-distance space travel.

  The world’s then superpowers, intent on winning the space race and gaining more resources, turned a blind eye to its harmful overuse. With money to be made and pride to be won, increasing levels of radiation were ignored. The radiation leakages from spaceships entering and exiting Earth’s atmosphere, combined with heavy pollution from mining operations below, soon made all major cities outside of Antarctica uninhabitable. With the Ozone destroyed and the world poisoned, Earth plunged into a medieval-type transitory age for hundreds of years. Humans were forced to migrate and seek refuge in the new Antarctic settlements.

  This consolidated power into the hands of the then Grand Council, now Universal Council, who preached a mantra of using advanced technology to improve living conditions and bring about an end to starvation. Saying as they do now, that they work for the progression of man. Well, in truth, for only a few men: ‘the Elite’.

  Nurse Rose leads the group to the corner of the chamber, coming to a halt before an inactive electric generator and turbine where she opens a panel on her right and pulls down a green lever. Creak! It opens a metal hatch, a trapdoor, above their heads.

  She instructs everyone, ‘Climb inside. They won’t be able to detect us in here’.

  They crawl through a short tunnel into a den-like, cramped space. A single bulb, the only light, reveals a long, narrow room lined with bloodied and injured people. Surprisingly few are armed, they look like ordinary citizens. VanWest helps the injured fighter through, carefully laying her down. Nurse Rose hands VanWest a flask of purified water, before hurrying over to a makeshift operating table, where a short-haired woman, a surgeon with a bloodstained apron and gloves greets her.

  VanWest, wanting a moment to rest, sits down next to the injured fighter. But as he does, a large silver-haired man with dark black eyes charges out. With his fists clenched, he readies to strike, only for Nurse Rose to intercept him, stepping in front.

  ‘Why is he here? You know who he is right’? He scolds Nurse Rose. It’s no surprise he knows Captain VanWest. His face continually broadcasted all over the Solar System after his odds-defying triumph at the Universal Red and Blue Games.

  ‘Sparks! Calm down! He helped carry back LuLu. She’s badly injured from an incinerator blast… Let’s discuss VanWest later’, Nurse Rose asks in a soft voice.

  This name, hearing it the second time, VanWest realises he has just helped a Most Wanted, Lexi LuLu, a Utopian High Priestess. His first thought is what would happen if the Universal Council found out that he aided her? His second what these deviants will do with him, knowing him to be the Universal Council’s newest poster boy?

  Sparks angrily glares at VanWest and then looks back at Nurse Rose, ‘The Enforcer scum came from nowhere, someone must have tipped them off. Dozens of our friends and colleagues have been captured or killed. Was it him’?

  ‘No, it was not. Calm down’, Nurse Rose repeats, with a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She adds, ‘Sparks, he’s under my protection, we must tend to the injured. Let’s speak of this later.’

  After tending to her own injuries, she grabs a surgical tool and joins the surgeon to help treat LuLu, which VanWest now lifts onto the table. Nurse Rose rolls a primitive cooling device over her arm and shoulder, which soothes her burns, but she has lost a lot of blood, it doesn’t look promising.

  Inside the den, citizens of all backgrounds and ages hide, having seemingly been attacked without distinction. The youngest victim is barely a few weeks old and the oldest,
a grand age for any citizen, over 70. The baby sleeps wrapped in a tiny aluminium foil blanket, held tightly against its distraught mother’s bosom. In the corner, he recognises a bag on the floor - it’s the one belonging to the old couple who were begging at the cockroach farm, bearing the InsectnOut label.

  He walks over to have a better look at the old man, who lays stretched out on the floor, semi-conscious. A sad sight indeed. Looking around, he cannot see the old woman he was with, and wonders what has happened to her.

  VanWest sits down, watching as the pool of blood grows with each passing hour. The blood drips down the makeshift, and unsanitary, operating table where a tired Nurse Rose and even more exhausted surgeon operate on a seemingly endless stream of victims. The scene reminds him of ColaBeers and, sadly, it does not surprise him that the Enforcers would partake in an attack on citizens so old and young. The wounded old man could barely even walk when he first met him, a threat to no one. VanWest struggles to find any justification for why they are here. Is this for progress?

  The smell of antiseptics, cauterisation and blood, combined with this claustrophobic small space, begin to overwhelm VanWest. He wants to leave but dares not ask Nurse Rose. After a few hours, he can’t last any longer, his head now pounding and his hands shaking uncontrollably. Only one thought plays in his mind - to get out. Sneaking past Nurse Rose, he crawls through and back into the steamy chamber. It is eerily quiet with the rotators having slowed to an almost dead pace. Sitting on the ground, he takes a few minutes to calm himself and recollect his thoughts.

  It’s not long before a visibly annoyed Nurse Rose follows behind, her jumpsuit stained brown by the blood and muck of the makeshift operating table.

  ‘Why are you outside? You must come back’! She tells him firmly.

  ‘Why are you allowing me to stay? The NEA does not help their mortal enemy, the Universal Council’s Enforcers.’

  ‘You really don’t remember, do you’? She answers.

  He pauses and stares at her eyes, he thought that she looked familiar. His head begins to swirl as childhood memories start to return. He remembers them together under the stairs, her gentle kiss on his cheek before the matron dragged her away, causing her necklace to snap. The amber stone pendant now tied around his neck. He remembers too that her name means humanity in old Greek.

  Looking into her eyes, it’s crazy to think how he could have forgotten her, how their destinies have gone in such opposite directions, she an NEA fugitive and he an Enforcer. Only to meet again after so many years, he feels he has reconnected with a long-forgotten, dare he say, friend.

  ‘Iris … Iris’? He mutters.

  ‘VanWest, yes’! She smiles on hearing him say her name.

  He takes off his pendant and presents it to her, ‘I believe this is yours’?

  Gently wrapping his fingers back over the pendant and pressing it against his chest, she tells him softly, ‘Keep it, please. I was already told off for it when I returned home without it. My father was furious, saying it was not of this world and had a unique power. So please, keep it, I do not want any new questions. More so, it IS yours’.

  ‘Thank you’, VanWest replies.

  ‘No problem, he only ever gave me one piece of jewellery again after that’! Iris half-jokes, rubbing the bluish-green emerald ring on her finger.

  VanWest looks at her electric blue eyes, ‘Thank you, you are sweet… It’s my only personal possession and means a lot to me, so much more so now’.

  ‘I always hoped it would help you to remember me’, she smiles.

  They stare at each other for a moment, before VanWest breaks the silence, ‘Can I ask, why didn’t you tell me who you were in Ward B’?

  ‘Sorry, I could not. It would have put your life at risk. You did not forget me by chance. Your childhood memories were masked for a reason. Telling you… ’ she hesitates, she is unsure if or how she can explain.

  Taking his hand, ‘It would have only overwhelmed. We hadn’t seen each other for such a long time, ever since… ’ but a blinding orange light lands on them, interrupting her before she can finish.

  Chapter 10 A Forgotten Friend

  Waaahhhh! A siren blares, reverberating off the pipes and the walls. They are startled to see the inactive turbine connected to the generator beginning to move and speed up. Iris jumps up unsure what is happening, she tries to hit the emergency stop button as screams and shouts of ‘help’, start to ring out from within. But before she can turn it off, a huge man close to 8-foot tall in blue body armour emerges from the steam and hits Iris in the shoulder with his rifle butt, knocking her down.

  Despite VanWest recognising the armour, that of an Enforcer, a red mist transcends over him as he charges, only to find himself also knocked down. Undeterred, he jumps back to his feet. Having fought many bigger Enforcers than himself at the academy, he skilfully kicks the brawny attacker below his right knee, causing him to lose balance and stumble. VanWest does not hesitate, following up he grabs his neck, snapping it effortlessly. The huge Enforcer lies lifeless on the floor.

  He can’t quite believe what he has done! He has killed a fellow Enforcer! It’s about the worst thing he could ever have imagined doing. There is honour among Enforcers and you do not do this.

  Waaahhhh! The siren continues to blare as orange light floods the chamber. He helps Iris to her feet, quickly pulling her to another vent a few yards away. She tries to go back, but the screams have already stopped all those inside dead. More Enforcers descend from the metal staircase. Luckily for them, no-one dares to shoot, for any shot could ricochet off the turbine’s rotators and hit the pipes, causing a huge explosion that would kill them all. He tears the flimsy iron mesh cover off the vent and they squeeze inside.

  A cocky laugh follows them - ha-ha, one he has heard many times before. VanWest looks back through the steam to see that it is none other than Alpha. Strangely, he’s more interested in posing triumphantly next to the generator than following them, wanting to celebrate his victory. Displaying his dishonourable behaviour yet again.

  VanWest helps Iris through the shaft, which leads to the back of the powerplant. They exit onto the street behind an Enforcer patrol vehicle, also known as a police hovercar. The small two-person car is extremely tough, manoeuvrable and fast, reaching speeds over 500mph at sea-level. To achieve this, it uses electromagnetic energy to spin through the air.

  A fetid smell greets them, a mixture of burning rubber and something much darker, the stench of roasted flesh. A smell that once experienced never leaves you. He peers over the hovercar to find the harrowing sight of hundreds of dead bodies strewn across the road and pavement, many burnt a charcoal black. The bodies lay in front of a shelter for the aged. These are elderly citizens! They surely posed no threat to anyone!?

  A lone Enforcer guards the bodies, waiting for the others to return from the powerplant. VanWest wonders if a massacre similar to that of ColaBeers happened here too, again just collateral damage to the Universal Council, bent on destroying the NEA whatever the human cost may be.

  So brutal, it could only have been authorised by the most senior members of the Universal Council. VanWest ponders what the reason could be for the Enforcers swarming the city, turning it upside down to track down every NEA member and accomplice. Could it be that they are aware that the Seductress has returned and has the Quantum Accelerator rod? But who could have informed them and also know of the NEA’s hideout?

  There must be someone on the inside of the NEA or Utopians, a spy. Either way, it seems they have stepped up efforts to shut down this part of the capital.

  VanWest realises that not all the elderly civilians are dead, the lone Enforcer has arrested one who kneels before him with her wrinkled hands above her head. It’s the old man’s partner, the woman he gave the cockroach leg to. Her tatty grey jumpsuit emblazoned with We Love this City, Queen Elizabeth, Antarctica, has been shredded and her face bloodied. Unable to scream, her body is held captive by a restraining forcefield, an Elec
trolock, which spirals blue around her.

  The Electrolock is controlled by the Enforcer’s mind, who spins it tighter and tighter, slowly suffocating her. Finally, he relents, dropping her limp body down with her chin smacking against the concrete floor. VanWest knows that he has already broken his commandments by abetting the NEA, but he can’t stand idle. Despite risking a charge of treason if caught, he throws himself on top of the Enforcer and immediately puts him in a chokehold until he loses consciousness. This time he is careful not to crush his larynx and kill him like the other in the powerplant. He’s already killed one person too many today.

  They must flee as quickly as possible. He lifts the Enforcer’s head to identify and authorise the use of his hovercar, causing its gullwing doors to swing open. VanWest first helps a clearly concussed, Iris into the passenger seat, the knock by the Enforcer having left a huge bruise on her forehead. He goes to the driver seat and, with him being not the authorised driver, switches to manual controls. A joystick juts out from the dashboard into his hands.

  VanWest thrusts it forward to speed away from the scene as fast as possible. He looks over at Iris who sits in deep silence beside him, her eyes filled with despair and sorrow, so many of her friends have been killed today. Taking the highway above the main road, he does well to navigate through the black smoke billowing from burning buildings. Following the route towards Mid-City, he switches to incognito mode to avoid any radar, the vehicle now appearing as any other flying car.

  It won’t be long before the knocked-out Enforcer wakes up or is found, so he keeps at the maximum speed of 500mph. He figures that the best place to hide is right under the nose of the Enforcer HQ in Mid-City, and despite helping Iris, he is still undecided on what to do next. Wondering if he should bring himself in, if not her as well. Now both ‘a traitor and a hero’, he must decide, which side he is on.