By David C. Daoust
To stand outside of a City Station was to stand amongst the stars. Artificial gravity would hold you to the walks and bridges. Ethereal force fields and artificial atmosphere would insure you could take a breath. It was to stand inside a city, towering buildings all around, each reaching for the blackest nights. Speeding vehicles coursed the eternal lights, all at interval, level upon level, for which the ‘land’ speeders could hover at their regulated height.
To walk through the corridors within however, was to walk within the day, as all the panels, of all the halls, would depict clear skies above and acres of natural earth below. Holographic versions of old abandoned worlds: Clouds drifted through the open air, as the horizon line in the distance met with rolling planes of grass. This, but one example amongst a wide array of variations. The outlines of halls and doors could be seen cutting through the illusion, an illusion that was a glimpse into the Hub; the artificial world built to help hold humanity within stasis as they spent centuries away from their natural environment.
It was here that Grandpa Haul found himself, the skies above could in no way be the outside of a City Station… but why the desolation? Why the wrecked and tore down buildings and structures?
It put him back in the day, the day he’d lost his wife. The desolation he felt then, matched the surroundings he found now. She’d been lost to the violence of the City Stations, Stations that had fallen to little more than ghettos. Ghettos full of people living off handouts, an action that could only train them to ask for more. These people looked to government for more and more, which could only build to frustration when their wants went unanswered.
This frustration led to violence throughout.
As the laws were strengthened to clean up its corridors, it only increased the amount of law-breakers. The more laws that were put in place, the more the justice system got overworked and clogged up.
The Constables, meant to keep the peace, became soldiers fighting a war, a war against an enemy that could not be recognized from the normal folk that surrounded them. The Constables became separate from the people, nervous and scared at their core, though with the real need to maintain the illusion of authority to do their job.
Grandpa Haul would follow his wife anywhere. He joked for years on end what a controlling beast she was; the dictator of his life. She led him back to the Stations, she led their family into the lifestyle she wanted, the lifestyle she believed in. He followed willingly, despite the fact her choices went against the grain of his very being. He supported her all their married life, even if he did find a respite; A way to experience the life he wanted, free of the authority that reigned supreme amongst the artificial cities that hung in orbit amongst the stars.
Grandpa Haul had returned to her, time after time, found her just as beautiful as the day he’d met her, so long ago, working on the planet’s surface, all so the Royals could start their families on the ground.
Once he’d returned that final time, the Mining Cartels crushed in his wake, those feelings of his youth, the feelings that twisted her into a dictator, fell away. They would live the life she wanted, and Grandpa Haul would stay with her, all her final days. They lived in their quarters, amongst others, as the boys moved on with their lives. During this time, the stations became less like what she had advocated when her family was young…
Once she was gone, lost to a Constable’s stray bullet at that… that was it. He’d had enough of the stations, enough of the core. He could only wish for more days with her, and regret those days he’d selfishly given up in his youth.
Grandpa Haul, a small time criminal and gambler maybe, but he was an old rogue, a silver fox, and had managed to pad his den extensively. He and his youngest son, Raymond, were instrumental to moving, not just their family, but their small community, a community of good people that were tired of being overrun by other people’s rules, other people’s authority…
Twin Crown.
Once his thoughts led him to this point, he realized he was not aboard the City Stations at all. His befuddled mind had struck again. The wreck around him was not an illusion, it was reality. He was on the surface of the far away home that he had moved his family to. All to see his grandson, Craiden, raised free and safe. All to see his youngest son finally start a family of his own. Raymond and his wife had refused, for years on end, to bring up a family in an environment, such as the Royal Alliances’ City Stations had become.
The way they lived, in truth, was a compromise, as these people that now roamed the sands, were Huddlers at heart. Each raised in the ways of the Ark Age, crammed together, never very far from another soul. They did not settle down, nor sprawl out to build in one location, their roving sand crawler, still provided the same living quarters of those in the black. One step at a time, Grandpa thought to himself. People were what they were accustomed to, after centuries of living this way, it was somewhat understandable that there would be those that could not easily let go, nor change.
In truth, this was the first time the old rogue had lived in the open air as well. His time building the Domes, when not covered from head to toe in a protective suit, to ward off the harsh environment of the unterraformed planet, he was crammed within the tiny workman quarters that housed them. Then later, the Crucible was tinier still, and even more cramped. Grandpa Haul spent his life jumping from one cramped station to another. He was not that far from a Huddler himself.
Their freedom on the moon was hard at times, but there was food enough if you kept looking. Kept hunting. If not wild life, there was vegetation or crickets, all of which provided protein and nutrients, all of which could be broken down, reconstructed into whatever someone felt like eating. If all that failed, there were always stores of preserved Lotus still packed away for emergency, which could, in turn, be reconstructed all the same. Water could be slowly pulled from the air, if not collected from oasis’s that pocked the dry sandy moon. The star port handled health concerns, or it did, before Grady built their town around it.
Grady created problems for them. Problems that were unforeseen before their arrival. Had they known they could surround and claim the starport, maybe it would have been them, them that taxed the new comers. The First Wave was pushed aside; their hate for Grady grew and festered.
Grandpa Haul knew where he stood at that moment, his befuddled mind had caught up, it was clear.
He remembered why he came here. Why he’d followed Vincent. His mind was clear as he had watched his friend, his partner, flip that switch. He saw it. He could have stopped it, though the sight of his dieing son clouded his mind.
His mind was not befuddled as his eldest son choked on the black mucus that filled his lungs. His mind was not befuddled as his daughter-in-law, mother of his two youngest grandsons, experienced the same fate. Nor was his mind befuddled when he’d watched the hacked news feed, proclaiming who was to blame.
The darkness he’d felt as he looked away, as that metal colossus did the deed for him, for them all, to answer the wish his entire family held within, to take justice. He could have stopped it, he could have taught him why, why it was Otomo, the corporation, not Grady.
But he didn’t.
He let it be, he let it happen. And when he saw in the distance, the capital ship of the standing government, lift off that moon, he let out a hoot and a holler that freed the darkness from within.
