Origin of Catastrophes, Ch.1: Beginning
Why do catastrophes repeat themselves despite our pledge, “Never again”? Holocaust. Rwanda. Syria. The list goes on. In this cataclysmic future world a former VR maker turned climate change investigator searches for origin of all catastrophes through experience, dreams, and virtual reality. Everything in this book, though fictional as a whole, was inspired by real events and some parts actually happened.
If you prefer to read in iBooks: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1114698512
It’s quicker read than what Medium estimate makes it out to be.
Ch.1: Beginning
“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows (Matthew 24:7–8).”
“Killing. All this killing. By people, by nature. Repeating massacres, raping future, enjoying torture, bombing patients, inventing temptations, ignoring blood. Human imagination seems, my friend, limitless. Today its wickedness cuts the sky in half while its goodness cries from graveyard. And why so? Isn’t humanity throughout time one giant person, trying new things, learning new lessons, and changing habits? Our habits are killing us. Habituated over centuries, our cult of killing one another, killing by condoning, killing by comfort our mother nature is so integrated within ourselves that we cannot be free of it by ourselves. What’s your recommendation this time? I must lead. I feel hollow without your counsel. Why do I bother asking, though? I already know what you’d say. You with your missionary heart. You would tell me we must love others as ourselves. That we must spend our time and resources for not just us but others. But, my friend, I know my world and I know my people and I know we cannot do that. We humans are not built for such selflessness. Others remain others and never brothers and sisters, flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood. The only way is to deny our very selves and assume new ones. But is that possible? For all 12 billion of us? My dear Will, how I need you. And how I wish you could read this letter. Love, Heidi.”
-An excerpt from an email sent to herself by President of World Governments at 2:59 a.m. on June 6th, 2053.
“Can’t you stay?”
“No, I can’t. Later, I promise,” I said packing and looking at my wife, whose sad eyes on her pale face above the blanket grabbed my heart and glued it next to her on the small hospital bed.
“Now, not later,” she said in a fragile voice.
I stopped packing and looked at her.
“I have a bad feeling. Dreadful. Terrible feeling.”
I walked over to her and softly brushed her beautiful, clumsily-combed hair and said, “Don’t worry. I will be back by tomorrow. Shana will be here too, you know. You’ll be safe here.”
“Take me with you, then.”
“It’s too dangerous. This is the safest place in America. Next to Midwest, perhaps.”
She closed her eyes and remained silent. I kissed her on her forehead. “Good night. Shana and I will see you tomorrow.”
Outside the room the doctor had been waiting and he turned around as I opened the door and when I closed it said, “Results came in. She will make it for another year. Maybe even 18 months.” He then hastily added, “By then the NIH will have created a cure. It may not be a complete cure; it might only extend her life. But still, it will give her a chance to stay alive until the next cure comes.”
“Any way to make a permanent cure?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
For more than a decade now the National Institutes of Health has been struggling to produce only temporary cures for all these new diseases, known as climate change diseases. Rising heat and pollution of air and water gave rise to a host of virus and bacteria immune to all modern medicine. This hospital in Seattle was home to an experimental medicine for Sudden Disease, named for its sudden, crippling impact, that my wife was suffering from, and we were lucky. More than a billion people with climate change diseases have died in the last 10 years without ever getting access to these ridiculously priced treatments. And they were only temporary.
I nodded to the doctor and after shaking his hand headed to the roof where rain was pouring. There a pilot hired by my company was waving in front of a solar jet.
“Hi, Mark. Ready to go?”
Something felt uneasy, but there was no reason to. “Yes. Let’s go.” I hopped in.
“Headed for Bethesda, Maryland. NIH. As usual. Correct?” the pilot asked as he started the engine.
“Yes.” Part of the new medicine this hospital was giving my wife came from NIH, and given confidentiality of the treatment, someone in the family or the lab had to deliver it to the team at this hospital to concoct the final version. My company, a VR application maker, lent me a solar jet for this and I made the trip every week.
“Hang tight!”
The jet launched upward then forward rapidly. The speed had been increasing exponentially every year since the solar jet was introduced in 2035 and now it only took 5 hours to go from Seattle to Bethesda. Regular jet is faster. But as the world was forced to realize, cost of speed was a bargain for cost of life.
“Should I wait, or do you want me to come back later after I drop you off?” he asked.
“I will give you call, if you don’t mind. My daughter will be there, back from Jamaica with my brother. I’d like to bring her with me. Maybe my brother too. His family in Seattle is anxious to see him.”
“Sure. How old is she?”
“Seven.”
“Must keep you handful.”
“I’m grateful for it.” I smiled.
“All right! It will be a fairly nice ride, with a little bit of storm and about 4 hours and 52 minutes away. Sit back and… Whoa! What is that?” He yelled looking left with his face horrified.
I turned. From the direction of the ocean a wave wider than the entire Seattle and towering over the 967 ft. Columbia Center, where I worked, kept getting larger and larger, swallowing everything in its path, and near it was the hospital. Before I was about to yell at the pilot to go back, the wave crashed into the hospital and swallowed it whole. As the wave went past large debris of the hospital floated.
I screamed. Over and over, hitting the glass door, I screamed maniacally. Wanting to turn back time. Wanting my wife to somehow turn up safe and sound. The pilot said something to me but only mumble was heard. My fist then went through the glass and shattered it. I fainted.
“No!” I yelled as I awoke.
Empty room. Blanket. Bed. Desk. My office in Boston. My smart shirt slowly whirled, drying the cold sweats trickling down my back. No wave. It was a dream. It already happened. Long time ago.
Now, not later. A faint echo of a sweet, sad voice filled my heart. If I let it the voice would soon swallow me whole and not let go of me until I became useless to anyone.
Shaking my head I sat up and swiped with my thumb the One Ring on my index finger. A real-like hologram surrounded me. Since several years ago One Ring, the one-for-all device from Tree, one of the largest technology companies, has been everyone’s go-to device for almost every need. Using real-like hologram, it could be anything: virtual reality lenses, workstation, chat app, keyboard, anything other than actual physical object. For that, portable 3-D printer doubling as smart watch did the job.
105 new messages had arrived since last night. I blinked twice at the first one, marked “Urgent.”
Expressive face of my aide, Susan, appeared. She looked alarmed. “Mark, at 3 a.m. the entire California coast was hit by a massive earthquake and then by a tsunami. So far about two million people have died and millions more have been injured.”
My eyes widened and my jaw fell. Susan continued, “But the real problem isn’t even that. The quake and the tsunami destroyed some of the startups’ labs, and some chemicals got mixed into a toxic, a very, very dangerous one. It’s far worse than 2042 Boston. I can’t verify everything right now, but from the reports I’ve been getting, a few of the people who fell into contact with this chemical suddenly exploded. We don’t know what triggered the explosion. People nearby were either killed or likely infected with the same disease. Worse yet, the wind picked up the chemical and the entire California is becoming a toxic zone. Some areas are safe, but there’s no way of knowing. Almost everyone, about 50 million, is fleeing to Midwest. I need you there to interview the people and find as much as you can. I’m already on the way. John is on the way too. Naomi can pick you up.”
She then disappeared. What a way to wake up.
This was new. And big. Even among all the terrifying catastrophes of this century. I’d better hurry.
I put on a new smart shirt and smart pants, which started cleansing my body, and got out of the room to a large hall four times the size of a football field with a high circular ceiling. It was dark and empty. I said, “time,” and bright blue letters appeared in front of me: “5:21 a.m.” Everyone must be asleep. Or heading here right this minute. It’ll be a busy day here.
I walked across the hall and out of the building, One Earth Center, the home of about 500 scientists, engineers, lawyers, and many others who came together under one mission: Find and solve the root cause of all catastrophes. It grew out of a breakthrough finding by the world’s smartest A.I., Neri, and coordinated by more than 50 leading scientists and engineers, some of whom won Nobel. The finding was simple but powerful: All catastrophes share in common a factor A, and that A lies at the earliest stage of every catastrophe, when it wasn’t even a fully formed physical reality. Even catastrophes caused by climate change. What that A is, no one, not even the A.I. itself, knows. Our job is to find A and solve it.
“Morning, director,” Bob, the receptionist, greeted me as I went out of the building. “I’ll never understand why you live in your office.”
“For the last time, call me Mark,” I said and kept on walking. I joined the organization shortly after its inception as deputy director of VR experiments, given my expertise in designing VR applications. Shortly afterward I became the director, but the title had little meaning. Each member was an organization of her own, in full charge of all operations of her chosen project. I only got rid of inconveniences that other members had in completing their projects. Otherwise, I was same as others, working on my own projects. My current project was analyzing artifacts from past catastrophes to make a VR film that enables reliving daily progress of the catastrophes, in hopes that somewhere there would be a glimpse of the factor A. 2011–2020 Syrian Crisis, in particular. For that I needed to go to the Museum of Syrian Crisis in Mountain View, California. I hope it’s still intact.
I walked to the Alewife station on the outskirts of Boston and got into a train heading to Central Square to go to the skyscraper where Naomi, a pilot, usually picks me up at. The train was empty. I sat down and thought about all that happened, all that shook my world and the world of billions of others so far in this century. Iraq. Arab Spring. Syrian Crisis. South Sudan. Nigeria. Zika. Venezuela. Yemen. China. Honduras. Mexico. And Vanuatu. Submerged. Completely. Overnight. With all its 394,000 people. By then we had to face the truth: The world in times of climate change was a world of uncertainty. Not the world we had ever expected nor felt we deserved by default. In hindsight, it was obvious. The world surrounding us had changed while we ourselves stayed exactly the same with our weak, fragile bodies. And that imbalance caused new catastrophes, which came surely and consistently and at exponentially increasing pace. And they happened in ways no one could imagine, with distant, invisible dots connecting to create new horrors like climate change diseases and genocide cleverly disguised as civil war. The world was in chaos. People killing people, nature killing people, microorganisms killing people. New York City. Southern Florida. Boston. Beijing. Seoul. On and on. And given too many catastrophes, people started hardening their hearts and it was now rare to find kindness. Genuine kindness. Kindness for selfish ends were plenty. Sickening. All because of all these catastrophes. And getting worse. Only last decade California was hit with massive earthquake, killing hundreds of thousands, but not at this scale. And… Seattle.
Thinking started to hurt and I closed my eyes and tried to relax. All this had to stop. No more. No one should lose their loved ones. Nor themselves.
Suddenly faces of people who had fled Florida hurricane and came to my office to ask for help came into view. Among them a baby, no more than 2, looked at me and smiled. But he started crying as his dad raised his voice to a yell, unintentionally as I felt no malice toward me, while he described with tears what he and his family faced fleeing from the hurricane. He had lost his older son. People he met on the way, cold from enduring terrible tragedies themselves, gave him no help, causing him to lose even his injured brother. I hadn’t seen such great anger. Perhaps only in my own heart when…
The train stopped and a voice echoed, “Central Station.” I shivered slightly to shake myself off from my train of thoughts and stood up and started walking out of the station. Thinking alone had no use. I had to do. The work that One Earth Center has done has influenced world leaders’ decisions but not nearly as much as it should have. After that night in Seattle I gave up my lucrative work and gave away all my money to climate change mitigation efforts and started working at the Center, but has it been worth it? The progress toward zero catastrophe has been far less than I had hoped. Unless we can find that factor A, and back it up with evidence that the public will immediately grasp as true and real, world leaders will keep doing only as much as will secure their votes or legacies. Democracy, the great invention of humanity, had its own limit. And that limit was killing people every second. I needed to do more. I could do so much more good if I were in the office myself. Presidency. Or even a Senate seat. A year of courting fundraisers and politicians for endorsements for Senate has been less than satisfactory; the polls indicated I still needed more endorsements. I will get there. If I find A, all will change. Even presidency may not be a dream. I might be able to put the world on the right course. Standing before the exit door I took out an oxygen mask from my pocket and put it on and walked out.
Why do catastrophes happen and how can they be prevented? The world seemed begging an answer for it as I stepped out of Central Square station in Cambridge, Massachusetts to the breath of toxic air that, if breathed in for more than several days, could kill me. Everyone I see has oxygen masks on. Walking busily around dozens of skyscrapers built twenty years ago to accommodate exploding number of technology startups, most are walking and talking with holograms in front of them. Not feeling like speaking with a mask on, I drew the name Naomi in the air with my index finger and on the hologram keyboard that popped up I typed that I’ve arrived and will see her at where we usually meet.
The toxic air was something all big cities suffered from and it was not the main problem Boston has had since 2042. Mosquitos. Climate change had given rise to the strongest hurricane to date in Atlantic Ocean and permanently made the entire Eastern Coast more humid. Combined with the heat that broke record each year, it birthed stronger, much more resilient mosquitos that survived all existing pest controls. Its bite bred bigger and more painful sores. But what made Boston one of the worst places to live, along with major cities including Beijing and New York City but for different reasons, was caused by its most prized inhabitants: medical companies. Toxic chemicals that one pharmaceutical company were experimenting with to more quickly manufacture a new drug to top their competitors were let out into Charles River and got mixed with chemical wastes that other medical companies threw away. So much for Boston being the center of biomedical companies. The mixture was deadly. Hundreds died before anyone took notice. Being brewed in silence was something worse. The mosquitos, those strong, resilient mosquitos, bred in it and started spreading the poison to people in the city. Hundreds of thousands died before NIH produced a solution a year later. By now every American has been vaccinated for it and most, if not all, of the mosquitos have been killed off. But getting bitten by one puts a person to bed for at least a few days. Yes, it was preventable. And as always, from hindsight.
Having moved to Boston after the 2051 Seattle Catastrophe, living here has felt like copper in my mouth. I grew up in Kansas suburb, and walking the streets of Boston and Cambridge meant freedom, knowing the world was more than I’d imagined and that I was in it, alive. Such contrast to spending Saturday nights cooped up in a cheap apartment, playing board games with my younger brother. But these days I feel I’d give up a lot to go back to that room with my brother just one more time. I haven’t seen him in a year; a heart surgeon, he’s always operating on people in remote villages. Ever since Seattle. Who would have thought that’s what he would do after losing his wife and children. Without a word to me. As a kid he used to run to me crying when something upset him. I guess my shoulders didn’t seem big enough to cry that much on. Or maybe he felt I needed shoulders to cry on myself. Thinking of him is painful. He sometimes takes my daughter; they were close even before Seattle. I wonder if she is with him now. I haven’t been spending enough time with her. Later I will take her to Disney World. Or is she too old for it? Maybe it would bring back too much sad memory. Memory of… I’d better not. Something else.
As I walked past the heavily renovated Le Pan, a café my brother and I used to come often when we were students at MIT, I wondered what he would say if he were standing next to me. Boston, the city of medical greed? Boston, where soulless entrepreneurs go to screw up the environment? He’s a lot blunter than I am. Seeing the city that once was my symbol of freedom from the monotony of suburb in a crumbling state made my stomach sizzle. I walked faster.
Entering one of the highest skyscrapers, I was immediately greeted by an elevator that wished me good day and asked for my business. I took off the oxygen mask and said I’m here for the flight and waved my One Ring in front of it and it sent me to the rooftop, where Naomi greeted me with a smile covered in grim urgency. I waved.
“Mark!”
“Susan briefed you?”
“Yep. Get in!”
I shook her hand and got into the solar jet. Seeing it gave me a tinge of pain.
“Tell me,” I said buckling up. “Where in Midwest?”
“Kansas. Wichita suburb. About 850,000 people are in tents and motels and streets. It’s a mess. Plenty of people to get information from.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why not California? Factor A isn’t something we will find by talking to people who were probably too scared to see anything. Or by looking at a bunch of seismic data. We don’t even know what we are looking for. We need to see the origin of the catastrophe and see if there’s any way we can learn something we have missed, something that existed in all the other catastrophes but went unnoticed. Why does Susan want me to go to Kansas?”
“California is an extremely dangerous place right now. You shouldn’t venture out there just yet.”
“But that’s where we might get what we need,” I said. Naomi remained silent.
“Take me to San Francisco,” I said. “No. To Mountain View. While I’m at it, I want to check if the Syrian museum is intact.”
I’d expected more protests, but Naomi nodded and the jet sped forward.
“What about Susan and John?” Naomi asked.
“Well, let’s let them get a head start in Kansas. Those people must know something about the catastrophe and it could be useful. I’ll text her to go on with the interviews.”
A few hours later we landed in Mountain View in front of the Museum of Syrian Crisis. Built in 2025 by then-young, rich technology workers, who had more empathy for the Syrians who suffered terribly from Bashar Assad’s actions and the West’s inaction, the circular museum stood over 100 ft. tall, 2000 ft. wide and showcased over a million artifacts from the crisis. The artifacts weren’t valuables traditionally showcased in museums but daily items like toothbrush, shirts, and lifeboat jackets that told stories of what it was like for them to flee from massacres in Syria across tumultuous oceans and lands to live in foreign places with people many of whom rejected and detested their presence. It was a grand attempt by youngsters to tell new youngers of the older people’s failure to save lives when they could, as a reminder to never let it happen again. Sadly, ignoring blood was a habit we humans had trouble getting rid of, as massacres happened around the world almost every year since, most of them unstopped. Every time there was an excuse not to save lives. And almost every time the world leaders used it greedily.
Naomi and I put on our masks and got out of the jet. The museum, with its former luxuriousness barely recognizable, stood broken terribly. Half of the ceiling was gone and spread on the walls were holes, seemingly made by trees that were thrown at it during the tsunami. Water, though yet only foot-deep, was everywhere outside. Nearby buildings were decimated.
“Oh, no,” let out Naomi as she, sobbing, covered her nose and mouth and looked at the endless piles of debris, some covered in blood. I was speechless. It was as if a war swept through.
“Stay close to me,” I said to Naomi, knowing I was likely more afraid than she was.
Naomi and I walked toward the museum and I pushed the door and walked in to find the water foot-deep in there as well. The lights were off and only the sound of our shoes hitting the water filled the gigantic chamber.
Naomi found the light and turned it on. A luxurious chamber with many small and big holes on the walls came into view. On the floor tens of big trees, some broken, were laid amidst the mess that included broken glass and a score of artifacts. Some artifacts were preserved behind glass, unbroken, but more than half were scattered around and many of them broken.
“This… wait.” Looking down at my One Ring I said, “Seri, show me the map of Syrian museum in Mountain View.”
A hologram of a map appeared in front of us. Then a voice rang, “This place looks dangerous. Would you like me to call Suber to take you to a safer place?” The One Ring’s safety system must have been activated by calling up the map.
“Let’s see if some of the artifacts are intact,” I said turning to a large tree around which many artifacts were scattered. Seri understood silence without disturbance in my activity as a negative answer.
Standing in front of the tree I could not see anything beyond the artifacts around it. Cheap necklace. Half-rotten clothes. Deflated lifeboat jackets, many of which were dysfunctional to begin with; the manufacturers loved what money gave them more than their souls. A walking stick. Even old people made the perilous journey. A toy, Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, half-covered in dried mud.
To know exactly which artifacts to take to analyze for reconstructing Syrians’ daily lives in VR, I needed to see more. And given California crisis, I needed to see it all fast. I climbed the tree and then another tree on top of it. The second one was vertically placed and at its top I could see the whole museum. Then my heart nearly stopped.
Spread around the 500 ft. circular museum floor were, among others, tens of thousands of lifeboat jackets; dozens of barrel bombs with their contents, mainly nails and scrap metals, piercing children made of rubber; and hundreds of thousands of shoes, denoting each and every person, including children, who died at the hands of Bashar Assad and the Russians and some by the rebels.
I’d heard something similar will be showcased here, but not like this. I should have visited when I was younger. Back then, almost everyone was too busy living in virtual realities that enjoyed zero government regulation.
As I stood in shock Naomi yelled from below, “Mark! What is it?”
“…nothing. I’ll come down!”
On the ground I led Naomi to the pile of shoes that filled the hall when the glass concealing them was broken. While she stood in shock I grabbed one of the shoes. I should choose at least one and take it. The pair was of size 11. Male. Faded blue background with black and white stripes, all covered in dried mud and very worn. On the label it read, “Adidas.” I put it down gently and picked up another pair. Size 7. Female. Pink and white. Less mud. I suppose the owner wore them carefully. Like my mom; she cleans her shoes twice a week.
Naomi, now calmer, came near me and held out in her hands a pair of shoes, a boy’s, of about size 2 with dark green and white background. Its logo looked familiar.
“Nike?” I said.
“What?” Naomi said.
“The shoes. Nike.”
“They’re called Nike?”
“You don’t know Nike?” I said, thinking of the pair in my gym locker. She shook her head.
“Well, the wearables explosion in the 2030’s may have diluted Nike. It used to be the most popular brand in shoes,” I said. “I think these are good. I’ll take them.”
Inside the shoes was a small paper. Surprised, I took it out. On it read, “Pilot.” All the other small shoes also had papers in them. I opened a few: “Astronaut,” “Cook,” “Doctor,” “Teacher.” Dreams of the refugee kids. The bigger shoes, those of adults, had different type of words: “Mother,” “Brother and Father,” “Wife and daughter.” Who they were. Since knowing accurate information for every one of hundreds of thousands of corpses was impossible, I’d guess the curators made guesses and put these as symbolic gestures. But, still, I couldn’t help but feel overpowered by their dreams. Who they were. Who they could have been.
Holding the Nike shoes in my hand I searched for a bag and once found a small one I put the shoes in it and kept looking for more. I can perhaps take two or three more. Then I must go on a search for… something. Something that’ll give me a clue for A.
Beneath a tree I found a tiny blanket, worn and beige color, soft and supposedly for a baby, and put it in the bag. It’s unusual to find a blanket made just for babies. Then walking near the walls I found white earphones and put them in the bag. Perhaps I can find out what they were listening to.
Naomi and I headed out of the museum. Before exiting I looked back. The piles of lifeboat jackets and shoes and barrel bombs, most of them hidden by trees. Maybe that’s the way we saw the Syrians back then. Their desperate plea for help, hidden by distance and our comfort and all the choices we had to make to eat better, be perceived better, and enjoy life better.
Outside as we walked toward the jet the sheer destruction of the city that once boomed with life and innovations touched me more closely. Miles and miles of small and large buildings and houses and from far away what used to be Google campus. All destroyed. Corpses floating in distance. Blood on bricks. Water slightly waving against our ankles — in a city.
Seeing destruction when I had been expecting it was one thing. Seeing it after I had been immersed in something else enough to forget what to expect outside was quite different: it was hell on earth, laid bare unannounced. But that’s how anyone meets destruction, I suppose. Unexpected. If they had known, they would not be there. They would have fled.
Naomi and I stood still for a while, thinking and reflecting, without agreeing to do so; it just felt a necessity. Then, slowly, we walked toward the jet.
In the jet after we took off our masks Naomi said, “There must be people who are still trying to get to Midwest. With the government doing nothing, we should help.”
The United States government has for sometime been lacking in rescue-and-aid missions. It used to be good at it at least for its citizens. But not since one catastrophe after another hit the United States over and over for a decade and a half. Its operations were scattered and people’s distrust in government led to a cycle of dramatic reduction in budgets, which all but ensured that in cases of catastrophes like this, only the very rich and powerful will get rescued. The rest were on their own.
“I agree. Hold on,” I said and then to my One Ring, “Seri, show me a satellite view of where people fleeing from California crisis are. Show me only those within 100-mile radius.”
“There. They are the nearest,” Naomi said pointing at a clump of dots near us.
“Let’s go.”
Naomi started the jet and it rose and sped forward. About 9 minutes later we landed. Getting out we met the urgent, exhausted eyes of about 20 people, some old, some young, some male, some female.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” One woman ran toward us with a baby in her arms.
“Please, we have space for only 5 people,” I said. “We will call other people with jets to come and get the rest of you. Can only women and children come forward please?”
“Please… please take me. I feel like throwing up. I…,” one man walked rapidly forward and said before turning around to throw up.
“My children. Please let my children get on that plane. Please,” one woman holding hands of two little kids, one girl and one boy, said.
“Wait, I have ulcer. My stomach feels like it’ll blow up. I need to be on that plane,” one man said grabbing his stomach and looking terribly tortured.
“I want to be on. I can’t walk anymore. I’m sick of this!” one kid exclaimed.
“I… I can’t go on. Water. I need water. Let me get on that plane. Please. Please,” one woman said.
“Take my children. Please. They haven’t eaten anything and they can’t possibly walk anymore. Please,” another woman said pushing her three little children forward.
“I have diabetes. No insulin, I’m dying here. Let me get on that plane,” one man said.
“Can’t… can’t breathe. Asthma. I need…,” one woman said struggling to breathe.
“My parents have Alzheimer’s and they need assistance now. Please,” one man said holding hands of his parents who looked at the plane blankly.
“Do you have food and water?” Naomi asked the group. They waved their heads.
“If we had food and water we will be camping out here! We need to be on that plane!” one man yelled.
“What do we do?” Naomi looked at me and asked. More people were asking to be on the jet and their intensity was increasing. Nobody was willing to wait around other than an elderly couple sitting far behind and looking far away at the mountains. If unstopped, these people might get into a fight. It could get uglier; someone might even try to hijack the jet or get killed.
“Please, stop!” I yelled. Everyone looked at me.
“I will stay behind so that one more person can get in. I will wait with you. And since I’ll be here, you can be assured that another jet will come by,” I said.
Everyone seemed to begrudgingly acquiesce and soon we picked 5 children and 1 sickly woman to get into the jet. After they were onboard Naomi looked at me concernedly.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
“No worries. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
I smiled and waved. The jet rose and sped away. I looked at the people left and they all seemed terribly exhausted but on their faces was a tinge of hope. I felt better.
“Thank you. Appreciate it,” one man said to me. Some others showed expression of gratitude, smiling and nodding slightly, though most of them still looked very much in pain.
“No problem,” I said. The night was dawning. “We’d better set up a camp. Does anyone have a camp?”
They all looked at me without a word and some shook their heads.
“Does anyone have One Ring?” I asked.
“I have it,” one man said.
“Good. Let’s turn on the camp application and we all should at least forget that we are sitting on a desert.”
He and I turned on the application and a night-sky-colored hologram hovered around all of us. Mine alone would have been enough for only about 10 people, but his covered the other half. The hologram replaced the desert’s sound of dry wind with sound of birds chirping, which surrounded us as if it was coming from every direction instead of our two tiny rings. On the fake sky fake moon and fake stars were shining. These were probably unnecessary, but they came with the application and actually looked more pleasing than the real ones, so I let them be.
Some people laid down to sleep and others sat down and talked. After making sure everyone was not too terribly sick I laid down in the corner and tried to sleep. But I could not and I grabbed the bag I had taken from the museum and opened it and took out the shoes. They were so very small. Bigger than baby’s shoes but in my adult’s hands they seemed to be of a baby. I felt sad. Some kid walked and ran in these shoes. He tied these shoes thinking of the fun places he would go. And later in these very shoes he ran in fear from bombs and terrorists. Was he alone? Did he have a family? What’s his name? I wish he had someone. How terrible would it be for a child to be alone without a home, to wander harsh streets and mountains. I wonder if he is alive today. The crisis was in 2011 to 2020. If he was 5 or 7 in 2011, he would be 47 or 49 today. Older than I am. I wonder what he would say if he saw me holding his shoes. I wonder if these would fit my daughter. She’s older, but she’s a girl. What is her size? Did many refugee kids wear Nike? It’s not a cheap brand. I wish no one gave him a hard time for having fancy shoes. I wish he made it out alive.
Closing my eyes and feeling my mind slowly go blank, I thought of the boy.
