Mirrors of Fire

~Stars~

Melancholy is everything that the rain brought. Clandestine memories from days where the sun witnessed love and passion never experienced. The youthful years guided and build lives along the shores of the island where they stood witnessing the stars sail past a memory. Something that remained there for eternity always caught their minds and heart. The red moon with formations reminiscent of carvings of some ancient angels who left centuries before to their destiny. This life has always been of seeking and observing, trying to recapture the majesty of the universe before everything fades into the baryonic ash.

~New Horizon~

Lyra, the northern constellation witnessed the first ever human explorations outside the solar system a millennia ago. Those bold dreamers who chanced upon a door that would redeem humanity and provide a passage to escape the dying earth. No regret remained for the earth that fell under the greed of men and machines. All that remained of earth are folksongs heard along the shores of this vast sea enveloping the planet and us, humans. They did not sing for the lost glory or sadness but for the triumph of having left the planet for good. Humanity matured a thousand years ago and here we were.

The blazing starships of earth never actually reached their destinations. Some say the builders never wanted them to be far from earth. Silly old men caught in their romantic obsessions of that old rock. We should have ventured long before when the space race opened our eyes, but we let the petty politics of yesteryear gods poking holes into our future. But now everything was done and calm. We went our ways. More than a hundred giant liners left earth that fateful year. There were no names for that event, it was planned and we left without any spectacle or goodbye. The mere billion, who did not want to leave, are history now. The occasional hyper signal or a stray freighter would bring messages of the crippled earth. Nothing much was left for humanity after the 21^st century. The later decades of the century saw drastic reduction in the population, down to a few billion compared to the height of a dozen billion in the year 2050.

Daggers and missiles, sweeping human fear and tears throughout centuries, gave no forward to what will happen. Not the cold war, not the oil wars, not the religious wars, the youths of the latter 21st century received their call and rewrote history. Deep roots were severed, as masterful surgeons and mechanical geniuses rebuild the sapiens, and star ships, so that we can fly away. A future where we are the intelligent beings, scattering the galaxies with our messages of existence. Matter and waves are mere tools, supplements to rebuild civilization of planets in cataclysmic solar systems, with earths the size of Jupiter that defies old school science.

We used binary mecators, and plastic sentience to signify that we reached a new dawn, where we stood for one dream. What skies we learned to be blue, what planets were drawn to the lines of feathers tipped into ink, flowing through ages, has finally reached a new dawn. We touched the horizon as the observatories flashed in their singularity webs, the message that we raced to the new worlds. Its the discovery, the spirit on fire to live our wishes. This new horizon, in it we are building memories of entropy, of our new existence in the mirrors of fire.

~End, Chapter 1~

Radio City Raiders

The summer of 69 wouldn’t have sounded better if it were the summer of 79. He would have liked it that way though, but then that summer; the song was number one across the country. Manu came first, as usual. Almost the same time everyday for the past 5 years, and sat almost at the same place for as long it has been. Almost distinctive considering he doesn’t like being routine for almost anything. Rafa walked in as the song ended, but he knew Jacob would crank up the old jukebox in a few minutes just for the heck of it. Just to hear the number one song for one more time. Dalian came in with a huge smile on his face. It was Wednesday, and everyone knows what Wednesdays are for. That one day every week they would ride to the outskirts of the city to catch the Night Birds on their amazing night routines. The best damn air show pilots in the west. They’re that much good for almost forever. Yes, that much.

The old radio is nearly bald of every feature. The dials are devoid of groves and the plastic panel in front is blurred to some sort of yellowish white candy like transparent color. But it played the old classics as good as new. And at 5 pm everyday, the snazziest DJ in the city will play all the new songs. Jacob liked old pop songs. The classic music almost magical as he recalls his past, as he recalls his childhood drowned in Sinatra. But he liked Tim and his gang of pretenders too. And they would listen to Bryan Adams almost all the time. Dalian and Rafa drank Bud like there’s no tomorrow. But Tim reminded them to hold the packs for they’ll end up seeing fireflies instead of Tomcats. Manu is strangely a coffee man. Maybe it stuck to him as he’s a long hauler. But almost all his life he’s been around his beer guzzling buddies and he haven’t picked up a can at all. Maybe it’s his visions of his grandfather reminding him subconsciously. His grandpa was an Apache in the aged desserts of Arizona.

Jacobs Moonlight Diner was opened back in the 60’s. Jacob was eighteen then and his diner closes before midnight. So much for the name, but no trucker would give a damn of any name in the middle of nowhere. This wasn’t much of an inheritance as his old man died in Korea servicing some misadventure with the traveling soldiers. So he was left nursing his wounds in some North Korean ‘correction’ camp while his wife walked out the back door from the old town half a world away. Jacob was left with his brothers and a sister and his ‘dead’ dad’s 300 bucks pension. His dad passed away for real about ten years later still lost and not much of a remorse for Jacob as he slugged to raise his own troop in an uncertain world. Elvis and The Beatles continued to dance the world as the Jackson 5 are practicing their baby walks. Jacobs Moonlight Diner was born on a torrential Saturday with a ten year old girl cashier. It was an American dream like none other.

Rafa continued to preach his now biblical version of the Night Birds Air Stunt fliers. The six odd F-14 Tomcats painting the skies of air shows from Nevada to Ukraine like war pigeons on their messenger sorties. They were that good that the president had them perform for his kids’ birthdays. Dalian started to worry of tomorrow as Tim pushed another can to Manu. Days end almost as fast as they come and these old raiders of the northwest aren’t getting any younger. So they made a pact under the Nevada moon not too long ago no to get married to any sweet talking candy girl for almost all of eternity, but then it was not any eternity they wanted to be because everyone around them are hitched to everyone else the know. So what.

The sight of the river running through Hoover's Dam rekindled memories worth telling in the drunken minds of Rafa and Dalian. Rafa crossed the border from Mexico decades back with his papi and mami, crossing the death river under the moonlight as the border patrol went quarterback chasing a few hundred eager Mexicans. No regret, it was the free world. Dalian is one of the famous boat people. None of the new kids knew what boat people really are. He was a year old kid when his family floated away into destiny’s hand under a century storm and landed smack in a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. Tim’s dad was a government officer who saved this kid to school and college where he would smoke weed and dance with hippies almost a generation too late. The coincidence ends here, almost.

In the 80’s like in any other decade of this crazy century, stories become almost folklores in the great highways of America. Manu crashed his 18 wheeler into the drunken ass of the Chevy Tim was driving. God came in the form of a Bud loving county Sheriff who let them go with a hiccup and a free tow to Las Vegas. There they found religion. Manu loved classic music and read old American literature. Dalian studied literature at Nevada U in Reno and Tim studied both of them in his legendary northwest jokes. Rafa worked in a second hand book shop selling almost anything and after hours selling lives to Latinos who found the new world a bit too late to know there is no free world. You don’t ask life stories to this kind of people but they ended up being friends for the sake of sharing a few cans and the whole year it took to pay for Manu’s hauler.

The thought of four mismatch friends is genuinely interesting to Jacob and he was the fifth dude who organizes occasional desert BBQ’s on a lazy Sunday out in the rattle snake dens of Sierra Nevada. They went to the movies watching rotten sci-fi flicks reminding them the world is much more worst out there. Tim was a die hard fan of the Red Soxs, and he will spend the rest of his life explaining why they are called the world champions when only America plays. Stories like that interest anyone.

By 1985, Jacobs diner was bustling and was one of the hundreds opened along Interstate 15. Truckers from all the coasts and dust states stopped there to get bacons and overnight girls. Devil had a discount booth up along the freeways of the free world. His brothers are all in the army, and his sister still drops by every thanksgiving. This year Manu took them to the Indian reserves near Los Alamos where they discovered Anasazis made better pottery that some hack in New York’s fine art district. Apache was a real warrior and Rafa lost his culture when he walked north. Dalian cried silent tears for the country he would never see again, not that Vietnam was far away, but the Saigon of 85 was in ruins. Tim was quiet all the while, wondering whether to apologize for his ancestors collective sins, but that’s what the world is. Almost devoid of compassion for historical contemporaries like the ruined walls of the ancient settlement, and he knew no chief sitting bull is going to blame him for white mans deed’s or for not gambling in Atlantic city. Las Vegas, Nevada and Bryan Adams ruffled few emotions in him unlike the red dust floating into his heart now warm and sullen. So they were friends whom destiny never imagines would ever be.

The hills overlooking the air force base out in the dessert were like ice creams lumps on a banana split. Bald and scattered with Joshua tree’s substituting for spectators on this warm evening. The Night Bird’s flew for hours during the Wednesdays as a special tribute to their crashed counterpart a few years back. The grid’s of melancholic light on the runway is not enough to illuminate the birds but the Tomcats had special lights on them outlining their wings, which after a few cold Coronas looks like lights on rides in small town funfairs. They had to remind Tim every 10 minutes he’s too old to become a pilot while Jacob tries hard to tune in Nevada FM under the skies of Sagittarius. Far away under the southern mountain range, the twinkling lights of Las Vegas struck a smile on Dalian’s face while Rafa cracked bonfire jokes. The stars seem to be applauding them, these raiders who made no mark for anyone but themselves. They’re just small town guys running away from century old stigma and the summer of 85 was suddenly the summer of 69. Under the motionless sky and dancing Tomcats, catching warm breezes in their baseball caps and cowboy hats, they were dreamers from the radio city raiding imaginations thousands of miles away. They were that good. And they sang over the sparkling wood fire...
'I got my first real six-string

Bought it at the five-and-dime

Played 'til my fingers bled

It was summer of '69...'

© Ghost Particle, 06.

(creative commons license)

[-] This is what you get if you have an hour to write everything that runs in your crazy mind. Pardon the geography because I’ve almost certainly had not been to the states, but the characters could be real. If you like this story please do leave some comments, it would help me write more.

Devil's Utopia

It started silently, on a Tuesday evening. The day has no significance. The screen glowed green initially. It changes every week or so. The light was metallic green to be exact. The kind that attracts attention fast, something that makes you want to tell you friends, and then just sit and watch it. He walked into the room, as usual following his mechanically perfect routine, unsuspecting of the change. It took him a good minute to realize the glow from the set echoing on the walls. He was surprised for another minute, stood there thinking, recalling for another minute and then walked near it slowly. It was all new to him, it was not there yesterday. Slow minutes passed as he perfected the dimensions of the thing into his brain. Surely it’s artificial and from the looks of it, it’s certainly modern. It went against his conventions.

The first few programs or moving imagery as he termed it showed vivid images of people killing each other. Lots of blood, screams of pain, carnage and rotting flesh. He dared not touch the thing. But then again he could not move away. He had things to do, projects to finish, his grand experiments. Not that the images did not bring any emotions too him, it’s all too new to him. He never saw anything like that before. He’d seen dead people, but not the kind with open wounds, burning flesh or the ones screaming silently dying.

Another week went by and he’s still transfixed to the screen. He noticed that the sound actually fluctuates from time to time. Certain shows were much louder than some. Occasionally there would be a pause of an hour or two. After a few hours he learned that it was to be his rest time too. He went ahead fast, to finish his chores, clean himself, and came back to discover more of the thing, always. On the second week the lights were faint orange. Again one of those colors that captures your senses, seeping slowly into your chemical systems, relaxing you and opening up your brain to everything. The shows this week were all of history. He knew history; it was his favorite subject back at the academy. He learned before how his ancestors came to this barren land and built a civilization. Teaching the natives how to use tools and languages and in return they were given land to settle. But the history programs on the thing were different. It did show his people, or what looked like people with his skin color and language, but then it showed his people suffering more and more in lands far away. How his people were made to slave for other people and fight other peoples war. His people were taunted on the streets, suffered in famine and disease while their masters just kicked them away. Killed them, piled them up high in the street corners and burned their corpses, some still alive. He cried for the first time. Some sort of anger builds up in him, together with hatred towards the other people.

(By the time the screen glowed blue, he already made up his mind. He learned enough of it, enough of what he’d seen so far. He wanted to watch more but the message was there right in front of him.)

It was very clear from the start. He was surprised it was that easy to follow since even his field of interest took decades to understand. When the second week ended, he was already taking notes, part habit, partly to decipher the real message from the thing. He noticed too the rest periods getting longer and longer, like an instruction to him to do something. The programs in the third week were mostly on education. Specifically it teaches how to regain their lost glory. They, his people, their lost rights in lands far away. There was a part of him, deep inside his heart that told him to rationalize, but that was suppressed throughout the weeks. Whoever made the thing, created the content was a genius. Much smarter and real than his invisible masters of rationale, he realized he’s been away from reality for so long. His tools changed, morphed slowly at first, then more and more imposing as the month reached its end. What was a clutter of electronics, wires and small tools were now assembled into something powerful. It was his answer, what he perceived as his contribution to his people.

So now, at the end of the month, the blue screen welcomed him from his short sleep. He sat there, in front of his master, the thing with no name while he ate his food. He’s a different person now, thinner, pale and his eyes are red. The blue screen shows were mostly religious. Calming him, teaching him aspects of his religion he never thought existed. How could he not have known them, he read every single religious book back at the academy, but somehow he missed the most important things. He’s going to be a martyr soon. His name will echo in eternity, a salvation to his people, not some hidden agenda, but something everyone will follow openly. He was amazed on how much he could have done if he discovered his peoples suffering earlier. He was too ignorant, stuck into his books; learning preaching’s of wooden saints, of science and materials. Nobody ever talked of humans. He left his room and walked to fulfill his destiny.

In between the rushing paramedics and wailing siren, they found him. What’s left of him at least. His eyes were frozen, like crystal balls, telling some lost story. His other body parts were pieced together later at the pathology table. The doctors had a hard time matching the scattered parts. So many have died, mutilated body parts lined the floor of the mortuary, ice boxes, numbered with mug shots of their faces, if it still existed. From the security camera they saw his ghostly thin figure, making his way towards the school compound. He was dressed smartly, in his best. But no one is there to know this. He shaved and even wore a tie. The occasional parents outside the school must have mistaken him for a father. It ran for another minute before a flash of light, an ear piercing sound and flying metal parts knocked down the camera. The fact that he hid his face with his hand were a surprise, he was smiling warmly to a little boy who walked in front of him seconds before he blew up.

Half a day later in the news, some obscure group from one corner of the globe claimed responsibility of the attacks. Half a day, it took the news to hit the airways, that’s how common this thing has become. The coroner identified the man as a scientist, still single, in his forties. A week later a group of men and women, found trying to escape into the neighboring country were nabbed and proclaimed to be part of the cell whose ultimate plan ware to blow up the whole city. A month later the final piece of report from the lab revealed the bomb to be of some crude pieced together electronics with solid explosives ingeniously home made. The report also stated that the diagram for the bomb were available on the internet. On the concluding page of the report, the casualty toll of the explosion stood at 343 dead, 89 injured with still a couple of body parts unidentified. A few months after, the gang members were released of detention because of international pressure from human rights groups. They were held without trial and somehow they had a self appointed lawyer. They promptly left the country, their final images showing the group leader holding a flag of their movement. A year later a memorial service is held at the site of the explosion, a monument was erected by a prominent sculptor. Thousands of flower bouquets lay along the road leading towards the now closed school and 343 white doves were released to mark the number of dead identified. A peace group held a candle light vigil throughout the week, while internet sites highlighted the event to the world. The nation’s leader gave a moving speech, later made known through the press to be written by his award winning press secretary. Opposition leaders blasted the leader’s lack of respect for the gravity of the situation. The leader banned the newspaper that published the sensational story. The doves were released exactly at the time the bomb went off. The parents of some of the children wept openly. Someone fainted. A few students who survived hugged each other.

That night everyone around the country sat in front of the telly to watch the news of the event. The newscaster began with…” Breaking new, this just in. A bomb exploded in the city of this far away country. Early reports shows it to be a huge explosion and many were feared dead. We’re getting live images now, from the scene…” Everyone sat there riveted to the screen, an angry orange red light from it casts shadows on their walls. A huge mushroom cloud rose over the city…

-gP2006-

(c) GhostParticle, 2006