Dead?
Dead. Dead.
“Kill Harold Fugger!”
“Kill Harold Fugger!”
Well, soon enough the great Harold Fugger, self-proclaimed savior of the human race will die. The great space pioneer who fought to live forever actually will prove to have an expiration date.
The physician and chief tech advisor look out the same window at the coming storm of hate and violence. Maybe their calmness comes from a knowledge they are not likely to escape. That their end rapidly approaches.
“Whatever happens, looks like you might be stuck with us,” the chief says, turning and smiling because it was a shared joke they had about both wanting to see HOME before they died. Then a huge explosion blows away the window, taking most of him and the doctor with it. The smell of smoke, carnage and apple trees fill the room and Fugger chokes unable to breathe. One moment, he was sitting in a chair and the next he is being hastily strapped into a rocket.
“What’s happening?” it sounds like someone else is asking the question with his mouth.
“You’re going to space,” then with a loud magnetic click, the tech says, “next stop, HOME.”
As the rocket doors close some of the smoke clears and he can see the apple orchard, the trees were in bloom, little pink flowers spring off the almost dead trees. It was pretty, yes, but it reminded Harold the heat of Summer was coming. The deep humidity of Southern New York. Choking smog. And all those poor starving souls begging for the bare necessities of life. Congestion of poverty. And them. No matter how many soundproof gates he erected, he could still hear the crowd's clamor, blaming him. They call him a money hoarder. They call him a murderer. And both were probably arguable in court. He couldn’t leave the country either, or his estate, by normal means anyway. Few places would offer him sanctuary if he did.
He was a political renegade. Hated by all the remaining world governments, where they lumbered he took and took and took until he had almost everything.
Then a barrage of rifle fire. Some of it pings off the rocket. An emergency countdown starts and he knows he can at least trust his security. If they last a bit longer he might escape. Then another giant explosion and the air grows hot from the oxygen-catching fire. There wasn't really a true Winter to keep the protesters away anymore so the fire just makes things even worse. Maybe one or two cold days, but never any snow. And now his apple trees, the last that bloomed that he knew of on Earth, not in one of the industrial farms anyway, were ablaze. They stopped forming fruit long ago but still flowered and he knows he might miss them most of all. Their days of fruit were long past and every year he suspected the blossoms that fall in a pink storm would be the last, but today drenched in orange flames he knows it is time to say goodbye.
Today, he’s happy he’s got to live on this planet; and he wishes it luck.
Rapidly turning brown, dangerous, and ugly he knows it’s because she is returning to power and he indeed lost. He has spent the morning working the last problem he cares about, keeping humanity alive despite what she will do if ever fully awake. He knows he isn’t going to solve it with the time he has remaining either, it’s more a hobby anyway, but still, this morning knowing the tides had shifted, he plugged numbers into equations and fiddled with radiation and gene-stores and physical capabilities, hoping to find a magic ratio.
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There isn't one. Without Earth, humanity is lost.
Just like he won’t likely recreate Harold Fugger in a lab.
But he doesn’t have to if he lives.
Above him is HOME.
HOME orbits the moon. Long ago it was meant to provide free and stable power, that’s how he sold it. Since launch, it’s just been another lie sitting in orbit with the other space junk. It’s more, but only for the elite and the need to know. Those that don’t can barely afford the life they live let alone knowing paradise exists circling their very own planet.
He gazes out the smoking hole that just moments ago was a window. There aren’t many signs of the seasons anymore on earth and he wasn't one for capturing pictures, but he wants this to be more than just a simple moment. It makes him feel whimsical, melancholy, sad for a time long gone.
He finds himself watching a little pink blossom floating on the smoke stain breeze that was already browning around the edges, then another explosion shatters the remaining glass out of the control-room windows into tiny shards and the noise makes his ears ring even inside the rocket. Tiny pieces of glass bounce of the porthole.
Another explosion but this one is under him as the rocket does its job just as thousands of people pour through the broken section of wall. Back when Harold was much younger, rioters would wear scarves on their faces, Halloween masks, balaclavas, and hoodie sweatshirts cinched closed in an attempt to remain anonymous. These people didn’t care, their ugly, rage-filled faces weren’t in any system because the system was broken and cities were bubbles of protection only the wealthy could afford. They are done here, and if they survive, they will slink back to their crevices like cockroaches. The mob wields pipes and 2x4’s. He watches one throw a brick that bounces off a kevlar-protected head of one of his black uniform-clad private military personnel. Another throws rocks with horrible aim, but still manages to do some damage. A woman with curly red hair, who looks barefoot and pregnant, whips a section coaxial cable. She catches a guard in the throat, tearing his flesh. The guard reaches up and grabs the injury but fingers alone can do nothing and he falls to his knees, blood spraying. When he goes down, he is pounced on and his weapon is taken and he is shot with the very bullets he loaded into the rail-gun.
The mob isn't coordinated. They are chaos. They are a tornado of violence.
One of his bodyguard team is knocked down screaming as he is dragged out of the destroyed control room and away to face his end.
This was all before the rocket on the elevator activates leaving what was living as corpses smoldering in their bits and pieces.
The launch is like falling a monumental distance and seems to last forever, and at the end of, he finds pitch black.
His body feels tight. He can't breathe. The air around him is cold and damp and hot and choking. Even though he knows what’s happening, he wants to panic. He wants to scream out a reminder that he’s an old man. Then the final rocket punches him free from Earth and the pitch-black is replaced by the brilliant blue of the Atlantic Ocean which dwindles into the horizon and is replaced by the rapidly darkening ring of orbit and finally the multicolored Van Allen radiation belt.
With a puff, gravity tries one last time to keep him down, but knows the powerful pain in his chest signals his time has come.
It was all over in less than one minute.
Maybe he died as he would have wished to have died.
No longer an Earthling.
Something he wanted his whole life that his doctors said he could never have.
And they were right. His heart exploded in his chest moments after leaving orbit.
Oh well.
It's not all that uncommon for an old man to have a heart attack heading into space after narrowly missing mob violence. Most humans wouldn't even have bothered or been able to get this far with a single life.
But not ole Harold.
He was quite the guy.
But if the truth were known, he lived beyond greatness because he cheated. He cheated because he had to because if he hadn’t she would have already won. And a scorched apple tree petal floats in the clean artificial scrubbed air.