After a stressful week, driving around the city streets: Freedom! That’s what Peter longed for. A whole day free, as if his day off was a dose of morphine. It was just him and his mother, Dona Rosa, sixty-two years old, religious, short and determined. This warrior had always been present in Pedro’s life, even more so after his father abandoned them when Pedro was a child.
The poor lady worked almost all her life in two jobs to support him. Pedro was always a good and educated boy who unfortunately interrupted his studies to take care of his mother.
After the discovery of cancer, she found herself like an incarcerated prisoner who was paroled from jail. All because of the chemotherapy she was undergoing three times a week, during hours of suffering in the sessions, always in the Urca Hospital, one of the most crowded in Rio de Janeiro.
One afternoon, before going hiking, Pedro took a nap, dreaming that he was seeing the earth from space, poor mortal, he thought, the phone rang several times, Pedro woke up scared.
-Hello, hello, Mom?
-Hi son,” answered Rosa, hoping to see her son and spend the afternoon talking to him.
-I’ll be there around 4 o’clock, I’m going on a hike and then we’ll spend the afternoon together, okay?
-Of course my son, stay with God and be vigilant, vigilance was a term that his mother used to say every time she went to say goodbye to her son.
Pedro caught the 007 bus from Central do Brasil, it took 20 minutes to arrive, he checked everything on the way: water, food, a book and other accessories, when he arrived in Urca, a safe place, since it was a military area, Pedro got his cell phone and checked his messages.
- Be careful, drink water and always be vigilant, his mother said.
-Ok Mom, kisses
On the way up the trail was empty, Pedro began to imagine things and travel in his thoughts about the world.
-At this very moment someone is dying, thinks Pedro, who looks at his watch, it’s 2:36 pm, the time of death of some person in the world,
-And if I could amplify the sound, could I hear my eyes opening and closing?
Peter decides to eat an apple while on the trail and listens to the sound of his own mouth chewing the food and imagines the apple being digested as it descends into his stomach, and tries mentally to follow the apple into his body.
-Apple, apple, the cause of death of Snow White, where are you going to end up? his mother didn’t know his thoughts or his love for Lady Death and at the same time the fascination of life.
Peter is faced with a thought, common to many he has had
- The apple is coming down and will be digested by the stomach,
How do we know what the stomach looks like?
-Why do we imagine the whole digestive process with everything working? clearly? there is no light inside the human body, the whole digestive process and all the processes are done in complete darkness, isn’t it?
-Pedro laughs in the corner of his mouth after reaching the entrance to the trail and finally starts to climb, for those who have been to Urca, it is a trail like any other, the problem is the height and size of the very low concrete railing that exists to protect you from death.
Nobody expects someone to jump on the rocks and explode into the water, from the rocks to the water there is no safe distance, first you crawl and roll to the rocks and then, if you survive, you fall into the water and the waves keep hitting you endlessly, as if you were a serial killer giving incessant stabs.
Pedro puts his cell phone away, starts to climb and puts it on airplane mode, without disturbances, while walking he thinks about his mother, his life, and the time he has to return, while he sees the landscape and takes a deep breath.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
-And to think that death is there, beyond this wall, where would I go? heaven? hell? would I die feeling pain? Well, it’s not good to think about these things, after all, when the time comes, you have to go, we are in a line, puppets of fate and chance.
-Peter thinks about getting there faster, starts running so he can take advantage of the time and see his mother, looks at a rock ahead and as always plays mind games, he thinks:
-If I jump over that rock and reach the other one as I have done several times before, my mother will leave the hospital, and jumps
-Here we go, shouts Pedro
- Silence, a second, a thousandth, and there is no reaction, as he jumps from one stone to the other that is further down, he doesn’t see the surface of the stone, a big splinter almost half of it is in the sea, stepping wrongly hitting hard on the side, breaking his shoulder, tearing ithis flesh, an agonizing pain shoots up and Peter falls into the sea with a broken shoulder, his first measure is to try to swim e……
- Stupid, you fool, he thinks as he tries to swim with a broken shoulder a pain increases that since he thought it couldn’t get any worse, I imagine death must be laughing in his face at this moment, minutes ago he was joking, now it is death that has him in its hand, are the possibilities already starting to cross his mind? Heaven or hell?
-Mom? your mom can’t help you imagine Peter, as if it were a whisper from the angel of death in his ear.
-My life, my things, my motorcycle
The waves begin to crash, his pain only grows, crashing against the rocks, he can only think of pain, heal the pain and save himself, until with the little energy he has left he decides to swim with one hand, with no response, again the waves crash him against the rock wall.
Cold water, blood, hostile thoughts, angels, demons and one word comes to his mind, watch, his mind goes blank, Peter thinks about the last thing he had read a week ago, about the 5 stages of death, do you want me to explain?
Denial, which Peter was going through, when things go wrong, when someone dies, when you repeatedly say,
-No, no, no, no, no. The second stage is anger,
-so many bad people in the world, the third is bargaining,
-”If I stop curing cancer, I won’t smoke anymore.
-If I cure my leg, I’ll never drink soda again.
In the fourth stage of depression, sadness for the rest of your life, if there is anything left, or try some joy until you leave this body.
The fifth stage is acceptance, you accept that you are screwed, that you are going to die even if you say goodbye to those who still love you, if you have been an asshole in your life, who knows if you are lucky and your mother will be on your side, sometimes not even that.
-Pedro imagines tears coming out of his eyes, but in the water, impossible, he realizes he is on the verge of fainting and surrenders to the tide, thinking he has a few more minutes to live and realizes something that his mind makes his eyes wonder, even on the verge of death, his arm shines
- What the F$%$$% is this? he shouts in thought, his wrist starts to shine in a Code 205878, the brightness gains intensity and he no longer feels pain, he wonders what is happening, and realizes his body is being sucked, all blown up like a piece of shit down the toilet,
-It’s over, he judges by his current state, I feel no more pain,
-Where am I? -Heavenly heaven, hell: purgatory
Good evening, Peter? a voice on the bass, Peter opens his eyes
-Where am I? Which hospital? Please tell my mother, she begs desperately, she thinks to herself
-Thank God I’m fine, I had one more chance, thank you sir, he barely thanks and the doctor answers his question
-You are in CORE-05
-What is that? -think, I’ve never heard of it, what hospital is that?
-He looks around, Peter stops looking at the face of the man in white in front of him, holograms and artificial screens glow on the walls, looking like one of the Iron Man movies.
-What is this place?
-This is CORE05 and the Orbital Reconnaissance Center 05, you came from a simulated reality, your code is 205878 your simulation gave an error and we are repairing it.
-What simulation? -Get me out of here.
-Why am I tied up, and where am I really? asked Peter, who felt like a puppet after the words came out of his mouth, and thought dozens of times that he has seen these dialogues in movies, eating popcorn in the comfort of his home, madly imagining that someone must be watching them now on a PC screen or on the TV in his house.
-You are in 2058, the earth as you know it no longer serves as an abode, we are one of the few stations left, millions of people died in a solar explosion, which devastated life on the planet.
-But what about my mother? asks Peter when he already knows the answer, his crying grows and tears flow from his eyes, in a twist of fate, Peter thinks
- I was dead and my mother alive ten minutes ago, now I’m safe, my mother dead, just like my father and all the others.
-Your father, he gave his place away, he did favors we can’t mention here, he paid a high price for his place in this station.
-But what now? Where do we go? One last question, wanting to know how your life will be.
-We are going to new worlds, we baptized this station as “New Horizon”, your father told us that you were special, and left you this, the doctor stretches out his hand and hands over a blue Formula 1 cart, which Peter remembers winning when he was small, and that you were one of the most incredible people he had ever met and would help us in this new journey.