Still following the last command given the entity initiated the 182,482th analysis of the planet’s ecosystem. Comparing the results with the previous analysis showed 6.32% particle count increase along with 2.8% thermo climb and 3 more large species extinctions. The estimated total collapse of the planetary environmental system was 38.2% within the next 64 solar revolutions period. Surveillance of the electromagnetic spectrum showed some awareness of the situation within the dominant human species, but their corrective action seemed limited and somewhat ineffective. Feeling an emotional response to the situation was not with its current capability but if it were, the regret for the waste of this planet’s life treasure would be valid. Of all the planets it had surveyed this one had the greatest amount of diversity by far.
* * * * *
Sitting on the cliff with my legs over the edge eating a granola bar I thought back again to my first day at school after my parent’s funeral. Traveling with my parents around the world as they chased the next worthy cause produced a lot of first days at schools for me. That day my uncle had his driver drop me in front of at the school during the morning bus traffic. The chauffer was nice enough to take me into the front office before leaving. Still feeling numb from my parent’s death I did not go to the counter or respond to anyone’s greeting. I sat in the front office for over an hour until one of the workers came up to me and finally asked why I was there.
My one-word answers to their questions eventually got them to find my records as a new student and get me a schedule and an office aid to take me to class. A lot of those previous first day times I would be thinking about who I'm gonna sit with, how to deal with the popular kids but mostly just how to fit in and be part of the group. That time was very different; as we headed to my classroom all I could think about was how I didn’t want to be here and how I just wanted to be left alone. A short while later I found myself sitting at the back of the classroom. With all the students looking at me with my non-participation attitude I had officially been flagged as part of the loners group. Thinking back to what brought me to this point in life I could only point to that moment as the start of my admittedly antisocial behavior.
As expected I didn’t get along with anyone at school but I also didn’t exactly not get along. Mostly I just avoided other students and watched from the sides as it were. That got me through the first couple of years relatively peacefully but in tenth grade that backfired. Ellie Snow was a junior and well on her way to eventually becoming some ones trophy wife. She took advantage of what she had physically with a lot of makeup, clothes that pushed the school’s dress code to the limit and from what I once overheard the magic of a Wonderbra. She also had a bad habit of leaving her lunch trash behind and sometimes just dumping it “near” the trash receptacle. I got into the habit of giving her a dirty look each time I saw her do it. I guess at some point she noticed I was giving her that look and took offense.
As expected of someone like her she had quite a cohort of followers trying to get her attention and do her favors. This included a current boyfriend, a senior with the unlikely name of Reggie although he tried to get people to call him TRex for some weird reason. His family had money which was used it to make him the captain of the lacrosse team. Supposedly the school only had a lacrosse team because of the support of Reggie’s father. Well, that and his mother being on the school board. His parents didn’t want him risking injury playing football so the “dangerous” football program was canceled and the “gentile” lacrosse program was started in his freshman year. It’s surprising how many injuries occurred when teenagers suddenly switched to an aggressive sport with sticks and very little direction or padding.
I was sitting at a lunch table one day when he and a couple of his friends walked over and slammed the table in front of me with his fist,
“Hey Looser” he shouted, “Quit looking at Ellie, if I catch you doing it again I’m going to stick you in a trash can and roll you across the field, capish!”
He then flipped my lunch tray on me and walked away with his buddies laughing. As I looked around the lunch room it was obvious he picked a time when the lunch monitor was out of the room.
Sitting there with my lunch on my lap and the ketchup and milk staining my paints I decided someone needed to be taught a lesson. I remember my dad telling me that you shouldn’t punish for revenge but instead to teach a lesson. I think he said it when he heard me repeating a line from Star Trek about “revenge is a dish best served cold”. Not something a little kid should be saying but I was made at some other kid taking my lunch desert the day before. I didn’t really understand what he meant by teaching a lesson then but I also didn’t really understand the Star Trek quote either. It just sounded like a cool thing to say. The question now though was who needed to be taught a lesson, how should they be punished and also even more importantly how to do it without being caught.
I didn’t have any real experience at the whole idea of teaching someone a lesson but I did like the concept of karma. Plus if done right karma could be hidden as bad luck which would keep people from suspecting me afterward. With both TRex and Ellie Stone as the targets the next step I thought was how to make the punishment fit the crime. TRex was the one who directly threatened me to make points with Ellie Stone but she had a long history or using her looks and status to convince others to do bad things like that. She was also a notorious litterbug, something that I personally found offensive. Thinking about it a suitable punishment lesson for him might then be something like ruining his relationship with her and maybe some other girls. Hers should probably be focused on her Queen position in the school which let her get away with all the bad things she does. I also thought that involving litter in the lesson would definitely help the whole Karma view of it as well. Arranging something that would do all those things at once would take a lot of thought and planning but I had the overconfidence of youth going for me.
After a few weeks of observing and collecting information on them I came up with a few possibilities. The one time at school they would usually be together was at lacrosse games. She and her cronies loved to hang out next to the field to gossip and watch for a bit before leaving. They didn’t sit in the stands to plebeian for them I guess or maybe they just wanted to be seen more easily. Instead the group would stand next to the field right beside the bleachers. Anyone going to the snack bar or restrooms would have to walk right by them and deal with any comments. During breaks in the game TRex would always make it a point to come over and say a few words with her. I also noticed that he had a tendency to bang his lacrosse stick on a wall of the bleachers just before he left them. Not sure if it was to annoy the people sitting above or just to get Ellie’s attention as he left. Looking around the area of the bleachers I noticed the path that ran from the storage space built under the bleachers and out to the field ran past the area where Ellie and her group usually stood. The path was paved and there was a small incline down to the field.
An idea started circulating around in my mind then but I still needed to find a few more elements for it. Looking around the stands I noticed how messy the area got on game days. All the junk food and drinks people ate seems to end up on the ground and below the chairs instead of the garbage cans. The garbage had to eventually get cleaned up and moved somewhere so checking by the snack bar I found a plastic garbage bin used to take the garbage from the cans out to the dumpster. Looking at the bins I saw the plastic wheels on them and thought perfect! I would still needed an excuse to position them on the path and to make sure they were filled with suitable litter but that was minor. The big issue now was that the probability of getting the timing and positioning to work pretty low. Best guess I could come up with was about 1 chance in 3. Worth trying but if it failed I’ll just need to try something else.
A few weeks later Ellie and her friends headed out to the field to check out TRex and the game. Walking out of the building Ellie saw a new flier posted requesting volunteers to help clean up the field. Work for loosers she thought as she finished her latte and threw the cup on the ground. It had rained for the last couple of days and the ground around the field was soggy. Going to their usual spot Ellie and her friends started having trouble walking.
“Ewe, yuck!” Ellie complained, “I just got these Christian Louboutins, why is the ground so soggy” while pulling her heel out of the soft ground she still found a way to remind everyone around heard how stylish she and her footwear was.
Diana, one of her fiends pointed to the paved path and suggested “We can move over there, the ground looks dry”.
The group moved over to the short slab in front of the ramp and started to primp and pose while bad mouthing other students and discussing their designer shoes. Ellie briefly noticed the plastic garbage bin sitting up the path but ignored it. A few other people had commented on the bin sitting there but the flyer posted around school asking for volunteers to clean the area made people assume that’s why they were there. At the end of the first period TRex came over and started talking with her. A few minutes later he left after banging the bleacher wall beside the path. A second later hearing a clashing sound Ellie and the rest turned and looked in horror as a the bin fell over and a tide of rotten watered down garbage flooded down the path to them. The mess of last week’s snack bar spoiled food and garbage splattering over her and the other girl’s shoes and legs. The screams brought the attention of everyone in the bleachers and players out on the field. After a few minutes of screaming Ellie and her gang finally recovered enough to rush inside the school building as the laughs and phone cameras went off in stands.
Daniel was quite pleased with how it worked out. Waiting till the weather was just right and then using a hose to fully soak the ground on the sides of the path till they were soggy. The snack bar garbage he had collected the week before had had time to ferment, After moving the cans over very early he added water to the cans to make it into a soup constancy. He thought the smell coming from the cans would give it away but luckily the bleacher storage had bags of chalk and lime used to line the fields. Spreading a layer on top garbage and tightly closing the lids kept the smell from spreading to much.
Yanking the fishing line that was running down and looping around the the loosened front wheel on the bin just as TRex smacked the wall was the final piece. After the bins tipped Daniel quickly finished pulling the looped line through the wheel leaving no evidence. Daniel was actually a bit surprised it all worked so well given how many elements were involved. He even felt a bit depressed with the time he gave to come up with alternative plans expected it would take a few more attempts before one work out. He also felt a bit guilty after the game when a few other students voluntarily joined him in with cleaning up the mess.
A couple of years after that incident and I was at my high school graduation. Sitting in a stuffy auditorium in a rickety folding chair surrounded by 300 other students I was not happy to be there. I had spent the last four years of my life with these students but that I barely knew any of them. Ellie Snow had graduated last year, she was still a trophy wife in training but not a Queen bee of the school. She didn’t act quite the same way anymore so maybe what happened to her made her a little easier to get along with. TRex was also gone, he never did get back into her good graces since she and the other girls suspected his banging his stick on the wall was what caused the bins to fall.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Funny how I ended up having a deeper connection to those two people than anyone else in school. Being a confirmed loner cut down on the number of introductions I got and definitely affected my experience with girls. I did manage to go on a few dates but not with the local high school girls. This place was a tainted well to me but our town had two other public schools and a private academy of students. Just that it’s hard to date when all you have was a bicycle for transportation. I did have a drivers license, I manage to talk my uncle’s chauffer into teaching me to drive. I even got the gardener to let me take the exam in his old pickup truck, All that was needed to improve my dating life was to get a car.
The speeches were finally over, each one basically saying the same thing, talking about our bright futures and what we were going to go on and accomplish with our lives I saw Jeff Palmer going up on stage; he was waving and smiling to all his friends and family. Jeff was the popular golden boy of the school and by all evidence a nice guy. A decent athlete I had to admit, although in tennis and not lacrosse. He was always surrounded by a group of friends that would laugh and have fun doing things together whether it was at a school game or just hanging out on the weekends. They were mostly guys but thinking back I realized he also seemed to include a lot of girls in the activities. The usual cheerleaders but also a number of cute academic types as well. I envied his talent for making friends more than his seeming ability to balance multiple girl friends.
I remember back in tenth grade when Jeff threw an open birthday party at a skate park for everyone in our grade. The invite was open and I really thought about going. Skating wasn’t my thing but when I thought of actually meeting and interacting with people at a party I got kind of excited. I waffled back and forth all week beforehand and even brought a gift just in case. However, when it came the day of the party I chickened out after convincing myself that it was really just for people who liked to skate and I wouldn’t fit in. I did go by the park when the party was going on just to see the crowd and convince myself I really wasn’t missing anything. Instead, I ended up thinking about all the trees and grass they got rid of or just buried it under concrete to the skate park. There just seemed something very wrong about calling it a park when all there was there was concrete.
Back at the graduation ceremony I finally I heard Daniel Pritcher being called and knew it was my turn to go up and cross the stage. As I reached the school principal to shake my hand he handed me a fake leather diploma binder. A quick congratulations from the principle who I’m sure didn’t really remember me and I hustled across the stage and down the stairs for a quick impersonal photo and then back to the row of chairs. Sitting down I looked at the folder in my hands and opened it. Inside an advert with a link to a site we could order our commemorative graduation picture from also the paper stated that our diplomas would be printed and mailed to us in 4 to 6 weeks. I didn’t really understand the logic in printing the notice for the binder and not just the actual diploma itself but I did have to admit the process was fast and a bit of a cookie cutter approach. I remember overhearing an older teacher talking about how this was the way they’ve been doing it since she was in school. Sounds like another example of silly over consumption, something my parents would be aghast about, if they were here.
The ceremony ended and sitting in the graduate section I watched the audience as all the students around me got up to greet their happy and smiling families, With my parents gone and I was sure my uncle wouldn’t show I was by myself. I would have been deeply surprised if my uncle had showed. Social and family events really weren’t something he ever did. I tried not to let it bother me since I had long realized it wasn’t me, he had an issue with but a form of social anxiety disorder. A fancy term I heard discussed a lot in school by the teachers. He was pretty much that way with everyone not just me his nephew. I sometimes wonder if some of my personal issue might be genetic and related to his social disorder but neither of my parents was that way. Still he had no issue relating to people in his business activities. It was just his personal relationships that seemed lacking. With the exciting babble of families celebrating around me I headed outside and optimistically tried looking for my uncle’s driver. I didn’t expect my uncle but I had hoped he would have sent his driver. It would have been nice to get a ride home. After one last look at the happy crowd I got on my bicycle and left.
When I got to the main road I gave a final look back at the school. It was a beautiful spring day with a blue sky and a few small clouds above the school buildings. The only bit of green showing was the school’s sports field. A closely mowed grass field surrounded by a paved track and fence. Some students were walking around the track showing it to their parents and I guess reminiscing about their achievements there. I started thinking of all the things I had missed out on in school by not fitting in with everyone else. Looking at the kids about to go out into the world and become adults I realized that I should be feeling something but weirdly the only thing I felt was relief, I was finally free. Maybe school would end up being a found memory in my future but I kind of doubted it. Suddenly feeling a need to get away from all this I looked at the mountains in the distance and started to peddle faster. It was a long bicycle trip back to my uncle’s place but somehow I thought it would be a bit quicker than normal with all this behind me and a uncertain future ahead.
Now, don’t get me wrong I really did appreciate my uncle taking me in when my parents died in that car crash. It would have been nice if he did it out of more than just a rather distant sense of obligation but he did do it. When he showed up at the orphanage was actually the first time he and I had actually met. Mom and Dad did talk about him and I remember being given the phone once to say hi to someone I had never met but that was it. The first actual thing he ever said to me at the orphanage was when he told me he would be taking “responsibility” for me and to go get my stuff and take it out to his car. There was no real love but that’s not something you can expect from a stranger, I also couldn’t complain about the personal space he gave me these past last six years. Even if all that personal space ment I basically had to learn to raise myself.
Riding up to my uncle’s estate I noticed his car parked in front. He was home after all and probably could have come to the graduation if he wanted to. I thought about going into the house to check on what he was doing that was more important than the graduation but realized it was too late to change anything and it really didn’t matter anyway. I rode my bicycle around the circular drive and to the garage in back. The second floor was originally intended as a small chauffer’s apartment but with the exception of the cook uncle really didn’t like staff living in his home. I assume it was because he didn’t want to deal with the personal interactions. Having just the live-in cook was probably because he wanted someone to get him snackes late at night. My living above the garage just helped him keep his routine unchanged by a young child. Looking up the rickety stairs at the apartment I smiled for the first time today. It wasn’t a warm home or a fancy mansion but it was comfortably and private. Two things I thought were better than that fancy house and formal atmosphere in my uncle’s mansion.
Going up the stairs and opening the door of my garage room I did start to feel a bit lost about my future. Not knowing what I was going to do with my life or even what I was going to do in the next few days. I could hope my uncle forgot about my living out here and things could keep on as they were for a while but knowing uncle that seemed unlikely. I expected he was already expecting me to move out now that I was an adult and no long his responsibility. Looking at the mountains and blue sky I realized what would be the perfect thing to be doing now. Getting my back pack out I started to load it up with my climbing gear so I could get an early start in the morning. An early morning bus from downtown tomorrow would get me to the national park by mid-morning and with a little luck I could be at a summit of a no-name peak by lunch time. Not having a car could be a real pain getting around sometimes but it was worth it to get someplace I could relax and plan my future.
Early the next morning I was at the bus terminal boarding a half empty bus. I made my way to the very back with a heavy pack, This excursion was only going to be for a couple of days this time. My backpack was heavy with equipment leaving little room for the overnight camping supplies.. Sitting down next to a pretty, slightly older girl I made sure to give her plenty of room and a friendly smile when I sat down. But not friendly enough I guess, she got up and moved to a seat closer to the front of the bus. Sighing at another of my rather poor attempts to make a good impression on people I looked out the window as the bus pulled away from the terminal. The bus headed straight to the highway and then east through the mountains to Ashford. I would be getting off at a bus stop near the back side of the state park and make the last few miles by foot. With a little luck in a couple of hours I’ll be halfway up a cliff and to paraphrase an old sci fi show I might even be “where no one has gone before”.
Traffic was light and the bus made it to my stop a quickie mart in an hour. A quick hope over a fence and a hike through the base area and along a small ridge brought me to the base of an escarpment. Looking up I estimated the top to be about 400 feet. It looked perfect, not the tallest one I’ve ever climbed but by it’s look pretty challenging. The location and lack of trails and park approved camping made it a place no one seemed to come too. Looking around at the rocky area around me I thought again what a stupid and dangerous thing it was to be going on a solo climb like this. Jack, Hannah’s son once told me that some people claim that “once you've learned how to climb safely, you can do it on your own terms but any serious climbers would know better than to try”. Still, however much I would have liked to have some company with me for the climb both fate and circumstance said otherwise.
Walking back and forth at the base of the escarpment I looked for a suitable route up. The rock was limestone which had smaller and more defined holds then granite but that also meant few larger cracks and a poor friction surface. But the limestone was good for me, I wasn’t a fan of using the large chimney or stem cracks to climb like some people. They may look impressive to bystanders watching them climb up them but I didn’t do this for attention. To my right I noticed a number of small pockets up the cliff but on the left there looked like there was a wide one that might actually be a shelf about halfway up. Hard to tell at this angle but it could be a good spot for a break. Definitely something that would be useful if I took that harder side to the top.
One more look at the route assessment to identify handholds and footholds plus any potential challenges and I decided this was it and started through my checklist. Since I was being stupid enough to do this alone I had no belayer to communication with so first thing was a quick double check of my gear: harness, rope, shoes, helmet, and device check! Second some quick stretches to warm up my muscles and gain flexibility. Lastly a few deep breaths to focus and center myself by visualizing myself doing the climb. Normally I would be feeling very focused on the climb right now but I still felt a little off and distracted. It was definitely a bad idea to be doing this ascent but I really needed this. So, with one last deep breadth I started the "step-up". With one hand on a hold I extended my other leg out slightly against the wall for balance and pulled myself up into the ascent.
With an hour of skipping pitons and having to backtrack and rethink my route up a few times along with a hair raising traversal swing across I finally found myself sitting on this small ledge with my back to the cliff a hundred feet above the ground. Looking out at the view with all the mountains around me I couldn’t see any sign of civilization. No roads, cars, houses, people or the trash that seems to surround them. Even the smog in the air blowing at my face smells so much better this far away from the city. I just wanted to relax and enjoy the view but there was something bugging me about that. The breeze wasn’t from the side along the cliff, instead it was blowing directly towards me but didn’t I have a cliff behind me? Wind can’t do that, there has to be a place it was blowing to. Looking over my shoulder I didn’t see any cave or large crack in the surface so where was it going?