How Did It Come To This? (Prologue/rewrite)
Author's Note
Yea. This is my first fic so please, have mercy on me :P The story really starts up next chapter. Also you may or may not have noticed, but this is a rewrite of chapter 1 and 2. I wasn’t happy with how they turned out so I rewrote them here :) Oh and if you leave a dislike, please tell me why so I can fix it! The next chapter is coming out tomorrow :P
How Did It Come To This? (Prologue/rewrite)
How did it come to this? How did the musky sent of fresh apples in the morning turn to screams of terror, emitted from lungs full of toxic fumes as they took their last breath. The world burning around them. How did the cheerful laugh of foals turn to desperate screams for their loved ones? How did sound of chatter on the streets in Manehattan be suddenly drowned out by the rumble of falling buildings. The roar of the hungry flames, snapping at the very tips of your soul? How did the clatter of hooves turn to rumbling and squeaking. How did the the beat of my heart fall silent? How did summer solstice celebration turn from shouts of delite, to an ear splitting echo? But most importantly, how did the world get so loud? And when did it get so quiet?
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The gun cracked like shattered glass, and kicked like a feral beast, gnawing away at its chains. There was a blinding flash, a gleam of the crosshares before the world dissolved into echos and sounds of a thousand varieties. The round glided through the air, seemingly immortal to the burden of time, slowing to take in all and stopping for none. Gradually, the echos faded. The world rushed back in an blast of invisible sound. The mind reeled, thoughts swarming into it, stunning it with a thousand feelings, pulling in all directions, bickering over the other for control. Those thoughts were everything, all its hopes, dreams, and desires. All crammed into an infinitely small box. Into an infinity large moment. The thoughts bickered, fighting for control, they tore, they teared. They scraped away the mind. There was crying. There was tears. There was yearning, confusion, shock. There was every feeling in the world. And then, there was nothing. There was peace. Nowhere To Go.
Tim’s eyes awoke in a instant. He clutched his blankets, as if they were the only thing keeping him from descending into the abyss of madness below. His heart pounded in his chest, demanding to be set free from its organic prison. His brow was streaming with sweat, like an eternal waterfall, falling into the void below.
Grunting, Tim sat up, wiping away the sweat with his blanket. All around him where white walls. The windows to his soul. They radiated nothing. They were just there, existing. Simply a background that flashed in and out of existence. Tim trudged over to his locker. It sat there, awaiting him with eternal vigilance. Opening its doors silently, the locker presented Tim with his required form of clothing. It was a standard crew suit, it’s coat fresh and pristine white, devoid of all colors, just like his soul. Tim stood there, gazing at it, simply looking at it, the fresh new suit, a fresh new day, oblivious to horrors of yesterday. Grasping the suit with both hands, Tim held it up to his face, looking for any trace of color, even the tiniest speck of grime. He found nothing.
With the suit on, Tim walked down the ships corridor, Heading to the mess hall. He kept his face down, eyes at his feet. He liked it that way. People wouldn’t ask questions. Ahead it lied, doors open and inviting the masses to gorge themselves of all the bland vitamin packs they could find. It was designed to accommodate 5,000. Inside, there was only 3,000. Tim slowly trudged over to his table, or rather the assigned one for his platoon. He sat down quietly, face devoid of all, slipping in undetected. Even surrounded by his fellow squad mates, he still felt alone, in the spiraling staircase of his mind, there was no up and down, only fall. Where there should have been grins and laughs, hollering and hooting, there was grim expressions, and eyes devoid of will. They became lost, these men. Lost in the very homes they created, lost in their very souls. 667. 667 deaths. 667 souls burned and flayed. 1334 eyes with no will, only the churning abyss of death and despair plastered across their glassy and pale pupils, mouth stuck in an eternal, silent scream.
Up at the head of the tables, walking slowly among them, is the brigade commander, commander Hatfield. His eyes are misty and grey, his feet shuffle in an unorderly fashion. His shirt is loose and ruffled. Large bags hang under his eyes. He has not slept for days. The pain is evident in his dark, downcast eyes. Everyday he gets news of another death, another casualty. They all compile, in the hundreds and thousands, from every corner of the known galaxy. For him it’s not just a statistic, it’s something more. He tried to keep our spirits up, he tried, he really did. But in the end, he like all of us succumbed not to the plague that bangs on our doors, but the one within our hearts, lurking in the deepest and darkest corners. An wide canyon that consumes all, no matter the size.
Tim continued to Gnaw on his protein bar. It tasted like a blank slate, just like the world around him, the polar opposite of the pang of emotions he got in his dreams, the ones that stalk him in the day, and devour him at night.
The commander Hatfield makes a move. He walks toward the podium located at the head of the room, his legs jiggle slightly as he walks sliding across the floor lazily, his sleep deprived mind barely registering it. He stands up on the podium, poster sagging, restless and fluttering eyes travel across the remainder of his men. He clears his throat into the mike that has been set before him. Tim and the crew snaps out of their stubbier, heads swinging toward him as if a teacher calls for them, to the deflated, mindless husk of a crew of a once great ship. He presents his rather poorly drafted and presented speech. His restless mouth stuttered, often the words that would have once inspired great patriotisme come out as hollow husks, dismissed as words of the deaf and blind. Because ultimately, we weren’t being lead by the brave and heroic, but the deaf and blind.
“The crew got some radio chatter today. Were joining up with the rest of what remains of our fractured hearts, of our tattered souls, the rubble of a once great union,” wrote Tim in his journal. It had been an hour since the speech. Tim was back in his personal quarter, back in his very own, personal prison. A place that kept life from entering, but kept the darkest depths of his soul. It was suffocating him, drowning him in all the pain of the past, the worries of the future, and the void of today and the demons lurking in the dark.
Humanity was building a new roof over its head, a grand new structure of defiance. The ultimate escape of the ages and beyond. It would brush the brinks of the known world, create a new home for humanity, spell its legacy out into the stars. But, what if it all comes crashing down? Who would be left to rebuild? What if there’s nobody left to rebuild? What if there’s no humanity left to rebuild? Would we scream defiance till the very end? Or would we simply take our last breath and await judgement? Either way, when we die, may it be tomorrow or a hundred years from now, it would be just a tiny blip in a universe of echoes, sound, and carnage. And then, silence. An infinite void of silence, a place where there is no reason to care and no reason to exist. A kingdom built upon an endless plain of silence in all directions, a place with no pain, a place with no care, a place with no sound. An eternal void, an eternal utopia.
