I own nothing related to Terra Nova and I own nothing related to Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I'm just a deranged person who likes to play with other people's creations.
Part One:
Chapter One:
I was born in 2090 in UK occupied Iran. My father was easy going man but a stickler to order and procedure. He was a German citizen born in Edinburgh Scotland. As his father before him was an officer in the Army. He earned his US citizenship shortly after marrying my mother. My father became an officer not because the constant civil unrest that decimated most private sector employment but because he wanted to create more efficient and thus deadly weapons. Unlike so many young people of his time that enlisted, the military was one of very few that offered a steady paycheck. My father didn't lack options in spite of the climbing 49 percent unemployment rate.
When I was three my mother died in the third Anthrax attack on Moscow during the Palestine invasion a cosmic fluke in the lapse of updated vaccination. Aside from warmth in the darkest past nothing of her remains in the hollows of my memory. Still my father devoted, not to the country he served but to the great God of war himself, Ares, carried on. Thus I was transferred and shipped as with the rest of his belongings from deployment to station to base while he went from design table to field test.
Still I grew up relatively happy among his weapons and his benign disinterest in me and my development, despite the fatal rigidity of his rules; an unknowing part of the larger military machine that ground its gears and made the world economies go round. All the skirmishes, operations, and battles lost all meaning long before I was born. War was the booming industry, every country profited.
My education was a well rounded as one could get on a military instillation. My teachers a smiling face on my computer screen as they went through the lessons in some remote city thousands of miles from me. Still I received excellent grades for my mediocre work. My father's name preceded himself; his successes meant tens of thousands of factory jobs. Still I was on perfect terms with both my educators and the few other children around me on base. My average abilities inflated for the sake of the larger scheme.
The days of my youth, as I look back, pass by in a flurry of the darkness of fallout and repetitive tasks per the safety lists that allowed me to reach adulthood. I went off, as expected, to Julliard Military Arts Academy. Where much to my father's surprise I studied environmental history until the second Somali Chinese war started. Then everyone's life was put on hold. So it was my adulthood unfolded before me in the very same way it had for all veterans of my generation.
One night when I was on fire watch we were ambushed. I don't remember much from the attack but I remember waking up in the field hospital with a nurse smiling over me. Upon seeing my eyes flutter open her long lean arms checked the dilation of my pupils. Then her small child-like hands checked my pulse just before ripping the IV out of my arm. That would best describe her, fragile looking and tiny but packed a hell of a punch.
Iyanni.
She was unlike anyone I had ever met. While she was well aware of the atrocities that were around her, it was like they could never touch her. She was a late in life child of a trio of politicals. Using part of her water ration to grow roses in her bunk. Her idea of joining the military was the way she could reach as many people in need as possible. Perpetually optimistic, she was the embodiment of everything good left in the world with a titanium core. She was the perfect juxtaposition of worldly and realistic with the naiveté of a sheltered girl.
As the action died down into regular comfortable battles, operations, and the occasional maneuver the prospect of spending the rest of what statistically should have been my short life with her was irresistible. Our lives fell into a quiet routine. Our son born a few years later was an unexpected joy. With the over population we had decided to not have children. The faulty birth control was a blessing in disguise.
Our son grew well and went to university and studied mathematics and biological technology. Though I'm loath to say I did treat him with the same disinterest my father showed my. Though Iyanni influence permeated his entire character. All of his best and virtuous parts came solely from her. I couldn't be prouder of him.
Lucas was so strong when the rebels stormed the city. Because of his quick thinking most of the children were able to flee the city. When they lined him up with the rest of the civilians they had worked him over but he stood tall like a man next to his mother. When the rebel leader announced that each of my men could only save one person… When you marry and live in a war zone you have conversations that you otherwise wouldn't have. Iyanni told me if it ever came down to her or Lucas, I better pick Lucas. She told me that a mind like his was rare and it was my job to ensure that he lived up to his potential.
I stood by helpless as the love of my life and best friend was murdered in front of me. When I looked at my son I saw something inside of him freeze. When those bastards had pulled from Iyanni the very last bit of life they killed my boy too. All that was left in the world that was good, pure, and kind died with my family that night.
The unnecessary years that followed were peppered with terse interactions with my son and near suicidal missions. Those missions propelled an already respectable military career into a legendary one. That legend was the reason I was chosen to be the first through the portal, the commander of Terra Nova. Truth be told I went because I had heard through a few channels that my son was due to lead one of the research groups.
Those first four months alone before the first wave settlers followed solidified my resolve that this colony would work. No matter what. As I walked through the dense jungle setting up stakes where the first buildings would be, I saw that this truly was humanities only hope for survival. This hope slowly gave me back my will to live.
My son came out on the second wave.
Soon after he arrived my hopes of repairing out relationship were dashed. He began to question the ethics of changing another timeline's past. Entering deeper and deeper into his research, he was rarely seen outside his lab. His grasp on reality began to slip also. Soon he was just… Gone.
The only thing I have left is some scrawling on rocks…
During his decline, what I believe push him over the edge, was the outbreak of Sincylillic Fever. Even paradise isn't without its struggles. That disease the mixed blessing in itself, we lost so many good people so quickly but without it I would have never gotten to get close to Skye.
Perhaps if I hadn't experienced such loss at such a young age or if I hadn't grown up in an environment where the decimation of my human man was so highly valued or the quick loss of my wife and the slow loss of my son I would have been immune to Skye's charm, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering charm that separated her from the average girl. I tried my best. I want it known by who ever reads this in the future that Nathanial Taylor was a good man. Weak, but a good man.