The dust was silvery white, the sky pink.
Temperature : 98 degrees C / 208.4 degrees F
He was warned, wandering out in the wasteland was madness. If he ever did return, he would be subjected to a battery of tests which could stretch for a week, plus another week in quarantine. They will not take any chances, even if it is him.
Wasteland ?
This was home.
The ground was never this white, not even in that harsh winter of 1991. The sky was never this way, even with the most beautiful of sunsets. Except this was not sunset, it was like this way, 4 months a year.
There were no landmarks, nothing. It was all wiped away. He couldn't believe the pictures when they finally came in. Three years after the dust storms had settled down enough for the toughest recon bots to be sent out. He didn't believe them. He didn't want to believe. And today he wished, that he had listened to them. At least he could die with his illusions. That at least something survived.
Die ? Could he ever die ?
His parents would scratch their heads. Their relatives, neighbours couldn't believe them. He never fell sick ! His friends called him Superman when they were very small.
His friends.
It would have been better if they had died in the strike. It would have been painless, they would not have suffered. But then it was a strike. Smallpox.
They were so beautiful, so handsome. His best friend, his freckles floored every woman. That smooth operator, how he loved to hate him, even he did not deserve the way he went.
The freckles were covered with the vilest of sores. He went blind before he died, thank God, he was spared the ignominy of ugliness.
It was not easy for the operator, the ladies man. He screamed like mad when he saw himself in the shiny pan. He heard that he stabbed himself to death with the lance used for the sores.
He could have swore the school was here, he checked the co-ordinates. No, it was not the school. It was their hangout.
He remembered the fat jolly man, serving them sundaes, sodas, shakes. He remembered the gang, the laughs, the curses, the crushes, the heartbreaks.
The fat man died of exposure. He was as large hearted as he was fat, volunteering to serve for the affected. He died all alone, sprawled on the broken pavement, the first of many.
He indulged him, despite everything. He did not deserve it.
It's hard wading through sand. Radioactive, corrosive, bio-active sand. He wished he could feel the ground beneath his feet. Except that true ground was hundreds of feet below this sand. And touching it, would kill the last survivor of this once fair city. Could it really kill me ? he thought.
The GPS tracker beeped. The mansion was here ? The home of the richest man in the city ? There was nothing now. Blank. Blank like everything else. He was so rich, it wouldn't touch him, they said.
It didn't, he committed suicide months before the strike. He was bankrupt, losing everything in the sovereign debt crisis of 2011. He did not have the courage to face his employees, his company, his family.
He did not care for the family much anyway.
He wandered aimessly. There was no way to tell the directions apart. Conventional compasses did not work any longer. Not only did we kill each other, we also raped Mother Earth. Destroying her magnetic field. That's when things really went bad.
The tracker beeped again, he looked at the screen. It can't be !
He thought he could go on longer, he could not, he sank to his knees. It was here.
She lived here.
It was on this street that he first saw her, all those years ago. It was love at first sight. For him.
She loved his best friend, and she loved him only as a sister ever can. He was the brother she never had, of the same age, same thoughts, same likes and dislikes.
He would do anything for her, he fought with his best friend for her. She trusted him with everything, confided in him her hopes, fears, joys, sorrows.
He remembered the first time she cooked for him.
He remembered his promise that she would be the first woman he loved. As if he didn't already.
The first he would kiss.
Promises he never kept.
He couldn't save her.
She was not scarred by disease, he pleaded to her to leave before it was too late. They called him a pessimist, a Cassandra of Doom, but he knew. He knew the doom that would come.
She thought he was crazy, but she trusted him. A trust she did not have even in his best friend, who she loved.
She escaped the bio-attack, she could not escape the radiation. It caught her, like it did so many else.
He watched her die. He watched her waste and shrivel to death in a polymer tube. He saw her golden hair turn white in days, her blue eyes turn opaque. Her skin and lips turn white as parchment.
He wished he could die with her, he knew they would not let him.
He wanted to kiss her before it was all over. At least on the cheek, on the forehead. They refused, she was contaminated, a liability. They kept her alive only for him.
At least she knew that he was there by her side. She would smile at him, they talked while she still could, their voices travelling over optical fibres, instead of air. They were only a few feet apart.
He didn't want to live, just one kiss, one touch and he would throw it all away. He would die like her. He did not care. He wished he could tell her how much he loved her.
He didn't have to. She did. Those were the last words she ever spoke.
"I love you, I always did."
She cried and he knew. He wished he could die right then.
She remained mute for a week after that, unable to speak. Losing her sight completely, two days before it was all over.
When he knew she could see him no longer, he muted the microphone and cried. Talking to her and crying. Telling her how sorry he was, how he failed her, how he hurt her.
She knew that he was crying and she did too, shaking her head. It was her way of telling him that it was not his fault. She should have told him sooner. They both remained silent for too long.
Nobody had ever seen him cry, till that day. And he cried for three whole days, and never again.
Her DNA was sequenced and preserved. Maybe her bone marrow and her brain ? They suggested, it would be possible to bring her back one day. They did it on the best scientists of the day, people they needed but who did not survive. They would do it to him too.
He said no. You only love once. There could be no one like her ever again. It was impossible to make someone like her unless she lived in that same city, that same neighbourhood, that same street and house.
No, it was an useless quest. There was no way they would recreate the Dawkins, Hawking, Penrose, Brinn and all the other scientists they planned to. It would be a collossal failure. He knew it but they would not listen.
Enough !
He pressed the homing beacon, it was time to return, he would never come back again.
He never should have. He didn't even keep his real name.
Real name ? The name his best friend gave him is his real name. The name she used for him was his call sign.
"Transport Charlie Three. Prof. Jughead Jones requesting lift off."
"Please Give Call Sign" the mechanical voice chirped.
"Juggie"
"Voice analysis successful. Call Sign accepted. Stand By to embark Prof. Jones."
He looked back at the patch of white sand that was her home one last time before he boarded the transport. Once through the De-Contaminator, he took off the exo-suit and his hands reached for the locket. The only one he wore.
Her DNA.
"I am sorry" he closed his eyes as he struggled to replace the scenes of her last days with what she once was before Dec. 21, 2012.
"I am sorry, Betty. I am sorry."