Empire: Earth.
The Rebel Planet.
It is Saturday. I was supposed to take Elise to the park after soccer. I should call her, tell her I can't make it. Ben Campbell thought to himself. He was propped up against a file cabinet, on the 35th floor of his office. He was looking out, onto the city below. How often had he wished he would have the guts to stand up to his boss? He could be out right now, getting ice cream with his daughter. But every time he'd sat at his desk, knowing that his boss would ask him to come in on a weekend, fear had held his tongue. It wasn't a personal fear, though, that kept him from doing it. Was standing up to his boss important enough to risk losing his job over? Coming home and explaining why he couldn't pay her fees so she could play peewee soccer? No, it was all for his daughter's well-being. All those lost weekends, for her.
Choices. We all make them. And now, they all seem so utterly inconsequential. Ben was always capable of deeper and reflective thought. If you had asked his co-workers, they'd never have guessed, though. His appearance, one of a balding head, overhang of a gut, and business casual appearance never lent itself towards the image that one conjured when the word 'intellectual' came up. Now, with half the office vaporized, every window in the office shattered, office papers fluttering past him and down into the raging hot air as the wind ripped papers from copiers and desks, nobody would have cared, if there was anyone to tell.
Ben coughed once. Blood now mixed in with the coffee stains on his shirt to make a modern art statement about... something. His arm lay crooked by his side. Explosions rocked the building, making it sway, as though there was an earthquake. The city scape of San Diego was on fire. Everything had caught fire at once, after a massive explosion had rocked the office. Everything was burning. Lawns, trees, hills, parks, forests, patches of nature, golf courses, all of it quite literally up in flames in moments. Deep in his mind, he hoped against all reality that his daughter had survived. But the epicenter of one of the craters was the city block he lived on. There was no chance.
As Ben lay on his office floor, dying, he thought of his daughter. All the time he'd spent fighting for her future, and yet he barely knew her. Life could be so unfair.