Old Wounds
Blue Zone B-2 Housing Unit 212 60th floor
The transparent elevator snaked up the immensely high, pencil like apartment block. And I felt a little dizzy looking down. All civilian housings in the blue zones are constructed likewise, intended on minimizing the ground used. The glassy and flimsy look of these buildings hid the strength and resilience of the ultra-hard composite materials used for their construction. For all buildings in the blue zones were primarily designed to withstand an assault, some apartments even had air defense towers on top of them, but taking comfort into consideration, as these buildings are now the permanent homes of many.
Finally, after a tiring day on the field trip I'm home. Surprisingly, the door locks in these ultramodern apartment blocks is still the old tried-n-true mechanical lock used in the early 21st century.
'Mom! Dad! I'm home,' I sank onto a plastic chair at our dinner table, on which stands the family's evening meal. Steamed 'rice' aka synthetic carbohydrate granules, tofu(artificial peptide and protein clot enriched with animal amino acids) soup with 'the greens' which are synthetic dietary fiber dyed with synthetic chlorophyll, a cheap imitation of vegetables and a few tablets of essential micronutrients.
This table full of plastic food, the toxic green stuff I have been experimenting on during my study, are now standing on my dinner table, all of this plastic food originates from the deadly infestation that is nurturing and killing us at the same time.
A plus though, our family was wealthy enough that the onions and garlic used for soup seasoning were of natural origin, in addition to the dessert fruits.
'Son, how was your day?' my father asked the rhetoric question with a sad tone while my mom let out an audible, worried sigh.
Living with your parents is pretty much the norm after TibWar 2, few people could afford their own flat in the Blue Zones. Pretty much everything and everyone was cramped together in tiny spaces. On the plus side, it did bring families closer together.
'Tiresome as ever', I retorted absentminded while starting to munch away without waiting for anyone to join. My table manners had never been known to be aristocratic.
My dad, now almost 70 and my mom 63 years old, looks like a pair of surreal middle aged dolls. With the world economy fueled by tiberium during and after the first tiberium war, research funding was virtually unlimited and tiberium itself possessed many amazing properties that could be harnessed. Many great leaps forward were made during an after TW2, the need for ever more powerful weapons and the need to cure ever more grievous wounds catalyzed a chain reaction of innovations in science and technology. Tiberium based nanomedicine allowed cellular repair at the molecular level and cybernetic implants are now so advanced that nearly all organs could be either partly or wholly replaced by artificial ones. My parents are now .strictly spoken .cyborgs. Their lungs, kidneys, liver and part of their brain had been replaced by cybernetic implants, The rest of their body cells had been little by little replaced by cultured stem cells. The fresh cells were injected into their aging tissues, replacing the old and dying cells so that the tissue as a whole maintains it's vitality allowing a abnormal live span of undetermined length.
However, the technology wasn't perfect, yet, and as a result people who had used such procedures repeatedly showed a slightly waxy appearance, making them look somewhat like living wax figures. Not a very pretty sight, but still better than that of a dying person.
These types of live extension and modification technology had once been highly controversial, violently opposed by many religious conservative groups. People who underwent such treatments were at times marked for death for defiling the sanctity of the human body. However, such opposition gradually dwindled after a string of scandals were uncovered where religious leaders secretly underwent life extension treatments while calling for holy wars against others who did the same.
I have heard that Nod extensively used such technologies to create super soldiers and they call it divination.
"Son!" My mom hold me in a firm hug, her eyes tearing up "I appeal to you as your mother! Reconsider your choice! I don't what this to become my only memory of you", she nearly cried as she hold up a old faded family portrait. A picture taken inbetween TibWar1 and TibWar2, before I was born, on the old photo were my parents, in their early 30th holding a baby, my brother, an older brother born long before I was born, someone that I had never known in person.
Our family originates from Brazil, or rather, what was once Brazil. My parents were careful to not bring a baby into a war torn world, they waited until well after the Brotherhood of Nod was defeated to have a child, to make sure that their child will grow up in a peaceful and prosperous world, something that was predicted after TibWar1, with Nod defeated, the world was to grow and prosper from the immense wealth brought by the then relatively new tiberium industry.
Both of my parents were academics, Shortly after the birth of their first child, both were invited as visiting professors at California University Ivrine of the then still functional United States. Pressed for time and energy, the newborn child was left in the care of my Grandmother in Sao Paulo.
The Brazilian government was officially a staunch supporter of GDI during the course of the First Tiberium War, however, severe social inequality meant that Nod, with it's vision of unity and brotherhood had an easy time attracting followers amongst the millions living in grinding poverty. Although news of the time refuse to acknowledge it, Nod had nearly uniform support in the favelas. And Rio de Janeiro, with it's many shanty towns, was a stronghold of Nod. GDI was in control of a few of the prosperous city centers but Nod was running the show as a whole.
Even after temple prime was destroyed by GDI's ion cannon and Kane pronounced dead, support for Nod amongst the slumdogs of Rio was high, with many die-hard Nod followers firmly believing Kane lives in death and some even claiming to converse regularly with him in their dreams. Such interviews posted on various tabloid magazines were dismissed as mindless ramble of drug addicts. Five years after TibWar1 Mom and Dad deemed the world a save and prosperous enough place to have a child.
As they were employed in the United States, it happened. Nod arose from the ashes, and proved itself to be frighteningly effective in rallying her supporters worldwide. The millions of desperately poor people in the Rio slums, who were even worse of after much of Rio was devastated during the TibWar1, were delighted that the vision of their messiah was not dead after all and the city turned into a stronghold for General Vega almost overnight. And before my parents could even decide what to do about their newborn baby in Sao Paolo, the word came, Sao Paulo was overrun by Nod forces launched from Rio, the GDI garrison there slaughtered and all contact to the city lost.
My parents were devastated on hearing this and my mother was send to a mental hospital for almost a year. All of the subsequent attempts to find out about what happened to Grandma and their baby proved to be fruitless. To this day, they are still wacked with guilt.
"Mom." I hugged here back and said in a smoothening voice, well as smooth as I managed to. "I promise I'll be fine, there is no real risk involved. I mean, I'm not to be deployed as combat personnel, I'm going there to help clean up tiberium. I have worked with tiberium since graduate school and can handle it safely. Besides, Nod is splintered and Rio is firmly under GDI control. So I cant see what could possibly go wrong".
My mother said nothing, just holding me, afraid that I would be lost forever like her last baby.
"Mom please, I promise I will look for him." I said in a stern voice.
That did the job, and with a loud sigh she said down next to me.
Honestly I don't know if I'm really going to make the effort of finding my older brother once being deployed as a containment engineer with GDI's reclamation task force. Since I never knew him I don't feel the type of attachment that my parents do and by all chances, he is long gone.
"Good luck sweetheart" She said as she pressed me a motherly kiss. "Promise me you return home save!" she said looking me in the eye.
"I promise!"
Our dinner proceeded in silence, me not wanting to steer anxiety in my parents and they too lost in their memories of their lost baby to talk to me.
Finished, I returned to my room, a cramped but cozy narrow 9 square meter walk-in closet style room, situated almost a hundred meters above the ground in this high rise apartment. There were only enough room for a single bed and a nightstand on which my laptop stands, a large GDI logo decorating it's back.
Turning on my laptop, I liked up with the public communcation channel of the GSS Philadelphia, the image of a middle aged man popped up.
"Greetings, how was your day?" My PhD supervisor Doctor Alphonse Giraud asked.
"It was educative" I blurted
Prof Giraud: "Hope you are ready for the challenge, tomorrow is the big day, it's going to be tough in the zones, did you managed to persuade your parents?"
Me: "Well, yeah ahem not really actually .when will you come down? I can't imagine me working in a yellow zone without your help".
Prof Giraud: "Oh, I'll meet you up in a few weeks, we still have a few things to discuss up there, take care until then."
Me: "I will, see you in Rio." I said as I turned off the video link.
Professor Doctor Alphonse Giraud was an experienced scientist in tiberium research and a former associate of Doctor Moebious. He had being researching containment and neutralization of tiberium and tiberium based lifeforms for many years including years of field research experience in red zones with their almost legendary dangers, where GDI reclamation personnel are frequently driven insane, many claming the gaint tiberium monoliths there were talking to them.
And it is an honor for me to have studied under his guidance and now working alongside. Being one of his more promising students, He recommended me as his aid on a new reclamation project initiated by GDI: To rid Rio de Janeiro of tiberium infestation and to restore peace and order to the City.
Right now, he is up on the space station Philadelphia attending a conference, discussing current research results and further plans and technology for fighting the infestation. Unfortunately, I'm not ranked high enough to participate, for I'd love to experience a space travel.
Rio de Janeiro was almost entirely destroyed during the second tiberium war, Nod, when holding the city, deliberately spread tiberium around it to fuel their war machinery, contained by woefully inadequate safety measures. In addition, hundreds of silos containing crudely processed liuqid tiberium were erected. These facilities were destroyed during the GDI counterattack and as a result large areas of the city became contaminated.
When GDI forces finally retook the city, it didn't expect the level of popular anger against them. With a high number of civilian deaths, their city literally in ruins and dangerously contaminated by the deadly infestation and fanned by Nod propaganda, the people of Rio turned anger to towards GDI, who were struggling to contain the tiberium infestation and restore order to the ruins of a once proud city. Peace keeping troopers were dispatched, humanitarian aids were brought in. However, the level of chaos in the city's wreckage and the attacks on GDI peacekeepers by lunatics, marauding gangs and die hard NOD remnants prevented any aid from being effectively distributed and GDI was forced to retreat from the ruins of Rio amidst mounting casualties and lack of progress, abandoning the people there to their fate.
Immediately after GDI's departure, the various factions in Rio turned onto each other, rampaging through the abandoned GDI and NOD bases, anything left behind was scavenged, the locals somehow managed to contain tiberium to an extend with abandoned equipments and set up crude tiberium processing facilities with questionable safety to support themselves.
What order and humanitarian support there was left with GDI, the story of Rio afterwards is unknown, but I shudder at the thought of what might had happened there. In recent years GDI discovered that the violence in what was left of Rio has decreased notably, probably having slaughtered each other, no one was left to keep up the killing.
GDI decided it was now time to salvage what can be salvaged, after all, Rio was one of the largest population centers in the yellow zones, and dispatched it's elite steel talons 502'st legion to pacify the warlords there. Having done that, it is now time for the regular troops and technicians to move in and reestablish some semblance of order and infrastructure.
A flash of light followed by a loud thunder interrupted my thoughts. A whole wall of my room served as the window, outside, the night sky shows the sign of a storm, thundering clouds gathering in the horizon, accompanied by torrential rain. Probably an ion storm originating from the Yellow Zones now covering the entire mid section of what was once the United States. It won't be long before Ion Storm warning is given and the upward facing sonic shield is activated.
I felt a sort of anxiety I never experienced before as I stared at the approaching thunderstorm.. I have lived my whole life in Blue Zone B-2, I have never left it's protective walls, who at times felt like prison wall, but now seems to give me a feeling of safety and warmth that cannot be described in words.
I have never left a Blue Zone before, not even visited another Blue Zone, despite it's cramped nature, GDI had very much managed to create an utopian world within it's walls.
With solid social security fueled by tiberium based economy, there were no such things as slums or poverty. With highly advanced medical technology, virtually all natural disease, including aging, was treatable and losing loved ones to old age was almost unheard of. And despite being a military government, GDI has rigorously enforced it's democratic charter, and political freedom was in many ways better than the nation states that originally created it.
Truth be spoken, there was nothing more a normal person could really wish for. Yet, it is mankind's nature to seek the thrill of danger and I had always felt a little trapped in this nest.
Now all is going to change, all of this is going to change for me, my warm home, my loving family, the safety of this walled paradise. I'm going to leave it for the first time in my live. Sure, I have watched a lot of documentaries, I have been briefed by GDI about my deployment. But none of these seems to give me a solid idea of what to expect now.
It is night now, but I continued to stare at the starless sky, the thunderstorm was now pouring it's cold, raging rain over B-2 Zone. The whole scene was of a surreal one, thousands of lights clouded by a dark sky and misty rain. What will await me, beyond that veil? How will life in the Yellow Zones truly be ..?
Remark:
Okay, I didn't managed to go to the action part now, but I'll turn up the heat for the next Chapter, which will be seen through the eyes of a new character.
Hope you enjoyed this till now.
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