Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't file a lawsuit against me....I bite...grrrs
A/N: I hate to conform to the Wyoming misconception that the wonderful people at Fox seem to have (Gillette and thus Manticore is a hell of a long way from any forest...actually, Yellowstone is the closest). However, grudgingly, I set this in the...Oh God...I can't say it...okay...I can do this *grits teeth* woods...outside...Manticore.
A/N #2: The kind of image I'm trying really hard to capture in this comes from a Robert Frost poem you've probably all read at some point or another called Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (see poem at bottom) This one actually turned out pretty short...oh well.
Restless
Part 4: Lydecker
Lydecker looked up at the vast, unending Wyoming sky through a roof of downy covered branches. He'd never been particularly fond of snow or woods in his youth, but as age wore on him and sleep became more and more elusive, he found solace in them with increasing frequency.
The large, crispy flakes clung to the sharp evergreen needles, weighting down the tree branches and making the entire forest seem to weep.
Lydecker would have wept if he thought it would have done him any good.
Manticore was collapsing around him, and he didn't know what to do to save his project. Following the death of his wife and his drinking problem, Manticore had become everything to him. The children -- his children -- and the objective were all that mattered.
As his boots crunched through the freshly fallen snow, he could almost see them running in his mind. They were young then, barefoot and dressed in dull, gray smocks. They were careful to keep everything a depressive grayish blue. Bright colors inspired feelings that didn't belong in the minds of Manticore soldiers. Occasionally they would use red for anger, but even that wasn't encouraged.
They weren't supposed to be able to get away.
Raking his fingers through his short, blonde hair he continued through the achingly quiet woods. Nothing around him stirred and only the sound of his lungs dragging in the below zero air disrupted his thoughts. As he huffed out, his breath froze and clouded around him.
He'd been places in his time where a person could breath out and watch the essence of their life freeze and shatter on the ground -- Wyoming winters didn't bother him.
No, what really bothered him was that his own creation was outwitting him. As close as he was to recapturing the lost X-5's, they continued to evade him. At times, he cajoled himself by attributing their brilliance at escape and evade maneuvers to his own teaching abilities. They were the prefect soldiers, they only needed to be harnessed.
They can't run forever.
His relationship with the X-5's was a strange one. They weren't quite people to him, and he could easily watch the weaker ones die in their training. Culling was all-together different from hunting. Lydecker couldn't stand to see his efforts wasted by having his progeny gunned down in the streets of some dusty, broken city. No, he'd rather fix the problem then erase it.
They were like the cattle that still roamed across the Wyoming country side. When the pulse had hit, most of the farmers lost everything. People couldn't afford to buy their beef and their investments had disappeared. A good number of ranchers tore down their fences and abandoned their livestock all together, creating a small, weak wild cow population.
Like the ranchers, Lydecker had put a good portion of his life into his charges. He could withstand sending his "cattle" to the slaughter, but having his herd destroyed was something he couldn't stand for.
Manticore wanted to wipe the radical X-5's off the Earth, ridding themselves of the mistake.
Zack, Jondy, Zane, Max...they were all still out there, waiting to be found. In the meantime, Lydecker found himself back in the pristine backcountry of a largely forgotten state, desperately searching for a means toward sleep. There was little left of Wyoming after the pulse, with an economy based so heavily in agriculture and tourism each city slowly began to fold in upon itself, most of the people choosing to move to more populated areas in search of jobs.
The emptiness suited Lydecker just fine.
Manticore was mere miles from a World War II internment camp for the Japanese called Heart Mountain. When searching for a place to base Manticore, the imprisoned people's description of the area came hauntingly back to him. The vast, unending nothingness had a way of eating at a person's soul, bearing all the things societal webs tried so adamantly to hide. It was oppressive, frightening, and somehow even enlightening at the same time.
Yet, all the space to wander and think brought Donald Lydecker no sense of peace. He wouldn't have peace, not truly, until all of the escaped X-5's were found and reprogrammed.
Someday, they'll slip up...and I'll finally be able to rest.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
By: Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.