Why Worry About What Hasn't Happened Yet? Pt. 1

 Why Worry About What Hasn't Happened Yet?

Act 1: A Half-Remembered Tomorrow

The memory is hazy, like the sunrise over Modesto when we reached the refugee camp. The mission had been a success, but somewhere between blowing up the BFR’s fortified cabin and running through the bunker’s escape tunnel we seemed to have slipped from the year 2000 to 2038 anno domini. Someone is going to tell me you don't get used to it, but I think I have.

The air tastes like ash and ozone, it’s hard to breathe. The situation is disorienting. A well-armed rabble calling themselves the Constitutional Forces are regrouping in Modesto to join their allies in an offensive on Sacramento. Imperial Russian VDV are parachuting from Il-76s along I-5 to disrupt the advance. A nine-pointed red sun on the black flag of Tsan Chan flutters over burnt crops. It flutters next to the American flag at checkpoints and aid distribution centers where they scan people’s retinas and take DNA samples. They’re working with the Connies to smash unsanctioned radios and screens.

Abandoned cars near abandoned farm towns are still running, doors left open, radios emitting static from jamming frequencies come too late to stop the Signal. The nearby bodies of the mass suicide are evidence of this.

The Signal? The Message! This is when Bhrunt ran off too. Broadcasting the Message as a weapon for the Russians. The little girl said we’d get him in the 4^th Battle of Sacramento during the 3^rd American Civil War. It baffled me at the time, but I understand now. Everything the other one I summoned has come to pass, and so will this.

“Keep your copy close.” I step away from my team into a ruined store front and open the little red copy of the King in Yellow the police officer on horseback gave me in June. Typeface is slightly off; the raised letters spell out that Bhrunt is broadcasting from the MacClellen airport. This bit of advice was worth my class ring.

A little more than a day’s walk from Modesto to Sacramento, avoiding I-5. Parts of it looks like Highway 80 between Kuwait City and Basra. It’s hard to breathe. The winds from the south blow in black smoke from the burning oilfields around Bakersfield. The winds from the east, those few that manage to clear the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, bring grit and dust from the desertified Great Plains. The winds from the north bring smoke from the conflagration consuming Yuba City and surrounding areas. No one speaking English seems to know what’s happening there, just that it’s burning and the air forces of either Imperial Russia or Tsan-Chan, or perhaps both, are flying constant bombing runs over it. Lots of talk about white phosphorous being deployed. Only the wind from the west, from the Pacific, brings any relief. The west is supposed to be Buné’s cardinal direction, so it makes sense in a way, Just as it fits that Vassago’s cardinal direction is North.

 The sky is reddened by all the particulates.

But why do I remember everything being in blue/green light?

We were approaching the southern outskirts of Sacramento from the east when it happened, but where exactly we were I couldn’t tell you. The vantage point we were on was…elevated. The stern face of a Byzantine Christ on a massive flag flying from the back of some advanced variant of a T-90 covered in multi-pronged spikes. Lead position of a small mechanized column moving through the ruins. Infantry on either side. Proper combined arms.

A figure emerges from the rubble. 7ft tall, thin, pale, androgynous in a grey Mao suit. The HE round is a direct hit, but the Russians infantry are already panicking. It should have been made into paste, but as the dust settles the things is…uncoiling itself, razor thin strands shoot forwards and suddenly the T-90s engine is on fire, its gun cleanly sliced in half. Christ scowls at the scene from the flag.

Screams, gun fire, men torn to shreds. One is impaled, lifted into the air still writhing in pain before 8, maybe 10 or more strands burst from him in all directions, killing more of his friends while practically bursting the man’s torso apart in a shower of gore.

One of them is screaming “Havana! Havana!” at a trooper with this bulky apparatus on his back. He pulls out what looks like a large TV remote wire to the device on his back and points it at the monster serenely slaughtering his unit. The thing immediately shudders, its form shifting wildly like its losing control. It thrashes about wildly while shrieking with a child’s voice. The soldier is too close, and one of the flailing razor filaments disembowels him.

As he falls, his device swings in our direction. Then I hear it. I feel it. My eyes are vibrating, my vision blurs, my teeth feel like they’re going to shatter, my nose gushes blood, all sense of balance is lost. Then, everything goes black.

Addendum:
Some point of view fiction I wrote up on a lark. Consider this a prequel to Fin's Play Report here.

I'm considering an Act 2 and 3.