After years of relentless fighting, a man nearing the end of his life recounts his journey with his commander and lifelong friend, questioning the cost of their fight for freedom. As truths are revealed, a seed of hope is sown for what lies ahead.
The sun was setting, and the deep red color of the winter sky shone through the frozen pebble-like flakes covering the glass window of my heavily modified StormSurge SS-001, blocking my view of the fading light.
What a shame, it couldn’t even snow properly anymore…
Unfocused, my eyes glazed over the lights from the many screens and radars, no longer caring to see the broken transmissions of my fallen comrades or the warning light for the low energy levels. The Tenki battalion had made our last stand in this month of the twenty-third year.
We had done all that we could.
Out of habit, I reached up to my single earphone, sliding the metal from around my ear. Broken plastic and exposed wires protruded from the end, and with shaking hands, I dropped it onto the dashboard. With a long, steady breath, I stared out across the snowy landscape, easing my breath by pressing against the wound at my side.
The damage done to my rig was irreparable. The staticmites had snuck up on me, eating away at the sensitive and intentionally exposed haptic transmitters. It was the only weakness of my machine, and the cunning bots had targeted it when I was too busy to notice.
Still, we had a good run.
Time and time again I had fixed it up, rigging new parts and rewiring new methods to make it run long after anyone had thought it was possible.
I thumped the metal dashboard fondly. We were too broken now. Our minds were willing, but our bodies could no longer endure.
Black luck.
That’s what they called it.
One way or another, it consumed those it chased, following all who tried to make it to freedom. There was no escape. Nothing beyond the horizon but the last desolate remains of a dying world. They had told us what would happen, but still we had to try. Better to die free than to remain holed up waiting for something to change, sitting compliantly under the government’s hand and the hellholes they had created, passing them off as a utopia and the greatest achievement of mankind.
Phlegm coated the back of my throat, and I coughed, trying to dislodge it without causing more discomfort and pain.
“Better to go out in a rain of fire than drown in a sea of false comfort.”
My captain’s words were instilled in me, a philosophy I had carried with me since the day I first met him. It was he who remembered what it was that we were fighting for, what had happened to society, and what it was we sought to restore.
His face appeared blurry in my memories: his gray hair tied back in a ponytail with a slashed metal pocket watch hanging over a ripped and dirty hat. His piercing blue-grey eyes had always had a faraway look to them, as if he were peering at something we could never see.
Briefly, I heard his voice in my mind, taking me back to one of our long-gone conversations...
“The air was so pure, V, you can’t even imagine it. The greens of the trees and the mountain painted such a lovely picture across the sky, and the stars V—they lit up the night sky as far as the eye could see. There was no haze like you see now, only the pure beauty of the land.”
I had sat in wonder at his stories and his descriptions of the land. They were so vivid they had captivated us the very first time he had told us about it. He had told us about the days without the freshtanks, when breathing was not difficult, and the wind blew across the lands like a breath of fresh air.
We had held onto the visions throughout our journey, and often, it was the only thing that sustained us in this desolate wasteland: the hope for a better tomorrow.
A sudden and incessant beeping disturbed my reminiscing, and I reached out to silence the alarm. The heat from the engine had been melting the snow covering my rig, but now that the battery had died, the view of the sky would soon be lost to me.
Maybe it was the loss of blood, but it seemed to me that the sky here was bluer, and the smog was not as thick against the horizon. Chuckling softly to myself, I raised my eyes, admiring the space between the clouds and the bright rays of sunlight where the sky seemed endless.
Had I made it at last?
Holding my breath, I shifted forward, biting my lower lip as the wound in my side stretched, determined to not spend my final moments trapped inside. The blood seemed to have stopped, but it had stuck my tattered clothes to the leather seat. I hesitated, overwhelmed by a rush of sudden sadness. The once vibrant green on my jacket had faded over the years, and even though it was torn and beaten, it was the single possession I cared deeply for.
As children, we had found it fascinating to grind beetles and rocks into powders to paint pictures. When we were older, we used the dye to stain our clothing. The jacket allowed others to recognize us and gave us a sense of belonging. Some named us as part of a resistance because of it—but I had never thought of my involvement as such. It seemed like common sense to fight against the systems that tried to control us and to fight fear with faith that we, as people, were far more capable than we believed.
It was not a resistance but a reason to live.
If we only had this one life to live, what person would give it away based on the words of those who never showed themselves to us? Those who were afraid of going outside the protection of the cities and the freshtanks. How did they know what lay beyond if they never chose to be a part of what they were trying to build?
The only authorities I recognized were the people who walked alongside me.
Those who were willing to risk it all for one last day in the unfiltered sun.
A sudden, guttural cough wracked my body, causing my chest to ache, and the distinct metallic tang to coat the back of my throat. Lifting the back of my hand to my mouth, I wiped away the blood from my lips and pushed back against the seat with my elbow, but my wound remained stuck to the leather.
I leaned my head against the door, reaching my arm forward and pulling the emergency lever. The glass dome inched upward as the pneumatics released a puff of pent-up air. Wedging my fingers in between the glass, I tried to lift my hand, finding the lift jammed.
It had long been an issue with the cockpit of my hopper. Each time we tweaked and fixed it, the door released a few times before getting impossibly stuck again.
“Piece of junk,” I said.
I’d built it myself, modifying the state’s blueprints to create something with increased mobility and power. The government, if you could find someone who would be willing to work on them, didn’t know one end of the cylinder from the other. They cared little about the functionality, desiring to complete the job without considering how it affected the whole of the vehicle. These rigs were once machines of war, to protect us from the “outside dangers”, but as the land continued to die even after their efforts, they stopped taking them out to look for signs of the outside world, growing complacent instead, and the machines were left abandoned, left to gather dust.
At least, the ones we hadn’t stolen had.
I sank back against my chair, hesitant to pry myself from the seat and risk opening my wound again. I licked my cracked lips, trying to moisten them.
“I guess I’ve lived this long without seeing the blue sky…”
My voice was hoarse, tacky from dehydration. All that mattered was that I had seen the blue sky, pure and as vivid as I had always thought it would be—even if it was for just a moment. Hope lived on.
My only regret was that no one else would know.
If I wasn’t too cowardly to rip open the wound at my side and—
A knock on the glass dome startled me from my thoughts. Fingers brushed aside a layer of pelleted snow, and I squinted, trying to make out who it was.
The glass, having become foggy from the temperature in the cab, lifted slightly, and I froze as a crowbar wedged under the glass, maneuvering until the dome shot open after being released.
“I know how much you hate being stuck in small spaces,” my captain said over me. He squatted down and held out his hand. There was dirt across his face, and a patch of blood caked over his right temple, but his silver hair seemed to gleam in the fading sunlight. “Let’s get you out of there.”
I leaned forward. “My blood’s hardened to the seat.”
The captain reached his hand to his toolbelt, pulling out a blade that he switched open. For a second, we were both silent, but after a moment’s hesitation and a slight nod of assent on my part, the captain dropped down into the cockpit and began cutting the worn fabric away from the jacket. When he was finished, he eased his arm under my shoulder, and I gritted my teeth as he helped raise me up. My legs were weak as I put weight on them, but together we managed to step outside of the cockpit, the captain bearing almost all my weight.
Despite our best efforts, the wound at my side became warm, and I shrugged off the captain’s arm, standing on my own so he wouldn’t notice.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the captain said.
I nodded, facing the sun.
The brilliant golden light was accented with crimson clouds on the horizon. Rich and vivid hues of oranges, purples, and blues, were smeared in chalky textures, creating lines that radiated across the great expanse.
The view alone made everything worthwhile.
Warm blood seeped down my leg. Looking over at the captain, his figure seemed to blur. The light from the sun added color to his pale. He was a few years younger than me, maybe six years, maybe more. I had never really asked. It seemed that our roles should have been reversed—that I should have been the one consoling him—but there had always been something about Mireor that made him seem wiser than his years on this earth. There was a collective sense of calm, of wonder and contemplation whenever one was around him.
It was hard to describe with words, but it was warm like the sun.
“Every action has played a part in the end,” Mireor said. “The trees and the songs of these lands will soon return.”
I sank down onto my knees, sitting back onto my heels.
My strength was failing.
The captain said nothing more as he sat beside me, and crossed his legs. We continued to look up at the sky in companionable silence as we bore witness to the moment.
“I remember when I was younger,” I said, a note of longing in my voice. “The feeling of the wind upon my cheeks and the rustling of my hair... I never thought much about those things until the air started to become heavy and the wind stopped. I took for granted that those things would always exist.” A pain of sadness gripped my heart, and for the first time in many months, I allowed myself to grieve. “Whatever happened?”
It was a hopeless question for all the pain we had been through and the meaninglessness behind our actions.
We had done nothing wrong.
One day the world had just stopped.
The wind had ceased to exist, and the air became laden with a poison-like smog. A person could go a few days without visiting the freshtanks, the machines that filtered the air, but any longer than a week away and the detrimental effects of the air would take hold. The freshtanks simulated airflow, allowing a person to revitalize their spirit and to brush off any microscopic particles that had settled upon them from the open sky. Water could not remove the particles in the same way. It had something to do with how the atmosphere was negatively charged and how the poison bonded with a person’s own chemical state.
I knew enough about the theory from my investigations and time with the Tenki battalion.
It was the scientists and the engineers who had come up with the freshtank design, prolonging our lives by creating a workaround to the earth’s natural cycle. They had managed to alter a small perimeter of the atmosphere and remove the negative effects to some degree. It had taken them a decade to develop the process, and after many dedicated years they had produced large-scale freshtanks—enough to protect small cities from the harmful effects. Most people lived within their boundaries. Even a few of my battalion had —at one point— carried with them the small life-altering tanks until they had failed.
Once your body adapted though, once you learned how to cleanse your own body and spirit and how to regulate it through your own means, you tended to distrust the people in charge of new technology who claimed theirs was the only way.
They feared us.
We all knew it.
They were afraid that we had found a way to survive without their technology. They had grown dependent on it, creating a society that revolved like clockwork, and they were unwilling to let that go.
So, where had we gone wrong?
What had happened that we were willing to throw away our freedoms to preserve our lives?
People were capable of more than they believed. We could adapt, adjust to our new circumstances, but people were afraid of change, of placing the weight of their choices upon their own shoulders and taking charge of their own lives. They would rather settle into complacency than struggle on their own.
The singular reason why the Tenki battalion was founded was to find out the truth. To prove that there was another way of life, that we could be independent and restore our freedom and freewill and pursue whatever it was we wanted in life. Over time, we had found others who believed in our cause, some even in the government, though they were often forced to help us in secret.
We were meant to bring back hope to the people.
A new way that they could follow…
I exhaled heavily, watching as the blue sky near the base of the horizon turned a crimson orange. The clouds were spread out in an inverted pyramid, with the large, more rough clouds fanning toward the rising sun. Somehow, it made the sky seem that much bigger.
“If the people could see this, they would fear nothing,” I said.
The captain nodded in agreement. He was always quiet, withdrawn, but at a time like this it seemed like he would have something to say.
“Captain?”
He turned his head slightly. “In time they will come to understand.” Though he was looking at me, his eyes didn’t seem to focus, like he was looking through me at something I could not see. Then, he focused back on me, giving me a small smile. “You’ve done so much for the people. Your explorations, your desires, your legacy—” The captain’s gaze lingered on the wound at my side. “I will make sure that others know of the things you’ve done.”
Tears welled up in my eyes before they rolled down my cheeks. My throat was too constricted to say anything, so I nodded gratefully. Weariness was upon me. I was tired, exhausted from the last ten years of my life.
I had been twenty-one when all this began.
Ten years of constant fighting…
The captain helped me stand and lean against the fallen machine that had become an extension of myself. The metal was cold against my back, but my reaction to it was dull. Somehow, the frigid sensation didn’t seem to matter anymore.
The last rays of light warmed my face, and I closed my eyes.
Despite everything, it had been a good life.
“Will you remind me of the trees and world you envision?” Captain Mireor asked.
His voice was distant, but there was almost a plea to it. He had always been curious about what others imagined the world to be. Few truly remembered—it was one of the effects of the freshtanks. Even though I had been away from the tanks for many years, I, too, did not fully remember what life used to be like, though I had created a vision in its place, a desire for what we were fighting for to endure the darkness.
“There was green, as far as the eye could see,” I said, clearing my raspy throat before continuing. “It was not brown and cracked like it is now, and instead of the dry, unforgiving earth it was damp and nourishing. When you walked barefoot the blades of grass cushioned your feet, dampening any sound as you walked across the earth.”
“And the forests?” Mireor asked, his voice hushed.
“The smell was so pungent,” I said, drawing in a deep breath. The vision in my head was so real that the scent of the bark and damp earth rolled over me. “Can you smell it?” I asked distantly, as if my senses were elongating and my own sense of self was no longer present.
I opened my eyes briefly to look at Mireor, an intensity and softness in his gaze. He had seemed odd when I had first met him, eccentric even, but the sense had faded as I began to know him. There was something unexplainable that drew people to him. Something, otherworldly, as if there was a deep purpose and connection to all he spoke to.
His words—his very presence —was a comfort, and it truly felt as if each of my words carried weight. All that I had experienced and all that I was, mattered.
“The smell of damp wood and the decay of foliage of the forest was always thick in the air. The grasses and the bushes were tall and ran wild like wildflowers. There were birds and animals in the forest, so many that you were certain to catch a glimpse of them. Wild berries were frequent, and they were juicy and sweet.” Vividly I remembered the sweetness on my tongue. “And the sky—the sky was beyond anything you could imagine. When it rained, the sky became a myriad of colors as the light from the sun caught the light and cast rainbows across puddles…”
My breathing slowed, and I opened my eyes one final time, seeing nothing but the sliver of blue sky ahead. A tear escaped my eye, and my vision unfocused.
It was just as the world had been.
“Thank you,” I whispered, a touch of a smile spreading across my face.
***
Captain Mireor reached out his arm, setting his hand upon V’s shoulders as he allowed himself a moment of silence to mourn his friend’s passing. He had lost many in the Tenki battalion—many hopeless fools searching for a world they remembered — but none had been so persistent nor driven as V had been.
And none had taught him what living meant as much as V.
A subtle silver light outlined Mireor’s hands as he removed them from V’s shoulder. In the hours following a person’s death the essence of a person remained in the air—where the soul of a person could be felt. To most there was no change, just a deep and profound awareness and compulsory remembrance of who a person was. It was human nature to grieve the loss of someone close to you, only natural, but beyond the initial human reaction, there existed something much deeper, much more sacred in the period of passing.
Captain Mireor reached into his oversized jacket, into the pocket closest to his chest, and pulled out a small ovoid sphere. He raised it between his thumb and his forefinger, and the light from the fading sun refracted against it, emitting a reddish hue fitting for the death of the once great freedom fighter.
The name that had been given him by the Tenki battalion, “V,” stood for Valiant, alluding to his character. All who met him had been changed for the better; his life had been a gift to these times, a gift of persistence and vision in land where few could see into tomorrow.
The captain turned the ovoid glass slightly, playing with the reflections in the air as the silver light that had outlined his hand began to transmit into the sphere. Like bright stars the memories shimmered around the seed, moving slowly in a kaleidoscope of patterned light. It reminded Mireor of the constellations and galaxies in the night sky. As pure as life itself, the display warmed Mireor’s heart. He was filled with a deep sense of love and hope that a tear came to his eye. The colors, the depths of his memories and the emotions he held for his friends and family…
It was a wonder to behold, and it was the last remaining display of the noble V.
Captain Mireor remained still until the last light infused itself inside the seed. The flesh may have died, but like all he had seen off, Captain Mireor carried them with him. He had a mission. One that had been growing since he had met the Tenki battalion and they had made him their captain.
“In the end, each of you thank me,” Mireor said. “But it is I who should be thanking you. I was born from the desires of your heart, manifesting as one of your kind. I have pieced together the strands of this world, and now that we have reached this place and time, I feel that I have learned all that I can. I will take with me both the joys and the sorrows of the world and begin anew the world that you have envisioned. Though it will not be the same, I hope that I will make you proud in bringing about the next age.”
The words were a parting gift to a dear friend.
Words of explanation he could never express before this time and place.
Captain Mireor was not sad for V’s death, as he knew V himself would have considered his life well-lived. He had found it, the sun, and the blue sky. After all the years he had spent, fighting against those who had cut off his voice and mission. Time and time again V had brought back proof to the people—stories and photographs of the distant places he had been—but the forces in power had never listened.
They thought his work was the effects of a man torn asunder by desperation to escape the lifeless world they had created. They found his work amusing, and the lengths he would go to prove his fallacies seemed fruitless in their eyes.
Most were unconvinced of their worth.
Blindly so.
But after a while, after many missions and after many years of not giving up, he had become a threat. A handful of people began to believe his words, and after this mission, word of the sky he had found would have shaken the very foundation that society had been created upon.
Captain Mireor carried the seed that had absorbed the memories and the dreams of V, Kaze, Ame, Hideri, Mizore and the entire Tenki battalion. He walked for some time, following the last ray of the sun. When he came to the place where the light shone upon the earth, he knelt to the ground, his head bowed over his outstretched hands.
He gazed into the seed, pouring his own memory and perceptions of the world. The stories about what the lands had been like he stretched out, elongated, and weaved together from all the men and women he had walked beside. He filled in the pieces, the gaps in their collective understanding, with his own experiences until there was a firm vision of the coming age.
One filled with the greens of the grasses and the rich lush forests…
Deep meadows and rolling hills…
Bright and warm deserts with flowers blooming from a spring rain…
And a winter sky.
Then Captain Mireor tucked the seed close to his heart and began digging. His fingers scraped against the hard earth, and the crevices of his fingernails became packed with dirt. His fingers began to bleed, but despite the pain, he continued at a steady pace, until he had dug a hole the size of his fist. It was not too deep, but it would be enough.
Tenderly he set the seed down into the earth. The glass surface became cloudy, taking on a greenish hue and morphing into a more ovoid shape. Captain Mireor cupped the loose dirt around the hole, covering the stone he had carried since he had come into this world with the dry and lifeless earth.
Then he placed his hands upon the packed soil and let out a long breath. “Let it be enough for this world to be reborn. Let their visions become reality and allow this world to take on the image of those who have loved it dearly.”
Captain Mireor stood then and stared at the spot for a long while before he turned away. For the seed to thrive it would need sunlight and water. The captain returned to his StormSurge SS-500, fetching the first of the containers of water he had stored. Water was not particularly scarce. There was plenty of it across the lands, but not all of it could be consumed—and only the purest water could be used for this purpose. It had taken a long time, but he was sure that he had gathered enough.
Slowly, he carried a container of water back to the place where he had buried the seed, and unscrewed the lid, tipping over the precious contents into the earth. The water soaked into the earth, and the captain returned to his rig for the night. In the morning he returned, pouring a little more water into the earth. For weeks he continued to tend the seed in the same manner, keeping a close watch on the place, until one day the soil was disturbed, exposing two healthy and strong leaves that fanned out from a green stem.
Captain Mireor knelt to the earth, placing his finger lightly against the tiny sprout and smiled.
“At last, you emerge.”
He dragged his sleeping bag out that night, laying it down next to the small plant. For the next few months, he slept beside it, not venturing far during the daytime. He left only to replenish his supplies—food and water—and after a few months the tiny sprout had become brown at the stem and more leaves had sprouted. Its base looked woody, tree-like, and the captain gazed fondly upon it.
V would have approved.
It was nothing like the plants that were grown in the cities, tended by the freshtanks in controlled and rigid environments. No, this plant was one that had been grown in the natural sunlight, fighting against the wind and harsh environment. Its stem was crooked, and its leaves were imperfect. One even had a small tear in it, most likely from the wind’s force, but the captain had done little to shelter it from the elements. He had learned that the imperfections of people, their rough edges and quirks made them who they were, and so he had allowed the sapling to experience life as it should be. To weather the storm by oneself, to endure and to grow—all these things were necessary.
A year after the tree had been planted, Mireor turned his eyes to the south, back to the capital. After keeping careful watch over the tree, he knew it was strong enough to survive by itself.
It was time to move on.
Thinking deeply about the friends he had lost, a question came to Mireor’s mind, echoing the words of his departed friends. Was it enough? Could the very will and desire of those who had given their life for this tree—for a new way of life and a dream—bring back that which had died? Could the reality of this world be altered?
And what would the consequences of doing so be?
Like tears upon a widow’s grave, it was an expression of love to dull the pain of those that were left: to honor the memory and life of the Tenki members and to carry forward their legacy. What happened beyond that, Captain Mireor did not know. He was born from the desire to rejuvenate the world, to bring about the next age and to restart the lands’ natural cycle of rebirth.
As the sun began to set, the captain kept his eyes skyward until the moment the sun touched the horizon. At precisely that moment a silver light illuminated from the tree. Mireor rested his fingertips upon the tree’s sturdy trunk, feeling a surge of energy flow through him. The feeling soon dissipated, and the silver light shot out from the tree’s trunk. Various hues and colors sprawled across the ground, creating a fractal pattern in the earth. Each one led in a new direction, providing a new course for Mireor to follow.
He would need to sow more.
This tree would become the center point to the land’s renewal, but the sickened earth would require more than one point to begin anew. It would take many years—many battles and fights to come, more experiences and life lessons for Mireor to create the world his friends had envisioned.
In time the tree would produce another seed, a vessel that Mireor would fill in the same manner as the first. He smiled one last time upon the tree, remembering fondly the faces of his friends before he left the last of his memories to the tree. The surge of love he felt whenever he would return to the tree needed no name. He knew there were those who had been precious to him, who have given everything for this mission—that was enough.
Keeping sight of the silver lights that spread out from the tree, he turned and set off across the cracked and dry earth. There were more people for him to meet, more memories and experience for him to share and to collect.
It would not be an easy journey, but little by little it would grow.