Pioneers

We lingered around the maple tree for as long as the flames provided heat. The glow flickered out just as night descended upon us, and with it, the impending cold. Most of the city's infrastructure was in disarray, the result of a well executed attack and hastily built pipes, sewers, and pumping stations. Redundancy and  quality construction were not part of the civil engineer's plan, focusing instead on efficiency and low-cost. Our little colony world would pay for that in the coming hours.

We walked away from that tree, instinctively moving towards what was left of our apartment building, but walking there without purpose. We shuffled and plodded, slow steps without precision or focus. There seemed little reason for haste when our next move, a ticket off our planet, was outside of our control.

I looked down without intention at a pile of rubble. Lying there was a seemingly pristine copy of one of Harrison's Pioneers series. I read them as a boy, engrossed in Harrison's words which never failed to paint a vivid picture of the early settlers' life. It wasn't until years later that I found out that many of these vivid images were a mere fiction, that what he had described as a wild west in space was more filled with disease, failure, and missing ships than anyone wanted to admit. Before the invasion, we felt we were lucky to be alive in a time when such struggles were behind us.

"Lisa! Adrian! There you are," yelled a voice in the dark. I snapped out of shadows from my boyhood and looked up. There was Peter, breathing hard but a smile on his face. He was always someone who found a way to look at the bright side and I was glad to see him. While I loved my conversations with Lisa, I sure as hell did not want to spend my last hours home only waxing philosophical.

"Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you. Sam and Vick found some vodka. Come on, we're all back at the center drinking." With that Peter, waved us on, signaling us back to the one remaining intact building. Vitality and joy for life in his eyes he yelled again, "Hurry up! You lazy asses aren't going to make me miss out on the last booze we may ever drink on this planet."

Lisa looked back at me. For the first time we both seemed snapped back to our weird reality. I lifted an eye and smiled ever so slightly.

"After you," I said pushing Lisa on.

What do you want?

She looked over at me with an annoyed glare and asked, "What is it that you really want?"

"I want all of us to get out of this alive," I repeated the response I had stayed firm in since the beginning. Though even I will admit, this time it felt more like a scripted response than a genuine thought.

"Bullshit. What do you really want? Everyone is selfish when it comes down to it. Accept that truth man. This isn't a bad thing, it's just the reality. So what do you really want? What is it that lives outside of this do-gooder persona you try so hard to take on?"

I didn't know how to respond. I felt I was a mature 22 years old, but I realized I had never given this basic question much thought. What do I want, I repeated in my head. What do I want?

I sat there thinking, Lisa by my side, for what seemed like an eternity. I looked up at the sky, now thick and blackened with plumes of smoke. We were 46 hours into the evacuation of our city. Most of the wealthy bought their way out weeks ago. They had heard all of the reports, they knew what was coming, so they ran with all the expediency possible on our small fringe world.

The rest of us had to wait. We had to wait along with the other 4 million people left on the planet. We were waiting on a lottery system, constantly praying your number would be called for the next 30,000 person barge ship could take you away off the planet. I waited pondering Lisa's question, what do I really want?

I waited even as the initial salvo of fire bombs had disrupted much of our basic infrastructure. Word was that within the next 72 hours, the full fleet would be here and those still left on the planet were likely to be trapped in the fire storm. I watched a burning building in the distance finally collapse into itself. The flames crept, then leaped onto an old maple tree standing indefensibly next to the building. It was quickly engulfed in the red and orange glow of heat, the branches snapping and wilting in the flames.

Lisa looked back at me and asked again, now sounding lost in her own thoughts, "So Adrian. What is it that you want?"