by P. S. Power
She gasped.
"Alan! I..."
He waited for her to freak out. To insist that she contact the matriarchy and send him back right then, to protect him.
Instead he was wrapped up in a big and rather tight hug.
"I didn't recognize you! You look... Fantastic. Even after all of this. I'd heard you'd vanished. We all assumed that you were dead by now. Why did you leave? To hide what..." Then she waved at him, indicating his lean and tall form. A very different thing than the vast majority of the men she'd grown up with. Most of them just got sick and died before they were twenty.
"No. In fact I told the matriarchy about how to do it before I left. Some of the other men, too. It was the rest of you that made me leave, not any secrets. You know how you all are..." He stopped and patted her arm back. A thing that should have made her bristle, but she didn't. "How the rest of them are, I mean. They can just barely see men at all. You're doing better than that. Is that because of Jake?"
That got another blush.
"Yeah. I... Sort of have a crush on him. I have for a while now. I think that human girl Colleen is going to get him, though. The Prophet Heather told me that. I couldn't... It's what you said. How we all are? I couldn't stand that he wanted me without me giving him permission to first, or just telling him that he was mine. So I wasn't all that nice to him. I missed my chance there, didn't I? I hope he's okay."
Alan nodded.
"Me too. I bet he is though. Now, crush on The Very Good Man or not, I think that we need to get that wood crew up for tomorrow. So, tonight... You're bed or mine?"
He kept waiting for her to snap at him, or tell him to leave her alone, but instead she took his arm and linked her own through it. That got more than a few people in the living room to watch them. Smiling.
"Mine. I have a great bed. It used to be Jake's. I stole it when he moved out a few months back. If he comes back here he'll sleep with Vickie and Colleen, so it's not a problem." She sounded nearly warm when she said it all.
It wasn't perfect, perhaps, but he nodded. He might not trust her that much yet, but there had been no treating him like he wasn't as good as she was once she realized his identity. That was a promising sign.
Almost as if she were a mind reader, instead of a Prophet, Heather walked up then, little Hope in her arms.
She looked at them both and shrugged, then handed the baby to Carley as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Jake will be back in a few weeks. Then... After that, he'll be gone." She sounded off, and looked away, her make-up free face more than a little pale.
Carley winced and started to tear up, but Heather didn't seem to notice, looking at Alan instead. Closely. Actually leaning in to look at him. Then she went on tiptoe and kissed him gently on the lips. It was a dry thing, but warm and done well enough he noticed it.
"He'll be here still. Don't worry. He'll just be Mickey again. It was who he was always supposed to be. Later, a long time from now, he'll be Jake again. The world will insist on it. I don't know what happens after that. Until then, I think you both will really like him. He played for you. At your wedding. That was really good cake. Make sure to get the extra-large one. A lot of people came. More than you expected."
Then, for some reason, she kissed him again.
"This is fun. Most of the people here treat me like I'm insane, you know. You actually let me kiss you. Every time. Even when you're married. You're okay with it too, Carley. At least now that I said this, you will be. With sex too. I can't back that one up, but I'm just throwing it out there, in case that ever seems like something I want."
Then, taking her child back, who was a shining ball of love in an otherwise quiet and dark place, she wandered off.
Laughing a little, he turned to Carley, "I guess we're getting married then? Nice of her to let us know in advance. If that's the case I should tell you... I'm not going back. If you want me, you'll need to live on the outside. Tell the others that I'm just some Human man. It's the only way that I can stay free."
Rather than bristle or even smile, she just watched Heather's back. The insane Prophet was rarely wrong, after all.
"I guess. I really hadn't expected that one. Probably why she dumped it on us now. Okay. I get to take you out for a test drive though. If you're bad in bed, the deal's off."
He smiled then, and nodded.
"Funny. I was just thinking the same about you."
Then, for the first time he could remember, everyone in the room there laughed. Loudly.
Then congratulated them both.
It wasn't what he'd expected, and he was still reeling a bit, but it might work. If not, then... Well, the Prophet had told them it happened, so it most likely would.
Squeezing the woman's arm a bit, he decided to just play things by ear from then on. It would let him feel better about things that way. As if he had a say in them.
Not that people ever really did.
Then, together, they went and tried to get a crew for the next day. There was wood to gather after all, and Jake would be back in a few weeks.
Almost as if it were something planned, Carley leaned over and whispered in his ear.
"I knew it was you. I knew it from the first day you came here. I just didn't think you remembered me. You acted like you didn't."
Without answering he kept walking, and so did she. Their arms intertwined for a long time.
Passing Things- Mickey Robson
It was, Mickey knew, past time for him to leave the life he'd created for himself and Colleen. That part was going to be hard. Leaving his friend. The woman that he'd spent his life with. His love. One of many, but the truest that he'd ever had, regardless of anything else.
What he had planned, his going away from the world, had nothing to do with her however. She was great. A brilliant and shining point of light that sparkled in the sun. All of his friends were. They were all there for him, and had never left him alone. They sought his council, advice and kind thoughts, and had for over a hundred years.
It also wasn't about him being too tired to go on. Looking in the reflective field that was painted onto his bedroom wall and activated at the moment, he noticed, not for the first time, that he was perfect now. Oh, not the best looking person in existence, his nose still being too big for that, but lean and youthful, thanks to modern technology. He looked as young as he had back then.
When the undead had been forced on the world, nearly killing them all.
The only difference was that now he wasn't raw boned and mainly starved. It had taken a bit of effort, given his playing and work schedule, but he'd managed to keep in shape pretty well over the last hundred years. Resistance work and nearly daily running. It was important for people to remember that not everything should be done via shortcut. Some things were valuable in life because they were hard.
So, the point wasn't that he was too old for this stuff anymore. He felt fine.
Good even.
It was about his friends though, in the end. Them, and Hope Morley.
She was a hundred years old, ran the Ruling Council in all but name... and people kept coming to him behind her back, to find out what they should really be doing. He was only a hundred and twenty-three. They were practically the same age now. She was a brilliant woman. Strong, good hearted and powerful. Besides, no one should have been all that baffled about his thoughts, should they?
As if it was that hard to work out what he was going to tell them to do?
Be good to one another. Work together, and fight against being selfish or petty.
It really wasn't all that hard, was it? Oh, sure, doing it could be a problem from time to time, but they didn't need him to repeat the same simple list of suggestions six times a week. Really, his being there was slowly crippling them. Putting them into a position to be dependant.
That was why he had to leave.
It was tempting to pack his things up first. To make the job of taking care of the remains of his
life simple for his wife. His love. Doing that would be the same as telling the world what he was really doing though, wasn't it? Short of actually killing himself, or setting things up to make it so that he died in truth, that kind of thing couldn't be allowed.
His soul ached for a moment, knowing the pain that his actions would cause. They were the right thing to do for most of the people in the world, but a few would take real damage from it. That wasn't a thing that Mickey could actually do though, was it? Let even a few people be hurt. Not even for the good of the whole.
No, for that he needed to become someone else. A part of himself that he hadn't even thought about in more than passing for nearly fifty years.
Jake.
Jake could see to the greater good. He would do it, no matter how much it hurt inside. There was, of course, strength in love. Power in friendship and compassion.
Sometimes it helped to just be a bit of a badass though. That was the part of his being that Mickey needed to remember now. That bit of hardness. A thing that was willing to do whatever was needed, to protect those around him. So that they could survive.
Closing his eyes, he tried to summon that part of himself, tears falling the whole time, not knowing if that was even a thing that could happen after so long. His neural pattern had been well set to being what he'd become, after all. A font of love, compassion and music. He'd been nothing else for so long that he didn't know if Jake would be a thing anymore. Especially since the problem he was facing was so... Abstract.
If a Z tried to eat his face, then it might work, but just because the world needed to move on now? Was that really enough to call the man from the depths of his mind? It was needed though, and that would be enough. The understanding flooded over him as he stood there, breathing hard.
He stayed there for a long time, unmoving, struggling to think of another way to get things done. A better way, that would be less... Painful. There were some, of course. Things that could be done that would cause less discomfort for everyone.
Skolu would help him fake his death, he didn't doubt. She wouldn't even ask too many questions about why he had to leave. The woman had remained hard over the last hundred years, unlike most of the others.
Really, that was a good point. She ran the Outer Worlds Exploration Corps now, which meant she had unrestricted access to the needed equipment. With her help he could leave, and simply walk into a new place. Perhaps an alternate Earth that could actually use a person like him? One that was a bit too optimistic most days, and would remind others to love one another? There had to be a place that could use the skills of a person like that, didn't there?
That, or someplace empty. He could work with that as well. If he had to suffer a bit, be lonely and lament the loss of his life so that everyone else could go on and become stronger, he could.
The raw truth was, that they didn't need him anymore. Not really. They never truly did. Even Colleen might well be better off with someone else. He loved her, and she him. That wasn't in doubt, but the truth was that being attached to him was a trial. It pretty much had to be. As much of one as it would have been for her to be with an abusive or mean person. It was different of course, but he only had three notes now, as far as his personality went. Love, compassion, and kindness.
Sometimes she just wanted to argue a point, or get a reaction. She didn't yell at him, but she'd get so quiet that her glare was an almost physical thing. He'd just smile at her and tell her that he loved her. It was true, but that didn't mean she wouldn't be better off with a normal person. One that had something approaching range that way. A person that could be more interesting and put some spark back into her life.
Of course, he was also rationalizing, he knew. Trying to make it all right, somehow, for him to leave his beloved after all this time. It wasn't. He was going to cause pain, and knew it. There was simply no other way. Well, short of killing himself for real, but nothing inside his being would allow that to happen. The closest he'd ever come that way had been as Jake, and that had taken massive loads of depressants to bring about.
Tessa Roland had seen to that for him. Trying to bring about the death of all humanity. Lois. A person that had also been his friend, after a fashion. Now that was clear to him, though it surely hadn't been at the time. She'd been acting out of fear, and a desire to not lose everything. It had worked, in the end. Not to the old Technologists' calculations, but all that death and terror really had gotten the climate back under control.
For a moment he wondered if Jake could come out at all, given the lack of the drugs that had been used back then without his knowledge, to make him feel low energy and depressed. It was counter to what he was now. To what he'd always been. For a long time now he'd felt good. Happy.
He still did.
His darling wife, looking as cute as always, walked into the room smoothly. Most of the people that had survived over the years since that long ago time moved well. It was part practice, and a tiny bit of advanced medical technology keeping them all young and strong. He turned and smiled at her, not even letting his sadness show. That got him hugged, which happened three or four times a day.
When he spoke, he told only part of the truth. It was a lie, if by omission, which ripped at his mind. He didn't lie well. Really, he never had. Even Jake hadn't. Not even to save lives.
At least he didn't remember ever having managed it.
"Hey love. I was just going to go to the central store and check the list there on the board." It was a thing that he'd put up in town, to make certain that anyone that needed help could get it.
Most of the things were minor enough. Lonely people would ask for a friend, and he'd go and visit with them. That, or at times people would ask for support with a larger project. Once a man had needed help with his husband, who'd become abusive. They were both survivors of the event, which led to real physical fights, each nearly lethal, even though they loved each other.
That had been hard, since the best thing for them both was to not be together. Even though there had been real love involved. They'd gotten treatment for their issues and nearly two decades later had been able to reconcile.
His wife just nodded at him, her face a bit wry looking suddenly.
"Mickey..." She looked at him hard for a bit, and finally shook her head, looking more confused than he'd seen her in nearly a century. "Or... No. What's wrong?" Her eyes locked on his, blue and scared looking suddenly. "Why are you here, Jake? Are we... Under attack?"
Without hesitating she went to the closet and reached behind the frame on the left hand side. It caused a panel to move to the side smoothly, at the back. It was about two feet by three, and had fit very well. He'd noticed it before, since wood working was a hobby of his, but had never needed to mention it.
Really he just figured that was where she hid her secret sex toys. Not that she needed to, but some people were shy about things like that. Even with their partners. That, or it was a secret shrine to Derrick Holsom. She'd loved him once, after all.
It was neither of those things, he saw now. No, it was an array of illegal weapons instead. Firearms and particle beam weapons mainly, by the look of them. Two lasers as well, but those weren't very efficient when it came to actually killing. Good for blinding people though, if they didn't know it was coming.
His tiny partner scrambled for a bit, and came out with a sonic rifle, the flat white end of the thing looking strange to him. Jake remembered his nine, and the forty-five. Rifles... And on some level he knew this one too, but not how he had the information. Mickey, that part of him, certainly hadn't gone out of his way to learn about it, had he?
Somewhere along the way the information had been given to him anyway, and Jake had squirreled it away. Hiding it for some time in the far future when he might be needed.
"It's not that kind of a threat, Col. Mickey... I, have just been noticing that people aren't moving on and growing anymore. They have a nice Very Good Man sized safety net, and are relying on me too much. So I have to g
o away. I'm... going to have an accident on the way to the store. Not a real one. I have a bio-replicant blank in the car, and filled out a do not resuscitate order ten years back or so. No personality on the bio-bot, since I don't want it to feel any pain, but I've rewired the electronic impulse drive on the vehicle to overload in a way that should look right. The whole thing will go up in a hot blaze. There will be no sign of brain activity or anything like that for the replicant when it's over. It isn't perfect, but if I'm gone, not here anymore, I don't think people will try to claim it was anything except an accident. I don't want anyone blamed for it, after all. This just has to be finished now. It's time for the Very Good Man to die and let the world move on without him."
That got his wife, who didn't have a violent bone in her body, to point the stun weapon at him.
"And you weren't going to take me with you? You weren't even going to tell me about it? That hardly seems like you." There were narrowed eyes, but no asking about what he meant in regards as to why it had to happen.
Because Colleen was intelligent, and had seen that part of it for herself. She was more intelligent than he was, about most things. More practical, too.
Jake shrugged.
"You deserve a real life. I don't know where I'm going, or how long it will take, but this world doesn't need me now. Dragging you into that wouldn't be fair."
That was so clear he didn't have to explain what he meant at least. She knew that she was loved. For a moment he expected her to cry and beg him not to do it. Maybe threaten to shoot him if he didn't agree to take her along.
Instead she let her mouth quirk at the edges. It was freaking adorable. For a brief moment Jake wondered why he'd liked her sister better than her when they were children. Rachel had been a good enough person, but Colleen had shone, even back then. He wrote it off to the fickleness of youth. There was really no better explanation that he knew of.
A thing that he would have seen eventually, if a certain Technologist hadn't been hitting him with nano clouds of depression inducing hormones, no doubt.