Awakening
Page 77
*
Jolted out of his horrid recollections, Kingston awoke to a pitch-black world. It was still early morning, judging from the sliver of light peeking over the horizon to the east. The frigid air had yet to be warmed by the rising sun, and the cold had firmly embedded itself in Kingston’s old bones. Every breath formed a cloud of vapour, which at least confirmed that he was still alive if nothing else. Reaching up to wipe his face, he was unsurprised to feel moisture on his cheeks. What was surprising was the sensation of wetness on his forehead, which proved to be a droplet of blood from a small cut. It was hardly serious, but it was proof that he had not escaped the crash unscathed.
Although he had slid in and out of conscious during their escape from Carçus, Kingston was able to remember enough in order to figure out what must have happened. He slowly sat up, truly seeing his surroundings for the first time. He appeared to be in a large desert, stretching on for as far as he could tell. He had been lying on an elevated slab of rock, and noted that such formations seemed to be fairy prevalent in the area.
Lodged between two large boulders was the remainder of their craft, now reduced to a hunk of metal a fourth the size of the original. All in all, he had been lucky, as he appeared to have no major external wounds. However, a slowly building pain in his temples, coupled with an uneasy feeling in his abdomen testified that perhaps he hadn't been as lucky as he initially thought. Ignoring the pain for the moment, he carefully got to his feet whilst systematically checking all of his limbs and joints.
From the North came a biting wind that seemed to strike at every exposed piece of skin. Kingston shivered as it passed, once more reminded of how frail he had become in his old age.
“I should be nestled in my cottage with a warm drink in my hand, not stranded in the middle of a freezing cold desert. But this is the path that I chose, and if this is what it takes for me to earn my redemption, then so be it.”
After scavenging what little he could find from the wreckage, Kingston found a relatively quiet spot out of the wind, and set about lighting a fire. Thankfully, his Solar Staff had survived the crash, and thereby could be used to spark the makeshift tinder. Aside from a few pages from the unread owner’s manual which was now quickly turning into ash, Kingston had managed to procure some rope, two coils of stripped wire, a length of lightweight sheet metal and a distressingly small amount of emergency rations.
After an unsatisfying meal consisting of stale food strips and desalinated water, Kingston made his way to the top of a nearby embankment, searching for any signs of the others. He had confidence that Maloch and Alza had survived the crash, and could only hope that Barsch had been lucky enough to avoid severe injury. However, with the pre-dawn light providing less than adequate illumination, he soon retreated to the dying fire.
A half hour later, the last page met its end in the fire, and Kingston made the decision to move on. With a small sliver of light on the horizon now providing the bare minimum of warmth, Kingston packed what he had found and left the crash site. He decided to head in the direction the plane had been travelling in, hoping to discover its original destination.
It would be a long trip, but he found that his body soon adopted the learned posture of a military march. One step in front of the other, not too fast, not too slow, just a plodding, methodical gait designed to allow soldiers to walk for days without fatiguing. At least the familiar gait allowed his mind to wander, just as it had all those years ago. It seemed that even decades spent as a hermit could not fully rid him of his violent past.
Kingston could scarcely remember his childhood, but he had vague memories of a happy and peaceful time. His father, now a faceless figure in his mind, had raised Kingston to the best of his abilities. A very intelligent and inquisitive man, his father had drilled lesson after lesson into him, while other children his age had played outdoors. His mother, a nameless woman he had never met, had had little impact on his father’s ambition. Instead, it had driven him forward, as if the moment he stopped working he would remember his lost love and lose the will to live.
They had lived a simple life, moving as often as his father’s work demanded, never really having a place to call home. Even after the accident claimed his father and his reputation, Kingston had lived a life of peace, pointedly ignoring the mounting chaos in the world around him. He found a quiet place to settle down in, and finally found a place to call home.
However, as the rising pollution claimed city after city, and the nations of the world turned on each other, he was forced to accept the state of the world. Thanks to a hasty promise to a worried mother, he had enlisted in the local garrison. Even after he had broken his promise and buried her son, he had continued to fight. Aimlessly, living each day believing that it would be his last, he somehow had managed to stay alive until the end.
He had gone to war a carefree boy, and returned a man burdened by knowledge and guilt. That time, when he had made the change from soldier to scientist, exchanging his gun for a degree in planetary science, was one of the happiest in his life. For years afterwards, he had fought a different and arguably harder battle: convincing people that they were the cause of the planet’s dire state and that they had to be the ones to fix it.
Naturally, this was not a popular position, and as his so called ‘friends’ abandoned him, he was gradually shunned by the scientific world at large. And as his ideas had become more and more radical, he had found himself effectively exiled, barred from setting foot in any university or symposium on the planet.
And so he had retreated from the world that no longer wanted him, finding solace in his isolation, while continuing to refine his theories. On the day of the Great Sleep, when humanity had frozen itself en masse rather than face reality, he had barely noticed, so accustomed to being alone that even the feeling of loneliness was a distant memory.
“And now I find myself in the company of two children and a re-mech, on a seemingly endless journey to who-knows-where? It seems I’ve taken my isolation for granted…”
Although meeting Barsch and Alza had been nothing more than a coincidence, they afforded him a rare opportunity. If he could help them, then perhaps he could earn his redemption. The world had refused to listen to him, and his pleas for aid had fallen on deaf ears, but had he truly tried his hardest? Could he have done more? Alerted more people to the crisis the world faced, informed them of the truth behind the cryogenic plan?
In the end, he had taken the path of the coward, retreating to his cottage and giving up on the ungrateful masses; instead of fighting for what was right with his every breath. But if he could help just two people, if he could show them the true worth of the planet they would one day inherit, then maybe his sins could be forgiven…