Story 3

(Well at long last, here's another one. This was an idea I came up with a while ago and was trying to figure out how to incorporate it into a short story. Comment comment comment!!)

Kyle Cunningham

The Tyrant

                Dr. Barnhardt was quite unlike anything any of his students had ever experienced in their respective tenures at the university. It could be said that Dr. Barnhardt was at a disadvantage from the second he stepped into the classroom, indeed, from the second he began his career as a teacher. The first thing one would notice (or rather, not notice) about Dr. Barnhardt was the three long strands of silver-gray hair that grew from the middle of his head. It was all the hair he had left, and he refused to cut the pitiful bunches of strings in the fear that they might never return. Instead, he allowed them to grow to horrendously uncivilized lengths, and attempted to comb the rouge strands in such a way that they covered all of his shiny bald head. Owing to the size of the head, this was a task that proved impossible for those tattered remnants, and one often wondered if even a great forest of silver hair would be able to do the job. The result was a look that was quite unique, if extremely grotesque. Oftentimes one strand at a time would escape from being slicked every which way on the luminous white head and eventually return to its original position; trailing behind like an ancient, tattered, silver banner flapping in the wind.

                Dr. Barnhardt’s wardrobe would have done a circus clown proud. Oftentimes, one could see the man wearing stripes, plaid, and polka dots all in one outfit. His favorite suit jacket was a plaid concoction made of greens, blues, yellows, and oranges. Often accompanying the suit jacket in its murderous rampage of fashion sense was a black and purple polka dotted tie. The rumor around the university was that Dr. Barnhardt actually made his own clothes, as no one could believe any self-respecting store would sell that kind of thing.

                Dr. Barnhardt wore glasses that seemed to his students to be at least 4 inches thick. Nevertheless, the general consensus was that he was blind as a dead bat, proved further by the fact that he was constantly squinting. Even further proof to his students was evidenced by his grading habits. Dr. Barnhardt prided himself in making his students papers bleed with red ink, whether there was an answer on the paper to castrate or not. It was not uncommon for students to find they had gotten every question correct, only to find they had missed over twenty points on the blank backside of the test. The solid white where neither answer nor question had dwelt would be mortally wounded, dripping red ink and gasping for breath.

                “But professor, there wasn’t even a ques-“

`               “Grades will NOT be discussed!!” he would squeak, and shamble off.

                If there was yet another complaint his students made on a universal basis, it would be that he squeaked. He did not squeak as a mouse does, or squeal like a small child who was just discovered something new, not even squeak like a toy. Instead, the sound made when Dr. Barnhardt opened his mouth to speak (squeak) most closely resembled to his student the grating of an old, rusty, iron gate as it opens. It was not hard to imagine deep down in his throat his metallic vocal cords grating and scraping together in such a high pitched tone that dogs would run for cover, clawing at their ears. His lectures made sense only to his ears. Often he rambled on and on about a subject that could be found mentioned only in one sentence in the textbook, or after hours and hours of extra research. With Dr. Barnhardt, however, anything in his head might show up on the test, whether he had chosen to share it or not.

                Dr. Barnhardt taught history, which did very little to improve his standing among students. It was often said that Dr. Barnhardt only kept his position as a professor simply because he was the most knowledgeable expert in his field. He was cynical, dull, mean, boring, angry, abrasive, grumpy, ignorant, racist, threatening, thoughtless, vengeful, venomous, voracious, and vulgar, not to mention he often smelled bad. But the professor knew his history. Dates, times, wars, rumors of wars, assassinations, affairs, revolutions, riots, conflicts, scandals, invasions; they were all his realm, of which he was king, and he guarded his throne with ruthlessness.

                Dr. Barnhardt was convinced that no one would ever embrace the scope of knowledge that he had. “Young people these days are too stupid,” he would grate to anyone who would listen, “they care no more for history than I do for Democrats!”

                What Dr. Barnhardt was beginning to realize in his old age was that not only did his students despise the subject matter which he taught, but many of his colleagues did as well. He sunk into a deep depression for several weeks after overhearing his department head exclaim, “Well, hello there Abe!”  picking up a one dollar bill from the sidewalk.

                Thus, Dr. Barnhardt began to feel more and more alone. He became almost like a cornered animal, though no one knew why he was cornered except himself. He was surrounded by blatant ignorance of a subject matter that he was thoroughly knowledgeable of. Dr. Barnhardt was therefore determined to annihilate anyone who attempted to study his subject that was not worthy. He took it upon himself to have the highest failure percentage of any faculty at the university, and he made sure his students knew it. He felt in a way that he was doing the world a service. If the students were to appreciate the subject of history, they would have to work at it as he had, and only a true appreciation would give birth to the immense amount of work it would require to even pass his course. In his mind, he had constructed a gauntlet of dates, times, wars, and famous figures that only the strong could survive. Eventually, he rationalized; he would find someone that would pass through the gauntlet. He dared to hope that maybe even an entire class of students would. In the meantime, he reasoned, the gauntlet must remain steadfast. The papers must continue to bleed, until the chosen few are finally discovered.

                And so it went for several semesters. Many times Dr. Barnhardt thought that he had found the light among the darkness around him. A student would begin to do well, start to even pass his class. And then he would discover the cell phone in the jacket pocket, or the notes written on the desk. He read remarkably good papers, only to read them again later in a book or magazine.  His students grumbled and cheated, and Dr. Barnhardt struck back. He made tests over readings two months prior without warning, he gave pop quizzes containing fifty questions in the last five minutes of class, he collected homework he had never assigned, claiming that any problem in the book was fair game to collect. He scraped, squeaked, grated, and continued to emasculate papers. Red ink practically dripped from his desk.

                And despite his best efforts, the students that did not drop out of his class were dangerously close to passing. Somehow, they had adapted to his tyrannical rule of the classroom. They loathed the material, but they knew enough to keep their heads out of the water, determined to win this battle against the Nazi that ruled with iron pen. But Dr. Barnhardt was determined to break them.

                A week before finals, he stood at his podium and began squeaking, “You are all failing, and by failing I mean in the most miserable way. I have never in all my years of teaching been exposed to a more ignorant, degenerate bunch of louses. You are so ignorant of American History that I doubt half of you know who your own grandmother was. As a result, I expect you to also fail the final miserably. It will cover everything we have ever discussed and every word of every sentence of every paragraph of every page in your textbook, whether it was assigned reading or not! There will be two hundred multiple choice questions, all composed by myself tonight! I shall enjoy picking the most obscure bits of information out of the text almost as much as I will enjoy scribing one single lone letter grade on all of your tests, “he grinned manically, “An ‘F’ of course. The test is tomorrow. You are free to go!”

                Dr. Barnhardt gathered up his things and shambled off out the door. He had not noticed that Jared Blevins had not moved from his seat. Jared sat in deep thought, his massive frame draped over the chair. He played football, and though his brains were better than his physical prowess on the football field, he still resembled a giant to normal humans. Someone called out to him from across the aisle, “Hey Blevins! You really gonna take this test? I think I’m just gonna quit now while I’m ahead. No reason to even try if Dr. Stalin is going to go all out just to make us fail. The only way any of us would pass anyway is if we somehow got an A on the final. It’s useless.”

                Jared mostly ignored his friend, an idea was beginning to form behind the heavy brows, “No, I think there might be a way. Besides,” his grin was almost animal-like, “if there is one thing I have learned from this class, it’s how to memorize.”

                Dr. Barnhardt locked himself in his office for most of the evening composing his final. He stopped for neither food nor rest, so passionate was he that no one should pass this test. True to his word, he scoured over every word of every page of his textbook, picking out obscure bits of information and barely mentioned figures. At the end, when his keyboard finally went silent, George Washington himself could not have passed the section on the American Revolution. Dr. Barnhardt was swelled with pride at his thoroughness, the posers he had as students would be utterly destroyed by this work of art that was his test.

                In unusually high spirits, he ran thirty copies of the test (thirty students remaining out of his original one hundred was quite impressive, he thought), shoved them into his black briefcase, and walked out the door of his office. He then realized he must have stayed far later than he anticipated, for the stars twinkled above him like little pinpricks in the sky. As he stood there looking up for a brief second, a fist came whistling out of the dark and crashed into his right temple. Dr. Brandt was out cold before he hit the ground, as glasses and briefcase went flying.

                He awoke sometime later to find a group of janitors vigorously shaking him. He declined the offer for a ride to the hospital, instead asking for his glasses and briefcase, and if anyone had seen who hit him. No one had seen anyone running from the scene, simply finding him sprawled on the sidewalk. His glasses were found, and returned to him, but the briefcase had disappeared. The janitors speculated that the vagabond that had hit him might have stolen it in hopes of something valuable being within. Dr. Barnhardt scoffed at that suggestion as massaged his luminous head, “The only thing he got, whoever he was, was a bunch of tests! He must be a fool.”

                Having a headache, and remembering he had saved a copy of the test on his computer, Dr. Barnhardt left without thanking the janitors. He printed off another thirty copies that night, and went to bed in good spirits. Thoughts of the next day consumed him in such a way that he did not even consider calling the police and reporting the theft.

                The next morning, Dr. Barnhardt shambled off to class, tests in tow. He passed them out with veritable glee, imagining in his mind that his students must be dripping with apprehension that their failure was inevitable. Had he not been blind as a dead bat, Dr. Barnhardt would have noticed that not a single one of his students looked nervous. All of them looked fatigued, as if they had stayed up most of the night memorizing facts and figures, but they were all relaxed. The most relaxed one was Jared Blevins, he sat draped over his chair in the back row, right hand wrapped in a bandage. A smirk lined his face.

                Everyone finished the test with time to spare. Dr. Barnhardt reasoned that this must be because they had all given up, after all no one could finish a 200 question multiple choice test and still have half the time allotted to them! He scooped up the returned papers with all the ecstasy of a young child at Christmas gathering his loot, and shambled for the door, his long silver banner trailing after him.

                Arriving at his office, Dr. Barnhardt gingerly placed the papers on his desk, sitting down and rubbing his hands in anticipation. His red sword was poised over the first test, ready to gut it with all the fury of a Mayan priest offering a human sacrifice. He laughed like a madman as the red sword hovered…

                But the paper did not bleed. The first question was impervious to wounds, as was the second, and the third. He turned the page. It too was shielded. The questions were all correct. He flipped the pages frantically, the red sword looked for any opening where it might dart through and inflict a mortal wound. Anywhere that it might carve a red X and inscribe in the paper’s body a magnificent dripping F. But no such holes were found. The tyrant panicked. He attacked every test, the sword flashing and darting, deflected at every turn. Hours went by. The tyrant’s brow dripped with sweat, his hand shook with fatigue…

                Four hours later, the attacks ceased. Dr. Barnhardt stood up and walked to his office window. Upon every test on his desk was unsteadily written, ‘A+, 100%’. Outside the birds were singing. The sun seemed to him to be a little bit brighter. As he looked, observing that dear, wonderful world, a single tear dribbled down his cheek. He had found the remnant. Despite his best efforts to destroy them, they had proved themselves worthy.

                “They passed through the gauntlet,” he choked(squeaked).

Story Numero Dos

(Okay, so I feel kinda like Michelangelo when he was forced to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on this one, because I had to write with a prompt. But hey, I may not like it, but maybe you will!)

The Runaway

I think what I hated most about my situation was just how typical and predictable it was. Everyone, I don’t care if you are old or young, has heard the old stories about the young girl that gets angry with her parents and runs off on her own. She usually ends up running off with the boy of her dreams because her parents are Nazis, and their view on dating reaches back to like the 1800’s or something. Anyway, so the girl in all those stories runs off with this guy, and they end up having kids and everyone lives happily ever after, and the girl finally finds some part of herself she apparently lost, and blah, blah, blah.. Horse crap, is what it is.

                The truth is, I ran off because I needed a little excitement. My parents and I, yeah we got along fine. We didn’t fight like some girls and their parents that I knew. Of course, that didn’t mean we talked at all. And it wasn’t for lack of love or anything that we didn’t talk. Well, in their case anyway. I guess I loved them. I mean, you can’t help but feel some kind of affection for the people who fathered you and birthed you. If for nothing else I guess it’s just some biological thing that goes on in your brain, something that you were born with whether you like it or not. I mean, a baby isn’t born to think it’s parents are morons. It doesn’t know if they are abusive or not, if mommy cheats on daddy, or if daddy drinks a little too much, or if mommy gambles away the family money at the casinos on the weekends. A baby doesn’t know if it’s being abandoned or neglected. I mean it would know it was hungry, but it wouldn’t really know why. A baby is born to accept love and affection of any kind. It doesn’t really understand that the people providing for it might be terrible human beings.

                See, what ends up happening is that those babies start to grow up and become wiser. Somewhere along the way they might realize their parents really aren’t all that great. And naturally, disappointment is what follows. See, it’s not so much that a baby doesn’t know it’s being mistreated, or that its parents are crap; I think that it just expects that it won’t be mistreated. I think it expects that its parents are the best they can possibly be. What a god-awful surprise it is growing up, huh?

                Anyway, everyone used to tell me I thought too much. I lost count of the times people would say, “Good grief, Rachel! I just asked a question, and you go off on this tangent about who-knows-what!”

                After someone would say that, I usually didn’t talk around them much at all. I never had much patience for people who couldn’t listen.

                Anyway, going back to my parents, we always had a weird relationship. Well, that was my opinion anyway. I don’t have any idea if they ever thought it was weird. I mean, I never asked them or anything. We didn’t do things that you see all those kids and their parents do in the movies. We never sat down and had dinner, or all went to the movies, or went and fished at some lake, or any of that sappy crap. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we didn’t every do any of that. Honestly, I can’t sit down and watch a movie where all the characters are all happy and sappy and gross like that. It makes me want to puke. “And they lived happily ever after,” has got to be the worst ending to anything I have ever heard of.

                I guess the problem was that my parents thought that we did do all of those things. I mean not in the sense that they were crazy, and thought we went to the movies as a family when we really just spent the evening eating our own dinners in our own rooms watching our own respective TVs. I mean more like they thought we had all those sappy feelings and stuff that they have in the movies after a walk in the park.

                My mom wouldn’t watch movies so much as she would read books. She didn’t read interesting books, she read like those super lovey-dovey romance novels. I walked in the house twice in one week and she was sitting in the living room in the same position both times sobbing. We are talking two and a half boxes of tissues sobbing. I went to my room and stayed there. Didn’t even come out to get food. I didn’t have even the tiniest bit of an appetite after seeing that.

                Anyway, so I guess where things got weird with my parents is when they thought they knew me. They thought we had that relationship they had seen in those movies. Where the daughter is all smiles all the time about seeing her parents. They are really happy to be involved in her life, and she is very happy to let them. Ha..

                My parents had this vision of me I guess. Not like they would put all this pressure on me to be something I wasn’t. There were times where I kinda wish that they had. Instead, they just had this idea that I was one of those cookie-cutter daughters, and they sort of just left me alone. Of the few friends I had at prep-school, most of them were always emotional wrecks. I would constantly hear, “My dad doesn’t like my boyfriend,” or, “Mom will ground me if I don’t get an A on this test.”

                I guess I always found that to be strange. Not that I wanted my parents to be all over my butt about little things like school and stuff, but sometimes I couldn’t figure out if what I had was really all that much better. I mean, my parents would go months without even glancing at the tests and report cards I would bring home. Then out of the blue my dad would just ask, halfheartedly, “So, do you need any help with homework or anything?” as he was heading out the door for Wednesday night bowling. It just doesn’t work that way.

                But back to my situation. I guess finally I just got fed up with it. I know if I told the story about running away to someone I met on the street or something, they would just assume I had taken off on my own to find someone that cared. Truth is, I really didn’t care that they didn’t care. After a while I think you just get used to being on your own. There were times when Dad would introduce me to some of his lawyer buddies and say, “Yeah, me and Molly are pretty proud of our Rachel!”

                That always just made me mad. It always reminded me of some mayor walking up to another guy pouring concrete and saying, “Boy, I sure am proud of the way this sidewalk is turning out!”

                I always imagined the guy pouring concrete would stand up, sweat pouring down his face, and punch the mayor right in the nose.

                So in a sense you could say I snapped. I woke up early one Saturday morning and took the car. Didn’t leave a note or anything. About thirty miles outside of town I found some car in an old parking lot and switched license plates with it. I figured eventually someone would find me, my parents would probably pull out all of the stops to get me back. But I wanted this runaway thing to last as long as possible. I could envision my mother sobbing over my disappearance like she did her romance novels and the thought of going back to that made me nauseous.

                The only thing I took with me besides the car was a twelve pack of bottled. I didn’t take a cent from my parents. Truth is, I really didn’t have a plan. I just knew if I had to stay in that house for one more day with those cookie-cutter people, I would snap for real and start shooting or knifing someone.

                So that first day I drove and I drove and I drove. I drove until the gas light came on and I had consumed about a third of my water supply. The gas light came on when it was just about dark, so I found a place in the middle of nowhere off the highway. I parked the car on the side of this dirt road and pretty much passed out. Driving can really drain your energy sometimes.

                When I woke up it was still dark. I didn’t have a watch or anything, but I figured it was just before sunrise. My stomach rumbled, and it was then that I wished I hadn’t been in such a hurry so as not to even grab some food. I got out of the car, stretched for a little bit, and walked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and I wondered how in the world I was going to find food with next to no gas and no money whatsoever. I had been too tired to notice it the night before, but I had managed to park on a road with big fields on either side. They were all fenced in, and I thought they were for farming or something. There was a big pole with some dark blob sitting on top of it about fifty yards farther down the road. Since I had nothing better to do, I began to walk towards the pole, simply out of curiosity. Before walking too far I could tell it was a sign and not a pole, and walking even closer I could make out that it said, “McCall’s Vineyard.”

                I had read in school or somewhere that vineyards meant grapes, and I was only getting hungrier, so I hopped the fence and walked some more. Before long I found the vineyard. It may have just been the dark messing with my eyes, but it seemed like it just appeared out of nowhere. The vines of grapes snaked along the wooden frames, and they looked pretty eerie in the dark. They were full to bursting with fat grapes though, so I picked a whole bunch of them and sat down to eat.

                I never would have heard him come up behind me in the dark; I was too busy stuffing my face.

                “Well, are you enjoying yourself?”

                I just about died of a heart attack. I jumped up, but didn’t run just yet. The voice really didn’t sound all that angry, more amused than anything. He looked for all the world like Old McDonald. Straw hat, overalls, scraggly beard, everything. He just kind of stared at me.

                “Sorry, I didn’t know whose grapes these were. I can leave now.”

                “Well, they aren’t mine, ma’am. I don’t care if you eat them or not, to tell you the truth. My job is just to water. I am pretty curious to know what a girl is doing out here at this time of night, though. The nearest town is forty miles north, so you must have driven.”

                I figured I might as well come clean to him. After all, I didn’t expect to get away with this for forever. And I was hungry like you wouldn’t believe. “Yeah, I drove. I ran away.”

                I thought it might kind of surprise him, but he didn’t even raise his eyebrows, “Ran away, huh? You ran away to a vineyard?” He kind of laughed.

                “Well, no. I just stopped here cause I ran out of gas. And I was hungry.”

                He nodded, “Well, yeah, it will happen that way. You can eat all you want; I don’t think you’ll make much of a dent in the grape crop. Why did you run away?”

                “It’s complicated.”

                He smiled, “Yeah it always is.”

                He took off his hat and picked himself a handful of grapes, and then sat down in the grass, “I think I’ll join you.”

                He began to pop them into his mouth one by one, and chew slowly. He motioned for me to sit back down, and for some reason I did. He eyed me for a little bit and then shook his head and smiled, “Perceptions are a funny thing, you know?”

                “What?”

                “Perceptions. You know, like the way a person sees the world. I have a lot of time to think nowadays, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about perceptions. Any time you ever stop to wonder why a person does something or acts a certain way, all you have to do is step back and look at things the way they perceive them,” his eyes glinted “and sister, I’m stepping back and guessing your perception of things is a pretty dismal one.”

                I looked down, not really sure what to say.

                He went on, “Now I don’t know you, so I’m probably wrong. But there’s only a couple reasons why a girl would run away from home that I could think of. One of them is a man, and I don’t think you are quite that type. And the other.. well..” he just looked at me then. I shifted a little, all this staring made me a little uncomfortable.

                He looked away and ate another grape. As he chewed slowly, he said, “The reason perceptions are so funny is because more often than not circumstances shape them. Now if I was having a rough time of it growing these grapes, and they were mine, I wouldn’t care much for some strange girl coming along and eating her fill. Generosity is one of those things that tend to disappear when famine comes knocking.”

                He kept chewing, I kept silent.

                “It’s the sad truth that reality tends to take a hike when things get tough too. You won’t have to look far to find someone who just can’t handle how things really are. It’s easier to escape by just ignoring the problem, or better yet find a reality of your own that you can handle better. It’s pretty easy to run.”

                I could feel him looking right through me again, but I still couldn’t look at him. “It’s a rare person you can find that actually understands how the world works, or for that matter even tries to understand. I’d be willing to bet most of the people on the planet will go to their deathbed without even really understanding why they lived.”

                After a while, he stood up and dusted his overalls off, “Well, sister, I had better get back to my watering.”

                I nodded and got up as well. Suddenly a hundred dollar bill came out of nowhere and he was pushing it into my hand. He put on his straw hat and looked at me, “Don’t you ever stop trying to understand any of it, sister.”

                He turned around and ambled back into the darkness, and in a few seconds he disappeared.

                I stood there for a minute looking after him, holding the money.

                Then I too turned back around and walked. And then I drove.

First Ever Finished Story - No Title Yet

(So I finally wrote some kind of fiction. I think I am somewhat happy with it. Hopefully my teacher, and more importantly you awesome readers, will agree.)

   T-minus 3 hours...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

“Dear Jesus…”

                The monitor screen flashed in front of Lieutenant James’ face, bright, focused, and brutally clear:

                Attack on United States and NATO allies much by the Central Middle Eastern Coalition imminent. Likelihood of nuclear and bioweapon attacks: 98% probability. CMEC forces likely to launch missiles and deploy military aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons within the next 3 hours, if such weapons have not already been deployed. Paris, France subjected to nuclear attack at 0300 hours without provocation. Casualties in metropolitan and surrounding areas estimated as high as 80%.All United States Military outposts and research facilities are hereby ordered to seek immediate emergency shelter indefinitely. The United States is in a state of NUCLEAR WAR. Nuclear attacks on United States soil by enemies are IMINENT…

                And then nothing. Not one word more. James sat back in his chair and exhaled. His heart felt as if it might explode, and his head was spinning so felt as if he might be sick right there on his desk. The fear had not yet set in, just a feeling of overwhelming shock.

                What the hell had happened? He had heard rumors, as an officer he heard as many as anyone, rumors that relations with the CMEC were not good. He had heard jokes about it, how we were all going down in flames and smoke sometime soon. A big kaboom. And now France had been hit? Eighty percent casualties? God, that had to be at least fifty billion people. One didn’t hear much of the outside world on such a godforsaken piece of rock, but something had to have gone bad very fast.

                And now what was he supposed to do about it? There were no real instructions. In a way he was surprised he had received any notification at all. Shocked that anyone even remembered this backwater little hole of an outpost. But the instructions he had received were almost laughable. “Seek immediate emergency shelter indefinitely”? You had to be kidding. It meant something had gone very, very, wrong. And now it was every man for himself. Seek cover, abandon ship, hide your children, and pray the towelhead’s little toys don’t find you.

                The fear hit him suddenly, like lead in his whole torso. It weighed on him, paralyzed him almost. For a second all he could see were red skies and mushroom clouds. Total annihilation. Oh, God, what  was he supposed to do? He clasped his head in his hands, elbows on the desk. The lights and sounds of the computer monitors buzzed around him, oblivious to him. Finally after several minutes James sat up. He glanced at the huge security screen monitors across the room, and then gazed intently at them. They were all in the mess hall having a party. He was one of only five military stationed at the outpost. A lieutenant (himself), one sergeant, and a handful of corporals whose main duty was to make sure these crazy scientists didn’t blow themselves up.

                James wasn’t even sure what it was they did out here in the miserable desert. Some of the researchers had tried to explain it to him. Accelerating mass to get energy or something like that. They were miles from God-knows-where, somewhere between New Mexico and Arizona. The exact location was kept even from the military stationed at the facility, and the scientists were flown here in teams of 20, blindfolded the whole way in. Welcome to home for the next six months boys. He had seen three of these teams come and go, which meant this one was the fourth, and he had been here for over a year and a half. He had planned on this being his last service to the country, retiring after this abysmally hot stint in the sand.

                It was the halfway point in this particular round of research, plus the scientists had apparently made some kind of breakthrough, thus cause enough for a party. He watched their smiling faces on the camera. Someone had grilled some burgers in the mess hall kitchen and a bottle of whiskey was being passed around. Even some of his men had joined in, having become friends with these quirky individuals who were always buried in some book or computer screen. Someone raised a glass for a toast. A comment was made and then laughter. They didn’t have a clue.

                The fear was becoming less paralyzing now as his hardwired military training kicked in. Think, James, think. Options, what are the options? There was an emergency shelter on site, it was underground, and he knew that it was supposed to be nuke safe. He briefly wondered if anything could really protect you from one of those things going off. He had seen the pictures that everyone else had, pictures of the devastation caused during World War 2 in Japan, plus the information they had pounded in him during training, of just what those things were capable of doing.

                The problem was the shelter. It had enough food and medical supplies to last five people a year, enough time presumably for the fallout to wear off and conditions to be safe enough to venture outside. Five people, and there were twenty five of them living in this outpost. He did a quick mental calculation. If they could somehow manage to squeeze everyone into that shelter, the food supplies would last 73 days. That was not even three months. The fear washed over him again. He again buried his head in his hands, and behind him the security monitors told the tale of the party going on below…

T-minus 90 minutes…

                He must have sat in that position for an hour. When he finally raised his head, his eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks streaked with tears.  This wasn’t like him, now wasn’t the time. But what could he do? He had run through the solutions in his mind at least a dozen times. He could of course, call his people up to the security room. He would explain to them what the situation was. They wouldn’t panic, that wasn’t like them. He would tell them that they were going to have to seek shelter in the bunker, leave the scientists on their own. There wasn’t enough room for them after all. But could he really do that? How fair was that? Just let them die without even a word? They would, of course, perish none the wiser, not knowing their guardians had abandoned them. Most of them would probably be in such a drunken stupor that the thought would never even cross their mind before the blinding flash, and then nothing. But who was he to play God?

                Then don’t play at it, he told himself. Tell them all what’s going to happen. Explain that only five of us even have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of this alive. How did they do it in the old days, draw straws or something like that? Luck of the draw, random chance. That would be fair, wouldn’t it? But then what if you don’t get picked, Mr. Prophet of Doom? What if the dice rolls and your number doesn’t come up? Or better yet, what do you tell the people who don’t get picked? Sorry sir, looks like your luck just ran out, might I suggest taking a long swig from that bottle? In all reality, how was that any more fair?

                He had these people’s lives in his hands, that much was crystal clear to him. Why even save anyone, after all? He could live in that shelter comfortably for over a year, eating and drinking the rations meant for five people, without the crowding. He put his head in his hands again. There was no way he could do that. James had never found much that he couldn’t do. Granted, he wasn’t great at everything, but he was good or mediocre at just about anything. It had worked for him on countless times before, merits and promotions coming easily enough. He had met his match here though. This playing God stuff was out of his league. Even when he thought he had made a decision, he second guessed himself a second later. There was simply not an easy solution.

                But he had to find one. He looked back at his computer screen. The message had been sent to him two hours ago. Something had to be done, and soon.

                He looked back up at the security monitors. Many of them had obviously had enough drinks to start feeling it. Someone was apparently playing some kind of music, because about ten of the group had cleared a space and were dancing around like they were in a nightclub. Boy, they must have not taught dancing lessons in engineering school.

                He studied the faces he could see. Some of them were hard, types that didn’t much care for partying but figured it was as good a time as any to celebrate. Others were fully engaged, this being a time to finally let off some steam and actually enjoy themselves for once. Some had had way too much to drink already, and the party was a lot less fun now than it had been an hour ago. James had watched people as long as he could remember. He was always fascinated by what he saw. Everyone, he had discovered, had their own story. They had all come from somewhere, more often than not they had done some pretty interesting things, and even more frequently an interesting course of events had led them into the present. He was always enthralled by the thought that his path and theirs had somehow met in the vastness of the cosmos.

                And now he was the one that decided where it ended, and for whom.

                The tears almost came back again. There was no way he could do it. Not in a million years. Maybe someone, somewhere, could have. But not him. He could not take that responsibility. He couldn’t even leave it up to random chance, because in reality he was still choosing to let some die and others live. It would have been better if he could have died with the rest of them and not known any different. He could not play God.

                If it couldn’t end that way for him, ignorant that the end was coming, the ride was almost over, then he would at least extend that mercy to the others. He gazed at the monitors again. Everyone was drunk now, but not the stumbling, throwing up kind of drunk. It was the drunk where you are so high on life nothing else matters. Everything sounds better and tastes better. Life is worth living. Everything is right in the world. A quote crossed his mind, he didn’t know from where, “Eat, drink, and be merry! For tonight we dine in hell!”

                And then he cried. The weeping that comes with knowing that your time is almost up. Regret, of course, hit him. Things that he wished he had done, places he should have seen, words he never should have spoken or should have said more often. But mostly he cried for loss. For the unalterable, overbearing, and unpreventable train wreck that is death. Behind him, the party went on…

                T-minus 10 minutes…

                He had stopped crying. Instead he watched the monitors. Taking it all in. The sun was setting through the windows to his right. One of those gorgeous desert sunsets that are so full of color in such a colorless place. He had written something on his computer, a report of why he made the decision he made. It included a letter to his wife and son. He doubted anyone would ever read it, but why not take the chance? As he looked at the monitors, he wondered how many of those people down there had families. How many people in the world did they care about, and how many cared about them? Life, he thought, was such an intrinsically beautiful thing. In his mind’s eye he could see the web, of all the relationships that anyone had ever had, all the contacts, all the conversations. All of them part of this throbbing, living, being. Maybe not a being in the one sense, but a presence none the less. It was really very appropriate in his mind that all the light should blink out at once. Someone was raising his glass for another toast.

                Finally, he tore his gaze away from the monitors and walked to the window.

                T-Minus 2 minutes…

                He decided he would like to depart while looking at the sunset. Thoughts and emotions were so tangled in his head he couldn’t have unraveled them if he tried. And then suddenly he wasn’t looking at the sunset anymore.

                “Jesus, that’s bright,” he thought.