03/02/2010, 06:22 PM
To those of you who've I've already sent a copy of my other book, titled "Seven Minutes," you'd probably be best off taking it in hands and burning it with your Hell-ish mind powers.
I come to you today, oh loyal thread reader, with a simple question: Which prologue is best?
As of now I'm bending towards using the New Prologue as the prologue and the Original Prologue as a later chapter, but I'd like to hear some other opinions, if anyone has any.
I come to you today, oh loyal thread reader, with a simple question: Which prologue is best?
Spoiler for Original Prologue:
The prisoners stumbled along in their lines, worrying around in the early morning darkness, trying to comprehend where they were headed. Not a single person in the seemingly endless lines knew where they were, how they had gotten to wherever they were, or what was happening, or even what time it was, but they could tell something was horribly wrong and that they were all in danger. Most of the people here were in their night garb; children wearing pajamas, wives and husbands wearing robes or even nothing at all, others offering them whatever extra clothes and garments they could spare to keep them covered up. There were babies and wives crying, and men muttering words of revenge and empty promises as they passed each “Black Devil”, soldiers who wore all black body armor from head to toe, and even hid themselves behind some crude-looking type of motorcycle helmet which also served to protect their head and face. To top it all off, they carried high-powered rifles just in case any of the prisoners had a mind to try and escape.
“Keep moving!” one out of the seemingly thousands of soldiers barked in English, although a deep and heavy accent conquered his words, his gruff voice muffled behind his helmet to make it even harder for the countless men, women, and children to contemplate what he was yelling about. He gestured with his rifle and the prisoners in the line he was addressing did as they were told, imposed with no other choice, and they continued moving forward to their unknown destination.
Around him, other soldiers that looked his exact twin followed suit, ordering the people in the lines around them to continue forward. “Keep moving or die! It’s your choice!” Not wanting to come to some horrible demise in the middle of an unknown death camp, the prisoners kept on walking despite the fact of how long they’ve been struggling along and how tired they were, because the endless number of lines they walked or limped or crawled in seemed to never end or to reach a specific destination. Vast lines of prisoners slowly trod across the painfully rocky ground of whatever this place was, and whenever they looked up, all they saw were other prisoners as far as the eye could see, with various groups of soldiers monitoring them, moving swiftly up and down in between each line. They knew that these soldiers were not from their country, not America. Was the United States being taken over by a terrorist group? Were they even in America? Everyone asked each other these questions in secret whispers when no one was watching, but still no one had an answer.
Finally, after hours of torment, dehydration and hunger starting to kick in, one prisoner leapt out of his line and tackled a soldier who was barking orders at the prisoners in the two lines surrounding him. He knocked the soldier over, who dropped his rifle, and the man began to punch the soldier in the face, but to no avail. The helmet the soldier wore was bullet proof.
“David! No!” a woman in the line shouted, apparently the man’s wife. She was holding the hand of a little boy, about twelve years old, who was silently crying, he too calling for his father. His dark blonde hair was dirty and unkempt, as if he had just gotten out of bed. His mother’s curly hair was the same, her short-cropped blonde curls blowing softly in the wind. “David, come back! They’re going to kill you!”
The man didn’t care, and, ignoring his wife and son, he repeatedly punched the soldier in the face, the skin on his knuckles ripping away, blood dripping down his arm and onto the ground. The rocks were also cutting his bare feet, making it torture just to stand, let alone constantly shift his stance to fight. “Damn you!” David yelled in frustration and rage. “Where is the rest of my family, you bastard? Where’s my son?” Before David could raise his fist to punch the soldier again, another “Black Devil” ran over and struck David in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, immediately knocking him unconscious.
What felt like years later, David awoke as someone dumped a bucket of water on his head, but before it cleared from his eyes and he was able to see again, the person left through a door that was located directly behind him. The water was as cold as it was refreshing, and he sighs as the tiny droplets ran down his face and cooled his body temperature. He tried to stand after that, but he was securely tied to the chair he sat in. What the…I can’t talk! he thought, panicking until he realized that there was only tape over his mouth, and the only sound he could make was a muffled groan. He breathed deeply in and out of his nose to regain his calm. He struggled for a couple of minutes and then decided it was useless. He slumped in the chair, defeated.
Gazing around desperately, he noticed that directly above him was a bright light, and when he looked into it he became blind for a few moments. Just before he was about to doze off again, the door behind him opened and two soldiers strode past him, one on either side. They stopped at the other end of the small empty room, checked their weapons, and raised them. David tried to scream, tried to beg for his life, but all he could do was grunt and groan, the tears blurring his vision. But then a third person, a man standing behind him, ripped the tape off his mouth, and David flinched as black hair from his thin mustache and beard were ripped out. “What the hell…what is this? What are you doing to me?” David begged through ragged breaths, still waiting for the guns to fire and end his life.
“Oh, you think wee are to kill you, yes?” the person behind him said, and David
tried to turn his head to see but he couldn’t twist his neck to that extent. Instead, the man walked around David and stood directly in front of him.
The man was not a soldier, David noticed at once, still trying to catch his breath. Who the hell is this guy? he thought, and, as if the man who wasn’t a soldier could read his mind, he said, “I am General Reavsky. You are in my little interrogation room, the ‘Hurt Room’ I like to call it. Don’t worry, though, my little friends with the guns are not going to shoot you…yet.” The General laughed at David’s horrified expression, his strange sort of conciliatory manner confusing to David. “My two friends are only here for my protection, in case you are of any danger to me, but I doubt you are. Do you know where you are?”
“You just said I was in the ‘Hurt Room’ or something, right?”
“No, I meant, do you know what country you are in?”
“What? No…where the hell are wee?” David shouted in a sudden rage. “Aren’t wee in America? What are you doing to all these people?”
The General laughed at David’s confusion. “Well, with these people, I am building an army, and for the country that you are in, well, this is Russia. But please, let’s be formal. Call it the Soviet Union, yes?”
“The Soviet…” David muttered, but he was too shocked to finish the sentence. “You bastard!” He jumped to conclusions. “You took all these people from the U.S. and shipped them on back to your country like they were slaves or something, and now you’re going to kill them all! You’re sick!” David spat on the ground at the General’s feet, disgusted. “I know your kind when I see it.”
General Reavsky took a hasty step back away from David’s unsanitary mess. “My, my, you people are just like I expected…pigs.”
“You son of a--” David yelled, struggling in his chair to free himself, wanting to tear this man in front of him to shreds, but the General cut him off.
“Do not become angry with me. What I said is true. You and all your kind are pigs, every one. You were in those lines up there. You saw what it was like; a bunch of pigs traveling slowly in never ending lines across barren wastelands. How sad.” The General tittered to himself. “I can’t wait until your whole race is obliterated. This is going to be fun!”
“And I can’t wait to wipe that fudgeing smirk right off your face,” David said coolly, leaning back in his chair. His breathing finally slowed down to normal. “I’m going to kill you.”
“And how do you suppose you’re going to do that?”
“Holding a gun,” David retorted back, suddenly eyeing the rifle the soldier behind the General to the left was clutching, “with a bullet in your head.”
The General laughed again. “Did you hear that, boys? He is going to kill me! Oh,
I’m so scared!” The two soldiers joined in on the laughing, but David only sat still in his chair as the three men laughed in his face.
Trying to stop his sniggering, the General continued. “Just because I think you’re funny, I’m going to tell you a secret. Well, a lot of people know this secret, just namely not any of your people.” David raised an eyebrow, but he could care less about some stupid Russian secret. He just wanted to kill the bastard standing in front of him, and maybe those two soldiers holding their precious rifles. “You and your people have been brought to the Soviet Union, and you are all my prisoners. I am building an army. Doesn’t it cross your mind as to how you ended up here in the first place?”
David had to think for a moment, but his memory was a blur. “I just woke up and then I was here. One second I was in my house, getting ready to go to sleep, and then all of a sudden I woke up here. So what’s the big secret?” David asked mockingly. “Did you teleport everyone here, like in the movies?”
“Time machines,” the General exclaimed excitedly, as happy as a child opening his presents on Christmas morning. “Wee can stop time.”
“Bullchocolate,” David muttered, shifting in his chair. He was still slowly but ineffectively trying to escape.
“I didn’t believe it at first either, but I do now. But time travel won’t be used for a while now, I assure you. After our first successful use of the machine, which was when wee came to America and captured all of you pigs, the machine broke down, but not until after wee were finished with the mission.” He smiled, showing his perfectly straight, shiny white teeth. “Very lucky, yes? Right now I have a team of experts working on its repair.” He shrugged. “Anyways, do you know how long it took my army of over a million soldiers to get all you pigs herded back into the pen, here in the Soviet Union?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Exactly seven years, but that was seven years into the future that never happened, because wee stopped time.” David knew the General was trying to explain it all to him as if he didn’t understand anything at all about time machines…which of course he didn’t. “All of my soldiers have special microscopic chips in their helmets that stop the effects of the time machine so they won’t be frozen in time, but I don’t expect you to be able to comprehend the science of it. After wee were finished, wee started time again, and there you have it, everything is back on schedule. It was like time didn’t go by at all…for you pigs, at least.” The General ran his hand through his unnaturally white hair. He must have only been in his late forties but his hair was as white as snow, and somehow it made him look fiercer, stronger.
David suddenly remembered something and he struggled in his chair at the realization. “Where’s my son, you sick bastard?”
The General seemed confounded, but after a few moments he said, “Oh, your older son, yes? Don’t worry, he is safe back in America, the most powerful country in the world. Oh, I’m sorry.” The General gave him a nasty grin. “I meant the former most powerful country in the world. Hey, did you know I have your president in another base not an hours drive from here?” For a second the General looked as if he had blundered into a corner and said something wrong, but his expression had melted away as quickly as it had appeared, trying to cover his tracks.
David didn’t care about presidents, only his son, which, for all he knew, was all he had left in this world. His wife and son were as good as dead if the general was telling an ounce of the truth. He also knew that right now was not the proper time to mourn for them. “So that’s the big secret, a broken time machine? How pathetic.”
The General hit David across the face, a lazy backhand slap. “I wasn’t finished, pig. Let me continue.” He readjusted the collar of his large jacket, one made for the cold, harsh winters of Russia. The hem of it easily reached the floor and his sleeves were rolled up so they wouldn’t droop over his large, strong hands. “I am building an army. How do I have over a million soldiers in my grasp?” He let David puzzle at it for a few moments, but he was too impatient. “Cloning. Cloning is the answer to all my dreams. And it works, too. I am not lying.”
“You can clone people? Are you insane?” David thought he was losing his mind. This is not happening. This has got to be a dream. A nightmare. I must have fallen asleep with the TV on again.
“I am not insane, no, but all of your precious teenagers in America will be. In exactly one year from today, July seventh, 2016, wee will travel back to America. It will be in the new era, the dawn of a new age, July seventh, 2017. I will not go back to America personally unless something serious happens, but three-fourths of my entire army will, and when they get there, I hope your son and all of his friends are ready for a blood bath of chaos and mayhem. It will be ‘kill or be killed’ in America. And if the children survive a year after that I will go to America, congratulate them personally, bring them back here, clone them, and they will join my ever-growing army. And finally, five or so years from now, when I’ve collected soldiers from every powerful country, I will rule the world, and I will be the king! I will rule the world!” The General laughed maniacally, his arms raised as if he had just won some important contest.
“You’re lying,” David said. “You expect me to believe all your lies? You’re so full of it.” I’m still going to kill you, though. He stared at the General with narrow eyes, hoping to intimidate him.
Nothing David did could bring the man down, and the General continued on, ignoring David’s meager attempt to scare him. “Believe what you will, or don’t believe me at all, but you had best believe in cloning, my friend. You will believe in it very soon.” He signaled to the soldiers and they made their way over and untied David. Knowing he would probably be shot, David doesn’t try to run. They’ll kill me for sure, but I have to get out of here. What can I do?
“Hands behind your back,” one of the soldiers said sternly, tying his hands up with the rope that had formerly bound him to the chair, but it wasn’t tied tightly for some reason. Luckily the General or the other soldier didn’t notice, and David took that as a good sign. I may escape yet. The General opened the door that was behind David when he had been sitting in the chair and led him and the two soldiers out and down a long and cold underground tunnel. They passed various other soldiers as they walked along, each one acting as if they had an important job at hand; when they saw the General, they scurried along on their way with feigned alacrity, eager to be out of sight.
“Where are you taking me?” David demanded, and he stops in his tracks after they had been walking for quite some time. He could see his breath steaming in the air as he breathed in and out. He didn’t feel cold, though. All around them, the walls were a dull grey cement color, and there was nothing to be said of but randomly placed doors on either side of the hallway that seemed to go in a very large circle. David thought it must have spanned over hundreds of miles.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the General promised. He turned to the two soldiers, casually taking out a pair of gloves to fit them over his hands. “If he won’t walk, carry him.”
Before David could reply, one of the soldiers punched him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and then he picked David up and threw him over his shoulder, carrying him as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. “Put me down!” David demanded as the soldier marched down the hallway, but no one paid him any mind.
“Shut up!” the soldier yelled through his helmet, punching David in the stomach once more. With that he sustained his silence. Finally, at the end of the long empty hallway that must have wound all the way around the entire Soviet Union (or so it seemed), they arrived at a door that opened up to a very large room. Lights, wires, mechanical levers, and computer screens covered most of the walls, all except one, which was clearly made of glass for he could see an empty room on the other side. Inside the room they entered was a machine that took up more than half of the floor space, and there was a platform just big enough to fit about three people on placed in the middle of the prodigious mechanical beast. Above the platform was a tube, which David thought at first to be a muffler taken from a car and used to build this contraption. “What the hell is that thing?” David asked, but the soldier only responded by dropping him on the floor.
“That ‘thing’ is what is going to build my army, and it is one-hundred percent fool-proof, I promise you,” the General explained, and he noticed David staring at the glass that made up the ceiling of the room. There were dead people floating in acrid clear water in the thick walls above. “Ah, I see you have noticed our little friends in the glass, yes?”
“I…I thought you said that you cloned people here, not killed them!” David shouted, suddenly trying to stand up, but one of the soldiers kicked him down and pointed a rifle in his face. He swallowed down his fear with a nervous gulp. “Why do you only speak lies?” He felt as if he would cry, but he made himself promise that he wouldn’t give the General that satisfaction.
“I am not speaking lies, my friend,” the General said, cracking his knuckles underneath his black leather gloves. “I have been telling you the truth the entire time, but you don’t want to believe me. What I said about time travel, that was true. What I told you about cloning, that much was also true. And by God, what I said about killing your precious children in America…that was definitely true. Your problem is that you don’t want to believe anything I tell you. Let me make this clear. Those people you see in the glass, who are cold, white, and dead? That is a lie. They are not dead. They are new clones wee have just produced, and they are being insulated with ‘Mind Juice’. That’s what I call it.” He tittered to himself. “After they are done in that watery cell in the glass they have no memory, no life, no family, and will do anything their officials command them to do.” Then he muttered something to himself, and neither David nor the two soldiers could understand a thing he said. Instead David tried to make sense of it all.
“You clone people, erase their memories and then send them off to kill innocent people?” David asked, incredulous. “You must be really messed up in the head. Did your mother drop you when you were a crying little baby?”
“Enough!” the General bellowed, and he kicked David in the ribs. He bowled over onto his back and writhed in pain on the cold cement, clutching at his chest as he tried to breath. “Now get up on the damn platform and get this over with. The sooner you’re cloned, the better. Get up!”
“No,” David mumbled, but the General couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“No,” David said, rolling over onto his stomach and pushing himself up onto his knees.
“Do as I tell you, or you will die,” the General screamed at him, furious. “Wee can afford to lose you, I’ll have you know! Wee have your whole country here waiting to be cloned! Wee can get more people! Your death doesn’t concern me! Now get on the platform!”
“He said ‘no’,” said one of the soldiers, and he shot the General in the chest with his rifle, then deftly turned and unarmed the other soldier. Shoving him to the floor, he yanked the soldier’s helmet off and inserted a knife through the back of his head. The Russian died without making a sound, his head gushing blood, creating a miniature lake on the cold cement, steam rising from it like David’s breath in the cold.
“What…what are y-you d-doing?” the General asked, trying to sit up, but he could only rise to his knees, holding his hand against the wound in his chest. He was losing blood too fast and was sure to die soon. “W-what are you doing, Lieutenant Ivanov? You will pay for this. I assure you, you will pay… f-for this!” He coughed and blood dripped from his mouth, steaming from the coldness in the room as it landed on the floor, mingling with the blood from the dead soldier to make the tiny lake grow twice its size.
“I am turning this mission around,” the soldier who was not a soldier said, quickly untying David’s hands, and then he gave him the other soldier’s rifle. So that’s why my hands weren’t tied that tight .Finally, the man took off his helmet. “And my name isn’t Ivanov.”
“H-how did…how could this happen? The perimeter was perfectly secure!” the General exclaimed. “No one could have escaped, never the less… kill one of m-my men!”
“Well, perfect wasn’t good enough,” the American soldier said mockingly, his head cocked to the side.
“I’ll…kill you,” the general said, his words freezing around him like his breath. “I…I…promise you.”
Ignoring the general’s sputtering, the American soldier glanced at David and pointed at the dead soldier on the floor, his lake swiftly reaching towards the General with fingers of blood. “You need to get into that soldier’s armor. If wee want to get out of here alive wee need to become them. Take off his armor and put it on. When wee leave here, do not talk to anyone, and wee might be able to survive.”
“I don’t…think so,” the General declared, and he shot the soldier in the head with his own pistol that he had drawn from inside his large coat. The soldier who could have helped David survive this insanity fell to the floor in what seemed to be slow motion, but it was just David’s adrenaline pumping in his brain, making him more stable, more focused.
Screaming not in pain but in pure fury, David raised his rifle the same instant the General turned to aim at his prisoner, but David squeezed his trigger first, shooting the General in the head with a stream of bullets, which exploded and covered David with a fresh layer of blood and added more to the dead soldier’s small lake. The General’s body remained on its knees for a few seconds as if he were praying, then fell backwards and landed on the ground with a sickening splat. David threw his rifle to the floor, trying to catch his breath, his head pounding, his brain attempting to process it all. After a moment his mouth spread into a grin. “I told you I’d kill you.”
“Keep moving!” one out of the seemingly thousands of soldiers barked in English, although a deep and heavy accent conquered his words, his gruff voice muffled behind his helmet to make it even harder for the countless men, women, and children to contemplate what he was yelling about. He gestured with his rifle and the prisoners in the line he was addressing did as they were told, imposed with no other choice, and they continued moving forward to their unknown destination.
Around him, other soldiers that looked his exact twin followed suit, ordering the people in the lines around them to continue forward. “Keep moving or die! It’s your choice!” Not wanting to come to some horrible demise in the middle of an unknown death camp, the prisoners kept on walking despite the fact of how long they’ve been struggling along and how tired they were, because the endless number of lines they walked or limped or crawled in seemed to never end or to reach a specific destination. Vast lines of prisoners slowly trod across the painfully rocky ground of whatever this place was, and whenever they looked up, all they saw were other prisoners as far as the eye could see, with various groups of soldiers monitoring them, moving swiftly up and down in between each line. They knew that these soldiers were not from their country, not America. Was the United States being taken over by a terrorist group? Were they even in America? Everyone asked each other these questions in secret whispers when no one was watching, but still no one had an answer.
Finally, after hours of torment, dehydration and hunger starting to kick in, one prisoner leapt out of his line and tackled a soldier who was barking orders at the prisoners in the two lines surrounding him. He knocked the soldier over, who dropped his rifle, and the man began to punch the soldier in the face, but to no avail. The helmet the soldier wore was bullet proof.
“David! No!” a woman in the line shouted, apparently the man’s wife. She was holding the hand of a little boy, about twelve years old, who was silently crying, he too calling for his father. His dark blonde hair was dirty and unkempt, as if he had just gotten out of bed. His mother’s curly hair was the same, her short-cropped blonde curls blowing softly in the wind. “David, come back! They’re going to kill you!”
The man didn’t care, and, ignoring his wife and son, he repeatedly punched the soldier in the face, the skin on his knuckles ripping away, blood dripping down his arm and onto the ground. The rocks were also cutting his bare feet, making it torture just to stand, let alone constantly shift his stance to fight. “Damn you!” David yelled in frustration and rage. “Where is the rest of my family, you bastard? Where’s my son?” Before David could raise his fist to punch the soldier again, another “Black Devil” ran over and struck David in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, immediately knocking him unconscious.
What felt like years later, David awoke as someone dumped a bucket of water on his head, but before it cleared from his eyes and he was able to see again, the person left through a door that was located directly behind him. The water was as cold as it was refreshing, and he sighs as the tiny droplets ran down his face and cooled his body temperature. He tried to stand after that, but he was securely tied to the chair he sat in. What the…I can’t talk! he thought, panicking until he realized that there was only tape over his mouth, and the only sound he could make was a muffled groan. He breathed deeply in and out of his nose to regain his calm. He struggled for a couple of minutes and then decided it was useless. He slumped in the chair, defeated.
Gazing around desperately, he noticed that directly above him was a bright light, and when he looked into it he became blind for a few moments. Just before he was about to doze off again, the door behind him opened and two soldiers strode past him, one on either side. They stopped at the other end of the small empty room, checked their weapons, and raised them. David tried to scream, tried to beg for his life, but all he could do was grunt and groan, the tears blurring his vision. But then a third person, a man standing behind him, ripped the tape off his mouth, and David flinched as black hair from his thin mustache and beard were ripped out. “What the hell…what is this? What are you doing to me?” David begged through ragged breaths, still waiting for the guns to fire and end his life.
“Oh, you think wee are to kill you, yes?” the person behind him said, and David
tried to turn his head to see but he couldn’t twist his neck to that extent. Instead, the man walked around David and stood directly in front of him.
The man was not a soldier, David noticed at once, still trying to catch his breath. Who the hell is this guy? he thought, and, as if the man who wasn’t a soldier could read his mind, he said, “I am General Reavsky. You are in my little interrogation room, the ‘Hurt Room’ I like to call it. Don’t worry, though, my little friends with the guns are not going to shoot you…yet.” The General laughed at David’s horrified expression, his strange sort of conciliatory manner confusing to David. “My two friends are only here for my protection, in case you are of any danger to me, but I doubt you are. Do you know where you are?”
“You just said I was in the ‘Hurt Room’ or something, right?”
“No, I meant, do you know what country you are in?”
“What? No…where the hell are wee?” David shouted in a sudden rage. “Aren’t wee in America? What are you doing to all these people?”
The General laughed at David’s confusion. “Well, with these people, I am building an army, and for the country that you are in, well, this is Russia. But please, let’s be formal. Call it the Soviet Union, yes?”
“The Soviet…” David muttered, but he was too shocked to finish the sentence. “You bastard!” He jumped to conclusions. “You took all these people from the U.S. and shipped them on back to your country like they were slaves or something, and now you’re going to kill them all! You’re sick!” David spat on the ground at the General’s feet, disgusted. “I know your kind when I see it.”
General Reavsky took a hasty step back away from David’s unsanitary mess. “My, my, you people are just like I expected…pigs.”
“You son of a--” David yelled, struggling in his chair to free himself, wanting to tear this man in front of him to shreds, but the General cut him off.
“Do not become angry with me. What I said is true. You and all your kind are pigs, every one. You were in those lines up there. You saw what it was like; a bunch of pigs traveling slowly in never ending lines across barren wastelands. How sad.” The General tittered to himself. “I can’t wait until your whole race is obliterated. This is going to be fun!”
“And I can’t wait to wipe that fudgeing smirk right off your face,” David said coolly, leaning back in his chair. His breathing finally slowed down to normal. “I’m going to kill you.”
“And how do you suppose you’re going to do that?”
“Holding a gun,” David retorted back, suddenly eyeing the rifle the soldier behind the General to the left was clutching, “with a bullet in your head.”
The General laughed again. “Did you hear that, boys? He is going to kill me! Oh,
I’m so scared!” The two soldiers joined in on the laughing, but David only sat still in his chair as the three men laughed in his face.
Trying to stop his sniggering, the General continued. “Just because I think you’re funny, I’m going to tell you a secret. Well, a lot of people know this secret, just namely not any of your people.” David raised an eyebrow, but he could care less about some stupid Russian secret. He just wanted to kill the bastard standing in front of him, and maybe those two soldiers holding their precious rifles. “You and your people have been brought to the Soviet Union, and you are all my prisoners. I am building an army. Doesn’t it cross your mind as to how you ended up here in the first place?”
David had to think for a moment, but his memory was a blur. “I just woke up and then I was here. One second I was in my house, getting ready to go to sleep, and then all of a sudden I woke up here. So what’s the big secret?” David asked mockingly. “Did you teleport everyone here, like in the movies?”
“Time machines,” the General exclaimed excitedly, as happy as a child opening his presents on Christmas morning. “Wee can stop time.”
“Bullchocolate,” David muttered, shifting in his chair. He was still slowly but ineffectively trying to escape.
“I didn’t believe it at first either, but I do now. But time travel won’t be used for a while now, I assure you. After our first successful use of the machine, which was when wee came to America and captured all of you pigs, the machine broke down, but not until after wee were finished with the mission.” He smiled, showing his perfectly straight, shiny white teeth. “Very lucky, yes? Right now I have a team of experts working on its repair.” He shrugged. “Anyways, do you know how long it took my army of over a million soldiers to get all you pigs herded back into the pen, here in the Soviet Union?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Exactly seven years, but that was seven years into the future that never happened, because wee stopped time.” David knew the General was trying to explain it all to him as if he didn’t understand anything at all about time machines…which of course he didn’t. “All of my soldiers have special microscopic chips in their helmets that stop the effects of the time machine so they won’t be frozen in time, but I don’t expect you to be able to comprehend the science of it. After wee were finished, wee started time again, and there you have it, everything is back on schedule. It was like time didn’t go by at all…for you pigs, at least.” The General ran his hand through his unnaturally white hair. He must have only been in his late forties but his hair was as white as snow, and somehow it made him look fiercer, stronger.
David suddenly remembered something and he struggled in his chair at the realization. “Where’s my son, you sick bastard?”
The General seemed confounded, but after a few moments he said, “Oh, your older son, yes? Don’t worry, he is safe back in America, the most powerful country in the world. Oh, I’m sorry.” The General gave him a nasty grin. “I meant the former most powerful country in the world. Hey, did you know I have your president in another base not an hours drive from here?” For a second the General looked as if he had blundered into a corner and said something wrong, but his expression had melted away as quickly as it had appeared, trying to cover his tracks.
David didn’t care about presidents, only his son, which, for all he knew, was all he had left in this world. His wife and son were as good as dead if the general was telling an ounce of the truth. He also knew that right now was not the proper time to mourn for them. “So that’s the big secret, a broken time machine? How pathetic.”
The General hit David across the face, a lazy backhand slap. “I wasn’t finished, pig. Let me continue.” He readjusted the collar of his large jacket, one made for the cold, harsh winters of Russia. The hem of it easily reached the floor and his sleeves were rolled up so they wouldn’t droop over his large, strong hands. “I am building an army. How do I have over a million soldiers in my grasp?” He let David puzzle at it for a few moments, but he was too impatient. “Cloning. Cloning is the answer to all my dreams. And it works, too. I am not lying.”
“You can clone people? Are you insane?” David thought he was losing his mind. This is not happening. This has got to be a dream. A nightmare. I must have fallen asleep with the TV on again.
“I am not insane, no, but all of your precious teenagers in America will be. In exactly one year from today, July seventh, 2016, wee will travel back to America. It will be in the new era, the dawn of a new age, July seventh, 2017. I will not go back to America personally unless something serious happens, but three-fourths of my entire army will, and when they get there, I hope your son and all of his friends are ready for a blood bath of chaos and mayhem. It will be ‘kill or be killed’ in America. And if the children survive a year after that I will go to America, congratulate them personally, bring them back here, clone them, and they will join my ever-growing army. And finally, five or so years from now, when I’ve collected soldiers from every powerful country, I will rule the world, and I will be the king! I will rule the world!” The General laughed maniacally, his arms raised as if he had just won some important contest.
“You’re lying,” David said. “You expect me to believe all your lies? You’re so full of it.” I’m still going to kill you, though. He stared at the General with narrow eyes, hoping to intimidate him.
Nothing David did could bring the man down, and the General continued on, ignoring David’s meager attempt to scare him. “Believe what you will, or don’t believe me at all, but you had best believe in cloning, my friend. You will believe in it very soon.” He signaled to the soldiers and they made their way over and untied David. Knowing he would probably be shot, David doesn’t try to run. They’ll kill me for sure, but I have to get out of here. What can I do?
“Hands behind your back,” one of the soldiers said sternly, tying his hands up with the rope that had formerly bound him to the chair, but it wasn’t tied tightly for some reason. Luckily the General or the other soldier didn’t notice, and David took that as a good sign. I may escape yet. The General opened the door that was behind David when he had been sitting in the chair and led him and the two soldiers out and down a long and cold underground tunnel. They passed various other soldiers as they walked along, each one acting as if they had an important job at hand; when they saw the General, they scurried along on their way with feigned alacrity, eager to be out of sight.
“Where are you taking me?” David demanded, and he stops in his tracks after they had been walking for quite some time. He could see his breath steaming in the air as he breathed in and out. He didn’t feel cold, though. All around them, the walls were a dull grey cement color, and there was nothing to be said of but randomly placed doors on either side of the hallway that seemed to go in a very large circle. David thought it must have spanned over hundreds of miles.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the General promised. He turned to the two soldiers, casually taking out a pair of gloves to fit them over his hands. “If he won’t walk, carry him.”
Before David could reply, one of the soldiers punched him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and then he picked David up and threw him over his shoulder, carrying him as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. “Put me down!” David demanded as the soldier marched down the hallway, but no one paid him any mind.
“Shut up!” the soldier yelled through his helmet, punching David in the stomach once more. With that he sustained his silence. Finally, at the end of the long empty hallway that must have wound all the way around the entire Soviet Union (or so it seemed), they arrived at a door that opened up to a very large room. Lights, wires, mechanical levers, and computer screens covered most of the walls, all except one, which was clearly made of glass for he could see an empty room on the other side. Inside the room they entered was a machine that took up more than half of the floor space, and there was a platform just big enough to fit about three people on placed in the middle of the prodigious mechanical beast. Above the platform was a tube, which David thought at first to be a muffler taken from a car and used to build this contraption. “What the hell is that thing?” David asked, but the soldier only responded by dropping him on the floor.
“That ‘thing’ is what is going to build my army, and it is one-hundred percent fool-proof, I promise you,” the General explained, and he noticed David staring at the glass that made up the ceiling of the room. There were dead people floating in acrid clear water in the thick walls above. “Ah, I see you have noticed our little friends in the glass, yes?”
“I…I thought you said that you cloned people here, not killed them!” David shouted, suddenly trying to stand up, but one of the soldiers kicked him down and pointed a rifle in his face. He swallowed down his fear with a nervous gulp. “Why do you only speak lies?” He felt as if he would cry, but he made himself promise that he wouldn’t give the General that satisfaction.
“I am not speaking lies, my friend,” the General said, cracking his knuckles underneath his black leather gloves. “I have been telling you the truth the entire time, but you don’t want to believe me. What I said about time travel, that was true. What I told you about cloning, that much was also true. And by God, what I said about killing your precious children in America…that was definitely true. Your problem is that you don’t want to believe anything I tell you. Let me make this clear. Those people you see in the glass, who are cold, white, and dead? That is a lie. They are not dead. They are new clones wee have just produced, and they are being insulated with ‘Mind Juice’. That’s what I call it.” He tittered to himself. “After they are done in that watery cell in the glass they have no memory, no life, no family, and will do anything their officials command them to do.” Then he muttered something to himself, and neither David nor the two soldiers could understand a thing he said. Instead David tried to make sense of it all.
“You clone people, erase their memories and then send them off to kill innocent people?” David asked, incredulous. “You must be really messed up in the head. Did your mother drop you when you were a crying little baby?”
“Enough!” the General bellowed, and he kicked David in the ribs. He bowled over onto his back and writhed in pain on the cold cement, clutching at his chest as he tried to breath. “Now get up on the damn platform and get this over with. The sooner you’re cloned, the better. Get up!”
“No,” David mumbled, but the General couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“No,” David said, rolling over onto his stomach and pushing himself up onto his knees.
“Do as I tell you, or you will die,” the General screamed at him, furious. “Wee can afford to lose you, I’ll have you know! Wee have your whole country here waiting to be cloned! Wee can get more people! Your death doesn’t concern me! Now get on the platform!”
“He said ‘no’,” said one of the soldiers, and he shot the General in the chest with his rifle, then deftly turned and unarmed the other soldier. Shoving him to the floor, he yanked the soldier’s helmet off and inserted a knife through the back of his head. The Russian died without making a sound, his head gushing blood, creating a miniature lake on the cold cement, steam rising from it like David’s breath in the cold.
“What…what are y-you d-doing?” the General asked, trying to sit up, but he could only rise to his knees, holding his hand against the wound in his chest. He was losing blood too fast and was sure to die soon. “W-what are you doing, Lieutenant Ivanov? You will pay for this. I assure you, you will pay… f-for this!” He coughed and blood dripped from his mouth, steaming from the coldness in the room as it landed on the floor, mingling with the blood from the dead soldier to make the tiny lake grow twice its size.
“I am turning this mission around,” the soldier who was not a soldier said, quickly untying David’s hands, and then he gave him the other soldier’s rifle. So that’s why my hands weren’t tied that tight .Finally, the man took off his helmet. “And my name isn’t Ivanov.”
“H-how did…how could this happen? The perimeter was perfectly secure!” the General exclaimed. “No one could have escaped, never the less… kill one of m-my men!”
“Well, perfect wasn’t good enough,” the American soldier said mockingly, his head cocked to the side.
“I’ll…kill you,” the general said, his words freezing around him like his breath. “I…I…promise you.”
Ignoring the general’s sputtering, the American soldier glanced at David and pointed at the dead soldier on the floor, his lake swiftly reaching towards the General with fingers of blood. “You need to get into that soldier’s armor. If wee want to get out of here alive wee need to become them. Take off his armor and put it on. When wee leave here, do not talk to anyone, and wee might be able to survive.”
“I don’t…think so,” the General declared, and he shot the soldier in the head with his own pistol that he had drawn from inside his large coat. The soldier who could have helped David survive this insanity fell to the floor in what seemed to be slow motion, but it was just David’s adrenaline pumping in his brain, making him more stable, more focused.
Screaming not in pain but in pure fury, David raised his rifle the same instant the General turned to aim at his prisoner, but David squeezed his trigger first, shooting the General in the head with a stream of bullets, which exploded and covered David with a fresh layer of blood and added more to the dead soldier’s small lake. The General’s body remained on its knees for a few seconds as if he were praying, then fell backwards and landed on the ground with a sickening splat. David threw his rifle to the floor, trying to catch his breath, his head pounding, his brain attempting to process it all. After a moment his mouth spread into a grin. “I told you I’d kill you.”
Spoiler for New Prologue:
The sun was slowly sinking in the distance behind the dark, heavy clouds, but its meager rays of light would still shine down on the General and his men for a few more hours. Complimenting the clouds was the laughter and pious biting of the cold, howling winds, and the General knew that if the storm clouds above were to shed tears tonight, snow would fall thick around them. Rain or shine, the General was set to finish their actions by nightfall.
“This is it. The end. Get the bastards from those apartments over there,” the General roared, pointing with his gloved hand at the tan colored town houses, which, compared to the run down housings surrounding he and his men, made them look brand new and luxurious. He quickly realized that he had mistaken the buildings across the street for apartments, but he did not care, for none of his men had stood up to him to tell him otherwise. Besides, it was nearing their final hour, and General Reavsky was growing impatient.
Seven years, it had taken them. Seven long and brutal years to round up every man, woman, and child in the United States of America and ship them off to their death in the Soviet Union, leaving the frightened and scared and wondering and quick thinking young adults to fend for themselves, to hopefully squabble with one another to the death, to turn on each other for their own survival, leaving less for General Reavsky to deal with.
And that’s more than they deserve, the General thought, grunting in his anger, staring blankly around the sweat and grease-stained auto shop that he watched his men’s work from. Across the street, hundreds of his black-armored, black-hearted soldiers went about their duty, breaking down the doors of every and all house in the little community the sign out front regarded as “Las Mariposas,” which—if the General could remember his Spanish well enough—translated to “The Butterfly.” If I weren’t the gentleman I am, I would have dropped every nuclear weapon on top of this heap of trash the world calls a country. He watched intently as two soldiers emerged from the apartment directly across from him numbered 311, carrying a man between them. The two soldiers were almost invisible in the darkness of night, their black body armor blending in with the shadows. The frozen man’s face was relaxed and at ease, as if nothing were amiss; he must have been deeply asleep when the General had begun his attack on America. And how easy this all has been.
The two soldiers drug the body up and into the back of the trailer of a large truck, only one of the thousands that had once roamed this country, people packed frozen and lifeless inside. The General smiled, despite his exhaustion. This was their last city, these last little town houses, and General Reavsky had only then came to realize that the moment was almost upon him. The moment I become the most powerful man in the world.
For a moment he felt like laughing, but the notion seemed distasteful to the situation. It might have intimidated his soldiers, which seemed too easy for General Reavsky—not that he disliked being able to scare any man on the face of the earth into approval. He stood with his gloved hands in his pockets, eyeing the scene lazily as another pair of soldiers emerged from the same house, this time each dark and shadowed man carrying their own victim; the one on the left dragged the frozen but relaxed body of the earlier man’s wife, the right carrying a boy about twelve, the pants of his pajamas rippling and swaying in the unnaturally strong wind. Besides the hair on their heads and the clothes on their backs, they remained quite still in the strong wind that made the few trees lining the sidewalk in front of the outer row of townhouses sway violently back and forth, yet for a brief moment they almost seemed to be dancing.
It was cold here, to the General’s dismay, but he was from the Soviet Union; he preferred snow and rain to sunshine and blue skies. Still, California rarely gets this cold, especially not at this time of year. The General pondered whether his abuse of time has collided with the weather somehow, and if any potential danger was close at hand. Not that it matters, he thought, remembering what side of the war he stood on. Wee’ll be out of this hell hole soon enough.
A final soldier rushed out of the town house and made his way across the street to the General, who, after opening his helmet, reported in his native tongue, “Sir, there should be a teenaged boy in the house, but his room is empty and wee have searched everywhere. Do you command us to repeat the search?”
“No,” the General said simply and in English, making the soldier narrow his eyes in brief anger, but he quickly returned his expression to something like a blank page. The soldiers knew not to challenge the General. He was in charge, and if he wanted to speak in such savage tongues then so will his soldiers; albeit only if they had taken the time to learn the language of their enemies. The General gave his final order, this time in Russian: “Clear out the rest of these houses and wake me when this place is empty. I shall be in my quarters.” There were still at least fifty more doors waiting to be smashed down, with almost twice as many more men, women, and children to be rounded up. The only people to be left behind were the young adults, as the general had ordered, but he must have not made his commands clear enough.
Parked underneath an overhang of the auto shop was a large semi, quite similar to the one the soldiers on the other side of the street were storing people in, and the General made his way towards the back of it. This is what he considered his quarters, as the trailer had been made into a self-styled bedroom of sorts, complete with a bed, bathroom, and kitchen. He had two personal drivers, also fitted into everything the soldiers wore; black body armor from head to toe, black gloves, black boots, black helmets. The only person without these vital protections was the General himself, for he thought himself a kind of god when it came to power. And besides, what kind of danger could I be in when everyone is frozen and dead to the world? he thought as he pulled open the back of the trailer. Merely a few feet in stood another wall, this one inlaid with a small door barely tall enough for him to enter.
He clambered up into the back of his truck and pulled shut the large trailer door behind him, thinking, I have my scientists to thank for this. He pressed his fingers against his temple as he ducked his way into his quarters, feeling the small chip inside his skull that was so carefully attached to his brain. It was a permanent stop against the effects of time, the only difference between his chip and his soldier’s chips inside their helmets being that theirs had an off switch; something they didn’t know. This was the General’s idea of having a fail-safe against time, so if another country somehow developed a way to manipulate or stop time he wouldn’t be affected, and no harm would come to him.
General Reavsky turned a dial on the wall, and soon warm air was forced into the room through vents in the ceiling, almost making the General sigh in comfort. He did enjoy the cold, but sometimes a man needed warmth, too. And now is one of those times, he figured, taking off his large fur coat and setting it aside on a counter next to his bed. He hadn’t slept for some days now, but sleep wasn’t necessary when you’re defying the laws of time; at least that’s what the General believed. But now the General was tired—not drowsy, but exhausted from yelling, from ordering, from thinking and planning, and from teaching his heir the ways of being a leader.
He took off his gloves, and shoved them inside his coat pocket, then almost fell onto his bed, thankful for the soft mattresses and blankets that served to rest his tired bones. Thinking of his son made the General wonder why he insisted that Scott Reavsky act the part as one of the soldiers, when he had more power than any other, besides any of the Generals themselves. Then it was clear. He must learn to fight, he must watch and see how to be a leader, but also feel how it is to be down the ladder in the food chain. And then the General drifted off to sleep, blankets piled high atop him on his small bed.
His dreams came in lucid peculiar shapes and colors, and for a while he felt at peace. The world wasn’t frozen in time in his dreams, and the people of the earth were one great family, all equal, all full of happiness, with no wars or battles to speak of. Everything was as it should have been, everything was perfect; all except for the fact that he was the only unhappy person in the world, and wherever he stepped, his boots were sucked down by the mud and blood of the innocents he had killed, and inside his head the chip that ensured his safety grew furious, making his mind vibrate and his heart grow weak in pain. You are a monster, was the last thing he heard before he was brought back into reality.
A sudden knock sounded at the door, waking the General with a start. It is time, he thought, not one bit angered for being so abruptly awakened. His nightmares forgotten, he threw the blankets off of him, all heavy with sweat. It was too hot in his room now, but the General still donned his large jacket before exiting the quarters he had made for himself in the trailer of the large truck.
“Is it done?” he asked in Russian, pulling his gloves out of his pocket.
The soldier in front of him was shivering from the cold, despite all the leather and armor he was wearing, but was trying to ignore it. “Yes, sir,” he said, his teeth practically chattering. “Wee have cleared out this entire area. Now all that is left is getting them back.”
“Good,” the General said through a smile, once again in English. The soldier gave him a confused look, so the General dismissed him with a wave of his hand, annoyed with his men and their inability to comprehend his words. Now where is my son? He has done his part; it’s time he was returned to his true status. “Lieutenant Ivanov,” he called, soldiers running this way and that around the General. After a few shouts amongst the men, the Lieutenant—dressed in all black as everyone else—wandered up and saluted the General. “Is everything accounted for?”
“Wee have taken every man, woman, and child from this entire nation as our captives, sir,” Ivanov said, holding a clip board with a thick stack of papers resting on top. It must have been a list for everyone they were to kidnap in California.
“Prepare the men for departure,” General Reavsky told him, “and find my son. Send him to my quarters. He is no longer to be among the men.”
“Yes, sir.” The man bounded out of sight, no doubt in search of the General’s son.
A sudden outburst of cries drew the General’s attention to the truck across the street, parked where the last Americans had been dragged from their homes. He briskly made his way over to see what the commotion was about. A shroud of black was all the General could see, since almost two hundred were now standing around the one small truck, taking in the scene—yet there were still hundreds more crawling about the area, keeping a perimeter around their main focus. General Reavsky pushed his way through, some soldiers jumping aside as they noticed who was barring their way through. “What is the meaning of this?” the General shouted in English when he reached the front of the group. Two soldiers jumped down out of the back of the truck, shouting for the General, both oblivious that their commander was already present.
“What is it?” General Reavsky asked impatiently.
“One of the Americans is awake, sir,” the soldier on the left said frantically, trying eagerly to get as far from the truck as he could. The General ignored him and looked into the back of the truck to find an American, who, as the soldier had claimed, was definitely awake.
“What is this?” the man bellowed from the very back of the trailer as he tried to make his way to the General, but he kept falling and slipping over the other people who were frozen and expressionless below him.
The General laughed despite his bewilderment. He probably thinks they are all dead. “They are not dead, if that is what you mean,” the General declared, and everything grew quiet, the man and the soldiers surrounding the truck listening intently. This man was the only one who had ever awoke before his time, and the soldiers all wanted to know why. So did the General.
“They look dead to me,” the man argued, pushing himself up off a pile of bodies. He stumbled uneasily to his feet and continued to make his way towards the General, but to no avail. There were just too many bodies, and a wrong step would mean a fall, which happened almost every other step. And this trailer was longer than most.
He’ll never reach me in time, the General thought with a sly smile. “You are a peculiar specimen, my friend. I’ll have to study you more thoroughly when wee get home, yes?”
“Home?” David repeated as stupidly as a trained bird, and he stopped in his tracks. Then, angrily, “What is this? Who are you?” He continued forward towards the General, but he was only halfway through the truck by this time.
“Who am I?” the General asked, grabbing the top of the trailer door. He began to pull it shut, and the man’s eyes went wide as plates, realizing he would be encased in total darkness with a room full of bodies; dead ones for all he knew, even though in truth they were quite alive. “I wish I knew,” the General finished, slamming the door shut, locking it behind him.
Behind him the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, and the twinkling of the stars and the reflections of the moon were the only light to remain behind with the sun’s departure.
“This is it. The end. Get the bastards from those apartments over there,” the General roared, pointing with his gloved hand at the tan colored town houses, which, compared to the run down housings surrounding he and his men, made them look brand new and luxurious. He quickly realized that he had mistaken the buildings across the street for apartments, but he did not care, for none of his men had stood up to him to tell him otherwise. Besides, it was nearing their final hour, and General Reavsky was growing impatient.
Seven years, it had taken them. Seven long and brutal years to round up every man, woman, and child in the United States of America and ship them off to their death in the Soviet Union, leaving the frightened and scared and wondering and quick thinking young adults to fend for themselves, to hopefully squabble with one another to the death, to turn on each other for their own survival, leaving less for General Reavsky to deal with.
And that’s more than they deserve, the General thought, grunting in his anger, staring blankly around the sweat and grease-stained auto shop that he watched his men’s work from. Across the street, hundreds of his black-armored, black-hearted soldiers went about their duty, breaking down the doors of every and all house in the little community the sign out front regarded as “Las Mariposas,” which—if the General could remember his Spanish well enough—translated to “The Butterfly.” If I weren’t the gentleman I am, I would have dropped every nuclear weapon on top of this heap of trash the world calls a country. He watched intently as two soldiers emerged from the apartment directly across from him numbered 311, carrying a man between them. The two soldiers were almost invisible in the darkness of night, their black body armor blending in with the shadows. The frozen man’s face was relaxed and at ease, as if nothing were amiss; he must have been deeply asleep when the General had begun his attack on America. And how easy this all has been.
The two soldiers drug the body up and into the back of the trailer of a large truck, only one of the thousands that had once roamed this country, people packed frozen and lifeless inside. The General smiled, despite his exhaustion. This was their last city, these last little town houses, and General Reavsky had only then came to realize that the moment was almost upon him. The moment I become the most powerful man in the world.
For a moment he felt like laughing, but the notion seemed distasteful to the situation. It might have intimidated his soldiers, which seemed too easy for General Reavsky—not that he disliked being able to scare any man on the face of the earth into approval. He stood with his gloved hands in his pockets, eyeing the scene lazily as another pair of soldiers emerged from the same house, this time each dark and shadowed man carrying their own victim; the one on the left dragged the frozen but relaxed body of the earlier man’s wife, the right carrying a boy about twelve, the pants of his pajamas rippling and swaying in the unnaturally strong wind. Besides the hair on their heads and the clothes on their backs, they remained quite still in the strong wind that made the few trees lining the sidewalk in front of the outer row of townhouses sway violently back and forth, yet for a brief moment they almost seemed to be dancing.
It was cold here, to the General’s dismay, but he was from the Soviet Union; he preferred snow and rain to sunshine and blue skies. Still, California rarely gets this cold, especially not at this time of year. The General pondered whether his abuse of time has collided with the weather somehow, and if any potential danger was close at hand. Not that it matters, he thought, remembering what side of the war he stood on. Wee’ll be out of this hell hole soon enough.
A final soldier rushed out of the town house and made his way across the street to the General, who, after opening his helmet, reported in his native tongue, “Sir, there should be a teenaged boy in the house, but his room is empty and wee have searched everywhere. Do you command us to repeat the search?”
“No,” the General said simply and in English, making the soldier narrow his eyes in brief anger, but he quickly returned his expression to something like a blank page. The soldiers knew not to challenge the General. He was in charge, and if he wanted to speak in such savage tongues then so will his soldiers; albeit only if they had taken the time to learn the language of their enemies. The General gave his final order, this time in Russian: “Clear out the rest of these houses and wake me when this place is empty. I shall be in my quarters.” There were still at least fifty more doors waiting to be smashed down, with almost twice as many more men, women, and children to be rounded up. The only people to be left behind were the young adults, as the general had ordered, but he must have not made his commands clear enough.
Parked underneath an overhang of the auto shop was a large semi, quite similar to the one the soldiers on the other side of the street were storing people in, and the General made his way towards the back of it. This is what he considered his quarters, as the trailer had been made into a self-styled bedroom of sorts, complete with a bed, bathroom, and kitchen. He had two personal drivers, also fitted into everything the soldiers wore; black body armor from head to toe, black gloves, black boots, black helmets. The only person without these vital protections was the General himself, for he thought himself a kind of god when it came to power. And besides, what kind of danger could I be in when everyone is frozen and dead to the world? he thought as he pulled open the back of the trailer. Merely a few feet in stood another wall, this one inlaid with a small door barely tall enough for him to enter.
He clambered up into the back of his truck and pulled shut the large trailer door behind him, thinking, I have my scientists to thank for this. He pressed his fingers against his temple as he ducked his way into his quarters, feeling the small chip inside his skull that was so carefully attached to his brain. It was a permanent stop against the effects of time, the only difference between his chip and his soldier’s chips inside their helmets being that theirs had an off switch; something they didn’t know. This was the General’s idea of having a fail-safe against time, so if another country somehow developed a way to manipulate or stop time he wouldn’t be affected, and no harm would come to him.
General Reavsky turned a dial on the wall, and soon warm air was forced into the room through vents in the ceiling, almost making the General sigh in comfort. He did enjoy the cold, but sometimes a man needed warmth, too. And now is one of those times, he figured, taking off his large fur coat and setting it aside on a counter next to his bed. He hadn’t slept for some days now, but sleep wasn’t necessary when you’re defying the laws of time; at least that’s what the General believed. But now the General was tired—not drowsy, but exhausted from yelling, from ordering, from thinking and planning, and from teaching his heir the ways of being a leader.
He took off his gloves, and shoved them inside his coat pocket, then almost fell onto his bed, thankful for the soft mattresses and blankets that served to rest his tired bones. Thinking of his son made the General wonder why he insisted that Scott Reavsky act the part as one of the soldiers, when he had more power than any other, besides any of the Generals themselves. Then it was clear. He must learn to fight, he must watch and see how to be a leader, but also feel how it is to be down the ladder in the food chain. And then the General drifted off to sleep, blankets piled high atop him on his small bed.
His dreams came in lucid peculiar shapes and colors, and for a while he felt at peace. The world wasn’t frozen in time in his dreams, and the people of the earth were one great family, all equal, all full of happiness, with no wars or battles to speak of. Everything was as it should have been, everything was perfect; all except for the fact that he was the only unhappy person in the world, and wherever he stepped, his boots were sucked down by the mud and blood of the innocents he had killed, and inside his head the chip that ensured his safety grew furious, making his mind vibrate and his heart grow weak in pain. You are a monster, was the last thing he heard before he was brought back into reality.
A sudden knock sounded at the door, waking the General with a start. It is time, he thought, not one bit angered for being so abruptly awakened. His nightmares forgotten, he threw the blankets off of him, all heavy with sweat. It was too hot in his room now, but the General still donned his large jacket before exiting the quarters he had made for himself in the trailer of the large truck.
“Is it done?” he asked in Russian, pulling his gloves out of his pocket.
The soldier in front of him was shivering from the cold, despite all the leather and armor he was wearing, but was trying to ignore it. “Yes, sir,” he said, his teeth practically chattering. “Wee have cleared out this entire area. Now all that is left is getting them back.”
“Good,” the General said through a smile, once again in English. The soldier gave him a confused look, so the General dismissed him with a wave of his hand, annoyed with his men and their inability to comprehend his words. Now where is my son? He has done his part; it’s time he was returned to his true status. “Lieutenant Ivanov,” he called, soldiers running this way and that around the General. After a few shouts amongst the men, the Lieutenant—dressed in all black as everyone else—wandered up and saluted the General. “Is everything accounted for?”
“Wee have taken every man, woman, and child from this entire nation as our captives, sir,” Ivanov said, holding a clip board with a thick stack of papers resting on top. It must have been a list for everyone they were to kidnap in California.
“Prepare the men for departure,” General Reavsky told him, “and find my son. Send him to my quarters. He is no longer to be among the men.”
“Yes, sir.” The man bounded out of sight, no doubt in search of the General’s son.
A sudden outburst of cries drew the General’s attention to the truck across the street, parked where the last Americans had been dragged from their homes. He briskly made his way over to see what the commotion was about. A shroud of black was all the General could see, since almost two hundred were now standing around the one small truck, taking in the scene—yet there were still hundreds more crawling about the area, keeping a perimeter around their main focus. General Reavsky pushed his way through, some soldiers jumping aside as they noticed who was barring their way through. “What is the meaning of this?” the General shouted in English when he reached the front of the group. Two soldiers jumped down out of the back of the truck, shouting for the General, both oblivious that their commander was already present.
“What is it?” General Reavsky asked impatiently.
“One of the Americans is awake, sir,” the soldier on the left said frantically, trying eagerly to get as far from the truck as he could. The General ignored him and looked into the back of the truck to find an American, who, as the soldier had claimed, was definitely awake.
“What is this?” the man bellowed from the very back of the trailer as he tried to make his way to the General, but he kept falling and slipping over the other people who were frozen and expressionless below him.
The General laughed despite his bewilderment. He probably thinks they are all dead. “They are not dead, if that is what you mean,” the General declared, and everything grew quiet, the man and the soldiers surrounding the truck listening intently. This man was the only one who had ever awoke before his time, and the soldiers all wanted to know why. So did the General.
“They look dead to me,” the man argued, pushing himself up off a pile of bodies. He stumbled uneasily to his feet and continued to make his way towards the General, but to no avail. There were just too many bodies, and a wrong step would mean a fall, which happened almost every other step. And this trailer was longer than most.
He’ll never reach me in time, the General thought with a sly smile. “You are a peculiar specimen, my friend. I’ll have to study you more thoroughly when wee get home, yes?”
“Home?” David repeated as stupidly as a trained bird, and he stopped in his tracks. Then, angrily, “What is this? Who are you?” He continued forward towards the General, but he was only halfway through the truck by this time.
“Who am I?” the General asked, grabbing the top of the trailer door. He began to pull it shut, and the man’s eyes went wide as plates, realizing he would be encased in total darkness with a room full of bodies; dead ones for all he knew, even though in truth they were quite alive. “I wish I knew,” the General finished, slamming the door shut, locking it behind him.
Behind him the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, and the twinkling of the stars and the reflections of the moon were the only light to remain behind with the sun’s departure.
