"The End" by Travis W. Herring

The sky was orange with the setting sun.  Esserine sat on the roof of her small apartment, watching the ball of light descending toward the distant horizon, beyond the tall towers of the city she had grown up in.  The sky was flecked with wisps of cloud stuff that reflected the descending sun in flickers so close to flame as to almost seem like the sky itself was burning.  It was a ridiculous thought, that the sky could burn, but Esserine had an active imagination, and it was frequently these evenings out, watching the sun go down, that gave her impressions to keep her work new and interesting.

Relatively well-off for someone considered middle class, Esserine’s apartment sat in a collection of similar townhouses along a hillside, perhaps ten kilometers from the downtown district, where all the towers rose like mirrored monoliths into the cerulean sky.  She’d chosen the location for the view, especially of the sunsets from the rooftop porch, and she spent every evening outside, watching the sun go down after a hard day’s work at her house computer.  Esserine worked from her home, her data streaming into the offices in that downtown collection, meaning she could avoid the heavy traffic and delays in the public transportation system.  She was currently the twenty-first most popular author in Kosere, according to the tabulation system, and the top twenty paid more.  These nights out on the porch had become something of a ritual.

So she wasn’t terribly surprised when her neighbor, a young guy named Athlas, came out onto the porch next door and slightly above (the complex was built along the hillside, meaning each one was slightly above the other as it went upwards).  In his hands, the youth held a pair of bottles and a tray of snacks.  It was his habit to provide such as a bribe to make Esserine talk to him.  She knew he was enamored with him, but her work had always taken so much time that she valued her privacy.  Thus, the only time he could actually speak to her without being waved off was at sunset, and he took full advantage each time he was home in time.

“Drink?” he asked, smiling across the divider.

“I was wondering if you’d make it home in time today,” she replied, rising easily from the chaise lounge she’d been sitting in.  She nodded at the orange sky.  “Particularly pretty tonight, isn’t it?”

Athlas turned to eye the sky and pondered for a moment, trying to see what she saw in it.  Athlas was a factory worker in a shop not far from downtown.  He built pleasure vehicles for the upper class, fulfilling a daily quota before being allowed to go home.  When he was in the right mood, he could pump out his ten units by mid-day and be home to watch the sunset with Esserine.  He hated his work, but he’d yet to find another job that would pay him the same rate no matter how many hours he was actually on-site.  When he chose to, he could work extra units through for extra pay, but he tended to race home instead, stop by the store on the corner, and browse for a time, looking for something new to offer his attractive, if somewhat distant neighbor for dinner.  Realizing he couldn’t quite imagine what it was she saw, he turned back to her and sighed, shrugging.  “It’s… pretty,” he settled with.

Esserine giggled, knowing he couldn’t imagine the things running through her head.  That was one of the reasons she was so popular in Kosere, after all!  If anyone could see the things she saw, would her writings draw so much attention?  After all, it was an attempt to get as far away from the things everyone else saw that made her work interesting.  No one wanted to spend their days working only to come home and log into the hypernet, just to read about the modern day life of someone ELSE.  They wanted action!  Adventure!  Mystery!  And above all, beauty.  Esserine had an eye for finding just what it was about a thing that made it interesting, and then wrote about it.

Others could claim fame by writing biographies about famous people in Kosere.  Or they could tell stories of where they’d been and what they’d done while they were there.  Still others could focus on military dramas that focused on the actions of the soldiers out on the rim, fighting the Selanians for the right to remain free of their galactic empire.  Esserine didn’t care for any of that.  She wanted to write stories of beauty, of mystery, and of adventures that no one else could think of.  Her protagonists were generally young, inexperienced, and unable to handle what came at them until they realized they had no choice and became the hero everyone knew them to be just by the fact that the story revolved around them.  Esserine personally didn’t know anyone who could fit that particular description – the soldiers were trained, the workers in the offices just shuffled papers (as far as she knew), the artists painted or created on their computers, and everyone else just sort of lived.

“It IS pretty,” she replied, grinning at Athlas and accepting the bottle he handed her.  Looking at the label, she realized it was Tarkanian ale, an exotic and spicy wine from beyond the battle lines out at the rim, and very, very illegal.  “Where did you get THIS?” she asked, eyebrows rising.

“A friend,” Athlas replied, waggling his eyebrows.  “This war has been dragging on for years now, and some are tired of the blockade regulations.  They’re going out of their way to provide some of the pleasures we had access to before the Selanians came with all of their demands.  You’d think that, just because we happen to have a peaceful climate and culture that we’re just going to knuckle under when some plate-clad lizard warrior shows up and demands all of our financial data.”

Esserine shook her head.  She didn’t like hearing about the war; knew very little as to why it had even started or when it might end.  The darkness spawned in Kosere by the shadow of the war and all the reports it generated were the very thing she wrote to get away from and why she was so popular to begin with.  In a way, she owed the war her fame, but she still did not have to appreciate it.  The fact that Koseran soldiers were out there dying to keep their culture peaceful seemed ironic to the artistic author.

“Sorry,” Athlas said, seeing her frown.  “I forgot your rules again.”

“Rule number three,” she said, grinning at him. 

They spoke in unison.  “Don’t talk about the war.”

“Sorry,” Athlas repeated.

“Don’t worry about it,” Esserine replied, holding her bottle out for him to open.  He reached out and zipped it off, stuffing the plastic top into a pocket.  He hopped over the barrier and fell the extra meter or so to her porch.  Raising his bottle to her, he drank before moving and sitting on the chaise lounge next to her own.  Esserine drank of hers and appreciated the variety of flavors and spices inherent in the drink.

She looked again toward the dying sunlight, the sky turning burnt umber now that the glow was fading.  There was a particular hum to the air tonight, she noticed, like the sky was thrumming with energy.  It reminded her of nights when a lightning storm was coming and you could almost feel the sparks in the air.  Only there weren’t any clouds capable of actual rain in the sky.  Curious.

“I hear you’ve moved up three points in the scale,” Athlas said after a moment, trying to get her attention back to him once more.  He grinned when she looked at him, curious.  “I’ve been following the charts lately.  You’ve climbed quickly for a new author.”

Esserine grinned.  “It’s my strange take on things,” she said, her eyes drawn back to the sky.  What WAS that hum?  It had begun to take on a localized effect, she realized.  It was coming from behind the hill she sat against.  Distracted, she turned and looked that way.

“There’s a…” Athlas began, but he stopped, seeing her turn back to him.  “It’s about the war,” he said glumly.  “Sorry again…”

“No,” she said, nodding at him.  “Go ahead.  What were you going to say?”

“There’s a battle to the east tonight,” he said quietly, nodding toward the dark bulk of the hillside their homes were built on.  “Close enough to be heard, from what I understand.  The Selanians are making a big push, so it’s said.”

“I wondered,” Esserine said.  The sky began to darken perceptibly now, the sun entirely set.  In the distance beyond the hill, lights flickered, sign that the battle truly WAS close by.  What she’d taken to be distant thunder now resolved itself into the thud and crump of impacting weapons fire.

All around, now, people were coming out onto their porches and eyeing the sky over the dark hump of the hill.  They talked quietly among themselves, eyeing the sky and then turning to look at the glittering city in the distance.  If the fighting was this close, were they safe?  Why hadn’t the government declared a general population evacuation?  The Selanians weren’t know for obeying the rules and conventions of warfare, after all.

The hum increased, and Athlas fell silent, watching the sky with his attractive neighbor, pondering what all this meant, and whether or not he’d ever have a chance or the courage to actually ask her to go out with him.  Esserine’s profile was delicate, a small nose, wide eyes, and dark brown hair that was cut in a pageboy style that let it all flop about her shoulders and brow.  A slender figure with an above-average chest, Esserine drew the eyes of most men who passed her when she went out.  She hated that they saw her chest rather than her face.  Athlas made a point of staring into her eyes.  They were pretty eyes…

The hum increased beyond a subsonic level and became a noise everyone could hear.  People started talking more animatedly, wondering what this meant.  And then the dark silhouette crossed above, hovering past and moving toward the city.

People began to scream.  Men pointed at the sky.  The shape wasn’t Koseran, and it flickered with reflected city light, wicked spikes and gun emplacements showing that this wasn’t a diplomatic starship.  Circular but built more like a barrel than a sphere, prods and sensors poked out at random intervals, tipped with lights and projecting defense grids and sensing lasers into the air around it.  A red line passed over the hillside, and Esserine could imagine the layout of the hill, its buildings, and even her features on some screen before an uncaring Selanian.

Her mind was still caught up in that image when the ship opened fire.  The screams of fear became screams of terror.  Esserine snapped out of her thoughts to see Athlas grabbing for her, pulling her by the arm toward the hatch that led down into her home.  As if that would protect her from the killing intensity of battle lasers focused through arrays that could pinpoint immolate a single infantryman and leave the others standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him untouched.  She jerked away, too caught up in the image of what she was seeing…

The Selanian battleship hovered over the city now, its lasers cutting down in precise maneuvers, slicing into the buildings, setting off fires, reflecting from mirrored surfaces until the arrays could be retuned.  A distant thunder began, the sound of buildings falling from their foundations, the tall skyscrapers of Kosere rendered architecturally unstable by the pinpoint placement of a sluicing laser beam.  Esserine stared…

“We have to hide!” Athlas screamed at her amid the rapidly rising panic around them.  The sounds of vehicles being started assaulted her ears, the smell of ozone rising as the lasers in the distance continued their brutal work, turning the artistically arranged towers of Esserine’s home city into so much rubble and pointing ruins. 

Kosere had no defense works around it.  The lines of conflict were supposed to keep the Selanians from overrunning, keeping the cities from spending funds used to maintain the quality of life on defenses that weren’t supposed to be necessary.  It sat there and burned while the Selanian ripped holes in its walls, set fire to its structures, and obliterated its populace.

Athlas finally managed to drag her to the hatch.  “Get down!” he cried, panic evident in his eyes and tears running from his face.  “There are fighters now!  I can hear them coming!”

“We are defeated,” Esserine said softly, pulling away once more and staring into the distance.  “What is the point of running?”

“Life is not over!” Athlas cried back, halfway into the hatch leading to Esserine’s living room.  “We must try to escape!  There will be other cities, other places where we can live!”

“As fugitives,” Esserine replied softly.  “Life as we know it is over.  My fame is over.  My… purpose… is over…”

“You can’t say that,” Athlas replied, looking down and then climbing back up onto the porch to wrap his arms around the stunned girl.  “You are still alive.  I am still alive.  Perhaps there is a new purpose awaiting us.”

Esserine shook her head and then turned to stare at the continuing destruction of everything she held dear.  “You do not understand,” she said quietly.  “What more IS there for me?  Everything I mean, everything I stand for…  It is all out there!”  She pointed at the shattered city, the warship moving slowly outward in a circle, its killing beams strafing and crushing all that they crossed, leaving fire and death and destruction in their wake.  “I cannot exist in this!” she screamed.

The tears began and Athlas, not knowing what else to do, stared at her, his arms about her shoulders.  The section the warship had just crossed had included his factory.  Suddenly, he wondered what the purpose of building pleasure craft for the wealthy had to do with life – REAL life.  The life that he saw going on right now, where those with REAL power exercised it on those that did not.  Turning away from that terrible, terrible abyss, he looked into the eyes of the one woman he could tell himself he loved.

And then he kissed her.

She resisted for a moment, wishing her eyes to only be on the devastation, to record it like she had recorded its beauty in her stories all along.  But Athlas would not release her, and the sensations were new, different… beautiful…

She kissed him back.

When they pulled apart, they stared into each other’s eyes, no words coming.  They turned and watched Kosere burn in the distance, knew that the circle of devastation would continue to widen until it took in the hillside they stood on.  They had to find cover.

“Come on,” Athlas said finally.  “I know somewhere we can go.  If we go now, maybe it won’t be so full, and we can do something about this.”  A hardness Esserine had never heard was in his voice.  “We WILL do something about this,” he said through gritted teeth.  “They will pay for destroying what you love so much.”

Esserine looked into his eyes, saw the anger, saw the emotion.  Felt the hatred for what was happening, felt it grow in her own heart, felt the sudden and complete emotional devastation that the Selanians had brought upon her and her oh-so-innocent and naïve neighbor, and hated them all the more for it.

“Let’s go,” she replied.

Together, they climbed down the stairs into her apartment, gathered a few things, and left their homes, making their way further up the hill, to a shelter that had been left over from the unification wars that had made Kosere so peaceful to begin with.  The night was far from over.  It had just begun.

But what else had begun because of it would change the future, both of Athlas, Esserine, Kosere, and the Selanians themselves.  What had been done could not be undone, just like the future that was in place for them all.  It was simply a matter of time’s inexorable push forward before the results of this terrible night would be seen by all.