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A Mother's Smile

"Save your strength, child. You're going to need it."

By Craig C MackeyPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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I remember the sound of the bombs dropping. Then a bright light. Then darkness.

I was playing in the living room of our Family Co-habitation Facility in the Northeast Quadrant of the Federation of North American States (FedNAS, as the news anchors liked to call it) with my two brothers. My little sister was in her crib. I was only six years old when the lockdowns started—FedNAS soldiers would go house-to-house handing out flyers in the poor areas with residents who couldn’t afford internet service telling us to “shelter in place” in case of an attack.

In the vacuum of information created by the government, everyone developed their own thoughts about what was happening. Conspiracy theories spread like a pandemic. Was the Union of Independent States preparing for an invasion? Was the Pacific League planting stories in our media? Were the FedNAS suits making the whole thing up?

I remember the sound of the TV anchor speaking.

“This is Mina Codaire for the Subchannel 347 News Hour. FedNAS officials announced an hour ago that Northern Quadrant Counties 3-thru-237 remain under military quarantine. When asked why, FedNAS officials continue to cite classified information from the FedNAS intelligence community suggesting a potential imminent threat to the health and safety of civilians in the Northern Quadrant.”

As the news anchor spoke, I looked up at my parents, each sitting in their own chairs. My father was focused intently on the television, and appeared to be deep in thought. I could see worry lines creasing my mother’ forehead and the outside edges of her lips. At her feet, in front of a cushioned reclining chair, my younger brother was playing with a doll my mother had knit for him. He was only four years old so he didn’t understand much, but he seemed to catch a glimpse of my mother’s face. Rather than speak, he simply put down his doll and hugged my mother’s legs. And for a moment, she seemed to forget about what the news anchor had said.

I remember my mother’s smile.

My mother didn’t smile often. Our family lived in the Subsidized Family Co-habitation Facilities (sometimes referred to as the “FCF’s” or “the Fuck-offs” by those of us who lived there). One of the “advances” of modern government was the acknowledgement that certain jobs do not pay enough to allow people to pay rent while also paying for basic necessities. So if you wound up with a job on “The List”—i.e. a government list of jobs whose average wages are deemed to be too impoverishing to afford rent. If you were on the list, your family qualified for a subsidized FCF unit.

“Qualify” is an odd word since nobody who lives in the FCF’s actually wants to live there. The FedNAS suits like to brag that the FCF’s ended poverty. The problem is that, in mankind’s 22nd Century, the focus of public sector bureaucrats was on resource efficiency, i.e. how can we keep the most people alive using the least amount of resources?

Unfortunately, the eggheads making the calculations forgot to put “quality of life” into the equation. The FCF’s in theory have domestic services to ensure the residents can maintain a reasonable standard of living. In practice, FCF’s are crowded, dirty, and “amenities” are few and far between. Bleeding heart suits with good intentions proposed the FCF’s years ago as a way to eliminate poverty in the FedNAS. The Financial Conservative Party (or “FinCons”) pushed back, worried that the cost would bankrupt the government. In the end, there was a compromise: the FCF’s would be built, but budgets would be slashed to the bare bones required to keep them running. In addition, as part of the deal, the FinCons got minimum wage laws abolished as a favor to donors. The bleeding heart suits went along with it under the pretense that “unpleasant shelter” was better than no shelter at all.

In reality what happened is that the FCF’s created a class of second-class citizens. Rather than ensuring a baseline level of dignity for everybody, the FCF’s instead serve as crowded, underserved communal facilities where those unlucky enough to not pass their Post-Secondary Education Exams were filtered into “low skill” jobs—jobs that barely paid enough to put clothes on your back in light of the deregulation of minimum wage laws. What wound up happening is that anytime employers saw an FCF address on a job applicant’s resume, they would reduce the starting wage in light of the fact that FCF residents “didn’t have to pay rent.” Eventually this practice was adopted by employers across the FedNAS, meaning that people without connections or college degrees were—with the occasional exception—essentially condemned to live in the FCF’s for the rest of their lives.

I remember the ring and the roar.

It wasn’t long after my mother picked up my little brother that I started to see the wall on the northern side of the living room start to glow a little brighter with light pouring in from a nearby windowsill. It was 6pm in the evening and Autumn had set in. Seeing the light suddenly get brighter at dusk was unusual, and I remember everyone looking up at the square of light on the northern wall slowly becoming more brighter. I briefly exchanged glances with both of my parents, then looked at my younger brother, who was staring directly outside the window. I turned around, and that’s when I started to hear the ringing, like the telltale sound of a bomb traveling through the air.

I saw a blinding, overwhelming light blooming outside my window as the ring turned into a roar. I felt my face and ears begin to vibrate.

Then darkness.

My next memory is of waking up in a bed that wasn’t mine. I was staring at a brown, dilapidated ceiling I didn’t recognize. I tried to shift my head to look down. I saw arms on top of the bedsheet that I didn’t recognize as my own: discolored, brownish, covered in scars and deep recesses in the skin. They seemed to be connected to me yet I couldn’t move them. I looked to my sides and saw similar beds on both sides of me that appeared to have people in them. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could see their arms. They looked like mine.

I remember someone who must have been a nurse coming to my bed, checking the readouts on some type of machine next to my bed. She wasn’t like any nurse I recognized: she was wearing what looked like some kind of space age military uniform—the kind you might see in a sci-fi movie. I looked down and realized there were tubes and needles stuck in the arms I was starting to realize were mine. I tried to speak, but my jaw felt like it was rusted shut. I managed to pull apart my lips and whisper a few meek, pathetic sounds that must have caught her attention.

“…mmmeuh…mehh…meeh…who…”

“Save your strength child,” came a gruff response. “You’re going to need it.”

As if to prove her point, after I spoke I suddenly felt faint. Not soon after lost consciousness again. This would happen a few more times over the next couple days before I was able to stay awake for an extended period of time.

What I would later learn is that I was a victim of “The Blast.” No one seems to agree on exactly what The Blast was caused by. What we do know is that millions died from some kind of massive bomb, and countless millions more were hit by a shockwave that resulted in the mother of all concussions. Some people died soon after being hit by the shockwave, their brains essentially being turned to mush. Others had such severe brain damage they were beyond salvation.

But some of us got lucky. I was one of them.

In the aftermath of The Blast, FedNAS infrastructure was obliterated. No internet, no running water, no garbage disposal, police, fire department, not even a street sweeper. As humans tend to do in a crisis, people came together for the sake of mutual aid. But it wasn’t universal—mutual aid groups arose that were organized around various themes—race, gender, ethnicity, geography—you name it. In the Post-Blast world, we call these groups “Orgs.”

I would later learn that I was rescued by an Org called The Sisters of Progress. Basically, imagine that a bunch of nurses and doctors that happened to be military veterans and/or active duty FedNAS military members who got together with the mission of protecting each other and saving children affected by The Blast. They were able to access unused military equipment at their military bases and essentially organized turned hospitals and clinics into fortresses called Conclaves. Men weren’t explicitly excluded, but there was a general understanding that women were running the show. Given the alternative, the men who were rescued and made part of the Org didn’t complain.

The Sisters raised me after The Blast and taught me how to cope with the new reality. The Sisters had three goals: First, search for, save, and treat those who survived The Blast but were unable to care for themselves. Second, cultivate all available resources that will help Org members survive. Lastly, develop a blueprint for a new society that will arise in the aftermath of The Blast.

Fifteen years have passed since I woke up in that bed. I am jumping from rooftop to rooftop in an old FedNAS sector using my HE Suit—a high-tech combat suit developed by FedNAS lab coats years ago and salvaged by Org members. The Sisters have tasked me with scouting out an old FCF facility to see if there’s anything useful there. What I didn’t tell the Org higher-ups was that they were sending me to the same FCF complex I was rescued from.

My old FCF complex is a crumbling, burnt-out husk of a building. There was enough of it left that I could still recognize some of the hallways and rooms I was able to crawl through cracks in the ceilings and rubble-filled doorways, until I found something that looked like my old unit. I walked through a shattered door and felt an odd sensation as I looked at a space that appeared to be my old living room—or what remained of it—for the first time in many years.

I could see rotted wood, cracked walls, and a few scattered pieces of debris that might’ve once been furniture. Blast shadows paint a destructive portrait on what remains of the walls. I looked towards where my younger brother’s room would have been, and saw only empty space—literally a gap in the foundation of the room.

There’s nothing here. For me, or for anyone. I felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness set in. There was no reason for me to come here. And whatever life we had is never coming back. My family is gone. My parents are gone. My siblings are gone.

It’s all gone.

I turn to leave and felt a crunch under my foot. I pulled my foot back and looked down to see what looked like a heart-shaped locket on the ground. I bent over and picked it up. It was one of those lockets with a hinge that opens up to reveal an inside compartment for a photo. After some fidgeting I was able to unhinge the fused, rusted lock on the side of the locket.

As I opened the locket, I saw something that I will never forget. I felt the emptiness subside and a new sense of purpose wash over me.

“Maybe there’s hope for us after all,” I said to myself, as I walked out the door to see what the new world has in store for us next, with my mother’s smile in my back pocket.

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

Craig C Mackey

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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