Memories of the Future

The little golden locket was in the shape of a heart they said. It contained a tiny photo of his daughter, but they told me not to open it if I found it. I wondered how I would know it was the locket he’d lost unless I opened it to see the little girl’s photo, a real paper one like in the days when people had them around the time I was born. How many lockets could there be in that particular area in one precise spot containing a photo of a little girl? Many or none at all? The real trick would be to find the damn thing amid all the likely rubble. Before I left, they told me again not to open it because there was something else inside the locket, something very important that could be crucial to our very survival and they didn’t want me losing it. I’m only a ‘Grunt’ after all. If this writing is found after I’m gone, I wouldn’t mind so much then about my true identity being known. I have to think that if I were to lose it and it ended up in the wrong hands while I still breathe, then I choose to remain anonymous. Think of me as a John. John Smith I guess. I was in the regular Army before all of this shit started.

By ‘they’ I mean the higher-ups of command in the unofficial militia of freedom fighters that has been dubbed ‘The Resistance’ by the invaders of our land. By ‘land’ I’m talking about what use to be called Atlanta, but it could also be used to describe what was once the United States. If you’re reading this, you probably know who I mean by ‘invaders’. They didn’t come from overseas. They came from the stars. They’ve made a stronghold of this city after destroying most of the suburbs and rural areas. They live and work in the skyscrapers, the brownstones, and apartment buildings to root out and destroy or enslave most of us humans that resist. Rumors abound of fellow humans that willingly aid them and serve them to save themselves while selling the rest of us out.

We still don’t know much about where they came from or what they are exactly. We call them ‘Snake Bugs’ for obvious reasons. Besides Atlanta, we’ve heard that they have strongholds all over: Washington DC. New York. Chicago. Denver. Dallas. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Seattle. Everything in between is a wasteland. We’re as cut off from the rest of the world as they are to us I suppose, but in the beginning we heard that the Snake Bugs also made strongholds in Dublin, London, Glasgow, Moscow, Dubai, Beijing, Tokyo, and probably some other places that we haven’t heard about. We’re assuming and hope that there’s resistance fighters just like us everywhere with one goal in mind: to fight with everything we have to stop the invaders that have infested our planet.

Here in what was once called the States, there are other bands of sporadic freedom fighters, but it’s hard to make contact with them. Most of the technology that man once had is now lost. Maybe for the long duration of forever, I don’t know. There’s no more widespread digital stuff like computers, smartphones, and the internet, though, some computers could be rigged to work for medical purposes. We communicate with refurbished, antique Walkie-Talkies that we found on abandoned military bases, old Army Surplus stores, military museums and the like. Sometimes we even use old ancient telegraph machines because there’s a lot of telephone lines that work on poles that still stand from the city to the rural areas of the countryside and beyond.

As far as technical things go, it’s like history is repeating itself. It’s sort of like what I’ve read about the 1950s instead of the here and now of the year 2056. I’m pretty sure that’s the year, but I don’t know what day it is at the time of this writing because I don’t keep up with dates anymore. Some do, but I don’t. Hell, I only write in this journal from time to time to stave off boredom and keep my sanity intact by feeling like I’m actually talking to someone. I couldn’t just sit around and talk about these things with others because we’re usually on the move, me and my unit. No one would give a damn to discuss these things anyway because we all live the same life.

We eat a lot of the same things you probably do to survive. Who would have ever thought that with the right spices you can make a gourmet meal out of rat meat, gutter flowers, and boiled potatoes? Am I right? Fried mice and moles are pretty good too. We have guns, of course, and other low-key weapons. We make our ammo when we have to. Though, at times when we’re in the middle of a fight, it feels like we’re shooting at a tank with BB guns. We still have solar panels, but we have to be careful and keep them hidden much of the time because the invaders routinely patrol the skies. We have a means to make certain medications from herbs and things. We have pretty good medical equipment smuggled in from abandoned hospitals that we have figured out how to make work. The only shitty thing about some of the medical equipment is that much of it is set up in facilities in defunct sewers and the dank basements of warehouses. The sewers still smell as rotten as they did twenty years ago before all of this went down.

Getting back to the golden locket, well, I’ll say that it was eleven days I never want to relive again and that’s saying a hell of a lot. I received my orders and when I left on foot with a rifle in my hand and a heavy pack upon my back, it was pouring rain. It lasted for nearly the first three-and-a-half days, which was how long it took me to get from where I was to where I was going, twenty-two miles outside of the city. In a few places I ran into encampments of Snake Bugs and snuck past them, right under their noses. I also had to watch out for Rogue Patrols that were on foot and them flying around in droves, patrolling the skies in person in their starplanes. They also had camera-mounted drones keeping the birds company that I had to keep an eye out for.

I walked past compiled mountains of rubble and debris and what must have been at least ten thousand old cars and trucks that were overturned or haphazardly sitting around out of commission. Human skeletons still remained inside many of those old relics. Using a compass, an old paper map, and handwritten directions that he’d drawn, I came upon what I believed had been his old house. By ‘he’ and ‘his’, I’m referring to the owner of the golden locket. I won’t say his true name here, but I’ll call him Jack. Just Jack.

Jack’s the leader of our way of life. A top dog scientist he’d been when everything went to Hell. For a long time, he’d been our High Commander, both scientifically and militarily. Lately, though, he’s been unable to function like he used to. Jack doesn’t know his own name on some days. Other scientists say he has a form of Dementia that could possibly be cured by whatever else was in that locket besides a picture.

Along this old neighborhood, like in many others, some abandoned houses still sat in spots and trees stood amidst rubble. I matched the directions to a vague description of the house and a great, old oak tree that was in its yard. There were many oak trees nearby as I looked at this particular one, one so twisted that from a certain angle it looked as if it were turned around to wave at you. The tree fit the description of the tree on the paper to a tee.

Jack had said that he’d been standing under that tree holding his daughter’s locket for safe-keeping as she rode her tricycle on the sidewalk in front of the house. He was about to put it in his pocket when a gaggle of missiles hurtled down from the sky and bombarded his neighborhood, turning it to ruin. The invaders had blindsided everyone everywhere with their first attacks. They had come quickly with no warning. His little girl had been blown up with the street and Jack was thrown back against the tree where he dropped the locket. My job was to find it.

With a pick and trench shovel, I cleared pieces of concrete and dirt around that tree for four days while hiding from the occasional enemy patrol. Using an old-fashioned, compact, hand-held metal detector I finally found something. I picked through a thin layer of rubble and dug down about a half a foot. I pushed away mud, dry dirt, and rocks until I saw something shiny. I knew what it was before I even picked it up. Though, it was covered with muck, I knew it was the little girl’s locket before I wiped it off.

It rained on me again on the way back, but not as much as a few days before on the first leg of my journey. When I returned, I proudly handed over my find of which they were very appreciative. Though, they were not as appreciative as old Jack. When he looked at the locket, he did so for some time before he opened it and saw his little girl’s picture. Suddenly, he remembered and he cried like a baby. Actually, there wasn’t a dry eye around him. I even teared up a little and it takes a lot to make me cry. They only knew about the locket because he had mentioned it several times before he got sick. Jack wasn’t very cohesive much of the time and wasn’t even aware that I had gone to find it. They didn’t want to spark false hope, so they didn’t even tell him about it. All they did was ask him, as a test they said, to give a description of his old house and yard.

Before he was given the locket, they opened it up and took from it what they really wanted: a tiny piece of his own skin. In the old days, long before the invaders came, people kept pictures of their loved ones in lockets rather than themselves. However, in the days just before the war started, there was a new tradition, especially among children, to have a picture of themselves next to a piece of skin from a very close relative or two, usually the parents or grandparents. Jack’s wife had died in childbirth, the little girl’s mother, and he took a piece of his own skin along with a piece of his wife’s and placed them in a mini-compartment across from the picture. It was a way for the family to stay close together, even in death. I don’t get it myself. I think it sounds morbid and macabre, but who am I to judge other people’s beliefs?

They took a tiny piece of Jack’s dead skin sample before putting it back in the locket. They said the experimental procedure would possibly only work from old dead cells, which they’d figured how to rejuvenate, rather than current living tissue. They tested the DNA to make sure it was his and not his wife’s, then they cloned more skin cells and tissue from it. Even new brain matter, which they fused together with his own in an operation in hopes of reversing his Dementia. I don’t understand it all myself, but it must have worked. Old Jack, well, his full memory seems to have come back and he’s doing really well these days.