The Reset

Something was wrong. I had seen this street countless times, walked the same steps nearly every weekend; I remembered how I had avoided walking past the house with the chain link fence that looked moments from falling down. Something was off and it unsettled me. I struggled to ignore the anxiety that was rising in my chest, the pool of acid that had started to collect within my lungs was making every breath increasingly more difficult. The trees were taller, the street littered with piles of leaves and weeds pushing through the pavement. The world started to spin and I realised I was hyperventilating, my heaving chest making the ground beneath me rock. The chain-link fence had met its demise, some time ago judging by the garden that had now overtaken it. I wondered what had happened to the dog that used to live at the end of a chain behind that rusted wire. I started to get light headed as I realised - it was silent. Not the quiet of a casual afternoon but dead-quite. The dog was no longer there barking at all that went past, there was no movement. I stopped walking and tried to focus on my feet planted on the pavement, tried to think of the warmth of the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair. I sucked in a deep breath and held it, willing my heart to find a slower rhythm, begging my lungs to expel the acrid effervescence with my breath. Settling into the closest I could get to calm I inhaled once more before lifting my head and opening the gate to house number 43.

It had been six and a half years, actually it had been more than that; it had been 2, 549 days. More than two thousand sunrises since I had left for work and not returned for dinner; almost a decade since I had laid eyes on my old home. Seeing the weathered paint peeling from the washboard, the overgrown yard filled with weeds, the shattered windows showing nothing but the darkness beyond - it all was as I expected and yet I had still held onto hope. I struggled again for breath as that hope of seeing my home as pristine as the day I left it tore into my chest as it withered and fell away in pieces. I was stuck on the boundary line between the cracked pavement of the street and the stepping-stones covered in daisies that lead to the front steps. I was trapped by my own mind, my thoughts reeling with endless possibilities and drowning in memories.

I hesitated, unable to complete the final few steps of the journey I had waited years to make. The threatening sting of tears pierced the back of my eyes as I slipped unprompted into memories of the last time I had walked down those steps and across the lawn. I snapped back to July 19th.

The day we call the Reset.

It was so frustratingly ordinary to begin; lukewarm toast, a search for lost car keys and a two hour commute that should have only taken one. I had been in my office looking over forecast statistics when the broadcast began. The sound came from everywhere, a low tone almost like a siren but slowed down. Every technological device lit up green revealing the symbol of the Fractured Hand - a sprawling network of revolutionary environmentalists. The following hours were a haze of disbelief and panic. It took weeks for acceptance to begin to creep in and longer still until people started to understand the changes.

That day was the last recorded date of our century, there was no prior warning, no personal preparation to be had; just whispers, theories and the unknown. Then there was just partially ordered chaos. There were many things that happened following that announcement, most to this day that I do not understand, but I know that their end goal was a second chance for the Earth and a last chance for humanity.

Our city was one caught in the collateral cross-fire of first-wave events that forced us to evacuate into underground facilities. I still remember how the ground had quaked for hours after the doors had slammed shut. Communications were limited and the information scarce, it took a month of gut-churning concern before any of us learnt of the fate of the city and our families that lived throughout. My suburb still stood but had also been evacuated, the list of names that accompanied that information was my first sigh of relief and I had held tight to that knowledge, even for the agonising four years after communications had been severed and we faced radio silence.

Now it was 0006 post reset and those of us who had only known a half-life since the reckoning were free to emerge and begin again. For me that meant returning to house number 43 in the hope of remoulding the faded memories of those names I hadn’t heard from in years.

I forced my legs to move. Closing the distance between my wrecked emotions and the answers they fought over. The door was unlocked, the house dim and in disrepair - and empty. Even the echo of my footsteps on the floorboards sounded empty. I wandered immediately to the kitchen, a habit even seven isolated years couldn’t break, and faltered when I saw the vase of long-wilted flowers. It was out of place on the island bench beside a small wooden box. I had prepared myself as best as I could, knowing that anything could have happened whilst I was locked away underground, but seeing my sister's lilting handwriting scrawled across the weathered parchment brought my organs into my throat. I took three attempts to clear my eyes of tears before I could make out the words:

Brother,

It has been a long two years and there is much to say but only so much time and paper to fill. I am sorry to be blunt but there is no easy way to say the half of it.

Mum joined Bree and Dad a year after the Reset, she volunteered for the reduction and though it sucked I knew it wasn’t fair to ask her not to. There is a note from her in the box, and dad's ring.

I wish I could have had this conversation in person, or at least over the phone but the world kinda got fucked up. Anyway, I have a favour to ask of you, I met someone in the outskirts facility and we were together for a few months before he got assigned to the re-establishment unit. He died in a building collapse on duty a week before I found out I was pregnant. Congratulations, you're an uncle and I pray you get this letter for both your sakes.

Her name is Nina Belle, she is almost 6 months old and she has my whole heart. Sorry to drop this on you but if this note is still here after 0003PR then this stupid disease has bested me. They don't know what it is yet, probably cancer or something else from the fall-out, but it's not treating me well so far.

Nina was taken to a facility on the surface just north of here in a new city they're developing. It's some kind of school but is also basically an orphanage. They're sending me to some lab for tests but like I said it’s not looking good. I have some pictures of us together and a note in the box for when she is old enough to understand. I hope you didn’t die too because I am counting on you to teach her about me, to make sure she knows she is loved. I hope this whole second chance thing works but all I care about is that she won't grow up alone.

I am sorry, for everything, and I love you little bro. Live strong for the rest of us, until the next forever.

Love Violet xx

Fresh tears joined the long-dried splashes upon the paper as I read and re-read her words; she was unsurprisingly as blunt in the end as she had been in the beginning. I let the pain of loss overwhelm me as I opened the box of treasures she had collected and blinked through the blur as I rummaged through it. I lost the fight with a fresh wave of grief as I spotted her silver-heart locket, one half of the pair she had once shared with our mother, and beside it on the delicate chain was our fathers well-worn wedding ring. My heart ached anew as I clicked open the pendant, one half housed the faded image of our parents, the other side held a newer photograph of Violet and baby Nina. I gave myself a moment before slipping the chain over my neck and closing the lid on the box of treasures that held what little remained of my family; and with that I tucked away my grief. Glancing around the dust-coated living room of my childhood home one last time I closed the door behind me and started northward down the street.

It had been a long run of bad news and unavoidable acceptance of the new way of the world for anything in the letter to be a surprise, everything save for the one little fragment of happiness that had been planted. I was an uncle. Somewhere in this crazy, fucked-up, tumultuous world there was a little girl who was waiting for me, even though she had probably never known the possibility of family even existed.

I continued to weave through empty streets, only the horizon in my sight and a small, weary smile creasing my lips. I would walk as long as it took until I found that little girl named Nina Belle with a necklace that matched my own and I would learn to love this new world through her.