Outrun Stories #49

Dear Billy – Number #1,298

You know, sometimes it’s hard knowing what’s the right thing to do, trying to make the right choice. There are all those different options open to us, all the little different ways that we could do something, and when the morning comes, we have to live with the impact of all those decisions, all those choices. Just like I have to live with mine.

What’s it been now, Billy? Ten years? More? Seems like yesterday we were riding out of the city, the neon and everything it held behind us and the moon and the stars and the desert lay out before us. You remember that, Billy? Remember the quiet? One minute we’re right in the thick of it all, all the noise that there is in Neo-LA. Impossible to find a quiet spot, really impossible to get away from it all unless you’re one of the rich and can bury yourself deep underground or get yourself way up high on one of the mega-scrapers, above the clouds. You and me, though, different story. We didn’t have much, stuck in that neon city with all that noise, but well, we had each other, and we had a plan, right? An idea, and that’s all anyone needs.

Get all the work we could, doing anything that our bodies and minds would take and just save, cybex-code scrubbing through our mainline cerebral hack, artificial DNA temperance experiments, anything that would pay, we’d do it. We didn’t care. We didn’t think we were missing out. We had each other and that was enough, that and our little plan. Save and save any dollar-yen we could get our hands on and eventually we’d have enough scraped together to get some piece of junk jump-drone and we’d just load it with synthetic scotch, as many illegal cigarettes as we could get our hands on, and drive.

So naïve back then. We thought we knew it all, but we didn’t know shit. We thought we had it tough being in city pipes? We didn’t know what waited for us, didn’t know what was laying underneath those night stars and that moon once the neon and noise was behind us…

Ah, Billy, you’ll have to excuse where the ink runs I guess, hard to hold back the tears when I think about it.

Billy, we rode out into that night, and everything that came after, everything that we had to go through… All I can do now is think back on the better days. It didn’t seem like it at the time but slaving away all those years, scraping together a living so we could just escape, those were the best times.

I know you’re gone now, Billy. I know this letter doesn’t mean shit now because you’re gone. You’re not here and there’s nothing I can do about that. Not now, at one time I could have, but now I have to live with the decision I made, live with it every day. So, I write this letter, over and over and over again, not every day, but whenever I need it.

Sometimes it’s hard doing the right thing, that’s how I opened this letter up. What is doing the right thing? Doing right by yourself, or right by the ones that you love? You were my brother, Billy, and you convinced me that I could walk away. You said you’d be safe, that you’d be okay, that they couldn’t hurt you and that you had a plan. I knew you were lying. You never were a very good liar, but I still walked. Something still pulled me away from you and I’ve had to live with that decision every day since.

You would have said it was the right decision, that I made the RIGHT CHOICE, but I can’t help but think I left you behind. I hope you can forgive me, Billy.

Your Brother, Always.

Richard

Dear Billy, Number #1,299

It’s hard—