Shine

By Phil Cochran
PicoRevolver@yahoo.com

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it. Always ready for critique or
comments, so feel free to contact me. Much love.
 Most people go through their lives and don’t accomplish shit. We earn our daily
bread and come back to a cheap drink. If we’re lucky, someone will be ther who can put
up with our whiny bullshit long enough to be intimate. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Then there are the select few – the visionaries, the lone wolves, the brilliant minds
that make inventions that innovate daily life. These people made NASA rockets and
bridges, sliced bread and nanotechnology.
We have also made bombs.
Instead of turning our studies to curing disease and ending war, we set about
destroying the world as efficiently as possible. This is my life.
It’s hard to believe it’s only been two weeks since the Shine and we’re left with a
decaying city. A sullen calm blossoms the more the human body crumbles. The smell of
the dead is subtle, but ever present.
 In fact, we’ve had to expand the graveyard well into the nearby parks to fit the
bodies – soon we’ll be running out of people able to dig the holes. What a terrible
realization.
The radiation poisoning starts out as little brown blotches on the skin, like burns
or bizarre birthmarks. But you can almost see them grow, sometimes by an inch a day,
and as soon as it hits an organ, it’ll shut down like a blown circuit. If it’s on your arm or
leg you can amputate before they spread and you’re in the clear. Anywhere else and
there’s nothing anyone can do.
So, where are my marks? On my left leg, all up and down Considered trying to
amputate it but other smaller spots have been noticed on my shoulder. I believe I have
about a week if I keep my health up, or I could walk out beyond the city lines and be shot
down by the perimeter of highly armed national guardsmen.
But today there is hope! I’ve found a stray bottle of Crown Royal in a wrecked
building and may now enjoy it at my leisure. This will be my last night I stay at my
apartment, and my submission to the great magnet. Tonight, I am accepting I have failed.
Really, where is this white picket fence, dog and spoiled kids? I sort of thought by
now, with thinning hair, I would have at least a best friend to dick around with to the tune
of our apocalypse. Nope, just me, sitting here on the couch I spent most afternoons on,
drinking my booze in solidarity. What’s going to set tomorrow apart from the rest of my
life is that I am now free of hope. I’m aware of my impending death and the concrete it’s
stuck in, so now I can face my isolated city with kamikaze spirit.
The new day starts fresh and, a
fter about an hour of getting myself together and finishing the bottle I found the night
before, I start on my way to “work”. It’s disguised as a cellular phone satellite
connection facility. See, government jobs kept getting caught because they were too
complex – the fact that we’re hiding in plain sight brings no suspicion as long as we all
keep our mouths shut.
That was no problem for me, since I was the loner bastard who started this whole
hive mind scenario. I suppose this is my confession; I’m the one responsible for the
radiation poisoning. I’m the one responsible for the Shine, subsequent mile-wide crater,
and I’m sure when I’m dead my name will take the blame for the looming war.
 April does not stop for us. There’s that first day of spring that comes unexpected,
where the winds change taste and not a damn thing can go too wrong. You walk to work,
or maybe you call in sick for the first time that year. Maybe you sit around in jeans
skipping rocks across the pond.
This was my life over twenty years ago, when times were simpler and I still had a
libido. I always drive by my old high school on my way to work, vacant without the need
for education. Today, as I cut through the tennis courts behind Bernardine H.S. I allow
myself to remember a Stephanie Hartigan who led the Oakville Hares to the state finals in
varsity tennis.
She isn’t what most people would refer to as stunning, but to me she was sex
incarnate. Flowing brown hair that was too straight framed a face that gave both
innocence and danger depending on the score. When her dangerous face came out and
she was rallying tennis balls, I shamelessly admired her pert ass when her skirt flared up.
In fact, I remember that’s how we met – she caught me watching her stretch and she
nearly concussed me with a tennis ball upside my head.
Sure she was pissed at first, but when I came to her house and apologized with a
big ugly bruise on my head and a brownie cake that I tried my damnedest to make edible,
she and I started something wonderful. Our first date was stargazing (I was cheap) with a
bottle of wine (advice given to me online, also cheap). I remember the way she smelled
like lilac and sunflowers, and how she’d pull at her bangs when she got nervous.
My parents always considered education more important than people – and for a
long time, I believed that. I was fine with coming home and hammering out papers and
studying nonstop for points on a spreadsheet. But once I turned 18 and my grades started
to slip, Steph was blamed as the cause and I was cut off. Simple as that. This I wasn’t so
fine with, but with her by my side we became an unstoppable dynamo.

I almost cut through the nearby grocery conglomerate that hangs crippled,
crumbled and dying, but the smell of rotting food keeps me away. I come across a rapture
circle, which I assumed were just rumors. They stand in a circle, all praying non-stop
until their breathing ceases. Kept alive by the bare minimum of food and water, when one
falls they let them lay where they die. The smell and desperation alone is enough to
assure me God isn’t coming anytime soon.
I take a break on a hill that overlooks the crater where the Glare hit. It’s almost
like a crop circle, moving in concentric ovals of differing ground color. The moment
those circles of bare earth stop, the buildings start (some only half-existing where it
contacted the Glare). It’s the scariest sound in the world when it’s deployed – a deafening
hum and a brilliant blue light coming from the sky like the angry wrath of heaven.
There’s nothing left of those inside the crater. The intense heat instantly vaporized
anyone and everything that touched it. They’re the ones with the easy way out of here;
it’s the survivors that deal with the miles of dispensed, specialized radiation.

We were going to be married in a church, then changed our plans to a small wedding in a
nearby park. We set it up so a friend of ours could get ordained and perform the
ceremonies for us. Flowers were ordered, the few friends and family members we invited
were checked into their hotels, and my bachelor party was only a few hours away.
The bastard call came from her sister Julia, who didn’t even give me a chance to
respond. “The wedding’s off.” She said, followed by a sharp click of the phone hanging
up. What I first took as a joke turned quickly into a search for my fiancé, who’s phone
was conveniently turned off. When I finally made it to her parents house, they didn’t let
me in the door.
“I know this is hard, son.” Her father couldn’t look me in the eyes. “But suffice it
to say she wasn’t prepared for all this. I hope you understand.”
“Understand? Look at me, Dan. Look at me. What the hell is happening here?” I
can only imagine how I looked standing there in my ‘Married Man Walking” bachelor
party t-shirt, desperate and angry.
“I’m so sorry, Andrew.” Her father stepped back and quickly shut and locked the
door. I must have looked at the wood etchings on the door for a solid minute before
freaking out and banging against it.
“What the fuck is going on here?! What did I do?” I screamed into the wood of
the door. “Somebody talk to me! Tell me what I did! God damn it open the door!” I
remember thinking she may be upstairs, so I milked every bit of vocal strength I could.
“Steph! Stephanie! Steph!” My voice broke, and I crumbled against the door.

I discovered the concept a few years after Steph disappeared when I … went back
to my studies. I guess I sort of overdid it so I didn’t have to think about that bitch and
what she did to me. Ended up losing the friends I gained and becoming a hermit with my
books. Years of schooling, understudying, and expensive testing led me to the invention
of a more specialized laser that contained it’s own heat and could harness the sun’s
photons themselves to unleash unbelievable amounts of power.
Once the government caught wind of my invention I was given a high paying job,
a high security clearance and a big red “Classified” stamp on my patent.
The Ein-Szilárd project, the Shine, hemorrhaged money on the front burner for
the most powerful figures in the military. Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt in 1939 as
precaution to the possibility of an atomic bomb being produced in Germany – with which
information, my country made it’s own bomb and razed the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. In that same vein, if we were found out, we would muddy the waters and make
it seem like a “terrorist nation” was making this sucker first.
Who knows why the crater now sits amidst our fine city, with the ghosts and the
polluted soil. Maybe it really is as they say – some elite, anonymous group hacked our
unhackable servers, reconfigured the non-modifiable launch codes, and pierced the sky
on a cloudy April afternoon.
Maybe it’s something more? Maybe, as I’m sure they’ve tapped and followed me
for years, the men in black decided to erase any proof of who was involved with the
project. Maybe taking out a metropolis was proof positive no one would be around to
devlope for foreign countries.
They say the paranoid are the ones with all the answers to the questions we can’t
ask. The trust is, this is the beginning of a terrible war that will scar the face of this blue
planet forever. This is the quest for global domination by those who print money and
convince armies to lie for them. This is the end of what we’ll refer to as “back then”, and
the start of the era called “these days”. What better way to convince the nation into
suicide than to corner the citizens into helplessness? Come to think of it, people I’ve had
coffee with in the break room are probably the same ones who pushed the button.
There’s no electricity anymore, so my fancy “Andrew Caraway” swipe card and
constantly changing security codes won’t do shit. I have to make my way around the
back, through a fake electrical shed and into the heart of the facility. I never put two and
two together, but I should have realized that they’d obliterate any proof of being there.
All the proof that remained were little black soot marks around where desks and cabinets
were incinerated.
I take a break on the stairwell, wondering where my strength has gone to these
last few hours. My arms and legs are sore, malleable and grotesque with spotted death. I
had originally planned to come here and find the terminals still existing, allowing me
access to some sort of communication. Any way to get to the outside world for a few
moments of helpless cries. I guess this is where I have to expand my truth; there is no
hope left to wring out of this doomed metropolis.
As I sit on the edge of the 6 story roof, wondering carelessly about if I will die on
impact if I were to just push myself off, I notice the spring breeze for the first time since
the crater. It flows in on angelic arms.
On the horizon I can see the perimeter put up by the military, with bipedal tanks
silhouetted in the red evening sun, aimed towards the city. They sit as sleeping
juggernauts, or wobbegong ready to surprise its prey with quick death. They will be
witness to my glorious suicide, flashing out of existence in a loud, hard moment that
blooms into peaceful rest.
I spin on my heels, knowing and feeling God’s absence, and prepare to fall back
into oblivion. But there’s this blinking light on the satellite dish that catches my eye – I
didn’t see it before because of the sun, but it’s clearly flickering now. “Receiving” was
the label next to the light, followed by “Sent” next to it, which stayed dark. Working
access to the internet through government satellites? The must have been in too much of
a rush to notice it.
I feel tired, but after a day of hunting down a gasoline back-up generator (for
which, I had to secure a ticket to hell), and a laptop, I find myself on the roof browsing
through what little information I can, only to come up with excuses. Plenty of memorials
for us on the viral feeds. They’re told we’re all dead – the perimeter is just to keep them
out of quarantine.
It’s funny. The internet eats all information, but the rare data that gives it food
poisoning is obsessed upon until there’s nothing but obscure, blind armies of powerful
young people. These people can open the doors to Valhalla with screams eternal, or take
down the server to the White House website when a bill of national bandwidth restriction
goes through office.
I have to take a break during looking up e-mail addresses. I throw up colors and
hydrate as best I can from my last bottle of water, rationed carefully. Things are getting
more severe now, and these episodes get intensely sickening before easing up.
I unsheath a small Tab Drive from my pocket and ready myself for the kill. All the
pictures I’ve collected in the last two weeks download instantly to the computer.
“To whom it may concern,” I look at that top line, read it, re-read it, then erase
and try again.
“To Anyone Who Will Listen,
Attached are the pictures of what is happening behind the quarantine. The
few thousand of us remaining are on our last legs, suffering and alone.”

I go on to explain about death marches to the firing line, hoping for mercy and
medical help only to be ripped apart by overkill shooting. I explain it all, as best I can
with all the righteous strength a QWERTY keyboard can muster. But all this writing is
grinding down on me again, and I feel like I should take another break. But these breaks
here and there are more snuffed lives that had a chance.
Completion. I pensively click “send” and lay back as my eyelids fall. Did I do the
best I could? After all those I’ve killed, I at least had their story told, right?
Or maybe I did nothing. Maybe my death is just another freckle of sand in the
wind, blown away by the sandstorm I created.
I’m forced awake in the morning by the loud sounds about a mile out. Familiar,
powerful cries from those whos throats still pump loud enough voices. Where the
perimeter sat before, bored and trigger-hapy, now stands as a powder keg, erupt in the
cacophony of fists and screams of unpoisoned bodies. Angry, spirited people who
apparently read the internet. It’s not until I look at my watch do I realize it’s been 2 days
since I blacked out, and my arms and legs are covered with black, numbing rot.
It takes me two hours just to get downstairs and out the door. Even though my
throat burns and my stomach is bone dry, I manage to prop myself up against a bus stop
and listen for familiar gunshots, yet there is no Kent State today.
I phase in and out of consciousness on a bench, getting glimpses of people here
and there, eventually feeling myself get moved. It’s only when I wake up in a cot do I
realize something is very amiss.
The two clocks on either side of the room click chaotically. I find myself unable
to move much, but from the bed I can see an IV bag above me as well as several, busy
looking women moving throughout the room hurriedly. I try to talk but shoot a blank,
clearing my throat and trying again.
“Whur um I?”
One of the women with these radiant, green eyes hears me while clutching a pile
of blankets to her chest, dropping the blankets instantly and moving to my side. “Don’t
try and move. You’re going to be alright.” She uses one of the blankets to cover me up.
It’s warm enough without, but I imagine she doesn’t want to stare at my horrible marks.
She takes a deep breath, gathering herself for a question that’s filled with hope and
expectation.
“What’s your name?”
I think for a long time,, letting my mind re-read it’s memory like some scratched
up CD – Jesus, it takes so long just to find something so simple. “Andrew. Caraway.”
She kind of smiles a while, looking at me like she’s expecting me to say
something else. “How far back can you remember?” She pulls nervously at her bangs
while she speaks.
I can’t help but smile at how beautiful she is. What terrible karma that I wasn’t
able to find a girl like this. Flowing, straight brown hair frames a face that gives both
innocence and danger depending on how she’s feeling. I watch her hopeful eyes sink with
disillusionment as I finally respond.
 “I remember a big blue light or something. Is that good enough?” I can’t
understand why she looks to be on the verge of tears, but smiles just the same.
“That’ll be just fine, Andy. I’m going to be right here next to you as long as you
need me.” It feels good how she holds me hand. “I promise.”
This room is nice. This girl, this Stephanie angel, takes care of me even as things
get more confusing, and I sleep days away. Even while my mind is leaving me, she holds
my hand and tells me it’s going to be alright. It’s so nice here.
She tells me that I sent some pictures and that I did a good thing. She tells me that
my story will be remembered, though I can’t even remember her name anymore, much
less my own.
She also tells me that she’s sorry, and I have no idea why. She won’t tell me; just
strokes my hair a little and tells me not to worry.
It’s so nice here. So quiet. Even when the cold black finally creeps in, she holds
my hand and gives me a smile I’ll never forget.