Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Meh

I'm in an inspiration drought, and still feeling lazy as hell, so I'm just going to post something I was toying around with awhile ago. A story about a guy who lives his life in stories. One of those, it doesn't matter if the story is true or not, the story itself can be important kinds of things. Haven't written anything else on it in awhile, but I might come back to it eventually.

Also, Megaman Legends 3. I'm not even sure what to say about this. I'm am at once both absolutely psyched and already planning on running back through the first two games...and horrendously disappointed. Psyched because I absolutely loved the first two Legends games and a conclusion to the series is gonna be a great thing. Disappointed because it's coming out for the Nintendo 3DS, which I'm not really interested in and which sounds like just another Nintendo gimmick I won't care for. Le sigh.

Anyways, same routine as always, comment with thoughts, etc.

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For as long as I can remember— and granted, through the haze of booze, cigarette smoke, and neon, that isn't exactly that long— my life has always been about stories. It wasn't until I got here, a garage reeking of synthetic oils and elbow grease, amidst the constant clinking of poker chips and low hum of the ceiling fan that sucked in a half dozen or more trails of smoke from lazily smoked cigarettes. It was here, at the weekly poker game of a group of guys from every background who'd done everything, it seemed, there was to do anymore, that it all fit together.

I can still remember the first real story I was ever told. When I was a kid, my parents were killed in an accident. I was too young to understand the details then, too young to even understand the implications all at once. All I got was that mommy and daddy were killed somewhere in the desert where they were working, and that meant I wasn't going to see them anymore. Being only five or six, I still remember thinking it was like a TV show getting canceled or something; they were gone, but that didn't mean they couldn't come back at some point.

It wasn't until I got older that I got the whole story. My parents were doctors working in the Middle East, helping out those that couldn't afford or otherwise reach help. They had gone into Q'Irah just before the war, and had opened up a small clinic. At first they were helping the refugees from the south who were coming in by the bloodied truckload every day. They had a shoe-string budget, more bodies than beds, and the ever present threat of the Q'Irah government cracking down on them for aiding people they were attempting to exterminate, but they pressed on, saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives over the course of a month or two.

Then, when the Pan-Pacific Alliance, united under the blinding might of our own country's military, declared war on Q'Irah for human rights violations, genocide, use of biological and chemical agents and a dozen other things (none of which included the vast economic boon expected from the reconstruction and “redistribution” of Q'rah's land and resources), shit hit the fan. Suddenly, instead of having a few more patients than they could handle, they were packed to the rafters with the dead and dying. Where, before, they had been able to stretch their thin supplies just well enough to get by, now they ended every week, if not every day, with nothing on hand. And worst of all, now it was not the Q'Irah government to be feared, but their own.

Day in and day out, they struggled. Twice they were robbed for supplies, mainly painkillers and bandages, once by a patient they had just released. The Red Cross ,who had been providing them supplies before, packed up and moved out, heading to PPA controlled territory. Every day, the howl of jets overhead got more frequent, and the dull rumbling of exploding ordinance got closer and closer. Finally, it was thoughts of me, their young son back home in the States, that settled them on the idea of leaving.

On their last day, they packed up what little of personal value they had left, closed up the shop, and planned to hop into a truck filled with supplies heading for the nearest PPA-held town, Khalef. The driver of the truck had been a patient of theirs, and, having owed my parents his life, gladly offered to risk his to help them. Early on the morning of March 13th, 2005, the nervous couple sat just inside their soon to be abandoned clinic and waited.

For two hours past the appointed rendezvous time, they sat in silence, waiting for their ride out. The truck, unbeknownst to them, had been stopped by Q'Irah soldiers only a few blocks from them. There, the driver was not lucky enough to escape death for questioning his government a second time, and was shot dead. My parents, left unaware, sat waiting until 8:32 AM, local time.

Then, too quick to leave them any time to say goodbyes, an explosion annihilated their clinic, as well as several buildings around it. The explosion had come from an Amistrian smartbomb, one that had landed, as it was designed, perfectly on target. That's right, their own government killed them. Some bad intel had pinned them as a gathering place for enemy militia, failing to mention that they were a medical facility, owned and operated by citizens of the United Amistrian Federation. The site was targeted and wiped promptly off the map in one of over a hundred other pinpoint bombing runs that day.

In accordance with their wishes, my grandma and grandpa on my mother's side became my guardians. Their assets were sold off or placed in either their name or mine, and their funeral was held in their hometown of Rockbend two weeks later. Aside from that our family got a letter from the government, complete with authentic stamped-on signature and the sort of feigned condolences that made you sure that you were reading one of a few thousand identical letters.

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