Portals to Home: Transmission One.

A short story exploring retiring in a planet unfamiliar to how you once knew it.

Photo by Stuart Frisby on Unsplash

Note: This story contains some unsettling elements, including the mentioning of loss of innocent life, such as children. Please read only if you feel comfortable reading.

Transmission from Portal One, Jacob L. Whittaker
Day 23, Month 6, Year 2182.

I always dreamed of retiring here. The idea of finally becoming one with nature, long after the horrors this planet endured. It felt fitting.

Let’s face it, Earth has always been a beautiful place. So lush with green, and vivid with all sorts of emanating life. Each breath of air felt fresh. Every bird singing was lively, and the eager chasing from cats hunting their prey melted my heart.

Amazing things. Until we took them away. Thousands of species going extinct every year due to human caused issues— deforestation, excessive hunting, and using them as test subjects for our capitalism… these thoughts always made me feel sick.

We plundered their homes. And they gave us everything in their hearts despite the pain we caused. All of this— and that was before the great war started.

Some say it was due to drinkable water becoming a scarcity. I felt it was more due to greed and undistinguished lust for bloodshed. The men at the top always wanted more and more in their round tummies, opting for short-term gains over long-term solutions.

Only benefitting themselves and no one else.

And yeah, I participated in that war. A soldier on the wrong side of history. There were never any clear winners, unless you count those privileged enough to be able to escape the planet.

I may have been one of them. But I regretted it every single day. Each morning was a bed drenched in my own sweat from nightmares. I couldn’t keep track of how many times I woke in a tense panic, the echoes of sound cannons, grenades, and sniper bullets whizzing all around me.

Or the image of a little boy pleading, no… begging for me to save him.

There was nothing I could do though. The bullet reached him seconds before I could, ripping and exploding bits of flesh right into my face. His eyes locked in with mine as he fell into my arms. It should’ve been me.

So today is the day I’m going to return. Bring myself back to where all that pain took place. I always knew I’d want to die here, where I should’ve all those years ago. And now that the government was allowing my retirement, I could finally lay to path that dream.

If the portal works as intended, I’ll be flying off to Earth, and stepping down in about four hours from now. If it doesn’t however… well no one knows what could occur. I was told the ship being used for this is a prototype— experimenting with teleportation technology. So, either I could arrive safely, or be disarrayed into a pile of goop.

I guess we’ll find out.

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Photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash

And that marks my first response to the Prompt I posted over on BookStack. Well there be another part? I think so, but maybe you should help decide what happens next. Make a decision in the poll below, and then I’ll see you whenever I write the next part. Buh-bye for now!