What once was.

Life was comfortable and easy, as every day could possibly be, another wonderful evening with the purple sky swimming in clouds at dusk, and the emergency alarms going off, sirens ringing loudly everywhere in the building, nothing atypical for the last part of the 21 century, people running in the hallways for dear life and in a heavily guarded, armored control room, so there was me, fighting for dear life with a bunch of buttons, all flashing red, you see, it gets weirdly chaotic in the evenings when the nuclear reactor you are working on is melting and every second could be used to stop the damn thing from turning what remains of dear Boston into another wasteland, but alas, we were too late anyway, and the real kicker was to gain as much time as possible for the civilian evacuation.

The coolant systems were down, manual input was required, the heat that permeated the hole building was unreal, sweat clinging to the skin and the hazmat, the air clogged with the stench of ozone and lead, the pulsations from the core were already interfering with the radio and there was a buzzing in the concrete of the structure.

"To think the weather man said it would be a nice clear night, perfect for the optimism reaffirming sessions of the veteran´s club"

Rang over the comms, hated to contradict the guy but radiated ashes will be falling the entire week, an anticipated winter, such a shame I won´t stay to see it, my commander and team decided to stay behind and this is my last run anyway, my vision beginning to fail means most likely I´m being cooked inside to keep the valves open just enough and the tungsten rods descending is getting harder, to become a vaporware was not in my plans this morning, a dirty way to go but a marine never shies away from duty, it is duty, the quality that defines us and some one has to remain in the maintenance shaft for this.

My name is Marcus Acker, born in the twilight of the 20th century, to see a world come down on itself as the tragedy that was the 21st came to be; I was young and naïve back then, when the collective bulk of humanity went ape-shit on itself. I managed to score a scholarship in a university, right before the fan hit, and hit hard it did.

I was about the last generations of true engineers, or of professionals in general, before the coming of the American second civil war, followed suit by ww3 and the coming of one pandemic, after another, in the midst of the crazy, things got from there to worse; terrorist nations came from the ashes of chemical and nuclear warfare sprouting as weeds on the fertile chaos, the gangs and cartels came later to reign, blood was flowing like rivers and the cheapest asset to exchange in those days were our lives, war came and swallowed all, until finally after half a century of despair, a modicum of peace could be achieved, but only after the countless sacrifices of unnamed heroes, fathers, sisters, and the ungodly amount of pain that was crawling back out of the sewerage of our own making, everything went wrong in a single lifetime, the last generation they called us. 

For those initiated before the end of the internet, we called it the age of strife for it was brutal, if civilization could be rebuilt after, it was still to be seen.

I was tired of too many things, of half living, and late into my 50's I was still an automation engineer working for the engineer corps of the unified states marine corps (nation that came to be, as the US fragmented). I was tired of the things we had done, the places we had been; the shortage of personnel made us combatants as much as any other brother in the core, forged in the shortest most brutal series of wars humanity has seen till now. The dead count in the billions, the planet left scared and wasted, all to finally come home, get some peace back, to get my old bones back to Boston, Home… to get a reactor blown to the face by some wanna be ambientalist hooligan.

'Damn hippies, if they don´t want a reactor near their weed plantations, blowing it up is not the option' 

That the young generation thought this, as an achievement of society the manifestation of ideals against the old tyrants, was truly a sign of the changing times, the youth didn't receive a good education and whose fault it was? We were too bussy keeping them alive, they became corrupted and indoctrinated, my generation failed them, it truly feels like the end of a world, man I´m already old, would have been a little better were it not for the crack-nuts celebrating outside the facilities obstructing the entrance and helipad, waiting for "the release of mother earth from the polluting evil" as the say goes, to hope you live interesting times, is really nothing but a sort of curse, for even the end is interesting.

The meltdown could not be contained nor slowed down anymore, the last ringing of the alarms came, the last look on my brothers though tarnished glass and failing eyes, and the facilities personnel giving the last goodbyes, brave man and woman that stood behind, and my commander´s last words over the comms when the countdown came.

"Gentlemen, it was an honor to serve with you, semper-fi"

and it truly was, for all of us, the last reminiscing of our life came to us, the sacrifice in the line of duty was not a bad way to go, to bring back peace and freedom to our people over a lifetime of war would end in a final hurrah, and so, it was over, that was the way I died.

or it should have been.