Father where art thou? Saalz follows. (Part 1)
‘Into the Darkness of my mind, where light is shadows
Bright they shine but elusive as my hope has come to be.
To find you Father is my fuel, my redemption to my Brother
And our late Mother, for Her secret never told, we must now find.’
-Excerpt from Saalz’s personal Diary a Year after his adoptive Mother’s Death.
A few weeks earlier.
He sat in his stone apartment, his red eyes glowing at what he was seeing flashing up on the screen, floating in the air. He had found the expedition site, maybe still active but not known. The droid made its annoying babbling noise once again, Saalz shouted an order to the Android that paced his apartment. It stopped in its tracks and hunched over, as if suddenly depressed by some thought; powered down.
‘My God, if Sight could see this!’ He had thought about telling Sightsee, but as the info was hacked from the Omni Tek research department, should he be implicated for any involvement in obtaining this info he would be sacked and jailed. Of course he was not, but it was to do with his Father… their Father.
Mr. Iglaisias Boothby was an ordinary farmer in one of the underground biosphere farms under the deserts of Newland City. They had already one son, Shaun Boothby (Sightsee), but had adopted an abandoned scarred baby they later named as simply Saalz. Both of them were the same age, and lived together as Brothers; the only exception was that Saalz was educated in Clan territory as part of the agreement by the Boothby’s and the Tir City Orphanage, Sight in Newlands. Iglaisias and his wife were good parents, they had hopes that Sightsee would work in an office, earn good money and settle down, he was a troubled child never really doing as he was told. Saalz was the opposite, obedient and interested in his studies especially building things or de-engineering them, so they didn’t worry for his future.
Unfortunately bad times hit the family business, what with the mutant raids destroying property in their desperation for food in the hottest summers. The War, effecting trade routes (it was looking bad). But they never revealed the situation to their 6-Year-old children. They were used to the comfortable life, and too young to understand the value of money. Iglaisias had no choice but accept a high risk job on an expedition, much to Seema’s dismay, but she let her husband go and could manage the farm with the help of the old droids they had to assist in the agriculture.
Saalz could never understand why their Father went off to some distant place, but Sight had taken his absence even harder than he. But they managed in the Year ahead, occasionally receiving audio mail from Iglaisias, a joy when it came on every other Sunday. On one Sunday, they awoke to find their Mother Seema weeping in the kitchenette, they had both spied on her from the stairs; he remembered that they held each other close then, knowing it was to do with Dad.
Sure enough, it was. Seema was never the same, lacking in physical affection for them both. She had stopped giving them guidance. She did however thell the unlikely Brothers that when they would come of age she would tell them a secret to do with their Father. But that never came.
When they were 17 Years of age, it was a fresh day out near Newlands Lake. Just another day of many. Saalz had grown bored had begged Sightsee to play a game of soccer, he refused many times but eventually gave in to the persistent Saalz. Saalz had played well, but only because Sightsee’s mind was on the storm he felt was coming. It was a strange feeling that something wasn’t right; like the feeling of being followed in a dark street at night. It wasn’t long till Sightsee knew why.
The Biosphere inside was a scene of a battle, the fields were burned, that cattle too, some mutant bodies were strewn around. Droid parts scattered around the area; they ran shouting for their mother heading for the side where there home was set. The Door had been blown off with explosives. And inside was horror enough to scar them both, to cause one to lose their religion. Before entering the kitchen they could smell the metallic scent of blood; the dripping of the tap but Saalz could only imagine blood. They both stood outside the kitchen door that was half slid open, frozen in their movement. Sight trembled as he brought out his Tactical revolver, anger fear covering him like a shroud, Saalz was shaking and moaning, tears rolling down his red scarred face.
“No… no, no, no” He said shaking his head. Sight looked through him and gulped down the bile that shot up into his mouth, and ran into the small kitchen, gun at the ready. He could see only as if looking in a tunnel, the room blurry around him, he tripped as if in the dark a few times. And there in Technicolor reality, she lay naked, cut in several places, blood dripping from her body to the sterile floor, dead.
Saalz snapped out of those thoughts, the images haunted him even now in his sleep. Iglaisias would appear sometimes, with a knife in his hands, glaring into Saalz’s accusingly. And that’s when the bond died between he and Sightsee. Sightsee had blamed him verbally then for wanting to play soccer, they would have been there was his argument. Even in the Years where Sight had told him there was nothing, nothing they could have done; he knew that Sight’s distance and insults were to the contrary.
He sat back down to go over the details once again, now the info they managed to ‘get hold of’ a few Years ago was making sense. But one mystery still remained. The paper document involved in the expedition that Iglaisias was part of, it dated to the Year AD 2005 with co-ordinates of this World and to a specific location, written in a strange mathematical language hidden by poetic prose. Only deciphered by today’s science.
But now before his eyes was the full file. But what of the mystery men and women who had approached him with it? Their names didn’t check out on any of the databases of them, elusive strange ones, young in flesh but wise, very wise maybe?
They wanted him to join them in the search of the site, the very same that their Father was asked to almost 21 Years before. He was told by them to simply tell no one, so he didn’t, his supplies were ready and so was his droid he assembled, a WarBot that would be his bodyguard. He closed the file and reluctantly destroyed the data cube in a small container of acid. He watched it dissolve, and it was already like redemption, redemption from his Brother for his mistake made 5 Years ago.
