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  Emit

  A Modern Myth

  Jack Beal

  © Copyright Jack Beal 2019

  Black Rose Writing | Texas

  © 2019 by Jack Beal

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  First digital version

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-266-3

  PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  Print edition produced in the United States of America

  Thank you so much for checking out one of our Sci-Fi novels.

  If you enjoy our book, please check out our recommended title for your next great read!

  Culture-Z by Karl Andrew Marszalowicz

  In the year 2190, mankind has made great strides forward in the worlds of technology, science, and greed. However, when all three get together one last time, this oblivious generation may not exist much longer.

  For my sister and best friend, Stephanie, who has shown me that being a hero doesn’t always come with acknowledgment, but with character.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Recommended Reading

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  ONE - JULY 4, 1947. RED, WHITE AND…

  TWO - THE PLACE WHERE JOURNEYS START

  THREE - ONE SMALL STEP FOR A BOY

  FOUR - INVISIBLE CHAINS

  FIVE - GLIMMER OF PAST. SHADOW OF FUTURE.

  SIX - THE MINUTE HAND TURNS

  SEVEN - MONSTERS AND ABYSSES

  EIGHT - STRANDS OF TRUTH

  NINE - WHEN MEN AND EMPIRES FALL

  TEN - WHAT COMES OF BROKEN PASTS

  ELEVEN - MISSING PIECES

  TWELVE - THE TUNNEL’S CENTER

  THIRTEEN - DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS

  FOURTEEN - A LIGHT TO DIM THE WAY

  FIFTEEN - THE ADDED DIMENSION

  SIXTEEN - THE ART OF STAYING AND GOING

  SEVENTEEN - OVERLAPPING REALITIES

  EIGHTEEN - BACK TO THE BEGINNING

  NINETEEN - A MOMENT. A LIFETIME.

  TWENTY - COLLAPSING ILLUSIONS

  TWENTY ONE - ORIGINS OF TRUTH

  TWENTY TWO - TANGLED IN THE MIDDLE

  TWENTY THREE - ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MAN

  TWENTY FOUR - TIME MITOSIS: THE CREATION OF MULTIPLE REALITIES

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  REFERENCES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BRW Info

  Prologue

  You have heard of me under many names. You have recognized me under many forms. You have spent fleeting hours mystified by the beauty I can bring and endless nights trembling in fear of my disdain. You have clung to me just as you have discounted me. Then, remembering me, you’ve gone out in search of me. You haven’t understood that I’m always here. Even when you are not.

  How many times have you lost yourself in my embrace only to embrace the thought of losing me? How many times have you loved me only to long of destroying me? But that is where you’ve made the biggest mistake. For if you slay me, you only slay yourself.

  The story I am about to tell is not my own. And yet by the intrinsic nature of what I’ve just confided to you, it belongs to me. I shall, therefore, recount the entire tale as if it were mine, and you shall read it as if it were yours. As it has always been and shall be forevermore.

  Thus begins the legend of Robbie Flynn. Or, rather, not. For as you will soon see, that’s not at all how it works. But as we must start somewhere, what better instance than now?

  So, as I begin stitching together the first threads, let me remind you this is far more than just a simple yarn. It’s a story belonging to all of us. I shall be there often, helping Robbie to find the words to tell his tale when he’s too young to find them, himself. As for the role that is yours to carry out, that is for you to discover.

  So now, without further ado, let us open the extraordinary account of Robbie Flynn.

  “It all began a long time ago.” Or, perhaps, more precisely, it will.

  If you are having trouble following, don’t fret. It won’t be so very long before it all becomes crystal clear. Unless, of course, it already is.

  “Myths are the most ancient remedies of the human condition.”

  ~Jack Beal

  ONE

  JULY 4, 1947. RED, WHITE AND…

  My mother’s eyes were of an unparalleled blue. Only, I don’t remember ever seeing them. I don’t think so, at least. Grandmom told me so much about my mom that sometimes I’m not sure if my memories are mine or hers. Every night, after laying me down to sleep, she’d sit at the foot of my bed and whisper, “All aboard?”

  I’d nod eagerly as Grandmom would steer me down that muddled river of myths like Osiris upon the River Styx. Drawing upon the silenced footsteps of times long since passed, she’d pave a road to that place of dreams, where legends are allowed to intersperse, and time is kind enough to melt away.

  And while Grandmom could weave magnificent tales of heroes going off into other worlds, my favorite was the story of when my mother came into this one. “It was a magical moment,” Grandmom would say, tugging open the curtain and peering out the window, “when the blue moon shed its shadow in a single night, and your mother was born. The moon was so blue, just like your mother’s eyes. That’s why we called her Iris.”

  When Grandmom passed on, the stories stopped, and for the second time in my life, my mother disappeared.

  Sometimes I stay up at night, trying to recall the way things were when I was too young to know to hang onto those moments. I try to remember my mother’s voice, the scent of her perfume, and the way it felt when she took me in her arms. But most importantly, I try to remember the color of her eyes. Only I can’t.

  I’ve asked Dad to talk to me about Mom, but Dad isn’t the talkative type. At least not anymore. When he came back after the Great War, everyone said he’d changed. I can’t tell you whether or not it’s true, though, because that was the first time I ever saw him.

  You see, in September of 1940, the government instituted its first peacetime draft. In each town, all the men between 21 and 45 were given a number, starting with one and going all the way up to almost 8,000. Then, back in Washington, those same numbers were put into casings which were thrown into a sort of fishbowl. When the time came, the Secretary of War, a small, mustachy fellow, fished the shells out at random. It was like a lottery. Only, if your number got picked, you got drafted.

  While a lot of people in Corona weren’t all too worried about some war taking place thousands of miles away, Dad said right off the bat that the whole thing was bad business. “The problem is that people are so quick to forget the lessons we should have already learned. It’s important to r
emember the past when you’re walking into the future.” When folks would ask him what he was jibber-jabbering about, he’d say, “This is the one that’ll change the whole world.” It was as if somehow, he knew something the others didn’t.

  “Number 158.” And just like that, thousands of men across the US were picked to go away. One of them by the name of Edward Flynn. People say when Dad’s number got called, he hadn’t shown any emotion. He’d simply shifted gears. Within a month, he’d traded in his mining equipment for a Colt, kissed Mom goodbye, and been shipped off for training.

  I came into this world 9 months later. It was on July 3, 1941, the same day Stalin called for a Scorched Earth Policy to be put into effect. That’s when you destroy everything so the enemy can’t use it to his advantage. It was a day of complete destruction, making it an awfully unconventional day to have been born.

  From what I understand, that was around the same time things started getting really crummy. When I was only a few months old, a bunch of bad guys came in airplanes and dropped bombs out of the sky. And just like that, the United States was at war. All those men who’d been recruited in the name of peace? Suited up and sent off to the other side of the ocean to fight. Including my dad.

  When he finally got back from the war, he was a different man. But, like I already said, I wouldn’t have known the difference. I’d never met him before the time Grandmom burst into my room and shook me from my sleep in the middle of the night. “Wake up, Robbie! Quick!” she creaked, a puff of peppermint breath escaping as she snatched me from my warm bed.

  Begrudgingly, my vibrant dreamscape dissolved into a world of shadow. The same rooms I’d always plodded were strange and distorted in the darkness, and Grandmom had needed to lead the way. I remember my knuckles squishing awkwardly together beneath Grandmom’s clammy grip, the sound of tires howling into the night, and wondering why we were tiptoeing around in the dark, anyway. The whole thing made me edgy.

  When the door whipped open, the hammering in my throat amplified.

  “A new moon miracle!” The words swayed softly on her lips.

  But I wasn’t listening. I was just seeing.

  I’ll never forget that first time I set eyes on him. He was standing there in the doorway, motionless, like he didn’t know whether to come in or stay there all night.

  As I already mentioned, it was dark as pitch outside. Even the moon was hiding. In between the doorjambs, he looked like a black silhouette painted against a blacker sky. When Grandmom finally switched on the light, it was one of those moments it takes years to finally understand. Out of the darkness, there he was. A sad-looking man with a stiff khaki jacket lined with shining buttons.

  I wish I could say I’d had some profound insight as I stood there looking up at him for the first time. But that would be a lie. What I do remember was thinking it was Christmas. Here he was, appearing in the middle of the night, all green and sparkly. When he reached behind him, I thought it was to pull a toy from his satchel. But he didn’t. Instead, he unhooked the shoulder strap and left the bag slumped over on the floor. “Hi, Chief,” he said in a faraway voice, patting me on the head a little too hard before whispering something to Grandmom.

  And that was that. Without so much as a goodnight, he trudged upstairs and disappeared into that room at the end of the hallway whose door we’d always kept shut.

  “Give him some time, Robbie,” Grandmom said, planting a kiss on my forehead and tucking me back into bed. “It’s been a long trip home.”

  That night I dreamt of the North Pole and of a shiny green Santa sailing through the sky before landing on our front porch. When I woke up, I went racing to find him. Instead, I only found my father. And a much less sparkly version, might I add. “What happened to all your shiny buttons?”

  “I’ve put them away, Chief. There’s nothing nobler about those badges than what I’ve traded them in for by coming home,” he said before turning back to his newspaper.

  “What was it like,” I stammered, “there where you were?”

  “It was war, son,” he said despondently, looking up over his reading spectacles.

  Harkening back to Grandmom’s stories of battles in far-off places, I’d exclaimed, “It sure must have been exciting!”

  “Exciting isn’t the word, Robbie,” he said, unhinging his glasses from his nose and sliding one of the curved tips between his lips contemplatively. “Man isn’t supposed to go flying through the skies dropping missiles on his fellow man. In fact, he would be much better off if he took to digging. And that is precisely what I’ve chosen to do.” As the last word fell evasively from his lips, he turned his chair to face the window, implying the conversation was closed.

  It’s been nearly two years since that winter night in 1945 when Dad doddered through the doorway, but I don’t know him any better than I did as I stood there looking up at him in my pajamas. I guess it’s because of whatever happened “out there,” but I reckon I’ll never know. As I’d imagine you’ve already noticed, Dad’s got this way of ending a conversation before it’s able to begin, and I’ve gotten used to the quiet. Especially since Grandmom has joined Mom in those rows of grass laid stones.

  I know I shouldn’t say this, but sometimes I can’t help but feel I got a bum deal. Every time someone comes into my life, it’s only because somebody else has got to be taken out of it. From what I understand, soon after Grandmom came to live with me, my mother went away. When Dad came back from the war that lasted six years and a day, Grandmom was the one to go. The way I see it, it’s safer for me to keep to myself.

  Still, it’s a lonely cycle. Especially this time. Grandmom told me stories. She let me lick the batter spoon and tucked me in at night. Dad’s hardly around. Sure, he sleeps in the room at the end of my hallway, but that doesn’t make him any less of a stranger. Our paths don’t cross a whole lot, which makes it awfully hard to get to know him at all. You see, my dad does shift work down at the Red Cloud Mine. He puts in real long hours. Lots of times, he’s leaving when I’m heading up to bed. Most of the time, he’s not here when I wake up, either, and I have to fetch my breakfast all by myself. Not that being alone bothers me. Like I already said, I’m used to it. But I still can’t help but notice Dad’s going off a whole lot more than he’s coming back.

  Once, I mustered up the courage to ask him about it. It took all the nerve I could gather to creep over to where he was sitting in his reading chair, but when I got there, all I could do was stand and stare.

  I guess if I inherited anything from the man, it would have to have been his way with words. The two of us spent a long time looking at one another, before Dad finally broke the silence.

  “I know it’s not easy, son…” he began like a mind-reader. As if, while I considered him an outsider, he knew me like the back of his hand.

  Something deep inside of me clicked open, and before I could stop them, the words came pouring out. “Then why are you always leaving?”

  I’ll never forget the sorry look that spread over Dad’s face as he folded the newspaper and set it on the armrest. “If I leave so much, it’s for you.”

  What? That made no sense. If he wanted to do something to help me, he’d stay! “You’re always so busy looking down in those holes that you never take the time to pay attention to what’s right here!”

  “That’s not true, Chief,” he said, pulling me onto his knee. “The reason I’m working so hard is for you to have a better future. After all, one generation has got to pave the way for the next, rather than leave it to rummage blindly in the rubble. When your mother and I decided to bring you into this world, it was with the intention that you’d have a better life than the one we had.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  I’m not sure if I caught him
off-guard, or if his choice was deliberate, but for the first and only time in my life, he responded. “Your mother’s eyes were of an unparalleled blue…”

  I remember tearing through the house, collecting every blue object in sight, and throwing them into a huge pile in front of him. “Which one’s the closest?”

  Dad just sat there, mute. I held out one blue item after another, but he didn’t respond. Until I showed him the page of sugar dots I’d gotten at Jake’s Corner Market. He was still silent, but the film over his eyes lifted and was replaced by another expression I can’t explain.

  I tried to get him to talk about the candy buttons, but he refused. And, as you well know, when Dad’s made up his mind about something, that’s it. End of story.

  Take yesterday, for example. Dad was on day shift, so I had to wait ‘til suppertime for my present. Oh, did I forget to mention it? Yesterday was my birthday! I was real excited because I’d asked for one of those German P-38 Souvenir Pistols they’ve been advertising in the newspaper. You know, don’t you? The real swell looking one with the leather holster that’s going for a dollar twenty-five.

  While I waited for Dad’s Ford Deluxe to come cruising into the driveway, I did all my daily chores, and then some. That way, I knew I’d have all the time in the world to play soldier once I got my P-38.

  When Dad finally came strolling in, at long last, I couldn’t believe my eyes! The package was a whole lot bigger than I’d expected and wrapped in this real fine Manila paper. I reached for the bundle, but Dad shook his head. “You know the rule, Chief. No presents until after supper.”

  As Dad fetched a container from the pantry, I went to setting the table, chop chop. After all, the sooner we’d eat the sooner…