The Streets of Boston - Chapter 2: Breaking point

  • March 12, 2246

    Day in, day out, I had been doing exactly the same things, in the same order, every day for decades.

    I would wake up, stumble into the bathroom, use the toilet and then follow up with a cold shower. I missed the days when I still had toilet paper and warm water. Then I would put my bathrobe on again and stumble back into the living room. I would rummage through my holotape recordings and switch on the holoplayer. I would pick up one of the books that bored me less and would get comfortable on my worn out sofa, and this until evening when I would get to sleep again.

    It had been years since I ate or drank anything that wasn’t cold water. There are only so many uses to teabags and so many sips to take from a bottle of wine. And believe it or not, I had started to miss the feeling of food in my mouth, what it felt like to chew on something and swallowing it. If the world would ever be safe for me again I doubt I would even remember how to eat at this rate.

    However something changed in my usual routine today. Something that was probably going to scar me for the rest of my lonely days.

    My Holoplayer broke down.

    November 5, 2257

    Nothing, I heard nothing but my own breath for days before I started tapping my fingers on the edge of tables as if I were playing a piano, stamping the ground as I walked, or trying to hum one of the songs I used to listen to, only to drive it away.

    But no matter what I did, it would always come back to me; the silence. Stronger and scarier than ever before. And so I started talking to myself to fill the void, it was hard at first, to form coherent phrases and discussions. It had been months since I heard one of my songs and it had been nearly two centuries since I last spoke to a human being. But it worked, the silence went away, but that feeling of loneliness that often accompanied it became ever stronger. I pondered ending it all. But to what avail, I had given up everything to live forever, to become a god amongst men, only to kill myself out of desperation? Oh if only I still had cigars…

    May 15, 2262

    Desperate to find a way of lighting that cigar I found all those years ago at a lonely christmas eve I actually came across a single match at the back of a kitchen drawer.

    However instead of lighting my cigar, another idea popped it’s ugly head around. And so I assembled my books.

    The flames were mesmerizing, licking the edges of the centuries old pages. I didn’t keep a single one, sacrificing them to these gods of red and green. They all ended up on the roaring fire as I chanted Armstrong’s what a wonderful world.

    I see trees of green, red roses too.

    I see them bloom for me and you.

    And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

    I see skies of blue and clouds of white

    The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

    And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

    In the end it was a stupid idea, the flames burnt through the available oxygen like they burnt through the paper and I would have died if the emergency ventilation hadn’t kicked in. But that didn’t prevent me of lighting that last cigar in the smoldering ashes of what had been my entire life for all this time.

    October 30, 2277

    The sound was hypnotizing. I had been watching the geiger counter for years now, listening as it ticked away the silence. Even after two centuries it appeared that the outside world was still too dangerous for me, even if radiation wouldn’t kill me it would leave some very nasty burns. And well, I wasn’t prepared to die the same way Eddy most likely did.

    I regretted lighting my books on fire as soon as I pressed out the cigar butt. I got caught in this psychotic craving, I wanted to see the world burn, I wanted to see my world burn. And once I finally recovered I realised my mistake. I was a man of culture, I would never purposefully burn a book, and yet I had burned an entire collection of them. What had I become?

    I spend the last fifteen years pondering that same question as I stared into the void, listening to the geiger counter ticking steadily. I was never getting out of here. And if the radiation didn’t take care of that I would make sure I wouldn’t.

    November 1, 2287

    So there I stood, in my best preserved suit, an improvised noose made from the remains of my bathrobe hanging in front of me as I stood on one of those damned uncomfortable chairs from the kitchen.

    I had been preparing for this moment a long time. And somehow I couldn’t shake off, that thought I had all those years ago, when I looked at that old tape and realised I regretted my solitude.

    When I entered this shelter, this grave I had built, I had no regrets.

    “Mais là, aux portes de la mort, je regrette tout.” I uttered

    I was ready to kick the chair away when my eyes caught a small red sparkle coming from the control board near the entrance. I hadn’t looked at it for centuries yet now, I saw this tiny little red flashing light coming from it’s dashboard.  Intrigued I stepped off my chair, and walked towards it. There was no indication as to what it meant so I booted up the old terminal and looked at the logs.


    What happened next shook my world, or what was left of it. I couldn’t believe it but as I scrolled down the long list of error logs there was no denying it: my geiger counter had been broken for nearly two hundred years. The wasteland outside had been safe for human habitation for nearly two hundred years...

Comments

10 Comments   |   Caladran and 1 other like this.
  • SpookyBorn2021
    SpookyBorn2021   ·  May 17, 2018
    Heheheheheh, oh damn that. Okay I dunno but I sorta thought the ending was pretty funny there, in a morbid way of course but just the idea of him being locked up this time because his geiger counter was broken. Moreso because he couldd've easily checked i...  more
  • Caladran
    Caladran   ·  February 7, 2018
    Noo, not the books! Thankfully he noticed the red flicker in time, but his mind state... remains in question.
  • Teineeva
    Teineeva   ·  June 1, 2016
    @Karver, you should really read chapter 3 then .
    @Idesto, yeah this is a tiny bit late , but yeah I would go mad without the music in that situation. I hate silence. I already have a serious problem with that in my near sound-proof bunker of a stude...  more
  • Karver the Lorc
    Karver the Lorc   ·  May 31, 2016
    Shit! After this everyone would go crazy...
  • Idesto
    Idesto   ·  April 23, 2016
    Aha! Nice twist. Losing his music? I'd definitely have lost my marbles then. I hate silence too. Next!
  • Teineeva
    Teineeva   ·  March 7, 2016
    I'm glad the gloominess of that last scene wasn't completely lost in the irony of it. But yeah, it's pretty dark.
  • The Wing
    The Wing   ·  March 7, 2016
    Am I the only one who found that an extremely depressing twist? XD
  • Sotek
    Sotek   ·  March 5, 2016
    Hahahahaha !!!!!
    Never saw that coming.....
    Well done Teineeva... well done.
  • Teineeva
    Teineeva   ·  March 5, 2016
    Yeah, things are going to be a bit surprising for him. I'm glad you liked the twist of this little pre-wasteland part ^^
    I was thinking of how I could get him to only leave his fallout shelter around the time FO4 begins and after considering many po...  more
  • The Long-Chapper
    The Long-Chapper   ·  March 5, 2016
    HAHA, that's awesome. He spent all that time there. Wow, is he going to be MESSED up when he gets out.