From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
Subject: The Undiscovered Country  (REPOST from alt.prose)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 05:45:55 GMT

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Date: Thu, 5 Mar 92 12:24:50 -0800
From: rauser@sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
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To: rauser@sfu.ca
Subject: The Undiscovered Country
Status: RO


>Newsgroups: alt.good.news
>Path: newsserver.sfu.ca!sfu.ca!rauser
>From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
>Subject: The Undiscovered Country
>Message-ID: <rauser.699697509@sfu.ca>
>Sender: news@sfu.ca
>Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
>Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1992 08:25:09 GMT




***

   What follows is a short story which, I feel, contains a good news
theme which I hope at least some members of alt.good.news will enjoy.


-RJR







           The Undiscovered Country


by Rick J. Rauser

(c) 1992 by WNI



"The future struggles against being mastered."
                        -Latin Proverb




    That was the year they dropped the bomb. It was the end of life as we
knew it, the end of the glories and wonders and beauties which had taken
centuries to develop, to create, and to flourish. It was the last time anyone
ever questioned the innate depravity of human nature. It was a time of man
rising against man, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. But in
the midst of it all, humanity stubbornly refused to die. In the midst of it
all, a few good people didn't seem ready to forget who they were. And in the
midst of it all, there seemed a certain hope was kindled. The hurricane may
tear apart a small town, yet its inhabitants will begin to rebuild the instant
the winds have died. And though human predators may stalk the innocent,
there are always good people ready to hunt them down and protect those who
cannot protect themselves. The mother may die yet her child lives on, and
though horribly cold winds may blow in winter, it is never long before
summer arrives.
      I was one of the few who didn't go to the major centers to be polled
by the government officials. I suppose at the time I saw no reason. I had
just witnessed the destruction of civilization and something as mundane
and absurd as marching to Vancouver to be counted by a government offical
as alive or dead seemed archaic. So I took as much as I could carry on
my back and tried to block out the strange, angry orange fires that glared
down from overhead with a pair of stolen sunglasses. And I walked. I didn't
know where I was going. Perhaps, at the time, I thought I was walking to my
death. Perhaps at the time I was looking forward to laying down and dying
in the barren, black fields that had once shone with golden wheat. Perhaps
I was crazy from radiation. But just as memories always fade, so do motives.
And my walking became a kind of stubborn refusal to lie down, a stubborn
refusal to die.
      There were others like me, far, far more than I had at first imagined.
Every little town across the province seemed to have its own band of 
survivors who, much to my suprise, were carrying on as if nothing had 
happened, as if nothing were wrong. I lived by scavenging. I kept what I 
could use, and sold what I couldn't. At first I was afraid that the military
might try rounding us all up, the wanderers and the scavengers, and the
outcasts. But I was wrong. The military didn't exist anymore, and the 
fragmented shell that remained in uniform was too apathetic to care.
      How can anyone talk about their life changing for the better after
watching the world get wiped out as I had? But my life did get better, so
better I could scarcely believe it. Even now its hard to accept, hard to
understand, how in the ruins that had been cities, the black wastelands
that had once been fields, and the smoking columns that had once been
buildings, such beauty as I found could even exist. But as an ugly cocoon
yields a lovely butterfly, and a Joshua tree takes life and sustenance
from a barren desert, so does beauty, sometimes in the strangest form,
survive the horrors of human destruction.
       I had been walking for days, actually sleeping during the day and
walking at night. If not for my compass I would have been dead long, long
ago, for there were no landmarks around me, not even a tattered dusty
remnant of a road. Just barren blackness as far as the eye could see, the
charred, torn remains of wheatfields, scorched by a fire more horrid than
anything seen by Elijah, and more evil than could ever have been imagined
by Einstein. My destination was Kintobar, a small settlement I had been
told of which existed "some ways" to the east. Three days, and no
Kintobar.
     From miles and miles away I began to make out the dim outlines of
a few smashed buildings, torn beyond recognition. I pulled out my
binoculars and watched. Far in the distance they lay, charred and black,
clawing at the orange sky as if pleading to God to have mercy. No
movement, and no signs of life. Definitely NOT Kintobar. Frustrated, I
put the binoculars back and kept walking.
     I had no weapons save a long, sharp hunting knife which I kept in my
boot. I had never had to use it, but one never knew when a weapon would be
needed. People were crazy. Perhaps I was crazy too; how can we ever know?
The very fact that I worried about my own sanity reassured me, however.
It's usually the crazies who believe themselves to be the most sane. As I
approached those rusted shells that stood proudly in the middle of this
black ocean I considered pulling out the knife in case I needed it. Perhaps
bloodthirsty nomads were camped out here, or maybe a crazed soldier with his
M-16 just waiting for a foolish scavenging civilian. 
     But I put the knife back. It was too quiet. And not even a crazy person
would be sitting way out here. It was too lonely. Too lonely for anyone, that 
is, but me.
     There were maybe five or six buildings altogether. From the looks of it
it had once been a small town. I saw a blackened stop sign, a twisted
and charred pile of metal that may once have been a child's tricycle, 
a car without wheels or seats or even much paint...but really there was
nothing. The nomads had obviously been here a long time ago, and had taken
anything of any real value. It frustrated me. I had been hoping to find
some more scrap along the way to Kintobar.
     I still remember exactly how she first sounded to me, like a child
crying in the wind. It came from one of the smaller buildings behind me, and
I was afraid. I walked slowly towards the demolished house and peered
inside. 
     It was hard to judge age for certain, because most people's faces
were either filthy with dirt or grease or grime or scarred by worry and
suffering, and more often than not both. But she was certainly under ten,
and older than four. 
     She looked up at me with those huge blue eyes, her hair filthy and
matted, and nothing but tattered rags hanging on her pale body. I still
can't forget the first thing she said. "I miss my parents."
     I felt an almost instant repulsion, an anger that the shell of 
cynicism and hatred which I had so carefully built up all around me to
protect me in this cold, cruel world was now being threatened. How could I
leave this little girl there to die, loner though I fancied myself?
I was afraid. Afraid of becoming attached to her, afraid of growing close
to her and then watching her die. But I pushed those feelings aside and
sat down beside her. I spoke slowly and calmly. I told her my name, I told
her where I was going, and where I had come from. And I told her how I
survived. And then I asked her her name.
      "Amanda," she said.
      "How do you survive? How do you eat?"
      "There's stuff in some of the houses."
      "What...what happened to your parents?"
      "Dead." 
      She said it so matter-of-factly that it chilled me and I was angry
that such a young and innocent child such as this had been forced so
brutally to come face to face with death by something as mundane as a
political disagreement. 
      But Amanda had courage, and strength, and although she was pale,
and weak, and frightened, I found myself needing her strength to keep
me going. We stayed in that barren little town for two days, and she came
to trust me and to open up to me. And I discovered that she needed me
as much as I needed her. And for the first time I was glad that I wasn't
alone. And I felt glad that she was here, and glad that I could help her,
and she me.
      "Sometimes I wonder," I said to her one evening as we sat around
a crackling fire, "what the point is of living like this. Why we need
to keep going."
      And she looked at me with her childish innocence and her young voice
said, "I think its better to live than die."
      Does that seem like an obvious truth now? It certainly didn't then.
But I thought on it, and held it, and studied it, and realized how true
it was. And I pulled her close to me and hugged her and held her for what
seemed like hours. She was my little sister now, I her older brother. 
And just as I had given her security and comfort and protection, so she
had given me hope, and faith, and love.
      We saddled up the next morning and kept going for Kintobar. Because
no matter how barren or bleak the road may seem, it always leads somewhere.
And darkest night always gives way to a bright sunrise. The future lay
before us like an undiscovered country, and where I had before seen only
pain and suffering and eventual death, I now saw the potential for life, 
and love, and even laughter in the midst of bitterest tears.and hardest
labours. And what made it all so appealing, all so hopeful, an in many
ways even exciting, was that I wouldn't have to explore that undiscovered
country alone. And neither would Amanda.
      And as for Kintobar, we found it that evening.

--
Richard J. Rauser       "Thus is the winter of our discontent
rauser@sfu.ca              made glorious summer by this sun of York."
WNI/Wicked Parodies                             -Shakespeare
 


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