Prochoros at Patmos
Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:30 pm
It had been a few days ago that everyone had been told. Her parents had cried, and hugged her tight, and some part of that felt wrong. It wasn't her who needed comforting, not really, not at all.
Survival of the Fittest, that's what it had been called, the event that had raptured away the majority of the class. Some of the team had stayed behind, not gone on the trip like her, but it wasn't like they were going to play any games anyway. Even thinking about that felt selfish, like she was thinking about herself and not them, but it kept sticking in her mind. She'd never get to train with Arizona again, never get to mess around with Cheridene again after a victory, and all of her memories with them were now tinged bittersweet with that knowledge.
They'd been let off of school too, and the newspaper had a little commemorative edition planned, but she couldn't bring herself to sign on to that. And they didn't ask.
The thing that she couldn't let go, as she sat in front of the little purple chromebook her parents had bought her for her 17th birthday, was that she didn't know what it was. Not really. She knew of it in the same way she knew of 9/11, a terrible event that was catalogued in pictures, and spoken about as little as possible. A few key images that had burnt into her mind, the thick black smoke billowing from the towers, the face of Adam Dodd as he realised it was over. She knew there was more to those tragedies, but learning about it seemed... Pointless. The kind of thing you shouldn't think about too hard, the only outcome being pain and sorrow if one did.
But as she slowly typed the words "Survival of the Fittest" into the search bar in front of her, she realised that wasn't quite right.
She clicked on the first few articles, and began to read.
They were concise, deliberately so, a list of names and short events. But something about that only seemed more awful, as she scrolled and scrolled, clicking recommended link after recommended link. There were so many names only mentioned once or twice, people who simply faded beneath the note of those writing, except to explain how they met their name. Anonymous additions to the death toll. They were professional, at least, with an almost clinical tone that nearly made her eyes glaze over as she read.
Or maybe that was the tears.
She couldn't help but imagine people she knew as those names now. Those few who she'd tried to search through for any details of, the people who had a wikipedia entry, but came with a note that it was a stub. And she could help by expanding it. Something about that tore at her, thinking of Arizona, or Cheridene falling into the pit of history forgotten of their rightful place in it.
And then, pages and pages of searching later, for those anonymous names she found something a little different. A site different from those professional ones, with their advertisements, and tight bylines and associated opinion pieces. It was messy, with a few grammatical errors here and there, and with a site design that looked far less well put together. But what those words held dug into her attention, and wouldn't let go, even as her mouth began to feel dry.
It wasn't that were less clinical, although that twisted her stomach a little, it read as though whoever had seen the events happen had enjoyed watching them just a little. No, it was the detail, and it made her only feel worse for the poor girl she was reading about. It talked about the struggles she'd faced, away from bloodshed and bodycounts, on trying to find people to help her and failing. It was her story.
There was a description of her death that she scrolled past very fast, as the events became familiar from those news articles she'd started with, until she came to the bottom of the page. There was a few links at the bottom, a donation option, but also a piece of text that read simply "contribute to the site".
She stared at it for a while.
Then her mouse moved over to it, and she clicked the link.
Survival of the Fittest, that's what it had been called, the event that had raptured away the majority of the class. Some of the team had stayed behind, not gone on the trip like her, but it wasn't like they were going to play any games anyway. Even thinking about that felt selfish, like she was thinking about herself and not them, but it kept sticking in her mind. She'd never get to train with Arizona again, never get to mess around with Cheridene again after a victory, and all of her memories with them were now tinged bittersweet with that knowledge.
They'd been let off of school too, and the newspaper had a little commemorative edition planned, but she couldn't bring herself to sign on to that. And they didn't ask.
The thing that she couldn't let go, as she sat in front of the little purple chromebook her parents had bought her for her 17th birthday, was that she didn't know what it was. Not really. She knew of it in the same way she knew of 9/11, a terrible event that was catalogued in pictures, and spoken about as little as possible. A few key images that had burnt into her mind, the thick black smoke billowing from the towers, the face of Adam Dodd as he realised it was over. She knew there was more to those tragedies, but learning about it seemed... Pointless. The kind of thing you shouldn't think about too hard, the only outcome being pain and sorrow if one did.
But as she slowly typed the words "Survival of the Fittest" into the search bar in front of her, she realised that wasn't quite right.
She clicked on the first few articles, and began to read.
They were concise, deliberately so, a list of names and short events. But something about that only seemed more awful, as she scrolled and scrolled, clicking recommended link after recommended link. There were so many names only mentioned once or twice, people who simply faded beneath the note of those writing, except to explain how they met their name. Anonymous additions to the death toll. They were professional, at least, with an almost clinical tone that nearly made her eyes glaze over as she read.
Or maybe that was the tears.
She couldn't help but imagine people she knew as those names now. Those few who she'd tried to search through for any details of, the people who had a wikipedia entry, but came with a note that it was a stub. And she could help by expanding it. Something about that tore at her, thinking of Arizona, or Cheridene falling into the pit of history forgotten of their rightful place in it.
And then, pages and pages of searching later, for those anonymous names she found something a little different. A site different from those professional ones, with their advertisements, and tight bylines and associated opinion pieces. It was messy, with a few grammatical errors here and there, and with a site design that looked far less well put together. But what those words held dug into her attention, and wouldn't let go, even as her mouth began to feel dry.
It wasn't that were less clinical, although that twisted her stomach a little, it read as though whoever had seen the events happen had enjoyed watching them just a little. No, it was the detail, and it made her only feel worse for the poor girl she was reading about. It talked about the struggles she'd faced, away from bloodshed and bodycounts, on trying to find people to help her and failing. It was her story.
There was a description of her death that she scrolled past very fast, as the events became familiar from those news articles she'd started with, until she came to the bottom of the page. There was a few links at the bottom, a donation option, but also a piece of text that read simply "contribute to the site".
She stared at it for a while.
Then her mouse moved over to it, and she clicked the link.