The Last Photograph
by Wrestlr
16.
No plan survives the first contact with the real world.
One year later, I sat hidden in the underbrush overlooking a resort hotel on the northeast corner of a backwater village. Below me, through my binoculars, I could see the restaurant’s outdoor dining area. It was afternoon. A pair of waiters moved among the few guests still lingering over their lunches.
Justin and I had managed to get out. It wasn’t easy. We had to fight. We had to run. We had to hide in the jungle until we found a road, a town, a police station. No one believed our story there. When someone was finally sent to investigate, they found no evidence of the high-tech complex we had described. I suspected they hadn’t looked hard or were paid to look the other way, but I didn’t want to stick around. If they wanted to dismiss me a crank, so be it as long as I got to walk away.
Justin and I stuck together. If Mick or the Leader or whoever was in charge sent people after us, we thought the best way to protect ourselves was to stay together. We went back to the States. There, we just disappeared. We moved to a different part of the country. We took fake names—Justin became “Jason,” and I took the name “Paul,” in honor of my lost brother. That was a mistake on my part, because the name and my resemblance to my brother reminded Justin too much of his lost friend, who he loved too but in a different way, constant reminders like a knife in the heart. I got a job in a mom-and-pop restaurant, a place willing to pay me under the table in cash, no questions asked. Justin got a job in a local department store that wasn’t too thorough about paperwork. It wasn’t much money, but together we made enough to live on, enough to afford a small apartment. Life was different, but for a while it was good, at least more good than bad.
I stayed in touch with my parents but only occasionally. I didn’t want to bring trouble to their doorstep if the Leader’s people were watching them. Once a month I bought a different untraceable prepaid phone and called them. I told them I hadn’t been able to find Paul. I intimated that I’d run into some trouble myself—I was okay, don’t worry, but I needed to lay low for a while. I let them believe I’d been in a bar fight while looking for Paul and there might have been charges pressed and I needed to keep a low profile for a while so the police wouldn’t find me. They’d believed that. Each time I called them, I told them I loved them, in case it was the last time.
I dated a few women here and there, mostly no-strings relationships. I’m big, blond, and good-looking; I let my hair grow out a little, enough to cover the tiny plug that was only noticeable if someone touched exactly the right spot, and the slightly longer-than-service haircut just seemed to make the ladies more interested in me. When they asked about my obvious military background, I told them I’d been in the Marines, just gotten back from my final tour. It seemed a plausible substitute for the Army Special Forces. I hinted there might be post-traumatic stress. I let them think that was to blame for the emotional distance and the obvious holes in my history that hid secrets. I made sure the relationships never got too intense or lasted too long. No relationship survived long after the woman started asking questions.
Justin had trouble adjusting. Life seemed grayer, colors and smells and sounds less intense for both of us, compared to the sharpness of being haloed. No pleasure compared to the bliss of those times we’d experienced reward mode. Justin and I depended on each other for safety and stability, and he confused that with love. Sometimes Justin and I had sex, but it was mostly for the comfort of being with someone who understood. He tried not to be jealous of the women I dated, or at least he said he tried. He found himself a boyfriend briefly too, but it didn’t work out. Justin chomped at the bit—he hated the secrets we had to keep, the restricted way we had to live; he wanted to return to his college, to his family and friends, his old life.
One day, six months after we escaped, Justin disappeared. There was no sign of struggle. There was no intrusion of hostiles, as I first feared. I searched his belongings and his computer, an old clunker we’d bought second-hand, and put together the story. No, one day Justin just took his real-name passport and boarded a plane with the ticket he’d bought using money his parents had transferred to an online bank account he set up. He told them he was sorry, had finally outgrown his misspent youth, was ready to come home, settle down, be an adult. He bought a ticket, but not home to his parents like they expected. He erased the flight information.
I suspected Justin went back to South America. Life “outside” seemed colorless, alienated. I knew it was probably the residual mind control talking, but I missed Paul, I missed Justin, I missed the intensity and the connectedness I experienced through the halo. I missed the Soldiers. The halo made life feel more ... I don’t want to say predestined, but ordered, uncomplicated. More real. I missed being a Soldier.
After a year, I made my decision. That’s how I came to be on this hill above this restaurant in this backwater village.
I checked the dining area again through my binoculars. Another tourist couple had just left. One waiter bussed their table while the other fussed over the last remaining diners. I hadn’t expected to see the bussing waiter, not so soon. He looked good; he looked content. There was no flash of gold at his forehead, but maybe the tech had evolved in the last year, especially now that Techno Geek Prime was probably working for them.
I pulled that last photograph of Paul and his friends out of my pocket. The paper was cracking from being folded and unfolded so many times. In the picture, they’re all giddy-grinning for the camera—shirtless, squinting against the sun, thinking they were setting off on a grand summer adventure, not knowing exactly what that adventure would be. Life turned out differently.
I took out my cell phone and snapped a photograph of myself. I made myself smile as if everything were perfect. It wasn’t; it never is; it can’t ever be perfect. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Compromises had to be made. I was ready to make them.
I wanted to look happy in this picture. I wanted them to look at my smile and think everything would work out, happy endings for everyone on the horizon. I sent the photo to my parents, attached to a text message saying not to worry, I’m all right but I have to be out of touch for a long while, and I want them to know I love them. I pressed the Send button and waited while the message transferred.
Then I turned off the phone and flung it as hard as I could out into the ocean. The salt water would make short work of it. I could barely hear the splash amid the surf. No turning back.
I guess, really, I was happy in my own way. I knew what I wanted. Everything hinged on the next few minutes.
I stood up and brushed the debris off my ass and thighs. Now it was time to walk down to the restaurant and talk to the waiters, Lucas and Justin. It was time to apologize, tell them I wanted to come back to the complex. They’d have to see I was sincere. I’d accept the halo, submit to whatever, if the Leader would take me back. I was ready to be a Soldier again.