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I remember Christmas being a time of jolly happenings, lots of food, and enormous piles of presents under the tree. That is when I was young, now I am in my middle ages, not old yet but getting closer to it each day.
When I was that boy, my family was around nearly all the time, but now, I rarely see, or hear from them. It is not like the old days, you know, the good old days when granny's peach cobbler was filling the air with the aroma of freshly baked peaches that we all helped pick, yeah, that time.
Alas, those days are long gone. Now I am a million miles away from the family. There is no hustle and bustle of shopping, singing, or a hint of snow upon the ground; from where I am sitting there is no ground to be seen.
Little did I know when I was a child that one of my dreams would steal Christmas from me.
I was an ordinary boy, born into an ordinary family. My father worked in a factory just like all the men in our town. We were poor, but didn't know that we were in that condition because everyone there was the same.
We had food to eat, a house to live in and we even took a vacation once a year during the summer months.
There was always something to do, or someone to visit in those days. We had friends that we played and fought with, but then when the fight was over, we played together again. There was no such thing as school violence, or shooting people.
The future of a child usually began the same way, "Write a sentence telling the class what you want to be when you grow up." The teachers said.
So that is what we all did. I wanted to be a policeman. Bobby wanted to be the Mayor, and Freddie wanted to be a popsicle. Hey, give the kid a break, we were in Kindergarten at the time.
You know, now that I think of it, Freddy dream was fulfilled, but I don't think it was in the way he had planned it. He was a research scientist at the North Pole, and unfortunately, last year, someone killed him, his co-workers found his body frozen in a bank of snow outside the complex. Sometimes life takes an unexpected twist.
I did pursue my career in law enforcement . There was nothing unusual about the five years that I spent on the police force. I enjoyed those years immensely, other than directing traffic in the rain and snow. There was even talk by my superiors of putting me into the detective training program, but...
(Somehow, there is always a but in the life stories of most people, at least there was in mine.)
I heard talk that there was an opening in a radical new space program that would allow ordinary citizens to join the space program. I never had considered a career other than law enforcement, and if I had it certainly wouldn't have been in the space program.
Honestly, the clincher was the money. There was an insane amount of it to be earned. The training was free, and there was the promise of untold benefits, that would be revealed after training was completed.
I was not sure how my family would take the idea of me switching careers, but I signed up for the training, and after two years, I was given my first assignment.
"What do you mean, you're quitting the force?" Said Reggie. He was my partner on the police squad, and had been since graduating from the Zephyr City Police Academy. I was the Senior Officer in charge and he the junior. That was the way he liked it because it had always been up to me to decide what actions we would take on the street.
I told him when to pursue a suspect, or to let them go. Let's face it, some crimes just aren't worth putting the effort into solving, especially if there's a bigger fish to fry.
"You know I've been shot three times already this week, and I'm getting tired of wasting my time getting lead pulled out of my body." I said.
"Yeah, I understand. But I don't like it." He replied.
There was just no fear in doing the job anymore. Not since the new LELSA (For the layman, that is the Law Enforcement Life Science Association) had been created. They had brought about great advances in life saving technology which had increased an officer chance of surviving a major gunshot wound to 95% or better.
The truth was this, I had become bored with chasing down bad guys for little money.
Perhaps, this news would have gone over better if I had not chosen the Christmas season to reveal my decision, especially by doing so on the evening of our precinct Christmas party. "Why not tonight?" I said to those that questioned my timing. "Christmas has become a time to reveal life changing events in my life, so, I say again, why not tonight?"
It was during the Christmas party when I was ten that mother and father informed the family that they were getting divorced.
Then during the Christmas party when I was fifteen, I learned that my dog Scuffmark, had been run over by a snow plow.
So the night I chose to tell the world I was going to be a space guy on a space station away from family and friends was just another Christmas to reveal a major life altering event.
In a way, I felt excited about the new assignment. It took me back to the day in kindergarten when Laramie Johnson said, "I'm gonna be an astronaut." That never happened though, instead he became the President of the United States. So, who says dreams can't be changed.
It wasn't on Space Station Delta 4 like I had hoped for. That was the ultimate assignment because that station was the top of the line outpost. It had all of the latest tech gadgets and it was the closest one to Mars; and that was my new dream.
Nope.
I was stuck on SS23. This was the smallest of the thirty -eight stations in existence. It was a one man station that orbits the Earth. There is no one to look at, or to talk with here, and the silence of space is quite dreadful.
This was not what I was promised when I joined up, and I am told that I cannot even put in for a transfer until I have been here for two more years.
I have plenty of supplies. There is enough dehydrated food, and healthy liquids to drink to last me.
The worst part is that I made Lois (my AI companion) mad at me and she won't speak to me anymore. I can't even get her to argue with me about anything.
In two hours, it will be Christmas. There hasn't been a major change in my life since I left the comfort of the Earth, will this be the year?
Each day is the same old drudgery, monitor the monitors, report any significant changes in the atmosphere of the Earth, and then watch the planet turn round and round; this resembles sitting in a field of dandelions watching the grass grow.
"Someone remind me of why I chose this profession again?" I said to the microphone, no one answered.
How odd, someone always had an answer to my complaints, but there was only silence, not even static. It was as though communications had been shut down.
With nothing else to do, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
Once again, I was eight years old, and there was a blanket of soft, puffy snow on the ground. I could see mom and dad sitting on the porch, drinking hot coffee, and watching me play in the snow.
They were laughing and having a good time. This was before Christmas became a horrible time of the year. It was when life was good and we all had fun. I looked forward to Christmas morning, which was only a week away.
The presents were already piled under the tree, and Christmas carols were the only songs to be heard on WKKL. There was only an occasional interruption from the weather man, who promised a wonderful, white Christmas.
The blaring of a alarm woke me from the wonderful memories of the past.
I checked the monitors for the disturbance, and they were all going crazy. Lights were flashing, the needles were insane.
What was going on here? Something was not right.
I tried the microphone. There was no response.
There was no sound, no warning, nothing. The Earth was a ball of flame.
It was December 25th.
ns 172.70.134.26da2
