Radio Silence - Part 8

You wouldn’t think that the end of the world would happen just because you didn’t get to have your normal cup of coffee, now would you? But in Richard Gillivray’s world, that is exactly what happened. The downfall of civilization. Because you ran out of coffee. It’s like something from a movie. Something you’d see and you’d say to yourself ‘yeah, right, like that would ever happen’.

It was a Saturday. You don’t quickly forget the day you started the end of the world.

Richard woke up and padded out to the kitchen in his boxers like he did every morning, before his alarm clock had even so much as finished going off, so he could put on the coffee maker. He opened the cupboard to retrieve the massive metal container of coffee from the discount store that it seemed a task set by the gods to ever get through, and tugged open the plastic lid. He dipped a large spoon inside and met with the metal bottom of the tin. He reached in and swirled his arm in a circle before lifting out the spoon. It was barely full. “Dammit!” He briefly considered putting the coffee grounds into his mouth just like that, straight from the jar. Could people die from something like that? His non-caffeinated brain attempted to solve this puzzle. In the end he gave up the struggle and threw the spoon into the sink with a loud clatter. “Jules! We’re out of coffee!” He was usually grumpy in the morning, but now that he had no coffee he was even more so. “Great,” he muttered, going back into the bedroom and pulling on some socks. One was brown and one was black with a diamond pattern, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to have his coffee this morning. And today was an important day. Today was the test run. The big day. Everyone was counting on him. This was his baby after all. He was the leading scientist, the one that brainstormed this, that lobbied for this. He needed it to succeed. But he needed his coffee. And were there any decent places between his home and the office? No, of course not!

“What’s that, honey?” His wife called from the bathroom, the sound of the shower drowning her out somewhat.

He opened the door to the bathroom a crack and wrote on the fogged mirror ‘NO COFFEE!’ with the added exclamation point for emphasis.

He threw his tie loosely around his neck, and put on his dark purple shirt, what he liked to think of as his power shirt. He needed all the help he could get today, especially since he wouldn’t be having a coffee. And the sludge at the office that people called coffee was little more than swill, and Richard couldn’t even bear to look at it let alone drink the stuff. He shuddered just thinking about it and made a face at himself in the full sized mirror on the wall.

Somehow by the time he found his suit jacket, ran a brush through his hair and examined his nose for any stray unruly hairs, he was late. Not very late, but late was late in his book. “Late, late for a very important date,” he muttered to himself in a sing-song voice. Something his mother always used to say when she chastised him. He ran into the room and gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek before rushing to the door.

“Bye dear!” He shouted to Julie, who was busy trying to perfect her eyeliner.

“Good luck hon,” she said, as the door shut. “I know you’ll do great.”

But Richard McGillivray never heard those words of encouragement. Maybe if he had, maybe, just maybe somehow things would have turned out differently. But he hadn’t and he was already opening the door to his electric car. A perk of the job. He still hadn’t got used to the strangeness of driving a car that was entirely silent so that he felt like he wasn’t actually driving. It was the strangest feeling, and unnerved him slightly, so that when he arrived at work, the weirdness of driving a ghost car to work, combined with the lack of caffeine in his system. Well, it was not a good start to the day. And from there it rapidly went downhill.

He shivered and shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat as he briskly marched across to the long metal hangar in the middle of the isolated field at the back of MeteoTech Incorporated, the largest government subsidized scientific corporation in the country, focusing mainly on environmental impacts, and harnessing the weather. Controlling it, dispersing it, rearranging it. Making the weather benefit humankind instead of devestate it as it used to do. Now, thanks to MeteoTech, there were less hurricanes destroying islands and island countries in the Pacific. They just orchestrated the weather so that these events would occur somewhere where there would be less impact, less loss of life. Richard remembered the first project he was assigned to. His team was charged with decreasing the number and frequency of tornadoes in Tornado valley. Yes, they pissed off the storm chasers, as it destroyed their livelihoods, but better than destroying lives. That was the jokey mantra around the office. Destroying livelihoods, not lives. But MeteoTech’s real slogan was more broad, more philosophical. But no less corny, thought Richard. “If a Butterfly Flaps its Wings, MeteoTech is behind it.” Ridiculous, he thought. But no matter, they did good work. They helped the planet on a global scale. Helped the fisheries and oceans organizations around the world to no end, helping keep thousands of commercial fishermen safe from unsettled weather patterns around the world’s coastlines that caused horrendous storms, and even more horrendous losses of life.

If Richard really thought about it, which he did sometimes when he was down in the pub and onto his third beer, he was like a superhero in a way. Like Batman. But he certainly didn’t feel like Batman today. He didn’t even feel like Robin. He felt like Alfred. Maybe, at a push. If Alfred had an assistant, that would be more like it.

“Richard!” A voice called to him before he was even twenty yards from the main doors. It was Jonah. Great. Just the person he wanted to see. If he had had his coffee this morning that is. But now, everything, everyone would get on his nerves. But Jonah was his right hand man, the second in command on the team.

“Ready to get going old boy?” Jonah slapped him on the shoulder, and Richard cringed. He hated being called old boy at the best of times, and today was so far from the best of times it was almost nearing the ‘this is the worst day of the year’.

“I’m not old,” was all Richard could manage as a retort. He wasn’t. He was only forty six, last his wife had reminded him. He’d spent a whole two weeks a few months ago thinking he was forty eight, but that might just have been due to the emergence of a new batch of silvery-grey hairs he had found sprouting from his crown.

Jonah laughed. “You’re not having a mid-life crisis now, are you Richie?”

Richie. He hated that almost as much as Old Boy. But it wasn’t as bad as Richie Rich, that people had teased and taunted him by in elementary school. At least here, working for MeteoTech, he wasn’t the only rich person. He was just one of many. Here he didn’t stand out in a way that made him get beat up by the school bully. Except for the fact that he was the lead on the Patch Project. That was the name that everyone was calling it.

“It’s the big day today, Rich,” Jonah was saying as he steered him into the hangar. Richard was glad for the support. He felt like he could barely stand, barely move. Don’t let this get to you man, he chided himself. Don’t freak out, just remember to breathe. Everything will be fine.

He laughed about it now. You had to laugh about it, he reasoned with himself. His words from that morning just sounded so fake, so hollow, so utterly childish. How could he have been so stupid? But of course hindsight is twenty twenty and all that. Whatever that actually means.

It was simple, what he had to do, really. Simple, but so so tough in its simplicity. Like a heart transplant is simple. Yes, you had to connect the aorta and other arteries to their connecting parts. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Just sew it all together and ta da, you have a functioning heart. But it wasn’t that simple. Just like what he was going to do today. It wasn’t simple at all.

And that’s where it all went wrong for him. Right at the beginning. With that single thought. Even though he’d done similar work hundreds of times before. But he got hung up on it all. He got hung up on the fact that he hadn’t had his coffee in his favourite mug, the giant one shaped like a hot air balloon. Or the bottom half at least, the basket, minus the balloons. His co-workers had given it to him as a gag secret santa gift. They assumed it’d be something he’d hide in the cupboard and never use. But he loved it. He usually brought it in with him to the office. But not today. As he walked to his work station he realized that today was the first time he didn’t have his coffee mug with him. The space on his desk seemed strangely empty without it.

~*~

If there was a god, someone sitting up there on a fluffy white cloud in space, he (or she) would see three people. Three normal, ordinary people. Each of them could be one of three things, on the board game of life. Good, Neutral or Evil. Really, isn’t that what all life boils down to? Black and White and Grey? And which one is which? That’s the question. Is the one with the boring job (which one is that? The radio station manager or the law office receptionist?) is that the good person? Or the neutral? Or maybe one is evil? Maybe the radio station man has killed someone? Or maybe the receptionist actually killed her parents, they didn’t just die. Or maybe they are just grey. Neither here nor there. Not good, but not bad, like 99.9% of the people on the planet. Selfish.

Maybe the radio station manager is evil because he cheated on his girlfriend that one time when she was away in sunny Morocco for three months on some dig and all she found was a couple rusted sheets of metal, a few old bones, and some crappy plates.

Maybe the privileged rich man, maybe he’s the good one because he donated a lot of money to charity a few Christmases ago when he was guilted into it by one of those ridiculous people dressed like Santa’s elves outside malls and ringing bells and holding buckets for gullible people’s cash. Does that make him good? Maybe it’s the fact that he’d never run a red light in his life, or that he donates blood once a year, hoping that maybe he can save someone he doesn’t know and will never know him or be able to thank him. Does that make him bad? Because he’s selfish. He does it to look good in the eyes of others. Or is he really truly evil because of an accident. Something he didn’t mean to do. Something anyone could have done, but instead it was him because it was his job, no one elses. Because people were relying on him. And he failed them. He failed everyone. He failed humanity. A simple miscalculation. A mix up of numbers, of elements, of data. Does that qualify as evil?

Where are the lines? Are there lines? Who decides what is good, what is evil? Is it the person lounging in the clouds, looking down on us, spying on us? Is it their judgement that we are seeking? And what happens when we do these so-called good deeds. Are we rewarded? Or maybe our lack of reward is some form of punishment instead.

Richard is wondering what his punishment is for unleashing evil on the world. For opening Pandora's box without thinking, for trapping hope inside without realizing it. Is there any punishment? There’s no one around anymore to punish him for what he did. Is that the punishment itself? No punishment at all except for what he inflicts on himself in his guilt. He wonders this as he turns the knob on his two way radio, scrolling through the channels listening to the static hiss of the universe above him, one he can no longer see since opening the box. The sound of the stars. All that is left of them is their memory, and the silent hiss of their chatter as radio waves.

He presses down on the button, turning the radio on to broadcast mode, turning it into a microphone to transmit his voice. He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again. Who would want to listen to the voice of the devil?

~~~~~~

Need to go back to the beginning, or want to read the next part? check out part 1 and part 9 below!