Entry 1: The Vacuum of Time
Title: The Vacuum of Time
Entry Number: 01
Author: rsn_studios
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: PG-13 (some depictions of past violence)
Genre: science fiction
Spoiler Warnings:
Word Count: 2467
The Vacuum of Time
By John Thomas Hill
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Satayana
“The Life Of Reason”
Dr. Jason Bond remembered when the downtown of Forest City was really like this...sort of. Having been pulled five hundred years into the future from the year 2011 to the year 2511, he lived in Rutherford City, which had long since spread well beyond the old Tri-Cities of western North Carolina. Most of what had been the small trifecta of small rural towns named Forest City, Spindale and Rutherfordton had been destroyed because of the Second American War/World War III that took place from 2017 to 2019, which (thankfully) Jason had missed, having been snatched up six years before.
It had been a century since Jason had been grabbed, but Jason was as young as he had ever been thanks to the gerontological treatment that had been discovered at the turn of the twenty-second century. Now, people living into triple digits wasn't uncommon, it was commonplace. Jason had observed in his century of living in this new time that people valued life even more than they had back in his old days, when walking in downtown Forest City wouldn't require you to raise your head much to see the tops of the town's skyline.
“You remember when this was real?” Portina de Soto pointed out to him. She was a thin, sleek Brazilian ex-pat who had emigrated from Aztlan (which composed all of post-war South America) to the Republic of Carolina (born in the aftermath of the last war and consisting of all of North America, Central America and the Caribbean), with long, flowing black hair and the grace of a former ballerina, which she had studied in her younger days. It was a bit of a contrast to Jason's stocky, muscular build, though they had jet black hair in common.
“Indeed! I remember when this...this was actually real!” Jason replied as he looked around the historical recreation of the downtown area. It wasn't exactly as it was when the world went to hell when President of the United States was shot and killed in the downtown area on that fateful Fourth of July in 2017, but Jason didn't mind. Western Auto didn't sell spark plugs anymore, but did great business selling memorabilia from a time when automobiles ran down these streets and most of the local men were handymen.
Jason was of Scot-Irish descent, with a dash of Cherokee, but he sometimes got confused with being Hispanic or even Arab because of the fact that he was just a bit darker than most Caucasians in his time. Even now, there was some debate among those who followed his literary, academic, political and business careers as to what his ancestry actually was. It struck him as funny, considering that most people these days were essentially human mutts, and most people not thinking much of ethnicity anyway. How could you when humans were spreading throughout the galaxy like spores from a dandelion? Mars, Venus, and the moon (known as Luna these days) had been transformed into livable planets centuries ago, and that was just in the inner system. Far more humans lived off Earth these days than on it, and that would continue to be that way forever more, thanks to the treatment.
They had come back from a meeting at the South Broadway Theater, which stood on the site where Florence Baptist Church had once stood, and decided instead of taking the subway back to Jason's flat on Maple Street in Rutherfordton, they would walk some of the way back. It was a beautiful spring mid-morning in year 2631, and the streets of downtown Forest City were somewhat packed with tourists, as it was Holy Week in the Christian religion, and while religious holidays were not mandated by the government officially, the concept of a “spring break” meant that folks usually took that week off as an early vacation.
“Was it like this when you lived in your old time?” Portina said after shaking hands with a former member of her cabinet when she served as President of the Republic of Carolina. She was in office when Jason showed up in this time, and they had grown close in the century plus since his arrival.
“No, it was never this crowded save for the occasional festival that shut down the streets here, and that usually happened only a half dozen times a year.” Jason replied as they stepped inside the recreation of Ron and Eddy's, which had been a place where his mother had frequented in her teenage years before the era of fast food restaurants. It had been closed for many years, only opening twice more under new names. The 1950s decor looked familiar to Jason, but to everyone else, it was if it had come straight from the Dark Ages.
When he said as much to his wife, Portina replied, “In a way, those days were rather dark, don't you think?”
Jason sighed and thought of the various discussions he had had over the years about the years just before the war happened. Before he could answer, the waitress came by and greeted them, handing them their menus. It struck Jason as funny that the theme of the restaurant contrasted sharply to him with the fact that their server was a black woman, which, if this had been the 1950s, would have been unthinkable in an era where segregation ruled these parts. That thought made him consider his reply before he gave it, but, after a moment or two, he replied, “Maybe...I used to not think as much...”
Portina looked like she had a bulb light up in her head, indicating that she realized what Jason might have meant by this. “Ah, it struck you as odd that a woman of African descent would be in a place from an era where she would have been most unwelcome in an establishment like this!”
Jason nodded, saying, “My mom lived through that time as a teenager, and there were those who lived through that era who considered it the 'good old days'.”
“Well, of course! Back then, being white meant you were viewed as automatically superior to those who weren't!” Portina said matter of factly as she scanned her old-school style menu. Her skin was just a tad darker than Jason's, and she would have been technically white in the Brazil of Jason's old time, but in 1950s rural western North Carolina, she would have not been considered Caucasian, and would have been barred from a place like this. “It's sad it ever was like that!”
“The war changed a lot of that.” Jason mused, then paused as the waitress came by to take their orders. After Jason ordered meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, Portina ordered a cheeseburger with fries, then Jason continued as the waitress went after their drinks. “People didn't think we could wipe ourselves out back in my time, even with all the nuclear missiles we had back then. They held on to all the old hatreds until it finally exploded and nearly wiped us out!”
“So what do you think when you walk down through this area?” she asked her husband as the waitress arrived with their drinks. Jason had a tall glass of iced tea with lemon before him, while Portina had a cola in a similar sized tumbler.
Jason paused again, and then said, “I think of a vacuum.”
“A vacuum?” Portina replied, “Why?”
“Look around us, outside of the downtown area! It's all modern day skyscrapers and whatnot! Even the historical buildings on campuses like Spindale State, Forest City University, Tri City University, as well as the government buildings are young compared to the buildings that used to be here!” Jason replied, then added, “But we all know that this is a replication and not the real thing!”
“I remember in history class in college they showed pictures of this area shortly after the war ended.” Portina said soberly. “None of the buildings survived the last battle, and the cleanup of the bodies and the debris took a solid year after that!”
Jason nodded, “It wasn't until settlers started coming in to help with the recovery that any construction started here. Many of the locals who had survived the war here, and there weren't many of them, were just trying to just survive in their ramshackle dwellings.”
“I remember that all too well from Dr. Amberzak's history class!” Portina smiled, remembering her history professor, who could get rather animated when discussing history. He still taught in college, but he had moved on to the University of Venus at Isis City.
They talked about the history of the town after the war, as those who had managed to survive the war were drawn to this area. No one was exactly sure why that was, but in the decade after the war ended, Forest City, Spindale and Rutherfordton grew rapidly as once larger cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville, Greenville, Spartanburg, and such withered until they eventually grew again, but only after the Tri-Cities had started spreading out all over. Soon, their lunches came and they ate heartily, relishing the delicious food that the new Ron and Eddy's served these days. Jason couldn't remember how good it had been in his time, because while it had been an institution in his time, his family hadn't gone there as much as he grew up, and he wasn't sure why that was.
As they departed, they turned left and walked down the street, past McBrayer's and Dalton Ward, before turning onto Mill Street. They were headed to the Florence-Haynes Mill, which had once been a textile mill, but was now a museum to the war and the post-war aftermath. It was here that the famous Depot Street Meetings took place, which started the slow rise of a new government in what was once the United States of America, and which eventually became the Republic of Carolina.
Jason's mother hadn't worked in that mill, but both of his aunt as well as his maternal grandparents had worked in a dry cleaners on Depot Street many years before the war, or before he was even born, for that matter. The cleaners were there, and did specialized cleaning of garments as well as alterations these days. The Blanton Hotel had been a decaying building in Jason's old time, but now looked the same but served as a luxury bed and breakfast for tourists who wanted to see what it had been like before the war in this town.
As they passed those buildings, Jason couldn't help to see the skyscrapers off in the near distance above the old skyline. The clock that was on the corner of the old bank building at the intersection of Main Street and Cherry Mountain was almost an exact replica of the original, and as they turned left and walked past the Music City Records club (it had been a music store in Jason's time, but was a popular concert venue nowadays), Jason almost could mentally go back to a time where he rode his bike up and down this street.
But then he saw the Cathedral of the Fallen and any nostalgia vanished, as he knew what had been there before, and he said to Portina, pointing to the crystalline building, “That shatters the myth of this downtown area, though.”
“Yes, I know.” Portina replied. It had been on the lawn of First Baptist Church of Forest City where President Reverend William Morrison was delivering a speech that essentially declared America would become a Christian theocracy, only to be shot in the chest, then head, as soon the downtown area became filled with tanks and armored personnel carriers allied with what became known as the Secularists. Minutes later, forces loyal to Morrison that had been waiting for such a move came to confront them, and the soon-to-be-called Fundamentalists clashed in the streets of Forest City, and the spectators did their best to escape the chaos that engulfed the downtown area.
As they walked to the Cathedral, Portina asked, “Why do you think they built this downtown like it had been, instead of doing to the rest of this area and start anew?”
“'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it', Satayana once said, though it's often misquoted. We need reminders of that unpleasant time, even if they are couched in pleasant surroundings.” Jason noted. The Cathedral was one of the centers of the post-war religious movement called Essentialism, which took the best of each of the world's religions, past and of that time, and “distilled” them into a faith that those who promoted it claimed to be the “true spirit of God”. It had taken off in the decades after the war as the old religions went though their difficult journeys to become relevant again.
“So do you think this place will stay like this forever?” Portina mused as they headed towards the subway station at the intersection of West Main and Church Street. The day was starting to get warm, and cart vendors were out selling food and drink, including fresh squeezed lemonade which was too much of a temptation for those two to resist. After finishing off their drinks, they returned the cups to the vendor's aide, who put them through a washer to clean and sanitize them for the next customer.
Soon they were underground, waiting for their subway on the platform. Being two of the most famous people in the country (and, in Jason's case, the known universe), they took the stares from those who were waiting with them in stride. “Never imagined something like this in my old time!” Jason said to his wife.
“You say that an awful lot!” she said as she chuckled at her husband.
“Well, it's true! Imagine if my mom were here as well...or one of my aunts or sisters! How would you explain to them something like this?” Jason said as he smiled, enjoying the conversation.
Portina smiled back. “The same way we explained it to you, back a century ago!”
They laughed and got on the subway, which soon took them to their stop at the intersection of South Ridgecrest and Maple Street in Rutherfordton. For Jason, it was yet another case of the past clashing with the present, and he had long since gotten used to those moments. To him it still felt like a futuristic world, even though it had been home to him three times longer than he had lived in his old time, but to him it still felt like living in the future, and he doubted that feeling would go away anytime soon.
Entry Number: 01
Author: rsn_studios
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: PG-13 (some depictions of past violence)
Genre: science fiction
Spoiler Warnings:
Word Count: 2467
The Vacuum of Time
By John Thomas Hill
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Satayana
“The Life Of Reason”
Dr. Jason Bond remembered when the downtown of Forest City was really like this...sort of. Having been pulled five hundred years into the future from the year 2011 to the year 2511, he lived in Rutherford City, which had long since spread well beyond the old Tri-Cities of western North Carolina. Most of what had been the small trifecta of small rural towns named Forest City, Spindale and Rutherfordton had been destroyed because of the Second American War/World War III that took place from 2017 to 2019, which (thankfully) Jason had missed, having been snatched up six years before.
It had been a century since Jason had been grabbed, but Jason was as young as he had ever been thanks to the gerontological treatment that had been discovered at the turn of the twenty-second century. Now, people living into triple digits wasn't uncommon, it was commonplace. Jason had observed in his century of living in this new time that people valued life even more than they had back in his old days, when walking in downtown Forest City wouldn't require you to raise your head much to see the tops of the town's skyline.
“You remember when this was real?” Portina de Soto pointed out to him. She was a thin, sleek Brazilian ex-pat who had emigrated from Aztlan (which composed all of post-war South America) to the Republic of Carolina (born in the aftermath of the last war and consisting of all of North America, Central America and the Caribbean), with long, flowing black hair and the grace of a former ballerina, which she had studied in her younger days. It was a bit of a contrast to Jason's stocky, muscular build, though they had jet black hair in common.
“Indeed! I remember when this...this was actually real!” Jason replied as he looked around the historical recreation of the downtown area. It wasn't exactly as it was when the world went to hell when President of the United States was shot and killed in the downtown area on that fateful Fourth of July in 2017, but Jason didn't mind. Western Auto didn't sell spark plugs anymore, but did great business selling memorabilia from a time when automobiles ran down these streets and most of the local men were handymen.
Jason was of Scot-Irish descent, with a dash of Cherokee, but he sometimes got confused with being Hispanic or even Arab because of the fact that he was just a bit darker than most Caucasians in his time. Even now, there was some debate among those who followed his literary, academic, political and business careers as to what his ancestry actually was. It struck him as funny, considering that most people these days were essentially human mutts, and most people not thinking much of ethnicity anyway. How could you when humans were spreading throughout the galaxy like spores from a dandelion? Mars, Venus, and the moon (known as Luna these days) had been transformed into livable planets centuries ago, and that was just in the inner system. Far more humans lived off Earth these days than on it, and that would continue to be that way forever more, thanks to the treatment.
They had come back from a meeting at the South Broadway Theater, which stood on the site where Florence Baptist Church had once stood, and decided instead of taking the subway back to Jason's flat on Maple Street in Rutherfordton, they would walk some of the way back. It was a beautiful spring mid-morning in year 2631, and the streets of downtown Forest City were somewhat packed with tourists, as it was Holy Week in the Christian religion, and while religious holidays were not mandated by the government officially, the concept of a “spring break” meant that folks usually took that week off as an early vacation.
“Was it like this when you lived in your old time?” Portina said after shaking hands with a former member of her cabinet when she served as President of the Republic of Carolina. She was in office when Jason showed up in this time, and they had grown close in the century plus since his arrival.
“No, it was never this crowded save for the occasional festival that shut down the streets here, and that usually happened only a half dozen times a year.” Jason replied as they stepped inside the recreation of Ron and Eddy's, which had been a place where his mother had frequented in her teenage years before the era of fast food restaurants. It had been closed for many years, only opening twice more under new names. The 1950s decor looked familiar to Jason, but to everyone else, it was if it had come straight from the Dark Ages.
When he said as much to his wife, Portina replied, “In a way, those days were rather dark, don't you think?”
Jason sighed and thought of the various discussions he had had over the years about the years just before the war happened. Before he could answer, the waitress came by and greeted them, handing them their menus. It struck Jason as funny that the theme of the restaurant contrasted sharply to him with the fact that their server was a black woman, which, if this had been the 1950s, would have been unthinkable in an era where segregation ruled these parts. That thought made him consider his reply before he gave it, but, after a moment or two, he replied, “Maybe...I used to not think as much...”
Portina looked like she had a bulb light up in her head, indicating that she realized what Jason might have meant by this. “Ah, it struck you as odd that a woman of African descent would be in a place from an era where she would have been most unwelcome in an establishment like this!”
Jason nodded, saying, “My mom lived through that time as a teenager, and there were those who lived through that era who considered it the 'good old days'.”
“Well, of course! Back then, being white meant you were viewed as automatically superior to those who weren't!” Portina said matter of factly as she scanned her old-school style menu. Her skin was just a tad darker than Jason's, and she would have been technically white in the Brazil of Jason's old time, but in 1950s rural western North Carolina, she would have not been considered Caucasian, and would have been barred from a place like this. “It's sad it ever was like that!”
“The war changed a lot of that.” Jason mused, then paused as the waitress came by to take their orders. After Jason ordered meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, Portina ordered a cheeseburger with fries, then Jason continued as the waitress went after their drinks. “People didn't think we could wipe ourselves out back in my time, even with all the nuclear missiles we had back then. They held on to all the old hatreds until it finally exploded and nearly wiped us out!”
“So what do you think when you walk down through this area?” she asked her husband as the waitress arrived with their drinks. Jason had a tall glass of iced tea with lemon before him, while Portina had a cola in a similar sized tumbler.
Jason paused again, and then said, “I think of a vacuum.”
“A vacuum?” Portina replied, “Why?”
“Look around us, outside of the downtown area! It's all modern day skyscrapers and whatnot! Even the historical buildings on campuses like Spindale State, Forest City University, Tri City University, as well as the government buildings are young compared to the buildings that used to be here!” Jason replied, then added, “But we all know that this is a replication and not the real thing!”
“I remember in history class in college they showed pictures of this area shortly after the war ended.” Portina said soberly. “None of the buildings survived the last battle, and the cleanup of the bodies and the debris took a solid year after that!”
Jason nodded, “It wasn't until settlers started coming in to help with the recovery that any construction started here. Many of the locals who had survived the war here, and there weren't many of them, were just trying to just survive in their ramshackle dwellings.”
“I remember that all too well from Dr. Amberzak's history class!” Portina smiled, remembering her history professor, who could get rather animated when discussing history. He still taught in college, but he had moved on to the University of Venus at Isis City.
They talked about the history of the town after the war, as those who had managed to survive the war were drawn to this area. No one was exactly sure why that was, but in the decade after the war ended, Forest City, Spindale and Rutherfordton grew rapidly as once larger cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville, Greenville, Spartanburg, and such withered until they eventually grew again, but only after the Tri-Cities had started spreading out all over. Soon, their lunches came and they ate heartily, relishing the delicious food that the new Ron and Eddy's served these days. Jason couldn't remember how good it had been in his time, because while it had been an institution in his time, his family hadn't gone there as much as he grew up, and he wasn't sure why that was.
As they departed, they turned left and walked down the street, past McBrayer's and Dalton Ward, before turning onto Mill Street. They were headed to the Florence-Haynes Mill, which had once been a textile mill, but was now a museum to the war and the post-war aftermath. It was here that the famous Depot Street Meetings took place, which started the slow rise of a new government in what was once the United States of America, and which eventually became the Republic of Carolina.
Jason's mother hadn't worked in that mill, but both of his aunt as well as his maternal grandparents had worked in a dry cleaners on Depot Street many years before the war, or before he was even born, for that matter. The cleaners were there, and did specialized cleaning of garments as well as alterations these days. The Blanton Hotel had been a decaying building in Jason's old time, but now looked the same but served as a luxury bed and breakfast for tourists who wanted to see what it had been like before the war in this town.
As they passed those buildings, Jason couldn't help to see the skyscrapers off in the near distance above the old skyline. The clock that was on the corner of the old bank building at the intersection of Main Street and Cherry Mountain was almost an exact replica of the original, and as they turned left and walked past the Music City Records club (it had been a music store in Jason's time, but was a popular concert venue nowadays), Jason almost could mentally go back to a time where he rode his bike up and down this street.
But then he saw the Cathedral of the Fallen and any nostalgia vanished, as he knew what had been there before, and he said to Portina, pointing to the crystalline building, “That shatters the myth of this downtown area, though.”
“Yes, I know.” Portina replied. It had been on the lawn of First Baptist Church of Forest City where President Reverend William Morrison was delivering a speech that essentially declared America would become a Christian theocracy, only to be shot in the chest, then head, as soon the downtown area became filled with tanks and armored personnel carriers allied with what became known as the Secularists. Minutes later, forces loyal to Morrison that had been waiting for such a move came to confront them, and the soon-to-be-called Fundamentalists clashed in the streets of Forest City, and the spectators did their best to escape the chaos that engulfed the downtown area.
As they walked to the Cathedral, Portina asked, “Why do you think they built this downtown like it had been, instead of doing to the rest of this area and start anew?”
“'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it', Satayana once said, though it's often misquoted. We need reminders of that unpleasant time, even if they are couched in pleasant surroundings.” Jason noted. The Cathedral was one of the centers of the post-war religious movement called Essentialism, which took the best of each of the world's religions, past and of that time, and “distilled” them into a faith that those who promoted it claimed to be the “true spirit of God”. It had taken off in the decades after the war as the old religions went though their difficult journeys to become relevant again.
“So do you think this place will stay like this forever?” Portina mused as they headed towards the subway station at the intersection of West Main and Church Street. The day was starting to get warm, and cart vendors were out selling food and drink, including fresh squeezed lemonade which was too much of a temptation for those two to resist. After finishing off their drinks, they returned the cups to the vendor's aide, who put them through a washer to clean and sanitize them for the next customer.
Soon they were underground, waiting for their subway on the platform. Being two of the most famous people in the country (and, in Jason's case, the known universe), they took the stares from those who were waiting with them in stride. “Never imagined something like this in my old time!” Jason said to his wife.
“You say that an awful lot!” she said as she chuckled at her husband.
“Well, it's true! Imagine if my mom were here as well...or one of my aunts or sisters! How would you explain to them something like this?” Jason said as he smiled, enjoying the conversation.
Portina smiled back. “The same way we explained it to you, back a century ago!”
They laughed and got on the subway, which soon took them to their stop at the intersection of South Ridgecrest and Maple Street in Rutherfordton. For Jason, it was yet another case of the past clashing with the present, and he had long since gotten used to those moments. To him it still felt like a futuristic world, even though it had been home to him three times longer than he had lived in his old time, but to him it still felt like living in the future, and he doubted that feeling would go away anytime soon.