Sins of a New War (Work in Progress)

Sojourn

The vast stretch of star weaved tapestry space seems to move by the windows of the S.C. Jericho, (Star Cruiser), languidly like a stream moving lazily through a forest path. An enormous, steel nuclear submarine, submerged in a vast ocean of stars; cruising at previously unobtainable legerity. Gile peers out the small window he had come to cherish as it his personal portal into the vast frontier of mankind's inconsequential splotch of the universe. He's amazed how slow space moves even though they are wafting through this dark, endless void at millions of miles an hour. This amazing sight that he can only describe as seeing Niagara Falls wild rushing waters collapse into the ancient basin of the Grand Canyon. Lost in the amazement trans-planetary travel, Gile mulls over how prodigious space is. Every day of this mission, from launch to now, Gile has been flabbergasted by how enormous the universe is. To think, a few months ago he was just a young man in midwest America, dreaming to escape the mundane life of being from a small town.

His urge to adventure and see the world halted by funds and lack of work in the area. Since the United States conglomerated with other world powers to form a super governing state, the Union of United Nations Coalition, research in nuclear energy and advances in it due to competition with the super conglomerate formed by the Soviet Union, the World Soviet Confederation, drained jobs from the midwest of the US. Gile's family, a line of coal miners, barely hung on to the needs of occupation by accepting low wage clerk jobs.The family seemed as mice, scavenging and hoarding what little scraps of food they could obtain in the improvised state of living they had come to experience from the low wage and job security the parents processed due to the ebbing work options available in the midwest. Gile and his siblings never went hungry, at least, not long enough to cause serious health problems.

Gile's motor vehicle of a mind came to a grinding halt to not crash deeper into his disheartening thoughts of Ava and what became of her dispiriting, bleak life. He remembered the awful fate his younger sister Ava befell when he was a child. Gile recollected on the past. The dark day that loomed when his younger sister passed. It was a ghastly memory. Every time Ava crosses his mind, her death overcasts his thoughts with dark, looming storm clouds. The memory, manifested in his mind as if he was reliving the tragic tempest.

Giles father and mother had returned home from a long day of working at the town's two supermarkets, Weeplock Market and Pleasant Mart. Most days, they would come home and argue about how the competition from both stores cause a large expectation of the employees. From what Gile remembered, the owners of the stores contrived that working for them was a privilege. That his employees should be thankful that they have any income at all. It was true, Gile's parents did conform to their superiors ideas. They were mere serfs working under the will of a lord. His family couldn't afford to move to the city for better jobs and neither of them had the training or education for higher employment. Farming was also out of the question because the government had taken control of all agricultural acreages. They were stuck with minimum wage torture in a dying, old, mining town.

Gile's father walked into the kitchen. He put down his keys and work nameplate reading Heath onto the rubbery wooden countertop. Slowly, he shuffled into the living room and collected the mail that Gile's younger brother Damien brought in after he returned from school. Gile and Damien sat on the floor with their school supplies sprawled out around them doing their homework. The brothers were only a year apart so Gile was an excellent help for Damien. Heath looked over at his boys and smiled. He began to tear through the stack of envelopes. Bills as usual. At the end of the endless late utility payment statements and overdue rent memos, a letter from the hospital where Ava had been admitted to. Heath shivered as he opened the note. Tears filled his bright bluish green eyes as he read the letter to himself:

Mr and Mrs Quinn,

We regretfully have the disprivileged of notifying you that your insurance has dropped your family and that we will no longer be caring for your daughter, one Ava Quinn, in in-patient care. Please come to Weeplock Medical Hospital to discuss your bill and future of your daughter's care.