Morning all. Sometimes a three day weekend is exactly what you need to recharge the batteries. I didn’t get as much out door work around the house done as expected because of the off and on rain, but the inside chores were complete and more importantly I got a little bit of a rest. I hope you did too. Now I am ready to jump back into this short week and get going. Ready to join me? Good then let’s begon.
Interesting. Not my favorite writing from a prompt, but interesting. And my brain feels more awake, which was sort of the point.
Tuesday, September 6th: You never know what to expect.
You never know what to expect. John heard the words rattle around his brain in a loop as though they had been spoken yesterday. It had been years since he was first told them by his first trainer. He was certain the words had been percolating through his world before then. It was just a phrase repeated so often by his trainer during his time there that it was hard now to even hear them in someone else’s voice.
As he gazed out through the view screen, he realized that the line had become one of the truisms of his life. He was trained for special ops and expected to spend his life in and out of war zones. Indeed, he had spent a good portion of his career in war zones. His instructor’s words were as true then as they were now.
However the world changed. It was ripped apart, a seam now running through their reality. It made life interesting in many ways no one expected when he was going through his training. While many sections of the planet were no uninhabitable from the changes the seam wrought on their world, it also provide and escape. Through the seam were pathways that lead to other worlds.
Transport though the seam was dangerous on the small shuttle like craft devised for the missions and their teams were small. Scouts were needed and John and those like them were pulled from the traditional battle fields and sent into the seam to scout. John knew his instructor died the year before the seam ripped open the world and would never have even dreamed of the places John had seen in the fifteen years he had been riding the shuttle scouts, but the training remained the same.
You never know what to expect.
John shifted as the sound around his shuttle shifted minutely. It indicated he was soon to reach his destination. He shifted, tightening and then relaxing various muscles to ready them for movement. Sometimes the landing would be easy and he could leave the shuttle at his leisure. Other times instant action was called for. He knew he needed to be ready.
He had long since stopped wondering what he would find when he landed. On none of his landings had he ever met anything that he would have expected. Almost everything was beyond both his dreams and night mares. ‘Of course those have gotten stranger as well,’ he thought.
John shoved the thought aside as the sounds outside shifted in timber, he could practically feel the shuttle losing speed on its approach. This would be his last trip out. He lasted longer than any other scout sent and his reward now that age was catching up with him was a semi-retirement training other scouts. The new assignment had been half apology, half reward. He put in for his retirement but it was refused because his skills were deemed too valuable. In compensation, he had a substantial pay raise and cushier new digs once he completed this final mission and made it back home.
Ten til Midnight 