Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 04:31:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: drake angel <drakeangel1719@yahoo.com>
Subject: Exodus Whiskey : Chapter One - Ground Zero

Exodus Whiskey

This is a fictional story set in the not too distant future. No intended
parallels have been drawn or inferred between characters in this story and
any one living or dead. The story deals with such situations as love
between two young boys, sexual arousal and some sexually explicit content.
Read at your discretion, follow the rules of your country and locality.
Please do send me feedback if you like this story, or if you have any
comments you would like to make. My email id is drakeangel1719@yahoo.com

Chapter One: Ground Zero

For many, different events color the instance that changed so much so
quickly in their lives. The lapse of time and space since that fateful
evening, has clouded my memory considerably. But I still can remember the
smell of ozone. The beach holidays spent building sandcastles on the
Puamana coasts of Maui came to my mind, an image of Mother and Father
smiling to us under the warmth of a glorious yellow sun, and the strong
smell of ozone.

Winter in Reykjav璭 was never much to write home about, and being a
foreigner from warmer climes made the cold, dark winters even more
depressing. This night, the 12th of December, 2020, the skies lit up with
an intensity that would have hidden the sun. I rushed outside, in my
pyjamas and furry flip flops, and as I opened the door, the smell hit me
like a wave. We shielding our eyes from sky, and I felt the warm comfort of
my mother's embrace as she urged us inside.

Later, exchanging messages over our devices, my friends and I shared our
experiences. For us, it was not so much of a cause for alarm as it was a
cause for excitement. Some of them had filmed the experience to share up on
YouTube, but were quite disappointed to see better production values and
camera work from similar minds and hands from around the world.

News channels and forums were abuzz. The whole world was witnessing this
event as many exchanged heated arguments and conspiracy theories. Some said
it was the explosive brightness of a supernova we had yet to discover,
reaching our planet after it's million year travel through space, floating
in limbo, weightless, biding it's time.

Yet others blamed HAARP, and it's less illustrious cousins, and accused
governments and corporations of playing God with Mother Nature.

Yet others knelt down in prayer, and cried for deliverance.

My mind, on the other hand, was fully occupied with the vision that was
聲o Dorste. He appeared at our classroom a week ago to the day, looking
very melancholy.  He sat next to the only empty seat in the classroom, next
to mine, where my good friend Inna had spent countless days, twirling her
flaxen hair in her fingers, as she looked on wide eyed and even more wide
mouthed during our lessons. We were fond of each other, as friends, and
being a girl, she had warmed up to my foreign sort a lot quicker than the
boys in my class. To lose her to Adhbuta, came a shock to her parents, but
not to me. She was after all, so lost in her virtual life that the bridge
to reality was an impasse too great to conquer.

聲o, ofcourse was a sight to behold. As he sat next to me, I thought I
could smell strawberries. Not the synthetic fruit drink, but the real
fruit, an almost earthy sweet smell that dazzled my brain. During lunch
break I offered him my chocolate truffle cake with peaches steeped in
Schnapps for his prawn tempura roll. Crispy batter never tasted so good as
I looked into his almost pearlescent eyes, green with flecks of brown, and
his most delicate smile. We walked back home together, and never said a
word. The only thing I did notice was the way he almost floated as he
walked, almost gliding, gracefully, as his hair tousled in the biting cold,
grey wind.

Once in my room, I took off all my clothes and stood naked, before a full
height mirror screen next to my bathroom. I was fifteen and turning out
nicely. I was still undecided on whether to shed the little bit of baby fat
I had left on me. I thought perhaps that little bit of imperfection maybe
what set me apart from almost every other boy my age. Would 聲o like it?
I pressed a couple of soft keys on the mirror and my back came into view. I
zoomed in on my bum, and the mirror camera centered on it. I accessed some
files from a week ago and compared the images I saw. There was no real
change, except that today, there seemed to be a lot more goose bumps, owing
to how cold it was. I jumped up and down gently a couple of times to see if
my bum would bounce a bit, but sadly it stayed in place. The only
consolation was that my bum was in perfect proportion to my otherwise
skinny frame.

In hindsight, it was perhaps foolish of me to be thinking of things so
mundane on that day. Had I known, I would have spent that evening debating
on the right way to begin a conversation with 聲o, or even taken a bowl
of my special ramen to Inna, who was now convalescing in a care home in
Askja. For relief from the pressures of an imagined life, said the brochure
for the R鏊egur Sl鶇. In reality it was nothing more than room
with no access to the net and absolutely no electronic devices
whatsoever. Guests were encouraged to write down their feelings, and
communiques on paper with a pen or pencil, and to read books, magazines and
newspapers made of paper. It was hell for her, and my visits every other
day cheered her up a bit.

Mother called out for dinner, and as was the custom in our house, the lot
of us, my wispy grandmother, wrapped in more fur and blankets every day, my
cheerful grandfather with his constant borderline jokes, my father and
mother, serious and full of purpose, and my younger brother, Pratyaksh, and
our servants, sat down to a hearty meal. Nothing was ever simple to eat at
our house. Impeccably prepared, presented and consumed, each dish was a
gastronomic delight, bursting with flavor and sensations, and of course,
Umami.

Between the lot of us, we were a family of divergent yet acute sensory
perception. My father's eye sight helped him with his job as a pilot for
Starbringers, the cheerful, omnipresent transportation and hospitality
company that had pioneered quick flight. My mother, a celebrated Youtube
chef catering to the experimental middle class cooking scene, had taken
housepersons of the world by storm, reinventing classic recipes. My
brother, at his 12 years, spent his time between school and his greatest
passion, making strange and yet evocative musical instruments using things
he picked up from his trips camping in the fjords and valleys nearby.

My specialty was my sense of smell. As we ate our dinner of turmeric and
basil infused chicken and flashed crisp rice, I thought of what 聲o
would smell like in his most private of places. I drifted off into my
thoughts, momentarily, but a pleasant reminder of the present came in with
the soft sound of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata playing from speakers
overhead. It happened on the dot at seven in the evening, a legacy from the
previous owner of our home, for whom the song, as related to us, was a
constant reminder of his long departed wife, who was an accomplished
pianist from Poland. We had never been able to figure out how to disable
the system, and in a way, we were all fond of this odd quirk.

Pratyaksh was not in a happy mood that evening. He was always a wistful
boy, prone to sudden bouts of extreme emotions. Some said that he was not
all there, but Father hoped he would improve once he was of age, and began
developing a healthy interest in girls of his age. Mother was never
concerned with his behavior, and mollycoddled him far more than Father
would have liked. Even as we settled into our beds in adjoining rooms,
Pratyaksh quick texted me. "cnu hr strng snds" I tried to listen, but for
the life of me could not hear any strange noises. I got up from bed, and
walked over to his room. His room was completely white, and decorated as
per his own design. Every surface, every piece of furniture, every soft
furnishing was white, much like the insides of a space capsule. He was
wearing what he usually wore when he went off to sleep, a tight pair of
white cotton shorts and white cotton skin fitting tee shirt. Sounds from
outer space played on his speakers.

I sat down on the edge of his bed and he came and sat down on my lap and
rested his head on my chest.

"Can you hear it?"

"I can't, but if you tell me what it sounds like, I can try to hear it", I
said ruffling his hair and gently rocking him. He smelled different today,
singed, almost like bitter caramel.

"It's like a large object groaning under heavy weight, almost like an
animal crying for help."

I tried to listen but the strange smell from him was quite distracting.
Even as I tried to listen, I thought I could smell heavy wood smoke, and
perhaps coal.  I lifted him off of me and made him lay down on the bed,
continuing to ruffle his hair. He did have several episodes of nervous
tension in his life, but this new emotion, which I could not quite place
had me concerned. I tried to listen, I closed my eyes, and concentrated.

聲o's face came before me, and we were in a field, of corn perhaps, like
the beautiful ones we'd seen in the United States. The sun was setting on
us. We were holding hands and laughing, spinning each other around, each
time faster than before. When I woke up, I lay next to Pratyaksh, hugging
him tight. He smelled like ozone, and the smell was so strong that I had to
get off the bed and open the window to let the fresh air in. Outside, the
smell was a lot stronger. And that, was the beginning of the end as we knew
it.