Drachen Fire Pt. 3

“Oh, shut up, it’s so obvious even you don’t believe that garbage you’re saying…” Rocco was angry. “You’ve been trying to get us to go out there for some reason, and you want to appeal to me. Is this what it is? Being a Scavenger Lord, you think it’s about bending to others, being selfless…? I wasn’t lying when I said there’s a fire inside you, but if you’re not willing to share it with anyone, nobody of value will ever take you seriously. So what is it? What is out there that you want to see so badly?"

“...”

“Alright, well if you don’t want to share, just shut it and go to sleep already. We have a long way down…”

“...My father once told me about this magical thing. He told me that on some days he would have to wake up early and on other days he could sleep in and leave it to the evening. Either way, it was something that would cloud his mind for the rest of the day. He would get in his car and drive. The drive for him was about an hour out. Sometimes two depending on the situation. If you were lucky, the drive would be even shorter. When you got there, you’d talk to a guy and he would give you this piece of paper. It was usually one per person. Heh, and then with this piece of paper… you’d um, shit, was it popcorn first? No, no, it didn’t matter. You’d talk to another guy who would look at this piece of paper and he’d let you in somewhere. Then once you got to where you needed to be, you’d take a seat. And, it would be like a car seat. That’s what my dad said. It was like a car seat but there was no steering wheel. Instead, in front of you was the surface. You’d put on a seatbelt of sorts. Sometimes you’d have to reach up and put your head through a hole to fasten it. Then, when it was all said and done, you’d move. You’d move like if you were in a car but it would go a lot faster and it would reach into the skies and plummet into the ground all the same. They were called roller coasters…”

“... I’ve ridden my fair share of them. I don’t think you needed a paper though.”

“Ah, is that so… I must have been confused. What was it like…? The roller coasters, I mean.”

Rocco walked over to a neighboring bunk and sat down. “Hoo, buddy… The feeling of walking up to a roller coaster, God, there ain’t nothing more terrifying. If it were up to me, I’d have never ridden a single damn one, but my wife, Clarine, was an adrenaline junkie. We’d look at the towering rails from a distance, our tiny selves on the ground. She’d grab my hands and say ‘This is the last one, I promise.’ We’d end up riding her favorite ones over and over again to the point where we’d lose count. You get on the seat and the anxiety starts to go away. You think, ‘Hey, maybe, this isn’t so bad after all.’ Then the thing starts up and just as you get comfortable, they all do that thing where they make you go upwards suuuuper slowly, and that anxiety starts to come back. You think, “This is the worst time of my life, I don’t want to be here. This was a mistake.” Some people, like me, start panicking. Others, like my wife, thrive in that chaos… But then you get to the drop-”

“Yeah, what’s it like?!”

“I’m gettin’ there, kiddo… The drop is one of the greatest feelings a man can experience. Every single thing you have ever felt up to this point melts away for thirty seconds. It’s an emotion that can only be described as our soul raging against the world. They call it adrenaline. We’re not supposed to feel it like that. It naturally comes when you want to live but your circumstances are beyond you. They invented roller coasters because people got so darn comfortable, they’d never be in a situation where they felt threatened. I ain’t the biggest roller coaster fan. But even I can appreciate the good parts of life, especially the ones that old Clarine loved.”

Despite my blank state of mind, it appears that my face couldn’t help but smile. “While falling earlier, when the big guy dropped me, I wondered if what I felt when falling, is what it feels like to be on a roller coaster…”

“...Yeah, kid, it all just melts away…” A part of me couldn’t help but notice how happy Rocco was just being able to reminisce about all this. Though, most of my mind was caught up in something else. Everything in life just melting away…

All that came to mind were the corpses they’d show us in school. The poor bastards who didn’t make it underground in time. I’m sorry that your lives were cut short by this universe’s foolishness. But maybe, to them, things weren’t so bad. I wonder, how many of those corpses got to ride a roller coaster?

My body sat up and Rocco immediately rushed to my aid. He tried laying me back down but I made him help me stand. His arm reached over my shoulder while the other supported my almost severed leg.

“What’s the big idea, kid?!”

“I told ya, already. We’re meeting the Ylvonian crew.”

“Damn it, why?!”

“... An elevator and rendezvous crew like theirs surely has a talented doctor and the necessities on board. They could fix my leg.”

I could tell that Rocco was conflicted. “I know losing your leg is hard but going out there and walking a mile like this would at least take an hour and who’s to say we even survive the trip there…? This freaking dweller is still here!”

That surface dweller was peculiar. Why was it so angry when we first came up? What made it calm down? Why’s it waiting for us to do something? Honestly, Rocco was right, I had no idea what the answer to any of those was.

“We’ll try and walk past it…”

Rocco scoffed.

“I’m serious. I have a feeling it’ll be okay.”

He shook his head and laid me back down even though I did my best to try and fight back. “I don’t understand you, kid. This ain’t like you. We gotta go back down.”

Not like me? Well, I guess he’s right… This isn’t anything like me. A few hours ago, if this same thing happened, I’d have told you to take me back down immediately. What changed? I know I want to give up being a Scavenger Lord. That life just isn’t for me… Oh.

“What the hell are ya doin’, kid?!” Rocco picked me up as I threw myself off the bunk.

My hands strained into tight fists. “We’re going to meet them. We’re getting my leg back.”

“No… we’re not. You’re confused and it’s making you do stupid things. Just wait, this will all be over soon.”

“... I don’t want to be a Scavenger Lord.”

Rocco stopped, “What?”

“I said, I don’t want to be a Scavenger Lord. That’s my father. He can be the most respected Scavenger Lord. That’s good for him, but it’s not what I want. Not anymore.” I began to limp and Rocco followed my pace as we began walking towards the elevator doors.

“What do you want to do?” he asked sincerely.

That’s a good question. It feels as if I’ve been avoiding it all my life for many reasons. Not a lot has changed. I still hate the world and myself. My vision is so clouded, that it’s impossible for me to just unsubscribe from those ideas, but my mind began to see something else. A new path.

“I want to build a roller coaster. I want to ride a roller coaster… And it’s going to be on the surface. I want to ride a roller coaster on the surface.”

“This is your purpose?” Rocco was taken aback.

I exhaled with conviction. “No, I want to build more. There’s going to be a lot of them. I’m going to build the first ever new-age theme park.”

The year is 2062. Earth currently has a population of 3.2 billion people. In the legends of the old world, there existed countless ways of life. The way my father told it to me, everyone was always happy and there didn’t seem to be a care in the world. Maybe Y2K was karma for the centuries of happiness humanity has experienced up to that point. I convinced myself for the longest time that it was impossible to be happy now, and if it was, it didn’t mean anything. I’m still not sure if these feelings inside me will take me somewhere meaningful but I want to give it a try. I want to find out who I am, what I am, and where this fire inside my soul will burn.

“What are you going to do about the surface-dweller?” Rocco asked.

I grinned, “My body is surface-resistant. Let’s see if I’m a dweller-whisperer as well…”