Jackson Smith

“This world has been judged deficient and will cease to exist in 365 days to make way for a new iteration.”

It was a message broadcast across all radio, television and satellite signals from an object no larger than a basketball hovering in lower orbit not far off the coast of Ecuador. Government agencies across the globe made every attempt at communication with the object, and when there was no further response they chose to treat it as a hostile threat.

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Music had been Jackson Smith’s entire life since he was seven years old. He had been heading to the park with a friend when a sound unlike anything he'd ever heard came from a small radio on a bench. An elderly man was listening to it with his eyes close and the smile of contentment on his man's face was something Jackson had never seen before that day.

“What's this?” He asked, young honeyed brown eyes sparkling with wonder.

“This? It’s Carl Nielsen, dear boy!” The man gestured wildly for Jackson to come closer, and eager to understand that smile he obliged. “You hear that confidence right at the beginning? Makes you feel like he's outstretching a hand asking to take you on some kinda fantastical journey. And now right here…a clash between the soloist and the orchestra.”

“It sounds like... they’re fighting?”

“Exactly! They fight, yes. But do you hear how in the midst of all that there is a harmony?”

Ever since then he had been hooked, chasing that magic he discovered for the past eleven years. Why should the end of the world change that?

For the first 24 hours he did nothing but plan.

“Please Jackson,” his mother begged in between heavy sobs and even heavier gulps of wine. “You can’t go! You’ll die out there!”

“Let him die if he thinks he’s so smart.” His father had always chosen to mask his fear with anger.

After the bombing runs started they both had become to preoccupied with their own anxieties and vices to notice that he’d finished packing.

He didn’t see a point in explaining his reasoning to them either, they would never understand. They had never been the most supportive; his mother had woken up early to drive him to his one on one tutoring lessons when he was a kid but once he was twelve he started taking the bus, and his father had always brought home new music for Jackson to practice but only to impress at an upcoming business dinner. They did not understand this beast that raged inside him, the need he felt to create and how the announcement had caused that beast inside to tear free of all shackles keeping it in place.

For the last two years he had struggled with a composition he had been hoping to use as a springboard into further education but had thus far completely eluded him. It needled in his brain a lilting, haunting melody he could hear yet never seem to capture, like trying to capture water with a sieve. Nearly seven hundred and thirty days of feeling like he were banging his head against a wall to the point where he had even decided to join in on some inane summer event his classmates were planning in hopes it might somehow inspire him.

But now inspiration flared like a raging inferno. And he needed to stand within it to complete the only thing that mattered.

He would finally capture that damned melody.

Jackson and several of his classmates had rented a private ski resort not too far from the city with every intention of spending most of their summer there. The invite had likely just been out of obligation, he only really knew two of the six others that were planning to go; Stevie and David had been friends with Jackson since they had been kids, but lately he didn't really know them much at all. He wondered how they would feel that he had chosen it as his final resting place.

“It might have been nice to spend more time with them.” Was the first thing that came to mind as he thought of them, but the same distance that had existed between him and his parents had also been there between himself and his classmates.

The resort would have enough food and water to last him at least nine months, he had no intention of things taking that long and so it would be more than enough, he would take only the true essentials. Half a dozen inhaler refills, two boxes of pencil lead and a few mechanical pencils, and three boxes of clarinet reeds; his most precious resource and he double wrapped them in a fleece blanket for added protection.

“That should be enough.”

Jackson had done the math. If he chose seven reeds playing one for every day of the week, with a replacement handy at all times, he would have more than enough until he had finished composing.

He hoped.

It was thankfully not too difficult a drive, though the traffic was enough that he cursed himself for not leaving sooner. The radio played nothing but the announcement and pundits theorizing and asking people not to panic with all the conviction of a lamb staring down a wolfs maw. Jackson flipped over to the CD player and the soothing sounds of classical music began to play through the speakers. The clarinet concerto that had set him on this path to begin with, chasing the dream that he might capture even the tiniest bit of that sensation.

He knew it a foolhardy endeavor, deep down in the dark pit where he stored the darker more shameful thoughts that crossed his mind. To ever hope to capture something of that level, but the more he doubted the more another part of him strove harder and with a zealous passion to prove himself, and everyone else who has doubted him, wrong.

The drive itself would have normally taken five hours but with end of the world traffic it took almost three times as long. Once he was nearly there he had decided to move on foot would be faster and simply left the car on the side of the road. He had no intention of making a return trip, he cared little about what happened to the rundown junker he’d got as a graduation gift. But as his mind recalled the happy tears his parents shed giving him the keys he made sure to stop them safely in his pocket before getting out with his pack.

Chuckling to himself Jackson couldn’t help but find humor in the fact he normally hated hiking, and if this had been the actual vacation he would be mentally groaning with each step. Yet now every movement and step felt somehow more purposeful. He wondered if his feet would be the last to walk these hills.

Exhaustion had yet to creep in, though he could not be sure how much of that was true or just the adrenaline and caffeine talking. But after fifteen hours of driving, and almost four hours of hiking, even if he could not feel it his body began to show signs of imminent collapse. His legs shook from the slow but steady buildup of lactic acid, his stomach constricting in protest from having only been fed energy drink and nearly expired beef jerky. It was inevitable he would make a mistake.

That was likely why he didn’t even notice the moss on the rock until after his foot slipped from it.

Jackson did not even remember the fall, there was only darkness after he slipped. All he remembered was the sickening crunch sound, and the pleading thought he kept having hoping it was merely the snow or some twigs he’d landed in.

It was not. His body had twisted some in the fall, either intentionally or involuntarily he was not sure, but he had fallen hard onto his side. The pack had taken most of the force, but it was unfortunately the side of the pack he had tucked his most precious resource into. Sitting underneath a leaning oak tree Jackson carefully removed each box of clarinet reeds. Thankful that the first was in tact, but his heart sank as his hand closed around the second only to find the box crumpled. He could feel splintered wood, perhaps some had survived but it was likely that many of the reeds had been damaged beyond use.

And after nearly three full days of planning, pretending, and hoping things would be okay the reality of everything finally sank in and Jackson Smith let loose every ounce of emotion he had been holding back.