30-Years Old with a Plan

The ringtone alarm on my phone went off at 8:00 AM sharp with the OST from an old game.

I cracked open an eye only to regret it when a lancing ray from the sun managed to snipe me from a slip in the curtains. I must have forgotten to close it last night after looking outside to see what the racket was. Idiots blasting their radio after midnight. Yawning as I brushed my eyes, I forced myself to get up and shut off the soundtrack.

Then I checked my calendar for the day to see what I had to do: a morning jog, shower and shave, finish off my leftovers for breakfast, business meeting online at Noon sharp, and then it was back to sitting in front of the computer all day and fixing other people’s problems with the full understanding that Uncle Sam would be expecting a quarter of my earnings for the last three months by the end of the week. The remainder of the loans I took out for a worthless degree twelve years ago would take the rest.

I wasn’t exactly the smartest when it came to thinking ahead when I was eighteen. Made some bad decisions. Not anything like doing drugs or stealing the car when everyone was asleep for a joyride. If anything, I was just a very boring student who avoided causing issues so I didn't end up on the business end of a belt for misbehaving from Mom.

But, whippings aside, I didn’t really understand how much I was being supported by her or how to think about the long-term. Or how that affected people other than me. Not until it was too late.

I didn’t even understand how loans worked when I jumped into college right out of high school. I knew you had to pay them off, of course. But I didn’t understand just how fast they skyrocketed because of the interest rate after graduation, or even the fact that going to a private for-profit university for a Game Design Degree might not have been the smartest decision.

It was the craze back then, having been blasted all over cable television and the internet. The college recruiter guaranteed they could place me in a few months at the latest. It took me five years of failure and deferred payments, leaving me $77,000.00 in debt, to realize that wasn’t happening.

It turned out that when you were one of several thousand competing for a highly-advertised career with limited openings in your area, the chances weren’t in your favor. Who knew?

I was lucky that my mother was a saint in letting me stay with her all that time, even though I was a failure compared to my other siblings. They had chosen more practical careers and had left the nest ages ago. They even had kids for some reason, with a couple of my nieces and nephews being old enough already to be in Elementary school by now.

Not that we saw each other much after the funeral.

They never said anything at the time, but I think I could tell on some level they thought I was a weight on Mom the entire time I was with her. She should have retired by then and spent time with her grandchildren. The others would have been happy to support her together, which would have been possible with their earnings, even if they had children.

But they couldn’t take care of me as well. It would have put them in the red. And because of that, she kept taking care of me by working until her health gave out.

Her life insurance gave me just enough to not live out on the street for a year after the others had found me a reasonable apartment to stay in. Not too far from a hospital and within walking distance of a grocery store, so that I could get the essentials without having a car. But they made it clear that I was on my own after that.

I didn’t blame them for it. I had five years after graduating to do something. Anything.

And I spent those five years doing nothing.

I coasted through life while being supported by my aging mother until it killed her. And I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I cost her everything because I was lazy and clung to a dream when reality was a lot colder than that.

I got smarter after that. I had to, if I didn’t want to put the others in an early grave by begging them to support me when I ran out of money. I didn’t want to get desperate enough that I would say that Mom would want us to support each other as an excuse. Not after that.

I got more time to deal with my debt by going back to college. Not a for-profit college with hastily thrown-together programs that they charge you an arm and a leg for. It was a technical college for a career where there was a shortage of manpower, and it was something everyone needed.

And while I was doing that, I joined up with one of those services that called you when there was an opening for some temporary work. Stuff like setting up bunks in colleges since students were coming soon, moving around old files in offices since they were getting ready to relocate. The most common one was spending the weekend in refrigerated warehouses to pack up cold drinks and food as they were finished being sealed.

It was largely physical work. The pay wasn’t the greatest, the work wasn’t exactly stable, and the people I had worked with constantly changed (with more than a few being a pain to deal with), so there was no point in learning their names. But it was enough that I could start putting down payments on the loans while it was deferred because I was in school.

I also started watching some financial videos online to make up for the knowledge I didn't have to begin with. I had no expectations of becoming rich in ten years, or anything like that. I just wanted to clear out the debt and get my life on track like the others.

We didn't speak anymore, but I was following them online under an alias. My sister had another daughter and named her after Mom. I wanted to see her and them in person without feeling like a failure by having no debt the next time I did. To tell them I made something of myself.

And I was close to doing just that now. It had taken almost three years after the funeral, and it wasn’t exactly easy, but I had managed to knock out a huge chunk of the debt even while in school for my second degree. I had a decent job that sat me in front of my laptop every day for hours on end as a freelancer (technically making me a business owner), making enough that I would be able to pay off the rest of it by the end of the year if I went all-in.

That did mean I couldn't spend money on much of anything else or go out. But I could do all that once the debt was wiped away. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have hobbies, like working through my backlog of videogames on a console that was a few generations old at this point. RPGs were always a good time investment.

There was also watching videos online of bladesmiths forging weapons, which I always found interesting. Not because I liked violence, and even if I did, the age of using a sword to kill someone had ended long ago. Guns were much more effective at that. Rather, it was mostly done as a form of art where you turned something like raw metal into something beautiful.

I liked watching other people do things by hand. Not just weapons, but even things like handicrafts, jewelry, or that one time I saw someone make a stone lantern with nothing but a stone and some chalk. I liked them because they showed that even if you didn’t have a lot of money or machinery, you could still accomplish something.

I even indulged once in a moment of weakness and attended a two-day weekend workshop to make a knife when a course opened up just outside of the city. It cost me the entirety of the credit card rewards I had built up on the card over a few years. And the result wasn’t anything like the picture they posted on the website.

But it was still something I made with my own hands.

Once I was dressed to head out, I locked my apartment behind me and made my way to the local park to start doing laps. It normally took me about an hour to do ten laps as my usual routine. After that, I would hobble my way home, half-dehydrated and in desperate need of a shower before starting to work.

But, before I was even partway into the first lap, I noticed that it seemed to be getting dark even though there wasn’t a cloud in sight and it was early in the day. I looked up and saw something in the sky that I thought might be the moon… Oh, right. I think there was supposed to be an eclipse today.

I pulled out my phone and checked the weather app to see that it was supposed to be Annular for the state that I lived in. That meant it would cover the entirety of the sun, barring the outer rim. The last time that happened was fifteen years ago, and they didn’t predict it to happen again for another thirty.

I raised the camera of my phone towards the sun as the moon crossed its path and tried to make sure I had a good angle. Since this was possibly a once-in-a-generation event, I might as well record it for posterity. I had shades on, so it wouldn’t hurt even if I looked directly at it.

Or so I thought until the moment that everything went dark and the ring of fire came into view.

That was when everything suddenly got really dark. To the point that I couldn't see anything. Not even my hands in front of me. Then the ground dropped from under me for a second, and I ended up stumbling onto something… hard?

When I could see again, I wasn’t on the dirt path through the park like usual. I wasn’t even in the park anymore. I was in a plaza of some kind that was ringed by fences topped with crystals and surrounded by buildings that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those overseas towns that you would want to retire in.

And I wasn’t alone either.