Departure

“That’s it?” Sakura sounded disappointed. She looked at the guns he had. “A-And why would he leave these here if he was going out exploring? I mean I’m sure there are crazier people out there than him!” She backed out of the diary folder and looked at the rest of the folders. One popped out at her. “‘Dark Matter’ huh… why isn’t this one named cutely like the others? Oh and didn’t he mention something about this experiment?” She clicked on the folder and only saw three videos. “Oh, relatively short I guess.” She opened the first video and saw a younger looking Taiga.

“Hi hi! So we just finished the project on extracting dark matter from the air. It is an incredibly hard process to do and took MANY failed attempts. Way too much man power and equipment. So I’m curious what the government will do with this new research. There could be so many things! There is so much application for this. We can possibly revisit light speed using dark matter. I have a theory on how we can use it but that will be for later. For now I have to wait to hear about what exciting things we will do! That’s it for now!”

The video cut out and Sakura smiled. “Aw he’s so cute here! Crazy what he turns into. Wonder what causes someone to go ‘mad.’” She opened the next video to see an annoyed Taiga.

“Of course. What else should I fucking expect? They want to make a bomb. A little background on dark matter itself… I’ve never put it into video format so I’ll explain it now. It’s not what we originally named dark matter. For now we, in the scientific community, have decided to change its name to ‘unseen matter’. We will change it when we can get a better name. Dark matter is incredibly strange. It has a tendency to just… consume. Everything except light and sound. Depending on how much you start with, it will grow to a certain size and collapse in on itself due to its unstable nature, however, consuming and destroying anything it gets close enough to or touches. The magnitude of the force of ‘suckage’ is determined by the amount you start with. Theoretically. You can take down an entire city with this. And guess what the government wants to do. Take down an ENTIRE FUCKING CITY with this new technology, or ‘weapon’. I was hoping to use it as an energy source or for light speed, but I guess not! Will update when we are done I guess.”

Sakura nodded, “I am starting to understand more of why he hates the government.” She went to the next video log. “Oh… it looks to be a different setting.”

“Hey! So we just finished prototype 74! This is the test now! Everyone! Clear the test chamber!” The video showed people dressed up in hazmat suits walking out of a chamber. That is until someone accidentally bumped into the stand holding the bomb up. It fell and immediately detonated. The video shows a large black orb start to form and grow. The incredibly heavy doors that led to the test chamber were slammed shut with a loud boom in a split second. Unfortunately, someone got stuck in the middle of the closing of the doors. The orb grew and grew as it started sucking in everything in the test chamber, including the scientists left in the room. Within five seconds, the orb started, grew and collapsed, everything in the chamber gone. Taiga looked in, through the insanely thick glass that separated him from the room, in shock. The magnitude of what this tech was capable of finally fully sunk into him. There were mixed reactions from the people in the control room with Taiga. A mixture of shock and happiness. The room stayed silent for a few seconds before Taiga quickly started to look sick. He ran out of the room, the camera being turned off a few seconds after. The last words said in the video were:

“It works.”

That was the final entry in the folder. Sakura looked at the screen with a straight face. “Well… I guess that could do it. Also kind of explains why he was so collected dragging the woman in and fighting back at the trespassers.” She navigated to “Crowd Control” next as it was another folder not named like the rest. There were a good bit of videos in the folder but they all seemed short except the first two. Sakura clicked on the first one.

An annoyed looking Taiga appeared on screen in an empty classroom. “Yea so, the government wants new ways to deal with… how can I say this, ways to prevent being overthrown. How? By using biological weapons of course. Use these weapons against the large crowds of people who go against this world wide government. Whatever, I don’t get paid to care. Anyway, we have figured out one way we are going to try. That being, some kind of weapon that causes necrosis. By using-" A loud beep was heard as he continued talking. “-we can easily cause necrosis in a part of the body. Like rotting. Full necrosis. The limb and bone become useless forever. Collapsing under the weight of a body, just full decay. Of course they want us to test on real human subje-”

Sakura stopped the video there and closed the window. “Yep, that’s enough of that. It just becomes more and more clear as to how he got the way he did.” She clicked on the next video.

“It’s been a few days and we have been going back and forth spitballing ideas. However we have decided the second method will be a small dark matter bomb. What I worked on before on a MUCH smaller scale. It’ll take off a limb at most. Maybe swallow a small child? Some shit like that. Yay, more dark matter bombs. Love those. Oh and with the last entry, I said something, like, super confidential. I send these to the government before I file them and they decided that what I said would be dangerous if someone had access to that information. They have the formula of the thing we will use somewhere locked up, but these videos are way more accessible than those so. They’d rather be safe than sorry I guess. The government has been talking about faking my death, too. That’s going to be awesome. Hopefully I can keep in touch with my family at least. I don’t really care too much about friends. Never really had any in the first place.” He looked at the camera for a few seconds before letting out a long sigh. “The rest of these videos will be mainly tests. Obviously they want live subjects. So they’ll probably take some inmates on like death row or something. I still don’t want to do these live tests but, it’s not like I can do anything. The dark matter bomb is not the one I’m worried about. That’s… more or less instantaneous. But the necrosis one… that’s…” He goes silent looking down at the desk. He looks back up with a very forced smile. “Here’s to happy testing!” The video shut off after that.

“Damn, he looked fucked up… I want to console him. I can’t imagine his mental state back then.” She scrolled to the end of the video files. There were A LOT of short video files, the small thumbnails depicting some quite grotesque scenes. Finally at the end of the folder, there was a normal looking video and Sakura clicked on it.

It opened to a more normal looking Taiga. “Right! So of course we didn’t get just inmates on death row. They wanted… some smaller test subjects. But it’s ok, in the process of weapons manufacturing, you have to ‘accidentally’ kill a few people to test whether or not it’s lethal. I think I’m used to death by now. They definitely told me they wanted to fake my death. That’s going to be cool! Imagine being known as dead. I mean yea sure I won’t be able to go anywhere but they were talking to me about giving me my own lab in the middle of nowhere, where I can basically do whatever experiments I want. No fear of these stupid organizations that want to stop me. Anyway! These tests were a massive success. I mean they work just as intended. Especially the necrosis bomb. Basically how that one will work is like a frag grenade. Someone will throw it, and it’ll explode and sho- or well they will work their magic and hit many people causing deep pain and damage. Knowing the government, they’ll cover it up, fabricate the facts, and pay off the media! Oh good ‘ole dictatorship, works like a charm! Honestly though, for ruling the entire world, they’ve lasted quite a long time. I’m impressed. But anyway that’s besides the point. Point is, we got our working weapons. This should help.” The video suddenly ended right there.

Sakura backed out and saw the final folder. She clicked on it and found the files to be grayed out. As she tried to open one, a pop up appeared that said ‘Enter in the passkey’. She tried the first password to get into the computer, but it declined entry. Afterwards she tried different variants to no avail. She sighed and shrugged, “Well it’s similarly named to the other two, being all cutesy. ‘Zoom zooooom!’ Huh… well I remember him saying something about light speed. I imagine it has something to do with that.” Sakura looked at the screen and sighed. There was a button in the window called ‘Show Hidden’ and out of curiosity, she clicked it. One more file opened up, it was labeled, ‘Goodbye.’ She clicked it and it opened to Taiga in a room surrounded by glass. Outside was white as can be.

“Is this on? I hope it is. I see it being broadcasted to TVs here… so it should be everywhere then too. Ok so, hi! My name is Taiga. Now I’m sure everyone has MANY questions, who am I, how have I been brought back from the dead, what’s going on, why do I look 20 when I’m over 30 years old, yada yada, I’ll get into these now. And to start I’ll answer the most pressing one. Last! Ok I’m Taiga, a very young super genius. Or was a young super genius. I’m older now. I was a college professor by the age of 15, but that’s beside the point. The government declared me dead, October 19th 2065, as some of you may remember. They faked my death and brought me somewhere remote to continue my research freely. Gave me my own lab, and basically an unlimited budget. Ok so that answers a few questions. I have very high government clearance… which doesn’t really matter anymore. I’m the only surviving government employee. Now don’t worry, I don’t plan to reinstate this shithole. President Cherino fucking sucked. Ok. Now for the pressing question. What the FUCK is going on. I’m sure some of you have seen UFOs flying around. No you are not hallucinating. These are aliens with alien aircraft. They are after a power source that we have PLENTY of. They came to us with a deal, we denied it, they didn’t like that, poof 99.99% of the population is gone. Not returning. Gone forever. What you guys do with this information is up to you, all I know is I’m surviving the best I can. Good luck out there, there is no government entity anymore. This has been Taiga and I’ll be saying goodbye on behalf of the government. Have fun out there!” The video turned off.

Sakura stepped back from the computer and opened the bottom cabinet pulling the guns out, along with their ammunition. “Why didn’t he take this stuff? I feel like this would be critical in the wilderness… something also just… seemed off about the video. The way he blinked, it was almost like he was being forced to or was trying to get a message across.” She grabbed the PSG1, walked over to his room and tried opening it again. It was still locked so she decided to just shoot the door handle and lock. It opened and she stepped in, turning on the light. Looking around at his bedroom, she found an expensive mountain bike, his bed unmade with a half full backpack, drawers open, clothes thrown everywhere, and different kinds of handguns displayed on the wall. She investigated the backpack which was half full of clothes and a few supplies already. “Seems like he… didn’t make it back?” There was one more piece of furniture in the room that wasn’t opened. It was a huge cupboard that went from the floor to the roof. Sakura walked up to it and opened it. It seemed like there were a bunch of women's clothes in it. She laughed a little as she started tearing up. “That fucking kid… he really thought of everything…” Looking through the clothes, she found something she wanted to wear, a nice, long sleeve, tight athletic shirt, and some heavy sweatpants. She grabbed his backpack, emptied out his clothes and started packing some other clothes from the cupboard.

After she packed the two snipers, multiple handguns with multiple rounds of ammo, plenty of clothes, and a suitable tent she found in his room, she grabbed his mountain bike and rolled it out of his room, putting it by the door. Sakura grabbed some canned foods and packed them as well. She did a last double check of her supplies and went to put on the big heavy jacket that was by the door as well as the shoes. Grabbing the backpack and bike, she opened the door, happy to see a nice bright day, with a blanket of snow on the ground. She quickly ran over to the shed from before, opening it, finding the snowmobile, strapping the bike to it in a way for easy transportation, and then starting it. Before setting off, she took a key she found in the backpack and attempted to lock up the lab. To her surprise the key worked and the lab was all locked up. “We will meet again, lab. I believe it.” With that she ran back to the snowmobile quickly setting off, leaving the lab for a while.