Only Good Men Deserve Yesterday

Copyright © Arno Le Roux 2016
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means
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author.

For Jacques Louw and others who don't know why time travel
makes sense.
“Only Good Men Deserve
Yesterday”

A Short Story - by Arno Le Roux

Synopsis
:
We are all absolutely unique and
rigid in our personal and preferred approach to problem solving as
well as our bias opinions on what constitutes
possible
,
just
and
ethical
. Yet, our reactions to an
imminent threat, if immense enough in its proportion, strangely, as
if by a shared genetic trait, somehow teaches that we may be
hardwired to unite against a common threat. Only during brief
flashing periods are we forced to unite under a shared umbrella of
a new and inescapable reality. Fine dotted lines that have mapped
history, made up the bridges to indicate that when groups and
civilisations are forced to drop the egos that cause judgement, the
privileges that make us seem different, and those single
superior ways
of doing
things, we can indeed unite. But of course, when we inspect these
events closely, at the very heart of it, we learn that it all went
hand in hand with major upheavals and upsetting of comforts and
sometimes a threat to the survival of the collective, never just a
threat to a single person or group or faction.

From
an early age we make peace with the apparent fact that we move
forward, no faster and no slower than that ticking clock on the
kitchen wall, and that there is an underlying feeling that
everything that will be, will be anyway, sometimes we feel this is
the case, with or without our contribution...,
maybe.

Maybe the clock on the kitchen wall was the biggest fact or
illusion, depending where the disillusioned masses found themselves
when news eventually filtered down that a Solar flare of all
things, united even those amidst a horrific religious war that had
been raging for a decade. The clock on the kitchen wall was
designed to tick only in one direction. Clockwise only, on and on
and on. This is the one way train ride in line with the system of
ageing in which we breathe and think and walk in. Always forward
never backward. Living forward, aging daily over time, and on the
way we have several appointments with the beacons of the plans we
had made. Some beacons were as good as expected or even
surprisingly better and others alter our reality in a most
unpleasant way. We see and feel how never move anti-clockwise,
never backward, and that we are not getting any younger. This is
the main truth that holds the realm of impossibilities together. It
isn't a mere notion or belief, but an absolute irrefutable fact
that we can never visit yesterday again. Or so we are conditioned,
just like the clock on the kitchen wall. So, as we store up our
vast memories, both delightful and horrid things of all that cannot
be experienced again, we continuously expand the realm, of
what cannot be visited
,
and what cannot be undone. The
realm of
impossibilities
of our existence was maybe
designed by a great and ancient architect to magnetise us towards
the clockwise motioned arms of the clock. Glued to each and every
second of this hour, up to when we read these very words. If we
were told for long enough by enough respected authorities and
people, that we cannot turn this page back, but only page forward,
would we believe it and not bother, or in the face of certain
demise, would we test this widely held truth? For some, it is not a
question of “can we”, but rather, “what do we do knowing that we
can?”

Prologue:

November 16th, 2018. Two men on different time lines and
continents apart, were trying to make sense of their
surroundings.

In
Tibet in a dark wooden 1000 year old monastery, perched on the very
edge of a high smooth vertical cliff and obscured by thick white
clouds, an overwhelmed monk looked down after his morning
meditation and gradually absorbed his reality of his wrinkled and
stiff hands that he opened and closed. In awe he looked down at his
quite out of place silver wrist watch on which the tiny candles’
reflections were dancing in delight. After adjusting the watch
strap a little looser, he looked at the time again. Is was a minute
later and the second indicator still hadn't moved. He held his
wrist up against his ear and smiled at the surreal silence.
Ascending slowly to his knees from the lotus position, and then
with great effort he rose his feet, he loosened the wrist watch
completely and stared at if for a brief few short seconds before
pulling his right arm back as far as his aged old muscles allowed.
As the watch was hurled out the open window and flew, time strated
anew. Time disappeared into a nearby cloud that enveloped the
ancient monastery. The old monk slowly made his way to the adjacent
room to light a fire and all the while a wide grin pushed his
wrinkled old cheeks aside. He commenced his reward for his opus in
the form of a well-deserved pot of strong tea.

In
France, in what seemed to have been a monsoon-like gush of never
ending water from the heavens, dressed in a brown robe, a soaked
old man looked down expecting his bare feet to be washed by the
cold torrent flowing past the shop fronts. His brown leather
sandals gleamed up at him through an inch of hasty passing
rainwater. He was soaked to the bone at 3am outside an electronic
shop window, staring slightly bewildered at the mute news
presenters on the long row of new Samsung Flat Screen TV’s. The
eye-blinding bright red and yellow alternating flashing neon signs
which lit up the words “low interest”, “cash discount” and “two per
customer”, were the furthest things from his mind. The lights
almost induced an epileptic fit that he felt coming on and that he
thought he outgrew when he was fifteen. But he wasn't shopping for
a special, actually never did. The man found himself staring at
unfamiliar that was rolling out in all directions around him. He
didn't know where he was and he was absolutely starving. Starving
and the overpowering absent sense of belonging would have been a
terrible reality to deal with for most people. As hungry as what he
was, and knowing he didn't belong, his loud bellowing laugh bounced
off his wet reflection in the shop window. Water bounced playfully
off his shaved bold old head in all directions and he looked
straight up into the black sky and surrendered to the heavy rain
that washed his face. His smile under the oddest of circumstances
was almost permanent.

Chapter
1

November 17th, 2018. A glorious historical day that superseded
all other days greeted not only South Africa’s rainbow nation, but
even the hostile nations divided up over many time lines. In South
Africa, not even the results of the last few seconds of the
hysteria of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, or the “peace had dawned”
feeling of the April 1994 elections could successfully compete with
the collective national racing heartbeats of the excited nation.
For what had been maybe the first time in history on a global
scale, varied skin colours, race, different, and even opposing ways
of worship and political ideologies didn't matter at all. It all
joined the plane where bias judgemental Facebook posts resided. The
forgotten suburb named
irrelevance...

In a
number of countries a multitude of nuclear reactors were about to
go online as the world was fixated on the gigantic bright-red
digital clocks that were counting down from 2 minutes. It had been
too long that the desperate world anticipated a solution to
progressively deepening and devastating electricity crises to
finally end.

The
almost hypnotic excitement served as proof of man's unity in the
face of a daunting future. As long as man had hope to cling to, and
a possibility of a better tomorrow, he could inch forward into the
abyss like he always did.

Apart from the ghost towns where large factories; which were
eventually also plundered for their remaining fuel reserves, and
homes which had run out of fuel for their generators, only small
solar panels, too weak to power anything larger than a home geyser,
was as close as mankind came to power. But on a national and
international scale there was one single other modern marvel. It
was scary in its awesomeness, absolutely detrimental to health and
the very last of hopes. And as the last hope, it was about to
introduce it bright new tomorrow, which outweighed the frightful
possibility that something might go wrong, as well as the
consequences of looming Ill health.

Later as the countdown reached single figures and the images
of the clock that was to announce man's salvation, life was put on
an unexpected pause...

Chapter 2

It
was not quite fully understood how, but during the untimely
frustrating confusion of what was the last of the power
interruptions, the networks which supported synthetic life to both
Facebook and Snapchat managed to survive the “The Flare”. Every eye
saw it, and the citizens who didn't witness the unholy event, were
victims of its far reaching consequences anyway. It was believed
that fate had seen to it that there would only be limited
communication between the hysterical earth dwellers. Government and
military satellites, those mainly for astronomical purposes, and
all other satellites that were proudly beaming news and other
communication down to earth, had at that very moment finally
outlived their high purpose and were aimlessly orbiting and
colliding in great firework fashion displays. It was evident that
both the single “world renowned” and one “lesser known” social
platform were somehow not dependant on the multitude of orbiting
specs which up to then, ruled man from the heavens. If the world
was to speak, for the foreseeable future at least, it was to be
done and heard from through one of the only two platforms of social
media. That alone would have been a horrifying thought in a normal
reality. But then, the new reality was all but normal.

It appeared that an almost extinction level Solar Flare had
introduced the ultimate chaos yes, completely disabled a host of
crucial satellites, also accurate, but importantly, it managed to
show an apparent interesting truth. That was the fact that the
financial world that had up to then ruled mankind via a fake value
that mankind had attached to things. It was at last as fake as the
plastic dolls in the quiet toyshops in town. If ever equality had a
strange ring to it, that had been it. It was scary in its
simplicity. One morning, the freezing cold and barefoot beggar in
the park seeking warmth under a heap of newspapers, and the
affluent CEO's of large oil and mining conglomerates were worth
exactly the same, right down to the valueless last cent. A single
almighty flash form the awesome blue heavens, had painted the sky
with blinding white halo which circled out into and beyond the
horizon. It took mere seconds to lead humanity to an even colder
reality than before. It reduced all the testaments to man's ego to
what it really was, brick and mortar owned by earth. Dark cities
and towns all over the world had no fresh running water and
batteries were running out on the last of the electronic devices of
which some were somehow not all
toasted,
as it was referred to. Money
could not be withdrawn or transferred and fuel supplies were
worthless as both the means to pay and to deliver were rendered
useless. It was like a Mad Max movie scene and everyone was either
hiding or scattering to find a device with just enough power to
find the truth or some version of it.

Chapter 3

On Facebook,
the ocean of colourful and popular selfies, constant check-ins and
motivational quotes were replaced by millions and millions of
visitors to mainly three Facebook groups. All of them were
identical over the world. The groups were separated by distinctive
colours to indicate their importance for the lucky ones who still
had sufficient battery power.

Where fresh water could be located and limited to 500ml per
person per day, displayed with turquoise-blue water droplet logos
and were really the most active of the groups. Dark green groups
indicated food at daily declining levels. All soon learned that
military and police both helped themselves and also took armed
control of all large food stores and food storage warehouses, where
only small rations were made available to whoever was there first
until the groups became too large and it became too dangerous for
the armed forces. Food was moved around constantly by armed convoys
to different locations around the clock to prevent the
givers
becoming sitting
ducks for hungry armed civilians. The plain red circle that could
have been mistaken for the Japanese flag was for groups where small
first aid kits, penicillin, insulin as well as an assortment of
headache tablets and generic medicine to cope with the increasing
diarrhoea, had been available. The last on the list of medicine
were taken at alarming rates due to the lack of clean water to
clean eating and cooking utensils to a healthy standard. In days to
follow there was inadequate water for proper bathing, so not even
used bath water could be diverted to fill up and flush toilets
either in public places or at home.