StarFire : Chapter One

The Room

After one or two cups of coffee, I finally relaxed.

It wasn’t just a question of trying to forget what happened in the last two months, with me and Jennifer.

No…

No, it wasn’t just that.

I relax, and the sound of my spirit is incoherent. A greatly doped happiness and pain appear.

Guilt. Sorrow. Fear. Fascination.

Dreams come true.

Hope.

Human.

Human is the part that I most fear. Every time in History was characterized by it: Human, or, putting it in a more clear way, inhumanity and insanity. The desire for power and for a cutting-edge thing, that gives someone a great feeling of power. For how many times has Mankind been deprieved of technology that could save it, and used it to kill itself? And at the price of how many dreams killed at birth? Sakharov was an interesting figure, when he told that never in history did war and privation made so much for the development of science and technology.

By however insane it may look, he wasn’s wrong…

My name is James. James Welch. My great grandparents where immigrants, who’ve fled Ireland in the late XIX century, in the great potato famine that dizimated thousands. As unbelievable at it may seem, I’ve lived my entire life in a country, where I’ve borned, where I’ve lived, where my entire life took place, and my soul always wanted to go home, to Ireland. Whenever I’m here, I want to be there, and feel my ancestrality. Whenever I’m there, I want to be here, with the people I love. I’m a divided man that hasn’t been able to crack his internal frontiers down.

But that is about to finish…

I spoke of me, but I haven’t yet spoke of who I am. I’m a scientist, specialized in Optics. A physicist.

It’s 4:50 AM.

I look through a window. Jennifer is not here. I look at her bedside. No. She’s not here. She’ll never be here. If I only lived in ignorance… but would I be happy if I lived in ignorance? I wouldn’t, would I? Would I live in remorse? I could still have her if I lived in ignorance…

A phone rings.

My heart beats strongly.

I answer it.

No. Ignorance would only make things wrong. This phone call reminded me why. I must get dressed. I must go back. It has begun…