Harold; of the Apocalypse, original fiction, chapter two!

Like to read chapter one? You can find it here.

Harold didn’t believe in psychics and he wasn’t too sure he believed the stories he’d been told about prophets, even the Biblical ones. That’s why it was so weird when he first started watching the future. He’d been about nine the first time he’d actually had his watching confirmed.

“Watch this mom, this part is funny,” Harold said. He was sitting on a park bench with his mother, looking across the street where a man with several packages was balancing on the curb.

“What are you talking….” Just at that moment, Harold’s mother screamed, her ice cream, which she’d been about to take another lick of, dropped, swirl first, vanilla puddling among the dirt and gravel of the pitted sidewalk.

Harold took another lick of his swirled chocolate vanilla cone and laughed out loud. “See! I told you!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the side of his face lit up with pain, as his mother’s hand came across his cheek in a solid slap, then she was huddled, crying.

“What did I do?” Harold cried.

Across the street a crowd was gathering, the man had stepped off the curb, into the path of a passing bus, packages littered the pavement and in the distance a siren started.

“That poor man,” Harold’s mother sobbed, “how could you?”

“I didn’t know,” Harold sobbed, holding his cheek, his own cone now soggily sliding down the leg of his shorts.

“Didn’t know? You told me, and then you laughed at that poor man, Harold, don’t give me didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know it was real!” Harold said. He stood up, wide eyed, tears forgotten as the man was carefully lifted onto the grass by the curb. They shouldn’t have moved him, Harold knew that, but he couldn’t remember how.

“Okay, so tell me again, Harold, how did you know the man would step in front of the bus?” Harold winced as the doctor pressed a cold stethoscope against his chest and looked at his watch again.

“Well, I didn’t exactly, I just knew what I was going to see, because I watched it before.” Harold said, he cleared his throat, doctor’s offices always made him cough for some reason. “But, I really didn’t know it was real, honest.”

Harold’s mother sat, her eyes red, dabbing at the corners of them with a tissue. It had been three weeks since the incident, and she hadn’t stopped crying for more than a few minutes. “He says he watches things, like TV, and then they happen. Sometimes he watches them over and over.”

“Like the man, I thought it was just a story, like TV, I didn’t know he was going to be killed, I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Was it my fault?” Harold had secretly worried about that one thing ever since it had happened.

“So, you see them. Are you awake, or asleep, when you have these visions?” the doctor asked. He pointed a bright light into Harold’s left eye. “Keep your eye open for me, son.”

“Answer the doctor Harold, how else is he going to fix you?” Harold’s mom twisted her tissue and sniffed softly.

“I’m awake, I think. Sometimes I have to be in that place, like the bus episode, I saw it before when I was swinging at the park. I looked over at the shoe store, and there he was, then the bus came. But, when I watch it, it stops, and rewinds, the man is okay, then it happens again.” Harold explained.

“Well, I’m going to suggest a psych evaluation ,” the doctor said, scribbling something on his prescription pad. “Get this filled at the pharmacy and give him one before bed each night.”

“What? Are these anti-depressants, or what?” Harold’s mother didn’t really like drugs. “I want him to be better, but I don’t really like him taking medications.”
“Just something to help him sleep. Right now, it seems like a pretty normal case of Dejavu. Harold saw the bus coming, his imagination provided the rest, I think, but the psychiatrist at Children’s will know more.”

“Okay, if he needs it.”

“I think good rest is best for both of you. Are you sleeping, Mrs. Lake?” The doctor looked her in the eye.

“No, not much, but I have some sleeping pills. I probably should take one, I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

By the time he was eleven, Harold had simply stopped telling anyone about the things he watched. They never believed him and when they did, it ended up with him in some psycho therapy summer camp, like camp Watchahootchie, where he’d only escaped electro-shock therapy by faking a stomach bug, complete with chocolate syrup in the toilet.

The last person he’d told had been his college roommate, Benny Jackson. But, Benny had been too stoned to remember, and no one would have believed him if he had.

“Whoa, so you can predict the future? What’s the lottery number for tomorrow, bro?” Benny had asked, taking a break between bong hits.

“Doesn’t work like that, it’s more like this,” Harold had picked up a piece of paper, “This is time.” He folded it over loosely, “Sometimes, it folds back over on itself.” He’d taken a sharpened pencil from a cup on the desk and held it up.

“This is me when I’m watching,” he drove the pencil through both thicknesses of the paper.

“Whoa, so, you see that one moment, that hasn’t happened yet, or has it? Right? Wow, that’s deep man? You ever see me?” Benny asked, taking another hit.
Harold had lied, but it didn’t matter, Benny was asleep. Truth was, he’d seen Benny graduating, with honors. He wouldn’t have believed it, if he had never experienced Bus Guy, as he had always thought of him.

Harold’s mother had driven him to the funeral home, “That man had a name and a family,” she’d said, as she pulled into the parking lot. “His service is today and his name was…”

“AGGGHHHHAAAAAA!” Harold had screamed and covered his ears, for the only time in his childhood. He’d seen it in a movie once. “I can’t hear you!” And that had been the end of it.

They sat in the car, watching people in black enter the funeral parlor, his mother, sobbing at the wheel of their Chrysler station wagon, people murmuring behind their hands to each other as they wondered who the strange woman with the kid in the car was. Harold hoped they started a rumor about him. His mother was Bus Guy’s mistress and Harold was his love child.

For all he knew, that was true. He’d never known his father. Didn’t even know for sure that he’d had one, except he was here, which was a pretty decent indication that there had been a donor, at least. He’d been raised with his Grandmother living in the guest bedroom, like having moms from two parallel universes. His grandmother, permissive and giving, his mother paranoid and selfish. But, he’d loved them both, most of the time.

He’d watched his mom die. It was the only other time he’d seen a future death. She’d passed peacefully in her sleep, but he’d seen it, seen the date on her Timex clock radio, and knew it would happen. He hadn’t told her. How could he? He was nineteen when it happened, away at college. He’d told his grandmother in a phone call the next morning, she hadn’t found her yet. He could never quite forgive himself for that, somehow.

So, when Harold Lake, Dot Com millionaire for an app called ThinkTank, at 24 years of age, in 2017, had begun to watch the apocalypse unfold, he’d stayed quiet. There was time, he reasoned. Surely he was wrong this time. It couldn’t really be that simple, could it?

But, as the 2024 elections rolled around, and the partisan clash became bloody, he knew what was coming next. When the election was postponed by congressional edict, under national state of emergency, it was like the whole world froze. Could they really do that? And from their ivory tower, the leaders of both factions came together and asked for Americans to look deep inside themselves and see if there was any common ground. They symbolically laid down their arms and abolished political parties.

As the nation sat stunned, the congress, that hadn’t made a single major decision in decades without weeks of political infighting, began to enact sweeping legislation, in order, as they put it, to bring America back together. It had the desired effect. While the working class had been too busy to notice, their kids were already being programmed to accept and enact the changes. They stepped up, and in a matter of months, the United States had ceased to exist for all practical purposes.

Most other major nation states followed suit in less than a year, and a global commission was formed to create “policy” for the Organized World, as it was called. At first, many older people resisted, but the almost immediate implementation of Universal Basic Income for seniors, silenced many.

As he started watching more and more incidents from the future, Harold quietly sold off his businesses and started buying up houses, prepared to make a stand. He knew what needed to happen next. But, watching the future from a distance and actually living through those changes, are two very different things. As the Organized World streamlined society, entire industries were abandoned as “unnecessary” and work, for humans, was pared down to only those things that couldn’t be done by automated machines, and the tasks humans wanted badly enough.

Everything got “stupided” down, as making things easy to understand and follow, not learning, became the new standard of intelligence. The technology that had made Ebay and Amazon possible was put to work creating a global, instantaneous direct democracy.People from all seven continents were asked almost daily to chime in on some point of policy, leading to the claim that the rules were made by the people of the world, so why not follow them?

The blockchain, once looked to as the hope of a libertarian world, free from centralized control, became the decentralized overlord of every fascist’s wet dream, capable of reducing, or entirely eliminating a non-coms benefits in real time, in response to reports from “consensus building” citizens, all without the need for slow and messy human driven court systems that had been rife with corruption.

The only moral virtue became consensus, as more and more benefits poured forth for those that complied. Americans, who had long ago laid aside their false religions for the true god of money were quick to assimilate. Other cultures took time, but automated infrastructure teams, manned by road building robots, quickly paved over their concerns and brought the modern world to even the most remote locations.

It might even have worked, except for one thing. People think. And when they think, they start to wonder if this is really the best they can do and that leads to questions, and the system simply couldn’t handle questions. Soon, banishment became a daily occurrence as more and more non-coms were swept under the rug of the Organized World, never to be remembered by the busy worker bees, filling their work and compliance quotas.

But they were still there. In the cracks of society, quiet minds held onto the tiny shreds of knowledge that got left behind by Total Equality because, no matter how hard you tried to make a former society disappear, there were always traces. In basements, books were read and shared, in back alleys, black markets sprang up and on rooftops, hydroponic gardens and fish farms were started. Little sparks were ignited in a million points of light, sparks that Harold was hoping to fan into a live blaze, right here in City #346932.

That’s what brought him through three miles of storm sewer every day to this door. As it swung inward, Harold tensed. One of these days, a compliance officer would greet him, and at best, his purple get of jail free card, would be a thing of the past. At worst, he’d end up below with the rest of the non-coms, unable to continue his work in a meaningful way. He kept the goofy grin on his face, as he scanned the room.

All were regulars, except for one tall, balding man in the back of the room with his back to Harold. As he turned, Harold felt as if his chest was caving in. There before him, much older, was a face he’d never forget. The last time Harold had seen Doctor Hector Alvarez, he’d been preparing to apply electrodes to his tender young scalp, he couldn’t be a non-com, he just couldn’t. And Harold didn’t know how to face the former director of Camp Watchahootchie.

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