Michael MacPherson was a successful, well paid, stable professional at the top of the mechanical engineering field. Where others in his diminishing circle of friends had made relationships, he had built a career. They had hobbies; he designed and built weaponry on contract to the newly formed world government. They had children, he had schematics.
He was a proud man, and justifiably so, but at this very moment, MacPherson was seriously questioning how his decisions in life had gone so utterly wrong. The new government, high-handedly titling itself, “The Great Alliance of Terra” had built an entire “defensive” fleet based on his designs, then used it to start a war with their own colony world: Horizon. They won, of course, it was the only fleet Humanity had ever seen and nothing could compete with its military prowess, but in the process of winning, they had managed to contract some nano-tech plague, something MacPherson had never heard of happening before, but when the government is involved anything goes, he supposed. The upshot of all this was that the plague had spread to the fleet, which had promptly crashed with nobody to control it and now they wanted him, Michael MacPherson himself, to go there and supervise, “specialized armament design” for whatever it was they were fighting now. Evidently the government felt the turn-around on communication was either not fast enough or not secure enough to risk. He himself had been sworn to secrecy amidst a crowd of imposing, dark-suited men before learning even this much. Likely, the humiliating disaster with the fleet was something the people, “didn't need to know”.
After agreeing, more or less under duress, to leave Earth early tomorrow, he had spent the entire morning tying up affairs for the company to operate in his absence, then rushed home to pack, negotiating the swarm of private hovercraft traffic which represented the wealthy and inodolent every lunch-time. Now, without any outside pressure to occupy his mind, the reality of the move was sinking in. He had never liked change. He had never enjoyed travel. Yet somehow, the stable, secure life he had spent decades building now had his home, normally tended to immaculate order, looking like the scene of a violent burglary. The worst of it was, he had absolutely no idea what to expect. He sank into the clearest patch of sofa he could see, wrestled some previously unseen lump from beneath himself, (which turned out to be an old camping knife his father had given him) and put his head in his hands.
to be continued.
