Reginald Solborne

​Reginald's Story

Reginald Solborn, known originally as Reginald Solanki, had lived a comfortable life. Before the war, he had known banquets, power-rail travel, and the luxurious benefits of higher education.

 

He had pledged himself to the aristocratic order of designers and controllers of society’s institutions: The Torch-Bearers.

 

Their mission was to light the way to a stronger and more beautiful future. After the bombs landed, however, any hope for a future at all was destroyed. Reginald had to lock away his family into a vault of his own construction, a sealed metal container complete with plants, small animals, and an operational food source.

 

To keep them safe and to seal them inside, such that they may be freed later after the nuclear fallout, he would have to remain outside and leave the key somewhere it could be found. What happened next no one would have ever predicted. Reginald remains as one of very few witnesses who lived to observe the ensuing destruction.

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As nuclear ash and radiation filled the air, a series of powerful explosions lining the Atlantic coast rose into the sky like blossoming flowers. The chemicals caught into the explosions created a fluorescent pattern of beautiful colors, like a radioactive aurora borealis, spreading throughout the sky and descending on the ground like a swarm of lightning bugs and campfire ash. It was beautiful, and it was killing everything.

 

The ash seeped deeply into Reginald’s lungs. He was lucky enough to be far enough from the explosion that he didn’t get caught in the fire, but the physical shockwave hit him a few moments before the sound of the blast did. He was thrown into the ground beneath him, buried into the soil.

 

The sound of the shock was deafening, and blistered the insides of his ears to blood. The lights continued to downpour from the sky, entangling him further with radioactive elements, red-hot ash, and with a sensual experience like none-other.

 

It was the Polaris missile’s twisted take on Nirvana: It was a total and complete encounter with pain, suffering, and destruction.

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When he awoke from his radiation-induced coma, for who knows how long, he awoke on in a world completely unrecognizable. Long gone now, were the high-profile dinners and keynote speakers. Gone were luxuries, desserts from far away colonies, and threads and silks fit only for Gods.

 

The planet had returned to its most primal form. The canopy over head was so dense it almost completely blocked out the sky. The branches, vines, and blades of grass surrounding him moved in patterns and with intention. The planet was alive.

 

When his vision and hearing came back to him, alongside the memories of the fallout, Reginald realized what this would mean for his family. The key was gone. Probably melted into the ground. He was too late to protect it. He rushed to their safehouse, now to discover it would be their tomb.

 

Thorny vines and thick brambles emerged from the ceiling, piercing sharply into the air, and sprouting blood-red flowers and mushrooms. His perfect design, destroyed by the one scenario he never thought of: That Life would return rapidly and powerfully to planet Earth.

 

How much luckier he’d be if it were destroyed instead. His family must have died a long time ago inside their sealed tomb he built for them, the plants once inside the garden inside have now grown to colossal proportions.

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Reginald resided to pace around the Great Craters, creating art and documenting the perilous yet beautiful landscapes of this new world.

 

At night, he falls asleep above the canopy, facing upwards towards the purple and green sky. By day, he’s spent most of his time searching for other survivors. The only thing that can keep an old man like him motivated, who belongs to a forgotten era of humanity, is his ultimate dream to live in a better world.

 

Maybe this one was built on the graves of all that he loved, but maybe too it could be beautiful enough to teach him something about what it really means to live.

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