Mountains to Climb by Wyatt Tremblay

There was a sudden loud bang. I mean… it was very sudden and very loud, causing me to flinch and duck. I don’t know why I ducked. It made little difference. Something hit me from above. It fell from the sky, glanced off the left side of my head, off my shoulder, and landed with a dull thud in the snow beside me.

It was a raven.

Singed, smoldering, and very dead.

It twitched once and then the stench hit me. Roasted flesh, burned feathers, ozone. I looked up. The wretched creature had fried itself on a power pole transformer. Sparks were still sputtering like the last gasps of a spent Roman Candle.

This was not how my day began.

 ****

Shelley nudged me.

I rose triumphantly from the command chair of the USS Reliant, having just vanquished the Borg from my sector of space in a bloody but decisive battle. Shelley elbowed me again. I stumbled and fell as a surprise quantum torpedo attack rocked the ship. The Borg had returned.

“Mmm?”

“Honey, Jeffy’s crying. It’s your turn.”

I picked myself up, waiting for the inertia dampers to cycle back on. The proximity-threat claxon sounded. Red alert. Another hit. I grabbed the arm of the command chair to steady myself.

“Ow,” Shelley hissed, pulling my hand from her thigh, “Wake up!”

“Mmm?”

The view screen rippled like a rock had been dropped into its fluidic depths, then exploded, showering the bridge with shards of flesh-piercing meta-glass. Needle-sized slivers slammed into my shoulder. I jerked away. Too late, I was down again.

“Alex.”

Shelley pinched me in the arm, “C’mon. Get up. He’s been crying forever.”

“Ensign,” I muttered, “to your duty station.”

“Excuse me?”

I threw the quilt back, farther than I needed to. Shelley complained and grabbed a handful of bedding, drawing its warmth up around her neck. The floor was cold. Stupid Borg. Always interfering, always assimilating, always insisting on galactic domination. I bounced off the hallway walls, tripping into Jeffery’s room. He was standing with his arms outstretched, his faced flushed and puffy from crying.

“Hey, my little Vulcan science officer, why the tears?”

His face split into a wide grin. He leapt into my hands and I lifted him to my chest, holding him until the sobs subsided. He was wet and hungry. I changed his diaper and gave him a warm bottle.

It was my turn?

How did this happen?

How did I get here? Standing in the baby’s room, feeding and caring for someone so small and so completely dependent upon me? Wasn’t I just that kid standing in my crib screaming for a parent? Didn’t I just graduate from college?

I sank wearily into the rocking chair next to the crib and cradled my son, tilting the bottle so he could leach the last few drops from its plastic milk bag. His lips were puckered, sucking, but he was asleep. He was on automatic. I felt the same way, I guess. Foot to the accelerator, brake lines cut, life on automatic. Just going. No stopping. One day — and all too soon, I feared — I would be an old man. Bald. Worn out. Married to an old woman. Of course, she would still have her hair. Some things just aren’t fair, it seems.

Fear. That’s what I was feeling. Feeling trapped, too. Jeffery wasn’t planned for. Shelley hadn’t been in the cards, either. There were still mountains to climb, airplanes to jump out of, and universe-spanning empires to build.

But, here I was, holding this needy child. Somehow, all of this had just simply happened. No fanfare. No parade, and no “Look, Ma, I’m marching off to war.” No dragon to slay and certainly no damsel to rescue. It hadn’t taken much, either, to catch me. A look, a stolen glance, a smile, that body, the first nervous conversation, the first date, the second… and now, here I was, my head still caught in the spin cycle. Married with a kid, a mortgage, a yard to mow, a car, bills…

How did this happen?

 ****

The raven twitched one final time. Its eyes were hollow, sightless pits, burned from the surge of electricity that had coursed violently through its body. One fatal mistake, one careless step, and there it was. The end had come. No more mountains to climb, airplanes to jump out of, or universe-spanning empires to build. Just like that, it was over.

Fini.

I nudged the bird with my boot and looked up at the smoking transformer. The power was out for a bunch of people on this block.

Jeffery reached a hand around, groping for my face from where he was securely strapped to my back in his Tommee Tippee Pack Along child carrier.

“Mfp-ag-pf?” he asked.

I took his small mitten-covered hand in mine and squeezed his fingers, “S’ok, Jeffy. He’s just sleeping. Taking a break from ruling the universe.”

Yup. That’s me, I realized. Taking a break from building my universe-spanning kingdom of testosterone-laden adventures. Jeffy, Shelley, they were my mountain now, my wild jump from a nightmarish height—without a parachute no less. They were my empire. Raw, unbuilt, unplanned, un-just about everything. Just there, waiting for me, needing me.

I took one final look at the dead raven, shifted Jeffy’s weight on my shoulders, and trudged on, heading for home, and the mortgage, and the yard, and the car… my universe.

It wasn’t so bad.

I could be lying back there with my eyeballs burned to a crisp.

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