The Tree of Life (Part One)

Mikhail Vandesky stood on the bridge beside Vladamir, watching the leaden water flowing beneath him like liquid steel – swirling, heaving, breathing as it coursed against the struts of the bridge. Snow flakes fell silently into the blackness. Little descendants of the sky, disintegrating as they touched the river's surface. He watched them, his elbows propped against the bridge wall. He watched how the river enveloped the snow without pause, eating it dispassionately. Destroying it. Eradicating it. There were no second thoughts. No looking back. The river was just doing its job, after all. Something as small as a crystallized rain drop couldn’t stop it. It was a machine; a supple, flexible body of energy. What was in its way would be brushed aside, moved under, over, and through. Mikhail breathed deeply and closed his eyes.

I am the river.

“It’s true, you know,” he said suddenly to Vladimir, standing upright and turning his head. “The world is dying. Not the world itself, but the people in it. Slowly. One by one.”

Mikhail pulled a pack of cigarettes – good smokes; hand rolled and stuffed with the finest tobacco – tapped one out and slipped it between his lips. Behind him, a steady, perpetual stream of pedestrians walked passed; their voices blending into a cocktail mixture of unified static. They laughed. They talked. They cried. Good people. Good citizens. The best and the brightest and the handpicked. Hand-sculpted. They were all his. His children. Conception had occurred through a computer screen, over a stream of ones and zeros, protested by picket lines overseas and bureaucratic bastards spewing propaganda in the halls of the UN. A new race, they screamed! Vandesky is playing God!

Racist, murderer, supporter of genocide. He had been labeled many things. By hateful, vindictive people who were too blind to see he was saving them all. He wasn’t a god. He wasn’t the father of a new race. But he was a catalyst. He had just started something. The human race was weak. Dying. And he felt compelled to fix it.

Vandesky was a humanitarian.

And sometimes the lushest fields were watered with blood.

He offered a cigarette to Vladimir, who refused, and then lit up himself. He took a long drag and pulled the cigarette away from his lips, exhaling heavily. “World leaders have known it for years, Vladimir. They see their citizens. Happy people who are oblivious to there own...imperfection. They don’t realize their children are pollutants.”

“Persepective, Mikhail. It’s all perspective.”

“Sure. But it’s still misplaced. Have you heard the things they call me? I’m practically a terrorist. America and every one of their anti-progressive allies want me dead.”

Vladamir shook his head. “They can’t see past their own egalitarianist noses.’

“Right. The gene pool is a sacred place. It should be pristine.”

Silence. Mikhail took another drag on the cigarette and flicked the ashes off the side of the bridge, into the water, which swept them away like snow flakes. Sighing, he turned the cigarette over between his fingers, breathing in the virile, musty smell.

“This is the twenty-second century,” he hissed, pounding his fist on the wall surface. “Godssakes, they should all know that!”

Vladimir put his hands in his pockets and crossed his legs. “Don't worry about it, Mikhail.”

“How can I not? I'm wanted. I'm hunted. Russia can only be pressured so far, you know. We're a flea on a hot pan. Turn up the heat too much and,” he flicked the cigarette into the water and shrugged, “pop.”

“No one lives forever, friend. Listen, forget about this crap. Let's go downtown for a drink.”

Mikhail shook his head bitterly. “I don't want forever. I want the human race to live forever.”

Vladimir shrugged. “Don't tell that to me.”

His gaze lingered on Mikhail's face for a moment, searching his eyes, looking for any sign of resignation, but found none. Shrugging again, Vladimir hunched his shoulders, lowered his cap to the wind, and began walking back down the bridge. Mikhail watched him go, pushing his way through the crowd of good Russian citizens like a police officer with a riot shield. He shivered as the wind blew around him; cutting at his skin like a thousand razor blades. It was getting colder out. And blacker. He glanced down at the river, roaring beneath him, and rubbed his shoulders.

Hot gin sounded good. So did some company. Maybe he would join Vladimir after all. Get smashed, get laid, and forget. Forget about the stupid politicians and the bourgeois old guard of the world.

Things weren't so bleak inside a whorehouse.