UTOPIA .. An Adventure Story .. Part 2 .. 'Superheroes'

In every day life there are superheroes. Brave, intrepid souls, doing extraordinary things to help other people. If we're lucky we might get to know one or two in our lives.

A TWO HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN

You wouldn't think to look at him that Old Saul is as old as he is. With his long brown hair and his beard flecked with white, you might put him somewhere in his fifties. Only there is something about his eyes, a distant, other worldly way of looking through people and things that might give you the sense that he's much older than he looks. Then again, he has the most wonderful teeth.

It had been at a fateful visit to the dentist, before the Great Meltdown (when there were still such people as dentists, for those who could afford them) that Old Saul (then not so old, he was in his thirties at the time) received an injection of virulent, modified stem cells to his upper left wisdom tooth. It was an experimental trial of a new medicine - aimed at regrowing cavities and reversing tooth decay - which had shown some success in clinical trials on non-human animals.

It happened thus: Saul had a deep cavity in his tooth and no health insurance at the time. His choice was to either have the tooth pulled out (at a cost he could not afford) or have a long and complicated root canal surgery (at a cost he could even less afford) - or to agree to try this new technique at the city's most state-of-the-art medical facility, along with receiving free health insurance, to cover any unexpected side-effects.

Saul was one of about 11,000 patients who were subjected to this medical trial. He never did get to use his free health insurance - not because he didn't experience any unexpected side-effects, but because the Great Meltdown occurred within three days of his fateful dentist visit.

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Of the 11,000 patients who were given this new medicine, around 1,000 survived the decades following the Great Meltdown, which was statistically slightly higher than the rest of the human population. They seemed to be more resistant to disease and the effects of radiation. Around half of those are still alive today. The other half would be too, had they not met with fatal accidents along the way, or suicide. After all, not everyone wants to live for centuries. For some, the pain resulting from the eventual loss of every single loved one, and the loneliness, becomes too much. Others manage to adapt their way of life to their unusual condition. Usually they are quite reclusive.

Old Saul hasn't left the hill for almost seventy years. For long decades following the Great Meltdown, he lived on the road - stopping here and there, sometimes even for a few years, at some refugee community, or some place where the water was less contaminated and other people had settled. Every time, social instability, or a dust, ice, sand or some other storm would come along, driving him ever onward.

Spiraling and zigzagging across the Earth, he'd roamed across three continents, looking for a place to rest - though he knew, better than most, that everything is temporary. Eventually he came to this place - a wooded hillside (in a place which, in ancient times had been called Galilee, and which is still called that by some, as a general region) overlooking a green valley, which has a micro-climate less volatile and more hospitable than a lot of other places. It was here that he built his cabin, and here that he has stayed.

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THE MESSENGER

Barak had humble beginnings. He was born in a cave, in a valley, deep in the mountains, in what used to be called Afghanistan in times long ago. In the area, which is one filled with caves and tunnels - some of which are miles long - remnants of ancient days of mighty battles between Superpowers - there lived quite peacefully, a loose collection of about 12 extended families. Tribes, if you will.

(I should note that if you're reading this in the early part of the 21st century, your notion of what consists a 'family' may still be limited by an earlier conception of what a family is, isn't, or should be or can be.)

Barak had three men who between them fulfilled the roles of a father figure to him, and two mothers, though only one had actually given birth to him, of course. He never knew his actual biological father (who had been a travelling musician passing through the area with a theater group) but that didn't matter as much as you might think it would. It's like that in a lot of places these days.

Barak had many brothers and sisters. They may have been cousins, aunts or uncles, but those words have largely fallen out of use. In these days, everyone is brother, sister - sometimes 'barista', which could be either-or - but not someone who practices law. There aren't many lawyers these days as there are no laws.

It was one fateful night, that a pack of about two hundred hungry roaming wolves attacked the cave where Barak (aged about twelve at the time) lived with his family. Even if everyone hadn't been asleep at the time, it's doubtful if anyone would have survived.

If the messenger from the neighboring valley had been quicker and more adept at evading wild animals, he would have been able to reach his neighbours in time to warn them of the approaching danger - but alas, he was eaten along the way.

On that night, Barak discovered his own instinct for survival. Awoken by a kind of premonition, he managed to outrun the wolves, lose them at a stream and then spend the next three days lodged in a deep crevice in a high, sheer cliff face overlooking the valley - the only place he had ever known to call home.

It was during those three days, that Barak realised his calling in life. It was then that resolved himself to become a Messenger.

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If you missed it, you can read part 1 here:

https://steemit.com/story/@stillgideon/utopia-an-adventure-story-part-1-old-saul

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