Nothing to say here, except that I AM going somewhere with this. Just wait and see.
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In the early days, the smell of gasoline used to transfuse the air. Generators ran 24/7 in some places, providing what energy and light "vital" establishments needed. These generators were hungry for heavy hydrocarbons.
People who owned personal boats, of which there were many, had grown disgruntled by the time Mark was aware of anything at all. With the expatriate fleet had come a couple of huge fuel Navy tankers that could have provided for everyone, they said, until they could figure away to find oil to tap. Or when they could properly set up a chemical plant to make synthetic gasoline.
And the Admiralty did dole out a ration of gas for people who had jobs considered "vital" to the colony. Though, in retrospect, even that much probably hastened some of the bigger tragedies of his youth, but they simply didn't know. But then, when they discovered that nothing anyone made, not gasoline, not gunpowder, not gun cotton or even black powder, combusted, well...Mark was too young to know anything except that his mother needed to divorce his father.
Well, Markus was not his mother's first husband, Mark's true blood father, but he was the man whom Mark had grown up calling "papa". And he was the father of his second brother, Antony.
Ah, little Antony. They used to be thick as mud, he and Mark. He remembered taking his brother everywhere until, one day, his father left with him. Mark called out after them and he recalled well the look Marcus gave him when he called him "papa" for that last time. The memory still hurt, but it at least taught him to not get attached to any of his stepfathers.
Divorce and family laws were still being hashed out, as the Colony was still deciding which State framework it would adopt, if indeed it would not make one up of its own. So judgement and execution of those judgments still layed with the armed forces. It took them until his mother's fourth marriage to finally give the order to allow Mark's mother to have shared custody of Antony, but they already had achieved that before then.
A year after they left, a year into her third marriage and 5 months into her third pregnancy, Marcus was forced to let him have him. Otherwise, they would have been in danger of starving. But that year had changed him a lot.
The thing was, at that time people needed to relearn how to fish without gasoline engines on their boats and, in the land, they needed to learn what they could and could not live off of. They needed to treat what farm animals that they had managed to bring over like holy relics, lest they die and leave them with nothing to eat in the future. They needed to husband and protect what seeds they had brought over until they had enough to give out without worry that an alien plague or vermin would render all of their crops extinct. They were literally one bad harvest away from eating nothing.
Mark's third stepfather could provide for him, his mother and their upcoming child. But little Antony turned out to be an unwelcome strain that put that marriage on the rocks. But Mark didn't know enough to worry. He had his brother back after all.
He never asked Antony what that first year away from them was like, but even years later when he grew up eating what Mark did his body was still marked by that brief stint of starvation. He came back a quiet boy when he had been a loud happy one. He came back a reserved quiet kid when he had been an open one. He came back smaller than Mark was when he had been as tall as he, despite being a few years younger.
It didn't take long to draw the boy Mark was still sure was inside of his brother, thankfully, just in time for them to watch in amazement as their mother's body produced another of their siblings.
Things started to pick up a few years later. Seeds were handed out and people claimed fields left and right. Boats started to bring catches with more regularity as hard experience allowed fishermen to exploit the bounty of a sea not touched by commercial fishing, and farm animals started giving birth to their next generations. They would be by necessity inbred, and that was a problem NOW, but back then....
Well, back then Mark and his younger brother played around with his third brother. There were other kids around, of course, but, the state of flux in the colony meant that they were never around them long enough to form tight long-term friendships. Not that they were alone in this experience, but it meant that the kids he interacted the most with were his own siblings. And it was grand, fun and nice while it lasted. Because when things got better, Marcus came back for Antony.
And much like Mark, his mother didn't want to let go.
In the end, it was two against one, Marcus and the third stepfather against his mom. Mark lost his younger brother again and, if that wasn't enough, he also lost his youngest sibling when the marriage soon dissolved.
The fourth and last Stepfather was rich. Or what came across as Rich in the Colonies, or so he was told. Because Old World wealth was beyond his imagination. Personally, any man who was front of the line to get one of the newly made houses was someone with more wealth than sense for Mark. But this man at least didn't care that Mark or any of his other brothers were extra mouths to feed. Food and resources weren't much of an issue for him at all.
But then, that was just the price for him to marry his mother.
Deep into her fourth pregnancy, Mark and his brother managed to get together again for a few blessed months. The best years of his life without doubt and something he would swear up to god. Antony, Peter and Mark all played the part of the dutiful older brothers for the last sibling of theirs to be born. They were a gang of snot-nosed little shits, but they were so happy to have each other back then.
And it all came crashing down with the birth of their fourth brother.
Their mother, the woman who had been there, and fought for them tooth and nail all their lives, died shortly after that birth. The Colony had run out of antibiotics at that time, and an accidental infection soon turned necrotic for her. He would never forget the way she cried when she held them for the last time.
Nor how uncertain the future looked for them.
He had been 11 at that time and, to his third stepfather's credit, he didn't throw him out immediately out of the house. No, no, he only gave him "encouragement" to do so until, at 14 years old, he left that particular nest. But then, his childhood ended the second his mother died.
But until that second, when there was someone who was undoubtedly on his side no matter what, when his brothers looked up to him as a leader and he tried his best to not lead them off a cliff somewhere...he still dreamt of that time.
"Wake up," a voice called out, sounding so much like his younger brother used to back when Antony couldn't sleep at night.
"Mark, wake up," the voice called out again, a bit wrong for how deeper and more mature it sounded, but Mark would have recognized Antony no matter his age.
"Wake up, you heavy asshole!" the voice said in frustration and Mark frowned; None of them much cursed when they were children. Their mother didn't like it.
And that's when he realized he had been dreaming.
"Antony?" Mark murmured as he rubbed his eyes.
The morning was still a bit dark, but the sun was starting to peek out of the horizon. His tent was on the outskirts of the Tents, given there was no way he could claim a much better spot, but he supposed he wouldn't be that hard to find. What with fighting publicly the day before.
"Yes, me," Antony said as he handed him a wooden cup. The aroma from it made his mouth water and he took a drag.
"Coffee?" Mark said in disbelief as he enjoyed the bitterness as it went down.
"I am helping it grow on the north hills," he replied with pride, "And they let us have some instead of cash."
"That can't be legal," Mark answered as he got up and winced.
Yep, there were bruises on his arm and torso that hurt like a motherfucker.
"Probably not," Antony agreed, "But it helps me work more, so I don't care. I am going to need that cup back, by the way, so hurry your ass up."
"Jesus, give me a second," Mark whined as he started sipping faster and faster.
"So, anyway, I heard you won a fight yesterday," Antony said as Mark was almost done finishing the cup.
"Not my best fight, but I won," Mark agreed.
"...can you help me out, bro?" Antony asked, for a second looking like he did back when they were kids.
Mark should have known that he would only be here this early to ask something of him, but then his brother always did know how to strike at the right time. He would have been a good fighter himself if he wasn't so mild-mannered.
And small.
At five feet and five inches, Antony wasn't a midget or anything, but he was significantly below the standard of the colony. He had brown hair that had once been yellow like Mark's, as well as their familial nose and brown eyes. He also looked like his own father, but Mark wasn't about to put that against him.
"What does Markus need?" Mark sighed as he drained the cup and passed it back. His brother very carefully stowed it away in a satchel before he nervously licked his lips and nodded to himself.
"Nothing too big," Antony said, "Just some medicine is all. Dad's cough is getting worse and it costs an arm and a leg to get anything."
Mark grimaced; his brother wasn't kidding about medicine being an arm and a leg.
For a brief moment, he was tempted to tell him "no". That he only had enough money to spend on the things that he needed. Which was point in fact true. But then, his younger brothers always turned to him for help. His mother, who he hoped rested in peace if an afterlife really did exist, had always asked him to do so. Because he was big and strong. Because he was capable. Because he was the oldest.
"How much is it?" he found himself asking instead.
And then found himself wincing when he heard the sum.
"W-will you help me with that?" his brother asked him as he had always done; like a dog not sure that his begging wasn't inherently wrong. But then, Antony never took Mark's help for granted.
"Let me just...see if I can fit it into the budget," Mark sighed and, from how his brother's face, lighted up, knew that he would not be able to bring himself to say no.
And so it was his brother went along with him when he packed his stuff up and headed for the merchant streets.
"How much for that?" Mark later found himself pointing at a radio set that he had had his eyes set on for a while now. They were in an honest-to-goodness shack, one made of corrugated steel walls. It was large enough to have been a rather compact home back in Old Earth, but in the colony as it was now? It was palatial compared to the tents.
"Probably more than you can spend, son," a white-haired man over the counter replied, "That's for big boys heading out."
"Well, as you can see, I am a big boy. And not that it's anyone's business, but I am heading out," Mark drily replied.
The man laughed and told him the number.