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Prologue
Posted By: Hardballer<fletcher.cruicksh.00@tased.edu.au>
Date: 9 September 2006, 11:58 am
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Sydney, Australia, Earth – 2536
Jamie Garland ran his fingers through his longish blonde hair. Time at the office seemed to run in slow motion, the depressing flip-side of the hackneyed proverb: "time flies when you're having fun." He'd stopped working nearly an hour ago, and now he sat watching the boss's new desk assistant. She was cute, bordering on gorgeous, and he'd had a fascination with her all day.
'Six o'clock…' Jamie sighed to himself, 'Time to go home.'
But he didn't really want to; he dreaded going home to his flat-mate, Rob. Rob was the polar opposite of Jamie and the two had been best friends for as long as Jamie could remember… Rob was lazy, and slightly insane. Usually when Jamie arrived home, Rob had either set fire to something, or gotten extremely drunk, sometimes both. Besides, he'd just worked up the courage to ask the new assistant what she was doing after work. He could go out on the town for a while, surely people stopped wiping Rob's arse when he was four, why should Jamie have to look after him?
He got up, packed documents into his brief case, and flung his jacket over his shoulder. The woman, whose name Jamie didn't know, was doing the same, and he was halfway across the room, bearing down on the woman, when she leant over to his boss and kissed him on the cheek, before walking out of the office.
Shit. God hates me. Thought Jamie as he tactfully kept walking right past, and left the office as well.
* * *
Jamie punched in the key code to his apartment, the red light on his door flashed to green, and the door yielded to his push, allowing him to hear the loud music within. Jamie sniffed; smoke, but only pot smoke, that wasn't so bad. He walked into the lounge room, and stopped in his tracks. There was sea of stuff everywhere, mainly clothes, the couches had been shoved up against the wall, and lying in the middle of the devastation was Rob, smoking a joint and listening intently to a piece by the classical composers: System of a Down.
'Rob.'
No reply
'Rob!'
Jamie picked a shoe from the wreckage and hurled it at Rob. It missed miserably, but gained Rob's attention. He sat bolt up right and silenced the music.
'Hey Jimbo!' exclaimed Rob.
'Rob, you asshole! What is this? Huh? What the hell is this?!' yelled Jamie, waving his arms at the mess.
'Just packing, mate.'
'No, no. This is unpacking, Rob. What are you packing for anyway? Do I want to know?'
'Steady on, I'm off to visit the family in Melbourne, I'm leaving in a half an hour.' Rob thought momentarily, and then followed up with; 'I should have bought you a cat or something, to keep you company.'
'Oh yeah, 'cause I really need something to piss all over the house and destroy the furniture in your absence.'
'Shitty…' said Rob, rolling his eyes, 'What happened to you today then? Get dumped by a woman or something?'
Jamie deflated; Rob could read him like a book.
'There's a new girl at work…' admitted Jamie.
'She hot?'
'Very.'
'Yeah? Shi-bam man.'
'She's also very taken, appears to be screwing the boss.'
With that, Jamie waded to the kitchen and began defrosting a pizza. Rob appeared at the door and leant against the wall.
'You know, I've been thinking.' said Rob.
'Oh the horror.'
'We need a change. You've been really stressed lately, your job sucks man. And I just have to get out of this shit-hole of a city.'
'Before you ask, no, I'm not going to live with you back at the farm.'
'Ha ha! No no no. I was thinking the military.'
'What?'
'The military. Come on, forty five grand a year, you make -what?- seventeen?'
'Sorry? One more time, it sounds like you're saying "the military", and I know that couldn't be, because at least minimum wage is better than death!'
Secretly, though, Jamie was inclined to agree… He and Rob had two old friends who were lucky and just returned to Earth, and now enjoyed a large payout from the UNSC. They had finished their service a year after the outbreak of open war with the Covenant, in 2531. Both of them agreed; it was only a matter of time, maybe still a few decades, before the Aliens reached Earth.
Rob was still giving him that look.
'What have we got to lose?' said Rob
'Rob. Those stories that Adam and Claye tell us, that's what it's like out there. I'm not going ok? It's suicide.'
'Well, how 'bout you think about it while I'm gone.' Rob finished his packing then bid good bye to Jamie, 'I'll be back in a few days.'
'Yeah, have fun mate.'
Rob walked out of the flat, he poked his head back in the door.
'Oh, and Jamie?' he said, 'Women love a man in uniform.'
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