Displaced Universe

Solomon Orion ate his fruit loops absently. He was not particularly looking forward to going to work this fine autumn day. He could see the trees outside his sliding glass door. They were beginning to turn all those cool colors.

The man loved living here in Flagstaff. He loved the season changes. He wasn't thinking about season changes or cool colors or even the fruit loops he ate.

Going to work these days meant...one, having to pretend he was happy about Irina Malik being engaged to be married to another man.

Pretending it didn't tear him up inside and most of all...keeping a happy face around the woman when all he wanted to really do was pull her into the nearest utility room and fuck her infamous brains out.

Maybe then, though subtle...it might get the point across...he kinda cared for her. In more than a “I'm your CO and we can't fuck in a utility room because of regs, and I hate that fucking guy you’re going to marry,' way.”

And C, or was it 'B'.

He just didn't have the same zeal for the job when he started seven years ago. He was getting older and his knees hurt more these days and he thought more and more of...calling it quits.

The man didn't think that these emotions started right after he had heard the news...Irina Malik was engaged to another guy.

Things just were different and it was hard...damned hard, to see her each day, smell her scent, feel her warmth as she stood next to him in a crowded elevator and not be able to feel what he had felt before.

Not with out the damned guilt, anyway.

Solomon Orion would never cross over the line where another man's woman was concerned.

He knew..in his soul. He had misused the one chance he had been given to ask Malik the question that had needed to be asked. He had blown it.

Not the other guy or the woman.

Colonel Solomon Orion. United States Army Air Corp.

He trudged to the kitchen sink, rinsing the bowl and glass he had used for his juice absently. He checked the back door...habit...and gathered his keys and I.D.

Another day to get through. He sighed heavily and moved his muscular, bulky frame fluidly through the house and out the door.

Had Sol been more alert...more aware...had his mind not been so preoccupied. He would have sensed the 'difference' at that exact moment.

He did not note his surroundings, however. Not even the fact that the next-door neighbor's yard was not mowed. That the fence separating their property lines was old, several of the wooden planks missing or hanging askew.

A fence that had been replaced just last summer.

That the old woman's immaculately kept garden, usually full of gloriously beautiful blooms of every color and variety...was dead. Uncared for, long since neglected, turning to weeds.

Sol drove automatically as one does, his mind aware and alert but his thoughts...wandering and focused on a dark-haired beauty under his command.

The first thing that made the man...aware...something was different, was odd, was changed...and he even pulled the truck over to the side of the road to stare. The damned gas station was shut down.

Orion always stopped there for his first cup of coffee in the morning. Well, technically...his second but he did not count his own 'coffee' at home as 'coffee'. It was the one thing Sol was not good at. Making coffee.

"What ...the hell?" Sol snapped out of his 'fog' and really looked about himself.

The usually bustling, busy street was almost deserted. An occasional car would pass, granted but nothing like the usual zip, zip of commuters he encountered daily on his drive to HQ.

And even the cars were questionable. No shiny, late models. All dusty, beat up, patched together relics from by-gone days.

And...the damned gas station. It was not only closed but boarded up. And the plywood was old and weathered as if it had been there for years, not just overnight.

Sol had stopped in for his usual Slurpy on his way home. It was his ‘treat me’ moment.

Oh Fuck. Was this a dream. Was he still back in bed, was he going to be late for work? The General would have his ass for sure!

Shit...he hated that. He really hated when General Isley called his ass on the cuff.

Solomon jumped out of his skin, startling.

An old woman came up to the car, having tapped on the opposite window.

His blue eyes peered at the haggard face peering back at him, then, his manners kicked in. He rolled down the window from his side. "....Yes, Ma'am. Can I help you?"

She was clearly a street person.

Solomon Orion had never seen a street person in this area before. Never...but, then...this 'area'. The man chanced a quick look around him before pushing the button to roll down the window.

This area was...not the area he remembered. And this 'street person' was just one of...well, he could count several just from his sweep. Across the street, down the way.

By the gas station, on the far side, two men sit and drank from a paper bag that Sol guessed did not hold a fine burgundy.

"Got any thing I can trade for food? Anything? I haven't eaten in a while."

Sol's heart went out to the woman. He glanced around, then finding nothing of value, he reached into his back pocket, producing a ten-dollar bill, extending it to her. "That do?"

"I can't use that. I need something to trade.” the old eyes angered. “You know that stuff isn't worth the paper it's printed on...what about your watch?"

She had eyed the object covetously.

Sol scowled, shaking his head. "What do you mean...the money isn't worth anything."

"What about this tire thing. I can get a lot for it..." She asked excitedly.

"Ma'am, what's going on here? This is...eh..." the soldier glanced around. Where the hell was this? It sure as hell was not ...his home. "Flagstaff, Arizona?"

"No...it's the Big Apple. Of course it's Flagstaff. The city is no place for a woman to be...and don't you think I know it " the tone was a little testy, Sol had to admit, for such a simple inquiry.

"I’m a little confused here." He looked the woman up and down...holding his opinion to himself. "Maybe I could buy you breakfast somewhere?" he needed to speak to someone, and here was someone...so.

The woman just sniffed and started to walk away, clearly angry with him.

"Hey...take the tire iron." Sol called after her.

She hesitated, then retraced her steps, glancing at the tire iron in the back of Sol's truck...reached and grasped it then headed on about her way.

Sol noted...she hid the item from sight and looked fearfully about to check if anyone noted the 'exchange'.

Sol sat for a long time taking in the streets and people around him, this time...with the eyes of a trained observer.

He tried to sort through all the misgivings, thoughts, hypotheses running around inside his head. He took out his cell and tried Makik’s number. Number one on his dial list.

He got nothing. He looked at the phone. It was dead.

Dead? He just charged the damned thing last night.

Solomon looked closer at the screen. The little lines were all the way to the top of the scale. The cell was charged. Sol pushed button after button.

No contacts picked up. None.

The lines for reception were gone...completely.

What the hell? He looked for cell towers he knew he wouldn't find.

The soldier's eyes swept the area meticulously. He sat, silently musing to himself. He had no idea how long he sat.

This had to be a damned dream. He was still asleep. He just didn’t know how to awaken himself. Because, fuck...this was some dream.

He knew he was not asleep.

Okay...he couldn't use the cell. Move on.

He checked the gas station across the way. There used to be a pay phone over... No, the stand was there but clearly, nothing inside the metal box. Maybe the old lady had taken the phone to 'trade' for food.

This section reminded Sol of a street he once sat on in Moscow, during his Black Op days. His unit was waiting for the arrival of a suspected terrorist group at a run-down hotel.

There was no hotel in sight but the 'feel' of the place was the same.

Solomon Orion was a man of action.

His first instinct was to head for HQ. He checked the impulse, for if something was wrong...and it had hit this spot. It sure as hell had hit the complex first.

He started the truck and drove to Jake Benson’s apartment. He had considered Irina's home but Jake’s was closer.

Or, would have been...if Jake’s apartment building had not been turned into a hang-out for junkies and gang members.

Orion pulled into an intersection, the one that would have taken him to the building he had come to know so well. But the 'feel' of the place made him take a long look and....drive on.

If Jake Benson was in that building at one time, he sure as hell was no longer in there. Jake would not be caught dead in a place like that...not of his own free will.

Sol was completely baffled and unsure of what to do next.

His training would suggest...scout the surrounding territory...get the lay of the land...see what the hell was what, then make a plan.

His senses were reeling and despite what his training told him the man had to know if Irina Malik was alright.

If anyone would know what was going on...the resident genius would. Malik was the daughter of a world-renowned scientist and inventor. The family traits lived on in the beautiful woman.

The solider headed for her street and he did not observe the speed limit, mostly because speed limit signs were few and far between.

But more so because his gut was telling him something was way wrong and he had to find something familiar or preferably...someone, before he totally lost it.

Which was never a good place to be, it was wisely said by those in the know. The man stepped on the gas, his thoughts wondering freely.

This day was going from bad to ‘oh my god’ rapidly.

He screeched to a halt outside Irina Malik's home but Sol knew...he would not find her inside that dilapidated shack of a run-down building.

What the fuck....was going on??

Solomon Orion's world was turning upside down and he hadn't even had his coffee yet.

This had to be one bad mother fucker of a dream...that's all there was to it.

The soldier thought about simply turning around, heading back home, going back to bed except for one small, rather glaring thing...

In the rear-view mirror something caught his attention.

Far down the way, turning the corner...all marching in perfect, military precision, was clearly, an entire patrol of guys dressed in full regulation gear, face masks shining in the bright reflection of a merrily rising sun.

The uniforms were nothing he had ever seen before. They weren’t Russian or Chinese. Bright red, with black trim, made of some plastic looking shit straight out of some old Star Wars movie.

And these guys were all heavily armed, weapons hoisted, ready to use.

Without hesitation, Solomon quietly urged the engine, easing carefully away from the curb so as not to draw undue attention to himself. Even though he felt a great need to be far away from this place as quickly and as quietly as his truck could take him.

He kept glancing in the mirror and while the Patrol had turned onto the same street...they did not seem disposed to think anything of a truck moving on down the far end of the road.

Orion rounded the nearest corner, put the truck in second gear, floored it and...got the hell away as fast as his V-8 engine could take him.