Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Falling Apart

"If you quit, we lose the house."

"Martha, if I don't quit the company goes under and all those people lose their livelihoods. Once it got out who I was, the company's been losing customers left and right since, and of course they refuse to fire me because they are good people, but I can't do this to them."

"I know Jim, I know..., but my business is in the ground. No one is buying, Jim, if you quit we have no income, we will have to sell the house and.... I don't know live in a tent?"

"Martha, we have four lovely children living on earth who are wiling to help us out, and besides it is just a house at the end of the day."

"I know, that's not my problem, I just don't like the idea of not having that security, and imagine what our association could do with the rest of the family. I mean they are already having trouble as it is. Thomas is already considering moving off world to get away from it, to get away from everything."

There was silence I the room.

Eris tried not to listen, she really tried, but the ability to read minds was just not soemthing she could turn off.

She was sitting in the front room watching the news, but had turned it off when it became too much.

The world was going to hell in a handbasket as the human side of her family would say. Regions of UN controlled earth were crumbling into infighting and chaos, this accompanied by mass suicides and riots made it seem like Armageddon was here.

It hadn't taken long for the end of the world to touch her new family. Martha, who had once had a thriving private business hadn't done any work in months losing the Vir family a good fifty percent or more of their income. Jim was still holding onto his job, but his association with Adam had turned into a PR nightmare , and he was honestly considering quitting his job to save everyone he knew the trouble.

It was heartbreaking to listen to.

She could hear their thoughts as well, the worry and concern and the heartbreak, and the anger.

Mostly the anger.

Not towards their son, but towards everyone for being able to believe that Adam would ever do soemthing like this. The entire world hadn't taken long to turn against a man who had only ever had their best interests at heart. It was frustrating, disheartening, and a great way to make parents lose faith in a system that they had once loved.

Jim Vir had fought for the UN in the Pan-asian war, and last night Eris had found his bronze star in the trash.

The UNSC had discarded their son like so much trash without even bothering to listen to him after everything that he had done, and now they considered him a traitor.

All of the pain their family was going through made Eris hurt tenfold because she could feel what they were feeling, knew what they were going through.

She leaned against the wall as she listened to them talk.

"You know martha, that isn't a bad idea. What if we moved off- world?"

There was a pause.

"Off of earth?"

"Yeah there are plenty of colonies out there we could look into. Think, maybe we could get a Homestead on bramble and do some ranching or farming. You have always loved to work with your hands in the dirt, and so have I. We both have experience, and with how old we are getting maybe it would be a nice way to retire anyway...... or I hear they are opening some new planets on the fringes. I think you and I would make hearty colonists to new worlds."