Soul of a Gambler

Part XIX - "Nothing Ends"

Jackson Davis gathered all he loved into the pockets of an olive drab duster. A cigarette case, a multitool, a pair of dog tags, three hundred dollars in good old American currency, and a purple sticky note with a scrawl of his mother's handwriting. He opened the dingy silver case and pressed the well-worn paper to the back cover. It slipped and failed to adhere, it's glue long dried. Thinking on his feet, he laminated the whole thing with tape. 

"You'll always be my Jack of Hearts. - Mom"

He closed the case and took the car keys from his bed. He bid his posters and high school trophies a final goodnight, and left his home for the last time. He threw himself into the driver's seat and pressed his palms to his eyes. She wasn't even in the ground, yet here he was resolved to never allow himself the closure of seeing it through. Could he really go through with it? 

There was nothing left. Even tears had run themselves desert-dry. He started the car. 

"Veronica."

The device magnetized to the dashboard lit up with a brief flash of the Lexington Corporation logo, and faded to a lightly oscillating purple circle. 

"What can I do for you?"

"Take me to Coriolis Starport Dallas."

A lighter dot whirled through the circle, a stock car of data blazing around it's track as Veronica dutifully compared each and every route. It stopped and became an exclamation point, then the screen faded into a GPS display. 

"I have highlighted the fastest route. Please drive carefully."

He would drive however he damn well wanted. That was a fact. With everyone in his life who could tell him what to do, to command him; to advise him, to assist him, all gone his life demanded he take charge. It started as it began, at a hundred miles an hour on a winding Texas back road. 

He reached the starport in under an hour, around thirty minutes faster than he had any right to. In ten more, he took up a spot in a line packed with families toting their entire lives on their backs just as he was. 

The line proved to be the most time consuming obstacle. While Jackson couldn't tell how much time had passed on a conscious level his nicotine craving had gone from a simple afterthought to a thing that had great gravity within his mind. It sucked in all his other thoughts which grew in speed as they approached the singularity. Overlapping stories of evacuations and losses in the Great Siege brushed away the layers of dirt he tried to throw over his own losses. 

"Can I help you?" 

Jackson snapped out of his haze and tried to orient himself to the clerk. 

"Hey uh,"

"Are you a displaced individual? A refugee?" 

"I guess," He stammered, "Well not exactly."

The clerk crossed her arms in front of the exposed portion of her white silk shirt, "Are you an expatriate? Moving to the colonies?"

"Look, I'm just tryin' to get a spot in whatever leaves first to wherever leaves first."

She pulled a drawer out from beneath the desk she stood behind and began to type on a keyboard. Jackson wondered if everything he had would even be enough to cover a ticket off world. Come to think of it, he could barely cover a plane ticket."

"Alright, I can get you on an outgoing ship to Eden departing at seven forty-five. I'll just need your passport, traveling authorization, tax stamp, and fingerprint. We'll also need to run a quick background check and--"