Star Trek: “Before the Bell Riots”

He doesn’t spend much time dwelling on the past. The past is painful, is why he ended up in the Sanctuary District in the first place. Better to try and forget. Better to try and make it work. Better to try and make it better. If that’s possible. He used to have more optimism. He knows that. But Gabriel has seen better times. They can happen again. Even here. He has to believe. He does. He believes it’s possible. It has to be.

There’s no way this is how the story ends. No. So much bad news. The tyrants over in Europe, the Middle East. Everywhere. Their wars. Their perversion of science. This was supposed to be the road to utopia! Wasn’t that what that tech guru, Starling? had spent so much time proselytizing? 

And that wasn’t what brought Gabriel, here, to California. No, that was just a coincidence. But he certainly found no paradise, here. 

No, things had been rough, they’d been bad, even before he saw the conditions in the Sanctuary Districts for himself. Oh, yes. He had seen horrors. He’d…

No, best not to think of that. The riots. The…Gabriel sits in filth (there’s really no other way to describe it; there’s no sanitation department, here, and he’s never known a humanity overly interested in cleaning up after itself, only advertising, the false face society wore when it still gave a damn), and he struggles with his past. He yearns to escape it, needs to, but can’t.

He had a wife, they had a son. The riots they found, when they came to live here, in California, when they tried to find a home that wasn’t infested by the breakdown of the social order, the factionalism, the tribalism…But when life works that way and you haven’t found a way to fit in, and all you hope for, yearn for, is a belief that we can be better than this, that we can still help each other, hold each other, regardless of the differences, perhaps even in spite of them…

He still has the nightmares. He’ll always have those. He’ll never be able to escape them. And perhaps that’s why he ended up here. He has to find a reason. He needs to believe. 

He’s heard chatter, here. The man called Webb. Gabriel keeps to himself, and most of the people here are only looking out for themselves, like everyone else. But Webb can’t help but try and organize. Always hustling. Finding volunteers. Even with that family of his. Even with something to protect. Gabriel listens. He’s slow to trust, these days. But quick to hope. He’s looking for an opening.

It feels as if something’s about to happen. Maybe it’s something positive, for a change. He’s ready. Whatever it is, he’ll play his part.