In My Not-So-Humble Opinion

How deep can your soul be? Is it infinite? Is it willing to take anything that we push onto it, oh so forcefully? How deep is a man's soul really? How much things can you shove down its throat and still get to keep it? 22:00 pm. Dull hum of the emergency vehicle. The driver, stern, trying to make a 2 hour drive fit into 60 minutes. Me, tired, knocked down, staring at my mother's pale face. My mother, asleep, sick, in pain. A pack of souls, rushing towards hope, towards a battle we all wanted to win, but deep inside we knew that we're going to lose. My mother, more than all of us. She was in and out of a conscious state each 20 minutes or so. I felt a sweet syrupy smell in her breath. The smell of her soul preparing for death it seems. I had to hold her hand and stroke her hair to calm her down, just as she did when I was a baby. She was wearing a sweater that I bought her for her last birthday. Oh, the irony. She begged me not to take her to the hospital. Why didn'...

That night, Adrian dreamed about his father. Again. The dream was about the days when his political career was at its peak. He saw himself, just a boy of six, sitting in his dad's chair, looking at all the opened books at the table in his home office, listening to his father speaking on the phone, saying something about the chancellor, and just like each other night before, he couldn't quite hear what was it that he was saying. He remembers the sun coming into the room, peeking through the curtains...oh the sun...the warmth, the color... and than he woke up. Day 3382 without the sun, and things were not looking any better. Prologue. The day before, Adrian got the final order: the dismantling of his Pacifier squad. They were to continue their duties for another month, and wait for their reassignments. The order came straight from the chancellor, and Adrian couldn't help but wonder if the order had something to do with the files he found on the hard drive in his uncle...