Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Accident's Happen ❯ Chapter 1

Accidents Happen...[or, A day in the life of Chang Wufei]

It's not a sunny day. It's not a rainy day. It's just a day. A day when you wake in the morning, do a little exercise because fitness magazine's tell you it's the right thing to do and by the time you realize it's not that important it's a habit you can't break. Or don't want to. You eat your breakfast, you go to work and you spend the hours behind the wheel of your car, behind the desk at work, behind the mask you're expected to wear that you're told is `professional'. You think you're moving forward, on days like this, but you're ever behind, falling further back. You'll finish work at five, get stuck in the evening traffic, go home to an empty apartment and cook yourself dinner, which will taste like ashes for the simple fact there is nothing you have not tasted before, and no one to share it with if there were. It's not a sunny day, nor is it rainy. It's just a day.

"Accidents Happen, Wufei. You have to move on." It's a voice in a dream, a voice I used to know. It's not real. It's just a dream…

So I wake. I don't bother looking out the window. The weather will not change what I do today any more than it effected me yesterday. It is not important. I move not five steps from my bed to the wall and I take my katana down and begin a slow dance. I dance alone, as quietly and silently as I slept. There is no one here to hear even if I chose to make a sound. No one would know if stopped, but no one will know if I don't…I choose not to. I choose not to a lot of things.

I eat breakfast. A bowl of plain, ashen rice. Uncreative, boring, normal. There is no reason to make anything else, no significant other to surprise. Just me, and I need not surprise myself. Need. Not.

I shower. It's just one of those things you do. No one would know if you skipped one, but you never do because you fear they might and if your fears are confirmed they might discover the truth. That you're not like them, but you want to be. So very different, yet entirely alike. So alike, I take their uniform from the closet and I put it on. The same plain beige and khaki cloth day in, day out. What does it matter what color it is, so long as it looks like you might belong.

I get in my car. I don't know what model it is. I think its white…but it's hard to recall. It's just a car. As long as the key turns we are a team, and when we're not I will find another. It won't mind. It's just an inanimate object, not really a part of the family at all. Discarded when no longer useful.

Morning traffic and evening traffic are somewhat alike. You go to work in a mask created to fool those who look upon you. You come home from work in a mask created to fool yourself when you look in the mirror. Either way, you wear a mask, so what does it matter how long it takes you to reach your destination? You're not really going there. Your reflection is.

So I get to work. I park in the little bay they put my name on. I lock the door, not because I fear someone might steal my car, but because you're supposed to fear it. They tell me you're supposed to a lot of things.

It's a short elevator ride to my office. I pass no less than thirty human beings on my way there. Not one says a word to me, and if they did I probably wouldn't answer. They are not of importance to me, and I am not of importance to them. We are merely faces, one to the other, coming from places separated by more than just space, going to a place that is only space. A small space. Two meters square in the middle of a room of cardboard boxes, each partitioned for a single person to disappear within, only to be seen when there is no other choice but to work in tandem. Not alone, yet completely bereft.

I sit at my chair, I boot up my computer, I take the pile of reports I must complete and I begin my work. It used to be important, because someone used to think it was. I wonder why I'm here sometimes, and then I remember why and I can only wish I didn't.

"Chang!"

She's not intimidating. She just likes to feel as if she is, and some people are weak enough to think it's true. I merely glance up from my work and wait for the rest. She is only my boss. I just do what she says and she leaves me alone. That's why I wait. There's nothing else to wait for.

"The report on the Uranium stolen from Australia last week?" She pushes her glasses back up her nose. She should just get contacts. It would save time. But then, I guess she probably doesn't have that much else to do with her time.

I pass her the report. She goes away. When she does that it makes me wonder if she was ever really there…but the report is gone, and the reality is she is simply not the person I recall. Something more, and something less. One person, trapped in one body, for all time…at least she had company before. Now she's just like the rest of us.

I don't stop for lunch. I don't see the point. At five I leave. I would stay longer, after all there is no reason to hurry home, but it's not normal to work if you're not being paid for it. That's what it means to live in peaceful times. That's what it means to be normal.

I get home to an empty apartment. I loosen my tie, just because I can. I cook dinner. It tastes like…nothing. Even water has more flair. I turn on the television, because there's no one to talk to, so it can talk to me. I don't talk to myself.

There's a man on the television. He's talking about a shuttle crash. A terrible accident. There are pictures of the wreck at the space port. Pictures of the body bags being dragged away, and at some point it registers that they're mourning somebody. Somebody important. The sticker on the wrecked shuttle's side is too familiar. Just three little letters. They don't change anything, but they might just mean something.

Like numbers on the side of a colony. Letters on the side of a shuttle. They're the words of the souls of the long gone; voices that will never be heard again. Will never talk to me again, except in dreams from which no one will wake me.

They're numbers and letters that remind me why I'm here, on Earth, and not there where I came from. Because it's still here, while there is…beyond my reach. I remember why I'm here and I can only wish I didn't.

The pictures are changing. They're shifting from the wreckage to the faces of those onboard. Older pictures, yet they seem new because I've never seen them before. In my mind they're still young, still smiling, still living, breathing. Not burning.

I think I should cry. I even want to. But I'm not that weak. I won't be. I chose not to be.

The man on the news is talking again. Talking to me. He's using those words…

"…a terrible accident….company….move on…"

I turn off the television and move to my bed. It's cold. There's no one there to make it warm. There are no voices to talk to me, no faces to lull me to sleep. It's silent. No one will know if I sleep or not. So for a night, just one, I chose not to.

And in the morning, I wake. It's not sunny. It's not raining. But accident's happen.