Date: N/A
Dimension of the Heavens
Time: N/A

As I sit here in this chair, I find it hard to concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing.  Everything in my head is blurry, as if my brain got squished together on the way up to this place.
Not like I have much of a brain left, anyway.
When someone dies, they are sent up here to live in harmony with their relatives for the rest of eternity.  But before they can, they have to write an essay about how their lives came to an end, and how they plan to spend their time for the rest of eternity, just to make sure no one is an evil terrorist person.  Then they get sent to hell.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.  Thank god this essay isn’t graded.  As if I, Brandon Cole, would ever have gotten a good grade on any essay, especially something this important.  As I try to look through the bleak, blinding light that surrounds me, I see all the different people whose lives ended on the exact same day that ours did.
And by “ours,” I mean mine and the person’s who; shouldn’t have come into my life in the first place, and somehow got us both killed at the same time, even though I didn’t do anything.
Francis Reid himself.

August 3rd, 2093
Tucson, Arizona
4:31 A.M.

Rebo’s had always been my favorite place to go as a kid.  Now, at 25 years old, I was a grown man and felt I could make my own decisions, like how/when to spend the little money I had.  This was an important quality in my life because my parents had been killed in a hovercar accident, and my older brother, Jacob, had gotten engaged at age 19 and had gone to Mars to live the rest of his life with his fiance.  Long story short, at this point my family has no idea that I even exist.  And as soon as they went, so did their money, meaning that I couldn’t go to college (I had bad grades anyway, so who cares).  So now I had an afternoon shift at Rebo’s diner, and would usually go there early-morning for nostalgia’s sake. 
The morning of August 3rd was an especially cold morning with a temperature of -3 degrees C.  It was cloudy, as usual, and the city generators had already started their daily suction of energy from the Earth’s core, as usual. 
You guessed it, us humans had blocked out the sun.
It was pretty inevitable, with all those gaping holes in the atmosphere caused simply by nobody ever doing anything to stop it.  And then there was the turbulence of all the protests, and the riots, and the global warming; basically the governments of the world just had to block it out.
Anyway, although everything was going as planned, I thought that there was something about today that was going to be slightly out of the ordinary.
Slightly out of the ordinary, ha, what a vague description of the words that I could use to describe the events of that day.

August 2nd, 2093
Avra Valley, Arizona
8:52 P.M.

“FRANCIS REID, THIS IS THE PIMA COUNTY POLICE.  YOUR RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED ON ALL SIDES.  YOU HAVE 3 MINUTES TO SURRENDER YOURSELF OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”
‘Ok, Francis, t ime to think.  You’ve gotten out of this situation before.  You’ve been a wanted criminal ever since you fell for that stupid bribe with that gang in Phoenix.  Now, all you have to do is go into their custody, and then somehow hijack their hovercar like you did last time, and then…’
I knew it wasn’t worth my time to think of a non-original plan.  The cops that were outside the house had known me ever since I was tricked into slapping an officer in Phoenix, and boy did they remember the time when I eluded them in their own vehicle.  But this was going to be different.  This time they knew my tricks, and they knew how to avoid falling for them as well.  Especially Officer Kent, who was in no mood to lose me again; there is nothing he would like more in the world to see my head hanging on his wall like they used to do back in the 20th century.
But one thing they didn’t know was that in the attic, there was a beautiful hovercar from the 60s, conveniently waiting for me there as if it were expecting me to get into a situation like this.  It wasn’t too fast, but hey, it was a hovercar (don’t ask me how the previous owners of this house got it up there, because I don’t know).
But my time was running out.  I started running down the hallway to the stairs which led to the attic, just in time to see Fatboy Kent running up the stairs to greet me.  He had a look of angry, determined hatred in his eyes.  I turn and run up the attic stairs to the hovercar, but Kent fired and the bullet hit me square in my left calf.  I gritted my teeth as the white pain surged through my body.  Holy hell, that hurt, but now I had the high ground.  So I jumped on top of Kent while he kept firing like a maniac.  I feel the heat of one of the bullets go right past my face.  He’s strong, but his hands are sweaty, so I snag the weapon and start firing at the other officers coming up the stairs.  As Kent started getting up, I punched him in the nose (man, that felt good).  With Kent out cold and most of the other officers on the ground in excruciating pain, I limped up the stairs to the hovercar.  I got in, pressed the on button, and started flying upward.  I crashed through the ceiling, and the car made a weird noise, as if the engine has just broken down, but I didn’t care.  I’m free!  I started flying towards Tucson, where I didn’t think the cops would be able to find me, but as I draw nearer to the city, I hear the sirens starting to catch up on me.  I ram the throttle to full speed, but then I remember the engine.  Suddenly, it explodes, and sends me and the hovercar falling down into a peaceful darkness.

August 3rd, 2093
Tucson, Arizona
5:27 A.M.

I hated Tony.  I mean, I didn’t hate him, but I hated when he made me do these things.  He was the captain of the football team, and one of the stongest people in my school.  His muscles usually gave him power, but while he was in college, he took things a bit too far, so now he was another one of those outcast people working part-time shifts at Rebo’s.  He still had his strength, though, and most of the times I went there, he forced me to do most of his chores.  So today, I was controlling the floor cleaner while he was drinking a shake that I made. 
So stupid, I think, as the cleaner makes that trademark whining noise as it slowly drags itself across the floor.   “Hey Brandon!  Move that thing faster!  My shift is almost up!”
“Alright, alright, I’m trying.” 
Shortly before I finished cleaning, I started to hear a high-pitched shrill coming from the cleaner.  “Hey Brandon!  What the hell ‘you doing to the cleaner!”  Tony screamed. 
“I’m not doing anything, it just started whining.”  I said. 
Suddenly, I realized that it wasn’t the cleaner that was making this noise, but it was the shrilling of sirens outside.  Then I see cop hovercars, and a short, stocky man covered in dried blood doing a limp-run down the sidewalk.  Although his face was in a terrible grimace with one of his cheeks completely swollen up, I immediately recognized him as the man who they’d been talking about on the news. 
Francis Reid.  And he was heading in the direction of the diner.
Tony started staring out the window, watching the events.  I in the meantime, had ran into the kitchen and gotten down quickly.  I peeked out the door and watched the man, or Francis, come into the restaurant.  “Hey, you!  You’re the guy on the news!”  Tony yelled.  He then jumped onto Francis and started to put him into a chokehold.  But Francis had a gun, and shot Tony on the shoulder.  Tony fell down, screaming, and then I noticed Francis running toward the kitchen entrance.  The sweat started running down my face; I honestly thought he was going to shoot me too.  As he ran into the kitchen, he sees me there, and says, “Here, take this,” and then hands me one of his guns. 
What the hell?  Why was he suddenly so sympathetic towards me? 
The sound of several cops entering the diner answers my question.  Or maybe it was Francis saying, “You’re gonna help me get out of here.”
Nononono, this isn’t happening, I thought.  Why me?
Tony started screaming at the cops, “He’s in the kitchen!  He’s in the kitchen!”  And then they came in, and started firing like crazy, and so did Francis.  Then they saw me, and started firing at me too.  I had a gun in my hand, so they probably thought I was with him.  So what did I do?  I fired back. 
Yep.  One of the stupidest decisions I could have ever made.  But hey, I was scared, what else was I supposed to do?

August 3rd, 2093
Tucson Mountain Park; (The Outskirts of) Tucson, Arizona
2:07 A.M.

I honestly don’t know how I survived the crash.  I came to at the back of an alley, and realized that the cops had missed me when they had scanned the car for traces of my whereabouts, probably because I had skidded so far down the alley away from the crash when I landed. 
Speaking of skidding on a hard concrete floor, I suddenly realized how much pain I was in.  There were cuts and burns all over my body, but my cheek hurt the most.  I touched it, and winced when it felt like an oversized baseball.  How was I going to get away if they found me?
I looked at my hotch (short for holo-watch), and found that it was almost one A.M.  Then I turned to the hovercar.  What a rueful sight it was, all banged up and on fire, and definitely not supposed to be flying through roofs of houses, I thought.
Since the crash, I had been limping my way through town and was now limping through the Tucson Mountain Park, part of the Saguaro National Park, which was most well-known for being one of the few forests left in the U.S.  God damnit, today is not going well for me, I think as branches start poking me on all sides.  At one point, I wasn’t really looking where I was going, and I sort-of fell/slid down a hill.
That hill had a lot of rocks on it, believe you me.
Anyway, the walking continued for what I thought was hours on end.  My cuts began to hurt more and I began to think that every tree that I saw was the same tree; that I was going in circles.  So I thought I would climb one to see where the city was.  I started to climb one, but then fell off about halfway up, and landed hard on my back.  It hurt so much that I couldn’t even scream.  I felt like I had broken my back.  I lay there for the next couple of minutes, and then got up.  Another bruise to add to the collection, I thought.  Maybe I should try a shorter tree.  So I limped around for about another half hour and then finally found the shortest tree possible, and then started to climb it.  The sky was starting to get a bit lighter every minute, so I would probably be able to see the city better.  As I was nearing the top, my grip suddenly loosened, and I fell about three or four feet.  Oh.  My.  God that was close.  After a few minutes of overcoming my paranoia, I started again to climb the tree, this time a lot slower.  At last, I finally arrived at the top.  I started to rotate my head as far as possible to try and find Tucson.  There it was!  Directly behind me.  Maybe I had gotten lost after all. 
I quickly climb down the tree and start running toward the Tucson.  I tripped at almost every step, but I didn’t care.  At last I saw a break in the trees, and I jumped right through it.  I landed on the side of the road, not with very good balance, but luckily on my feet.  I stopped for a minute to close my eyes and breathe in some fresh, polluted air, which then reminds me of consumption, which then reminds me of how much my stomach has been imploring me for food. 

August 3rd, 2093
Tucson, Arizona
4:35 A.M.

When I wasn’t yet a criminal, I used to live here, and my favorite restaurant was this place called Rebo’s.  So I decided, why not revisit my youth for a little bit?  People might recognize me, but hey, food’s food.
I started to wander around the city for a while until I saw a place I actually remembered.  It was one of the city generators, near the high school, and it had just started to function for the day.  The diner was only thirty blocks from there.  So close, but so far, I thought.
It had taken me almost an hour to get to three blocks away from the diner.  But I was almost there, two blocks remaining.  So close, one block remaining. 
And then I saw it.
Tucson police station, sitting one block away from the diner, and walking out the door was none other than the police chief and Fatboy Kent.  “Look at what he did to my nose!”  Kent said.  “I demand a further investigation!” 
“We’ll investigate when we investigate,” said the chief.  “Right now we have other issues on our hands.”
Apparently Kent now wanted me dead as soon as possible, which might be soon, I thought, because they were now walking towards me.  What do I do?  I tried to hide my face in my hood.  They were getting close.  I walked right by them, and they didn’t seem to notice, until I heard Kent turn around.  He had noticed my limp.  “Hey, you!  Stop!” 
I stopped.  I heard Kent’s feet stomping loudly on the ground behind me.  I looked down at my feet, just in time to see Kent’s right in front of mine.  He pulled up my hood.  I looked up to see him grinning an evil grin at my face.  “Surprise.”  I said, and slammed my fist into his nose (that felt even better).  Kent fell down in pain, and the chief suddenly pulled out his gun and started firing at me.  My heart started pumping like a machine gun.  I don’t know how he missed me, but somehow I managed to pull Kent’s gun out of its holster and start firing back.  I hit him in the thigh, and he too fell down in pain.  Almost all the windows of the station were open.  “OFFICERS!”  yelled the chief.  “FRANCIS REID IS OUTSIDE THE BUILDING!”
I heard what I thought was a lot of commotion going on inside the station.  I put the guns into my jacket, and then started to run in the direction of the diner.  I heard the shrilling of sirens right behind me as I ran up the steps and opened the door.

August 3rd, 2093
Tucson, Arizona
5:30 A.M.

Okay, maybe I should rephrase my saying of “I didn’t do anything,” but honestly, I was acting on instinct.  I killed a few people that day, but I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to.  After we fended the cops off, I started to stand in horror and gaze on what I’d done.  Then Francis grabbed me and said, “Come on, we gotta run.”
We ran outside and got into one of the cop cars.  We heard sirens coming from the police station about a block away.  I sealed my seat belt and started the car.  Man, that thing had horsepower.  We got up in the air just in time to see the other cop cars pulling out of the station garages.  I rammed the throttle at full speed, and the hovercar sped off.  I rounded each corner with ease, trying to make my way toward the eastern part of the Saguaro National Park, where we could be able to fly without having to make so many turns.  We were nearly there when I noticed that Francis didn’t have his seatbelt on.  “Aren’t you going to seal your seatbelt?”  I asked. 
“I didn’t have time, we’re being chased by the cops, you know.” 
“Just seal it!”  I said, almost hitting a building as I rounded a turn.  “You could get killed!”
“Fine, but stop  worrying about my safety, I’m a criminal!”  Francis said.  As he was sealing it, “Watch out!” 
I looked forward to see that I was about to smash into a building.  I floored the brakes so hard that Francis flew out of the car.  He landed on his head, his neck instantly snapping.  And then he just lay there, motionless.  How ironic it was, to have him spend half of his life as a criminal, and then die just as he was about to follow the rules.
“Holy crap!” I yelled as I saw a bullet fly from one of the cop cars into my engine.  It made a funny noise, and then died.  The hovercar then started to fall, and it landed with a hard thunk on the street. 
“GET OUT OF THE CAR AND PUT UP YOUR HANDS.”  I did.  I didn’t want to, but I did.  I saw a whole lot of cops standing beside the car with their guns drawn.  Two of them approached me and laser-cuffed me. 
Then something weird happened.  One very fat cop, I have to say, who looked like he was having a nervous breakdown and had a very painful-looking nose, pointed his gun at me, and shot me in the head.  I was sure he was going to get fired after that.  Shortly after I watched the bullet enter my head in between my eyes, everything went black, and then I found myself in a very large and brightly lit room, sitting in a chair with a desk in front of me.