The Test

Eighteen

Two weeks later

Lucas

Watching his past self is always painful, and sometimes he doesn't know why he does it - to torture himself? - but he does nonetheless. It helps, to know he has dealt with grief before, and so can again. He steps into the glass box, apprehensive and more than a little scared. "Holograph activate."

~

"Lucas?" A plump older lady with a wizened face and thin grey hair twisted into a neat chignon, save for a few curls falling from it to frame her face, walks up to him. Her arms are held out and a broad smile lights up her face as she sweeps him up into a bear hug. "Gramma?" Lucas asks, perplexed. This is a hologram. She shouldn't be here.

She is, nonetheless.

"I'm here, abuela," he says into her shoulder, using the Spanish name for 'grandmother' that his father had taught him to use from a young age, since his father's mother, and therefore his father, was Mexican, descended from those of his family that arrived from Mexico to what was then the United States almost two hundred and fifty years ago, before the war between government and immigrants was waged and lost, which caused the nuclear reactors to burst.

He remembers, with a twist of pain, that he only called her Gramma, the Americanised nickname she hated, when she wasn't around; the term Abuela was used only when she was in the room or within earshot.

His grandmother pulls away from the hug somewhat reluctantly, eyes sparking with excitement and mischief. "Oh, Lucas, Andreas cannot wait to see you!" the lady cries, turning away from him but grabbing for his hand and pulling him along. The name slams into him like a battering ram, knocking all the wind from him. Andreas. That's what this is about. He nods, numbly trailing after her. They are in a large courtyard lined with ancient flagstones that ring with their footsteps.

They go into the old farmhouse in which his Abuela resides, set in the midst of rolling fields just west of the border into New Mexico, Lucas smiling at the comforting sight of lamps burning in the windows, emitting a soft glow that affords immediate - false - reassurance to his mind, now plagued by the fear of what is to come. He has seen this before, has lived this before, and it does not end well, real or not. For any of them.

The kitchen is sparsely furnished, the table - old and sporting a cracked surface, worn down with years of use - the main feature, aside from the range in the corner, which gives the room, and often the house, especially in winter, all the warmth they need. Andreas, upon seeing Lucas come in from the hallway, stands up from the table and embraces him. "Brother," he murmurs, holding tight to him as if he will never let Lucas go, and Lucas has to push down a wave of sadness because it hits him afresh that this is just a simulation, that he will never really see his brother again, except like this, here, forever playing out this scene.

If Lucas is said to be the spitting image of their mother, (which he often used to be by his grandmother's friends and acquaintances,) with his dark blonde curls and sharp green eyes, then his brother Andreas took after their father. His chin-length black hair accentuates the thin length of his face, high cheekbones and cobalt blue eyes that sparkled with perpetual mirth. This, too, hits Lucas like a punch in the chest, full of pain and the inevitable realisation that this cannot last.

The brothers sit down at the table together, each tucking into a warm bowl of stew that their grandmother had lovingly made a few hours prior from ingredients she grows in the fields beyond her house. Mundane conversation ensues; they stay away from painful topics, like Andreas' pending conscription into the army, or the fact that he is to be posted on the front lines and tasked with hunting down the last of their enemies.