Episode Nine: The Loss of Paradise

    Troy Lombardi awoke to another beautiful morning.  He made his camp on one of the foothills of mountain range the night before.  Green grass that stood higher than his chest covered the hill where he lay.  Only a mile or so up the gentle slope the grass gave way to rock.  The mountains themselves were very rugged looking,  no life grew on their slopes.
    At the foot of the mountains lay a vast plain with rolling hills.  There were occasional thickets of trees, especially along the river.  These clumps of trees had provided good resting spots and welcome relief from the beating sun, as Troy made his way northward.  His original food store had lasted only a week,  but from time to time he would find fruit trees or berry bushes.
    After having an apple for breakfast from a nearby tree, he loaded his pack full of them.  He didn't know what he would find on the other side of those mountains, and he wanted to be prepared for anything.  At a nearby stream he filled his water pouch to the brim and began his climb up the mountain.
    The trip had been unique for Troy Lombardi.  As a wealthy outdoor enthusiast he frequently took trips to extreme back country, but the grass covered plain proved much easier traveling that he was used to.  The going had been easy and days long.  Around midday he would find a grove of trees to rest in avoiding the hottest part of the day.
    By the end of the first day on the plains he wished he had a horse.  There hadn't been any at the lodge, and he probably wouldn't have taken one anyway. It would have been difficult taking it up the stone staircase at the water fall.
    After lamenting the lack of a horse he began to notice other odd things about the endless frontier.   At night when he lay in his sleeping bag he heard no noise except the wind.  There were no crickets chirping in the night, nor frogs croaking in the nearby ponds.  The next day he observed a lack of any animal whatsoever.  No birds flying in the trees.  No mosquitoes in the swamp he circled around.
    He realized that in his journeys animals had always been a sort of companion.  Now he felt eerily alone.  After the first week he despised the plain.  Each day he would run for a few miles in the morning hoping to reach some variation in the landscape.  When he had finally spotted the mountains in the distance it instantly became his goal.
    Having a goal, a visual object to aim at, soothed his frazzled mind.  Out on the plains he could not seem to enjoy himself.  Wandering without aim left his mind to wander.  He wondered what had happened to Lombardi Inc. in the weeks he had been away.  Without him there to sign the papers the business deals he had been working on had certainly failed, and who was now minding the frequent paperwork and reading the reports?  He had no clear successor.  What did the police think had happened to him? Certainly he was reported missing.  Did they think he was dead?
    And behind all these thoughts lurked a constant anger: Dean Senoma.  Over and over Troy planned his revenge, malicious plans to publicly humiliate and forever end his scientific carrier.  One of his ideas included having William make a new program, one that had only barren desert with mirages of water that were really cactus beds.   A normal trial and prison term seemed too ordinary and mundane for Dean's bizarre crime.
    All of his plans had one great flaw, getting out of the Endless Frontier.  Once, before he had spotted the mountain, he stood on the edge of a river wondering how hard it would be to drown himself.  He weighed in his mind over and over the possibility of death verses awaking in the portal.  He had been there for almost a full hour before he moved on.
    Now as he made his way up the rocky slope he enjoyed the focus that came with the struggle.  For hours he wound his way up the slope.  Soon sweat drenched his shirt as the air was heated by sun-baked rocks.  Once he fell and slip twenty feet or so down a gravel slope.  The ordeal tore his shirt, exposing a large portion of his chest, but he didn't let the pain from his bruises and scratches slow him down.    
    Instead of heading toward the lowest point on the ridge line where he could most easily cross, he headed strait toward the peak of the mountain.  And by mid-afternoon he made his way up the final slope.
    The view from the top was beautiful.  The far side of the mountain dropped away in a cliff a few hundred feet high.  As far as he could see in that direction there were mountains of varying heights.  He could also see a few wooded valleys and slopes covered in wildflowers.  A clear lake had formed at the bottom of the canyon directly below him.
    At first he was overwhelmed with relief.  He had feared that he would be faced with another vast plain equally boring as the one he had spent over a month to cross.   There was a land worth exploring, he thought.  Then an odd thought intruded his mind: the explorers in the old days would have thought that prairie a golden find, and these mountains a waste land.
    After the initial thrill of victory, the peak seemed anticlimactic.  He sat down and bit into an apple.  A slight breeze made the air comfortable.  For a long time he looked out at the plain and back into the mountains. He couldn't identify it specifically but he felt something was horribly wrong.  Eventually he came to the realization that the mountains would be just like the plain had been, long and wearisome.  This was not the paradise he imagined it would be.
    The anger, augmented by the loss of his paradise, suddenly returned with overwhelming force.
    “Dean Senoma!” he shouted into the thin air as he struggled to his feet.  “I will find you and make you pay or die trying.”   Troy ran down a short slope and leaped off the edge of the cliff.
    As his foot pushed off the edge, a memory of his father sprang to the forefront of his mind
    Lombardi Inc. was still very new in those days and often struggled financially.  That day one of their trusted business partners had betrayed them, selling his portion of the company to a competitor.  Troy had angrily suggested a few methods of revenge.   His father, however, had remained quiet and calm.  It was that calm quiet face he saw now.
    “Troy,” his father had said, “Don't allow your anger to make the problem worse than it is.  This will set us back a few years, but we will move on.”  And with steady determination he had.
    It isn't the same, Troy thought to himself.  I am trapped and desperate.  But the feeling of disappointing his father didn't go away, and the ground came rushing up to meet him.