Day 292

They'd mapped out the entire island, not that there was much to it.
You could take a virtual tour through everywhere but the mine.
He just wanted to see how his childhood home had crumbled over the years.
All sixty four of them.

He'd left with his mother when he was ten, the work on the island was all but gone.
They'd bled the mine dry and now there was nothing left.
Shame his father had never agreed, he and a few others kept going back.
They swore there was a vein of gold deep down and they were so close to it.

It was hard for him to recall the last few days before they left, his father was a stranger to them.
His mother had whispered to relatives that the coal dust had gotten to their brains.
There was no convincing them and so with tear filled eyes people left them behind.
He never even came to see them off, just went to the mines at sunrise with the others like usual.

Now all these years later he was going to take the virtual tour and relive those last days.
He held his breath as the first area loaded, the pier where he and his mother had shared a final look.
The tears came faster than he thought they would as he remembered how his father had changed.
Formerly a bright and cheerful man, despite the coal-dust covering his skin became a shadow.

Became obsessed with the mines and the alleged gold vein deep, deep down.
Him and the others spent every possible hour down there, burning weight like paper in winter.
The further the old man scrolled through his old home, the more he wanted to see it in person.
He had this feeling that he would find out what had driven the miners to obsess over an empty place.

The flats where he used to live were mapped out too apparently, or the hallways were at least.
He'd lived in 712, twelfth room and seventh floor that had a great view of the second housing block.
Scrolling along that hallway he found he could stand almost exactly where he had as a boy.
He nearly fainted as he saw his father standing in the opposite building, frozen mid wave.

He looked like he had during their last days there, thin and dirty and so, so sad.
But how could he be there, the island was only mapped the previous year, surely he would be dead?
If his father was alive he'd be over a hundred years old and yet apparently he was standing right there.
Maybe the website makers had put photos of the old miners in as tribute?

That had to be it, what other explanation was there?
He scrolled further through the island to find the others, if they were there then it was a tribute.
He looked into the rooms on he seventh floor, seeing concrete and plants sprawled everywhere.
At a whim he went to the ninth floor, the highest place on the island, to see it all from the top.

The ninth floor was missing, there were meant to be flats there, the tallest flats.
Instead there was only a concrete slab with thick foliage around the edges.
He moved the viewpoint around until he saw a familiar figure, his father, once again.
He looked the same as the other image only much closer and not waving.

He looked to sad, the old man scrolled closer towards him until his father's face filled the screen.
He could see every pore and crease in his father's tired looking face, he could see himself reflected
in his father's eyes and began to feel a gentle breeze around him.
Blinking he found himself standing on the concrete slab where floor nine was, inches from his father.

He had no words, what could you say to someone who by all accounts should be long dead?
What could you say upon finding yourself in an impossible place?
So he said nothing.
His father smiled like he had before he made a joke.

Look at the mine, son, look at the gold I promised.
He held out his hand revealing several chunks of glistening gold, the kind you only saw in cartoons.
Gently he placed the gold in his son's hand and held it shut.
Go give some to your mother, tell her we found it and we'll be home soon.

The old man awoke on the floor of his home, by the computer.
His father's face no longer filled the screen, only the grey slab of floor nine and the plants around.
His hand hurt where his father had held it but he was holding something.
Slowly opening his hand he found he had no gold.

He held his father's ID card, crumpled, coal-stained and faded and three teeth.
As he stood he saw black footprints leading from the computer, down the desk and out of the door.
So his father had come home after all.