After It's Over Ep. 2
Episode 2: One Man's Fate
Reece Daniels grew up in flyover country. He was the youngest son with only one other sister, Cassidy, ahead of him. She was 8 years older than him and to be honest, he wasn't supposed to exist. Surprises do happen, but this one involved a surgical procedure from his dad that must have not quite taken, or miraculously reversed itself. This doesn't mean he wasn't loved, he grew up in the kind of home most people dream about. Two parents who were not only loving, but also fair and always giving him just enough rope to make a few honest mistakes, but not enough to hang himself.
His sister and he had been close, but he lost touch with her after she left home. She took jobs that left her on the other side of the world and she didn't make much of an effort to make it back regularly. Reece was one to talk, as he lived a busy life himself and in recent years was on the road as much as half the year. He worked hard and achieved his dream of becoming a scout for professional basketball. Most of his work was in Europe, and his passport was full. In the Spring of 2020, when the pandemic broke out, all of his scouting opportunities were canceled and he caught a flight back to the US before travel got really tight.
They had lost their dad several years earlier to heart disease, but their mom was doing well, and had many friends through her church and community. Reece did his best to stay in touch and see her a couple of times a year when he was back in the US. Unfortunately, the holiday season of Thanksgiving and Christmas was a busy season for him, with basketball seasons worldwide all going on. Because of this, he always seemed to miss Cassidy when she was visiting.
His mom had always been the healthy one, the one to take care of everyone else. Reece couldn't remember a time when she was ever seriously ill. That's one reason it was a complete shock when one of her friends from church reached out to him to let him know she was in the hospital with Covid. He caught a flight the next day, but because of Covid restrictions, they wouldn't let him in to see her. She was already on a ventilator when he got there and seemed to be fading fast, and within a week, she was gone. He never got to say goodbye, and because of the lockdowns, they couldn't even properly honor her with a funeral, just a small memorial service.
Cassidy got stuck with travel restrictions and though he talked to her every day while their mom was in the hospital, she wasn't able to get out to come back home. While most of the world was navigating the pandemic in isolation physically, Reece felt like a man stranded on a deserted island. He stayed in the area to try and settle his mom's affairs, but honestly, didn't know where to go. His work would be limited to film study for months and his heart wasn't in it. It was at times like this that he had to admit that he had thousands of "friends" from all of his travels, but no close friends that he could call, and the pandemic was a miserable time to try and connect with people who you weren't already close to.
He threw himself into his mom's neglected house, with a plan to fix it up before putting it on the market. Much of the early pandemic was spent alone, working on these projects or sitting in front of his computer, studying old film for his work, with nothing new to report on. He was grateful to have a job and income, when many didn't have that and he had been good with his savings, with most of his living expenses covered by his work.
When things finally opened back up, he was glad to get back on the road, though international travel restrictions left him mostly scouting university and high school prospects. Going from place to place in the US had never felt more different. Regional differences were always there, but now every place’s responses to the pandemic spanned a wide spectrum. In one city, he might be crowded in a gym with not a mask in sight and in other places, the only place he could watch was out on a playground with severe restrictions on all spectators.
It was obvious to Reece that much of these restrictions were more political than about public health. The virus was real, there was no doubt about that. I mean, he lost his mom to it, but the human response was just as bad in some places. Corrupt and incompetent politicians thinking that they could control a virus was the height of arrogance. I guess they felt the need to do something.
It wasn't until the 3rd year of the pandemic that it became obvious that something else was going on. In many countries, restrictions continued long after they made sense. The fragile global economy had started to collapse before then, but most people in the US didn't see it. A few empty grocery shelves and rising prices were surprising, but in other countries, the access to food and medicine had already reached critical. Reece rode the wave of these difficulties quite well. Traveling overseas teaches you to be flexible and there were few things that he deemed essential to his daily life, but for a society that was used to infinite options, these sudden limitations were quite a blow.
It was at the end of the 3rd year when he finally realized how unnecessary his career was. Sports were fun and the competition was an important part of society that many enjoyed, but when it came down to it, professional basketball was nothing but entertainment born out of excess, just like many other jobs created on top of the wealthiest and most prosperous age the world had ever seen. When that wealth crumbled with hyperinflation and the breaking up of a flat world's global infrastructure, entertainment wasn't essential. In the end, no one told him he was fired, it all just disappeared. His phone stopped ringing, the emails stopped coming and even though sports, movies, music and entertainment still existed, the money to pay the people producing it didn't. He, and everyone else, would soon have greater concerns.