Chapter 2: A Grand Waste of Time

Sun-light gleamed powerfully into Isaiah’s vacant eyes. It had always been quite bright and distracting especially now while taking his last look across the rolling sand dunes. The light that shown through hazy green pockets this day was no exception to the rest of them and intensified every photon that passed through worn down O-zone. Only now it did not seem bother his thoughts as strongly.

His shadow was rapidly approaching the sullen dirt. Thumping bursts, muffled by flesh, moved his chest, slowing in tempo until the world was soundless, sightless, and all the useless memories and burdens in his tortured soul were gone from the earth; like its own forgotten winds.

He'd of felt relief if he knew what that was.

This was a world with nothing and no one to hear him so even if he'd cried out of fear of existing no longer, there would be a zero percent chance of anyone to watch him die.

Martyrs of the first dead are the only bare witnesses.

In the distance hordes of the mysterious Brittle-branch tree’s waved along the rising heat. They had mixed in with the hazy sky but their eerie structure was unmistakable. Cursed to be named a tree but never live as one, they were a failed attempt at life. The bark was light and chipped with the slightest touch, too weak to absorb sunlight and would never drink its rays. Water, of course, was out of the question and the 'trees' had quite noticeably given up hope of ever seeing a drop. Isaiah related heavily and could feel all their pain.

The rare vision, one to remember even in the absence of memory, it hit at the most inappropriate of times. He could not comprehend his own thoughts, his mind was empty while the world remained full. Extinction had not quelled the land, but transformed it into mystery and despair.

Seven desperate years spent fruitless combing the ruins of Wasteland for signs of life in search of answers with no questions.

New and erupting question brought on by these the thought of these dead end riddles were held at bay by surges of adrenaline that pumped its way around his body. For a time he felt comfort while falling. The dry stinging feeling of sand in his eyes and constant hunger pitted deep in his stomach had been eased as well.

He knew it all really hopeless to think of such nonsense, especially now, but still convinced himself maybe it was all sort of lucid nightmare even in free fall. It was a strange thing to be rushing towards the ground as Isaiah was, indulging in such a childish fantasy while plummeting to his demise. He neither had the time or power to care any longer.

A darkness settled over his mind and the rare-vision took over one last time.

01001111 01010010 01000100 01000101 01010010

He was shuffling from side to side determined to get comfortable on the hot ashes.

Sitting up, Isaiah looks into the white forest, figuring its distance, wondering if it would be the last horizon he would ever see. 

This happened on a moment to moment basis.

Hesitating at the thought of death makes Isaiah nearly unable to move. Eyes closed shut, he wishes for a second this was unreal, for a second he believes he was in this damned forest before everything else and it was the world that had gone crazy.

He opens his eyes to find green sky and takes the last sip of his water.

Despite making do with nothing more than the small amount of gear he allowed himself, he’d had felt a sense of pride, if he knew what that was, knowing that he must actually be stronger than death itself if the desert could not take him. Along with a keepsake Watch he did not know was a watch, a blanket made from tattered decaying horse hides he knew people must had used for some reason, a few books he could not read, and essential tools to make fires and clean water that he never used; this was all he carried with him when he walked away from the Sanctuary; He was able to make home anywhere he pleased.

With no legitimate past, the mind of this overlooked boy had only to wander, trudging the dunes alone, seeking a holy journey, waiting to be pointed in some direction if any at all.

Staring up at the golden pocket watch for some time, its chain link dangling towards gravities center; the hands of the clock pointing north, wondering if the time is correct while twisting the winding crown. He curses while stomping about, yelling into the Wasteland. 

“HhhhHHHHHRRRAAHAHAHGG!”

Isaiah fell to the ground before giggling at his own foolishness, clutching the watch tightly, coughing nearly the entire time.

There were no ideas to what any of this meant. The responses to actions that had no meaning to emotional outbursts with no cause or justification. He laughed and did not understand humor. He yelled but could not bring himself to know why. He cried but that was for an entirely different reason and certainly not for himself.

This was no ordinary desert any man had ever walked, but a blanketed world, made endlessly of bone dust and cinders that no longer stirred. Gusts of winds that stayed in the beating sun, intensified by radioactive haze scorched everything by day. 

The sun never set on Wasteland.

Skylines made of noxious vapors cast by a marvelous, alien sun surrounded his vision at all times and always reminded him that there is more out in the valley that killed all. Even at night the suns rays bounces off of the toxic upper atmosphere and displayed a sickening green and red glow that could not be turn off.

Empty rivers and ocean plagued the landscape with hollow bodies, all dried or poisoned with no fresh water to fill them. The earth would have soaked it up all up in an attempted to preserve itself for later and gave none to the life it had made. When Isaiah was not looking for people he was looking for something to drink; Anything to drink.

The air had always been pestilent and thick like liquid and choked life itself had and left the Earth completely barren and depopulated. 

Decaying structures falling indiscriminately everywhere like sandcastles from the years of neglect and radioactive blasting, lifted the ash and dust high into the atmosphere adding to the mess.

It was all enough to drive anyone mad.

Many theories had come to Isaiah, only a few correct, and with little proof that made itself available in the miles of burial ground, you could count it as a stroke of genius that anything resembling deductive reasoning could manifest itself inside his head.

He was living as far as anyone (no one) could reason despite going months at a time unaware of how long he’d been neglecting the urge to eat, drink or breathe fresh air.

No one walks where I walk… it was meant for me alone.

A silly thought, though not the only plausible conclusion he had produced. Another, more likely but as equally ludicrous, was that humans had destroyed themselves and that he had been the reason why. This was a grim idea that Isaiah would fight off like the sun fights the night sky; if he could understand such allegories. To think that humans could even do something like this..

A symphony of belly groans always followed these kind of thoughts. It was quickly carried away into oblivion.

He had given up all hope of ever eating. Even if the need arose, the branches of the dead were dry and brittle, not good enough for making spears or a bow and would not be useful considering he had no idea how to make either. It would had been for the best as he would also not know what to do even if a plate of delicious looking food was put in front of him and the fact that there was no one he could learn how to eat.

It continued this way for weeks until he’d come across a town or relic from the past. Often he would squat in old abandoned homes waiting for the answers to come. Scavenging for artifacts became a way to pass the time. Clues to the past; holding no answers, only more questions he barely had words to conjure.

His attention would bring him room to room of every house in all the towns, they all held the same secrets and the same emptiness he’d grown accustomed to.

Staying in one spot for a month, sometime a day or two, he'd try and make whatever sense of everything he saw. Turning ideas around in his head, creating a new story for everything he’d see, but nothing ever seemed familiar. Most of the time, he’d simply guess at something and know he was correct or close. Every so often he was stumped by something so small, so insignificant, that he began to think that he thought too much about what he was thinking about and moved on to only be haunted later by the same thoughts.

Once he was done with the town, Isaiah would set it ablaze so the smoke could grow big and be seen all the way in the distance. Burning down all that stood in the process was a good strategy for getting over most of the riddles that would never be solved. Fire was clean and he understood that well. It also stood to reason that the smoke would alert anyone close enough to see the billows. Though no one ever came, he continued to do this habitually for all the years, learning bits and pieces along the way.

Maybe he’d just always been there, on top of that radio tower, waiting to rot away with the rest of the world.

Destiny it seemed, the great enigmatic mysteries per-ordained by forces unknown (The same mystery that brought him to this very spot), had other plans that sent him on a collision course towards Earth’s surface at terminal velocity.

The horrifying nightmare, finally being recognized as reality in the elongated seconds during free fall, would be ended here. Sudden yet welcomed by the last man on earth in his two-thousand foot plunge from the derelict tower, he was not afraid and embraced the fall like an old friend waiting to take him from his expedition.

Nature at work, but out of order and necessity.

It all mattered little now. Fate or luck had brought him here, the single most important event possibly in any Universe, and weather he knew of this or not, he accepted his place and time in silent requiem, plummeting to certain death.

01001111 01010010 01000100 01000101 01010010

“The Experience of Sentience borne from chaos will naturally bring order. Logic will not prepare you for this; only Imagination or Insanity can make blank walls looks like windows into the Universe, and only the Universe can make a being who knows the difference.”