z

Young Writers Society


12+

Chapter 3: The Animist

by gingerbeardsan


[1] ‘lost/found’ is an objective noun phrase used to describe a point of information, location, or instrumentation that holds no mass (relative to a thought) in “ALL-SPACE” or “ALL-TIME” and is technically considered ‘GONE’. Only the most extreme ‘lost/found’ items can be recalled by extra-sentient beings through unique mechanisms.

The world spun on and on until its final days. The time had come for Isaiah to leave earth. The world had only known suffering in its time of defection and humanities last trial had finally come to an end as the life left Isaiah’s body when he met the ground. A glimmering, shining piece of hope left for life was gone. The Earth too now spiraled on in the abyss for having all of the sentient life on it extinguished and now lay in space for no one’s validation.

This was an extremely slow process for all things that require any level of priority in the universes eye takes time to process, but this was the most lethargic of all things that the fabric of times needle could stitch.

To Isaiah it had only taken 7 years. For the universe, his entire life had come and gone almost as sluggishly as it took for the universe to process itself before it began.

It would seem that our universe has ended though Isaiah’s story is nowhere near complete. 

You see, it would seem, there was much more going on than was lead to believe and I apologize.

Let me introduce myself.

My name is the Animist. Some call me cartographer, librarian, or any other name that would describe a being that exists in-between space, cataloging the change in matter and it’s relative course to other changes, and so on, and so on until something ‘meaningful’ happens, at which point it is then referred to my ‘higher-ups’ and either becomes a part of the mass of meaning that the universe hides within itself and is ‘lost/found’[1] forever or continues to be nothing at all.

If you are extremely dead set on giving me a name, for closure, I would advise waiting until you create a clear picture of my purpose of making my presence known.

I'll have to make a few things clear before proceeding to the rest of my messages.

I am not ‘me’. I am also not 'I'. To be categorized as a being would be inaccurate. I do not fall into any category of anything any human could understand entirely. I am the difference between a separate bodies and an actual body. I can only refer to myself in pronouns because of my second function.

I create logic. This, of course, is illogical due to my last statement and should not be taken seriously. I would urge you now, however, to assume from here on out it is actually not just possible, but obtusely logical. It would save time and as you will learn this is relative to 'my' interests.

If you should take anything from the previous chapter and this one, it is that Isaiah is not your average human being. Having been 'born' out of nothing with no memory and with an innate ability to survive in a water-less, food-less, sun drenched, radioactive, graveyard for 7 years of his own vocation (which was none), He had learned to cope with his immortality with one guiding question. Who am I? That and being truly ignorant to it all.

He was alone for all 7 of those years never knowing another person than himself. Had he woken up a second earlier in his life he would have met the last real human in that universe right before she inevitably perished.

It was a shame because she did care for Isaiah and he would had learned about humanity infinity. Even with the boy (at the time) being unconscious since the day her oldest son found him in the dust. It had been a particularly red day out. Out in front of their home, he was bare but a black cloth darker than nigh-time lay draped over his body. This was while the wind still moved and dispersed toxic fumes into the upper troposphere, before the death of the last ‘real’ human, and then the other 7 years before the death of the last ‘last’ human.

He would never know the kindness of this woman or her son.

The dark drape floated endlessly into the crimson sky.

Isaiah had remembered a lot about this life during the last moments he had one. It had not been very long. It had not been pleasant by any definition. Most times he was confused, and others he was convinced he was crazy with not knowing what crazy was. Had he understood what the word crazy was to the feeling, he would had probably agreed that that was the exact things that had happened to him. In fact, he believed that he was on the verge of coming up with a word for this feeling he had right about the time he fell and landed dead. Oddly enough, the word he had come up with sounded a lot but not entirely like the word 'Love'.

Before we move on there is an additional subject I want address. From here on out, you may assume that I am the narrator of Isaiah’s journey. You may also assume that I exist as an entity in 3 dimensions. While these statement are totally inaccurate and impossible for any of this to make sense, this is again simply to save you some time connecting the delicate intricacies that hold Multi-dimensional space together to the words you are currently reading.

Enjoy!

01001111 01010010 01000100 01000101 01010010

Isaiah laid on his back staring up at the moving arms. They were waving. He waved back and smiled for the first time ever

How did he know what waving was?

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

His back, of course, connecting everything else by default, caused the rest of his body feeling trampled. Comparing to what tortures were happening inside his skull though, he was relieved to feel a little physical pain. It was all agonizing to him and he soon realized the 'arms' were something else entirely so he put his arm down as not to seem foolish.

How did he know he was acting foolish?

The light was blinding. He put his arm back up.

Isaiah noticed he was smiling then began to frown but that seemed to hurt more so he returned to a stalwart expression that he was commonly more comfortable with.

He'd play around with this function later.

Taking a minute, he looked at the not-arms once more.

Instantly and painfully he shot up into a sitting position as though he was testing the gravity. It was working pretty well and at an almost uncomfortable 1-G. He thudded down on his back. Death was not as easy as he thought it would be.

Was he actually dead? What was death? Is it supposed to hurt this much? If he understood his own thoughts, all of this is what he'd be thinking.



Isaiah attempted a second sit-up and this time was different.

This time he was positive he had died.

Standing up now, he brushed the dirt off his bare body. The dirt felt strange. The coarse particles and ash that was deeply mixed in had changed and became long and smooth. It looked like nothing he’d ever seen before, and it made him question something he hadn’t thought before.

Maybe there are other sands.

Maybe it was important to his questions. What if he found more new sands and he would never know why it was new. He felt nothing on the matter, silently assessing the smooth sliver. One might expect to feel angry or confused, maybe even love for the new sand, but all he was able to do was examine it closer.

It smelled funny. It didn't fall like sand. It was strange.

Maybe this sand wasn't sand at all. Ultimately he decided to call it not-sand and to continue looking at all the other disorienting things that popped up in his field of vision.

There was no field of vision. The outer place, horizon, was out of view. He had to look way up to see the sightless edge.

His eyes adjusted to the light once more, excruciatingly slow. It took exactly One-hundred-and-twenty-three seconds to make the connection and Isaiah immediately understood what it was he could not explain though little words still came to mind.

01001111 01010010 01000100 01000101 01010010

He was alive. This he was positive now. He had known pain from the first day of life. He understood that well when he fell down a stair case the first year he managed to leave the house. Isaiah remembered the questions that lead to slight knowlage, but nothing more than fragments of pondering nuances and half-phrases like ‘hand the wall thing” or, “there are falling here”.

He had lost a lot of blood and sustained severe head trauma that day but had miraculously survived the whole ordeal.

When considering chance, an alternative belief structure, you might say the odds we’re really stacked on him biting it there, but we should always consider even the most unlikely chances exists in a universe with limitless possibly. Unlike his last act on earth, he would survive.

At this time in the midi-logue’it is well noted that Isaiah was, at the moment of looking up, experiencing a miraculous, unlikely feeling of excruciating peace and magnificent horror at the same exact time. And in one Nano-second he forgot all of it and understood that what he was in fact looking towards was crystalline, blue, nimbus sky.

All of this was ten times more painful than the first falling indeed.

01001111 01010010 01000100 01000101 01010010

After a momentous amount of time Isaiah decided that he had learned enough to not feel the pain of learning things. He was relieved to find his 'body' liked that idea as well. It liked many things besides hurting or pain, but he accepted them soon like of his physical pains. It was bearable, however, this was the first time a thought had hurt his actual body. He promised his body he wouldn’t do it again and his body somehow instinctively knew that to be a lie.

Showing no sign of distraught or adverse effects from the thought, he went up to the tree’s bark and rubbed his hand on its rough surface. It felt alive. It smelled alive. The tree was happy to him. If trees could talk, they all would have cheered upon his arrival in their forest. Trees however do not talk, so instead they waved in the warm wind at him. He was right, they were very pleased that his smiling no longer injured him but instead invited their honesty.

His true stolid and resolute face looked aimlessly on as this interaction took place on the outside.

“They are happy to see you, Isaiah.”

This sound was no good. It was harsh and unbalanced. There was an abnormal tonnage and a lot of similar smaller sounds inside of bigger sounds that in the end made no sense to his frail, now growing, mind.

“This must all be very confusing to you”

Isaiah became confused, really perplexed. He had not expect the same sound twice. It became apparent he would soon have to face this sound lest the questions get too heavy in quantity all at once.

The sound came from behind him. Turning to see what caused the noise he found it to nothing more than a happy tree among its family.

Wrong.

There was something behind the tree's. Something was moving along the vertical thicket.

Fast. Maybe it was slow. Something was moving.

Isaiah began to move towards the unknown basically by instinct. His walk rapidly crawled into a pouncing sprint. Reluctantly he enjoyed the sense of adventure. He thought of having an inside smile but figured he he was not very good at all of this multitasking.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

This thought nearly stopped the venture of running towards mysterious sounds.

“Are you going to follow me or stand there acting like an idiot?”

He began to run once more until a path way out of the brush came under foot. Panting real air, looking around for the slightest shift in surroundings like an animal on the chase. To the left, an illusion disappeared from view and he was forced to stop the hunt once more out confusion.

At first it felt like the noises were coming from the right.

Had he the mystery phantom been coming or going?

Isaiah began to run a 3rd time.


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624 Reviews


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Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:19 pm
Casanova wrote a review...



Heya, Ginger! Casanova here to do a short review!

Anyway, straight to it!

At first when I read this it felt sort of lacking, at least in the beginning, and I agree with the previous reviewer when I say parts of this could be used as a prologue. It would do better that way, or make some of it a different chapter. The length of this was a bit over average and made it a bit daunting to read, and I would appreciate it like that.
The next thing is your plot. It's somewhat interesting, but the beginning does seem to be a bit dull, but you even it out towards the ending. So props for that.
Your characters are alright, but have their dull moments. Play around with actions and dialogue to fix this, making them show more emotion.
Your dialogue is rather bland, and I can see you doing more to solve this.
That's all I have, and I hope this has helped.

Keep on doing what you're doing, and keep on keeping on.

Sincerely, Cas




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Mon Nov 21, 2016 8:09 pm
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EverStorm wrote a review...



Hey! EverWinter here, once again!

It's great to see you posting more and more of this story! Do you already have it completely written? I really hope I get to read the whole thing because I am completely invested in this story now.

First things first, I just wanted to point out a few typos that were quite noticeable. "The time had for Isaiah to leave Earth" you missed a word in this sentence.

"He took a minuet" should be minute, not minuet.

Take this next thought with a grain of salt, because I'm no authority, but the section where you introduce our narrator seems like a Prologue of sorts. But it wouldn't fit as the prologue. What I'm wondering is does the story rely on us knowing who the narrator is? If it does, great keep it, but if it doesn't I'd either consider getting rid of it (because some would find it rather confusing) or finding a better place to put this introduction. At the moment, it's in a rather awkward place, in the middle of a chapter and not even in the first chapter. If the story relies on it, then it's fine and would most likely make sense to the reader after they finish the story.

Other than that, this chapter is good. I'd spend a little more time looking for any typos or missed words. I don't know if I got them all and that would turn off an agent or publisher (if that's where you're headed with this).

EverWinter






Awesome, you're bringing all the questions I'd hope to insight :]

Keep interested and maybe you'll find out why the narrator is truly important





To answer your first question, the entire book has not been completed yet. As of right now I have 10 solid Chapters up for review before I continue



EverStorm says...


Aw yiss :D Im so excited




To have more, you have to become more. Don't wish it was easier - wish you were better. For things to change, you have to change, and for things to get better, you have to get better.
— Jim Rohn