Alex and I were traveling to meet up with one of my old friends, Jenny, and her fiancé. Cars and motorized transportation are sparse and many roads are overgrown with wild grass and other prairie vegetation. The great plain states or what used to be the great plain states are beautiful and probably look most like what they did before man found them. All the farm land quickly reverted back to nature. The weather was perfect for the entirety of our five hundred mile journey on foot. A smattering of clouds provided us some shade in the day and allowed the heat to escape at night.
Alex was not a good traveling companion, he never had anything to say, never started conversations, never had ideas about foraging. I didn't like him after the first day, I'm fine with taciturn companions, but he wasn't doing anything to help us. He seemed lazy and uninterested in finding Jenny. I was excited to see Jenny, I hadn't seen her in a long time, and was thrilled when I found out she had survived whatever had happened.
The journey was long, and I forgot my traveling companions name, day after day we walked in silence, ate what I found, and slept under the stars. The weather was the same everyday, perfect. The sky was amazing, the bluest sky I'd ever seen, everyday I swear it got more blue, everyday it was best I'd ever seen. I think the clouds did it, the clouds were pure white, contrasting with the blue. Rich, bright, solid blue, it didn't make sense how it could be such a deep blue but also so bright. A platonic blue sky, dotted with bleached white cotton clouds.
I knew we were getting close because of all the dirt roads. Jenny and her neighbors had built roads along the most traveled pathways. The dirt was loose, but the roads were better than nothing, and proved to be a useful guide in the worst spots.
Finally we reached Jenny's house: a dilapidated farm house painted a faded sky blue, with holes in the roof, and a broken bench swing amongst the rotting colonial wood columns. She rushed out to greet us. Our customary bear hug lasted longer than usual. How many of our friends had died? I had not met her fiancé yet, and he watched us from the porch. Jenny introduced him as Alexia. I thought this sounded very familiar, and tried to introduce my traveling companion, but his name escaped my mind. My mind kept churning, struggling to find the name of the person that just spent weeks traveling with me across country. I failed to recall the name but it remained on the tip of my tongue.
Jenny and Alexia had a beat up, old Ford pickup truck. Keeping true to the color scheme, the truck was a medium shade of blue, like a well used pair of dark jeans. Joy riding around the loose dirt roads was exhilarating: wind in my face, warm sunny day, beautiful blue sky, Jenny pushing the truck to its tipping point. Alexia, Alex, and I road in the bed. Alexia cracking jokes, and yelling to Jenny when she drifted around particularly worrisome corners. Alex, still being withdrawn, sat expressionless and slid around the bed like a sack of potatoes.
After the truck ride, we retire to the undulating hills surrounding Jenny's house. We lie down in the soft grass and stare at the perfect blue sky.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Lost Cruise Ship
The cruise ship was large enough that the stormy seas did not produce a noticeable rock. The sea was roiling but the skies were clear and the sun was too bright as usual. Hurley and I were enjoying walking around the deck with very dark sunglasses on. Everyone was enjoying themselves and most passengers where in bright summer ware. Kate was wearing a nice blue summer dress and a large sun hat with sunglasses. Nobody was bothering with shoes as the carpet/astroturf was soft underfoot, warmed to a nice temperature in the noon day light. The mood was calm and people chatted quietly as they enjoyed, lemonade and ice tea. No plastic on this cruise, glasses sweat the same as people.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Pillars
When darkness had spread across the land...
Work had gotten out an hour before but it wasn't quite dinner time yet. Business at the grocery market was slow for the time of day. The lighting was inadequate and made shoppers uneasy. Not that it mattered much, everything made people uneasy in these times. An unmentionable horror had spread across the land. I was about to find out first hand. The north wall was suddenly ripped from the store, exposing only blackness, instead of the movie theater across the street. A giant malformed hand extended from the gaping maw and wrapped its disfigured digits around me. A similar hand grabbed a young girl, much younger than me. Our eyes met, her resolve told me that we would survive this, my worldliness told her that if there was a way to survive it we could find it.
The hands set us down in a large cave. The wall stretched far above our heads and faded into blackness before the ceiling became discernible. I also saw no light sources but I see could fifty feet in any direction before blackness crept into the hall and then eventually dominated. The stoney walls and earthen floor had a warm and comfortable touch to them. To my left I noticed the girl also exploring her new surroundings. I nodded with approval, and went back to inspecting my portion of the walls. On one side of the cave was rough and looked natural, the other was smooth and as it extended into the blackness slightly curved away from us. I noticed that there were three paths before us. The closest approximation of their orientation would be a "T" intersection one might find driving. The rough wall making the top of the "T", so that the underside of the top and the trunk of the "T" was comprised of smooth walls. She finally broke the silence and asked me how we should get out of here. I didn't trust the smooth walls so she picked a way to follow the top of the "T" in the direction closest to her. I started walking but met an unseen barrier before I caught up to her. She turned around and came back to ask me why I wasn't following her. I told her I couldn't go any further so she tried to grab my hand and drag me along but the unseen barrier prevented her from doing so.
The hands grabbed us again and set us down in a large elliptical room. Maybe three hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide. These are order of magnitude estimates at best since two incredibly large pillars were at the foci of the ellipse. One pillar was fiery red and emitting wave after wave of intense heat. The other was a glacial blue and was blasting waves of icy cold air at the same periodicity. The waves were reflected by the walls of the ellipse, getting amplified and reflected before meeting in the middle and dissipating each other. We were placed in the intersection of the major and minor axis of the ellipse and were surround by a vortex of elemental fury every ten minutes or so when the waves met. Either end of the major axis was unaffected by the opposite pillar so one end was molten and the other frozen. The girl and I marveled at this enormous heat engine, which I assumed powered the Earth in some manner. The perfect timing of the pillars energy release was astounding even the tiniest difference would cause one pillar to eventually overpower the other. Fire and Ice surrounded us in a violent futile battle for supremacy.
Work had gotten out an hour before but it wasn't quite dinner time yet. Business at the grocery market was slow for the time of day. The lighting was inadequate and made shoppers uneasy. Not that it mattered much, everything made people uneasy in these times. An unmentionable horror had spread across the land. I was about to find out first hand. The north wall was suddenly ripped from the store, exposing only blackness, instead of the movie theater across the street. A giant malformed hand extended from the gaping maw and wrapped its disfigured digits around me. A similar hand grabbed a young girl, much younger than me. Our eyes met, her resolve told me that we would survive this, my worldliness told her that if there was a way to survive it we could find it.
The hands set us down in a large cave. The wall stretched far above our heads and faded into blackness before the ceiling became discernible. I also saw no light sources but I see could fifty feet in any direction before blackness crept into the hall and then eventually dominated. The stoney walls and earthen floor had a warm and comfortable touch to them. To my left I noticed the girl also exploring her new surroundings. I nodded with approval, and went back to inspecting my portion of the walls. On one side of the cave was rough and looked natural, the other was smooth and as it extended into the blackness slightly curved away from us. I noticed that there were three paths before us. The closest approximation of their orientation would be a "T" intersection one might find driving. The rough wall making the top of the "T", so that the underside of the top and the trunk of the "T" was comprised of smooth walls. She finally broke the silence and asked me how we should get out of here. I didn't trust the smooth walls so she picked a way to follow the top of the "T" in the direction closest to her. I started walking but met an unseen barrier before I caught up to her. She turned around and came back to ask me why I wasn't following her. I told her I couldn't go any further so she tried to grab my hand and drag me along but the unseen barrier prevented her from doing so.
The hands grabbed us again and set us down in a large elliptical room. Maybe three hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide. These are order of magnitude estimates at best since two incredibly large pillars were at the foci of the ellipse. One pillar was fiery red and emitting wave after wave of intense heat. The other was a glacial blue and was blasting waves of icy cold air at the same periodicity. The waves were reflected by the walls of the ellipse, getting amplified and reflected before meeting in the middle and dissipating each other. We were placed in the intersection of the major and minor axis of the ellipse and were surround by a vortex of elemental fury every ten minutes or so when the waves met. Either end of the major axis was unaffected by the opposite pillar so one end was molten and the other frozen. The girl and I marveled at this enormous heat engine, which I assumed powered the Earth in some manner. The perfect timing of the pillars energy release was astounding even the tiniest difference would cause one pillar to eventually overpower the other. Fire and Ice surrounded us in a violent futile battle for supremacy.
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