literature

What Comes Down...

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Literature Text

What Comes Down…

It’s been forever since I have written anything. I guess that is because writing is not exactly much of a job these days, or even a hobby. Hunting small game or scavenging houses that are still more or less one piece, now that’s a job, the sort that keeps a survivor going in a world like this. A world after the world ended.

Of course after finding an old office building that belonged to some old tech superpower, things changed. The building was powered by a solar generator that had kept working over the last ten years, and the inside of the building was sterile. The air conditioning still worked, so I was amazingly chilly in the middle of July, a feeling I had long forgotten.

After settling in, there really wasn’t much to do. After all, I didn’t have to wake up for work at six every morning, and I had no bills to pay or people to stay in touch with. As long as I had food and shelter, I was alright. The emergency cellar filled with dry rations that lasted centuries took care of the former, while a cubicle on the second floor took care of the former. I guess I could say I’d found my early retirement on this side of the apocalypse, one that didn’t involve a bullet in my head. Life was good.

At this point though, I was bored. At least before, I had to find food or a safe place to sleep. But now?

I tried to read but all I found were old computer manuals. A few computers had games on them but for the most part, the only game was a supermassive open world role playing game that had come out right before the devastation. It was in a post-apocalyptic setting so I was less than eager to play.

One night, when I couldn’t sleep because the soft whirring of the fans kept reminding me of hovercraft filled with soldiers flying by, I turned on a desktop and opened the word processor. I sat there for hours, my face bathed in the white glow. Finally, hesitantly, I began to type. The more I typed, the more it came back to me.

Back before the Big Bang and the Old Ones all perished under hellfire and glowing dust, I’d been a writer. Nothing special or widely published, but I had a few short stories scattered in a couple magazines. I wrote for a state-wide paper, decent establishment with a dozen or so of us working various stories in between other jobs.

What I was good at though was typing. My colleagues were sometimes frustrated because by the time they finished their sentence on screen, they’d forgotten where they were going. Not me though. For me, I could type as fast as the words came to me. It was how I’d brainstorm sometimes, just type every thought that came through my head until something good came up.

Here, in the cold cubicle in the cold office building surrounded by a hot world, it began to come back. And I kept writing. For days, then for weeks, I sat and typed. At first, it was just a few stories and silly pieces, things that got my creative juices flowing. But then I settled in for the long haul and began to really write. I began with the Decline and how the nations tensed up so much that the only people who weren’t struggling to keep jobs were masseuses. Then I told the Fall, of how neighbors turned on neighbors and of how gas became like water and how water became like ghosts because ghosts were never real except in dreams.

The Barrens were especially hard to narrate in an objective way, as that was when I lost the most. I always considered myself lucky that I still had people to love after the Fall, and that even though I lost them later, it was still something.

Writing about it made me question that though. Maybe dying in a hot flash would have been better than watching them drown in sand and blood.

After several months, I was done. The story was told, all neatly printed in a stack by my desktop. But on my screen, my cursor blinked next to one more chapter title that I hadn’t begun to write yet. “Rise”.

I looked at the screen, and then outside a window into the glaring sunlight. Whatever dangers waited out there, whatever horrors or possible ends, a future also waited. A potential for redemption and return. A rise of humanity, back to where it had once been, albeit wiser and kinder hopefully. And while I could sit here in comfort and ease until the solar panels broke or I died of loneliness, I could also head out into the sun and see that future for myself. Then I could come back and finish my history of the past and the future.

I sent every printer in the building a copy of my book, hoping that at least one copy would survive until it could be discovered in another age, and lovingly placed my personal copy in my bag. I packed up my few things and loaded up on as many rations and water packs as I could carry. After powering down my computer, I shut off all the lights and stepped out of the office building, blinking in the harsh sunlight. The heat seemed worse than usual, but I might have just been spoiled by working AC.

Once my vision cleared, I readjusted my pack and started walking. It was time to find a Rise for us all.
...must go up!
© 2015 - 2024 Rayen-V-Storme
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Undomiel321's avatar
Ooooh! Fun! I especially liked the bit about the rpg being about an apocalyptic world. That bit made me laugh. 

Quick edit: paragraph 3 you say the word "former" twice. I think you meant "former" and "latter."

It's so great to see you back Rayen. Yours is a unique voice that I was missing lately. Do what you need to do, but please remember to come back every once in a while. Keeps things interesting. =)