A Lone Stranger (Shipwreck)
I am alone.
I: A Snowscape in Abstract
One life form detected in the immediate area…
The static crinkles.
The AC above hums at a constant value.
A soft beeping emanates from the scanner below.
They work in tandem, without my prying hands,
With the precision of a seamster's needle.
But facility is in no rush tonight.
(And neither, really, am I.)
The current temperature remains 24 degrees Celsius.
The current time before sunrise remains twenty-nine hours…
The windows beyond peer.
Into starlit forests, blanketed by snow.
Into auroras in the distance that bleed color. Like a painter's lullaby, painting the sky.
The forests under the bridge of heaven
Draws a striking similarity to the utopian dreams of my childhood.
This place learns, and it copies.
(But in that vein, so do we.)
II: A Vagrant on an Unreal Sea
Within the last hour, your smart system has detected and blocked 3 anomalous influences from your radar.
I have six reality stabilizers, insulated into the walls.
They pull and tangle with the existing machinery,
Sneering at this suburban facsimile we've built.
Unmoving, difficult things to settle.
Reigned in, they could moor our drifting home.
Rigged wrong, the anchor turns inwards, and to the depths it yields its load.
(I pre-planned this base myself.)
You have made seventy strokes on your canvas tonight.
My eyelids flicker.
The lone torch I carry does not travel through my skin.
My workstation is the moon, soft and silvery, while I am its drab side which never sees the light.
The vestiges of my vision travels across the treeline.
I know the moon, just as I know the shore beyond this desert of white.
One is my nest, and the other the endless drop beyond wing's length.
(Both equally absurd, timeless things.)
III: Where We Make Our Bed
You have won the Top Employee of the Month award. You have been Employee of the Month for the previous six-hundred and twenty months.
The night is early, but I consider sleep.
The sides of my hands brush the quilt of the table.
I hear the click-clacking of keys, the singe of something, burning my cheeks.
I pull back, consciously breathing. My eyes fall on my palms.
Only the valley of my age line greets me.
The back of my eyes are splattered with visions of drift and storm fell.
In my childhood, I dream the snow globe thrust into my gloved hands at Christmastime, swallowing the neighborhood and leaving snowmen on every street.
In my adulthood, I dream of quicker deaths.
Because I am not perpetual.
(But nothing is.)
To reduce employee stress levels, the system will cycle your favorite tracks for the remainder of your shift.
I touch my hand once again to my cheek.
I feel the cold that seeps into both holders, cold enough to freeze.
Memories at night comes in chokes and gasps.
The slight of my hair drifting before my focus. The ebb and flow.
Here are my limbs, the only things that will not see me abandoned.
My limbs — they too are cold and grey. The ceiling grows further and further.
(I sink.)
IV: The Twisting Blues
The current temperature remains 24 degrees Celsius.
The current time before sunrise remains thirty hours…
Nothing is more lovely.
Little things in life can supersede the thrill of a good melody.
When the music kicks in, my soul wanders, rested atop my desk.
And it occurs to me where I've heard this song before.
It comes back to him.
It always does.
(I nod along to the beat.)
V: The Origin Butterfly
One life form detected in the immediate area…
One life form detected in the immediate area…
One life form detected in the immediate a…
I am alone.