The World Is Quiet Here

I found myself standing again in the middle of a road belonging to some obscure town of some name nobody would bother to remember. With a ball-point pen and an open sketchbook equipped, I trace my vision of squat businesses and apartments, immortalizing them on the page. I’m trying to hone in on even more immaculate details, recording any intricate texture or faint glimmer as accurate as possible, in an effort to pad every second of my schedule as I can.

This isn’t even the first time I’ve participated in this particular artistic study. I’ve drifted through this tiny stead more than a handful of times before. Already I’ve broken into each building, mapping the neat labyrinth of rooms and walls with great care. Already I’ve taken astute notes of the now-strange remnants of the lives that vanished so inexplicably. However, after examining the story of so many individuals, the repeating motifs blur into dull patterns and desensitivity.

I’m not sure of the exact reason, but this corner of what could be called the United States continues to beckon me. I’ve commanded conquests to the sprawling concrete webs of Tokyo, the ancient habitat of Damascus, and the then futuristic topia of Dubai. I’ve cartographed the intense monoliths of Los Angeles, Guangzhou, Jakarta, São Paulo, Mumbai, Pyongyang, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and so many other feats of mass architecture that evade my immediate memory. These megalithic titans make these walls of varying, decorative hues and late 1800’s architecture pale in comparison, yet these minimalistic streets yield some unmatched charm. Maybe it’s the coarse familiarity. Maybe it’s the closest concept of a home I desperately want to return.

I took a moment to reflect on the ink now uniting with the paper, and decided the itch to return to these parts had been scratched. The image bordered on a life-like quality, minus the color. Perhaps that will become a project for another day, but for now my business is concluded. I zipped open my backpack and deposited my sketchbook among the small stockpile of matches, candles, lanterns, and maps. The electricity stored in batteries has long since dissipated, so light vehicles such as flashlights were out of the picture. The luxury of gasoline has also fallen into a mode of obscurity, so my primary transportation is a trusty old bicycle. Driving an electric car would be an absolute dream, but no matter how many ways I try to design and rig a farm of solar panels, the result remains a failure. So, for now, this mechanical method of transit reigns champion. The trip back to headquarters will take about eight days, but that's nothing these days.

In fact, I decided to stretch my route out a bit longer by rolling through the scenic path. The wind bracing my face as the asphalt and trees and towns fall behind me is a cherished doldrum. It’s these periods of tranquil reflection that let me forget about the state of the untenanted world I’m ensnared within. Even with this meandering detour, these places I've passed through are all too familiar. It's with profound regret that I have to say I became dry on adventure years and years ago.

Before I knew it, I emerged from the blur and into the sobering acropolis of New York City, USA.

The New York City Public Library seemed like an entrancing and competent place to plant my operations. I always found the expansive concrete domes adjacent to ceilings of ornate metallary and paintings have an endearing and awe-inspiring charm. The abundance of bookshelves are also a valuable amenity for my collection of notes, maps, and illustrations. I stationed my bike just outside the gates of the Rose Main Reading room and ventured inside. I usually do my best to leave the books in their original resting place, but for my own selfish purposes I emptied the shelves on the west wall of the upper floor to make room for my own illustrious volumes of junk. It’s not like I displaced anything I haven’t read anyway.

Underneath the large, arched windows looming over the spacious gallery of lengthy tables and chairs no longer occupied, I had adorned banners made of construction paper and bubble letters announcing the genre of each shelf: Maps!, Notes!, Day Tallies!, and Sketchbooks! I had balanced a ladder against the lower west wall when I first settled in and utilized this advantage to cut up and over the protective rail looping around the secondary level and I used it to quickly scale to my destination. I unzipped my bag and returned the sketchbook to its rightful home on the Sketchbooks! shelf. I also returned the cache of map books to their respective home. I then waltzed over to Day Tallies! and lifted one of the custom leather-bound books containing exactly five-hundred (one-thousand if you count the front and back) pages. I opened it up to the final page, ignoring the near identical pages that preceded it, and stared at a grid comprised of precisely three-hundred sixty five squares, each box filled with a black X, except for twenty ultimate ones which are only now dormant as I had neglected to bring it with me on my brief excursion.

Each X represented a single day. I began marking the boxes to catch up on the lost progress, but I got caught up after the nineteenth. I couldn’t help but stare and ponder about the ancestral contents before it. Not only the existing calendars in this copy, but also the four-hundred ninety-nine editions sleeping soundlessly on the shelf. And after this brief lapse of sore contemplation, I pressed forward to officially complete my 500,000th year.

It was approximately that long ago I had designated myself as a scribe of the streets. I would travel from village to giant village, meticulously investigating every room of every building constructed by human hands. I would become an expert on every corner of every winding road that could ever savor the pleasure of being blazed. With diligence, I would record the minute details of the cumulative endeavors of the talented and decorated species I survive. I married myself the boulevards and avenues simply because there was nothing else better to do.

I exist as a sole inhabitant. In all this time of wandering and spelunking, I have yet to even encounter a sign of fresh human life. Empty automobiles litter the roads, locked in their last patterns of traffic, awaiting a master that will never come back. Possessions are left in pristine preservation, unaware their owners vanished into absolute nothing. It took a while, but I eventually acclimated to this unprecedented degree of solitude. At some point I actually learned to enjoy an existence belonging all to myself, but now it seems that lesson has since slipped.

I can just barely remember the morning I awoke to this distressing silence. I can just barely recall stepping out my door and being awestruck by the absence of anything. The birds that seemed to praise the dawn with inane chatter were gone. The neighbours and dogs that patrolled the eight o’clock streets were gone. Any sign that a creature other than myself could breath was dumbfoundedly gone. The only apparent evidence of life rested in the greenery. While I could still appreciate how the leaves and reeds interacted with the wind, it didn’t take long to find out their growth was stunted, frozen at the state of development when I first emerged to dance on this farcical stage.

The weather is also stagnant. Apart from the occasional white, graceful cloud floating across the sky, the world is perpetually sunny with the thermometers clocking in at a base of seventy-four degrees. The heat of biomes, I discovered, scaled to their respective geographic placement. At some point, I capitalized on the ample opportunity to measure the cycle of each day and night; from sunrise to sunrise I found to be exactly twenty-four hours.

I no longer need to worry about thirst or hunger, or really any other bodily necessity. In fact, at first, I tried to indulge on former favorite snacks in the absence of societal responsibility but couldn’t keep down the sludge. I have found that if I concentrate enough with my eyes closed it is possible to induce myself into a state of sleep, but in all of my experimentation I haven’t been able to conjure a dream.

As for pain, my body still has a way of screaming that something is wrong. Even to this day, my toes are not immune to the occasional stubbing and subsequent swearing. There was one time, out of boredom, I was balancing on the edge of a skyscraper in Singapore when I stumbled and took a sudden plunge to the ground beneath. My bones remained intact, but the immense tidal wave of anguish kept me glued to the asphalt for at least a week before I could muster the strength to stand.

To this day, any hypothesis of what could have set me in my current situation has yet to be proven. I’ve entertained the idea of being set deep in some elaborate coma dream, but as far as I remember, I was never caught in such a crippling accident. I’ve also thought it possible this could be some kind of afterlife, but, if so, is it a punishment? I never led a particularly malicious life nor a remarkable one. Maybe the latter of that fact is the key issue if this truly is a purgatory. This could also be some vivid hallucination, but I always thought myself of a sound mind and abstained from psychedelics. But I guess I would never know if I was actually bonkers. In any case, it doesn’t matter too much because this is how I exist now.

And how I exist has become excruciating to bear. I’ve always had the occasional wave of despair, but as the years continue to stretch, each round becomes stronger and persists longer with little waning inbetween. There are only so many cities to revisit and retrace before you come to the conclusion that everything is exactly the same. The abandoned lives of people become so predictable and the patterns that emerge are so recognizable the art of expedition becomes mundane and hopeless. The one desire gripping the focus of my mind is that I can somehow be pulled into an oblivion and my mortal fabric is shredded asunder until I can no longer process my own awareness.

I spent the next few days browsing the palaces of New York City, traversing what I thought could bring back some sense of novelty. There are more buildings than I would have realized that have hidden rooms and passages embedded inside, absent from any floor plan or blueprint. The deceitful design always brought this dumb smile on my face, but this time the secret maze of the Woolworth Building failed to inspire any wisticism.

However, while staring out a window at the pin art landscape and blue beyond on the fifty-first floor, I was struck with a sudden urge. There is seldom anything left that can instill fear in me, and the ocean is one of them. Back when I was first learning to sail to the transatlantic continents, I became lost for something like two-hundred years, despite the wealth of compasses and books about star-navigation.

It almost pained me to think of falling into that global pool, becoming lost forever in the one nook of the world impossible to check. But the thought that panging me begged the possibility that the ominous water may be the benevolent void to strip my soul or spirit, or conscience, or whatever from this morbid realm. What if the water flooding my lungs disrupts the oxygen flow to my brain and shuts down all my senses and imagination? What if the millions of pounds of pressure make me implode like some pathetic, empty can of soda, destroying any possible activity? The prospect was exciting, but on the other hand, what if the drowning doesn’t extinguish the fire and I’m left in a perpetual state of anguish? What if instead of being an optimistic future, it exacerbates the desperation and hopelessness? What I want is an end to whatever this is, not a hell without a devil.

For the next month or two, I mulled over the proposition, weighing pros and cons , until I approached a grand conclusion: just screw it. In the worst case scenario, I would adjust to a more literal form of black nothingness and numb existence. So I embarked on my sailboat docked on the Hudson River toward the endless blue, ignoring any and all reservations. I floated on with blind determination past the empiric skyline that I have grown to see in great detail even with my eyes closed.

It was with almost flippant bliss I watched the obelisks disappear behind the horizon, being erased forever. Every metropolis, city, town, village, house, street, path, monument, or any slight sign of human interaction that remained on land was being erased. Every film, painting, book, scripture, or idea by any human that has ever been conceived was being erased. As I drifted into the expanse of pure blue, I was being utterly erased.

I voyaged upon the calm, lulling waves for a couple days, until I reached an undeniable point of no return. The mere sight of the water and weight of the gravity of what I was about to do seemed to surround me like an envelope before even a foot submerged into the inky void below. The breeze was light and felt pleasant as it brushed past my skin and hair. I began disrobing everything to firstly, bask in the warmth of the sun in its entirety before I fell too, far out of its reach, and, secondly, for comfort. Wearing wet clothes drives me insane no matter what condition of fate I’m in.

I walked to the edge of the deck, bracing for something that is impossible to brace. I was hit with the first taste of sweet adrenaline I’ve been graced with in an unfathomably long time. I almost felt obligated to savor the swelling beat of my heart and the slipperiness pooling in my palms. I hoisted myself onto the side of the boat and sat; the waves were high enough to make intimate contact with. I tested the water by first dipping my toe in the water, reflexively recoiling at the brisk chillness. Then I gathered an immense amount of courage. It was going to take a lot to convince my apprehensive muscles to force themselves to plunge into the deepness. With great impulse, I shoved myself off the sanctuary.

The cool water felt surprisingly refreshing as I sank more and more. Out of involuntary instinct, I held my breath even as I saw the last beams light occluded by the surrounding darkness. My guess is that it was around three minutes before my lungs began burning, demanding another dose of air, but I was still afraid of what I would discover if I drew that imperative breath. The raw sensation exploded to a point I had no control over and it forced me to inhale.

The consequence that followed was the one I never considered. It was strange, the saltwater flooded in with a hammering force into my lungs, but that was about the extent of the pain. I exhaled and it flowed out with more or less the same ease as the atmosphere I abandoned. The second breath was almost as surreal as I could focus on the reality without the hindrance of anticipation. It was as if the entire ocean was composed of perfluorocarbon instead and I was never informed. Vexed, I continued to respire against all sensible, lucid logic.

I don’t know exactly what I expected from all this, but it definitely wasn't anticlimax. I sank deeper and deeper down; blackness had totaled the scope of my vision a few leagues up. It didn’t really feel like I was sinking at that point, it was more like I was suspended in animation, floating in some dimension that didn’t exist. I did feel the pressure steadily increase, but at some point the invisible hugging plateaued and I was able to maneuver my lims freely and withstand it all without my bones being crushed. I thought about attempting to swim upward several times, but some foolish glint of pride persuaded me that the best course of action was to keep drifting down, until I eventually collide with the seafloor.

It was impossible to gauge exactly how long it took for my feet to touch the sand, but it was long enough to enter a state of dissociation that the grainy silk rudely jolted me from. I didn’t know what to do except to stand and appreciate the fresh sensation of solid ground. Now I could sense the flow of a gentle current sweeping past my knees. While I was blind and deaf, it was still so luxurious to make contact with solid earth again.

Then I began to walk. I walked forward. The sand mushed itself between my toes as I marched in some direction over the undisturbed ripples of ground. I had no end point in mind; it was quite impossible to determine a destination anyway. I only knew I was positioned somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic without any indication of where dryness could be.

So I walked. There was the odd occasion when I would unexpectedly scrape my shin on a hidden boulder or step on a particularly sharp stone that would penetrate through the meat of my foot. Yet, this sudden pain was sometimes more of a relief than a nuisance.

The first time I saw a bright orange blur appear in my vision I was instilled with such profound elation I was on the brink of tears. Real tears. Tears of immeasurable joy. Tears of a kind I can’t remember feeling before. What I had discovered was a magma vent. They were rare, but whenever I stumbled across one I had to spend an extended visit to admire the brightness and radiant heat before setting off on my adventure again. Light can be addictive when being deprived for so long.

In a weird sense, all of this was liberating. Each pebble and rock and miniscule incline and insignificant bump were all new. I could appreciate each detail without obsessing over the process of recording them because I physically could not. These were my own moments to hold and nurture and remember and then to forsake and never see again. This was a sacred garden I was only temporarily allowed to stroll through, but once I’ve taken my tour I couldn’t be let back. But like the surface life, there was only so much grainy terrain to cover before things began growing stale.

Then, I don't remember when exactly, I felt the floor start a steady incline. The hill kept growing taller, enticing me with it’s unprecedented ramp. I continued to walk up. The weight around me began feeling thinner and thinner the more I climbed. Then I saw the dark soup around me wax to a little bit of a lighter shade. With even more reinvigoration, I walked a little bit faster. Then I saw the breach of a light beam. The taste of sun manifested itself in my mouth as I broke into as much of a sprint as I could. I was now at a point of pristine blue colorfast bombarding my vision. It seemed as if my elation was tied to the still desaturating field of periwinkle. And then I could see the ground I was walking on in front of me.

The tide helped me beach onto the shore and I arrived on all fours. The saltwater filtering through my lungs spilled out in a violent wretch. The burning pain I had dreaded of the initial plunge now presented itself in full force. I continued, in torture, coughing out however many decades worth of water stored within my organs. After a few minutes of this fit, I collapsed with not only exhaustion, but with intense joy. The coughing soon transitioned into involuntary laughs as the sun baked my naked body.

In all the excitement, I didn’t get a chance to view my immediate surroundings. The beach hosting me was an immaculate white with what seemed to be the matching white buildings of San Sebastian, Spain behind it. I sat for a while, not knowing the last time I was able to appreciate a view as familiar as this. It was like being embraced by the arms of a family you finally decided to visit in a while. But there was a thought at the back of mind reminding me this feeling of reunion won’t last long. Soon, the existential fatigue is bound to settle back into its familiar nest. For now, though, it's nice.

I got up and began touring the small slice of coast. While the sand was hot, it was still nirvana to know it was dry land. Moving through air was almost foreign; it was so free and light compared to the oppressive depths I had emerged from. The sound of the waves crashing coupled with the clean day brought an intense atmosphere of serenity. I wished there was some way to encapsulate this moment and this could be the eternity I occupy until the sun forfeits its iron will to go on.

Then I noticed a peculiar impression in the sand. The pattern of jagged ridges was almost eerie. I recognized it at once: a shoeprint! Then the print revealed itself to be a piece of a trail. My immediate thought was it must’ve been left by myself, but then I remember I left my shoes on a boat in the middle of nowhere. I never imagined it would become useful, I actually ruled the possibility to be laughable, but the knowledge from those books on tracking I studied long ago came in handy. Upon inspection, the prints were a bit faint and I deduced that they had to have been left a few days before. The wild sense of adrenaline returned at the manifesting reality of someone else inhabiting this ghost world.

There was no way, right? Such a wrench in the machine of this level would be preposterous. But I had to play the only option I was presented with, and with a frothing cocktail of skepticism and hope, I began following the prints to where the sand met the wall at the top of the beach.