With winter came a slow panic and a dreadful feeling that clung to me and soaked into my mind like a stain.
Animals were scarcer, even if they were easier to track through the snow. The cold winds and dreadful snow required too much from my body sapping my strength away with a constant drain. I had to learn clothing was more than a protection from thorns. Yet more clothing meant more weight and slower speeds. The sun too didn’t like the winter
as it hid beneath the ground for longer, providing far less time in the sky.
Worse by far, was that the wires were not providing as much as they had before. There were times when the wires stopped providing any power at all, only coming to life again when the sun rose.
I began to hunt at night, in the coldest part of the cycle, and then rest during the day when the wires could provide sustenance, as limited as it was.
The water froze, even after I figured out how to reattach the door and made a nest of blankets, curtains, and clothing gathered from other buildings.
Traps no longer worked well, the animals that remained seemed disinterested in meat of any kind, preferring to eat the grass, or bark of plants.
I tried baiting the traps with grass and bark but the animals that ate those must be smarter than the meat eaters as none even went for the bait.
I had to hunt smaller animals, and was forced to reconsider how to do that. Sweaters gave me yarn and from that my fingers could knot nets, but even when I caught birds or smaller mammals they did not provide enough sustenance for the effort I put into hunting them.
I was starving. I knew that because I’d done it before, even if I couldn’t remember when.
I knew in my gut that everything I had gained would slowly fall away. I would be how I once was, reacting instead of planning. Living in an eternal moment of now instead of seeing the past and facing the future.
It shouldn’t scare me, I hadn’t been scared when I’d been like that after all, yet I did not want to return to that state of unthinking hunger.
With no new ideas and a future I could see that would not get any better, I considered doing something else.
Something unknown.
That was a first for me, and even at the time I recognized how large of a leap it was.
Up until that point every single choice I’d made had been a slight improvement of what I’d already been doing, satisfying the two hungers I had in better, more efficient ways.
This idea, to expend energy towards something with unknown results, was different.
It was born of desperation of course.
I could see no path forward, and yet, my previous selves would have kept upon the same path anyway.
Why was I different now?
Why would I consider a plan that might very well make my situation worse on a small chance that it would make it better?
As the sun broke the horizon all I had come up with was that I had reached a level of thinking that allowed me to understand how little I had actually thought before. I could consider now. I could plan and play scenarios in my mind, and evaluate possible outcomes.
I didn’t want to lose that, and in staying to the same path I would. While this plan had risks, it could be no worse than losing the ability to think and plan, a state I would reach if I didn’t risk trying something new.
When the sun rose the prompt that appeared before me each morning appeared like it always it. I read it, and accepted.
[This settlement is unclaimed. Do you wish to claim it?]
Since I could dismiss the floating image with a thought I tried accepting it with one. That seemed to work as the display disappeared, only to be replaced by another.
[Settlement Name?]
I tried to consider that. Words on signs, memories of the destroyed buildings came to me. Ed’s Eatery, was the first that popped into my mind as I had found food trapped in metal containers there.
[Ed’s Eatery?] - Available - Accept Name?
I'm not sure what I did to accept the name. There were no options displayed. I simply wished to accept it and it was accepted.
[Ed’s Eatery] [No network invitations found.] [No valid claims found.]
A separate window popped up asking if I wanted to claim Ed's Eatery. I hardly finished reading it before it disappeared showing me the window underneath. 'No network invitations found' was in red, and the 'No valid claims found' was in green. But a moment later it flashed and disappeared leaving only the red information about networks.
A few more windows popped up.
It proposed a currency, calling it 'EE Credits,' and asked me to accept. This time I considered and the window stayed visible until I did a mental shrug. I had only a nebulous idea what currency was and didn't care at all about what it was called. That mental shrug of indifference must have been enough because I was informed that the currency was now called EE Credits. There were several other questions having to do with something called encryption and non-fungibility. My indifferent thoughts accepted the proposed suggestions though I understood none of it.
The screen shrank down and away, seeming to fall into one of the ever present artifacts always hovering at the edge of my vision. The symbol, the icon there, changed.
I didn’t really notice them as they were always there, but now that one of them had changed from a grayed out shape to a blue and white shape, I took note of the others.
There were other shapes that were gray, most of them in fact, but there were some that were blue.
I waited, unsure if anything else would happen.
Nothing did. The risk I'd taken, that I'd built up in my mind, the change from routine, had seemingly done nothing.
I continued on with my routine for two days, disappointed at there were no more daily screens to dismiss and no change to the bleak future I could predict.
Then, on a whim I wondered WHY the icon at the edge of my vision had changed. What did gray convey that blue did not.
When my eyes were closed the shapes on the edges faded into nothingness, unless I didn’t want them to. There were numbers that changed in one spot and the sun rose roughly at the same set of numbers each day, though that had changed as the seasons did and it took longer and longer for the sun to rise. But at night, when I wondered how long I had until the sun rose, I could look at the numbers, even if my eyes were closed, and guess.
Eventually, in my wondering, there was a shifting of sorts. A willing toward the newly blued icon.
It flashed white for just a moment before a screen I’d never seen before appeared.
[Settlement tasks] Titled the list of tasks.
They were listed from top to bottom and color coded.
The top line in red read [Critical - Clear Hostiles from Settlement - 30 EE Credits.]
The second line, also in red read [Critical - Solar Panel Maintenance - 6 EE Credits.]
I continued reading each new line. As I reached the bottom of the screen the list scrolled up, displaying more tasks as a small square on the right side moved slightly down.
The list was topped by red tasks, both with the word critical in the description. Then yellow tasks for several pages. Then green. Then white. Then gray.
The lowest task was gray, and unlike all the other gray tasks there was no EE Credits component. It simply read [Compose a poem about the settlement]
Through context clues I was able to use the slider on the side to quickly move up and down the list of tasks.
By accident, willing towards the top task, another screen opened as I focused on one of the tasks.
[Critical - Clear Hostiles from Settlement - 30 EE Credits.] was titled across the top. Just under a line in much smaller size font that read [sys>EEsettlement>tasks>]
[Citizens have tagged entities as hostile. Pings show they are still within the settlement. Deal with them.]
Below that there was a blue icon with a question mark. I pressed my will towards it and another screen appeared.
[Hostile entities may be cleared from the Hostile Log by destroying their implants, diving them out of the location designated [EEsettlement] or by downgrading their status (warning this requires elevated permissions) Hostiles within EEsettlement can be roughly mapped with active pinging. Sweeps for hostiles must return negative for six hours (Default) before Settlement Alarm status changes. Active pinging can alert hostiles.]
There were lots of blue words in that, but I focused on the one my gut told me to.
The word [mapped] flashed from blue to white and then screens cleared away and one of the icons I always had rushed toward me growing as it did.
It was a map. There were a large amount of surprising details. It took time, but eventually I was able to move the map, to zoom in and out. Incredibly far out.
Much of the map was black, showing nothing, but large amounts of the seemingly random squiggles were gray.
While I zoomed in on them they remained gray.
“Why is this gray?” I asked. Out loud.
The sound of my voice surprised me almost as much as the sudden overwhelming knowledge that I could speak. My surprise continued to ramp up as I received a response.
“The indicated sections of the map have not been updated in the last seven days. Seven days is the current time-out on map accuracy. Would you like to change that setting from the default of seven days?”
I didn’t open my eyes, or claw my way out of my cocoon of blankets and curtains. I knew the voice well, from another life.
I knew it was in my head.
I changed the default times and then changed them again and again as I tried to figure out how long it had been since I’d passed through certain areas.
The area around EEsettlement grew white but the rest of the map stayed gray. I extended the time to years and portions of the map turned white. Some were a different sort of gray, a white and gray alternating pattern instead of only gray.
“Why is this section different coloring?” I asked, then, before she could answer asked, “what does the checkered pattern mean?”
“This is data captured by someone else, corrupted, side-loaded, or otherwise unverifiable.”
There were other color coatings and sections that were coded differently. Most of the explorable map was never mapped, and large portions were “unreliable due to data extrapolation errors.”
When I asked what that meant she answered with words I didn’t understand, for longer than seemed necessary to explain anything.
Eventually I asked the voice how to get the hostiles to appear on the map, and it just happened.
Three red dots, in the main road.
In the morning I found them, she could place me in the map as well, though my dot was blue.
They were mostly eaten, likely by me. The muscles on the legs were gone completely, most of the arms and the organs had been consumed.
Black brittle spiderwebs spread out over what remained. The eye in the closest skull shifted slightly to look at me.
When I titled the head the eye moved and the jaw snapped.
Odd.
Most of the muscles around the neck were gone. Those were easily exposed and likely one of the first things I’d consumed.
I turned the head to the side, then further, lifting and shifting the remains of the torso.
There at the base of the skull was a discoloration of skin. A reddish-black scab that radiated the brittle black webbing out across the flesh that remained.
I picked at it with fingernails until a piece of the webbing broke away. I knew it would do that, but I wanted to test it anyway.
I had a few knives on my belt, and I used one to cut into the base of the skull above the scab, then another to stab into the skull higher and a third just above that.
Each driven strike placed the blades of the knives in a line, the skull shattering beneath.
The sustenance may have waned in the winter, but my strength was sufficient enough to pull the two halves of the skull apart. Then I grabbed the scab on the back of the neck, just below the exposed black and pink brain matter and pulled.
A thick plug of fibers, more reminiscent of hair caught in a drain than anything else, pulled free of the brain's mass.
Thin strands strained and broke under the pressure but for the most part it was the mass of brains that gave way coming out in chunks scatted among the strands like some ghastly fruit of some vined plant.
In the center, pulling free was a central mass. I set the plug of strands down on the ice covered street after swiping once to clear the loose snow. The scabbed over plug that sat at the base of the skull was worthless. I ignored it and focused on the bit that had pulled out from the center of the brain.
While there was a dense clump of strands that moved from the plug to the center, there were tens of thousands of more strands that moved from the center outward into the rest of the brain.
I cut carefully with one of the knives removing strands from around the central mass.
The strands began to move, as if there was a breeze. I pressed a finger into the mass of strands and while there was no pain at first, they did attach so that I could lift the ball of strands upward.
Then healing fires flared in that finger and slowly the external strands began to give way.
I had a sudden and overwhelming urge and acted upon it before thinking.
The crunch of the small device in the center of the puff of strands gave way between my teeth with hardly any effort at all.
I swallowed and felt the fires inside moving towards my middle.
The map indicated one of the red circles was gone when I checked it.
I ate the rest of the strands and some of the brain bits that clung to them. They were not rancid or rotten like I had expected in a body long dead and eaten.
The other two red dots were the same. Bodies mostly consumed but with heads still intact. There was far less webbing on these two and neither had eyes that moved, or even looked like they could see.
While the brains did have healthy bits, there were many blotches of dark black rotten goop as well.
I ate both of the implants, crushing them in a single bite.
Once the last implant was destroyed the icon for the settlement changed from blue to yellow. I willed the screen to appear.
It informed me I had completed a task for EEsettlement and would receive EE Credits when the timer had run down.
I went about hauling water and checking the traps, switching back to the timer until it reached zero.
Another artifact at the edge of my vision changed from gray to blue and I brought up it’s page with a bit of directed willpower.
[Wallet]
[System Credits - 0 Credits]
[Settlement Credits]
[Ed’s Eatery Settlement - 30 EE Credits]
[Rose Garden Settlement - 32,856 RG Credits]
[Terminus Arcology - 1,347 TERM Credits]
The Rose Garden and Terminus Arcology lines were grayed out.
“Why are these lines grayed out?”
“No contact with the settlement systems in over fifteen years. Would you like to change the default time for wallet timeout from fifteen years?”
“Where are these on the map?”
“Map data is corrupted. All data is not available due to data extrapolation errors that occurred when reconstructing database from compacted nodal storage.”
“How long since I was last in Rose Garden?”
“Unknown,” the voice said.
I’d heard that response tens of thousands of times. And though I couldn’t remember a single instance I knew there were ways around it.
I asked questions differently until I struck upon one that worked.
“How long since I last connected to Rose Garden Settlement systems?”
“Twenty-three years, six months, one week, and two days.”
“How long since I last connected to Terminus Arcology systems?”
“Three hundred eleven years, one month, and four days.”