Remember.

    There was a howl as the wind slipped across the dusty desert, torrenting any hope of relatively stable ground. The sun beat down mercilessly, and what clouds there were held a dreary lack of hope to them. There was an unpleasant breeze, followed by a pounding, everlasting scorch of flowing dust, shuffling and crashing against the air.

    Somewhere in the emptiness lay a hope. But not here. Here lies nothing but more emptiness.

    A small dune in the dust rose nearly a foot above the ground. It was unusual for such a small pile of nothing to exist unless it was covering some old vehicle from before the calamities; it could’ve been a cart, or maybe even a corpse. The wind cried again, forcing the dune to reveal it's true nature.

    Beneath the dune lay the features of a strong, yet weak jaw. An intelligent, yet feeble face. The eyes may have been off by a slight, but the design was perfect. The only thing distinguishing this face from that of a normal, complete human’s, was the darkened sidebars that lined the sides of the face between the eye and ear on either side like tears; the strips that would burn bright-blue with small circular patterns should they be activated.

    The wind blew hard, forming a gust of wind that challenged the dune. The dune fought, threatening to consume its bounty, but inevitably lost before it had the chance. The gust attacked violently, and the body was thrown from the dune, spectating the battle from twenty feet away.

    Once the body stopped rolling, its face stared up into the noon sky. The body now lay spread, dressed in light clothes that someone would wear inside their home --a tan pair of semi-short pants, and a gray t-shirt beneath a brilliant-white button-up, and light sandals like that of a monk. 

    If one were to look closely, they’d notice that this figure was, in fact, not human in the slightest. It might look human, sound human, and act human, but it will never be human. Embedded in its forehead, if one pushed aside the ginger hair, they would find some markings; symbols, in the shape of letters and numbers: “4D4M.”

    The wind howled again, and at last, 4D4M’s eyes awakened, and the strips on his face brightened like the sky.

    Why? Was the first thing on 4D4M’s mind. 

    He had no memory of why he was here.

    “Why?” he said aloud, hearing his voice began to carry over the desert. It was young, yet crisp. Assertive. “Why!”

    He pulled up on his back, yanking himself from the sinking dust. He looked at his hands; dirtied, overused, and coarse. The same with his arms. His legs felt heavy, but he bent his knees to hoist himself up. He felt weary, yet he appeared so young.

    Why. Why was “why” on his mind?

    The dust storm tossed around 4D4M’s body as he stumbled in some random direction. He didn’t know where to go.

    He reached his hand into his pocket. Deep in the hand-full of dust he collected was some sort of thin fibrous material wrapped around a flaky piece of metal. Upon further inspection, it was some kind of note. A scroll?

    4D4M unwrapped the supposed article, realizing that it was almost as aged and beaten as he was. Carefully, he took out the metal and pocketed it. With a deep breath, he began to scan over the paper…

    The whistling noise. It was there, again. The sound of the wind upheaving the dust. He could feel it coming, 

    A huge, quick, dashing gust of ferocious wind slammed into his back, upending his feet as his body flew into the air twenty, maybe thirty feet; the sun was far too bright for him to tell as he ascended. His arms wailed as if there was some sheer hope he would have that he wouldn’t crash into the ground and end six-feet-under. He thrashed and he thrashed until he felt something soft and thin leap from his hand.

    Innocently, the unbundled message escaped his grasp as it gingerly glided along the dusty air. 4D4M felt his body descend at a rapid pace, yet at all times he kept a keen eye on the paper. He could feel the dust attacking, ravaging his body, destroying his eyesight, but none of that mattered compared to his one, fleeting objective.

    4D4M’s body plummeted as he watched the paper whisk away into the wind. A moment later, he felt the thud of his body impacting the dust as he screamed in apparent agony, yet the pain had subsided as his body rebounded, planting his face into the dust. As his scream echoed, he immediately pulled himself from the ground in a desperate attempt to find the scroll again, waddling around as dust whisked across his face, obscuring his vision. There: whisking away in the wind towards the glare of the red-hot sun.

    The confused creation scrambled to get up before barreling towards the sun, with one arm out to block the glare and one arm to keep his balance. He fell a few times before the paper began trailing the wind at a faster rate than he could track it. It was like the message was teasing him, taunting at him, holding answers to questions that he didn’t even know he had.

    As the paper whisked away still within 4D4M’s sight, the landscape (at last) seemed to show some form of irregularity. Long patterns of upheaved dunes, even mountains, dotted the horizon; there were some potholes, pits, ravines, and crevices, some even reaching hundreds of feet down. As he ran he noticed some of these distinctions were level; as if a perfect cube of dust had been heaved into the air by ten feet or so. He never stopped to look...

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    The wind died for but a moment, and the paper elegantly, softly, began to levitate towards the awaiting, outstretched arms of 4D4M. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. He jumped for it before one final gust blasted the paper into the sun.

    He stared in awe as the paper made its way towards some sort of… structure. It was the first geographic thing 4D4M had seen in this vast desert. Whatever it may have been was now mostly caked in dust and decay, with only about twice 4D4M’s height of the structure peaking up into the surface. It was made of what might’ve been steel, possibly plaster, and some other materials he didn’t recognize, but it was certainly a squarely-built structure fluent with cracks and deprecations. There were four quad-paned windows, three of which were missing their panes entirely, with the fourth only missing one. He couldn’t see the roof as the structure was taller than he could see, but he assumed that was what provided the deep, terrifying darkness within.

    The message slid inside the minute gap in the fourth pane, disappearing into the darkness.

    At this point, 4D4M felt exhausted. He couldn’t quite understand exhaustion, he simply knew he felt it. Something was straining his arms, and they could no longer pump. Something was tugging at his legs, and they could no longer dash. His breath --assuming his breathing was real-- also gave deep bellows. All in all, it was forcing him to set himself down in the dust.

    In this new world surrounding him, 4D4M found more of the same; that is, more of the new, strange anomalies in the world. With a closer look, he found that some of the dunes were truly just dunes of dust stacking up on these tall structures. The smaller dunes were likely smaller structures, while the potholes and crevices must’ve been created by a similar abnormality. This, however, was the only structure he’d seen that had almost no dust dunes forming around its exterior. Something was strange about this one; as if it had some sort of protection, though 4D4M felt no signs of anything other than pure construction material.

    Protection from the dust meant it had to be moving, he soon realized.

    He and the wind may not be the only entities in this world. Whatever the Third Entity could be, it may be inside.

    And his message was inside.

    4D4M hoisted himself off the ground, stumbling once, but made a quick sprint to the Broken Structure. As he got closer, one thing he noticed was some sort of… deep, yet long-dead vegetation seeping throughout the walls. It made him feel… uncomfortable. As if needles had begun crawling along his neck. 4D4M had to jump to reach the window but still persevered to pull himself up so he could look inside.

    He expected to see a single, level floor, with broken walls between rooms. Instead, there were no walls within the interior-- not even an entire floor. What made up this top level was nothing but a quarter of plaster with wiring jutting out of it. The next floor (which he could clearly see,) was a bit more secure, with half a wall and what might’ve been a desk making up half of a floor. The third floor (which he could see if he scoped through the crack that made up his line of sight,) may have had less decay to it, but 4D4M was uncertain.

    He tried to get a better vantage point, but the moment he did his head bumped into the pane, and it fell inside the building with a loud CRASH. As it did, 4D4M heard the sound of plaster buckling under the weight of the thin-metal binding.

    Carefully, 4D4M shifted his weight up into the window’s paneling. First his left foot, then his right-- immediately, the plaster failed and 4D4M had to grip the side of the wall to keep from falling. Slowly, gently, he lowered himself down…

    He was used to unstable ground… but not like this. In the dust, it was a balancing act to keep yourself from falling over. Here, it was a balancing act to keep everything from falling over. Every push, every pull, every twitch, every muscle-- all of it was tense, slow, and painful.

    Eventually, his feet, one after the other found stable ground to stand on. He held onto the divets in the walls for safety, as he turned to look at the lower level. Now that he was closer, he noticed that the desk was, in fact, half of a dining-table, standing on four of six legs. From roughly fifteen feet away, it looked like he may be able to hop onto it.

    4D4M mumbled, considering the options, his murmuring echoing across the walls. The second floor was riddled with dead vines and branches as well, tightly knotting the plaster. It’s possible that the second floor has proven stronger than the one he was currently standing on. It might even be safer to just jump for it.

    Suddenly, a loud, terrifying gust of wind resounded throughout the entire structure. 4D4M’s gaze immediately shifted to the second floor as he could hear it cracking, and shaking, becoming further unstable. The chunk of plaster he was standing on began to break just as he decided to leap with all his might to the table below, hearing the plaster clamor behind him, down to the third floor. He landed on his feet, then his knees, then instinctively hopped forward as a sudden CRACK cried from the floor. The table began to up-end itself and plummeted off the far end! 4D4M dashed to the left, landing prone on his back as a terrifying SLAM, CRACK, and BOOM resounded throughout the structure. The edge of plaster he was laying on was not enough, and as he rolled his legs hung off the edge just as the table had. His hands stiffened, but inevitably he found his entire body hanging off the side of what was left of second floor.

    From here, 4D4M could see the entirety of the third floor… almost completely covered in shambles and mold from some sort of overgrowth that has long since been dead. There were no walls, but the flooring was complete. All except the large, rectangular hole that now punctured the center of it all from the table’s descent. It must’ve fallen with such ferocity that it broke through the plaster.

    Sure now that his quarry must’ve dropped further below, 4D4M let go of his hand-hold, falling feet-first onto the third floor. Immediately pain shot up his knees as he landed, realizing now that there must’ve been an entire floor in between the one he’d just fallen through (since it was roughly a twenty-five-foot drop, and he could see remnants of plaster on the sidings). The pain quickly melted away as his eyes widened and his face showed immediate relief. Covered by little dustings of debris, in between two thick patches of dead moss, 4D4M picked up his note. Untarnished, unbroken, and untorn.