DISCOVERY PART 1A

Day 18; 1317 (Afternoon)

Focus: 513

*SPLASH*

A loud splash of water shattered the eerie silence of the motionless air. The culprit was 513, who had started cleaning himself after having just consumed a hefty meal of dried, smoked meat, and nothing else.

Aside from the noise made by his own movements, the surrounding area was pristine and deathly silent.

Tilting his head back, he stared at the large, expansive, clear-blue sky above him in awe, and reminisced about his time back on Earth. The laughter; the joy; the calm -- they were fond memories of all the lives he did not live.

Closing his eyes, he took-in a deep breath. He spent this time of reflection appreciating his present life of peace and solitude. The last few days had been kind to him. He was given a rare opportunity to live a life without fear of stalking predators or immediate dangers. And though he knew it was only temporary, he was reluctant to let it go.

With eyes still closed, he felt his remaining senses heighten.

He felt the cold air dance on his skin as the lukewarm water from the rinse ran down his cheeks and off his jaw. He listened as the water gently trickled off his face and dripped onto the hard, charred ground below his feet.

*DRIP* *DRIP* *DRIP*

In this moment, he felt tranquility.

Opening his eyes, he turned his attention towards the wash basin made of fire-baked clay, and swirled the clean water inside of it with his hands.

As he prepared himself, he briefly mused about his upcoming tasks, then buried his face into the water-filled basin.

*SPLASH* *SPLASH* *SPLASH*

Scooping-up clean water with both hands, he vigorously scrubbed his face caked with dirt, sweat, and grease. This went on for some time until all the clean water inside the wash basin had been used.

Lifting his head away, he closed his eyes once more. He was curious to see if he could repeat the sensation he felt before; if he could force himself to heighten his senses on a whim.

As he concentrated, the cold air enveloped his face and stung his skin where water was still present. He could feel the formation of tiny droplets as they travelled and converged on to the sharp features of his face. And then he listened as those droplets gently landed onto the hard ground below him.

*DRIP* *DRIP* *DRIP*

It was soothing; meditative.

The sound of the gentle impacts, the feel of the water running down his face, all of it calmed his mind from the insanity raging inside of him.

He returned back to the wash basin and looked into the murky water left inside. With the sun at his back, he stared at his own reflection. [Skinny.] He commented. It was an emotionless response to seeing his expressionless face for the first time in days.

513: “Well, at least I’m alive.”

He murmured to himself, pretending to be disinterested.

Shelving the thought for another time, he focused his attention elsewhere.

He dumped the remaining contents of the wash basin onto the ground and set it next to a row of fire-baked clay jugs filled with potable water.

The stored water was collected from a nearby sinkhole that had filled with groundwater.

The collected water was then boiled, filtered through several layers of charcoal and moss, boiled a second time, then transferred into the clay jugs for later use -- like drinking and washing.

The clay for the pottery came from similar sources -- sinkholes and open fissures that exposed thick layers of clay deposits to the surface.

He capitalized on the find. First, by manually hauling armfuls of clay soil back to his camp, then, by using a sled made of bone and stretched hide for subsequent return trips.

From the clay, he created various forms of pottery, bowls, utensils, and most importantly, bricks for constructing walls.

His days were filled with back-breaking manual labor, with all the projects he had going, but he couldn’t be happier. He was building something for himself, rather than huddling deep inside a cramped hole to hide from ruthless predators.

As he checked for empty clay jugs to refill, he tasked his mind with a thought experiment. The subject was simple, the geography of his current location.

Using his knowledge of clay being abundant in the area, he surmised that the forest had flourished inside an expansive valley or ancient floodplain, which was surrounded by a vast mountain range. This conclusion was reached after logically thinking about where clay is often found, which is near rivers.

Rivers create flood plains; mountains create rivers; valleys are found near mountains. His logic appeared sound.

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From his observations, he deduced that the forest was boreal, which explained the cold weather and massive conifer-esque trees. Using what little knowledge he had of the subject, he hypothesized that the general area must have, at one point, been covered by a massive sheet of ice. That massive ice sheet -- or glacier -- would have carved-up the landscape as it travelled across the land, leaving the terrain rocky and barren.

Using Earth as an analogue, he continued his thought experiment. He reasoned that his location must have been somewhere in the northernmost region of an unknown landmass. He based this presumption on the area’s rough terrain, abundance of clay, cold weather, and forest type.

Eventually, he finished checking the clay jugs.

Upon finding that no jugs required refilling, he decided to put the thought experiment on hold. He could muse about the subject for hours, even days, but it wasn't the proper time to do so.

So, he switched his focus over to his next task, which was performing his second inspection of the day -- the first being performed earlier in the morning. After he organized the water jugs in an orderly fashion, he set-off towards the perimeter of his camp.

The sun beat down on 513’s exposed, tanned skin, as he leisurely walked the perimeter; its bright rays proved rather deceptive in the frigid weather. His skin felt as if it had been warmed, even though it remained cold to the touch. [Must be the sun’s radiation.] He told himself, quickly shrugging the thought away.

The thick layer of smog that had originally loomed over the entirety of the dead zone, had disappeared due to the rains that had come as a result of the fires.

Flammagenitus, or fire clouds -- formed by a large rise of hot air from the surface and induced by forest fires or volcanic activity -- had formed over-top the dead zone, condensed the high moisture content in the air, and produced the rain that had snuffed-out the remaining fires in the area.

Because of this, the dead zone was able to begin recovering from the damage.

He briefly wondered what life would have been like if the smog had stayed, if his vision had remained obscured by a formless, opaque wall that could easily suffocate him in his sleep. Would he have the same mental clarity that he does now? Would he have been able to accomplish the construction projects he currently worked-on? Would he have had access to food and water?

The more he contemplated, the more his thoughts went nowhere.

Eventually, he abandoned this train of thought and resumed his inspection.

Walking past the large tree stump he used as a point of reference for his camp, his eyes subconsciously focused-on a piece of dug-up land that was now used for storing processed skins and dried hides.

513: "Hmm."

He mumbled to himself as his eyes fixated on the location.

It was the site of a memory he would rather forget.

◊◊◊◊◊◊

The event occurred the day he stopped having traumatic dreams in his sleep; the day he completed the healing process.

It was on this day that he experienced the second purge from his body.

Just like his previous encounter on the rocky hill, his body became lethargic and weak. His bones felt like they had turned into rubber.

Falling to his knees, he struggled to keep his head from slamming onto the ground as sludge filled his mouth and exploded outward. He felt like a burst dam; he vomited uncontrollably, and showed no signs of stopping.

Then, came the pain.

He felt a familiar burning sensation in his lungs as his body was slowly starved of oxygen -- his airways were blocked by the filth spewing out from his body; clumps of minerals and solidified fats slowly worked their way out from his tear ducts; wax and dead skin cells spewed out from his ears like a leaky faucet; built-up mucus and clumped-up particulates oozed from his nostrils and stretched to the floor like taffy; his bones vibrated, generating extreme heat that radiated outward, pushing the remaining imperfections from inside his body out through his pores.

His body became a living fount of filth.

And when all this had concluded -- when the vomiting, the crying, and the hurting had ended -- he wicked away the residual muck and grime off of his body and quickly searched for disinfecting moss to clean himself.

This was the day he named the event: the Cleansing. It was a phenomenon that came directly after Trauma Healing -- the name he gave to the dreamscape events.

After he had finished wiping his body clean with disinfecting moss, he changed out of his filth-soaked clothing, then returned to the site of his Cleansing.

He felt squeamish looking down at the large pile of grime and muck that had been extruded out from his body. Unlike the sight of mangled and torn-up creatures, or the gore associated with them, the filth that came from his body was different.

It was easy for him to become desensitized to something that he had no stake-in, something that did not involve his well-being, but the filth...the filth was personal. It was something that was once inside of him; it was something that could still be inside him, even now.

His skin crawled as he stared closer at the pile of sludge. It appeared to be alive, wriggling and pulsating like a squirming worm caught in a deluge.

Once bubbles started emerging from random locations in the thick, soupy slurry, he decided it was time to rectify the situation by removing it from his camp.

At one point, while in the midst of brainstorming a solution, he thought the muck had spoken to him directly. It told him nonsense like: “open your miiind” and “we are ONE, we are the SAME”, but he pretended not to hear it; he feared that what had been spoken was true, that what he had heard was real.

Calming himself, he dismissed the situation, concluding that whatever had transpired must have been a figment of his imagination; a fabrication of his psychosis.

Eventually, he settled on a simplistic solution to the problem: dump the contents of the Cleansing into a bottomless hole in the ground. Luckily for 513, there were plenty of those in the area.

After choosing a location far from any sites that had filled with groundwater, he carried out his plan.

Using the sled he had made for hauling clay soil, he transported the filth from the Cleansing, alongside the ground beneath it, to a hole far, far away from either his camp or the pools filled with groundwater.

Once at the edge, he leaned the sled over and kicked it into the whole. He thought about saving the sled, but realized it would be easier to simply make a new one.

Upon returning to the camp, he immediately started a large fire. He kept the fire burning continuously for an entire day, and used its smoke to purge the campsite of the abhorrent stench that came with the Cleansing process.

◊◊◊◊◊◊

513: "Tch. Not looking forward to more of those."

Clicking his tongue, his face contorted in disgust while whispering words of complaint to himself. He knew a Cleansing event was an inevitability, not a choice. So he was clearly unhappy.

After spending a brief moment clearing his mind of the memory, he resumed his inspection.

---Chapter End