“How many years has it been?” Max asked, staring up at the sky. He wasn’t asking how long he had been here, he knew the answer to that.

No, he was wondering when he stopped caring about the passage of time.

He still recalled that day, centuries ago, when he realized he had spent more than a decade here without realizing it. He noticed it again when he turned 60. The third time was after a century had passed. Each day, though interesting in the moment, bled into each other in his memories. Each of these instances was a shock to him, not only realizing that so much time was passing, but that he was facing no repercussions for idling his time away. Max vaguely recalled that at some point, the idea that he had completely stopped aging scared him.

But now? Now he felt like he knew exactly how much time was passing, it just didn’t matter anymore. It was strange. He thought that as time went on his memory would grow duller, but instead, it felt like his mind grew sharper with every passing day. To someone who lived for 14 centuries, days could be counted like seconds, and while the finer details were a bit hazy, the more important events were all there.

It had been 1290 years, 3 months, and 2 weeks since he stopped using cookbooks when preparing meals. 620 years, 5 months, and 3 days since he started getting bored with video games and started learning other languages for more reading variety. 195 years ago that he got bored with wood carving and started exercising daily. 15 years ago he decided his regimen was too easy and increased the intensity to the point that only the most athletic humans could keep pace with it for more than a few days.

And today was the day that he asked himself a very important question. How much longer was he going to stay here? He told himself that he would explore the desert once he grew bored with the oasis, but that didn’t seem like it would be happening anytime this millennium, if ever.

His laptop seemed to have every game in existence, and countless more that he had never heard of. The bookcase had a new selection every day and seemed limited only by the capacity of all recorded human knowledge. No matter how bored he got with one pastime, there was another to shift his attention to. It didn’t even matter how much or how little effort he put into it, because he seemed to have infinite time to waste.

“If I keep putting it off, then I’m never going to leave.” It was a thought that had occurred to him many times, but saying it out loud gave the words more weight. It was time for him to choose.

Venture into the desert or remain here forever.

Max sat up, staring at the tree line for a few moments before swearing under his breath and walking back to the cabin.

Going to his bedroom, he changed into a set of light but durable clothes, a plain white T-shirt and cargo shorts, before opening the bottom drawer of his dresser, revealing a backpack with a canteen hanging from the side. It was a bit smaller than he would have liked considering the situation, but opening and closing the drawer didn’t give him anything better, so he sighed and accepted it. Putting his laptop in the backpack, he went to the kitchen.

At first, he thought to fill the pack with normal non-perishable foods, but then an ancient memory from before he came to the oasis surfaced in his mind. Opening the cupboard, Max began filling his backpack and pockets with boxes of meal-replacement protein bars, jars of calorie-dense energy gel, and bottles of vitamin pills.

Walking outside, he went to the pond to fill the canteen only to realize that it already had water in it. Curious, Max opened it and started dumping out the water, only for the water to never stop pouring.

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“I guess I only have to worry about starving to death then,” he said jokingly.

With his provisions gathered, Max walked through the garden toward the treeline. He was about to grab a handful of grapes as a quick snack, before reaching for a thicker part of the vine. Tightening his grip, Max pulled and ripped the vine from the trellis with little effort.

“I may as well take the whole thing. It’s not like it's heavy or anything,” he said, resting the 4-foot-long vine over his shoulder. Like everything else in the oasis, Max’s body had gained supernatural properties, and over the last hundred years his training regimen had steadily changed from “casually keeping in shape” to “breaking the limits of humanity.”

It wasn’t as though he was magically stronger, but the degree to which he pushed his body should result in torn muscles and overexertion. Instead, he only grew stronger. Additionally, no matter how much stronger he grew, his body retained the same lithe, toned physique that he gained from his more casual exercises.

Max plucked a few grapes from the vine as he made his way to the tree line. Despite putting off exploring the desert for the last millennium, he had traveled out there just to stare at the desert frequently. Sometimes he told himself it was to see if anything would change over the centuries, other times it was in the hopes that there was someone else in the strange world and that he could grab their attention as they passed by. Sometimes there was no reason, and he just wanted to watch the shifting sands as they flowed like water, the dunes rising and falling like waves on the ocean. After all this time his walking had created a distinct path through the jungle, a narrow but clear dirt road free from any leaves, branches, or even a single blade of grass.

That path was not what he found today.

Instead of the winding path created by centuries of walking, there was a wide stretch of flat grassy ground that led straight from the clearing to the desert beyond. The trees that grew along the sides were far closer together than they would be normally, creating a natural fence that barred him from the rest of the jungle. A few of the trees bent towards each other and made arches along the path. Despite the abundance of trees, the ground was utterly devoid of any signs of the many roots that had to be there.

In short, it was easily the most unnatural thing Max had seen since he first arrived in the oasis. The fact that this appeared to him, on the day he was choosing to venture out into the desert, made him feel like his little paradise was saying goodbye.

It was unsettling to Max.

As he walked along the path, he realized that the ground wasn’t turning soft like it usually did, instead, it remained as solid as normal ground should as he approached the edge of the jungle.

Finally, he reached the end of the path and looked out at the desert as he stood silently. Gazing out at the endless expanse, dunes rising and falling like waves on the sea, sand flowing like ocean currents. Max felt more hesitation and anxiety than he had felt in the last 1400 years.

He took a deep breath, realized that it didn’t help at all, silently cursed every writer that included such a line in their story, and stepped forward.

Then the world exploded.

The sand below him erupted upward, surrounding him so completely that for a moment Max thought that he was drowning in quicksand. The tiny grains pelted him, tearing at his skin and clothing as the sandstorm raged. He opened his mouth to scream, but his voice was overpowered by the shrieking wind.

The storm stopped as quickly as it started. When Max opened his eyes he expected to see the dunes around him disturbed by the wind, his arms and legs scraped and bloody, and the vine he was still holding to be cleaned of its grapes and leaves.

Instead, he was greeted by the same pristine waves of sand that were there a moment ago, shifting around and below him. His limbs were devoid of damage, his lightly tanned skin unmarred by even a single scratch that wasn’t there an hour ago. Even the vine was none the worse for wear, with not a single leaf out of place.

All that was missing was the oasis.

Max turned around and saw nothing but empty desert. There was no sign of the jungle oasis that he had called home for over a millennium.

He had walked out of paradise, and now all he had was the vast desert.