Stepping Out

I took a cue from those girls and left in the dead of night. It wasn't difficult. I think I was even spotted by the rifle on the roof. They said nothing, and just let me walk. As I strolled down the road I couldn't help but shiver off the atmosphere of that church. I wish them survival, but I don't think it will go beyond that.

Many of them are already dead, they just haven't stopped moving yet.

I walked away down the main street, immersed in the muggy warmth of night in the high mountain desert. It's like being hugged by the breath of a volcano that is trying to smother you using a thin, and worn out pillow. After awhile you get used to it. Your body puts up a fuss at first, upset that it can't get away from the heat. But the human is a highly adaptive animal. We can ignore and adapt to discomforts, and loss of limbs. We can adapt to climate, to altitude, to pressure, or lack thereof.

But when it comes to an extreme survival situation . . . most people die. They don't freeze to death, or impale themselves on a branch, or die of infection, they simply . . . die. I can't say I think it improbable that this has already happened. I haven't run into anyone that has lost hope so completely. But I had to leave that church because that's what I felt there.

The people had lost their spirit. The building was nothing more than walls blocking them from the outside. A death has happened to humanity apart from the rise of Zed. We've died within. Yet strangely I've never felt more alive.

As the stars wink in the sky I paused to watch. I stood still, a lone living figure in an all engulfing darkness, gawking upward at a sky full of ancient light. I look out there, and feel simultaneously trapped on this enormous rock, and hopeful for the future of the race. We play out our silly games on this planet, mundane, contemptible - continually one-upping each other, positioning for status, power, and sex. Running after the almighty dollar like one possessed.

Madness in all this infinity.

Pointless spending of energy. Because we've all been taught to think, act, and perceive short-term.

I began walking again, one soul surrounded by the depths of the darkness. Small wonder then that my mind began to wander onto the problem of being short-term thinkers. Will this disaster change our perceptions? Shift our veritable paradigms? Will they who survive have exercised that atrophied skill called thinking in the long term? My thoughts shift into rebuilding.

When humanity rebuilds . . . if. At the top of their list of priorities will be prevention. They will want to prevent Zed from ever happening again. They will want to build a framework of freedom and security. We will once again have leaders with character, and selflessness. We will have governing bodies who will sacrifice themselves for the survival of their families, and neighbors. They will survive, and inspire survival, and all the best things in the human race.

For only they who have the compassion, and the empathy, and the vision to carry the human race into the future will persist in this environment. And if they do not have these most essential of human traits, they will have to inherit them. If they don't they will not last. They will die.

I will die.

The thought brings me back to earth with a thud. I was walking south. Back home. I didn't come here, twist my ankle all to blazes, and enjoy the deadest living company for three days to turn around and go back home. I am going to find Scott. I came this far. I won't leave until I find him, and bring him home.

I pivoted on my bad ankle, which gave the tiniest bit of protestation, and walked north, stepping off the shoulder of the road and into the dust, catching a full nose-full of Utah's southern desert. It's on to Parowan. May he still be there.