Last Life Part 1: Homecoming

The Forest

Everyday it gets more difficult to fight against the natural disorder, and that is life, the organismal struggle against entropy.

Once the daily chores had been completed, I found myself left with the rest of the day to myself. I could read, but I've already read every book in this wretched place, at least twice, including every textbook, guidebook, cook book, fiction, nonfiction and journal. John had taught me how to read, and even enjoy it, though I have to admit the calculus textbooks and dictionary were not nearly as enthralling as the biology or chemistry books or the fiction novels, but when you have time to spend, books are the safest option.

I got together my foraging gear, because today was prime for visiting the forest. It has been quiet for weeks in there, I suspect many of the bigger beasts have gone dormant in the summer heat, but I still chose to bring a weapon with me anyways: a few flash bangs and a large broad sword. I'm not one for guns, they jam and most are simply ineffective against the beasts of the forest, and they run out of ammo too quick in this world, and where would I get more of it? Whereas even if a sword breaks it can be reforged. Bullets are absorbed into the bodies that they pierce, swords cut through and cleave muscle from bone, circuitry from motherboard. Maybe a hundred years ago typical guns would work on these bastards, but nowadays they just laugh at anything smaller than 50mm.

The plague, the reason I have to wear that mask, manifests itself within the bodies of those tortured demons. The plague haunts them day and night, for an eternity until somebody is merciful and armed enough to put them to rest. The plague was once a madman's solution to mortality. The plague was good, for about thirty years. The plague did not kill humans straightaway, but it slowly, day by day, turned them into something else, something worse than human. The plague filled not only the lungs of humans, but many beasts as well, creating hellions that rivaled our own. The plague made their flesh into metal, and computers turned out to be more cruel than their creators. The plague was a means to end the end, for some, but definitely not all.

I am not one to be stopped by thoughts of death anymore, if it is my time, it is my time. Might as well live the rest of whatever this life is by living it to its fullest, even if that means terminating ahead of schedule. The decaying depths of the forest hold many lucrative finds, from tools to trinkets of the past world to animal parts and edible fungus. But if I were really lucky, I would find a book or a tape, where within I could absorb myself in the wanders of others. It is not as if I want to live this life, nor should anybody want to, even if it has its liberties. I've got freedom, heat and death.

I had to hike for about a quarter mile downhill to get to the forest. The crumbling hillsides and cholla made the trek slow and arduous, not to mention the constant screaming of metallic cicadas. At the edge of the forest, the land is bright and dry, the ground light tan and mottled with patches of bleached and mildewed grey grasses and mustard, sticking out like tufts of fur on a mangy hide, often disturbed by slight breezes of lost washes of air. Yet, In the woods, the air lies still, as if the whole world has stopped, holding its breath for a moment. Minuscule dust motes drift down from narrow, mottle shafts of golden light. And so, I don my mask, breathing in the caustic air through purifying, rattling filters.

Most, if not all of the trees for miles and miles around are dead, moldy and black with toxic rot. The insects in the putrid soil had long ago stopped decomposing the acrid tree waste, they lacked the appetite for the fallen leaves and tree limbs, for now they lusted after nutrient rich flesh, adding to the entropy. The trees, without the vast majority of their decomposers, began to wither away and die. The effects of pollution and radiation as well as the competition for nitrogen was simply too much for the great trees. Poisoned and starved, the trees dropped their leaves, which fell to the lower branches, along with the twigs and even dead animals, to form a rancid, black lattice-work of decay on the lowermost branches. The entire chaotic, intricate, delicate complex would be brought down with a strong wind, rainfall or earthquake. It was all a repulsing scene of musty death.