NOTHING IS LOST

Entry #2

Belongs to : Abel Braun

Role : GUIDE (Renegade)
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The smells of molten metal slowly started stinging our nostrils before we even got to see the town. They were fixing a small breach, most likely. We arrived at the gates of Settlement Glasstower around 8 AM, way ahead of our schedule. Irony has it that the guards on this specific shift were two new cocky, pimply rookies that didn’t want to let us pass. “We aren’t expecting any batches before 8:30” one said, looking straight ahead, ignoring my stare. “-no, we ain’t” the other continued, overlapping his partner’s last words. I didn’t like identity checks so, handing five metal scrap to each one, they mysteriously lost track of us as we slid through the gate. We made our way into the town center, looking for the Coffee place that made this settlement so popular. Long ago in the old world, near to where Glasstower was built, there used to be a Coffee processing plant, so these guys are sitting on a huge stockpile of what might as well be 24K gold. Everywhere else, a coffee will cost you a small fortune, but not here.
Not in Glasstower.

Half an hour had passed and my next batch was scheduled to leave. With a tip of the hat to the new friends I’d just made but will most definitely never see again, I got up from my stool and headed towards the exit. Outside it was cold. It had rained the night prior, so the canopy was soaked. Water rolled along and off the countless branches overhead, then hit the metal streets of the town at irregular, disorienting intervals. “That is as close as we get to rainfall nowadays” I thought. For the most part, it was true.
Walking towards the recruitment bay, I spotted an “Antiquity Shop”. A card that covered one of its windows read “Items from before the Rapture. Lightly used.” Intrigued, I crossed the street and looked inside through the foggy glass. It was all a jumbled mess, paintings and lamps and all sorts of other random objects disrespectfully stacked on top of each other. And then, among all that chaos...there it was! An amazing scope that was in almost pristine condition...I couldn’t believe it. For as long as I could remember, I had been looking for a good portable piece for my astronomical observations, and I had finally done it. I’d found one, and it looked perfect. I rushed inside and almost felt disgusted at the low price of such a beautiful instrument. With the sky completely and permanently covered by the impenetrable canopy, the light of all our stars would just recoil back into the void, never reaching its true purpose. Never observed. It was simply wasted, discarded by the Universe as mere sterile energy when, if seen and admired, it could become wonder, curiosity, love, fear…Simply passing through the filter of human experience, this feeble wave-particle would be given so much more meaning. Still, I understood this.
I understood why this isolated case of optical craftsmanship wasn’t worth a damn to most people out here but to me…it was worth everything.

It didn’t take long for me to reach the recruitment bay. I sat down and waited for my batch to arrive, but all I could focus on was the beautiful glass I was holding in my hands, gently covering its objective lens with a fine piece of fabric I’d bought along with it. Soon…
I used to beat myself up about not being old enough to have gotten into astronomy in time, back then...Back when the sky used to be ours, wide open, full of unending wonder. Everywhere you gazed you would find something looking back at you in its hauntingly beautiful silence. And I ignored it all. I’d gotten old and missed what could have been tens of years of…light.
Along with my excitement for my incoming observations came a blunt sensation of regret. As if all of my thoughts were tainted on the other side, and no matter how I would spin them, I would always end up feeling the same thing. Guilt. I knew exactly when this whole astronomy thing was ignited. I could pinpoint it to the exact agonizing second.
A batch of five scientists I was leading north together with Koda, twelve years ago. They were moving some pretty important papers on the medicinal properties of Sap, so they requested two guides just to make sure everything would go smoothly. Put down a hefty deposit too, so we knew they were serious. I was supposed to be lookout that night, but...somehow...I had fallen asleep…
A Ravager came out of nowhere and tore through our camp, trampling and mauling everything in its path. It happened fast...The screams stopped quickly. By the time I got up I thought everyone had died, so I hid. I was wrong...The monster found Koda hiding underneath a fragment of the torn tent. With tears flooding my eyes, I watched her desperately trying to fight as it was tearing her open. I wanted to jump out but it was already too late...With the last jolts of energy, she was punching at its head, but the beast showed only ravenous determination. It never reacted to her flurries. It never even blinked. It just ate.
I couldn’t look, I wanted to close my eyes but in the last second my gaze fixated on something…
My friend was being eaten alive and the steam of her blood was charging the air with a visceral sense of dread, but all I could look at was...Arcturus. Bright and imposing. I didn’t know its name at the time, but through a crack in the treetop it stared back at me...It echoed words of agony and peace. It showed me flashes of distant worlds… It promised that nothing is ever lost. It’s all just different faces of the same infinitely spinning coin… It kept my gaze locked on it, shielding me from the horrors that were happening then and there, right in front of me.

Back on Earth, at the recruitment bay...Time felt as if it was passing slower and slower. Random clients would occasionally walk in front of me and wake me up from my trance. I was planning on testing the scope…that run. That would require a one-day detour in order to pass through the closest Vertical...A very difficult route on top of gigantic intertwined branches. You are constantly risking falling to your death but are rewarded with gorgeous panoramic views from the top of the Holt. Trees in that sector were old and didn’t shift as much, which meant it was…stable. Infested with Lurkers, though. Not to mention that I somehow had to justify the delay... A full day? I needed to convince myself that it was worth it…
How could it not be? A real look at the stars for the cheap price of risking my skin…and putting my “batch” in considerable danger. Yes, they should in fact be grateful! This batch was about to witness what probably less than five percent of the remaining human population had witnessed in the last fifty years. Many other Guides could have taken this path before, but they rarely ever did. It was too dangerous. It never made sense. Not. To. Them.
Batch was a big word for what I had, anyways…I still couldn’t believe that all my years as a guide would culminate in me leading a bunch of spoiled, rich kids across kilometers of extreme terrain with a high probability of death...just because they wanted to “visit”. Tourism had survived the apocalypse, it seemed. Back in the day, guides were seen as the ones who dragged the broken remains of society through roots and gunk and blood. Crucial cogs in its rusty mechanism. When we moved, everything moved…Only to turn into disposable safari escorts.

Another ten minutes had passed. We were already not going to leave on time.

Smooth old-world jazz was ricocheting through the misty corridors of the recruitment bay and, zoning out, I lit a cigarette and pictured it for a second. The vast void. Pitch black…except for one strange point of light suspended in the nothingness of space. A laugh in the face of monotony. Arcturus, the fourth brightest star in the night sky. Its spiky arms spread out as if reaching for a hug…as if it was sorry for us…For how things turned out…
Snapping out of it, I found myself already briefing the batch on safety precautions. I had no idea when I started speaking and where I was going with my sentence, which made me stutter and stop. It all felt so strange, as if my consciousness set me to autopilot and traveled somewhere far, far away...eons away...then came back and picked up the controls once again.
All around me were confused faces. Three boys and two girls. Ages starting at seven-teen, but none older than twenty-five. Obviously first time traveling. They were all waiting for me to gather myself and continue my idea.
Somehow, I did.

The leaves overhead were dry, taking in the light from the sun and adding their colorful spin, then covering us in hues of bright blue, then violet, then red.
We had already covered a good chunk of the way to our first designated campsite. The young clients were hectic but listened when I told them to. They asked me infantile questions. I answered.
Part of me wanted to shut them down...Then I remembered my plan. If I was about to put them at risk for this, I was at least going to entertain their stupid little ideas. I knew, deep down, that nothing bad was going to happen but it just felt right to be…humble, and so I was.
That night, we camped at ground level. I tried catching a glimpse through the leaves here and there, but it felt like an insult to the stars and to my new scope. I stopped. It was easy to show restraint, knowing that the following night we were going to camp along the Vertical.

As morning came, one of the two couples were facing problems in paradise. It took all my patience to not freak out. We were in the middle of the man-eating Holt, the biggest natural disaster humanity had ever faced, most definitely looking in the face of a drawn-out extinction event, but somehow those two lovebirds found something more important to fight over.
I eventually did, in fact, freak out.

It was almost time to set up the camp, and my enthusiasm was starting to show. Taking short breaks to write in the journal helped contain my emotions. I had to make it look as if tough decisions were being made. It was finally happening…The batch was also very excited to see the horizon for the first time in their lives. It all worked out. Hah! I might even consider allowing them to look through the scope, but I must be extremely cautious in putting my precious instrument in the greasy hands of and on the greasy faces of…teenagers.

We were...attacked. As all things in the Holt, it happened fast. Obviously, a Lurker. It was dark out and it was silent. I didn’t get to see who, but it snatched one of the boys. The rest split up and followed protocol. I could hear the girls whimpering in front of me. The other two boys were to my right...I needed to move. I grabbed one of the boys and whispered that I needed a distraction…I wasn’t sure he understood, but there was no time. I gave him the gun and slipped into the darkness. When the “sun sets” in the Holt, it gets so dark, so quickly. Exponentially, much like a candle flame running out of oxygen. The creature had probably stalked us for a while and was waiting for this exact moment. Pitch black...and then, through that darkness came a blinding spark of light. And then another. The jarring sound of the handgun echoed through the branches. Lurkers are invulnerable to bullets. If you want to take them down, you have to get close and stick a blade between their tough bark plates...but the boy didn’t know that, and it was for the better.
Against the bright flashes of the gunshots, I saw what looked like snaps of the slender silhouette charging towards the gunfire. The girls were screaming. I sprinted towards it and at the very last second, jumped on its mossy back, barely clutching its throat from behind. From then on, it was easy work. The blade slid effortlessly between its armor and into its soft, pathetic flesh. It slowed down and weakly threw its arms and legs around in a final attempt at running away , then collapsed on its face, slinging me forwards.

I barely could get them to calm down and stop calling for their fallen friend. Especially her. The Lurker had...separated one of the couples. I was trying to find the correct order of words...to explain that he is gone and that she should not make any more noise, because she was putting the rest of us in serious danger. As if that mattered to her in that moment. As if anything I would have ever said could have changed that situation. It couldn’t have. It didn’t.

We waited, listened, then set up the camp at the top of the Vertical soon after. The others were traumatized and fought to stay awake. Exhaustion was indisputable, but fear was was the greater force that night. They sat in silence. The girl, she sobbed and sobbed...until she suddenly stopped. At first I thought she’d fallen asleep but instead she was just...staring. Gazing into the darkness of the Holt below with a blank, sterile expression on her face. While looking straight into her eyes, I got up. I grabbed my scope and quietly made my way to the edge of our camp, at the top of an enormous branch that curved back down into the darkness.
There I was. At the top of the world. My eyes took time to adjust to the distance. From up there, the scale of things didn’t seem all wrong anymore. In the distance, clouds.
I fucked up.
I was pretending to ignore it... but I felt that guilt again. And this time, I shared it with the stars.
They drew me out here. They mocked me. Most of all, IT mocked me. Arcturus. Grinning and whispering the same things it had whispered twelve years ago.
“Nothing is lost”...I am.
I lowered my eyes into the darkness at my feet. Through the branches...five faces looking straight up at me. Their white eyes tired and their expressions lifeless. The most piercing of all...Koda. I failed her.
Relaxing my fingers, I let the scope disappear into the darkness below.
Laying down, my eyes mechanically set on Arcturus directly above me. I placed my journal on my chest...and then it was silence.



Note: The remains were found under a bed of leaves. The cause of death is believed to be severe blunt trauma to the head, chest and spine of the victim. There was little to no clarification on whether the fall was accidental, intentional or caused by a third party.
Directly above was a Vertical where an abandoned campsite was also discovered. No signs of survivors were present in or around the camp. The body on the ground was in an advanced state of decomposition, but was identified through clothing, equipment and accessories as being renegade guide Abel Braun. A journal was also discovered meters away from the location of the body. The contents of said journal were considered to support the suggested identity of the deceased man.

End of Entry#2