Children of the Water [Part One]

      He had slept longer than he had intended to.

     The assurance of electricity and fresh water from last nights rainfall gave him much comfort, but he shivered till the early shafts of morning light touched his building. When he had awoken to the light he was so damn weary he merely covered his eyes with an arm and slept on in the dawn warmth. Though, it was still late morning when he awoke; quarter to ten-o’clock as professed by his watch. He could have slept through the whole day; he had forgotten the last time he had the opportunity to sleep as much as he wanted despite the discomfort. Yet, his stomach growled and murmured at him to get up and try to find something to pacify it. When he stood he realized how sore he was, wishing not for the last time to have some where soft to sleep; if not an actual bed.

     After a couple minutes of getting his meager possessions packed and in order he was on his way outside. It was just as hot and muggy as it was yesterday, in spite of a thick cloud cover above. At least it had provided him a more abundant amount of fresh water in the street, which he drank enough of to try and trick his stomach into being full along with filling his water bag. With this new morning routine out of the way, he plodded along on the heading he had chosen yesterday: slightly downhill and to the West.

     He felt as though he was in higher spirits, despite still getting used to his surroundings. There was a hope that he had upon witnessing the lamps outside come alight. Surely there should be someone, somewhere, that is producing power for the grid; perhaps a town of sorts and the lights in the city simply being of a tangential connection. Additionally - if he found a building with lighting fixtures and perhaps some appliances - there was a chance he could create a sort of urban homestead to live from while he explored, gathered and hunted.

     A smile began to form on his face as he slowly moved along, skirting the sharp rocks as they emerged from the grasses and brush. The worries that had plagued him for the last couple of weeks - couple of years, to be more thorough - were suddenly and completely vanquished; the physical causes of them, at least. Sure, the necessities of food and water were a bit irregular in this world and he would have to provide for himself from hand to his mouth, but, its better than being leashed to The Party for his food or starving at the mercy of It’s whims.

     Keeping on at a comfortable pace he appreciated the architecture and engineering around him, pausing every so often to peer at worn street signs to understand where he was. Just like every other one he had passed, the markings had mostly faded away long ago, yet, some of the more preserved lettering was surely in a familiar form. Perhaps the language of this city was precisely the same as his own? That would be a tremendous stroke of luck if it were; just imagine all the books he could gather and scavenge knowledge and entertainment from!

     In his pseudo-archaeological musings and observations he didn’t notice the figure in the road before him till he had to clamber over a particularly large bit of rubble blocking the street. It was less than a block ahead of him when he froze, having noticed it standing behind a rather shaggy bush beneath a sizable tree. His hand dropped down and fumbled to draw the handgun from his hip, deciding on suspicion and caution rather than stroking his curiosity. The figure had yet to move or turn in his direction and from this distance he could make out it’s large head and arms, though it seemed less human the more he looked at it.

     Creeping through the brush as quietly as he could, the green reticle on the handgun’s optic trained on the strange form in the shade ahead of him, daring not to take more than a shallow breath. During his approach birds exchanged their warning calls to one another before taking flight from the trees and brush, the cautious man flinching at the raucous escape of the songbirds. Yet, the silhouette remained still as a statue, as if intent upon something at it’s feet.

     Only a minute passed in his furtive approach, but it felt like an eternity with his weapon clasped in his hands and unblinking eyes on his target. In only another minute he felt like an utter fool as he noticed the vines and moss that had long taken hold of what was once an object of suspicion. With a re-holstering of his gun he let out the breath he had been holding and strode forward to take a better look, his curiosity overpowering his caution.

     It was a robot, of sorts. Rather tall and quite large, it’s purpose seemed to be that of a sanitary worker. It’s arms were long with rather pointed fingers for gathering up trash and to it’s mechanical waist a rather large and deep bin on wheels had been leashed to it. It did not have legs but, rather, some wide treads that were made of since dry-rotted rubber. It’s head, lastly, was rather blocky; housing a singular ‘eye’ and sporting a rather rakish antenna.

     “I suppose it is you I must thank for being unable to find any bottles.” He remarked to the dead machine as he perused its corpse.

     He had seen robots before, of course, though these were only during military parades and the rare private tests he bothered to show up to. Compared to this specimen - despite the rust and lichen that dissolve its fine components - those were only stanchions to hang propaganda and hollow laurels of progress upon. He didn’t know much about robotics, but he made an assumption that seeing one holding such a plain yet valuable occupation meant that whoever designed it surely must have been a genius. He couldn’t imagine the effort it would have taken to create such a machine that could navigate this vast city and not get stuck or cause problems for people.

      After a short melancholic pause he wondered to himself as to how this world came to such a state. With this city still standing after apparent decades, such incredible technology and the flow of electricity still present in it’s crumbling veins; how come no one is around? Why did everyone leave? Surely they left voluntarily or else there would be corpses and ruin in the streets.

     Strangely he felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth and he allowed himself a chuckle as he climbed upon the stoic automaton: “I suppose I have all the time in the world to answer that question. Surely coming up with questions and trying to answer them will keep me going, even if I am alone.”

     He managed to grapple himself up enough to peer into the tote that was attached to the robot and was pleasantly surprised at the horde of treasures within. There was plenty of bottles mixed within a deep mess of compost and leaves that were nourishing a small amount of seedlings. Though, as he dug through, every single plastic bottle he grabbed crumbled in on themselves and turned into chips and dust.

     At the end of his dumpster diving he found only a half-dozen bottles that were of any use. Though they were made of glass they lacked caps and were choked full of dirt, compost and whatever vague, sticky remnants of what they once contained. Regardless, he put them in his bag, reasoning that he could boil water in them sometime later. He would have preferred to have found some metal containers, but every one he found was too rusted through to use. Surely he could find some in the future, hopeful of a suitable enough size for his needs.

     As he hopped down from his rummaging perch, he took a second look at the treads of the robot. He had doubted they would have held his weight, but they did while he awkwardly stood on one leg and dug around. Without further pause he fished around in his bag and pulled out his pocket-knife and began the surprisingly laborious task of cutting the rubber from where it was held by the robot’s rollers.

     Apart from some cracks in the material it wasn’t in the worst shape, as far as he could tell. It’s new purpose wouldn’t be all that different from it’s intended one at any rate, at least once he found some way to fasten it to his foot. That would have to come later and he stuffed the rubber mat into his bag and continued on his journey, giving a half-hearted wave at the dead street-cleaning robot as he turned away. He had plenty of time to think as he sawed through rather than cut the rubber plate and he had made another decision.

     He wanted to press onwards to the water that he thought was on the horizon, it was certainly the most sizable landmark that wasn’t a sky scraper. Additionally an abundance of water, as his father had told him, would be a place that plenty of animals would flock to. He would only want for something to occupy his mind and for a comfortable place to retire to. It wouldn’t be that difficult, he reasoned, to set up snares through trial and error, make a bow for larger game and live comfortably from there. But for right now, he needed to provide some insurance that he would make it there. Ducking into yet another empty building he found a place to sit down, where he could lash together some kind of sandal from the rubber he had reclaimed.

     Before too long he had shaped the tough slab into something that resembled the flat sole of a shoe, but, he had ran into an issue on how exactly he could keep it attached to his foot. He wasn’t exactly as handy with knots and rope as he was with glassware and chemicals, even if he had any rope to use. It completely slipped his mind to have taken any kind of cordage with him when he packed his bag. Then again, he didn’t think he would be in such a situation where he would need any so desperately. Only now did he realize how important something so simple, yet versatile could have been to someone as isolated and ill-equipped as he.

     There were several minutes where he walked around the lobby of the building searching for any kind of lashing, but there was none to be found. He considered trying to get into the walls of the building to find some wires to use, but he was just as poor of an electrician as he was a survivalist. The fear of getting shocked, burned and potentially dying kept him from even attempting an expedition into the cracking drywall. Surly if the street lamps gathered power there should be at least some running through the buildings.

     “Perhaps… I’ll need to risk it in the future.” He said aloud, looking towards the building’s stairwell; wondering if it was worth stalking up yet another flight of stairs in the attempt of finding something of use.

     He only took a couple steps towards the stairwell before he decided against it, sitting down once again and puzzling over his crude footwear. Eventually he decided to cut apart the vest he had wrapped around his foot up until this point. As loathed as he was to do it - the fabric providing some warmth in the night - the sacrifice was worthwhile enough to be able to walk quicker without damaging his foot.

     The whole process took about an hour and several iterations of trial, error, failed knots and dozens of frustrated swears at each unsuccessful attempt. However, with enough time he eventually threw together a bizarre web of scrap cloth that wove through holes punched in the rubber that held up to his gait. The strips of what was once his vest were surprisingly comfortable around his ankle and the simple knot kept it in place reasonably well. The real test would be for how long his cobbled together shoe would hold together.

     It took longer than he would have liked, but the stop more than made up for the time he saved in traveling towards the water he saw on the horizon. There was more ground covered in that last half of a day than the previous twenty-four hours. It helped that much of the detritus on his downward path had apparently been pushed to the sides of the roads by the rains. In a city as grand as this there was very little for rainfall to be absorbed by, so anything in its path ways tossed to the side in the heavier storms or moved subtly over a period of months.

     From within one of these dry, urban creek-beds it was discovered that the body of water he had seen in the distance wasn’t at all what he expected. Instead of the city being built upon the banks of a lake he saw, it was the lake that had actually encroached on the city itself. Before him many of the buildings had been sunk or otherwise flooded by the rising waters, these appearing to be more weathered and run down than any other he had seen so far. It was far from surprising, as the closer he got to the shores of this lake the realization dawned upon him that he couldn’t even see the far bank of it. He had heard of large bodies of water being able to generate their own weather systems. Those buildings out in the water would bear the brunt of any waves and winds moving inland.

     The building around him began to change, though he hadn’t paid much notice as he was often distracted with messing with his new apparel. Sometimes the vest scraps would pinch his skin in odd ways or the knot would give way when he made more ambitious steps over obstacles. It certainly wasn’t an ideal fix, but it worked most of the time. As he gazed around now, he realized he had entered an entirely different district of the city. Buildings around him had become less towering, the spaces between them less claustrophobic and the evident purpose of the buildings shifting from commercial to industrial in nature. It looked like, from his limited perspective, that most of the high density areas of the city stretched northward while the materially productive parts did the opposite.

     It was a space that was more familiar to him, though mostly flooded. The skyline was less cluttered, now only dotted with the occasional high building, most of the buildings being large warehouses or lots for storing materials. The fenced in areas that were close or on dry land - to his surprise - actually had various raw materials staged in them like steels, kinds of wood or great baskets of miscellaneous types of items. He absolutely itched to start digging through more rubbish for anything of use, but a few thoughts stopped him.

     The first one was the sudden realization he was was oddly giddy about digging through trash. The next thought was a more practical one: He didn’t care for climbing over the rusted, barb-wire topped fence or wading through the water to find an entrance into the building. Lastly, he wanted to clean out the precious bottles that were clinking around in his satchel, both to keep his bag from getting any dirtier and so he could keep a supply of water with him. He just needed to look around for some sand and perhaps a stick to scrape the scum and dirt out from inside the bottles. Perhaps he could even whittle down some of the slimmer branches of bushes to make rudimentary stoppers for his scavenged canteen bottles.

     Another thirty minutes passed and the clouds above were starting to roil and swirl together, a bit of a light breeze kicking up into a gentle gust as the heavens threatened to, yet again, douse the earth. In that time, the wandering chemist hadn’t had much luck in finding much sand, though slim sticks were in abundance as he walked northward, as there was more area for the scrub plants to grow now. He had considered just using dirt, but discounted it almost instantly. He was looking to clean dirt out, not put more dirt into the bottles… it would make a great mess as well. However, it seems like the oracles of luck were smiling kindly upon misplaced wanderers on this day.