Salvia Officinalis

     Despite the pelting rain he ran southward, or, as near as he could tell in the waning light. His clothes had been soaked almost immediately as stepped outdoors and he didn’t think to take the time to hide in any of the waterside buildings to dry off, even after constant glances over his shoulder confirmed he hadn’t been followed. Those… creatures had shaken him to his core and his recourse was to immediately vacate this city of beguiling beauty. He clearly wasn’t welcome by the new residents of this place, beyond being their dinner, that much was clear.

     He lost count of how many times he had to collapse against a wall or a convenient tree to shakily regain his breath and blink the swarming stars out of his eyes. As he ran or, more accurately, jogged and collapsed his way out of the city, the buildings became less grandiose and more suburban. The cracks in the pavement were less pronounced, yet what was once manicured laws and driveways were cluttered with young trees and thick grasses that overwhelmed the homes that were nearly obscured by the growth. The storm soon abated to a calm downpour and night fell in earnest, he barreled his way into what was once a small shop. An old fashioned barber shop, judging by the stripped pole that was hanging by one tenacious screw on the outside.

     Having no idea how far he’d traveled over the past couple of days his muscles cried out for rest as if he’d been perpetually walking for weeks. His clothing were hanging off of him from the damp yet it felt as though some trickster had secreted lead weights into all of his pockets. Only too late did he stop long enough to throw his rain jacket over his body, the waterproof fabric only helping to make the clinging damp stick more thoroughly to his skin. Though, now, he was at the very least dry in this shop and a cursory glance through the darkness - aided by his flashlight - revealed that this place was furnished just like the factory had been.

     As much as he wished to collapse, the paranoia of running into another one of those… reptilians… wouldn’t subside until the small room was scoured of any hint of their presence. Thankfully, there was no such evidence. However, something rather innocuous unnerved him slightly when he noticed it tucked into a corner.

     It was a simple fireplace, something exceptionally mundane and normal to the peoples of his country; the winters being as harsh as they were and many opting to fell trees for wood rather than cranking up the heater and the costs along with it. Yet, as debilitated and mentally dull as he was, he wrinkled his nose at the otherwise cozy, brickware structure. The muggy, oppressive humidity and the constant rainstorms were surely a symptom of summer, but did it really get cold enough in the winters for a hearth to be built into a motel lobby? Or, he thought; perhaps it was an old, aesthetic touch to keep up with the rustic barbershop theme?

     As perturbed as he was by the notion of having to face a harsh winter in this world, he was at the very least grateful to be somewhere sheltered from the elements and relatively safe.

     “I… need… to get dry.” He panted out, his throat dry from running himself ragged and he hoped was caused by thirst instead of an onset of a cold.

     “Can’t. Can’t get sick…”

     Again he struggled against another involuntary buckling of his knees as a wave of fever seemed to take him from nowhere. A wearily familiar feeling to the chemist, a loaming specter that hung over every cold and flu. He managed to wrestle himself out of his sickly feeling, at least enough to stay on his feet and shrug off his satchel and set up his pistol as some sort of hazardous spotlight on the vacant receptionist’s desk. To his relief, the bag had only gotten slightly damp during his escape; the delicate pages of his books slightly wrinkled from the moisture but otherwise undamaged. Pushing those aside he grabbed the lighter stashed within and set the bag down and busied himself with a fire-starting attempt.

     His hopes for a warm fire to dry out in front of were dashed almost instantly as he noticed the firewood rack was devoid of any lumber. With a rub of his tired eyes and wiping the beading, feverish sweat from his brow he did the next best thing, which was stripping off his soaked suit. As he got down to his shorts he had a sudden realization that he just so happened to be surrounded by furnishings made from plenty of burnable materials.

     Before too long he had ransacked the room for papers, pulled the drawers out from the receptionists desk; anything that would help get a fire going and stay burning. During his hobbled destruction he was excited to notice some wooden chairs with some soft looking cushions on them. Yet, the appearance of comfort was a fiction, as in the half-light he noticed that the cushions had been ripped apart and the fluffy insides dragged away in the absence of care.

     “Probably some… rats or mice…dammit,” He grumbled, realizing he didn’t have the luxury of a makeshift bed this night.

     Striping the ‘cushions’ from the seats, he set about breaking them down, at first trying to take them apart gingerly but resorting to dashing them against the floor till they broke. Even in his feeble state, the wood was weaker with age and dry-rot. It still took a few overhead strikes at the floor, blistering his thin hands and breaking himself down into sickly panting after his efforts. At the end of it all, he had less wood than he would have liked, but it would hopefully be enough.

     The first fire starting attempt was lackluster, his weakened body and numbed mind impatiently shoving paper and draws into the hearth. The butane lighter caused great licks of flame to curl up and devour the paper yet the flames didn’t spread upon the heavier timbers. Muttering swears as he dug out the knife he bemoaned his siblings childhood with their father. Camping, hiking, hunting, fishing… all while he was confined to bed and fever. His sister could have made a fire by scraping some twigs together and his brother could have had a deer tracked, killed, skinned and butchered by the first nightfall in this land. All he seemed to have was his father’s verbal lessons and stories, spoken to him by his bedside.

     Knife in hand he took one of the chair legs and whittled strips away from them, rasping a pile of chips for the hungry flames to be more contented with. By the time the fire began to burn under it’s own intensity, the desperate survivor was shivering from the perspiration and precipitation dipping from his thin frame. As the room brightened up and a cozy warmth began to radiate from the hearth his shivering lessened somewhat and the musty odour of the room was replaced by the reassuring smell of woodsmoke.

     He let out a sigh of relief as the flames grew and the smoke roiled up the chimney. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the tamed fire brought a calm upon his psyche and it felt like he could relax, just a bit, once again.

     After spreading out his wet, tattered and dirty clothes out to dry he hastily went to turn off the light on his handgun before returning to bask in the heat of the flames. It would be a terrible loss to have the battery die. There was very little that he could do with the rain still pelting down outside as well as having nothing to cook or boil over the fire. Yet, he had to keep his hands busy or let the stress overwhelm him. So, with the meager loose cartridges in his bag he reloaded the magazine in the weapon and counted what remained.

     In total, there were only sixty-eight rounds at his disposal. Three full magazines and a meager handful in reserve. After seeing that massive reptile creature in the factory he wasn’t sure if a full magazine would be able to take it down. Not if it was bearing down on him.

     Unfortunately, now with his hands idle, his eyes wandered and settled on staring into the coals of the fire and a growl rumbled from his stomach. Moaning to himself he drew his knees up to his chest and rested his head against them as a wave of nausea washed over him, making his slight fever feel like a crippling blight. It had been three days since he last ate; that stale, old granola bar that had been given to him before that final attack tasted like heaven and it haunted his cravings. Yet, a full meal that actually satisfied his hunger was a distant memory.

     As he sat in his ball, eyes closed and willpower occupied with pushing all the discomforts away from him; his thoughts began to wander to one of the more filling morsels he’d been allowed. Those rebellious guerrilla fighters had given him a decent cut of a feral dog they had shot and cooked. As loathe as he was to eat it, there was not a chance of denying his body it’s demands. He didn’t care much for it or that the conditions in the country had gotten so bad that packs of dogs had begun to roam around and even attack solitary wanderers for a meal. The Guerrilla, at least, seemed to have a knack for coming by food; as meager and dubious as it was.

     He wondered if any of them made it out of the city alive. If they managed to succeed in the plans they had shared with him of freeing some prisoners of war from a distant camp or if they had died or been imprisoned themselves. The thoughts wandered over his hasty tutorship of how to safely detonate his explosives, their initial tense meeting, the whole group's disdain for his desire to run away, even the woman that had command over the group.

     Letting out an extended sigh he shuffled himself closer to the fire, letting the heat sink into his skin. That last thought struck him in an odd fashion. He had his fair share of crushes; either on classmates in university or on coworkers but there was something about that woman. He didn’t particularly like her pushy attitude or how she had barked out orders at him as if he was in any way familiar with military actions. Yet, in some other world, perhaps he could have fallen deeper for her. Her eyes - he couldn’t help but remember - had this playful and mischievous glint to them; as if she knew the punch-line of a joke that everyone else was in the dark on. It seemed lost on her fellow militia-fighters, but to him it seemed to be a chink, a window through her rough-neck exterior into a more carefree nature that would have shone had circumstance been different.

     He felt a couple tears rolling down his cheeks as he reminisced only to push himself out of his ball and grope for the last of his water that was inside of his bag. There was no thinking about the past world now, even with the mountain of regrets and goals left undone. He would never know if they escaped or found their way into better lives, if the war had ended favorably and that the evils of his nation had been thoroughly expunged. He had no family to return to, even if he could find some way out of this equally hostile world.

     After his clothing had dried and he had redressed, the fire was stoked back into a comforting blaze. Braving the rain outside he left the bottles out in the storm to gather water before creeping back inside to sleep. The fabric from the chairs, though they could not be fashioned into a bed; they at least made a comfortable enough pillow when rolled up. As the fire began to burn down into coals the chemist had long since fallen asleep, one of the final thoughts in his mind was a simple goal for the next couple days: kill or gather something to eat.

     Going to bed and waking up hungry was something he wanted to forget. For a time, if not forever.

     Throughout the night he began to have peculiar and tumultuously vivid dreams that disturbed his rest and had him flailing and turning in his sleep. Flashes of his subconscious memory of his death, the flash of blinding light that scorched his slight-less eyes and burned his deathly skin yet only a soothing warm sensation he felt. Moments of terror at the multiple instances of being caught by the Civilian Protection Commission and the Civil Reserve.

      Then came a dream that had plagued him on most nights. A night of familial mutiny, arson, desecration of what was once a wholesome household; a dusk of evil committed upon mere suspicions and selfish ambition of sworn loyalty to The Party. Only the fires of Hell could have burned hotter than what villainous and corrupt wrath was wrought upon the abode of his Father and Mother. Terror and bitters of being marked for death and pursued by the zealous hounds of doctrine for an obligation to preserve what his parents had died to sustain.

     The dream had faded, the despair and rawness of the tragedy shook him from his sleep along with a peculiar clinking sound. For a moment he didn’t bother to open his eyes, wanting to turn over and fall back asleep, dully hoping to have a more pleasant dream or none at all. In the fog of drowsiness the clinking turned into a rhythmic gurgling followed by the subtle sound of water splashing and his eyes snapped open.

     ‘Reserve Troops? Have they found me?’ He thought as his muddled mind began to stoke a panic within him.

     With a start he jumped up and grabbed his bag, looking around for any exit to escape from imprisonment… or a swift, unceremonious execution. There was, in fact, a window in the opposite wall from the entrance and he could surely flee through there. Perhaps fast enough to be long gone before the state dogs would become bored of messing with his bottles. That last thought gave him pause, though he had already strode halfway to the window. He knew he needed the bottles for water, but he hadn’t quite brushed the cobwebs of sleep from his mind and in an irritated fashion he dismissed his confusion in favour of running.

     The moment his hands alighted upon the window to pry it open he heard the sound of a door handle jiggling followed by the protest of weathered hinges from behind. Letting out a breath in disappointment and resignation he raised his hands in surrender to the assumed troops and began to hope for detainment. Yet, the thought felt out of place to him and he didn’t quite understand why these ideas had to plague him now.

    “ ’Lo?”

     The presumed arrestee’s head recoiled in confusion and he turned around, slowly coming about to the realization that he was under no such threat. There wasn’t a hint of malice or apprehension in the… strikingly feminine voice. Simply surprise and perhaps a twinge of honest curiosity.

     “Who’r yu?” It wasn’t an accent that he was familiar with, but it absolutely resembled his native tongue.

     As he faced his unexpected discoverer he was shocked in a number of ways by her appearance, enough so that he had to take a step back and question what exactly he was seeing. She, however, matched and overtook his step by taking a few paces towards him and then repeated her question again with a bit more insistence.

     Squinting and clearing his dry throat he adjusted his glasses, naively thinking that the cracks in the lens was affecting his vision more severely than he first thought: “M… my name is Fritz.”

     The woman before Fritz was as strange as she was strikingly beautiful. She seemed to be younger than him, perhaps in her early twenties and the intensely curious, almost innocent glint in her eyes seemed to reflect her age. If she had existed in his world, it wouldn’t be amiss to see her on billboards and television commercials or immortalized in marble. However, some of her features were evidence of a life roughly lived: her body was tanned and athletic, she bore scars upon her knuckles and arms, her hair was cut short but was tangled and a gamy, unwashed odour was becoming more noticeable as she approached.

      “Fitz? Odd-ear?” She questioned, slowly moving closer, her eyes wide and intensely affixed upon his face in much the same way his own eyes were mesmerized by the most shocking of her features. Yet, he noticed her face scrunched up slightly as if she had also smelled something foul.

     Of course, he thought to himself, he hadn’t bathed in days and he certainly didn’t count running through the rain last night. All the sweat, fear and dirt hung off of him as a miasma if he had the mind to notice.

     As much as she looked human there were the distinct features that ruled such classification out. Instead of ears on the sides of her head where they should have been there were two, pointed and hair tufted ears that twitched towards ambient sounds but mostly faced forward. The other feature was a large, fluffed tail that he wouldn’t have noticed immediately, had it not been swishing to and fro like some kind of novelty cuckoo-clock pendulum. As she approached he noticed a mild concern replace his surprise, her apparent excitement becoming something subtly unnerving. The animal woman didn’t seem to have any weapons on her, in fact - aside from some kind of leather bag hanging from her neck - she had nothing aside from some primitive hide clothing.

     “The hell are you doing? Step back.” He anxiously said, his hand wrapping around the grip of the firearm on his belt.

     She paused, her hand tentatively raised towards him, only an arms length away from his face. The woman could clearly sense a vague amount of danger, but some other force pushed her forward and her thumb and forefinger briefly grabbed upon his ear. Jerking back, he let out a slight grunt as he tugged his ear away and pushed the offending hand back.

     “Seriously, what is your problem?”

“Prob-lem? Yor ear… is odd… not like…” She said, almost in a broken breath of awe as she pointed at her own ears over her head. “Yor odd-ear.”

     “My ears are odd? You have the ears of a fox! Who are you, then?”

     “Me!” She replied with a kind smile, excitedly moving back into Fritz’s personal space to inspect him more throughly… much to the annoyance to the owner of said space. Her lack of a reply had completely flown over his head in these agitating circumstances. Other friendly beings were nice and all, but this one seemed to be more of an inconvenience to his desires than anything else. As much as he didn’t care for this kind of attention she clearly didn’t mean him any harm. He glanced out of the open door into the muggy morning and dully noted that one of his water bottles was gone.

     “Okay, why are you here? And why did you mess with my water?”

     “Just seein’, like to see in…” she paused as if she was trying to find a word before gesturing around her, clearly unsure of what to describe the building as.

     “And my water?”

     Her ears flattened back against her head - almost in shame - as she reached into her bag and presented one of the larger wine bottles to him: “Like dis clear ‘hing. Shape is neat.”

      “Thing?” He gasped with some incredulity: “This is a wine bottle. Glass.” He said bluntly, taking the bottle from her and placing it into his own bag. The patience he had from realizing she wasn’t a threat was beginning to wane and he wanted to move on to the goals he decided on last night. His stomach was gnawing at itself in hunger and he didn’t care to waste any more energy today. He navigated around the fox woman and went to pick up his waters, taking a large swig from one to wash the sleep thick saliva from his mouth.

     “Glas… ohh… Fitz know… ‘hings? Like other odd-ear?”

     Fritz choked and coughed out the last gulp of water, sputtering the liquid onto the ground before whipping around at her statement. He shot up, walking back into the lobby towards Sage: “Others? Like me? There are other people that look like me here?”

     He ears twitched a bit, her face lighting up in excitement as she went outside and pointed eagerly down the road: “Like Fitz. At my…” She paused for a moment, pointing at the wall just beside the chemist as he stood in the doorway. He waited for her to continue, but noticed her staring intently at him for a moment before she gesticulated towards the wall again.

     “Your…. House?” He filled in the missing word for her: “Are they there? Can you take me there!?” He asked earnestly.

     The woman gave another quick nod before trotting down the street: “Yes! ‘Dere!”

     Fritz felt he had no choice but to follow, partly from desire to find more people and partly from the need to find some sustenance. If there were more people, particularly around her abode; it stood to reason that there would be some source of food and cleaner water nearby! Yet, as he strode after her a dark and sinister thought gave him some balance to his sudden upwelling of optimism. If there were people, indeed like him, they could be of the terrible type that he had been fleeing from till his untimely demise.

     She was moving at a comfortable and casual stride, yet she easily outpaced him and turned to watch him slowly catch up before bounding off again. Meanwhile, Fritz was struggling with being awake and the remnants of last night’s fever. He shuffled along at such a slow pace even he was shocked at how sluggish he was; perhaps if he could have been more fit in his youth he wouldn’t have to suffer tremendously so. Even though he was agitated in his weakness, his new acquaintance seemed like she couldn’t be happier with her day.

     The Fox Woman roamed around the road, parting through long clumps of glass, running in her barefooted way back to gawk and occasionally prod at her newfound traveler. By the time the city had vanished behind the treetops and the surrounding suburbia became less planned and more sparse, Fritz thought there was a good chance that this wild woman had covered three times the distance traveled. He was sweating profusely beneath the zenith of the sun, yet she seemed no worse for wear.

     ‘If not more peppy and wound up,’ He thought wearily: ‘At least she’s grown bored of ogling me.’

     Another thought crossed his mind, aside from finding him he had the vague notion that this kind of journey was a very regular habit for her. As dangerous as this world had appeared to be to him, she walked in it as if there was nothing that could harm her. She wore no armour and as if to accompany her revealing garments, she bore no arms. Perhaps she was confident in her abilities or this area was, in fact, as safe as she made it seem.

     As the day traveled along with the peculiar pair, Fitz grew a bit tired of acknowledging the woman and yet again he felt his attention wander through the foliage around him. In that way he entered the afternoon, noticing the redolence of the air as the foliage began to thicken and mature. There was the heavy smell of flowers and the sharp scent of the over-ripeness of fruit. At first he was only pleasantly soothed by the scents in the wind, at least before he remembered how ravenous he was.

      Yet the moment as he was about to make a dash into what appeared to be a fruit orchard overtaken by nature, his primal urge to feed was stayed by the potential danger of the unknown. Moving amongst the trees he saw many figures milling about, crouched at the base of trees and sifting around. At least, they were until they took notice of him. It was a strange experience to him; as his adult experience with attention was something that he likened to being like wallpaper: unless people directly wanted something to do with him, they mainly didn’t acknowledge him. Going unnoticed was the best way to avoid scrutiny and the potential danger of a Party dog catching wind of something… undesirable.

      Now, however, it seemed that all the suspicion was affixed upon the young chemist as murmurs issued forth from the fruiting woods. The fox woman seemed rather oblivious, continuing her characteristic quick pace and her usual glances back to assure herself that Fritz was still following in her footsteps. As much as he wished to hide his gaze from the prying eyes of the curious onlookers, he couldn’t help but take in as much as he could about these peculiar people; the grip he held on his handgun tightening as he did so.

      However, once he met a few of these bizarre People’s eyes with his own did he notice that perhaps the woman he was following was decidedly the most bizarre in comparison to the rest of her people. After he had noticed this his eyes wandered much less and he began to lock them to his mis-matched footwear.

     ‘Good Heavens, this woman is well dressed and groomed in this world…’

     The men, the women and even the occasional young child that clung to their mother’s side were all incredibly filthy with smears of mud on their hands and knees from foraging beneath the fruit trees. It was clearly a permanent habit of going unwashed as their hair were in clumped dreads, the older men with beards in much the same state and the younger adults with various stages of severe acne. To make things even less hygienic, every single individual was as naked as they were on the day they were born.

      After they had passed by, the crowd disintegrated and vanished much quicker than The Chemist would have thought. She still seemed remarkably curious about Fritz, whereas her people only whispered to each other for a few moments before going back to their foraging. The duo came, were remarked upon, then forgotten about in favour of rooting through the fallen fruits of the overgrown orchards.

      It was rather perplexing to him, not solely the oddity of these new people but this woman’s differences to them. There was a deeper quality to her, as clear as day compared to the dull and disinterested eyes of those they had passed. Maybe it was do to her contact with the other ‘odd-ears,’ as she had called them. It would explain her clothing and her bag as well as her fascination with human materials and places, he pondered.

     And he continued on with his silent musings, snapping out of his deep thoughts enough to take notice of his surroundings or listen to his guide attempting to tell him something about the area in her broken version of language. Shortly after the orchards there were the overgrown fields of what must have been farmland at one point. Here it was much like where Fritz had spent his childhood: Within an old countryside shire home neighbored by many similar houses and fields of grain.

     Up ahead was a hamlet of very familiar size and it brought a painful nostalgia to him. Even though he was a sickly kid he was fond of the meadows and easygoing nature of the village people. His father was absent more often then due to his military duties, but when he was on leave he spent every moment with his children and their mother. It was a much simpler time and the world seemed so much bigger and more full of opportunity back then.

      As the pair walked the streets Fritz’ mood became more blue as he looked down the bleak and narrow alleyway’s of what would otherwise be a charming cluster of buildings in the country. He also realized he had greatly misjudged the size of the town from the road, the buildings winding along at a slight slope towards the North. It was like a hamlet had grown to the size of a small city but simply decided not to get as dense and congested. The eerie silence was also brought to his mind that perhaps his new acquittance hadn’t been telling the truth. If there really were more humans here, why was everything still so run down? Why wasn’t there a solitary individual walking the streets in the afternoon? Where was the smell of woodsmoke or the sound of conversation? Why weren’t the people of this world living in the abandoned homes, shops and pubs?

      Fritz was lead to a rather ornate building, carved stone walls clung with severely overgrown, decorative ivy. Despite it’s lack of cultivation - much like many of the buildings he had passed in the city and now this town - the building was still standing strong and regal. As they entered he realized another similarity; this place was most certainly a place of education, a college of sorts or maybe even a ritzy private boarding school. It still seemed out of place in comparison to the rustic nature of the town, like it was a brand new building that was erected before everyone vanished.

     He was itching to explore around, perhaps find one of the classrooms with the general science and chemistry equipment so he could see if anything was still left. Though, the unexpected journey further out into the country side had sapped what little energy he had regained over the night that more exploration would have to come tomorrow. Keeping up with Sage, she walked straight through the lobby of the building and down one of the wide, dim hallways.

     She pushed open a door to one of the rooms and it was indeed a classroom, walls hanging with faded charts and posters of people in fashionable clothing. There were several large, square tables inside the room cluttered with a wide assortment of random items, but each one had a sleek sewing machine fastened down to each one. The fox woman took her bag off her shoulder and began to place the contents of it on one of the more vacant tables before turning and smiling at Fritz.

     To Fritz it seemed that the class that was once taught here was some kind of fashion or seamstress trade course. It wasn’t something he was familiar with, but going by the posters and the few decaying and half finished pieces he saw clinging to hangers it surely was a rather applied course.

     Dully, his interest in clothing waned as he realized there wasn’t a single shoe to speak of in the area. On top of that - where the fox woman had lead him - there wasn’t a single living soul apart from the two of them. He didn’t think there would be since entering this town that had been frozen in time, but having it confirmed did little to energize his spirit.

     “Ahem?”

     Her ears twitched, head tilting to the side, clearly waiting for him to continue.

     “Where are the other people? The-the other odd-ears? I thought you said there were others.”

      Her smile re-appeared upon her face and she moved to the back of the classroom where there were a few bookshelves lining the back wall. The shelves, much like the tables in the classroom, were filled with miscellaneous items that Sage had taken a fancy too. Except for one shelf, which was mostly empty, there wasn’t a single book or even a stack of papers. The shelf being remarkably vacant of dust - constantly having a singular object picked up and placed back upon - was clearly important to her.

      Turning around she presented the object in her hands, pointing at the face of it: “See? Odd-Ears. Like you. Not like me.”

      Fritz let out an exasperated sign as he saw the cover, the smidgen of energy he had left vanishing from his body and he leaned back against one of the tables with hand pressed to his face as he felt close to faint. It was an innocuous enough item, but the absurdity of it had been the last bit of shock he could stand for the day.

     “Yes, those are other humans. But that is a Summer Fashion Magazine. Pictures of humans.”

      The cover explained a few things - particularly his guide’s ‘haircut’ and her dress - displaying the usual over-hyped products but more significantly: a pair of women modeling swimsuits for the summer. Letting his hand slide from his face and flop limply against his side he let out another weary sigh before extending his hand to see the thin, flimsy book. It was at least the first bit of literature he had seen that wasn’t weathered away or used for urban navigation.

       The young woman hesitated a moment before handing him the book before sheepishly asking: “Fitz is…. sad?”

      Though Fritz had heard her words, his mind was again torn asunder by yet another perplexing shock. The sub-heading of the cover had a title that he had initially thought was some hollow, vapid promotion. But as he flipped despondently to the article and read the first few lines he realized there was actually substance to it. Scientific substance, no less.

      ‘Prepare for Infinite Summer: Eden’s Return! Our Eden’s Return collection is in preparation of a new Weather Control Program to give much of the world a year-round growing season, weather systems you can set a watch too and the perfect temperature to enjoy a day in the water, all day! Thanks to “Tritium Industrial Energy” and their “Fusion Based Infrastructure” we can enjoy the summer of the millennium FOR a millennium!’

      “It all just…doesn’t make sense.” He slurred from his mouth before sliding harshly down onto the floor into a deep, thoughtless unconsciousness. Perhaps he had pushed himself too hard over the past couple days. This could not go on.