A Rooted Reality [OSC story]

Chapter 14: Years

3 years have passed. Many things have happened. Sugarcane shortly contacted us after her visit; she apparently gave birth to her new son. His name was Bamboo, by now he is about two and a half years old. The kid was one of the shyest kids I ever seen.

I felt bad Reed never got to see the birth of his child. I wondered what he would be doing right now; he wasn't dead.. if he was the machine would be turned on. It was always off. I would sometimes check on it to see if anything changed. It was always nothing new, but I still went every week. I kept my promise and never told sugarcane but I left a note by the tree just in case.

Lily and I decided to get married. It was very sudden but by that point we had known each other for 2 years. I gladly accepted and we've been happy together.

and let's not forget about USB, him and me worked on the business and it surprisingly became big. Very big. It was a simple charity business but soon became a place that took mechanical related needs to offer them in easy accessible places. I was USB's assistant, I got a good pay and it was a great job. Working with a good friend, we became very close; he was almost like a brother to me.

I now went by Cacti. I wanted to move on from my old life, try and make something new and better. It did get so much better.

While my life got better, my health got worse. I began hating it; I accepted that I would have a shorter life span but I didn't want to die. Things had got so nice, and knowing I would be leaving everyone made me hurt more.

In 1995, Lily and me moved out; we passed the house onto Sugarcane. We thought she would have better use with it; especially for Bamboo. We moved in a small house closer to the ocean. It was far from where we used to live, but it was where we wanted to be.

Five years after then, I became extremely Ill. I was at the edge of my deathbed, while Lily stood with me the whole time.

—

(Third person POV)

Cacti passed early 2000. Lily passed a year after, no one knew how or why. She wasn't sick or anything, no one really knew what happened. USB never recovered from Cacti's death. He started blaming humans, he began to hate them. They did it to him, and he swore if he saw one again he wouldn't hold back and do the same thing they did to him to them.

USB and Sugarcane ended up working together. Sugarcane became busy, Bamboo grew up not having a strong mother figure. She would always be gone most of the week. Sugarcane and USB both conspired that something must of happened to Reed. His body was never found so they knew he wasn't dead, for that matter they knew he wasn't even on the planet anymore.

Reed was on earth. He never ended up getting the machine back; it got tossed around from person to person, he could never find who actually owned it. For a while he followed the trail but then it ended in a dead end; he ended up living as a human. Reed got a job as a wood worker and had a small house in the woods. He was overall happy but missed Sugarcane and his son, he never got to meet. The people who lived near him knew about his form, they didn't mind and some of them actually helped him adjust to this new life.

As for the machine being tossed from owner to owner; it was thought to be a power source but no one could get it to work. It ended up being put in an arcade cabinet that went from place to place. It wasn't wanted, the damn thing wouldn't work so it ended up being donated to a man in New York. Martin Valdez and his son Poe Valdez, became the final owners of it in 2007. They found something extraordinary about it. Something that changed them forever.