Remainers

A Fractured Mind, Part 1

He awoke in total darkness. His mind was groggy, and he found it hard to think. He sat up, and as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark room, he realized that he had no idea where he was.

He was lying on a cold, metallic table surrounded by strange tools and machines. The sound of whirring and buzzing filled the air, and though he initially believed the place was pitch black, it was in fact simply very dark, as a dull red light illuminated the room from below.

Startled, he leapt off the table, which triggered an alarm that filled the room with more red light and a deafening blare that shook his eardrums. Panicked and still groggy from having just woken up, he almost barely missed the door across the surprisingly large room. With little choice, he ran towards the door and pulled it open, revealing a vast and dry grassland that seemed to go on forever. Without a hint of hesitation, he ran with all his might, though he had no idea where to run to.

He didn't know how long he ran for, or how far. The grassland soon gave way to empty roads and wastelands, yet he never stopped running. At some point, he thought he'd collapse from heat and exhaustion, but somehow he never did. The day soon turned into night, and when he began to worry about finding shelter, he happened upon an empty town just off the road. The entire town had mostly been destroyed by wind and rain, but there were still a handful of houses left standing, though only barely. He ran towards the first house he could find and took shelter within as the sun began to fall below the horizon.

The house had seen better days. Whatever furniture left inside had either rotted or eroded in some way, and the floor creaked awfully with every step he took. Though he tried to look for a bed that he could sleep in, he eventually gave up and sat down on the floor. Now that he had time to think for a bit, he sat down and tried to remember whatever he could.

His name... was Eric. It took him a moment, but the moment he remembered that, it was as if he had never forgotten it. All at once, his memories flooded back: his childhood, his time at the academy, and his career as an engineer. He also remembered the end times; the unending wars, the threat of nuclear fallout, and the cries of a dying planet.

He suddenly remembered that he had spent at least several hours running around out in the open and began to worry. Could he have inadvertently exposed himself to nuclear radiation like that? Was the facility he was in meant to protect him from the deadly environment outside?

Eric slapped himself to bring him back to his senses. What was the point of worrying about that now? It was more important to figure out exactly where he was and what had happened to him. Nuclear radiation was a big issue, but only if this area was actually irradiated in the first place. Furthermore, it's not as if there was anything he could do even if he was exposed at this point.

Eric took some time to think. There were definitely some huge gaps in his memory; though he could perfectly recall most of his life up to a certain point, he had no idea what year it was now and how he had ended up in that facility in the first place. Even his most recent memories were extremely fuzzy, making hard to even remember where he had been last.

It was no good. Try as he might, he simply couldn't remember anything else. His head hurt, and the coming night drowned the house in darkness. He closed his eyes, laid on the rotted wood, and fell asleep. Perhaps getting some rest would help him remember.

Unfortunately, when he woke up the next morning, he still couldn't remember anything about why he was in that building or what had happened to the world. To make things worse, he was starting to worry about food and water as well. He wasn't feeling hungry yet, but it would probably start kicking in soon, and he wanted to find some kind of sustenance before that happened.

Eric gingerly stepped out of the house he was hiding out in and took a look at the ruins of the town outside. There were only a few structures left standing, and while that meant searching would probably not take him much time, it also meant that if he didn't find anything there, he was probably out of luck. From where he had taken shelter in, he could see a handful of houses in the distance, still standing thanks to the large rock formation that towered over it, blocking a good number of the winds that might have blown them over. There was probably no better place to start.