Mad World

Chapter 5

Eris Cordova

Dreams come true, they say. No, I don't freaking think so! All I wanted to do was help people. Was that really too much to ask? Now look at where I am! Driving through some god awful decimated city that was before the New Order started. Debris lines the street, well what is left of it. There is an eerie vibe to this forgotten and rotting city. Yet here I am, with Isaac and Aiden, searching through the torn up area looking for the alleged rebel group that has already screwed all of us over. They are a bunch of freaking traitors.

I look across the steering wheel of the rusted old car that we fixed up from a junkyard. Is this really just another town that leads to nothing? We have been chasing clues for about a month, we know that the resistance HQ is in "The city on the edge of yesterday's tomorrow," It's also called, "The Rotting City." Each clue unlocked after we solve a puzzle. So far we have gone nowhere, just around in freaking circles. Go to the pier of broken dreams. Or rather, travel to Liberty Island, liberty doesn't exist anymore, i.e. broken dreams. Travel down the street forever slumbering after its eternal wake. Or rather Wall Street, Wall Street used to never sleep, but now it has no use. Travel to the town of rust. That one was heard, there was a town in the country that used to have the state's largest scrap yard, then it stopped. Few people live in the country anymore, most moved to the city where life is just as good, if not better. The country is for farmers, and ranchers, and even then urban agriculture replaced the need for corporate farms. The last riddle the city on the edge of yesterday's tomorrow. We figured that that meant one of the towns in the towns in the country yard that was rapidly expanding. This makes sense because the HQ is also called the rotting city.

We turn the corner exiting the small town in northern New York, no clue, no pointers, we truly are lost. Isaac brings out the map, it's the oldest map we have and has the most amount of old cities on it. "There goes Lowville" Isaac says marking the town off with a black marker, "That leaves three more towns before we have to start guessing where the towns that aren't on the map are"

"Urgh," I say, "Why the heck can't they just be like of here we are if you want to join us sign up here if not go kill yourself"

"This whole concept sucks" Aiden whines, "we should go back and live for happy with our fake identities, no one cares, they think we are dead, and I honestly don't care that there is a AI, what the heck is it supposed to do, save people like it saved us?"

"Shut up let me think" Isaac said

"Back off you're no smarter than any of us stop it with your pretentious attitude"

"No listen I think I got it"

"What is it" I sigh

"So if this is the city on the edge of yesterday's tomorrow," Isaac asked, "and That one man from the city of rust called the old world yesterday's world".

"Get to the point, I'm tired, and hungry, and done with this whole thing"

"Yeah quite frankly I'm done with this whole resistance thing"

"No but here me out what if it just means the city of tomorrow, but not like today's city of tomorrow, but like before..."

"Yeah that make sense" Aiden said, so where would this city of tomorrow be?"

"Look at that mountain" He pointed at a mountain range in the distance, well that looks like an observatory."

"Oh my gosh, we won't get there till tonight" Aiden

"But if we make it there we won't have to drive back", Eris says "and it makes sense, there's freedom from Liberty Island, choice from Wall Street, and scientific research from the observatory."