Among and Beyond

2 - Turning Point

Loading up the supplies onto the truck and stabilizing the statue, the guy was ready for his trip. Suddenly he saw the food stacked at a corner of the warehouse, food that no longer give him the drives and the thrill. The statue stood still as to rhyme with his still consciousness, and in silent,. he started up the engine and venture outside.

Dust.

Sand.

Rust.

That was all one could see on the golden plains.

Plains that used to be greeny grasslands that extended to the horizon as a background for the small country houses and vehicles.

What used to be a farm full of the oinking of the pigs, moo-moos of the cows, whinny of the horses, baa-baas of the sheeps,... was then a mass of wastelands fill with clackety-clacks of the metallic creatures roaming on the ashes and dust. Where humans used to live was now cultivated by a murder of cyborg-crow feeding on the corpses.

At least that was what one would expect to be, as everything was engulfed in a desert there.

The sky looked so weird as the light was somehow reflected towards the sky about sixty feets above the ground, creating a shrouded, dark atmosphere surrounding the wastelands.

Such depression was lingering on the truck driver's face, a depression, no, more like a nostalgia of something that ceased to exist. Memories of the delightful festivals, of the tiring but exciting harvests, of the frugal but cozy meals. And, memories of something indescribable, taken for granted but valued.

Strange, the truck driver thought. This was not the first time he went outside his front door, still, everything felt so alien. The dry gusts that leaked in through the windows that carries particles that built up in his armpits, the golden, eye-bleedingly bright sun that sit behind the visors and the fried smell, all made up a sepia-like motion of a lazy director that kept the camera on straight for hours.

The driver blinked his eyes, as an old habit where he used to wear glasses, he would raise his hand to correct the position of the trim, only to notice the ironic truth. It was in clarity, his vision. Everything looked so beautiful as if it was projected from a luxurious monitor, with every pixels refined to perfection. Such change came along with the tinglings on his skin: wind and dust. There came another particle:  dandelion seeds from a faraway, unthought land. Came the knowledge, came the fear of who he was. Everything he felt had its own meaning to him, yet meaningless at the same time.

Not just simply identifying the small particles, he gradually began to 'feel' the internal structure of everything he touched for a period of time. The material that made up the wheel and its components, everything flowed into his mind as a type of 'feeling', as if someone was whispering from the depths of his consciousness but inverbally.
Such thing overwhelmed his sanity, as the information was overloadingly flowing into him, not just from his hands but from everywhere, everything.

He turned on the auto drive mode and walked down onto the rear to find some air. Sitting against the cold steel wall, he tried to eliminate every thoughts. Yet, his body could not stay still for a second. Something happened, and was happening. He felt his heart vanishing and reforming as a still organ, without pulse but vibrations, stabilizing and operating. Then, from that thing, new veins replaced old ones, spreading throughout his body, veins that were apparent on his skin, extending to his extremities. And with the extension of the veins, came the shrinkage of his muscles, muscles he never thought to exist. It seemed that they were condensed onto the outermost layer to form an exoskeleton. Everything was done, that 'thing' recreated him wholly, still, like a human.