Alone

Year 5, Day 1

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know if there are others. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m being watched. I think I must’ve come from somewhere or somebody. Every now and then just as I’m drifting into sleep I can see and hear a couple, a tall man wearing a brown coat and a beautiful woman with long, auburn hair. I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a beautiful dream I’ve made up to make myself feel less alone.

I read and I write. Someone must have taught me to do that, right? As early as I can remember there were books, and I always knew how to find food. Sometimes I’ll travel for days looking for new things. Looking for answers, or anything. My home base is a large open room, covered with thick creeper vines on the gray, partially reflective walls. I call this part of Homebase, the storage room. It’s where I store all of the things I find, and think might be helpful: pots and pans, lighters, batteries, ties that I’ve connected to make long ropes and hammocks, a lot of stuffed animals and blankets. It makes the cold, still, room feel more comfortable. My favorite things to find are books and blank sheets of paper to write on. There are lots of stories in the books, yet some books are boring and just about how things work. I get the feeling that a lot of the stories may not be true, but it’s hard to suss it out. The weird thing is, all of the books have lots of characters in them, lots of people, even if they’re just passing by the main ones in the city square or on the busy streets. This is my book, and there’s only one person in it, me. Also, a lot of the stories refer to things that I’ve never seen before, things that happen down on the ground, floor G. I’m on floor 912, and I’ve never made it down past 334. There are writings on the wall when you get down to the 300s. Plus, the lights go in and out. One time when I made it down to 334 I could hear something. I was excited at first, I’ve never really seen another thing that makes any noise*. I was in the stairwell by the door that led to 333, but it was bolted shut. I remember calling out, “Hello?” and heard stomping as if something big was coming from far away. I never went back.

Now if I go anywhere I usually go down the long halls, I’ve explored the west wings much more than the east ones. There are these big bridges that connect the buildings. Most floors don’t have them, but I’ve mapped all the ones close to me out. Every hundred floors there’s a bridge connecting to the next building. I’m hoping one day I’ll find the last building in the row, and then I can look out and see the outside world. There’s a balcony not far from Homebase, but all I can ever make out is more buildings surrounding me, and the ground is too far down to make out, there’s too much dust in the air near the ground to see anything. Sometimes I drop things down to see if I can hear it hit the bottom, but I never have.

Keeping track of time has been difficult. I started measuring myself about five years ago. I’d lie down and put my feet against the wall and mark on the floor where the top of my head was. About three and a third tiles. Now, five years later, I’m about five and a third blocks long. I’ve read lots of books that talk about climates and seasons, I’ve figured I must be in the tropical area because all I get here is the cold, the rain, and the hot weather, never any snow. I count the days on the wall farthest from where I sleep, the walls are made of square panels 10 feet wide and 10 feet tall, each wall is made of five of them in the storage room and I’ve just filled up one wall with days. I put one horizontal mark on the panel in each wall every morning I wake up now, so I know how much time is passing. I can never make out the sun from where I am, most of the day it’s pretty dim, but at night some lights turn on here and there down the halls and in the storage room so it doesn’t feel too dark. I’ve recently been looking for more of those boring “how things work” books because I read about electricity and I worry the whole building might go dark one day. Also, I can’t help but remember one of the messages I read in a stairwell by the 334th floor, “light is your friend, darkness is theirs”. All these warning messages really scared me when I went to check on the lower floors last year, but now when I think of them I just get frustrated. Why didn’t anyone leave behind some kind of message that actually told me what happened to everyone? Or what “they” are. Seems kind of stupid. I haven’t read any books that explain what happened, but I read enough to know that the people who used to live in this world were pretty stupid. They were killing everything that supported them, apparently, and then when they were on the brink new people took power and forced 99% of people to live in the cities.

Now that I’m older, I’m getting more curious about everything. I know from my reading that this situation I’m in is not normal. Also, I just read a book that has some damning evidence that I came from somebody else. But then again, I’ve read science magazines about clones and “test-tube babies”, so maybe I just sprang out of some test tube and crawled up here? Too many questions. I’m going to go to bed now. That’s one thing I didn’t tell you about! In the storage room, there’s a vent that I can crawl through. There's a small series of different directions, but I’ve memorized which way to go. About two minutes in, there's a big opening with fans on three sides, and one of them spins very slowly, providing the perfect breeze and white noise for me to sleep in. I have a small light, and many pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals in there. It’s also where I’m keeping this book I’m writing. I always go in here before it gets pitch black because the building makes noises sometimes at night, and it keeps me up.

Tomorrow I might go east.

Year 5, Day 2

I decided not to go East today. I checked on my plants by the balcony that looks out to the other building and realized they needed some care before I went out again. I usually go out for only a day, but sometimes when I’m out I feel like I’m getting somewhere important and I stay. I figured it would be best to make sure my plants are watered and trimmed before I do anything. My balcony is nice, it’s got a nice shelf on the edge with a border running a couple of inches high so the plants don’t fall off. A few years ago I started messing with the gutter that runs down towards the ground so I can collect rainwater. Originally there were just a few small vegetables and succulents in a self-contained glass terrarium, but I’ve since tried cloning the tomatoes, basil, mint, and mini corn so I can make more. The vegetables taste much better than the canned food scavenged. Last year I found some onion and garlic seeds in an apartment room not far from Homebase. I was puttering around the room just looking for something to do and I found a gardening book under the bed with two seed packets in it. The garlic and onions are my favorites now. I spent the day watering my plants and refitting the gutter to my bucket, I hate that part because the metal of the gutter and the bucket often clank together and make a lot of noise. I know no one is around to hear it but I still feel like I’m disturbing something if not just the quiet. I’ve become so accustomed to the silence that now even the smallest noises make me anxious.

I always wished I had more rainwater because I try to conserve the bottles of water I have for drinking, I only have a few hundred bottles, and I haven’t found much more in about a hundred days. If I had more water I could clone more plants and have gardens on nearby balconies too. I decided then and there I would try and get onto the roof again. I’ve only tried a few entrances to the roof, so I think it’s worth it to check again.

Year 5, Day 3

Today was sunny and I was feeling lucky. I got my flashlight and fresh tomato for a snack and decided to head East and then check a few stairwells going up. I walked for two hours before I decided to walk up to floor 1000 to cross over to the next building and then check the third staircase up to the roof. Some of the lights flickered on and off, I never liked how this building did that. When I came to the third stairwell I made the journey up to the roof. When the lights flickered on in here I get really spooked, there’s no light from any windows so it can go black for a few seconds at a time, and I try not to use my flashlight unless the situation is dire. Plus, my footsteps echo and make a lot of noise. I don’t know how late it was by the time I reached the top. I must have walked up to ten thousand steps or more to get there. When I made it to the top I found it locked. Unlike the other doors I found, this one didn’t seem to have an electronic lock, just this thick, metal padlock. When I shook the handle the door moved slightly, I knew it was only this lock keeping it in place. I kicked the door and ran and hit my shoulder against it but it wouldn’t budge. I looked around at the empty concrete stairwell and saw a fire extinguisher in a glass box. I broke it open with my flashlight and picked it up. It only took a few hits with the bottom of the extinguisher to get it open. I flung the door open, feeling my heart bursting from my chest, and walked out onto the roof. It must’ve been dusk by that time, because it was dark outside. The wind blew, and I could see fog and dust swirling into the air. The roof was completely empty, except for some potted plants that grew wild, pouring out of their pots onto the wet floor of the roof. I looked across towards the other building that was just as high as this one. Across the way I could see a small, green light like a dot on the roof, shining outward in the darkness. I got excited, thinking maybe it was somebody and shouted, something I never do. The light started blinking ferociously in some erratic pattern as if in response. Then, in the darkness of dusk, I swear I could make out some figure of a person, waving their hands at me.