The Detail

I sit in my tower looking at the metropolis in the distance. The details melt into the blur that my eyes create. I feel I have been here forever, maybe I have, maybe I have just forgotten.

I used to be in that city, be part of it, feeling like an ant, just a moving part in a huge machine, but the machine began to fail, and so I walked into the desert and found this tower, which seemed to have been built for me or someone like me. The door was unlocked, it isn't now, and I walked up to the top and in the distance, I saw the metropolis that I had once been a tiny part of.

I did not feel safe there, but I do feel safe here. I think there have been one or two that tried the door, but it now looks like a tall stone desert column, like the solidified lava core of a volcano. They don't come here any more. I have forgotten the last one that did.

I look at the distant city and feel that it is falling apart, becoming a blurry mush, unsafe to live there unless you become subhuman, but the lights still come on at night, so somethings still work.

I do not know how this place works, but it does. Food is available for an ordering system, and nourishes me well. I have a computer, a keyboard and a television which allows me to watch recordings. There has been nothing new produced for years, and all the TV channels are dead. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "57 Channels And Nothing On". I don't know how many channels are on my TV, but there is nothing on any of them, and I have checked them.

Life is good here. I am a loner, maybe a hermit, although I am not wise.

I look out at the metropolis and I can believe that everything is working fine, and the people are OK, that is the situation in my mind, but I am sure reality is far different.

Things do look better from far away; distance keeps you safe from bad and harmful things. I know that I will never leave here, and I do not feel I will ever die; I feel immortal.

I watch films, play and listen to music, read books, and sometimes I walk to the window (this place is circular and every outside wall is glass) and I watch the metropolis and make up stories in my head about what, if anything, is going on in there.

The odd bird and hailstorm have hit the windows, but the place manages to clean itself. In here, nothing changes, and the metropolis never changes. At night, it lights up.

Although I am interested in the metropolis, it is not interested in me, or it has forgotten me. I am fine with that.

From this distance, the metropolis is fine. I think I was expecting fires or explosions, but they have never happened, so maybe it is as good as I imagined.

Should I go back and visit?

I know that I can never leave here, even if I wanted to, and I don't.

So while I am here, the blurred metropolis is just another part of my entertainment. Which will go first, me or the metropolis? I don't know.

If I go, I won't know about it, and maybe I will wake one day to see it devoured by flames and justify my decision to leave and come here.

Til then, I will just order another drink and continue reading "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.