2: The Potential of Life

The screen flashed to a man with brown hair and blocky glasses. A few moles poked through his tan skin. He’s wearing a neat white t-shirt, leaving his moled arms bare.

Mordred whispers into my ear, “You can see through his shirt. He’s a star.”

The man blathers on, and I lean in a bit closer. A six-pointed star is drawn on his chest.

Mordred grabs my shoulders and yoinks me back, panic-whispering, “He’ll notice that you’re looking! Tucker, no!”

He pauses, and I feel his grip tighten.

“I think he’s dead, Mordred.”

“Why?”

“We’re here because humanity is dead. You told me this.”

“…Oh. Oh! Okay. I’m sorry, I’m forgetful.”

I twist my body and look to him. “The reason we’re here? Pretty fucking hard to forget.”

He fakes a laugh with tiny pupils and points to the screen. “Look! New content! New content!”

I focus back into the screen. A man with broad shoulders helps up what I assume to be a woman from the ocean. The screen flips to a woman holding a child, then to a man working in a lab, mixing something together. More sounds are coming out from the speakers, but I can’t focus on it. I gently rest my hand on the keyboard and look back at Mordred.

“Hey, what are you doing? Why is the stuff skipping?” He tilts his head and cocks a brow.

I lift my hand off the keyboard jumpily and allow the screen to continue. Looking back, it was a man with pale skin and black hair beside a ginger woman with moles and freckles. Mordred shifts.

“The good, American man of the 1920’s is a hard worker that provides for the family, while the woman engages in no flapper nonsense. Servitude and parenthood is the future for the woman, all within a cozy home.” It’s not the moled man’s voice. It’s full of static and, while I do not understand what the word means, full of Boston as well.

I grumble, “Sounds like the worst. Dehumanizing.”

“It’s just how human society works, I guess.” He leans into my chair and whispers something to himself. I hear a high-pitched buzz coming from somewhere behind me.

“Well, we’re not humans and I don’t care about this bullshit.” I slap my hand on the keyboard, hoping the same thing would happen. The clip skips, and the grinding of metal sings from above. The lights turn on, and the room

“Well- well-”, he angrily looks around the room, and dashes to a corner. He picks up a black leather bag that was leaning against a previously hidden by darkness bookshelf. He rips through and seems to find every book with a human on the cover, and one book of just red. He starts to look through them, and I leave him to his bidding. I walk to the other side of the room, with a small end table.

On top, there was a dusty book with some gold paint on it. I swipe it off with my hand, not realizing how brittle the paint is. Now I have a blank book. Opening the thick, leathery book, my eyes swipe through a jumble of words. The term, “deadly beasts wearing fingernails as trophies”, pops out to me. The table has a drawer I struggle to pull out, but it gives eventually. Another book, this one smaller. I untie the lace holding the cloth book together and release the contents into my eyes. Pictures, with colors.

The first page is the man in the video, with smaller moles, happily exposing his chest to show off the six-pointed star. He was holding a kitten. In the next picture, he was simply sitting at a table and drinking some dark and foamy liquid. The next page had a skinny pale woman with eyes I found strange. She was posing in dresses, each looking completely different. In one, she was gagging at a cigarette. The next page had a man with extremely dark skin posing on cars and airplanes. He looked tiny and overdressed, and his hair was way too curly to be real. I look back at Mordred, still going through books. His hair is very straight. I don’t think I have all too many curls, but my hair is still a bit wet.

Next, there was a large man with white hair and purple eyes. The right side of his faced was messed up, but he still had sharp jawbones and an overall handsome face. He posed with a motorcycle, then with a tiny, tiny baby. Then, some guy with the same strange eyes was holding the baby. He was dressed straight out of the Wild West. Unlike the girl with weird eyes, he liked cigarettes. He was also the only one with facial hair.

Then, there were blurry pictures of a man with growths from his back. I don’t want to see that.

I close the book and stack it atop the other. I carry them over to Mordred and poke him.

“Throw these in the bag, too.”

He smiles and nods, like he forgot he was angry at me. He’s sitting on the ground, sorting through piles of books. He has about three in the bag. I pet his head, causing him to stop moving, and tell him, “Grab one more. Let’s go.”

He quickly throws my books into the bag, then grabs the red one I saw earlier. Standing up with a quick jump, he whimpers to me, “There’s a map by the door. He said we needed to go to the circled locations.”

“Sure. We’ll get there when we get there.”

He followed behind me as I trekked up the first set of steps I saw. I felt as if he was trying to see my face, but his finicky movements only caused him to trip on his own feet. My feet clacked against the metal stairs, loudly sounding ahead of me. However, Mordred’s steps were tiny, echoing behind me.

“Are you doing that on purpose?”

“What?”

I turn to him, eyeing him down. He blankly smiles up to me, ignorant of his own actions.

“Nevermind.”

Continuing up the steps, a series of metal doors looked to be freshly opened, spreading years of dust throughout the air. A beam of light reflects off the aluminum flooring, striking me in the eyes.

Good to know the world already hates me.

[Sorry for forgetting to post. I’ve been arranging stuff to start a YouTube channel, and I’m currently on vacation. On a related note, email me some small towns to look into! I’m gonna focus more on American towns, but I will be sure to look at some towns in other countries. The exception, as always, is Utah. The first town I’m covering is actually the beginning setting of Abide the Bride.]