15 THE EDGE
Before long I reach the underground shelter. I pick up the cat and carry her down the ladder. Inside, Tee is playing a game of cards with the sphere-bot.
"Hey I made a new friend," I say to her and I put the kitty down at my feet.
Tee runs over and picks her up, hugs and kisses and squeezes her, rubbing her face in the fur and she smiles at me. She puts the kitty down and takes her seat again at the table where there's playing cards spread around.
"Hey, what game are you playing? You sleep ok last night?" I ask her. She gives me a big hug.
"Yeah Anna sung me songs," and my heart skips a beat but I realize she means the sphere-bot. Anna was my wife's name.
"Oh good, you didn't go outside right?"
"No. Not really."
I kick my shoes off to preserve Archie's white carpet. and I sit down heavily at the table, exhausted.
"We're playing Egyptian rat fuck."
"What?"
"Egyptian-"
"I heard you.. How do you play?"
"Well, each person or robot takes a turn playing a card from the top of her pile. Then if the cards match you have to slap the pile first, and then you put those on the bottom of your pile. Whoever has all the cards wins."
"Your mom teach you that?"
"No, Anna did."
"Anna, what other games do you know?"
"I know 1024 playing card games."
A thousand and twenty four games. I don't know any, I never learned. Never have the time, I’m usually too busy chasing iguanas to learn card games.
I heard the manhole open and Archie appeared at the bottom of the ladder.
"Hey old man, you're home early."
"I met a wandering trader, was able to get the parts I needed. He told me an interesting story too.
"Yeah let's hear the story."
"Well, he got this glazed look in his eye and started going on about some junkie he'd met who'd seen the edge of the wasteland."
"The edge? I just assumed it goes on."
"Well, this trader paraphrased it for me, I guess the junkie said there's some kind of chaos at the edge. Chaos that'll make you lose your mind, and the junkie insisted he was a dead scorpion somewhere, that he had baby scorpions to feed and he needed to get back there."
"Wow, sounds like the guy had a bad trip to me."
"Maybe,"
"What do you mean 'maybe,' that sounds like a bunch of baked bullshit."
"I've been to the edge, never beyond, but I saw the edge."
"Fuck, really? What did you see?"
"Ten thousand things. I saw a smiling family around a dinner table eating meat and vegetables, I saw the wasteland, green with life, I saw human like robots in a junkyard. I saw great reptilian beasts, hunting one another."
"All that in one look?"
“There's a barrier, a swirling barrier of images. I didn't go onwards. I saw my wife, but I didn't go."
"What the hell are you talking about Archie? You sound like a madman."
"I can't say I understood what I saw, but it’s like reality was fractured, you know, the bombs must have done it. And I found a pile of clothes there, gun and ammo, like someone had just disappeared right out of their clothes."
"You're mad Archie. You were probably dreaming, or rad-sick." He looks sternly at me and says in his deep voice, "I wasn't."
"So there's some kind of chaos out there, but where?"
"A hundred days west of here, in the middle of the ruined city.”
"A hundred days? How the hell did you survive the radiation?”
"The scorpions helped me, they came at night and fed me, protected me."
"Yeah, right. Obviously you left your marbles somewhere old man. There's no edge of the wasteland, it just goes on and on, dust and iguanas in every direction."
"You're wrong, Russ. I was there. You have to see it to understand." And I want to. Archie had seen his wife there, in some kind of chaos storm. Do I have a chance of reuniting with mine? I know she's dead, and I am only dreaming, but I find purpose. Maybe there’s a chance I can see her again, even for a moment.
"I've got to see it Archie."
"To hell you do, that journey nearly killed me. Stay here with Tee and me, and sip coffee and put your feet up. You're not a wanderer anymore."
But I am. I will always be. The wasteland is my home, being safe is boring. I have to see whatever it was Archie had seen. I have to see, if my wife was there too. And I know that I will leave Archie and Tee behind. I will be a lone wanderer again, a tourist in the wastes.
"Archie, mark my words. I'll see you in 200 days." and I feel invigorated, a new sense of life pouring into me, a mission of my own making, a chance to maybe see my wife. I, like Archie, have lost my will to live somewhere along the line. I love Tee and him but that's only a bandage on a broken will. I want to see my wife, desperately, and I will do whatever I have to do to see her one last time, even if it means evaporating into nothingness, leaving my clothes in a pile and disappearing into some kind of fractured reality.