Deca had driven east along the byway for several hours. By the time she pulled off and headed south again, Reca was so used to the feeling of paved road underwheel that she wondered how she had ever managed to sleep with the jerking of the van as caused by the uneven sand. The sun rose.
There were mountains to the south, too, but they were so far off and so hazily obscured by thick fog that they were useless as a distance gauge. Reca sat backwards on top of the van for long stretches, watching the northern peaks recede, wondering if anything would interrupt their journey to Pandemonia. Deca applied a slight eastern tilt to her driving to avoid one of the black circles as marked on the map. It would be a close shave, but one the duo felt they had to take. The sun reached its peak, and then it began to descend.
The shadows of the dunes got longer as the evening came. They stretched out, tempering the harsh glow of the desert sun, which Reca was now beginning to see as a third member of her traveling party. She played with words, trying to come up with a million unique ways to describe the same old desert, but she found that after seven or so they became trite and repetitive.
The dunes in this part of the desert were rarely tall enough to cast shadows over the top of the van. Reca pressed her cheek against Deca's metal shell in an effort to fight back the hot air. It was almost sizzling already. Was this really winter?
Without warning, a massive shadow passed over the van. Deca looked upwards in alarm, but the sky was blue, and nothing was there.
She curled up again, but the same shadow, much larger and colder this time, whipped by once again. This time there was a distinct gust of air that followed shortly after.
"Stop," commanded Reca. Deca did as she was told, partially because she had also felt the odd wind.
They sat there as the air cooled, waiting for the shadow to pass overhead again.
"There!" cried Reca, standing on her tip-toes and pointing up into the purple-blue sky above the desert. There was a black shape flying in precise circles so high up that its nature was impossible to determine. She squinted, but it flickered and warped just as the static had outside of the Village of Lights. If only it were closer...
Reca found her wish coming true awfully fast. The black shape was getting closer, and closer, and closer so fast that she found herself entirely unprepared. It was a bird, and then it was a plane, and then it was a grayish blob of white-noise goo, and then it was another bird- another bird aiming to pick her up in its mouth! Reca did the world's least graceful backflip and landed on the sand. She could gain leverage this way, she thought, but she found after a few seconds that her legs couldn't carry her as fast as the bird could fly.
"Please!' she squeaked. "Please! I'm not food!"
The bird's face came into acute detail and she scooted backwards into the sand, hoping desperately that this wasn't some sort of predator bird and that it would at least be merciful when it picked her up and took her back to its nest-!
"Look out below!" said an unfamiliar voice.
There was a loud swish- a blade?, an even louder roar- an engine? and a bang- somebody landing on the ground...?
When she opened her eyes, she saw someone- someone lanky, wearing a brown jacket, denim shorts, an odd backpack, and an unusual metallic gauntlet- pinning the bird to the ground with the longest longsword (and the only longsword) Deca had ever seen. Seconds later, it dissipated into a cloud of static that faded into the evening air with a pained screech.
"Are you okay?" Reca ran over to the person, still reeling from the close call. She couldn't determine their gender- they had a long mop of hair and a little wait, but a defined jawline and a flat chest- but she saw up close that their 'backpack' was really a sort of jetpack, and that their gauntlet had an attached sheath for their sword. It seemed too short to actually hold the thing, but it was clearly empty, and the person clearly held a sword.
The person peeked through their messy bangs at Reca.
"Close call- good thing I was here."
Was this person a mind reader? That was exactly what Reca had been thinking!
"Where were you before the bird came down? Who are you? What was that thing? Is that a real sword? And is the machine on your back a real jetpack?"
"Shh- you should be praising me for saving you, not asking so many questions." The stranger winked, and Reca's newfound dislike for them was quelled slightly- so it was a joke.
"Okay, well, thank you. I guess we should be going..."
The stranger didn't say anything. They folded up their sword and inserted it nearly into the sheath- so that was how it worked.
"...but I'm really curious! Do you come from a settlement or something? Or do you just live out here, fighting... weird birds?"
The stranger laughed- it was jovial, but also oddly hollow.
"A settlement? Well, maybe you could say that."
"What would it take to get your story?" Reca had a new, temporary goal: she wanted to get past this person's vague, aloof shell and see the real meat of their story hidden inside.
"Tell you what," the stranger flipped their hair. "You come sit by my campfire, tell me your story, maybe I'll tell you mine."
"Maybe?"
"I can't promise much. Hey, maybe we'll both be eaten by a Glitchfisher before I even get the chance to tell you."
"A Glitchfisher? Is that what those big bird things are called?"
"That's what I call them."
The sun was setting, and the moon was already visible. Reca had nowhere to go for the night except down south back to the river, and there was no time limit on that goal.
"Deca," said Reca, "Let's stay here for tonight."
Deca thought for a second and agreed, if begrudgingly. The two of them followed the stranger back behind one of the taller dunes- apparently, it concealed a small campsite, or what could pass for one in the apocalypse. There was a little fire pit where a meager flame burned below a metal grille, and two sandy sleeping bags sat opposite the dune on the other side of the fire.
"Who's the other sleeping bag for?"
"Remember- no questions for now. Sit by the fire and tell me about yourself. Information for information."
Reca grumbled something in audible. Just as she was about to sit down, an invisible lightbulb went off in her head.
"Hold on a minute- I have something to get," said Reca, hopping back to where Deca was parked. The stranger only nodded and smiled. A minute of shuffling around in the back later, Reca returned with five cans- two cans of beans in her pockets, one can of creamed corn and one can of chicken noodle soup in her left hand, and one can of clam chowder in her right hand.
"Big eater, huh?" asked the stranger.
"No," replied Reca, and she saw an effervescent blip of surprise flash across their face for the first time that night. "I like beans, so I'm having a can of beans. I brought the other four so you could choose one! I was thinking I should only bring one other can, but I realized I didn't know what you liked, so I just brought one of everything."
The stranger examined the labels and eventually settled on the creamed corn. Deca took the other cans back and let the beans warm up over the fire- they were ultimately uneven in terms of heat, but they still tasted like beans, which meant they were good enough for her. She drank them like a chunky soup for lack of utensils.
"Well, you wanted to know about me," Reca started. "I'm Reca, and I come from a place way west of here called Andistronica where the acid snow started getting really harsh recently."
"Acid snow, eh? In summer?"
"It's winter."
The stranger wiggled their eyebrows. "Guess it doesn't make a difference out here."
"That over there is Deca, who I met at the junkyard near Andistronica. She's a van, I think."
"And she's a 'she'? Not an 'it'?"
"Yes- well, technically, I don't know, but I named her, so I guess I also sort of ended up giving her a gender."
"What, does she talk to you?"
"Depends on what you mean by talking."
"I see. Now, what brings you all the way out here?"
"Basically, I woke up one day and the acid snow I mentioned was burning through Deca's shell and really hurting her. So we decided to leave, and along the way we also decided to figure out what caused the apocalypse!"
"A hefty task."
"For sure. And would you believe we haven't gotten any closer?"
"Well, Reca, that's a little hard for me to believe, if I'm being honest. Did you learn about the three horsemen, at least?"
"Yes, but only just yesterday."
"And how long have you been traveling?"
Reca counted on her fingers.
"I don't know."
The stranger did a mini-spit-take into their can of creamed corn.
"Well, Reca time gets away from you in the desert, doesn't it?"
"For sure," she said again.
"Tell me about why you look and dress like that," said the stranger, catching Reca off-guard. Was that an insult? She hadn't looked in a mirror since the start of the journey- could it be that she had somehow been horrendously deformed?
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Your skin is purple and you're wearing an outfit straight out of a pulp sci-fi mag," said the stranger. "Is that normal in this timeline?"
This timeline...?
"I dunno. I dunno how you want me to answer that. It's just been that way for as long as I've been alive."
"That's a good enough answer for me, Reca."
"Stop saying my name so much when you haven't even told me yours!"
"Fine, fine. I think you'll find that my name hardly matters anymore, but I'll begin soon. I have just one more question for you, though, Reca- have you heard of the concept of orphaned etymology?"
She thought back through her environmental and cultural lessons, but came up empty.
"No. What is it?"
"Let me ask you another question-"
"Will this be the last one?"
"Maybe. The other question is- do you watch or read a lot of science fiction?"
"I don't watch or read much of anything."
"Should've expected that. Okay, picture this: you're reading a fascinating exploration of three original spacebound societies, and you follow... let's say, Axex, a Zorglet from the planet Porgon."
"Huh? What?"
"Just bear with me here. Axex and his friends are going for a joyride in their spaceship and they start talking about hot alien gossip. As it turns out, Axex has a second littercousin who got into a catfight with Zermygas, the High Plegin of Porgon!"
"What's a Plegin?"
"I'm making this stuff up as I go along. But tell me this- did you notice anything strange about that sentence?"
"Half the words were strange."
"I mean, did any of the words that weren't strange seem strange to you?"
"..."
The stranger smiled.
"Catfight," they said. "Tell me why a catfight is called a catfight."
"Well, I mean- is this a trick question?"
"No."
"Then... it's called that because it's a social situation similar to how cats fight."
"Great, you've got it. Now, think back to Porgon. It's a planet somewhere far out in the distant galaxy, and all the flora and fauna there is totally foreign, totally alien. So why would a Zorglet form Porgon use the word catfight?"
Reca's eyes lit up in excitement.
"Authors use whatever words will convey they meaning they want to convey, but occasionally you get a word that shouldn't exist, and yet it does. It's divorced from its history- it exists independent of all the factors that would cause it to exist."
"And this has to do with your story... how, exactly?"
"I'm one of those words."
Reca gulped. She didn't know how to interpret that.
"I shouldn't exist," said the stranger, mouth half-full of creamed corn. "The factors that should have caused me to exist never existed. And yet, well, here I am! Funny, isn't it?" There was that hollow, empty laugh again.
"Well, I- I mean, I guess..." Reca stalled, trying to find words but failing miserably.
"Let me tell you my whole story. You don't have to believe me- that's up to you, but it's all true, at least from my point of view."
Reca nodded.
"There was- and wasn't- a city here called Nolyah- my home. Look up at the sky. Imagine towers all around, made of reddish brick. Can you see them? Can you see their windows, the steeples of the buildings in the distance, the banners hanging from their eaves?"
Reca nodded, but the look on the stranger's face told her that wasn't the correct answer. She shook her head and they continued.
"Well," they said, "Let me see it for you..."
There was a girl. Long, brown hair, blue dress, pinkish leggings. She stood on an orange brick path in a red brick city. The sun boiled overhead. The ground shook and shook- the buildings crumbled, the path cracked. She fled, screaming- Cynni! Cynni, where are you? Where are you? Answer me!
There was no answer. A brick narrowly missed the girl's head and made a nasty dent in the sidewalk. She gripped her backpack- it had been her mother's jet-backpack, but her mother had given to her after the quake was announced- and it contained a box of matches, a spare set of her father's clothes, and two jetpacks. One for her... one for Cynni, her little brother.
Cynni!
Nothing. Nothing but the crumbling of brick.
She turned and ran.
Nolyah was in the center of a desert, so it wasn't as if there was anywhere to go. Sand had blown over the roads months ago- news came, news that told of the destruction of every other city nearby. She would have to make do with the sun and the dunes, and then she could come back- she could meet up with the survivors.
Half an hour past the city, far from the borders of the isolated quake, she set up camp. The vibrations from the city's persistent little quakes had always helped her sleep before, but this time the lingering rhythms were deeply unsettling. She couldn't sleep a wink- she was too worried about her family, about her mom and dad- about her brother.
No sooner had the vibrations stopped than she had packed everything up and trekked back to the city, which sat in ruins. It had looked normal yesterday morning, and yet it had fallen to its knees in one night. All it took was one quake. Nolyah would be another news story of death and destruction, assuming anyone was even around to receive the news.
Edette, came a pitiful voice. The girl swung around, sand-worn dress fluttering, hair whipping in the wind now that the walls of the city no longer kept it out. There was a woman on the ground in the street, leg pinned to the pavement by a chunk of fallen brick.
Miss Vladrudd, said Edette.
She was Edette's beloved engineering tutor, the one who had been preparing her daily to take on her parents' automaton business for the greater part of seven years. Here she was, nearly dead, another victim of fate's cruelty. Edette went to lift up the brick, but found her efforts futile- she wasn't strong enough.
Don't worry for... me, whispered Miss Vladrudd, I'm almost dead.
What kept you alive?
I was... waiting to see you. Your mother... told me... you'd come back today.
My mother! You mean she's still alive?
She... and your father... and Cynni... they went to the courthouse...
Miss Vladrudd coughed, and Edette didn't stick around long enough to see if it was blood. She had to see her parents- and Cynni! The courthouse was-
It should have been in front of her. All that remained was a pile of bricks.
As she waded through the structure, she came across pale faces, pale bodies, drained of life, blood, and lifeblood, some squished beyond repair. The head judge. Her parents. Where was her brother? If she couldn't find his body, maybe that meant he had-
Her heart sank. There was an arm sticking out from one of the brick piles, and it wore the same oversized mechanic's gauntlet that Cynni always wore.
He wanted to be a real mechanic- now that chance had been taken away. There was no happiness to be found here for Edette, nor any closure, nor any hope. She left the ruined courthouse and took one moment to look back at Miss Vladrud. Her eyes were closed, and her chest no longer rose or fell.
Edette turned and ran back into the desert. The road out of town faded into the sand, and she lost her way- all she could tell was that she was getting further and further from Nolyah.
When it 'set' over the horizon, so did the sun, and she fell to her knees. She took a quick swig of water from her father's canteen, but it wasn't enough to quench her thirst. Would she die here? Was this a better fate than dying under a collapsed building? Perhaps not- perhaps she should have died there with the rest of her family. Perhaps that would have been honorable.
Young one, came a voice like the sound of glass bells.
Edette turned skyward to see an ethereal gowned being as tall as the Nolyahn towers she missed so very much. It scintillated like late-evening starlight and its arms, rather than culminating in fingers, dissipated into the air like smoke trails.
Who... are... you?
I am no one.
What... do you want from me?
She used the last of her voice to cough out the question, unable to even cry with the meager amount of liquid in her body.
I want to give you another chance.
Why me...?
You are here, and so am I.
Edette would have protested, but the entity's smoky arms wrapped around her and pulled her away from the desert and the sky and the dehydration. She stood on a starry veranda that looped around on itself ad infinitum.
I guard time, spoke the entity. It was only now, with her rejuvenated mind, that Edette noticed the being had the pendulum of a grandfather clock within its chest. Moreover, its face was numbered, and it had two clockhands where its nose should have been. It had no mouth.
So you can take me back to before all this happened?
I can. Would you like to relive this day?
The girl shuddered and newly-formed tears peeked out from the corners of her eyes.
No, unless I can change how things went.
You cannot reverse the earthquake in this timeline.
This timeline? You mean there are others?
Yes- any time anyone on this plane makes a choice, the timeline is irrevocably divided into two. Would you like to be transported to another timeline?
Let me see them! Please, please, let me see them! Edette blew her nose on her sleeve. Suddenly, a million pictures flashed before her eyes.
In one timeline, her family followed her to the desert, but there wasn't enough food to go around and everyone but Edette died of exhaustion on the way back to the city.
In another timeline, she saved Miss Vladrudd and trekked into the desert, but the both of them were caught in a sandstorm.
In yet another timeline, Edette died in the city by her brother's side...
No, no. None of these are right, yelled Edette, breath catching. Is there a timeline where the earthquake never happened?
Of course not. The earthquake wasn't a choice made by anyone, nor was it the result of compounded choices.
Could you put me back in time? I could protect my family in that first timeline if I got more food.
Not possible.
Not possible? Edette fumed. You guard time and yet you can't even do something as simple as sending me one day back in time?
Time travel creates paradoxes. I do not wish to be on the bad side of any entity above me, replied the thing.
Then... tell me this.
The entity cocked its head. Edette's blood boiled with righteous fury.
Is there a timeline where none of this suffering ever happened? Where my parents didn't have to die, and neither did I?
The entity ticked once.
Yes, but-
Take me there!
You must be sure.
I am sure! Do you hear me, you stupid clock? Take me there! Take me there! Please, I'm begging you! Make it so that none of them ever had to suffer!
"I didn't know what I was getting into," laughed Edette. Reca sat, transfixed, unable to process the story or the end that she was sure was coming.
"I woke up after that and I walked back the way the city should have been, 'cause I thought everything would be fixed. But it wasn't there. No trace of it- just a fault where it should have been."
"So the entity lied to you?"
"No. This was the only timeline where nobody suffered, I think, because it was the only timeline where none of them ever existed."
Orphaned etymology.
"Oh, and trust me, I tried to figure out what had happened. I went down to Pandemonia because it was supposedly still standing, but they told me there that there had never been any such city as Nolyah according to their records. I traveled everywhere, I saw everything- no trace. Not of the city, not of any of the people who lived in it. And, see, back where I came from, it was a major city! My parents made machines that were sold all over Wonlandica, and then Wastelandica. Now there are only two of them left."
"Two?"
Edette pointed to her jetpack and to her gauntlet.
"That's why I stay here," said Edette. "Look- right over there, that dune? That's where the city border was. Then, past the border, there was a little prison museum that used to be our actual prison, and past that there was a Billy Burgermeister... do you know what that is?"
Reca shook her head.
"A fast food restaurant. And next to it there was a souvenir shop, and then a row of little houses that the owners painted different colors, and next to those..."
Reca listened to Edette's descriptions. For one second, just like back at the Iris Street House, she could see everything- the brick architecture, the fast food restaurant, the prison museum- and then it all melted into an endless desert again.
"That's why I stay here. I'm the only one who remembers it. Without me, Nolyah might as well have never existed at all."
"But it didn't exist at all in this timeline, right?"
"Right, I suppose. That means it's all the more important that I'm here. I hold the whole city- and the lives of everyone who lived there- within my mind. If I forget, they die with my memory. If I die, they all die with me. By being here, I like to think I'm keeping them alive in a moment with no pain, no suffering... well, all of them except for me. I bear their pain."
"How old are you?"
The older girl giggled.
"Don't you know? In Nolyah, it was considered impolite in to ask a woman her age."
"Fair enough. But this isn't Nolyah any more, is it?"
"It is to me."
The moon was up, and the beans were finished.
"I guess that's the end of my story. I came here, and I learned how to avoid the birds by burrowing-"
"Where did the sword come in?"
"A traveler like you gave it to me and taught me how to use it."
"What kind of traveler carries a giant sword?"
"You'll have to go to Pandemonia and meet him if you wanna find out. I'm all out of answers for tonight."
"Hey, that's where I'm going!"
"All the better."
Reca tried to ask another question, but found that Edette was already snoring in her sleeping bag. Who had the other bag been for? There were two in the jetbackpack from the story- maybe one was for her and her mom, and maybe the other was for Cynni and his dad. Two people per sleeping bag didn't sound very comfortable. Maybe the other one was just for Cynni- maybe their parents didn't expect to survive.
Careful not to make a lot of noise, she boarded Deca again.
When Edette woke up the next morning, the fire had dwindled out, and a pair of faint tire tracks wound into the distance. She was alone again... but not really.
The voices of her friends, her family, and all of her other fellow Nolyahns carried on the wind. They sounded hollow, but also full of light, almost like glass bells.
A mirage flickered on the horizon that only she could see.
Every day, she half-expected to see the clock-esque being in front of her when she awoke. Every day, it was just the empty desert and her visions of Nolyah.
When the starry entity appeared, she would have a sleeping bag prepared. They would camp together, and Edette would tell it her story, from beginning to end.
When the starry entity appeared, her sword would finally make itself of use.
She had all the time in the world to wait, and she relished every moment she could keep her orphaned world alive.