Chereads / earth orc / Chapter 189 - 59

Chapter 189 - 59

You roam far from the Surgeons, aware that they may at any moment reconsider their decision to leave you wholly human, untouched by their genetic influence.

At first, you make an effort to calculate the time you spend on this planet. Such calculations are tricky, though: the dirty gray sun never seems to stray far from the horizon, and the days seem longer than on Earth. You try to count your Earth days by keeping track of how often you sleep. But such a flexible unit of measurement soon loses any real meaning, and you abandon the effort altogether. In any case, the Christmas season comes and goes, and you begin a new year. Weeks pass, and then months. A year passes, you guess. Perhaps you go insane for a while: certainly, from time to time you catch yourself laughing out loud at thoughts that pass through your head. But such welcome insanity, if it truly is insanity, is fleeting; the dreary slog of day-to-day existence always calls you back.

You find a murky, dirty ocean that is only slightly less repellent than the rest of this horrible world. As you sit on its shore, you wonder if it might be convenient just to drown yourself. But every time you entertain such self-destructive thoughts, you are held back—by rationality, or cowardice, perhaps even by hope of reprieve. Call it what you will: whatever it is, it prolongs your tedious existence.

At some point during your first year here you chance upon some sort of ruin, half buried in this world's ubiquitous muck. You explore it for a short time, thankful for the distraction, but it holds nothing of any real interest. Still, it causes you to wonder if the Surgeons are truly natives to this world. Perhaps others lived here once, who the Surgeons consumed.

Rain is not frequent in this strange place, but when it does rain, it rains in torrents. You set up the rain traps you constructed some time ago, then take shelter in these incongruous ruins.

As rain batters the stone roof above your head, you wonder whether you should choose a name for this new home of yours.