"Listen up, you crazy psycho," Sultan began.
"I don't know who you are.
I don't know why the hell you're the only person I can contact.
And most importantly, I have no idea what kind of crap that bastard threw at me this time!"
"So stop getting your sick amusement at my expense and either give me some actual help or explain the situation. I'll figure out the rest myself!"
Sultan immediately regretted what he had written after sending it. His reaction wasn't entirely unjustified, as the other person failed to consider his situation and continued mocking him instead of treating the issue with the seriousness it deserved.
Nevertheless, this didn't excuse his poor response. If he angered this person, they might decide to abandon him, stripping him of his last fragile rope of survival, no matter how slim it was.
He didn't have time to rectify his mistake, though. Just as Sultan debated whether to delete his last message or just send an apology, a very unexpected series of replies arrived.
"Now, that's just hurtful. I'm doing all I can here," the first one read, Followed by an emoji of an amused smile.
"To prove my goodwill, I'll answer the questions you asked in your last message." Upon reading this, Sultan felt a wave of true regret. Had he known answers would come from the other side, he would have sent all of his inquiries.
"'Who am I?'
I'm no one important—just an everyday person, a normal, average citizen, you could say. We've met before, though. In fact, we had a very animated and lovely conversation today."
Shock. despite the fact that this wasn't a definitive answer, it narrows down the suspects too much .
Even Farther more than the sender might have intended.
"why you can only contact me?
y, it's quite simple. We're using the same RLISYS.
And this one was a bomb. Terror is a tiny word to represent sultan's emotions.
Because this can only mean one thing: the day he installed his RLISYS, his privacy has been butchered like a pig.
"'what kind of crap the bastard through at me this time?'
"Hum, who's the bastard?"
Sultan skimmed over the last message, still processing the implications of the one before it. Questions rang in his mind like clashing swords, How? Why? What?
Yet before he could voice, or rather, write, any of them, a delayed response flashed before his eyes. One he both deserved and, at the same time, did not. A response that slaughtered his protests of injustice and demands for explanations with the same bloody blade that had cut the throat of his privacy earlier.
Now, you listen up and listen carefully because I'm going to address your unseemly behavior with words only once.
Everything I say, everything I send—you must comply with, or you'll have no one to blame but yourself for the consequences. Saving you and having you be all good and well will benefit me more than you think. I've been preparing for this for months, so every action I take—or choose not to take—is deliberate and in your best interest.
So stop whining, get your butt off the ground, and remember: you are the one who needs help, not me. The least you can do is show gratefulness, and the last thing you should be doing is disrespecting the one helping you."..
Sultan closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
He allowed himself a chance to reassess his condition, which, incredibly, had shown a clear improvement.
His body had begun to regain its vitality, his muscles relaxing and his mind sharpening.
So as he adjusted his posture, folding his legs beneath him, elbows resting on his knees and his head cradled in his hands, he paused in a long, unending moment to reflect on all that had transpired.
The world was still unbearably cold, yet the facts were colder.
The recent harsh words of the so-called average citizen were just the bullet that nailed it home, the final blow, and the pocket of cold water that washed over the last traces of sleepiness and woke him to the stark grimness of his dire new reality.
For now, he ignored the bizarre experience that occurred between being in his kitchen and arriving here, as honestly he isn't certain whether it was real, or just a very lucid dream.
That would leave him in an extreme situation of getting lost.
By unknown means, Sultan had been abducted or transformed, accidentally or intentionally, to this dark, uninhabitable place.
This, beyond a doubt, is an oversimplification, a stretch of the words to their limits, but it is all he has to work with, so he would assume on a basic level that they hold some modicum of truth.
Now what? If he followed the thread of being a lost person, at best, or a kidnapped victim, at worst, his next course of action was, ironically, quite similar in both scenarios.
Instinctively, most would assume that the only solution is to contact emergency services and wait for help.
But Sultan knew better, there is always another way.
So he started to think about the issue in a different method, one that Sultan grew to like and depend on to solve problems. His brilliant method is to divide the challenge into smaller pieces. The big, unsurmountable mountain of a problem wouldn't look so scary if you cut it into smaller baby ones, and the distant, seemingly unreachable solution wouldn't be that far away when its path was divided into actionable steps.
So that what he did.
Sultan stretched his legs before him, made one hand into a fist and started releasing a finger at a time as he determined on his next steps.
find help .
Scape, and/or identify the current location.
Find a way home from there.
Three fingers. One daunting fist of a problem had been split into three insanely difficult but more manageable challenges. Better yet, he had already accomplished the first and third steps.
The one who called themselves an "average citizen" has offered help in the form of a way back home, which was his first and third needs respectively.
For now, it didn't matter that this so-called Citizen had turned out to be an infuriatingly unreliable and unrelatable individual, always wringing every ounce of sarcasm from Sultan's misery.
he would also have to ignore the fact that his way of returning relied on the oldest trick in the book: following the compass, which came with enormous drawbacks. The seas wouldn't grow gentler or less dangerous just because the ship knew its course, and the desert wouldn't suddenly show mercy and spit water and sustenance simply because the traveler held a compass.
But all these challenges—and the matter of escape—were Sultan's burden to bear. Since when had he become so entitled as to expect a meal without paying for it with sweat and blood?
There was one vital rule by which those who lived below the line survived: You don't look a gift horse in the mouth. When you're down, you take the first hand offered, whether it belongs to a foe or a friend.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have said all that. I'm, of course, thankful for your assistance. It's just... I'm too stressed because of my current situation," Sultan apologized.
And he meant it. Because if this person was genuinely trying to help, nothing else mattered for now. Their motives for withholding information and the blatant violations of his privacy are irrelevant.
Trust was a currency for those who had something to lose. And when your life is on the table, bargaining away everything you have, even your most intimate secrets,
is too cheap a cost to pay.