Water. A man stood on a shore, watching the completely still water cover countless miles. The shore which the man stood on was more like a rock slab than a sandy beach like the ones on Earth.
No, the man was no longer on Earth. He had been part of an expeditionary crew sent to investigate a newly discovered planet outside of Earth’s solar system that appeared to actually have liquid water. Unfortunately, the water they had found was more than just water. It was water, but it was mixed with what seemed to be a liquid akin to battery acid, giving it an unearthly mint green color. Thus, this highly corrosive liquid quickly ate through the ship which the crew was using once they brought samples to test on board with them. Sadly, all but the single man had died in the ensuing crash after the acidic water ate through the ships fuel systems.
The man had crashed on a small island made entirely of an odd stone that the water could not eat through. It was white in color, and was like no mineral the man had ever seen. It resisted the corrosive effect of the waters, a feat which even the incredibly durable metals which the man’s ship had been made of could not do. However, the man did find it to be very lightweight and malleable. He could break it into pieces using only his hands, then shape it into whatever he wanted, much like clay.
The island itself was made entirely of the stuff, but it was not flat. There were tall white spires, which seemed to have caverns going through out them, with openings in all sorts of places on the outside of the towers. The spires were also of different heights, and all protruded out of a large, strangely shaped mound. The whole shape of the island and its spires seemed too natural to have been made, yet too eerie to be considered natural.
The man had already made numerous trips through the island, walking among the spires in search of life. Unfortunately, the absence of color was something of an indicator that if life had existed here at some point, it did not anymore.
Once he had given up on looking through out the island, the man decided to look out towards the ocean. There was no wind, so there were no surface waves. The ocean stood still, and seemed almost like a solid object. There were no clouds, yet there was a light shining from the sky that the man could not find the source of. All he saw when he looked up at the sky was a blue so light that it almost matched the mint green of the ocean.
On his wrist, the man had a watch. He knew it was useless on another planet, seeing as how the time measurements would be different. What he did not expect however, was that while the time on his watch had passed three days, the light that filled and permeated every crack and crevice never faded, not once. The light was not hot, neither was it cold, but it wasn’t warm either. The lack of wind gave the planet a stuffy, cramped feeling, yet at the same time the lack of anything made it seem infinite.
The man’s appetite never bothered him, neither did a need for sleep. He had an emergency ration pack that he tried to eat because he knew he needed to, but he just was not hungry. He never slept, because the light never went away and he was never tired.
Four weeks had passed when the man sat back one day and thought about himself and his position. He was trapped on a planet light years away from help with limited food and water and no way of contacting anyone for help. He was by himself, he had not a single soul to talk to. Yet, despite all of this, he did not feel worried. He felt a more serene calm than any other time in his life.
Not once during the following seven years did the man ever eat or sleep or be in thirst for water. Never did he long for companionship or wish things were different. No, instead he simply sat on the island, wondering to himself about the spires, the ocean, the sky, and himself. It was at one moment in time, when he stood up and the ration pack fell out of his pocket, did he realize that he still had not eaten anything at all. For the first time in a long time, the man felt a new feeling outside of wonderment and serenity: panic.
He couldn’t explain it, but he suddenly became very afraid. He began running around in circles all over the island, convinced that something was behind him. He began to rip off his clothing and began throwing it all over the island, hoping to distract the invisible phantom that suddenly plagued him. To no avail did this plan work, and the man continued running for some time.
The man woke up, and rubbed his head. It throbbed rhythmically. He looked at his feet and saw his clothes in a lumped pile. He stood up and began putting them back on, and at once remembered what had happened. In his blind fear of whatever it was that he was running from, he had tripped over his clothing and fell on his head.
Thankfully, the irrational fear that had gripped the man subdued, and he began to go back to his original spot on the shore to gaze at the ocean. Once there, however, he noticed his ration pack, and remembered that seeing it had caused the preceding event. He began to feel the fear rising in him again, but he quickly quieted it within himself. Once he had pushed away the fear, the thoughts that before had been incoherent came to his mind clearly. He was not doing the things that all humans are supposed to do, such as eat and sleep, yet he was not dying. Instead, he was living, and he seemed to never run out of energy. The man remembered his earlier episode and remembered how he never felt tired and how he felt as if he could keep running forever. At first he dismissed that as nothing more than an adrenaline rush from the fear, but after awhile it began to bother him.
The man decided to test himself. If he could run around the island for a full day at top speed and never get tired, than he would accept that as a fact along with his now no longer needing sleep or food. The man checked his watch to time himself, but he realized: it was dead. It had stopped a long, long time ago, the man remembered. So, he just decided to run until he felt that sufficient time had passed.
The man did run, and for a very long time. He finally gave up on running after it had sufficiently bored him. He now found himself with nothing to do. He tried looking out at the ocean and the sky, but they just did not have the same appeal as they once did. The spires too had also lost their attractiveness. He instead found himself fascinated with the stone material that the island was made of.
He took large amounts of the stuff from the base of one spire, and brought it out to the shore line. He threw a chunk of it out into the ocean, and it sank immediately. The man was disappointed, but at the same time intrigued. He made a large amount of the stuff into a flexible rope-like object, enough to circle the island three times, and fashioned a large lump of the stuff to one end. He threw the lump into the ocean and watched it sink. The rope continued to go down and down along with the lump. It came to the end of the rope and just kept going. The man let it go and watched the ocean swallow up the end of the rope just like someone slurping a noodle.
The man found it interesting that right after the shore ended into the water, there was no gradual decent into a deep ocean. Instead, it was deep directly after the shore line. However, the man’s fascination with the deep waned quickly, and he found himself digging for more of the stuff at the base of the same spire.
After having removed a considerable amount, the spire broke off at the bottom, much like a felled tree, and hit the ground silently. The man had not noticed it before, the the stuff seemed to absorb sound. Or perhaps there was no sound on this planet at all? The man quite frankly did not care too much, and was more interested with the fact that the spire had not shattered. He checked the entire thing, but there were no cracks to speak of.
It was then that the man had an incredible idea. He quickly began to work tirelessly to hollow it out and to seal off the holes that covered the spire. Once he was finished, the man stood back and admired his work. He had turned the spire into what could be considered a boat. He knew it seemed to be the only thing that the ocean could not digest, but what he wasn’t sure of is whether or not it would float. He had seen the rock shaped lumps sink, but he hoped that the shape of this thing would allow it float.
He proceeded to fell two more smaller spires, and hollowed them out as well, but this time he covered them completely, leaving air inside of them to create a balloon effect. He attached these two to the sides of the bigger spire, and was satisfied with the result. Through further experimentation, he found that while he could break it with his hands, he could not break the stuff on itself. Try as he might, he could never get a piece of it to shatter on the surface of another piece, nor could he get the other piece to break. This satisfied him, because he felt that if he found another island, he would need to ram into the shoreline in order to get there. After all, he did not want to touch the water.
The man loaded up the boat with additional amounts of his building material, as well as two very long oars he had made. The stuff was lightweight enough so that when he held the two oars in his hands, both of which were three times his length, yet they felt almost non-existent.
He looked at his boat, then at the island. It had been his home for quite some time, yet he felt no attachment to it. He thought that he must feel something for it, but he did not. He did however, respect the significance it had on his life, so he wrote a message on the shoreline for any other soul that might one day visit this place. He wrote:
“The sky, the spires, the sea,
all of these things are wonders to me.
I once lived here,
and I may have died just a little ways from here.
If I did, just know,
it’s the way I wanted it to be.”
The man stood up and looked at his message. Without emotion he walked over to his boat, he pushed off and quickly jumped in. To his joy the spire floated well and he grabbed the oars and began rowing out into the still ocean, his own ripples disappearing almost as soon as they came into existence.
The End
Leave a Reply