Chapter 16: The Edge

I poke around the shack a bit before I leave, I open the suitcase that had been my pillow and inside is a small case with the words "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" embossed on the surface.  I hit the latch in excitement and it opens, but it is empty except for one small vial with the label "no. 9" on it.  The instructions are missing but I pocket the vial of liquid and head into the wastes.

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 eyebot.

"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 eyebot.  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 his 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 a the end 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 had never taken the time to learn.  Never had the time, was usually too busy chasing iguanas.

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 radscorpion somewhere, that he had baby radscorpions 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 was 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, "I wasn't."

"So there's some kind of chaos out there, but where?"

"A hundred days south of here."

I know where he was talking about.  He must have crossed the great desert to get there.

"A hundred days?  How the hell did you cross the Endless Desert?"

"The radscorpions 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 wanted to.  Archie had seen his wife there, in some kind of chaos storm.  Did I have a chance of reuniting with mine?  But I know she's dead, and I was only dreaming.  But I had found my purpose.  Maybe there was a chance I could 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 had to see whatever it was Archie had seen.  I had to see, if my wife was there too.  And I know that I will leave Archie and Tee behind.  I would be a lone wanderer again, a tourist in the wastes.  I want to see.  I want to see and believe.

"Archie, mark my words.  I'll see you in 200 days." and I felt 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, had 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 would do whatever I had to do to see her one last time, even if it meant evaporating into nothingness, leaving my clothes in a pile and disappearing into some kind of fractured reality.

Welcome to the wasteland.