Reversion--Part IV

Here continues my science fiction short story, "Reversion." Josh Eya leaves his community to search for his mother, and finds himself in a beautiful land devoid of large buildings and other technology.  He recognizes the stark difference between his community and the outside world.

Having donned normal clothing, Josh closed the door behind him and walked briskly across the front porch of his home.  He could only scarcely recall how to exit the community, but his feet—laden with a pathfinding feature of their own, apparently—sent him confidently in what he hoped was the correct direction.  He left his front yard behind and merged onto the sidewalk.  As his feet led him, he gazed at the houses lining the street.  They were built to utmost perfection, symbols of the endless capacity of man for construction and advancement.  There was not one building lacking symmetry in any form; they were perfectly molded creatures of the human race, tall towers reaching the heavens; they were the might, pride, and wit of man made visual.  The yards of the homes were precisely shaped; lawns were boxes of nature amidst towering industry; the mountainous fences established privacy not only for backyards, but many proprietors even separated their front yards from the world.  The street was flawlessly linear, and the smooth curbs rose smoothly and unmarred around it.  No one was outside.

There was something golden about the city.  Josh was reminded of Rome.  He had heard from stories (and viewed in The Fall of Rome©) that the constructive power of the Romans during their city’s epoch was unmatched.  Likewise, these homes seemed to be at the pinnacle of man’s creative ability—at least in the realm of edifices.  And yet there was also something subtly dark about the city.  Perhaps it was the fact that no one was outside; perhaps the houses were so large that the sun could only with great difficulty trudge above the brick rooftops.  The latter seemed quite possible, for while it seemed to be relatively early in the afternoon, long shadows of houses extended across the street, shady teeth gnawing ravenously at the asphalt.  From around a block a young boy, perhaps a quarter-mile from Josh, came on a bike, and he appeared to misgauge the distance between his front tire and a bump on the sidewalk, pulling up too soon.  The front tire pounded against the bump, and the handlebars twisted toward the boy’s stomach.  He managed to fall off before the bars did any damage to him, but the fall did not look very promising.  At that moment a lady rolled through a stop sign near the corner slowly, noticing the boy on the ground but not leaving her vehicle to check his condition.  After a moment of rubbernecking, she sped down the street without making eye contact with Josh.  The boy pushed up to his feet, set the handlebars straight, and rode toward Josh.  They did not exchange glances, Josh because he did not know what to say, and the boy probably because of his humiliation. 

The homes continued on in their perfect pattern, giant dollhouses meticulously detailed in their composition.  Ahead of him shops rose up, their names stamped elegantly across their faces.  Josh watched as a man exited a thrift store, hopped into his car, and drove no more than a couple blocks to his home, where he parked in the garage.  Josh began to study the porches of the homes around him.  He remembered the porch at his parents’ house; a rocking chair had sat outside during his youth, where he or a family member sat occasionally to read a book or enjoy the fresh air.  As he grew, his parents had tossed the chair and replaced it with a small bench, something more inviting for two people to sit on and talk.  In those days, people—even couples!—went for morning jogs or power walks, and Josh recalled his father sitting on the bench and greeting everyone who walked by.  He had thought it odd at that time.  Although he had hardly ever dared to speak out against his father, his mind had nearly pressed the words out of him: Dad, didn’t you notice how they were purposely not looking toward our house, so that they would not have to face the awkwardness of greeting us?  Yet as Josh, now beginning to tire, began to approach the community’s gate, he was saddened by the fact that he had seen no joggers or couples power walking together.  Why was everyone inside?  Were they too afraid of being seen or of seeing?

He made a left turn around a corner, and abruptly before him loomed a large, dark wall, a Great Wall of China for the community.  It was not very thick, but its overall greatness gave its viewer the effect that there was a definite line between the community and the outside world.  Nothing beyond it could be seen.  Attached to the wall and pointing to Josh was the roof of a station, held up by Corinthian columns and placed under the vigilance of two guards.  Beneath the roof were two gates that could be opened to allow cars in and out, and on either side of those larger gates were small, gated doors used by pedestrians.  Josh arrived at one of the doors and keeled over, placing his hands on his knees.  He had never been in shape, but this was ridiculous.  For the remainder of the journey, he would have to travel more slowly.

“You leavin’?” the guard nearest to him asked.  “Or are you just takin’ a breather?”

“Leaving,” Josh answered, coughing.

The guard’s eyes widened.  “You’re one of the few, then.  And as I like to say to the others, you’re either real brave or real stupid.”

“Why would I be either of those?”

The guard chuckled.  “Never mind.”  He opened the door for Josh and beckoned him through.  “Good luck.  I don’t know how you people tolerate them people out there.”

Josh had not prepared himself for anything akin to that which he now viewed.  Nature.  Once outside the gate, he did not see the structures of perfection that were inside the city, nor the streets that deviated not from their preordained course, nor mechanical patches of grass planted between technological towers; he saw hillocks, rolling for miles into the horizon like the jade waves of an endless sea, crested by fruitful trees of every name and flowers of precise symmetry, untouched and unconstructed by man.  He saw stones of the earth’s most ancient days, undying bones that lamented man’s forgetfulness of them, who acquainted with the land before humanity’s entrance onto the stage of the world.  There was no asphalt street, but a dirt path diving between the knolls and disappearing like a liberated ribbon into the western edge of the heavens.  The grass that crowned the hills and swam between the minute valleys was tall but fine, waving at Josh like pure faeries prepared for play.  There were no wooden fences or massive walls, only luminous land beneath the sun.  And in many places brooklets wound their way south, now tattooing the road with their glistening veins, now plunging out of sight behind a hillock but still singing with sweet voice the true ballad of nature.

He stepped onto the road, overcome with a sense of adventure that he could only recall from artificial sensations of heroism in a video game, and from dreaming of being in the shoes of some champion of his favorite movies.  What was portrayed on a screen or in a story could do little justice to the genuine beauty of nature; these were but poor constructs that, when properly collected and summed, could only deliver a hazy likeness of the entire essence.  Such a powerful feeling overwhelmed Josh, and this drove his heart into a frantic but hale pounding that reminded him that he was alive.  Despite having awakened in a terrifying room of needles and medicines, of the EKG mockingbird of his heart, of darkness and confusion, Josh was—as strangely and misplaced as he had felt since his rising—fully alive.  With every view of birds soaring into the blue firmament and cawing in freedom, every view of streams glittering like liquid glass as they impaled the earth’s skin, and every view of the trees stretching their youthful arms up to drink in the rays of the falling sun, Josh felt his strength returning to him.  He was alive.

Before long all heed whatsoever was lost to the path that his feet took, and his mind linked with nature as he trusted his instincts to lead him to his parents’ house.  Behind him the town began to fade, a dim thorn obtruding from a shining land, only a small number of rooftops prickling above the vast wall.  In the west, ahead of Josh, the sun began to finish its daily trek and hide behind the western rim of the world.  In the faintest distance mountains loomed, prepared to embrace the golden orb and burn in its brilliant conflagration. These natural spikes of the earth transcended all that was deemed great in mortal construction; they scoffed at man’s greatest buildings, dwarfed Josh’s home city, and could nearly pierce the heavens like somber swords.  What man could engineer such exquisite figures of power?  Who could delve into the earth and lay the foundations, the earth’s greatest roots, and from them build a tower of stone and dirt?  Who could concoct the formula to dress the craggy slopes of these mountains with trees, immobilized druids bestowing upon the earth new freshness, new beauty, and new fruit?  Man could build and pride himself in his construction, but all that he created was taken from this mighty planet; the ingredients for inventions had long existed, waiting for man’s mind and hand to discover them.

Overhead the sky blushed as the fatherly light sizzled against the mountains, spreading itself in a fluid, red band across their peaks, and thereby crowning those earthly skyscrapers with ruby diadems.  The streams accordingly seemed to lower their voices, but still they sang odes to the failing light, mourning the end of its journey and wishing it the safest trip in its quest beyond their sight.  At least, this is what Josh initially believed the melodic voices on the air to be.  As he considered the low music, movement from the north caught his eye and he halted for a moment, gazing in that direction.  A circle of young men and women sat on rocks, covered with stained, rough clothing.  They swayed to the beat of their voices and some sort of stringed instrument.  One man sat on a stone lower than those of the other people, and he played an acoustic guitar, singing with the others.  Josh could not catch much of their hymn, but the word “Jesus” rose up clearly above all other words.  Such liberation was revealed in their expressions!  Such gorgeous voices, like those of elves that a stranger might hear when stumbling upon their merrymaking in a faraway glen, were pushed from the singers’ diaphragms, and even the voice of the lowest in skill could be heard flowing like the reddening streams.  This would certainly never be seen in Josh’s city.  Although he did not fully understand the significance of the words they sang, he smiled at their freedom and moved on.