A touch through time and space

He scanned the brownish gray, dusty, flat expanse around him as he walked. Looking for anything notable, any landmarks. Shifting spirits of wind given form by dust and grit seemed to reflect a listlessness. Buildings, flattened, molding from water damage and exposure against a dim sky with the night’s stars still visible from the lack of competing light. The former abodes and businesses were like big crushed cardboard boxes. There was so much nothing stretching into the distant reaches, but this was once a fairly decent sized village. He mentally switched to foraging mode. He wasn’t sure if it was something he was imagining but it felt like he could mentally, no, just feel where there was something worth finding. Maybe it was his imagination trying to keep him sane, but he had no system to his foraging methods and a fairly high success rate. It was as if by being alone, some unseen tendrils of psychic need for more sensory stimulation reached out, established a new way to cope with a bleak and wasted world. Or maybe it was just delusions of grandeur.

He was by himself. Totally. Sometimes the sheer disconnected feeling would rip through him and sometimes he would surprise himself with his indifference to it. It was as if something about himself was becoming altered, evolved and the old self would struggle to reassert itself once more, not wanting to let go, subconsciously of the version of himself from before. There was no organization to report to, no destination really and nowhere to go back to. He felt the feeling. As if a transparent thread was tripped and beckoned him. It sort of reminded him of the feeling you get when you feel secure, sure, and you have things going for you.

He leaned to the left, north, tilting his head with the sensation. There was meager remains of a crumbling driveway just visible through layers of dirt and unidentifiable remnants. He walked down what he reflected might’ve been the length of the driveway, carefully watching where he stepped on the uneven terrain. He felt a tug of the thread and knelt down to his right and began digging through the dry earth with his hands.

After maybe half an hour, the sun had risen and started to make him sweat. He could feel the dust coating his nostrils and mouth despite efforts to cover with a cloth. After about a foot of digging, he found the outline of a small hatch just big enough to fit through one by one. Feeling satisfied for now, he drank from his canteen and rested a moment. There were times of desperation when he would’ve only been encouraged to dig faster but this was not one of them and one of the benefits of being alone was not worrying about stolen treasure.

He did feel, this was treasure.. without knowing why. It was as if the architecture of his mind had shifted and reassembled itself improved. Not by logic, nor deduction but by a raw and reaching feeling did this sensation seem to operate. He smiled despite himself. A movement he had not felt on his face for a long, long time. He had always held onto hope, but before recent developments, it was the idea of hope against overwhelming odds. Sure, the reappearance of insects, some burrowing beetles, the occasional rodent and one very haggard vulture evidenced life went on to some degree, yet this was the first time he felt more than the movement of his legs against the backdrop of a flattened world for years.

It felt like a haze rising away from a dark road just as the sun showed itself on the eastern horizon. The culmination of events, a removal of obscurity on two levels. He took a moment to savor this newly appreciated sense of self authority, self-determination… more than fate… He spat dirt that had accumulated after remoistening his mouth with the water from his canteen and emitted a brief, confident, single, amused sounding laugh. He felt himself again and realized while there was something new to this, he was always more than a lone observer, meekly traversing the wreckage of the world. The thought encouraged him.

Wiping away the excess dirt, he better scraped away the outline of the hatch. There was no handle, it was smooth, yet recognizably there. It seemed as if it had once had some sort of cover. There were holes on the corners and a broken rusted bolt still stuck on the upper right corner. The hatch was well sealed, however. His efforts to force it were fruitless. He would need to improvise.

He stood back up, and straightened. He looked down, avoiding the beam of the sun with the brim of his wide hat but mostly it was to gaze upon the object of his goal. His mind ran through the possibilities. He visualized himself spending the day digging around the hatch and looking for a weaker access. Maybe, he thought, but that would be exhausting.

His vision was unfocused, far off. His mind drew on images from before, showing him a mental movie of what it might’ve been like before… A playground with sand contained neatly in a box, shiny rust-free slides. A store standing and with unbroken windows. He could even remember what it felt like before it was by comparison, when it was taken for granted. He wasn’t old enough to have built the world, the one destroyed, but he wasn’t born to this either. It was a benefit of having seen both ends of it. He wasn’t sure if it was truly a respite though or just the clinging to what was. Maybe someone who only knew this wouldn’t long for a return to something better, or maybe we naturally reach for more and know deep down on a higher level, beyond any specific memory of the reaches and heights we desire. Yet maybe this was a fresh start and blank space to something new.

Suddenly he found himself seeing a young girl with her family. They were hurrying to a car, leaving their belongings from a picnic behind. They seemed to try for discretion. He saw them drive off and the view faded and changed to the car rolling up a driveway. Manicured lawn, well watered and edged, flowers. The family went directly into the hatch. The same one he stood above. Was he hallucinating? One part of him asked. But it felt real. He supposed any good hallucination would. There was a tingle down his spine.

He woke to the cold of night and stiff muscles from laying on the ground but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t know what happened to the day but something felt tangibly right. He saw the girl, older now but malnourished, in a room with no windows or doors. She held something in her hands on a chain around her neck and seemed to whisper to it. He was transfixed. He didn’t feel the cold night air, hear the unbroken wind. It was replaced with a humming machine sound, and the whispering. He heard it now as if his ear was what she held. God, the Universe… if you are there, I want you to know I don’t blame you. We did our best as a family and held on as long as we could. I only wish there was something more we could do. We are almost out of food and something must be covering the solar panels because the batteries are not charging anymore. I won’t stop trying though. I just needed to feel like someone out there was hearing me.

The man could see both the wasted version and the nice home overlaid on top of it like a ghostly after image. He knelt over the hatch somberly and put his hand to it, reaching out. Just as he did the girl opened her eyes, walked over, climbed the ladder and put her hand on the other side. The hatch unsealed and opened.

His vision returned to the moment and he stood feeling like he had a religious experience. Some element of him questioned if it was real. Or did somebody open it for him? He flipped the hatch open. Attached to a hook on the other side was a chain with a heart shaped locket.