Empires of Oasis

Four days out from the Oasis and already I was starting to regret this venture. The trek through the desert was murderous. I don’t mean it was strenuous, I mean it was actively trying to kill me. Devilish quicksand, perilously treacherous paths through rocky crags, Goliath lizards and venomous snakes. And the heat. There was no sunshine, obviously, none since the Reset, but enough UV light forced it’s was through the yellow haze between the ground and the sky to bake the desert floor to an extent that heat emanated up like a dry frying pan. If you stood for too long in one spot, your boots would start to melt. Yep, this was feeling less and less like a good idea. I adjusted my sand goggles and looked back in the direction I had come from. I thought for a second I could see a faint, silvery shimmer of the Oasis on the horizon, but all before me was yellow-grey rocks and sand, undulating for miles.

The Oasis is the narrow temperate belt sandwiched between the rolling desert that now forms most of the Northern Hemisphere, and the frozen wasteland that is the Southern Hemisphere, roughly coinciding with what used to be the tropics.

I’d left New Orleans two weeks ago, making my way up from the swamps of New France to the frontier with Yellow Waste. My paymasters had heard an interesting tip from one of their forecasters and wanted to get ahead of the game. My mission was very simple in principle: head into the Waste and establish if there were hospitable environments, untapped resources or abundant food supplies, claim them for the Republic of New France, and report back. Easy.

The problem is, as I’ve mentioned, the Yellow Waste was the most inhospitable place on the planet. The lush, verdant greenery and cool, trickling waters of New France peter very quickly into stark, arid scrubland as you press towards Dallas, the last bastion of civilisation before the endless deserts of the waste, where any greenery simply ceases to exist.

To make this trip even more perilous, but also more lucrative and, rather fundamentally, worthwhile, no-one really knew what was out there. Since the Reset, various geological events had taken place that had caused the previous global structure of seven continental landmasses and seven oceans to… vary, somewhat. It seems that the Earth took the opportunity to reset and reinvent itself very seriously and decided to redo the continents. Given the inhospitality of much of the planet, its hard to know exactly what has changed, but I have heard reliable reports of hippos and giraffes roaming the jungles of Columbia, and I don’t think they built a raft to get there.

This new worldview brings us neatly to what I’m doing. I’m stepping bravely out into this desolate hell because my paymasters, Le Deuxieme Republique Francaise, or the Second French Republic, want to understand what lies to their north. New France now covers most of what used to be the Gulf States of the US, from East Texas all the way round to the Everglades.

When the world stopped turning and orbiting the sun, the Arctic icecap, caught on the hop in mid-summer, did what any ice-cube would do when exposed to excessive summer sun. It melted. In this case, the icecap was under constant sunshine for more than four hundred separate twenty-four-hour periods. It was difficult to describe them as “days”, given the Earth’s current stationary status. Eventually, the Earth started to rotate again, very slowly. But it still didn’t orbit, it hung lazily in space, one side being cooked while the other got gradually colder, like a chicken cooking on a broken rotisserie.

Over time, the Northern Hemisphere dried and cracked, forcing people to flee gradually south, eventually being chased by the encroaching parched desert to the Oasis, our narrow, green glade of heaven. As the north fled south, so too did the southerners migrate north, trying to stay one step ahead of the freeze. Nearly all of human kind was now congregated in the narrow belt around the equator. A few hardy people, mainly small tribes with a distinct identity and tradition of isolation still try to survive on the frontiers, but we don’t think many are left now. The barren deserts, hot and cold, will overcome in the end.

As I trudged through the heat haze, picking my way through the rocky out crops and dry gulches, the outline of a dome shaped ridge materialised through the mist about half a mile ahead of me. After scrabbling around at low level for hours, I headed for the high ground. I heaved myself up the small hill, my feet slipping underneath me as the sand and shale shifted under my weight. I took a meagre drink of stale water from my canteen.

I looked out to the West and grimaced. A tall, dark pillar of cloud was swirling towards me, a thick vertical line of perilous darkness splitting the haze in two. I reached into my pack and pulled out my battered telescope. This didn’t look at all good. I peered through the scratched and clouded lens at the cloud-pillar. It was swirling fast, tails of sand whipped about the facing edge of the cloud and rolling, roiling bursts of dust swallowed rocks and boulders as it powered in my direction.

“Balls” I muttered to myself. Getting caught in a sandstorm out here in the wilds would be fatal. The blowing sand would suffocate me in minutes. I quickly scanned the horizon, looking for anything that would provide me with shelter from the whirling sands. Off to the north I could see a number of tall monolithic cliffs, clustered together, standing proud of the desert like a flotilla of ships on the ocean. There was a cluster of stone huts on the top, probably the remnants of some long-forgotten indigenous tribe. It was a fair distance, but if I jogged it, I felt I could beat the storm to the cliffs. The climb would be touch and go, but it was definitely preferable to choking to death on flying sand. I staggered down the sandy dome and started running towards the cliffs. I didn’t sprint, tripping and twisting an ankle out here was as good as slitting my own throat, but I certainly moved with purpose. After about a mile, I peered over my shoulder. The storm cloud was definitely getting closer, surging towards me with a menacing surety. Not fast, not hurrying, just powering towards me, unstoppable, immovable. I upped my pace to give myself more time for the climb, which as I got closer to the cliffs, was looking more and more challenging.

I skidded to a halt at the base of the cliff and assessed the climb. It was an utter bastard. The walls were practically sheer, the smallest of which must have been at least 150 feet up, the tallest perhaps 300. The huts were at the top of the foremost, and smallest of the three primary cliffs, with the taller two providing a backdrop and shelter for the clifftop. There were few handholds or footholds, but there did seem to be promising ledge about halfway up that could form a useful rest point.

I delved in my pack for my climbing rope. Woven from salvaged fronds and fragments, it was a fine, multicoloured silk cord about 80 feet long with a three clawed steel grappling hook at one end. Although homemade, there were several noticeable benefits to the rope; it was exceptionally light, very strong and took up very little room in the pack. Given that the grappling hook was roughly welded from old scrap and weighed about as much as the cliff I was about to climb, it was a useful trade off. I pulled on my gloves and swung the rope round and round horizontally, gathering speed, and hefted it towards the rock ledge. It landed plum on the ledge, and I gave the rope a hard tug to let the grapples bite. They scraped and scratched as they fought for traction, but the hook held. I braced my feet against the base of the cliff, and started hauling myself up. The heat from the rock wall was fearsome, volcanic. Sweat poured down my face from the strain and the intense heat pounding my body from the cliff. I could feel the soles of my boots start to stick in places as the ancient rubber started to melt to the cliff face.

As I heaved my way over the lip of the ledge, I looked up at the horizon. I could clearly see the sandstorm now, less than half a mile away. I could feel the hot winds start to lick and my shirt and hair. Time was not on my side. I picked up the grappling hook and swung it up to the ledge of the lower cliff. I tugged it again and it held. I grabbed the rope and started up again. After about six feet, I felt my stomach plummet as the grappling hook lost purchase and slipped towards the cliff edge. The side of my head slammed into the rock face and fell heavily back on the ledge.

“Balls” I groaned, feeling the fresh burn on my face from the cliff. I’d need to use some of my water ration to cool it later, although ‘later’ was fast becoming something of a moot point. If I didn’t find shelter soon, I’d be better off throwing myself from the damned cliff. I threw the grapple back up the cliff as the first few particles of sand started lashing my face. The storm was nearly on top of me. Sand flew in my eyes and in my nose as I inched my way up the cliff face in a reverse abseil, and the storm was howling all around me as I dragged myself over the top of the cliff and crawled towards the stone huts.

The huts were roughly square, with holes for windows but no glass, and rough wooden planks for roofing. They were holed and derelict, but I couldn’t be happier to crawl through the doorway of the nearest hut and shove the wooden remnants of the door closed. I breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against a wall below one of the window holes. The hut didn’t keep all of the sand out, but it certainly made the storm simply “weather” rather than “certain death”.

As I caught my breath and rested my muscles, my eyes adjusted to the gloom in the hut and I took in my surroundings. A few wooden pallets were on the floor, with a pile of blankets in the opposite corner to me. I went over to grab a blanket and take a nap, when I spotted the body. A young woman was prone under the blankets. She was clearly dead, but her body hadn’t started to decay, and her skin wasn’t yet waxy. I bent down to inspect the body. On one arm was a crude tattoo reading “JB”, while around her neck was a tiny, heart shaped golden locket. I reached out for the locket and tugged it from her neck, intrigued. I wasn’t expecting this. As I lay the locket in my palm and prodded it with a finger, I realised two things. Firstly, I clearly wasn’t the only person to come exploring this desert recently. Secondly, a scuffing from the door way told me I wasn’t alone on that clifftop.