It is all dust

The cover on the couch was so worn that she could see the threadbare upholstery of the couch. The cover might have been beautiful, the work of the weavers producing textiles from the cotton they had once grown, and dyed with natural dyes in some far-off land. When she looked more closely, she could see silver threads, like wires running through the weave; she thought maybe those wires were holding the couch together.

The old man, dressed in tattered clothing, entered the room. "It's nice to meet you. I don't get many visitors. I'll make some tea and we can talk." She found the old man in this dilapidated house when she looked through Marco's address book. She didn't want to spend much time here, especially as the house gave her the creeps, but she decided she would get more information from him if she were patient and polite, and drank some tea.

While he was boiling the water over the open fire behind the house, Vilay walked around the dust covered house, she wondered at the computer equipment – and yet, he had no wifi, no online connection. It seemed to her, that if he had the savvy to connect all this equipment, that he should be able to have figured out how to connect to the web. She looked at his solar array and was about to ask him how he had managed to get the materials for electricity, but he had no other modern technology – he was cooking over an open fire. He had an outhouse, and although he had electricity, he had no internet connection.

She sat down on the couch, and thought, everyone has different priorities.

The old man returned with their cups of tea, and a plate of stale cookies. She sat down the couch slowly but a cloud of dust still rose up from the cushions. Trying not to cough, she took a sip of tea. It tasted stale and bitter; she noticed a layer of dust on the surface of the liquid and put the cup down on the table, wiping off the layer of dust. The couch was uncomfortable and she noticed that there was a latticework of wires holding it together.

The old man sat across from her. “No one ever comes here any more. When they built that train track, people go on that expressway. Can go from San Fran to Seattle in 2 hours.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re here. Are you real?”

“Yes, very real. My car is outside and I came to find out about my friend.”

“Good thing you brought your car. The train goes too fast and you might miss him. It can go from San Fran to Seattle in 2 hours.”

“No time to admire the scenery,” she said and picked up a cookie. When she noticed the ants on it, she put it down again. She wondered if Marco had sat on this couch and had eaten one of these cookies.

“When was the last time that someone stopped here?” She looked at the shelves lining the walls in the front of the shop; they were all about machine language and artificial intelligence. The old man was quiet and she let him think.

He suddenly sat up like he was waking up from a nap. “I’m sorry, Who are you again?”

"I'm Vilay. I'm looking for Marco."

The old man rubbed his face and looked out the door. With the room so dark, the blazing sunlight on the sand was blinding, enough to addle someone's brains as they cooked. "Why are you here? You won't find him here."

He then seemed to have an idea and moved around the room. "Maybe your friend was the last one who was here." He removed a 2 year old paper calendar from the wall and held it close to his face. He rifled through the pages before noticing the date. “I should throw this out. It certainly won’t help us.” When he threw it on he floor, more dust raised up.

She opened her bag and showed him the photo of Marco, taken the previous month. “Have you seen this man?” Marco was tanned and smiling at the camera, not like the ghost of a man in a hospital bed when she last saw him.

The old man took the phone and looked at it for a long time. “I saw someone like this a while ago, but that man looked 20 years old.” He glanced at her. “Are you the police? Why are you looking for him.”

She sighed and repeated what she had told him before. “He’s a friend and has been getting medical treatment. About a month ago, he disappeared and I’ve been trying to find him and convince him to continue the treatments.”

“What’s he got? Cancer?”

She nodded. She was sure if she said radiation poisoning, he might not be so cooperative.

“That’s bad stuff, he said. “My wife got the it. The treatment made her sick and she lost her hair.” He looked at the photo. “but the man I saw, he still got all his hair.” She then understood the reason for his solitude. She thought she knew.

“He got a different treatment, an experimental one.” The old man nodded. “Yes, I saw him. He stopped for a while, to drink some tea. He said he was on his way to the forest to find some peace.”

She felt tears in her eyes. It sounded like something Marco would say. "I'm not sure how long ago it was. Time out here doesn’t have much meaning. But I think about two weeks ago." He looked out the door and snapped his fingers. "Wait a second. We talked until the moon rise. It was the full moon.” He motioned to the scene outside the window. “This used to be forest, but with the forest fires and climate change, now it’s a desert. So I think he’s got a way to go before he can find a forest.”

“He used to live in Omega county.”

“Too bad, if he’s going there. That was one of the first places to get burned up. But there might be new trees sprouting up. I haven’t been there for a long time. There are many people lost there in the waste land.” He sat down on the couch. “I don’t know what they’re looking for.”

She wrote down her contact details on a paper. "I don't have an internet connection but I’ll have to send you some smoke signals if he comes back in here again.”

“In case he does re-appear, tell him that his wife is looking for him.” The man nodded.

“Now I’m heading back to his hometown, see if he is sifting through the ashes.”

“Be careful,” the old man said. “He pulled out a small handheld monitor. “This is a Geiger counter. Something might have happened up there, like what started the fire.”

When she did find Marco, he was lying, buried by the tall grass, in the only clearing surrounded by trees, in the middle of a desert. She sat down next to him, thinking he had died; he was so skinny, like there was nothing that held his skin to his bones. His arms were covered by bruises, blood ran from his nose and his hair was gone. She didn’t know if he was still alive until she touched him and he startled awake.

“Who are you?” he gasped. “Are you coming to take me to the deadlands?”

“No, it’s Vilay. I’ve been looking for you.”

He turned his head and gave her a blank look. “I don’t know you. I don’t think you’re real. You’ve come to guide me to the next stage.”

She sat cross-legged on the ground next to him. Maybe that was true, she came to find him, to guide him to his end. It was peaceful here, not like in the lab where they tormented him with taking blood and tissue samples. A good place to die.

She lay down near him, in the grass, and looked up at the sky with him. The sun set and the millions of stars appeared. They talked quietly; sometimes he remembered who she was, sometimes he talked about people who must have been imaginary. He said, “I am fusing with the Earth.”

In the early dawn, she woke with the dew tickling her nose. The sunlight filled the clearing with a golden glow. She felt she was no longer on Earth. She turned towards Marco – but there was only a pile of dust where he had been lying before.

She sat up to talk to him, and noticed other piles of dust in the clearing.

She moved to collect Marco's ashes when she touched a metal box and filaments like wires extending from it. They were already extending into the ground. She lifted her hand and felt this oily dust on her fingertips then it was absorbed into her body. "Who are you?" she asked the pile of dust and stood up. Marco would want his ashes to merge with the Earth. She knew she had to return to the old man's house.

When she returned to the house, she was shocked - she couldn't find it, but there was a cactus field which grew around the perimeter of the yard and she couldn't see the house itself. She circled around the field, trying to find a path. She finally saw a place where the dogs had dug up the dirt, creating a kind of tunnel through the field. She got down on her stomach and pushed her way through the field. She hoped that it did open up on the other end because she wasn't sure she could back up safely.

She did arrive by the house. She really felt that she had to talk to the old man. He somehow seemed to be the key to the mystery.

When she entered the house, she saw that it was worse than before - dust had filled part of the house to knee level. She was shocked to see the outline of the old man on the couch, outlined by his clothes, which were filled by the dust.

She couldn't believe the extent of the cactus growth and the destruction of the house, the depth of the dust. She had only left the house a week ago, as she had gone to look for Marco.

Vilay felt weak and tried to leave the house. As she opened the door, it fell off its hinges and immediately turned to dust. She fell down and pushed herself along the floor. She felt a kind of peace as she settled into the dust, breathed it in, felt herself mingle with it, felt herself growing into the floor as the wires reached out to engulf her.

Marco appeared before her. "Welcome," he said. "I know who you are."