text: [Themes: fan fiction]
  
  Wiping beads of sweat from his brow with his cloak, Austin approached the stranger. "Thank you," he managed to croak after a slight pause. It had been so long since he'd used his voice, it was difficult to form words and was like trying to start up the engine of an broken-down car (most were these days). "My name is Austin."
  
  "Austin, eh? Coulda sworn I heard that name somewhere before." the man replied, spitting a stream of dark liquid out of the side of his mouth.
  
  "I took it from a sign on the side of the road. 300 miles to Austin, I think it said. My birth name I hardly remember by now. It died long ago, with my father."
  
  The stranger sighed in sympathy. "I understand jes' fine. I lost my pappy too a while back. Seems a lot of folks have, these days. The name's Frank. If you'd like, I could take you back on over yonder to my settlement. Give you food and water if you got yourself something to trade. Like that cloak you got on your back, I swear I've seen something like that before..."
  
  He knows of it. What to do?
  
  > let it go
  "I won't be trading this cloak," interrupted Austin. "But I've got other trinkets and supplies that I don't need. Could I have a ride?"
  
  "Of course. Hop on ol' Greyback here." replied Frank, gesturing to his horse. Austin walked over to Frank and his mount, and with a helping hand, managed to pull himself onto the horse. Frank let out a single "hiyah!", and tugged on the reins of the horse, sending it into a steady trot. The pair moved on through the desert, leaving nothing but silence and a cloud of dust behind them.
  
  As they rode, Austin realized that the empty landscape was changing, as more and more shapes filled the space around them. He saw statues half buried in the sand, monuments to heroes of the past who lay cold in the ground even as the bombs fell above. He saw cold metal structures that towered for miles above him, scraping against the clouds and kissing the sky. In the western horizon, he saw the mass of an ancient city long gone, picked clean by radiation and scavengers. Towering shapes filled the city, even taller than the structures he had seen just now. But even from this distance, Austin knew that the city was dead, and had been for a long time. Frank paid these sights and rode on without giving them a second glance. But Austin knew what these were. They were the bones of America, of the cloak he wore on his back. The flag with red, white, blue, and a sea of shining stars, each filled with hope.
  
  Austin was filled with despair at these sights. Could it be true? Were all of the tales he had heard nothing but lies?
  
  > A Memory
  Austin had been born in a bunker, his mother dying in childbirth and leaving him along with his father. The bombs had fallen and gone centuries before, but the raiders chasing Austin's father made it too dangerous to venture out. To entertain him during their year-long stay, his father had regaled Austin with tales of the old world, where settlements of millions thrived in cities of light and cinema, where everybody ate fresh fruit and vegetables everyday, where nobody ever cried, and men lived in peace. ed, and Austin grew up with his head filled with stories of America, and how it was out there somewhere. He just had to find it. On Austin's twentieth birthday, his father died. His last birthday gift to his son had been a folded flag- America's flag.
  
  That had been ten years ago.
  
  Ten years Austin had searched for the utopia of America, to find nothing but ash and dust and sand, where once a nation had stood.
  
  Ten years for nothing.
  
  Austin is overwhelmed by emotion, filled with...
  
  > Despair
  He wept, silently, as not to disturb Frank. His heart filled with grief until he thought it would burst. Frank must have noticed from the wetness spreading on his back, but said nothing of it. After an eternity, Austin felt exhausted, drained of all grief and tears. Just as he was about to jump off the horse to end the despair he felt, several small shapes appeared on the distant horizon. "That's Talma up ahead, my home," yelled Frank, over the galloping of hooves. "When we get thar, I'll buy ya a drink to ease the soreness your backside's giving ya after riding on a horse without a saddle."
  
  As they rode up to Talma, Austin could see that the settlement was surrounded by a makeshift wall of scrap metal and barbed wire. A rough patchwork, but he guessed it would serve against raiders. Frank shouted a passphrase up at a guard standing on one of the walls, and a section of the wall was slowly pulled open- some sort of gate. Frank hopped off of his horse, landing awkwardly with a grunt. Austin followed his lead, sliding off of the horse with a bit more grace. "This way, I'll show ya to to the bar." Frank ambled through the gate, Austin following close behind, his mind blank. Nothing mattered anymore.
  
  The settlement seemed more like a ghost town, with hardly anybody in the streets. An old man snored loudly on a porch of a nearby shack, oblivious to the world. He looked so old that Austin wondered if he hadn't slept right through the war, the one that had engulfed the world in a radioactive fire.
  
  "Damn, I need a drink. Come on, let's go on inside." Frank complained. As they stepped towards the pub, however, Austin felt an ancient, quivering voice call him back. "Come here, son." He turned to see the old man on the porch, now awake and staring directly at him with hawk-like eyes, strong and clear despite his age. Frank nodded at the old man and turned to Austin. "That's there's Mayor Doyle, he founded this here place. Go ahead and talk, I'll save you a drink." he promised, as he entered the pub.
  
  Austin decides to...
  
  > have a talk
  Austin slowly approached the man, who rocked back and forth in his chair.
  
  "You wear America on your back." the old man croaked. Austin's eyes widened in surprise.
  
  "Y-you remember America? Before the bombs fell?" asked Austin, desperately curious. "Ha! Not that old, I'm afraid." chuckled the man. "No, my grandfather told me of it when I was a boy- he really was alive back then. He told me of a land filled with green trees as far as the eye could see, babbling brooks where you could pluck a fish out with your hands...nowadays, most people don't even know what a fish is. I'm assuming your grandfather told you much the same?"
  
  "No. It was my father. I don't know how he knew." replied Austin, taking a seat next to the withered old man.
  
  "From his father, most like. Stories are passed down that way. Thing about stories is, they tend to be exaggerated the more people they're told to- I found that out the hard way. You came from the west. That means you saw the ruins of cities, of radio towers, of statues of people whose names I've long forgotten. I can see it in your eyes- you're grieving for America."
  
  Austin nodded, tears starting to well up in his eyes once again. "I-I just wanted to see it once, with my own eyes, not just words from somebody else. Instead I found this wasteland."
  
  The old man gave him a sympathetic smile and took his hand. "Boy. You're crying for a nation you never even saw. You remind me of myself, when I was young. I had my head filled with nonsense about the paradise that was the old world- you're much the same. Truth is, no amount of tears will bring back the dead. And America has long since been laid to rest. This is the world we live in. If you keep staring back into the past, your eyes filled with the flashes and bright lights of a dead nation, the wasteland will run right over you, and you'll be gone and buried with America. The only way you'll see anything resembling what your father told you is if you make it in the image of this new world we live, not patches of the old."
  
  "Now tell me, boy...do you want to be stuck or do you want to be free? If it's the first, then I'll trouble you no longer. If it's the second...then I think I can help."
  
  > stay Stuck
  "To hell with you!" The grief and despair Austin had felt was now let out in a fury. "I will find America. And if I don't, I'll make it myself! I'll build something great, old man, I will rebuild this nation into what it once was!
  
  The old man stared at Austin with sad, baleful eyes. "If you try and put a broken vase back together with no idea of what you're doing, son, you get something that's deformed and misshaped. If you do make something, it won't be anything resembling the old country."
  
  "America will become what I make it to be. After all, the bombs burned away all the history books, didn't they? You'll see, old man, you watch and wait."
  
  With that, Austin turned and walked out of the gates of Talma, his head filled with visions of paradise.