text: *By ColdChemical* The sun beat down on the dry land, blazing brilliantly against a perfect blue sky. The earth was dead and flat―every weed and insect choked with death by the toxic dust that had settled over the land. The air was hot and stagnant. A long time passed. Eventually a far, distant sound emerged. This sound slowly grew until it became a muffled roar―carried from miles away across the infinite flatness. This sound was shortly accompanied by a black speck on the horizon, a long cloud of dust billowing in its wake. Jedediah shifted uncomfortably in his seat and flicked his cigarette butt out the window of the jeep. His eyes, shaded from the blinding light by a pair of dark red sunglasses, drifted lazily across the wasteland before him. There wasn’t much to see. There never was. After three years, Jedediah was beginning to reconsider the job offer that he had jumped at just a few short years ago. What had promised adventure and danger had become merely one long and tedious journey after another, and they were only getting longer. At 26, he had already seen more than most members of the commune would in their entire lives. Not that they were missing much, as far as Jedediah was concerned. It was just wasteland as far as you cared to go. Still, he couldn’t deny that he treasured this freedom. It was boring as hell, sure, but out in the wastes there wasn’t nobody to tell him what to do, none of them narrow-eyed shopkeepers or stupid old men with their stupid talk. The wastes alone were his master. The long empty miles gave him a sense of momentum in his life, even though he was really no freer than the rest of the commune and was doomed to die just like the rest of them. Deep down Jedediah realized this, and unconsciously he hated himself for it. He longed for a life that he could never imagine, a life that did not exist and had not existed for many long spans of time. Yet it was this distant and long-forgotten past that the people of the commune were utterly and completely dependent upon. Scattered throughout the wastes were isolated vaults buried within the earth. Their dark steel depths betrayed little about their unknown creators, and all were identical in shape and mystery. Upon entering, one would be overwhelmed by the staggering immensity of their age, and the power and sophistication surely wielded by their creators. They defied the land, plunging indiscriminately into the bowels of the earth through soil and stone without any heed for the natural order. How unlike the communes above, which clung desperately to every rock and stone and were subject to all the violent whims of earth and sky. The survivors of the wastes, lacking any other defining feature upon which to settle, inevitably grew their towns upon the ancient relics which protruded from the surrounding plain. Shapaw, the easternmost commune, was where Jedediah lived. Hajiik was to the west and Guln in the north. The two southern communes, Apette and Illicagh, were rumored to have starved or fallen to some other similarly horrific fate, as no news had reached Shapaw of either in quite some time. Even Shapaw, the largest of the communes, contained less than five hundred residents. Some of the others contained scarcely enough people to merit a name at all. More than once some crazy band of fools had gone and tried to live inside one of the vaults, but the dampness and the creeping blackness inevitably drove anyone inside to madness. Most of the vaults, however, had not been touched by human hands for a long, long time. Their dark tomb-like caverns were usually braved by only the most fearless and curious of souls, who were invariably rewarded with a treasure-trove of strange and useful relics, the most valuable of which was a tiny blue pill. This pill alone kept the communes alive, for without the medicine within them, the people of the wastes―should they breath so much as a mote of the toxic dust―would be writhing on the ground in minutes. It was a violent and agonizing death. All efforts to learn the secrets of the blue pills had failed, and the people had resigned themselves to a life dependent upon them. As plentiful as the pills were, they would not last forever. After a time, the supply beneath the streets of Shapaw had been exhausted, and so it became necessary to send someone out into the wastes to gather more. These men became responsible for the resupplying of the pills by way of finding and raiding the surrounding vaults which had not already been robbed of their contents. Jedediah checked his compass, then craned his head back to gauge the position of the sun. Sixteen degrees southwest and just about high noon. He scowled. At this rate he’d have to spend the night in the back seat of the jeep. The wastes were scorched and burned by day, but the nights were sickly cold, and the back of a beat-up old jeep wasn't Jedediah’s idea of a good night’s sleep. He drove on. Eventually his thoughts turned to other things: the girl at Begunn’s who was always smiling, his busted generator, the price of the replacement part to fix the damn thing, the― Jedediah suddenly sat up and squinted. He threw off his sunglasses and rummaged around in the sack on the passenger seat, pulling out a pair of binoculars. “About time.” The grey disk that poked out above the earth could mean only one thing: a vault. As he drew nearer, the smooth, familiar features of the structure became visible. It looked the same as every other vault he’d ever seen, but then again, why shouldn’t it? He decelerated to a crawl, then braked and cut the engine. Double-checking the contents of the sack, he then slung it over his shoulder, and walked towards the embankment which descended towards the entryway. The ground crunched beneath his boots. Now that he wasn’t speeding along at 130mph he could smell once more the subtle sickly aroma of the poisonous dust kicked up beneath his feet. Jedediah slid down the embankment and came to a halt just before the imposing metal hatchway. He gripped the hot metal handle and pulled. After several minutes of strenuous effort, a loud clunk came from within, and the lock fell open. Jedediah braced his shoulder against the door, and pushed. The hatchway swung inward with an eerie quietness into the dark chamber within. Jedediah took out his torch and lit it. He stepped inside. Immediately he sensed that something was different; something was not right. Although his eyes could see nothing in the darkness, he was overwhelmed by a sensation of immense space. It was as though he had stepped into the center of a massive subterranean cave, rather than the usual maze of rectangular passageways which he had learned to navigate. Jedediah scowled and tightened his grip on the torch. His right hand moved cautiously to his knife-sheathe, where it stayed, tense. Glancing out the hatchway, he set off into the dark. His footsteps made no sound as he moved onward into the chamber. Nothing but blackness emerged out of the dark, and eventually the open hatchway was nothing more than a pinprick of light in the distance behind him. Jedediah stopped. “HELLO?” he shouted. A faint echo reverberated around him. He waited. Silence. Suddenly, from above, came a tiny mechanical clinking. After a moment, it stopped. Jedediah stood very still. “Hello.” cooed a soft metallic voice. “Shit!” Jedediah leaped backward, starring wide-eyed into the black abyss above him. “Who's there? Just who the hell are you?” he demanded. “I am a Long-Term-Data-Preservation unit. I have no name.” Its voice was cool and friendly, yet disturbingly inhuman. “Who are you?” He glared at the darkness. “Jedediah Ackerson.” “Hello Jedediah. I have waited a long time to meet you. I have much to show you." The surrounding air slowly became alive with a deep, almost inaudible humming. Suddenly, the entire chamber exploded with blinding light, and Jedediah slammed his eyelids shut. After several minutes, his eyes began to adjust to the throbbing brightness. He cautiously blinked open his eyes, and the sight that met his gaze paralyzed him. His entire body became frozen in shock, as though he had been turned to stone. In all of Jedediah’s short life, nothing―not even his most radical fantasies―could have prepared him for this sight. The breeze―warm and sweet―played across his cheeks. The blue horizon sparkled in the brilliant sunlight, and seemed to breathe in and out as it leapt up the sandy stretch below his feet, only to slink back upon itself. Jedediah blinked. He stared and blinked and thought no thoughts: a man overcome by the most beautiful thing he would ever see. "This," said the disembodied voice, "is an ocean.