From AWOL With Love…

Oblivion is sometimes a welcome sign upon an empty road. When I woke for the second time, I came to, dry-mouthed, fretting.

Nobody was there to greet me. I was in a room that was in darkness. It felt like I had been there before; just a feeling. For a moment I believed myself to be the only person there, wherever there was. In fact, a thought ran through my mind that I might be the only person left alive.

My ears alerted themselves to the sound of the world outside of the room. At first there was nothing. The world had fallen into silence. At home, I would sometimes awake to the whirring of the BOT as it made its manoeuvres around the apartment. Night was its time to complete the domestic chores, the cleaning, the washing and…, well let’s say other things. 

On top of that, beyond the confines of our home, lay the city. Vast and spreading, it never slept. BOTS roamed the streets, cleansing and spying, moving interminably along until dawn. People slept and let the other world continue unabated. If I listened deeply, I could pick out the sounds of the somnambulant world. Here, though, there seemed only silence.

I listened again, freshly tuned for a different world, and waited. There were noises in the distance: a rattle; a door closing; the mumble of a conversation reduced to dull echoes. So, there was life.