Chapter 104

Chapter 104: 104 The sun was just passing its apex when Bran finally found a road. He’d been stomping through the forest for what felt like hours, getting stung by mosquitos and who knows what else, so stepping foot on a cracked bit of man-made asphalt felt strangely exhilarating. Or maybe it was the knowledge that he was only, maybe, about an hour away from civilisation. Before he’d have been pretty grouchy knowing that he still had at least an hour before he could touch some digital technology, but now... Bran’s toe caught on the edge of something and everything went out of his mind as he cushioned his fall with his hands. The first few times he’d fallen on his journey down the mountain, it had been a big shock, but now he was used to it. He’d grown five inches since the last time he’d been walking around so much so it made sense his brain was still getting used to the new size of his body. That new height was useful, though, and he used it to crane his neck and look down the road in either direction. Unfortunately, he honestly couldn’t tell which way was heading where so he picked one and started walking along it, keeping careful to stay to one side for each time a car or truck went past. At first there weren’t many of them, but after some more walking (and more insect biting), the volume of traffic speeding past Bran made him have to actually get off the asphalt and onto the grassy brush beside the road. Thankfully, this gave way to a crumbly sidewalk which then gave way to a proper sidewalk as civilisation - glorious civilisation - bloomed before him. There was a gas station at the junction between Bran’s road and a larger, more arterial looking road. Bran wasn’t interested in the gas station, but he was glad to see it. If there was a way to refuel, then that meant there were cars, and if there were cars, then there should be signs. And there were. Many, dozens, way too many signs, all rusting and stacked up upon each other on not just one pole but three, with a bipedal set on the other side of the road. Bran found a safe place to zone out by the side of the gas station and stared up at the signs. They were bilingual, which meant Bran couldn’t complain too much, but they didn’t help him much. Like everyone else his age, he was mildly addicted to his phone and relied on it for even the simplest bit of geographical direction and that was in areas he was familiar with. The mountain he’d walked down, where that strange manor was hidden, was in the middle of nowhere and the names on the signs didn’t fill him with confidence either. Bran bit his lip then looked down the larger road in both directions, then looked back at the signs. Logic, he would rely on logic and observation. Apart from the names of locations, the signs also had distance estimations and Bran compared them between the different directions, deciding that his best bet was to head towards the set with the most locations that were in the same area. If a location was a place more people went to, that made it significant; if it was significant then it was more likely to have a sign; and if an area had more significant locations, and thus more signs pointing to it, then it was likely that the area itself was more built up. It wasn’t the greatest feat of thinking, but it was something, so Bran set out down the road he hoped would lead him to actual civilisation. It was still bright out by the time Bran somehow found his way to a library. It was the library for a district he’d never heard of and he was fully bracing himself to find out they didn’t have computers but he was to be surprised. Up the linoleum clad stairs and down a musky corridor was a library, of sorts. Or perhaps it was better to describe it as a quiet meeting place for older folks who liked to pour over newspapers and not be obligated to talk to anyone, that also had some books on the side. It also had a row of near-retro computers and Bran wasn’t sure if he was lucky that none were in use, given how he could actually see the grime built up on the keyboard and mouse. He sat down at one of the desks and stared at the grime. The grime, having no eyes, did not stare back. Eventually Bran forced his eyes up to the screen and grabbed the mouse. He gave it a good shake and waited for the computer to wake up as the anticipation grew. The whole reason he’d snuck out and walked all this way was because his phone had stopped working and even after charging it, it refused to stay on for more than a few seconds before crashing out again. He knew it had been three years since anyone had touched the phone, but still; it was annoying. Bran leaned back against the chair (while trying not to think about just how old and thus how dirty the cushion of the chair had to be) and squinted at the screen as it slowly blinked to life. He rubbed his eyes. That was another annoying thing. At the manor, that woman (Yeung something) had told him that the seal that was protecting his soul or whatever was also affecting his eyesight but it would probably clear up later. He hoped it did. He’d never liked the idea of wearing glasses. Finally the computer’s corporate blue-green screen blinked to life and Bran grabbed the mouse, ready to double-click that Internet Explorer icon on the cluttered desktop, and... The computer blue screened. What? Bran stared at the painfully blue screen with its menacing white text and watched as it blinked to black. He’d seen a few bluescreens of death before; he just had to wait a bit and it would reboot, right? He waited, and waited, then poked an impatient finger at the power switch. The little green light above the button flashed then went out. Then he heard something clunk from inside the brains of the computer and the whole thing went quiet. No fans, no quiet clinking, nothing. Bran sat still for a moment, then tried the ’on’ button again. This time the little green light didn’t even go on. He glanced around the small library dreading that someone had seen and also hoping that someone had and that they’d come to help. But, either way, no one had. Bran sighed and moved over to the next seat. He’d never been good with computers, but even he knew that something was off with how every single computer he tried to use immediately bluescreened and died. What were the chances of the library having really really old computers that all just happened to give up their collective ghosts on the same day at roughly the same time? And so he sat at the last computer, the last working computer, and didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t touch the mouse; he didn’t touch the keyboard; nothing. He just sat and let the wave of frustration, anger, and grief wash over him. Actually, ’let’ wasn’t quite the right word. Perhaps ’internally broke down’ was a better one. He’d lost his family, he had no way to contact his friends or even know if they still remembered who he was, he’d lost three years of his life, and, as he was starting to realise, he had lost his future. Who the hell, in this day and age, didn’t use some kind of digital technology, have to use some kind of digital technology? The young, the old, the fit, the dying, everyone, absolutely everyone had a phone or a computer or a laptop or just something. He’d seen elderly people with armbands indicating they had cataracts carefully poke at smartphones with the largest buttons you had ever seen or scan the nearly ubiquitous QR code to do something as simple as order food. They lived in a digital world, with all the ups and down of that. And he did not. He no longer was able to and he couldn’t tell if he was more aggrieved by it itself or by it all being forced upon him like this with no warning. "It must have been so hard," said a soft voice. The speaker was a woman sitting at the other end of the row. She was looking tearfully at the younger Bran though it was obvious that she was trying hard to hold onto her tears. "It was." Behind her stood present-day Bran, seven years older than the one in the memory. He too watched his past self struggle with adapting to a world that did not seem to want him there. The visuals of the memory were sharp, he would give it that, but there was something hazy about how the whole scene felt. Or maybe that’s just how most memories were - just a little faded at the edges.