4338.208 · July 27, 2018 AD
Layered Over Nothing
Concrete makes sense. Dogs make sense. Even a bogged BMW makes sense — dust swallows everything here eventually. But fifty metres from the Drop Zone, the air does something it shouldn't, and Kain sees something that doesn't belong in this empty landscape. It's gone before he can be sure it was real. The shovels are easy to find. The questions aren't.
The screed bites into Kain's palms as he and Jamie drag it across wet concrete, smoothing the surface into something approaching level. Simple work. Physical work. Problems with clear solutions — no portals, no resurrections, no lagoons doing unspeakable things. Just basic construction, the kind he's been training for since he was old enough to hold a hammer.
Glenda joins them, learning the process with genuine enthusiasm. When Kain asks what she thinks of the new arrivals, she mistakes it for a question about the concrete. The laugh that escapes him feels foreign after so much grimness.
Then Lois arrives — a golden retriever cresting the hill like a furry torpedo, coat gleaming, tail wagging with manic enthusiasm. Jamie's reaction is immediate: not another fucking dog. But watching Glenda's face transform with pure joy, it's hard to begrudge her this. Everyone needs something to hold onto.
Paul appears next, dust-coated and frustrated. Glenda's BMW is bogged just over the hill. Two vehicles defeated by dust in one day — there's a pattern forming, and it's not a good one. Jamie finds humour in Paul's predicament. Glenda declares the camp is like living with children. The walk to assess the damage confirms the obvious: they need shovels, and the ones they've been using are crusted with cement.
Kain volunteers for the fetch. The path to the Drop Zone has become familiar, his feet finding the route without conscious thought. The sun presses down. His thoughts drift through the day's events — Karen and Chris, the concrete slab, Lois bounding into camp, the BMW sinking into earth.
Then the air shimmers wrong.
Not heat distortion. Something else. The landscape ripples like a reflection in disturbed water, and for a moment Kain sees something layered over the emptiness. Buildings rising from ochre earth, their lines clean and purposeful. Paths connecting them, cleared of dust. People moving between structures. Gardens breaking the monotony of brown and red. A community. A civilisation. Something grown from nothing into something permanent.
He blinks, and it's gone.
Just the Drop Zone. Just dust and supplies and endless empty landscape.
A mirage. Has to be. Heat playing tricks on an exhausted brain, conjuring images from wishes he hadn't known he was making. But the afterimage lingers at the edges of his vision — a ghost of a future that might never exist, or a glimpse of something waiting to happen.
The shovels are there, clean and ready. Luke came through after all.
Kain walks back with both balanced across his shoulder, unable to shake what he saw. This camp is temporary. These tents, this desperate scramble — it isn't meant to last. Change is coming. The only question is what form it takes.
