4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
The Clivilius Delivery Drop Zone
Morning reveals the storm's cruelty: every footprint erased, the campfire buried, their presence wiped clean as if they'd never existed. Paul wakes confused with burned feet and no memory of chasing Rose. Luke is conspicuously absent. When he finally arrives with a truck full of supplies and demands their wallets, Jamie finds himself confessing something he never planned to speak aloud—and receiving a response that rewrites everything he thought he knew.
Some mornings erase more than footprints.
Jamie wakes to find the dust storm has wiped their settlement clean—no trails, no campfire, no evidence they ever existed. Paul emerges confused, his burned feet a mystery to him, the nightmare that sent him screaming into darkness completely forgotten. And Luke, who promised to return first thing, is nowhere to be seen.
When Paul unveils his vision—a new civilisation where they choose who belongs, leaving Earth's toxic people behind—Jamie's scepticism wars with something unexpected: the first stirrings of connection. Together they mark out the "Clivilius Delivery Drop Zone" with rocks, their first collaborative creation in a place neither chose.
Then Luke arrives. A stolen truck. Minutes before the delivery driver returns from the toilet. The Portal rejects Jamie again with a warning colder than before. Luke demands wallets to liquidate their assets—Paul refuses, thinking of Claire and the children. And in the chaos of it all, guilt forces words from Jamie's throat he never meant to speak: "I was with Ben."
The response isn't anger. It isn't accusation. It's a kiss that tastes like forgiveness Jamie never believed he deserved.
