Chapter 1

Soros dreams…

…

Deep in the confines of a house with concrete walls, a man with white hair remembers in his lonely mind. His mind frayed, rotting away like dwindling fires, ashes rushing through the windows, paint poured across the walls until only a sticky, uncomfortable feeling remained.

…

The small sailboat sent them to Everest. Along a lonely path, fog hanging in the air, fragments of glaciers crackling as they decayed in the water. Toward the distant peak of Everest, away from thousands of miles, from the cruising plane filled with thousands to only them sailing toward Everest, toward the place of floods untouched. Inside the cabin, watching the glass undersides flow and trickle with water. Underneath, thousands of houses, lined up in forgotten grids lay gone. More and more ahead, floating along the currents, drifting one by one, wires strung up in a ball, a stop sign, the arm of a man, and a rusty headlight. All dusty, old, decaying, filled with the grime and seaweed of the ocean.

Blurry buzzing faces spoke and comforted him while he watched their old home float away, sinking. He remembered his wonderful little world, all isolated and alone. Time at school was like some infinite road, neverending, and summer days were like fresh water and orange slices.

He was alone, all alone, to himself. In the nothingness… And a voice murmured to him, once in a while, cupping hands against his ears to tell him of his new home. Blurry indistinct words that he had forgotten.

The ship shuddered as it drifted into the mountain. And they anchored themselves onto the thick ice. They pulled a cart up the steep mountain, up and up against the snow that shuffled down, as they climbed up and up and carved a deep path into the snow. Gone into the storm of snow rushing down and down from the clouds. The sun glimmered like cut onyx.

For an hour, he had waited.

In the ship, the lights , as the snow blasted, feverish, chaotic, as the wind howled, while the moon wept, and an infinite haze covered the world.

When the lights dimmed and the water thrashed, with waves writhing erupting into the air, and the ship creaked and bobbed, when all were screaming, when the water began to rise against the walls, he scrambled outside, and ran from the crumbling sailboat. Into the moon, under the stars...

Into the cold…He followed the blurred footsteps, dreamed of the warmth of a hand, gripping tightly against his own, and wondered, dreamed, of a great fire thrumming at the hearth. It had given his cold hands warmth, as he lay in the winter nights, with the water slowly gripping at their door.

One night, the water burst through the walls, flooding the house. The rubble burst through at every seam, making a great cracking noise as he ran up the stairs. A dead body lay facedown, floating, slowly moving down, down. The water had carried it into their empty home, floating, bloated, rotting away. A thin, cracked smile, and hair floating in the depths.

He screamed aloud, wanting to be near the fireplace, warm, alone. Until his father led him away from the water, his mother lifted him up the ladder.

They lay upon the roof, watching the cold sun rescind into darkness, the warmth seeping away. Only frost and cold.

This was it. Life was just a flavorless empty cold, bloated from the endless pleasure.

The moon slowly rising, the fires rushing up from shattered roof tiles, as they poured gasoline over an ever-dwindling fire. One by one, roof tiles shedding like dirtied scales.

For two days, they laid up there, sitting by themselves, the hot sun boiling past, the cold night filled with a strange long, silence. Emptiness…

He watched the days pass by, the days never-ending, an endless warped dream. A thick isolated dream, thin amounts of food and water. His dreams, only daylight hallucinations. Wondered of the rotting death, emptying away, wasting into the water, the seas, underneath the long, long nights.

And dreams of rotting away, bugs crawling through his corroded flesh, a young face forever gone, corrupted away.

…

Yet a yacht, floating by itself, tossed by the waves and the currents… A golden yacht… Shimmering in the sun, shining, glowing with a wonderful, new, light…

…

He stepped upon the mountain snow and saw the cramped space, a small tent sitting deep in the snow, a pipe buried in the roof, with smoke coughing away. The wind blasted into the tent again and again. Snow fell from above and the wind blew and blasted its way through into his face, whirling, howling, spiraling.

Behind him, the waves of water continually smashed against one another, filled with strange loneliness, never-ending, only rising again and again.

Above all the haze, all the fog, the State lay grand, a great building, rising from above, curved as the windows lined down, down, down, in vertical columns—lights illuminating the dark, dark night.

He stared, and watched the State faintly. Strange in the distance…

The emptiness of those lights, he wished to touch them, walk through the barbed fences, open the door, and walk inside.

….

Alone, nobody in the tent….

He lay there, as the wind rushed through the flaps, swaying the entirety of the tent. Like pure waves, again and again.

In his small tent, he slept and dreamed of fire, he dreamt of a strange, beautiful, crisp fire, burning the world, burning away the ice, until the water had drained away, until nothing was left.

Horrible waves crashed against the stone, as he watched from a mountain high above. Nightmares crashed through his mind, of the infinitely gigantic waves, of the great dripping things in the dark. Of the arctic, of the glaciers slamming against one another as he slept.

The infinitely chaotic dreams rushed past one another.

Climbing the mountains, with the snow clumping against a stone tower, a path led toward the absolute peak. Watching from atop the world, watching the soldiers stand tall, the concrete walls glittering in the sun, the State with its grandeur, the grand towers shaped by rough hands. Beneath, buried in the ground, lay Ainom, unknown, strange.

And hidden in the snow, the scales of a serpent writhed and glittered. Red, buried, hidden, but shining, large, a single scale lay larger than both of his feet.

And when he went back, he sat near a wonderful glass mantel, from a wonderful house, watching the chaos below, the waves of water filled with strange things, floating with the wreckage of thousands of ships, of the infinite cosmos, the glitter of the stars. He read fantastic, wonderful books that showed the sun, glimmering in its infinite purity.

Stuck inside, cramped in the great hollow hallways of a tent, as the wind battered against the canvas constantly, and an air heater stood in the corner constantly filling the sealed tent with warmth.

He wondered where they were, his parents, all gone, away forever. But he was tired, he wished to stay by himself, alone, only for a minute. In the silence, in his state of sleep, full of beautiful, blossoming warmth.

He woke up…

He brought himself to put on his clothes, and go outside with his thick coat, wearing his snow pants.

A trail of stale, footprints, almost covered by the wind, led him into a deep, deep cave, where snow rose thickly upwards, and he saw the signs of an avalanche, the signs of thunder, a blizzard, a great storm, rocking the entire earth. Boulders standing together like a great wall covered the world, the ruins of fire rushing on a blue blanket lay dead and ash white, merely a deep black hole.

He neared the cave, two twisted bodies were against the ice.

All dead. All dead.

They were black and blue, laughing aloud, with heads tilted upward. He saw they were bathing in the cold, smiling toward the sun.

As if they stood on the sand, watching the ocean waves run back and forth on the shore, the sun shining with a silent, wistful peace.

Frozen to death, in the colonies of ice.