Bilfred Baker's Marvelous Bookshop

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The Balloonist's Fragment (cont.)

I slept uneasily. I had nothing to shelter myself with; our many-person tents were too bulky to pack away quickly, and I didn’t want the extra weight in the balloon. So I wrapped myself in my blankets and lay down on the ground. The bright sunlight played behind my eyelids as I slid into sleep, but as soon as the blessed dimness arrived I lay awake again - all the while until it began to brighten, at which point I again slipped into sleep.
I woke again a few hours past the time I normally arose. I was unrested, but not getting to sleep again any time soon.
I ate a dry breakfast and fired up the balloon. I wasn’t very well equipped to survive out here alone, or even to keep running a balloon. But that made it all the more imperative that I get out of these wastes, to somewhere with more people.
As I continued south, I realized that I had drifted off of the path that the thing had taken. I could see the burned and blackened areas no more. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldn’t tell. Did I want to reach the place that it was going?
The place it was going could well be … civilization. Where I had come from.The great nations and empires of the world, with all of their faults and all of their glories. The only place I knew how to survive. Would I ever see it again?
I occupied myself by staring at the land. Still it was monotonous. It resisted occupation by the mind; I could not grasp the wideness, the flatness, the emptiness. There was nothing for the eye to hold onto, not even a pile of rocks.
As the hours passed, I became increasingly aware of how little fuel I had left. That was to be expected, of course. The balloon, although an ingenious invention, had never been intended for long voyages across the air. A metal cage above my basket held a burning pile of straw, and that fire heated the air inside the balloon. I had stuffed as much of the basket as I could with extra straw. But straw burns quickly! - and the bucket could only hold so much.
It was only a little after midday when I threw the last of the straw on to the fire. After that my only task was to bring the balloon down gently.
Which I shortly did. The land stretched around me still, rolling up and down in folds so long and slow that I almost couldn’t perceive them. The land stretched around me still; but now I had nothing to separate me from it.
Was there a point to any action I could make? I would surely starve anywhere I went, and walking would only use up my available energy more quickly.
But I would starve just as surely if I stayed at the balloon. I stuffed all of my food and water, my pen and paper, my compass, my fire-starter, and one blanket into my pack. Then I heaved it onto my shoulders and began walking south.

"Still can't find it?" asks Bilfred Baker.

You shake your head no.

"Well, I'll keep an eye out for it!" he says. "Do you have an address I can contact you at?"

You leave Bilfred your address and head out the door.

***

You step outside and sigh as the crisp air hits your face. In the park across the street, a group of the homeless is huddled against the brisk October wind.

In this city of decaying churches, of moss growing over gravestones, of rain making ripples in puddles on the cobblestone sidewalks, you wonder, as you have many times before, whether life is bad or good. Everything in this city points to the seeming glories of a not-so-recent past. But sometimes, walking in the hills in the soft October rain, looking at the changing colors in the trees that have grown over the abandoned farms, you think that there has never been a time in which you would rather have been alive.

Life was bad in your grandparents' time, certainly. Back then people worked 16-hour days in the steel plants if the Administration for Administrative Affairs wanted them to. If someone spoke against the Administration or read the wrong book, the secret police might come in the night. Most of the dissident writers you revere were either killed or sent into exile.

Now no one knows anyone who's been visited by the secret police. No one even knows if they exist anymore.

You work for the Administration, like most of the people you know. You keep a burner stocked all night with coal in an otherwise empty factory. The bureaucrat who pays you your tokens swears that there's an Administration capitol still, full of bustling buildings, organizing the world.

You rent a small attic room that's heated and has a working roof. It's a crime to trade Administration tokens for anything other than Administration-provided goods and services, but no one's been arrested for that violation since your parents were young. With so many abandoned buildings, and the Administration not exactly providing upkeep to the official dormitories, it was inevitable that some enterprising folks would fix places up for lodging.

You get by. There are many things that are hard to get hold of these days, but canned food will never be one of them. Not when the warehouses are still stocked with provisions and preparations for a war that never came.

And when you can, you write.

But enough reminiscences. Where were you going, again?