Time? What’s time? Everything’s the same, been the same, will always be the same. Of course, there was a before this, and there was time then. But after, now there is no time. The world ended. People brought it upon themselves. Buildings grew taller and taller. Cars got bigger and bigger. More and more land was turned into cement roads, and eventually the cement started covering the ocean. Minds were growing with transportation so easy. There was no more traffic, on the roads or the road to human success. Science, philosophy, industry, everything improved as we took over the planet. They welled water from beneath the concrete, but they synthesized it in labs too. They synthesized oxygen and recreated the whole atmosphere. It was like no other time in human history, global utopia. But it couldn’t last.
Human resistance to the expansion was nonexistent; even the most radical and vehement protesters gave up, or at least were ignored, all in the name of advancement. The entire planet was turned into a ball of concrete; science manufactured everything keeping us alive. We were prospering, but Earth was failing. The Spirit of the Planet, a Titan, God, whatever He was, He spoke to all of us that day. Every human being heard the voice in their head, in their heart. Our time was over, it told us. We had reached our peak, but also our point of no return. The final words He spoke were “evolve or die”.
Then It happened. From the concrete surface of the planet grew walls, countless walls. Buildings crumbled as the concrete walls ruptured their foundations. By some force of nature, our concrete ball of a planet had been turned into a maze of walls, a global labyrinth. The deaths from the event were catastrophic, but the following months were more horrendous. People reverted back to savages, killing each other for food, for water, for oil, for whatever reason they could have. Evolve or die became kill or die, and those that weren’t murdered for their goods died of starvation, of thirst, of cold. The quality of the artificial air began declining with stagnation. Soon, even oxygen became a resource, and the murder rate rose again.
But things eventually settled. There are so few of us left now. I haven’t seen another person in three months. I’ve liked it better than the thirteen years of savagery I witnessed. Those who killed have killed themselves off in their own violent struggles. Those less willing to kill, but those willing to steal, to horde, and to pay tithe to the killers in their midst created their own society, which is where I grew up. I was eleven when It happened, and I lived with my father, my older sister, my older brother, and my baby sister. My mother had died during It, and my father swore to protect us in the new world, no matter what. The baby died first when we couldn’t get a medicine for her when she got sick. My father would have lost his mind if not for my sister, Raehel. She was 17 at the time, and she took care of my father while my brother, Willum, took care of me.
During the days, she would take my father out to scrounge and trade for supplies, while my brother spent his twentieth year teaching me. My father would not let me go uneducated, no matter what state the world was in. Wil taught me grammar, vocabulary, literature, arithmetic, history, biology, chemistry, philosophy, and more. At nights, he would take me out and teach me to navigate by the stars, a skill which had become valuable within the walls. Willum became my guide to the world, while my father and sister provided for all of us the meager restitution they could. We lived simply, poorly, but happily as a family like that for three years.
Wil and I had gone on trips around the maze as I got older, mastering the navigation of our area of the labyrinth. We trekked with caution, knowing there were still brutal, savage murderers that roamed outside the village. We also had to remain vigilant of our position so we didn’t get lost forever in the walls, nor to wander too far. Nevertheless, we had great adventures, found remarkable, valuable treasures, and both continued our education of the world, teaching each other as true friends and brothers do. Occasionally we traveled with local long-distance traders and traveled to other nearby villages. Wil was also a proficient hunter, and I often accompanied hunting trips. The two of us were, along with our father and sister, one of the most loved families in the town.
Once, we set out on a long trip together, just the two of us. We traveled far into the maze, marking our trail so we wouldn’t get lost. We hunted, we gathered, we learned, we traded. And we met so many people on that journey, hearing so many stories of other villages and the travels of their people. We returned home with some of our best spoils yet, sure to keep our family fit for a while. The village was in shambles. Houses had been destroyed, torn apart in a way only human hands can destroy. Raehel ran to us, sobbing, weeping, wailing. A man, a hulking beast of a man, had walked into our village and come across Raehel and my father in the marketplace. He demanded goods from everyone around and threatened death otherwise. He tossed aside what my father and sister had, instead demanding “the girl”. My father, the constant defender, stood up to him, protecting my sister. When Rae described the ornate blade that the man slayed my father with, I knew immediately whom he was.
The most terrifying time of my life, Wil and I had come across a savage in the maze. He was brutally hacking a woman to death with his sword, pants around his ankles and her clothes strewn about. It was clear what had just happened, and now he was killing her, presumably for meat. Wil and I were paralyzed in fear, that any noise could alert him of our presence and we would become his next kill. The thing about the savages was that they would kill anyone, whether for meat or anger, or the sheer desire to save supplies for themselves. They did leave villages alone for the most part, except for the occasional pillaging, but the villagers often gave supplies willingly to save their lives and their families’.
But the people knew around this particular beast. He was called Zotz, and he was as savage as they came. People from all surrounding villages had told Wil and I tales of this savage. Not particularly smart, but brutally strong, and violent. He had trouble navigating the maze, and so he was frequently hungry, horny, and angry. He had come to our village, no doubt following the trail my brother and I had left, and killed our father, slaughtered our people, broke our home. Without our father, we had nothing left in our village. Wil and I were explorers and treasure hunters. Rae was a trader and a merchant. The three of us could live and settle well in any village. Or even, as I suggested, as nomads, wandering from village to village. I thought maybe we could even map the maze.
But we settled eventually, and we were able to keep ourselves alive.
