America had long since given up ranting about the unfairness of it all, how he had wanted so sorely to go to space to see everything to adventure with his people and everyone's to discover new worlds like he'd wanted to for decades and centuries

(to escape the congestion and concrete and thickening air)

in favor of walking.

He followed the overgrown railroad tracks and cracked highways, passing through cities

(silver and gold boom towns came to mind though those had long rotted)

that stayed peaceful despite what the movies had said about how once everyone left it would all fall apart into war and hunger.

America crossed states and First Nations, staying a winter with Oglala because though summers were warmer winters were bitter cold and he'd forgotten through disuse how they'd managed it back then, keeping New Mexico company in the dusty bone-dry heat.

Humanity united to go to the stars, his movies had been right enough about that, and the nations united to guard the remnants. America knew that all the Italian states had stuck together, traveling up and down the peninsula to try and preserve everything they could in the face of Veneziano's wet hacking cough and the inevitable fall of plaster

(people stayed in the vatican and nobody was surprised by that)

while he had made the jump and visited China and saw the sun rise clear over Harbin for the first time in centuries.

They could tell when the humans formed new nations, as the millions of souls filtered away slowly from their veins, leaving a few behind

(poland shall not perish so long as we live and remain)

and America wondered what the new ones looked like as the strange feeling of losing citizens poured through him, not dying just not his anymore, not there

(leaving for a new life and he understood that perhaps better than the others but

it hadn't been him)

and he still walks head pointed up at the stars wearing through shoes and socks on an earth left with a skeleton crew

(the final frontier his shows and his movies had said and he'd always wanted to be on it his people had been on it

and it's lonely)