Chapter Six: Where Do I Go From Here?
I had been tired, both mentally and emotionally, and I had been hungry and my body had been starting to feel the cold, particularly my feet. I remember the snow had been glistening in the moonlight...completely untouched. The tranquil silence had been such a contrast to the chaos from earlier; it had been a welcome sound to my still ringing ears. There had been a creek nearby...it had looked so calm...bubbling along, making soft noises. I hadn't been able to resist stopping beside it briefly. But as nice as it had been to stop briefly, and give my body a break, it had allowed my mind the chance to wander...
Freedom: The state of being free; personal liberty or natural independence. That's what the dictionary says, but what does that mean? How do you know when you're free? I mean really and truly free? Those questions had assaulted my mind as I had sat there watching the bubbling creek beside me...so calm...so unlike my thoughts.
Eventually I had decided to keep going, for security reasons of course. So I had pried myself away from the creek and its comforting noises, and continued creeping along to...to, well...I hadn't really known what I was creeping to, just what I had been creeping from. I didn't really know where I was going. I mean, I knew all the geography, I could name all 50 states and their capitals and blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean...but I didn't know where I was going...I didn't know what I was going to call home.
That's about when it had finally sunk in. For the first time in my life, I had been lost. Not lost, as I said earlier, in the sense that I didn't know where I was, because I knew perfectly well where I was...I was lost in the sense that I didn't know what was going to happen...how things were going to turn out. Kind of a joke really...I mean who does know what's going to happen? You'd have to be clairvoyant or something to know what's going to happen, and I sure as hell wasn't. Maybe if I had been, things would have turned out differently. No point in thinking about that though. All the 'what ifs' in the world couldn't change anything, because you just can't change the past...you can only do your best to change the future-for better or for worse.
I hadn't even been in a norm town yet and I was already overwhelmed by the concept of freedom and the outside world. Kind of pathetic, but what else could anyone have expected? Manticore had been all we'd ever known. And so with those thoughts in my mind, I kept walking North East, destroying the untouched beauty of the freshly fallen snow.
I had walked all night. It had been morning by the time I had crossed the border and reached the outskirts of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. I could hear all these different noises. Some of them had been familiar, like the sound of cars, but others...others had been completely foreign to me. Eventually I reached the city. It had been early in the morning, and I remember seeing the sun reflecting off these huge glass towers. I had been in complete awe. I had had no idea what skyscrapers were at the time. All I had known was that they looked beautiful reflecting the rising sun off their glass sides in the cold dawn. Like the dawn of something new...something better. Just goes to show what an optimist I was then. I wouldn't know until much later just how wrong I had been.
I had been tired, both mentally and emotionally, and I had been hungry and my body had been starting to feel the cold, particularly my feet. I remember the snow had been glistening in the moonlight...completely untouched. The tranquil silence had been such a contrast to the chaos from earlier; it had been a welcome sound to my still ringing ears. There had been a creek nearby...it had looked so calm...bubbling along, making soft noises. I hadn't been able to resist stopping beside it briefly. But as nice as it had been to stop briefly, and give my body a break, it had allowed my mind the chance to wander...
Freedom: The state of being free; personal liberty or natural independence. That's what the dictionary says, but what does that mean? How do you know when you're free? I mean really and truly free? Those questions had assaulted my mind as I had sat there watching the bubbling creek beside me...so calm...so unlike my thoughts.
Eventually I had decided to keep going, for security reasons of course. So I had pried myself away from the creek and its comforting noises, and continued creeping along to...to, well...I hadn't really known what I was creeping to, just what I had been creeping from. I didn't really know where I was going. I mean, I knew all the geography, I could name all 50 states and their capitals and blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean...but I didn't know where I was going...I didn't know what I was going to call home.
That's about when it had finally sunk in. For the first time in my life, I had been lost. Not lost, as I said earlier, in the sense that I didn't know where I was, because I knew perfectly well where I was...I was lost in the sense that I didn't know what was going to happen...how things were going to turn out. Kind of a joke really...I mean who does know what's going to happen? You'd have to be clairvoyant or something to know what's going to happen, and I sure as hell wasn't. Maybe if I had been, things would have turned out differently. No point in thinking about that though. All the 'what ifs' in the world couldn't change anything, because you just can't change the past...you can only do your best to change the future-for better or for worse.
I hadn't even been in a norm town yet and I was already overwhelmed by the concept of freedom and the outside world. Kind of pathetic, but what else could anyone have expected? Manticore had been all we'd ever known. And so with those thoughts in my mind, I kept walking North East, destroying the untouched beauty of the freshly fallen snow.
I had walked all night. It had been morning by the time I had crossed the border and reached the outskirts of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. I could hear all these different noises. Some of them had been familiar, like the sound of cars, but others...others had been completely foreign to me. Eventually I reached the city. It had been early in the morning, and I remember seeing the sun reflecting off these huge glass towers. I had been in complete awe. I had had no idea what skyscrapers were at the time. All I had known was that they looked beautiful reflecting the rising sun off their glass sides in the cold dawn. Like the dawn of something new...something better. Just goes to show what an optimist I was then. I wouldn't know until much later just how wrong I had been.