As we left the base, I discovered that Enas was incredibly fast. One moment he stood next to me; the next, he was already well into the wooded path. It seemed that my body was trained for advanced athletism, but the bald man was able to continue to pull away with a walk that resembled more of a military march than a sprint.
Eventually, some natural inclination within me led me to chase after Enas by leaping across the grey tree branches where the ground could not hold me down. We kept up the pace for a while before he realized that I was keeping up only with great struggle. The bald man stopped and allowed me to catch up with him.
“Apologies,” he said curtly. His rough voice could easily be misconstrued as uncaring with his stoic expression. I figured I would give him the benefit of the doubt and assume otherwise.
“No problem,” I replied as I continued to breathe heavily.
Enas slowly and intentionally walked through the grey trees, and I matched his pace. He rested one hand above his strange metal weapon, and every once in a while, his blue eyes would dart to the side while his face remained forward. I looked in the direction that caught his attention but never saw anything other than grey foliage. I was content with being silent, but I did have a question floating in my mind that seemed no better to ask now than any other time.
“Why does Orrin call you Mark?”
The bald man seemed to shudder at the question, but his face remained stone cold as ever.
“On my world, I was given the model number M–A–R–K–1–1–1… and some more numbers after. When I first came to this world, he quickly decided to make that spelling my name,” Enas explained. He was a lot more open than I figured, given his facial expressions.
Still, his explanation only raised more questions.
“What is a model number?” I asked.
Enas rubbed his chin. He seemed to go deep in thought on how my question ought to be answered.
“Do you have genetics and factories in your world?” he asked. I shrugged in reply. “Right, amnesia. Let us just say I never had a mother as you do; instead, I was forged in the same manner your dagger was.”
I looked down at the pretty blades which hung near my sides. I didn’t fully understand, but given all the strange things and people I’d met so far, his story was something I just decided to accept.
“Do the letters mean anything then?” I asked.
“Yes, it is an acronym for the role that I was designed to fulfill,” Enas said. He didn’t add anything more, and his frown suggested I should not ask.
We walked through the grey woods for a while longer until a clearing was reached. In front of us was another large body of faux water. It was the entrance to another world, as I now understood. Not too far in the distance, I could see the tall and narrow mountain where I had encountered the fiery creature and Orrin. Further on from the lake, a stony structure was set up, which resembled a large gate.
I walked close to the edge and looked in. The faux water seemed to move gently like the real stuff and sparkled like it was full of millions of tiny stars. If Orrin’s understanding were correct, jumping in would take me to the world. Which meant dipping my hand in, as I had done before, gave a preview of sorts. Curiosity welled up, and I leaned over to dip a hand in.
I saw hundreds of people, maybe thousands, all going about their lives. Each was running around in concrete towns with buildings towering into the sky. Giant beasts of metal seemed to carry them to, and fro, and each stared at an odd object in their hands as they moved through the world.
From behind, I was yanked back, and the vision broke.
“Do not stand so close unless you want to dive in,” Enas said as I struggled to pull free from his grip.
“Have you seen that?” I asked him after I got free.
“Yes, just another world. We call this one the Water Earth. It is the most mundane and peaceful place out there if you are looking for that sort of thing.” There was an odd sort of dismissiveness in his words.
I turned back to the blue entrance into the world. Everyone had been moving about their lives with no idea what was happening here. It was an odd feeling as if I was in on some extraordinary secret.
I didn’t have too much time to ponder; the water in the lake seemed to start to shake. A small geyser shot out of the center. Unlike what I had seen before, the stream did not arc across the sky. Instead, it only flew above the trees and crashed back down. Waves rippled to the shore.
Enas bent down and began to examine the ground. I looked down as well and laid eyes on what he saw. A treasure trove of items had been washed up on the shore.
I looked as well and picked up a leather object with paper in it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
The bald man quickly came over and nodded. He opened the leather object and began to pull out the contents contained within.
“This would be a wallet, and with cash in it. Good job, that will be good for the next grocery trip we do in this world.”
“Does stuff wash ashore all the time?” I asked.
“Yes, objects wash up all the time,” Enas said as he eyed a shiny card with a face on it. The card was slid back into the wallet, but Enas put the paper in his pocket.
“Should we be taking this stuff? Won’t the owner miss it?”
Enas finished examining the contents. Other than the so-called cash, everything else was put back in, which mainly were several shiny cards with numbers on them. Then, he tossed the leather object back into the world. I watched as it flew in the sky and plopped into the lake.
“It should land near enough to the owner that it can be found,” the bald man explained to me as he eyed my confused expression. “Pick up the objects that washed up, and we will keep the useful things. Everything else can be thrown back.”
He had not answered my question, but I walked around the lake and picked up the odd objects just the same. There were metal canisters with pictures of food, keys on rings, things with many buttons, and pieces of fabric shaped like a foot. I wasn’t sure what good anything was, so I picked up everything. Perhaps more of it was curiosity about what the objects could be. I wasn’t sure if my memory loss or the world I originated from made up for my lack of knowledge.
Eventually, I made my way to the stony structure near the lake. It consisted of two large blocks positioned so that the longer length was headed up into the grey sky. A shorter block was sat on top of the other two to connect each into a gate appearance, though it lacked a wall that would allow it to serve the purpose of a gate. It was hard to tell if the grey appearance was due to the world or just the stone’s natural color.
Up close, the stones were more than just simple blocks. They had been delicately carved with patterns and languages I could not read. I set down some of what I collected and reached up to touch a carving when a shout from Enas stopped me. He had come around from the other side of the lake with a handful of collected items.
“Don’t touch that,” the bald man shouted as he got close.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Best not to mess with these sorts of things.” Enas did not clarify and simply left the gate a mystery as he began to eye the stuff I had collected. He started to throw several items back in and take what was “useful” in his eyes.
After some time, Enas began to head back to his “base” while I followed along. I asked about the structure several more times, but he only gave vague answers. In the end, I gave up; perhaps Orrin would be a better choice for who I should be asking questions. I settled on planning to ask him when I got the chance.
Thanks for reading. Here is a picture of Enas.
