[ENDGAME] Stage 4; Allegory
The clouds dissipate, and only then do the people below realize that they had never been clouds, by the ashen offal generated by so many bioelectrical creatures in the sky. The atmosphere is a seething, crackling mass of solid Entropi. They bump into one another, passing through and generating wide arcs of lightning, seeming like the whole racial
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Taking a deep breath, Faye ran over her options again. No matter what she did, her chances of dying were pretty high. But her best chance was to look for people. Even if she died of thirst or starvation or exposure in a few days, at least she'd be trying.
Faye returned to her room, grabbing one of her backpacks and filling it with as much food and water as she could carry. She strapped her wool and mink coats to the outside of the pack, then hauled it outside. Next she went to the park, where a few twisted, denuded trunks were all that were left of the magnificent trees that had once grown there. She ripped off a sizable branch and returned to her pack. On the edge of town, she inscribed in the dirt her name and the intended direction of her travel. She reached for her PDA to check the date, and found it gone.
"That's odd... where did I put it?" Faye murmured. She thought hard, retracing her steps, but she came back to the same fact every time- it ought to be in her pocket. It was always in her pocket.
A sudden suspicion sent her reeling. Somehow, this tiny discrepancy seeded an explosion of doubt. Is this real?! Faye thought furiously. The first time, when the Keepers came, my first encounter with Entropi... the hallucinations. They felt so real... could this be another one? She couldn't for the life of her think what the purpose would be... why not just kill them outright? But the Entropi had never acted in ways that made sense. Think, Faye, think. Does it add up? Is it likely? "...At least as likely as everyone disappearing while I was passed out, and me being the only survivor, or the only one overlooked," she decided. "Or more likely, even. ...So now what?"
She thought for a time, chewing on her lip and staring a hole into the dirt. More and more she thought it likely that this was all just an Entropi mind-fuck. "But so what? I can't wake up from it on my own... or I don't know how to. I can't control what they're doing to me while I'm dreaming, if this is a dream. And if it isn't, I could starve waiting to wake up. ...Hell. It's not like I've got anything better to do."
Faye nodded to herself; she'd hoof it anyway, just in case. She guessed at the date, carving it into the ground with her stick. Then she shouldered her pack and struck off to the south, trailing the pointy end of her stick through the dusty earth as she went. She would go south until she hit a coastline, then follow it east.
...Or, she'd starve to death. Or, she'd wake up. Whichever came first.
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