Parchland

You wished to see the ocean, so you hopped on a train.

Promises of clear air and roaring waves enticed you to save every last nickel you could. Your family thought you irresponsible; your friends laughed at you. What was the point of seeing moving water? Just shake the water in your canteen. And what was the point of clear air? You breathed it all in either way.

As you labored in the earth’s stomach, dredging up precious things, sparkling things, dull things, you never abandoned that hope. And so you worked; you didn’t spend your earnings at the trenchpit like your friends and your coworkers. You saved it all—every last dented cent.

You saved your hopes.

And now you’re on the train.

Your world has become a whirlwind of movement. You watch the coal-burned lands flash past you in the window. Black plains crisscross with metal teeth rails, and smoldering cinder rivers weave through surface cracks. That heavy grey wall of sooty clouds reaches far beyond even your dwelling.

Hardly another soul sits in the cabin with you.

When the train makes its last stop it seems to shudder and settle into the ground, a beast weary of its long journey. You are nearly drunk on the visual feast the window has shown you these past few days. Even when the dark land was pitched into night, you still watched the shadowy forms of buildings and structures sliding by, hardly sleeping a wink for fear of missing anything.

Your joints click and groan as you step down onto the platform. The baffling sight of white streaks in the pepper-black sky makes you stop in your tracks and marvel. Everyone thought you a fool for coming all this way, and yet, they would never get to see what you saw.

You hurry to the beach.

A sound picks at your ears, at first faint, but then grows in volume. It is a yawning groan that recedes, then builds up into a rumbling roar, then recedes again. You increase your pace, convinced that this is the sound you’ve been yearning to hear your entire life; the sound of waves, the sound of the ocean.

Soft particles of plastic and sand crunch underneath your feet. You lean forward as you hurry past hillocks of abandoned smelly things, broken things, and forgotten things. And still you press onwards, knowing that you are nearing the ocean, the pinnacle of beauty and wonder.

You get to the edge and stop.

There is nothing here.

Or rather, no water.

A vast empty canyon of a pit stretches out before you. You look down, deep into its depths, and only see a gathered fog shifting and weaving in those trenches. Strange skeletons with fins dot the surface of everything you see, and the air is clear but heavy with rot.

The air stirs, breezing past softly before quickly growing into a strong wind that crescendos into the moaning roar you had heard before. There are no waves.

There is no ocean.

You stand there for what feels like a dozen train rides that circle round and round inside your head. Then, slowly, you shift your stance. You rotate round and begin to walk, slowly at first, but then you quicken your pace, practically running as you leave this beach of ruin behind.

You wander past dilapidated buildings and small shambling crowds. A bright sign with yellow letters on a red-trimmed building catches your eye: OCEAN INSIDE! COME INSIDE AND SEE!!!

Such a sign ignites an effort to lift your hopes, but it collapses under the weight of knowing that the ocean could never fit inside such a small space. Nevertheless, curiosity draws you forward, and you shuffle inside.

The establishment claims to be a museum with special seaside relics on display: a barnacle-encrusted anchor, a ragged black coat with a tear on its left sleeve that belonged to a lighthouse keeper, metal navigator tools, hull pieces from shipwrecks, and massive sea creature fangs and bones. But it quickly becomes apparent that this place is more of a gift shop than a museum, with shelves and racks stuffed with replicas of the items on display.

Near the end of this dizzying parade of history and shopping tags, comes a roped off square section with a pedestal in the middle. A glass jar filled with water sits there, with sediment glittering at the bottom. A sign hangs from the ceiling claiming that this jar is full of authentic ocean water, back when the surf and waves used to make that dead salt water dance.

You sit on a nearby bench, dejected and empty. Another sits on the bench next to you. She’s sharply dressed in a casual-wear-grey jumpsuit with a plastic white cardigan. You share a look with each other, conveying the same shared hope dashed across the rocks.

With an unsaid agreement you both rise to your feet and wander outside. There is some meandering along the seaside gravel road before splitting back to the mounds of beach garbage, back to the pit that once boasted of being an ocean.

“My grandmother said her great grandmother used to windsurf,” she says, brushing back a hair curl in the heavy wind. “She said that there was so much water, people could drown in it.”

You nod, saying you had heard such claims before. Part of you had hoped to feel that full watery embrace of hanging in suspension and feeling weightless.

You’ve never felt weightless before.

You talk about the blackened lands you’ve come from, and she tells you about the industrial plant she works and sleeps in. She talks about how her sector’s baron is generous, and lets her sector walk through his private gardens of grass on week’s end. You whistle, impressed. She must be near the top tier of society.

Both of you fall silent and gaze out at the yawning emptiness before you.

“What do you think is beyond here?” She asks.

You don’t answer. How can you? You had thought the ocean was beyond where you came from, but in the end you were wrong. You would probably be wrong again.

A strange thing begins to happen to the sky. An orangish brown tint seeps into the slate grey clouds. You both watch as a golden light pierces through, filling that monochrome with a ruddy ruby hue. Together you marvel as that thing, which you can only assume to be the sun, fills the horizon with blazing swirls of orange, pastel pinks, and trickles of purple. Though it is far away, you feel a warmth touch your skin, like the flickering whisper of a flame.

It seems to be an eternity of this light’s presence hanging in the sky, before it dips past the edge, and the world is swallowed by deep darkness. Both of you stir out of your transfixed state, blinking and rubbing your eyes.

The wind begins picking up, and both of you climb to your feet.

“I don’t know what lies beyond here,” You say, “but I do hope there are more colors there.”