Desert Debris

Shimmering below, in the brilliant sun, an expanse of desert stretches from horizon to horizon. Sinking down, movement replaces the illusion of stillness and the flatness becomes a surface of perpetually shifting hills and valleys. Blue, green, white are beheld as the descent approaches the waves. Objects floating to and fro upon the waste; huge and small, wood and artificial in composition, display themselves in a shy fashion. They slink into troughs, before returning to view.

There's a person! Slipping from a sea smoothed board, he splashes, flailing, and crying, “Help,” though there's not a person to hear, nor a hand to aid.

Wait!  “Just swim,” replies a voice in distance, unseen behind a composition of oxygen and hydrogen, “Swim and be free!”

“But,” the endangered youth began, before a wave catches him, tumbles his fragile form, and mercifully releases him to the air.

“But I haven't the strength,” he says, only a faint tang of salt remaining.

“And who has the strength to hold on?” the other answers.

“I'll swim to you,” says the boy, out of breath, “keep speaking,” but he receives no reply.

With laggard limbs, a spluttering spirit, and a face continually doused by walls of salt, he swims a few arms length before unexpectedly grasping a leg of a chair.

This is different: more solid, less slippery.  He likes it.  Since he can't hear the voice, he remains.

From his ever shifting position (the chair rolls in the swells), he sees hints of other foundationals. That's what he calls them, though you or I would name them detritus, rubbish, floating junk.

A faint noise, is it only the surf and the sound?

He looks up out of the shadow of depression into which the chair has carried him. He didn't care for it, misses his comforting, consistent board.

And cresting the ridge of his vale, a fabulous cruise ship (crowded with relaxed passengers) streams past.

“Hello!” he says, attempting a climb into a superior position on his foundational, but only causing a twist and counter-turn.

Yet, the passengers see him, gawking, and the leviathan begins to slow, until it floats a length away.

A sailor, who might be the captain, peers over the railing at the boy clutching his chair.

“How long have you been there?”

“With this foundation?”

“No, in the sea.”

“Since I was born.”

The man considers, he motions to other official appearing members of the crowd. After conferring, he speaks again.

“I've always been upon this deck, but there are others aboard who have shared your origins. We've evaluated, and agree there is space for you to exist with us.”

A crew of five began to lower a raft containing two more to the unstable floor, but the boy tries to paddle backwards fruitlessly.

“What's wrong?” said the captain.

“What's your name?” said the boy.

“Immanuel.”

“I'm Jude, and I think our conversation will be understood if we know each other's name.”

“Well, Jude, what are you doing?” Immanuel says as he motions the raft to stop its approach.

“I'm not certain I want to rest on your ship.”

“Rest, who said anything about a rest?  Permanent habitation, better than any you can conceive of from your experience.”

Jude shrugs as best as a young man can while clutching a chair in the sodden expanse of a tumultuous sea.

“It may seem so presently, but I daren't commit my self to an convenience beyond this chair.”

“Poor Jude, can't you see the surpassing superiority of my foundation! My deck sways above the abyssal ocean, upon its ever stirring surface. We sustain no everlasting chill, suffer no encompassing dew, and consider not the possibility of pain.”

“Yes, it seemed so to me, from down here,” says Jude after looking around him, “And I think I prefer my state. I am barely held above the void, and I have become numb to the danger as I swim in it, but my senselessness is not insensible as yours is. I reside upon this four legged vehicle until I find one of my choosing: suitable for my temperament.”

The Captain lifts his hat from his head and throws it against the deck. He shouts orders for the men in the raft to recover Jude.

“Insolent boy! You haven't the experience nor the reason to suffer unaided. Do you want to die, alone and stubborn? Your speech hints at great intelligence. Do you want to remain obscure, Jude?”

As the raft approaches, Jude (a desperate boy indeed), reluctantly but firmly releases his grip from the chair. Diving, twisting, he places walls of waves between himself and the bumbling crew who seem as unused to the sea, as a flounder is to fly. Beyond their call, he finds a small floating tub and climbs inside, watching the commotion in the distance.

The behemoth he refused, in slightly worse waters, tilts to starboard, and then leans to the left. The whole state bustls like a hill of disorganized ants. Jude can see half going one way, and a third another, until they and smaller conglomerations can't be reconciled. And the ship promptly splits down the middle.

Men and women spill from it into the sea, a few clutching life jackets or the sturdier rafts. And then they are swept from view, though Jude can hear their lamenting a day longer.

He thinks, from his leaky tub (which won't last a week, filling slowly with water) of how these debris came to be scattered and not truly solid. They are like pages of books, shorn from their binds and spread above a chasm. Barely do they hold the souls up.

Unsatisfied, Jude plans for his eventual transition. What foundation can he discover?

A friendly, “Hello,” awakes him from a sun induced daze.

“Why do you stupor in an unusual vessel?” says an elderly lady resting casually upon a pinnacle of rock. The rise and fall of the current never brings a drop within a fathom of her crossed legs, though Jude can envision a large wave sweeping her from her pedestal.

“I'm dreaming of a foundation, a ship of comfort and maneuverability. A motor and a stove.”

“What need do you have for such, when you've seen the result?”

“What should I search for?”

She smiles at him, “I would offer you my refuge, but I think you will find one fit for you. It is difficult to search when carried near and far by the circulating sea. Do or do not seek, for I offer other advice...” but the moment ends as a fickle swirl separates them.

On a day not far beyond the last, Jude dives into the waves, with the conversation still in mind. Strike, strike, strike, his hands cleave the water like a birds winds slice the sky. With hands upon rough wood he lifts himself onto a crude raft.

It has no sail but the sea, and no fridge but the sea, but he doesn't mind. As night approaches he lays content facing the firmament. The intertwining motion of earth and sun placed the latter out of sight, but its brilliance was only replaced by the glinting stars.

And his raft rolled on day and night through the endless sea of foundationals.