The Station, Part 31

I’m getting lightheaded. Stomach’s still hurting. The pain has passed into my extremities. There’s an alternating sense of muscle cramps and numbness. Can’t pass out. Keep walking, Bradley. Find a place to rest. An acacia is here. Thank the stars for that. Thick branches will block sunlight. No grasses immediately around the base, but I’ll be invisible to if I lay down. Oh, that sounds so good right now. Just laying down in the shade. I’m so hot. Feel like I could just fall asleep forever. It’s cool under here, and darker. Just going to lay down here…

It’s so peaceful here. Like home used to be. They have recreated what used to be in nearly every detail. The right amount darkness as it should be. The feel of the earth around my holdfast. The taste of the air. The air currents themselves however, are not quite as they should be, but in time, with our help, He will perfect it. By then, why will be want to leave? We will have had all we need and more, that being His protection. Already some of us have begun to grow children. It is early for any of us to be doing so, but in reality, what is there to stop them? If we were home, now would be the time to be growing and fortifying ourselves for the impending fasting days. We don’t have though days anymore. Most of us are thankful for that. He has done this for us. There are a few that do not believe that the abundance that surrounds us is ultimately beneficial. Without the hard times they point out, how will we know the true value of what has been given to us? Those thoughts are few, and even fewer of us listen to them, especially those who have chosen to have children here. When these children separate from the bodies of their parents, they will be the first to have known only this place. And He will have always been. In that, these children will be different. What that means for The People I do not know. None of us do. Of this place we know only what He has told us. Will that change when the first new child awakens to awareness of itself? In time we will all know the answer. I should feed now. Although in some way, the food seems easier to catch and lacks something. Not nutrition I am sure. It came with us to this place at the same time. It is perhaps the last remnant of home. A home that is now gone. But I must not dwell on the past. I must be thankful; my people must be thankful. If not for Him, we would have perished with our world. The People would have been one with oblivion. But He has given us a second chance. But is power, however great, must be finite. He didn’t take all of us. He took enough of us to begin anew, somewhere else. At first I thought that this new place was here. But we have been told that this is but a temporary home until another, more suitable world can be found. Until the day He took us, I and The People thought there was only us. We were the entire world. We have since been blessed with the knowledge that there are many, many worlds and some of them have their own People. Far fewer of them are worlds in which we can live, but He is searching. He says He will one day find a new world for us to make our home, and then we can thrive as we did before. Yes, I believe Him.

I still have not fed. I must open my arms to the sky and wait for the food that floats in constant abundance. That wait won’t be too long. It never is anymore. And that one aspect of living here is something to which I am ever ambivalent…If He would return to live among us as he has done, perhaps I would be reassured. But He has been absent for many cycles. I wonder if He no longer wishes to be one of us as He has done. Perhaps we do not interest Him as before. Where is He?