A Jaded Life

“So, Jack, what can you tell me about the local survivors? Hopefully, there are some, even with the oddity of the city,” I paused, realising that Jack and his merry band might actually know what happened here during the change, how two cities that should be some hundred-odd kilometres away from one another came to be in roughly the same place. And, maybe more importantly, what else had changed with the cities? Was it only the buildings that were moved, the man-made structures and such, or was it everything, including the mountains, forest and whatnot? By now, I had almost given up trying to make sense of the geographic alterations to our world, at least in the short term, but maybe there was some rhyme or reason to them that I just couldn’t see because I hadn’t observed them. But maybe Jack, or one of his more intelligent companions, had seen something that could shed some light on his. However, instead of adding yet another question before Jack could answer my first one, I decided to wait.

“Well, sure, there are more of us,” Jack began, apparently uncertain just how much detail he wanted to give me, or maybe just trying to put their situation into concise terms. After a moment, he began to explain in relatively general and almost vague terms that their group had coalesced mostly from survivors of Colorado Springs who had gathered in one of the formerly wealthy neighbourhoods and fortified the area, a task made easier by the fact that it used to be a gated community. Sure, there was some damage to the gates and walls but with those already in place, creating fortifications was fairly simple.

From the sound of it, the place was run on something resembling a military hierarchy, with a guy named Hammond, a former Air Force officer of some sort, providing the leadership and letting those under his command. Not a terrible system, if the guy in charge was as capable and benevolent as it sounded but unchecked power could easily corrupt, not that I was a good example of uncorrupted power. Luckily, it sounded as if their system was currently in a stable state and it likely would take time for that to change. Time measured in months, if not years, at least as long as that Hammond remained alive.

Curiously, it turned out that Hammond was not actually a legacy, though he seemed to have teamed up with one early on, giving him some advantages but his advance was his own. Impressive, though ultimately meaningless. What made him special was the fact that he managed to gather and lead a fairly large group of people to the point that it sounded as if they’d be easily able to make it through the coming winter.

It was somewhat amusing to watch Jack and the others become more and more disbelieving as they saw the cottage I had built for them, especially when I demonstrated my recreations of modern amenities. Things we had all once taken for granted, like running water or a flushable toilet, had been cruelly taken from us by the change, those little things that were what made almost all modern people live lives the kings and queens of old would have envied. Sadly, while these modern conveniences increased and enhanced the quality of life one enjoyed, they were far from vital so I doubted a group focused on pure survival would take the time to recreate them. Hel, even I had only recreated those on a whim while working on an entirely different project. Otherwise, I would’ve continued to magically clean myself, not mess around with conjured water, as pleasant as a shower could be.

During the show and tell, their explanation about the other survivor groups in the region continued and there were quite a few of those groups around. Most of them sounded as if somebody with a modicum of skill and charisma, in some cases more of one than the other, had taken charge to give the necessary leadership and guidance. Or rather, those were the groups that had, well, survived without disintegrating or simply dying off, the groups with somewhat effective leadership. Truly, a classic survival of the fittest, at least on an organisational level. On an individual level, luck and connections could easily play a role, as evidenced by somebody like Daniel who had been lucky to become part of the group I was now introduced to as Search Group One. Numbered by random chance, as it turned out, not by some perceived order of ability or competence, as disappointing as that was.

Regardless, while they didn’t have meaningful information on all the various groups in the region, as there were some twenty-odd groups of various vastly differing sizes around, I learned enough to realise that there was no true cohesion. The people might unite under some truly competent and powerful leader who gave them a vision of something better, a role might be able to take if I were so inclined, or they might unite if faced with an outside for, some organised force that necessitated unity to survive. Again, a role I could take, if I were so inclined but, just as I had no interest in becoming some sort of messianic figure to lead the downtrodden into a glorious future, I had no interest in becoming the opposite and force them to fight against some sort of magically rased army, similar to what I had created near the frozen citadel. Not that I could create such an army in this area, I lacked both the power and the necessary spirits to bind, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t create something interesting if I were to put in the effort. Alas, I had better things to do with my time and, maybe, that was for the best.

For a moment, I considered how to best incentivise the five of them to give me more information about the region and what had happened during, or maybe right after, the change. How the geography had been altered and their experience with it, because I simply couldn’t accept that an alteration of the level of shifting cities around wasn’t a mind-bending experience. So, given that I wanted them to continue talking, I decided to continue the tour, even if doing so exposed more of my tower than I had originally planned. Not that I would show them everything, especially not the currently filled cells, but to show them some of it so they kept talking? That, I was quite willing to do.

As we walked up the stairs, after I had to magically undo a lock or three, I brought up the question and got fascinating responses. It turned out, that each of their responses was somewhat different, though it sounded as if the differences were, at least partially, based on geography.

Jack, for example, had been at his cabin to fish when the change hit, not even noticing the initial change. Apparently, he had been somewhat drunk during that particular night and only realised that something utterly bizarre was going on when going out of his cabin in the morning and finding that his fishing hole was gone, replaced by the back garden of a fairly nice mansion. Given that his cabin was some thirty miles up in the mountains, fairly remote and isolated, his confusion was quite warranted, especially when he later explained that the entire mountain range had shifted. And not in some subtle, small manner, some of the peaks he recognised from hiking trips should be dozens of miles from here. To make matters worse, he had no idea what happened to the place these mountains had been taken from, or what had happened to the things that used to be where the mountains now stood. To my faint amusement, he readily admitted that even trying to figure that out was just giving him a serious headache, so he focused on more important things, namely his daily survival until he managed to meet up with and join a group of survivors, one of whom was Sam.

Who readily picked up the tale, giving me her own impression of the change, this one as seen from within the city. Most of it sounded very similar to my own experience, with blue flames and fires breaking out all over, but where the blue flames in my home town had been somewhat subdued, the flames here seemed to have been a mechanism for the insane level of geographical alteration we could see.

Space itself, as described by Samantha, had burned away, only to be replaced with something else as the flames faded away, the description enough to give me a small headache, one that wasn’t alleviated when Daniel, Murray and Jonas told me about the things they had seen. It was all, quite frankly, a massive mess, one that even I couldn't make much sense of, especially with only a few eye-witness reports to go by. Maybe if I visited some of the local mountains in the coming days I could find something interesting, or in the city, if I managed to find more spots where reality had shifted around to bring the two distant towns together.