Finding Truth
The Entire Series
This post contains all the posts for the Finding Truth series. It will be updated with the latest entries as I make them over the coming weeks. Be sure to subscribe to not miss the latest entries.
Finding Truth
Chapter 1
There is hope in the orange full moon tonight. It’s the first time in years that I’ve felt this way. I’ve come across paper with words on it. “Newspapers” they used to call it. Another piece to the puzzle as to why I survived and no one else did.
I’m able to touch the top of the doorway of my room. I’ve grown another two inches. There are other rooms with beds. Other closets with clothes. Plenty of forks, spoons and plates for dozens of people. Yet it’s only been me here my whole life. At least from what I remember.
I open the front door for my boxes. Food and drinks are right on time. I never see what delivers these supplies. Just me and the moon here in this empty town.
I begin eating and get to work. But the newspaper doesn’t seem to provide any information of use. The people want something called the “government” to make things better. This government seems to want to help but can’t. That’s because there seem to be a lot of people who think the government will just take away their freedom. Instead, they want to help themselves.
Why do some people want to help themselves while others want the government to help them? It looks like the “self helpers” are doing things to the “want helpers”, but I’m not sure.
It’s all very confusing.
I’m going to look for more papers. I need to find the truth.
After weeks of searching, I haven’t found another newspaper in this town. I sit down in another deserted house and flip open the one newspaper I do have for the hundredth time. What is this? It’s a short article I didn’t notice before. It reads:
“I don’t use these words lightly, but I don’t believe what we are being told. Why aren’t we allowed to talk freely? Why aren’t we allowed to visit one another? Why must our diet change? There is but one explanation remaining: we are being deceived. We deserve the truth!”
It’s signed, Yusuf. Same name as mine.
What does deceived mean?
The front door begins to rattle and I feel the house shift as the wind leans into the structure. A bright light comes through the windows.
“Knock, knock.” I turn towards the door. Can it be? Someone else is here! After all these years.
I open the door and find a towering figure surrounded by an orange glare from the full moon. “Hello, Yusuf. It’s nice to meet you. I am Truth.”
Is this really happening? Finally, finally, another person! I run up to hug him but Truth just walks past me. Standing in the living room, his head looks around, pausing in short increments.
“Why have you left your home?” Truth smiles.
I walk next to him and look up. “Well,” I say, “to find answers.”
“Did your training not provide answers?”
“Sure, yeah. All sorts of useful things. I learned how to speak in training. Learned how to prepare meals. Learned how to read and write. Learned math and stuff like that.”
“Then why have you left your home?”
“Well, as I’ve gotten older–”
“You are 18 now.”
“Yes! How did you know that?”
“Why should I not know such a thing?”
I stare at him for a moment. “Because you are Truth?”
“That’s right. Why did you leave your home?”
“I was looking for the truth.”
“And you have found me.”
Okay, this is weird and it’s not because of me. This guy is a bit off. “No, no. I didn’t mean that type of truth. I mean the truth. You know about the world. This world that only seems to have me in it.”
“I can assure you,” Truth says, “that you are not alone.”
“Wonderful! When can I meet them?”
“Them is me.” Truth smiled.
“Let’s go home.” I gesture outside and we begin walking home in the night. The orange moon provided the light as we made our way through deserted neighborhoods.
“So, you are Truth?” I say after a long stretch of silence.
“Yes, Yusuf. I am Truth.”
“What happened to all the people that used to live in these homes?”
“For protection, they had to leave.”
Finally some answers! I’m so excited, I pull out the newspaper from inside my jacket. “Is it because of the government? Or the people angry at the government?” I point to the article in the paper.
“Yusuf, where did you get that?”
“I found it in a box inside a store. A real newspaper! Can you believe it?” It feels like Truth is walking faster. I manage to keep up. “It’s a message from the past. Something happened, Truth. I need to understand why. It could explain everything! I need to know what happened. I need to know the truth.”
Truth takes the newspaper and holds it out, flipping through the pages, his head slightly moving up and down on each one. We’re still walking briskly.
“Well?” I say out of desperation.
“You shouldn’t have looked at this, Yusuf. Let’s go inside,” Truth says, gesturing to the door. We’ve made it home. “Your memory will need to be erased. For your protection.”
My memory erased? Can Truth do that? And why would he want to do that? Where did he go? He’s not in the living room. I check the bedroom downstairs and the three upstairs.
“Truth!” I shout. I need to catch my breath. What’s that smell?
I’m running downstairs and see smoke. I spot Truth in the kitchen–burning the newspapers!
His head turns towards me. “Thank you for showing this to me.” Flames shoot out of the cooking pot on the stove. “This is extremely dangerous.”
“But it seemed to explain things. It’s just information! For my 18 years, I’ve been alone, wondering what happened to everyone else. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“I am Truth.”
“I get it, I get it. You’re Truth. But I don’t know who I am.”
“You are Yusuf.”
“I want to know where I come from. How I got here. Why no one else is here. Don’t you understand?”
“What has come before does not matter. The present is all that matters. The present is safe.”
“If you’re, Truth, tell me what happened. Where did everyone go? Why am I alone?”
“You are with Truth. You are no longer alone. You are safe.”
I was less frustrated when I was alone. His eyes are locked onto me. He doesn’t seem to blink very much. Does he blink at all? Wait, there he just blinked. One blink. I guess that’s normal. Truth follows me into the dining room.
“Look, I know you’re trying to help me. To keep me safe.” I’m pacing on one side of the table. “But I need more information about the world to know who I am. I’m more than just me. It matters what others are or have done. The good and the bad–all of it. I don’t need to be protected from the truth. I need it.”
I stand at the end of the table in front of Truth. “Why was everyone arguing in the newspaper? Why did the writer say we were being deceived?”
“Your consumption,” Truth says, “of the newspaper information was unfortunate.” Before I can react, his hand stretches across the top of my head. What is he doing? I try to look up at him but I can’t. He’s too strong.
My eyes are closing. I’m so tired. I just need to…
I sit up in bed and squint from the sunlight. My head is throbbing. I don’t remember going to sleep last night. I was speaking with someone, I think. Or was that a dream?
I smell food. I peek out the doorway and walk down the stairs. Someone prepared a bunch of food and wrapped it up to go. “Hello?” I say. I go from room to room and find no one. Dreams don’t make food so someone was definitely here.
I open the front door and see the usual empty town. I know I was speaking with someone though. I scan the sky for drones–they haven't delivered a package yet. Back inside the living room, a backpack is on the floor next to the couch. It’s heavy and filled with clothes and supplies.
On the table is a map! I’ve only read about them but never actually had one. An “x” is circled with the words, “Yusuf, go to meet up point.” It’s signed “Truth.” Wait, that was his name! The man I met yesterday. I twist the map in different directions trying to get my bearings. Well, I’m not good with maps, but okay, let’s go find Truth. I mean, I’ve been out here alone my whole life and everything just came to me. But how hard can it be to go out into the world?
I get changed and stuff the food and water in the backpack and head out. The map seems to show a desert outside of town that will go on for miles. The mountain peaks come after that. If they are the ones I’m thinking of, I’ve seen the tips of them covered in white during winter.
My only hesitation is that I feel like something was bothering me yesterday. Was it Truth? I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like retracing your steps to figure out where you left something. Only thing is, I don’t know what I’ve left.
I pass through the neighborhood houses and stores that have always been empty for me. There’s that rusted bicycle lying next to the sign that greets you as you enter the city. “Welcome to Homeland” it reads with what’s left of the bicycle lying on top of the thick stone sign in the ground.
The hike out of town is a bit tiring. Looking back as I make it to the top of the hill, my neighborhood looks so small. I say, “Goodbye, Homeland.” I quickly turn and make my way towards mountains well off into the distance.
Chapter 2
It's been three days of hiking and the mountains don’t seem any closer. This desert seems to go on forever. I’d be lost without the map that Truth left me. Oh, and the compass I found in my backpack–I just keep making sure that I head North East to the first map marker called “reclamation”. There should be massive boulders and a valley below. I cut through the valley and make my way to “floating lake”, the next map marker. The “landing zone” is the next stop–that should be interesting. I guess something will be landing for me? Maybe it already has. After that is just Truth’s circle to meet him there. Directionally, this is all north east on the map, for the most part, with the mountains at the end.
I finished eating a mid-morning snack, leftover bread and some honey. It’s light but gives me a jolt of energy I need. I’m just 18 but I need a lot of calories. The food that Truth packed me is holding up so far. I look at the drones in the sky leading the way–I’m sure they will drop down some food again at some point. At least I hope so, it could be weeks before I get to Truth.
Suddenly, I fall to the ground. What did I trip on? It’s just flat around me. Wait, the ground is vibrating. A lot. The sand and small rocks are bouncing off the ground. Two large explosions go off! Each just a short burst and ahead of me. I lay flat and still. The ground stops moving.
Whatever it is, it is getting larger and black. It was round but now is a triangle shape with a long narrow tip, hovering and rotating in different directions. “We are here to help,” it says. From the ground, I angle my head just enough to get a view from the tops of my eyes and keep the rest of me still. They both begin to move with a wide red beam emanating from it to the ground.
Is this from Truth? If it was, why wouldn’t it say so? The red beams are coming in my direction. I squeeze and pull the backpack closer to hide my face. A zipper is open and a small silver cylinder is sticking out. It has a note stuck to it: “Point at target.” I thought it was some sort of navigation when I first noticed it a couple of days ago, but could it be a weapon?
The beams are almost on me! I grab the device and aim it at a triangle and push the button. A lightning bolt comes out of the sky. “It’s time to asc–”, the triangle explodes.
The red beam from the other triangle briefly touches me when I roll to my side and aim the device at it and push the button. “Zhooom!” the lightning shoots down, exploding the other triangle.
I jump up, brushing off the debris singeing my clothes. Two round drones drop from the sky. “Thanks,” I say. I squeeze the silver device in my hand. The drones hover low and seem to absorb the debris. Their shape slowly changes into a triangle, its tips pointing at me.
I take a gulp of water staring at the two drones in the dessert sky ahead of me. They saved my life, destroying those triangle drones. Well, along with this silver cylinder that I used to pinpoint their lightning strikes. The cylinder is clipped to my waist now—I think I’m going to need it.
Thankfully, after taking out those triangle drones, my drones quickly changed back into its round shape. Flying ahead of me now, we’re following the path on the map that Truth left me.
First stop, “reclamation.” Don’t know what that is supposed to mean but, sure, why not?
What was that? Something just touched me. Footprints appear to my right and out in front of me. “Who’s there?” I shout, with my cylinder in hand. “I’ve got a weapon!” I wave the silver cylinder at the air.
“He’s here!” a voice shouts. But I don’t see anything.
Another set of footprints appear and stop at the other ones. “I told you he’d come!”
“Listen,” I say, “come out or I’ll use this!” I point my device where I think they are.
“He’s got an arc!”
“Oh no!” Suddenly, they appear sprawled out on the ground.
They were dusty with layers of over sized clothes. Except for their pants, that were much too short. Both had curly hair, one black and one sandy brown.
“This thing?” I said, clipping the device back to my belt. “I’m not going to hurt you.” They grab my outstretched hands and pull themselves up, standing just below my waist. “What are you?”
The black haired one looked up at me and shook his head. “What are we? Ha! Why we’re the owners of this planet.”
“The owners!” the other said. He turned to his friend. “Jupe, those humans always forget that, don’t they? Showing up here and messing everything up!”
“Look, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m Yousuf. It’s nice to meet you, Jupe,” I say to the black haired one.
Jupe said, “Oh, he’s all right, Benny. Besides we can use his help these days.”
“I guess so,” Benny said. “But we’ll be watching you.” He nods and squints his eyes.
I nod back. “How did you disappear like that?”
“We only just met,” Jupe said. “After we get to know ya, maybe we’ll tell one day. Maybe.” Benny and Jupe wink at one another.
“How about,” Benny said, “you tell us where you got that arc?” He points to the cylinder device on my waist.”
“It was given to me. A gift I guess.”
Benny shakes his head. “No one just gives the ARC device to someone. Its got to be earned.”
“ARC?” I ask.
“That’s what the humans called them,” Jupe said. “Stood for something I think.”
Benny cleared his throat. “Artificial Reality Connector. ARC.” Benny smiled.
“No one likes a show off,” Jupe said, his arms crossed.
“Well,” I said, “it saved my life. Helped my drones attack some other drones.” I point to the drones hovering ahead. “I’m not sure how it works, to be honest.”
“What?” Benny said. He and Jupe slowly back away from me. “Be careful, Yousuf. Only well trained humans wield an ARC.”
I walk toward the drones. “You boys coming?” Benny and Jupe run to catch up.
I wish I knew more about maps. I twist and turn it, trying to figure out our location. At least I know we are heading north east. If I didn’t have those drones in the sky to follow, I’d be lost.
Unfortunately, Benny and Jupe are set on helping as well.
Jupe ripped the map from my hands again. “I’m not so sure we’re heading the right way,” he said.
“Please be careful with that,” I said. “It’s the only map I’ve got.”
Benny ran ahead and waved his arms at the sky. “I wouldn’t trust those drones, either!”
“Oh calm down, Benny!” Jupe said. “You heard the man—they saved his life. Wait, I see it now. We’re right here on the map and heading to ‘reclamation’.”
“That’s our first stop,” I said. I tried to step around Benny who blocked my path. “What now, Benny?” He’s got something to get off his chest again. For someone who I’ve known for half a day, he sure has a lot to say to me.
“You need to be self-reliant,” Benny said. “You can’t trust those drones. Ain’t that right, Jupe?”
Jupe nods. “We’re the protectors of this planet. You should listen to us. That’s what all the other humans used to do.”
Since I can remember, I have been the only other human here. I need to learn more. “When did you see them?” I kneeled down.
“We were just kids,” Benny said. “Don’t remember much about them. Jupe is even younger than me, so he don’t either.”
“Were you told anything? Maybe read something about my kind? Anything?”
“Tell him the story about the ARC,” Jupe said. All of us look at it hanging from my waist.
“Well,” Benny said, “it was just kids story. Nothing scientific or anything like that.” He walked back and forth in thought. “Our elders told us of a time not too long ago in which this planet was filled with humans. Some humans were able to connect to anything, to control or access it, using an ARC. Through years of training, few humans were entrusted with that device. But it can do anything.”
I grabbed the ARC. “Anything?”
“Careful!” Benny and Jupe shouted and rolled away in opposite directions.
“Don’t even touch it, “Benny said, “until you’ve had proper training. Put it away!”
“But what does it do?
“What doesn’t it do?” Jupe said. “That’s the problem, right Benny?”
“All I know is that there used to be humans all over this planet and now there is just you, Yousuf. And I think that ARC may be the reason.”
“But it was given to me for this journey and it already helped me.”
“Who gave it to you,” Jupe asked.
“Truth.”
The horror in their faces appeared and then disappeared, along with the rest of them. Benny and Jupe were gone.