To Gunter. Keep reaching for that rainbow.

Excerpt from: Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabokov

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).

I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people-and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell.

But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated."

1

Tristram Shandy woke up and smelled the ashes. In a hole in the ground, in the shell of a burned out helicopter, he made his home. Raw and engine black, there was almost nothing left. Bare remnants of side doors he could pull aside was all that protected him from the harsh elements of the wasteland.

Walking up a nearby hill to get his head right in the morning, Tristram stood and watched over a valley of defilement. Trees stripped clean, most knocked over and rotting. The sun beat down hard against old rags he had wrapped around his face to protect from radiating winds and dust. The Earth continued to spin, and with it its oceans, but in America's capital there was scarcely anything natural left. An ocean of bone dust. The fossil of industrial civilisation. All very bleak. Best not to think about it.

He bent double and coughed into his fist. The edges of hair were greying and thinned, his eyes dug deep into his face. The skin of his hands stretched tight. His face was long and worn, but he had arms like a blacksmith. For a man to survive so long in the Capital Wasteland and not succumb to it was rare. An anachronism.

Back in the helicopter, Shandy turned on the radio. Through static, In The Mood by The Andrews Sisters played. Appreciating the upbeat sounds, he danced in what little space he had. He wiped the grease and dust from his mirror mounted on the wall and reached for a straight razor. Shaving cream was long extinct, but he made do. A hot oiled rag could work wonders, or so he assumed. Good razor blades were on their way to becoming an endangered species as well.

"I must make a note of that," he said to no one. "Find more razor blades."

But those were secondary on his shopping list. He made knowledge the priority. Pre war books. Most that he found were old and worn and falling apart past the point of unreadable. Those he did find he packed away as best he could, to preserve them for the future. What little future there was, Tristram couldn't say.

"Hey Tristram, what kind of future is there?" an old friend would ask.

"Fuck if I know," he'd say in return.

And fuck if he did know. He had been born in the wasteland, and he would die in the wasteland. That was not up for debate. That was life. He heard legends of civilisations more sufficiently redeveloped, far off in west somewhere. But those were only rumours. There were others rumours, too. Rumours of book depositories filled to the brim with pre war knowledge. Locked away forever. If only he could get to them. The new world had need of them, not the old.

He would have enough to start a library in Junktown or Oldtown, or deep in the hull of The Black Freighter. A place to regather information and to learn again. In the capital wasteland no one really knew anything. One day guns and scrap iron would run dry and everyone will raise their collective shoulders and shrug about what to do next.

He continued to boogie. "Aww yeah."

The song faded away. Tristram continued to boogie to nothing until the next song, Come and Get Your Love by Redbone. One of the most modern songs in the world of pre war music.

Outside he heard deep, guttural snarling. Placing a hand over the open doorway, he lowered his head and stepped out into the world. He couldn't decide on his favourite part of his self proclaimed property. The brown hill, the greyish muddy lake, or the other brown hill.

On his second brown hill a wild dog was yelping and dancing around another animal. A mole rat. Huge radioactive bastards, dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. They had fangs, and Tristram didn't think that was righteous at all. Though dangerous to the inexperienced, both the dog, with its skin burned and melted away from radiation sickness, and the mole rat, were mere inconveniences. Shame to waste two good bullets on them. Best let the two sort out their differences with fisticuffs, then kill and eat the survivor.

"Now that's good eatin'," he said, licking his lips.

Stepping back inside, his eyes flicked to the wall near the cockpit, caked in ash. A map had been stuck to it, with light pencil scratchings. If only he could find an eraser. Dancing over, he examined it. It was pre nuclear holocaust but marked with capital wasteland features.

Looking over the lay of the land, he considered it, stroking his freshly-shaven chin. Some of the wasteland you can run from, you can flee, or you can bring a big gun with very powerful ammo big as you like. And you shall fear no evil, because you carry a gun. But the wasteland is a pit. In time you are stripped of your weapons and armour, an old jumpsuit, deceased ammo, and nothing to do but to traverse the poisonous, health leeching hell without succumbing to the horrors within. All you own strapped to your back, wandering without reprieve and then you die. All very bleak. Best not to think about it.

"Where to next?" he asked, drawing a long finger over flimsy paper. "What do you think Günter? GÜNTER?!"

Günter did not respond. Because he was dead. He had been for quite some time. A skeleton in the cockpit. He wore a round helmet with over sized goggles resting on the crown and coated in a thick later of dust. Arms limp by his side, Günter sat in the pilot's seat. Tristram was mostly sane, but only entertained the idea of Günter because it made him laugh, and Günter was good company anyway.

The song flicked over again to a smooth saxophone. Junktown was the logical destination. But he could go wherever he chose in his quest to preserve the old world. Wherever he chose.