0bject permanence: a disconnection parable - part III

He walked and walked until it seemed that his feet would simply liquefy under the Nevada sun. His lips were split and bleeding, but he didn’t give a shit because all he wanted to do was reach the next meager little piece of civilization before he was sucked away into oblivion again. He knew it would happen, especially before any actual harm befell him, but he’d grown accustomed to the game he’d invented. He called it: How Long Can I Exist?

His game was, of course, a fallacy, because the fact was that he was somehow designed to be a surrogate for somebody else’s non-existence at the whim of a particularly whimsical universe. Whether or not he was truly, equivocally, aware of it. 

So after, what he assumed to be, hours went by under the throbbing heat of the desert sun, he heard the inevitable sound of a vehicle charging up behind him. Rumbling like a djin. 

He turned to see an old beast of a truck careening toward him in a cloud of dust that would make the Depression look like an afterthought.

The truck stopped. Behind the driver’s seat was an old man with less teeth than  reasons to pick up a stranger. But, pick up a stranger the old man did.

They barreled into Pahrump, and Nil asked the old man to drop him off at the nearest diner. Which the old man did, even going so far as to give the strange young man he found in the middle of a dust-storm a few bucks for a cup of coffee. Nil thanked him within an inch of the old man’s life, and even waved his arm in the air like a madman at the truck as it drove off. 

Nil then went inside and, after side-tracking to the men’s room, asked for two things: a side of toast and a current news paper. Well, technically three things, including a booth in which to enjoy the other two items.

He pulled his remaining bottle of water out of his backpack and sucked on it like a mother’s teat, while he ate toast and read the paper. Toast finished, he lit a cigarette from his absconded pack. 

There were but 2 other patrons in this tiny diner besides himself, but he read his paper like a fiend. Eventually he came across the story of a 23-year old sailor who had disappeared months earlier in Singapore, yet had miraculously been found dazed, but well, in the grotto of a Las Vegas hotel pool.

Nil finished his coffee and gathered his things.