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Dirk let out a sigh, leaning back against the concrete wall, his thoughts nothing but mist in his mind, curling and twisting, but ultimately disappearing into shapeless nothingness. He had nothing to occupy him at the moment, nothing that needed to be done outside of his cramped apartment, but he couldn’t stand being in there any longer. The walls felt like they were closing in on him, the very air choking him.
Not that out here was any better, the entire city was a series of concrete boxes built like coffins, impossible and cavernous, a labyrinth where everyone who lived in it was a Minotaur all their own. It took hours to find a way out, sometimes, unless you knew the way, had memorized the paths so perfectly as to not make a single wrong turn.
Better have your own thread if you ever wanted to get out of here.
Even though Dirk had been in this city all his life, even he still got lost if he stepped into the unknown. He was used to it all, though, the misdirection, the proximity of everything, the world condensed into a series of cubes, the neon lights that flared endlessly, the press of human on human, lives encroaching on each other.
It was an ocean of humanity, that was what he knew. An ocean where he stood, a solitary lighthouse. Or, perhaps, merely a piece of flotsam, hardly important enough to qualify as any sort of structure or complicated life form. Perhaps he was a piece of dead seaweed, or even nothing more than the salt that flecked off of the waves.
The point being: one immeasurably tiny part of an otherwise phenomenal world.
Dirk shifted on the railing he was sitting on, still balanced perfectly, at no risk of falling, but his ass was getting numb. Back and forth a moment to get his blood moving, a hand reaching to push his shades up from where they had started to slide down the bridge of his nose.
He hadn’t really been paying attention to anyone around him, people such a vague thing to him, (aside from Roxy who was across the city, and Jane, whom he only knew from a computer screen). But motion close to him caught his eye, someone leaning on the railing of the next balcony over. They were looking at him, head tilted, scarlet lights from the nearby neon sign shining off of the lenses of their square-rimmed glasses.
“Top of the morning to ya!” the boy greeted, his tone overly friendly and way more cheerful than Dirk was used to hearing.
He blinked. “It’s…nighttime.”
The boy scoffed, a fist slamming on the railing, metal vibrating with the strike, “Confound it all, I just can’t keep track without being outside.”
Dirk had to admit, his interest was piqued by how weird this guy was, his eyes narrowing behind his shades, “We…are outside.”
“No, no I mean outside,” he spoke emphatically, waving his hands and shaking his head, “Wind, grass, trees, and the like. This is—well, practically indoors.”
Where in the world did this guy drop from?
“Anyways,” the stranger pushed on, straightening up to his full height, reaching out to offer a hand to Dirk, “I’m Jake. What’s your name?”
Dirk honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to speak to someone long enough to justify giving them his name. Frowning, he reached out, shaking Jake’s hand. Quick, but firm. Jake’s palm was warm, like he had a heat generator hidden somewhere in there. “Dirk. I take it you’re not from around here.”
“Nope!” Jake grinned, the white of his teeth stark against the dullness of everything else around them, “I’ve only just moved in! Although I’m from this area, I’ve never really been in the city before!”
As far as Dirk knew, there weren’t really any other settlements nearby. People came and went, obviously, this was a port town, but to live in the area and not in the city? Was he from some nowhere-hovel or something? It was sort of rude to ask directly, wasn’t it? Not that Dirk particularly cared about being rude, but he could hear Jane chastising him in his head. He could at least try to act like a person, for phantom-Jane-in-his-head, if no one else.
“What do you think of it?” a leading question instead, one that might still cause Jake to speak on his past, but invited him to simply share more of himself. Dirk was curious enough for that.
“Oh, it’s brilliant! Quite odd as well, but well worth the adventure of it all. There’s so many places. Every corner is somewhere new, a home, a shop, some kind of community area. Even gardens, in this concrete jungle! Utterly incredible. Still not enough plants for me, I feel a bit out of sorts, but, well, still.”
Dirk was used to all that. Every sight, every smell. Even the things he hadn’t seen before failed to interest him. Jake was completely different. It was strange. Refreshing, somehow.
“You’re missing the greenhouses, probably. Plenty more vegetation there, aside from what’s scattered around to give us oxygen.”
Jake tilted his head, taking in the information, but giving him a bit of a side-eye. “You don’t sound particularly enthused, my friend. Sorry, is the topic boring? I’m not—well. I like talking but I know that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m any good at it.”
“No,” Dirk replied, and he surprised himself that it wasn’t entirely a lie. Even though his own thoughts skewed negative, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, and listening to someone talk wasn’t the worst thing in the world either. “I just don’t spend much time around people.”
Jake leaned back, as if some comical wind had blown him over from Dirk’s words. “Really? Even though you live here?”
“All my life,” Dirk smirked, watching as Jake’s eyes grew even wider in befuddlement. He shrugged, shifting slightly on the railing, “Not really a people person, I guess.”
“Fascinating,” and the way Jake said it sounded genuine, like he really thought there was something interesting in someone who didn’t seek out others. Dirk hadn’t met anyone as barefaced as this guy before. Jake waved out a hand, vaguely indicating the walkway in front of them, where far below there were people going about their lives, tiny dots on the horizon. “I love it. I love being around people. And this, well, it’s like Coruscant, a city on top of itself, with a mysterious underbelly beneath it all. Endless mystery and adventure.”
Jake jumped up on the railing himself, perching to mirror Dirk. For a second, he was worried he’d fall, but quickly it became clear that Jake had a good sense of himself. He showed no sign of fear or uncertainty, and immediately was just as comfortable in the precarious position as Dirk was. And, without a care in the world, the boy continued, “Where I’m from was quite, well…barren. Of people, at least. Quite lonely.”
Dirk frowned. There was plenty of loneliness here too. An ocean of people didn’t make you less solitary, a single ship among the waves. The only company you really had was your own head. Dirk knew that well, and kept himself duly occupied to chase off the feeling. Still, that wasn’t the right thing to say to someone he just met.
Luckily, Jake didn’t need any input from him to continue. His eyes were far off, looking to the middle-distance, nostalgically hazy, “I’m from just…out there. The wilderness outside of the city. I grew up there, with my grandma. Gran was a real firecracker—said she used to live in society, but swore it all off after I was born. Took me out there to keep me free of it all, for a while. We had one home that was a bit more formed than the others—Gran had a lab in a house out there, deep in the forest, but we’d move around all the time too. We had a bunch of camps out there. Sometimes she’d go trade or go into the city for supplies, but otherwise it was just the two of us, living off the land. Fending off any predators that came round.” He half-laughed, shaking his head, “Honestly I didn’t even know it was weird until I started watching movies when we were home. I started seeing lots of characters who weren’t like me, lives that weren’t like mine. It was strange, and interesting. I was always enthralled by it all. But, whenever I tried to talk to Gran about it, she’d just get… I don’t know. She was trying to protect me, I think.
“Then she passed away, and for a year or so, I stayed put. Living as she taught me, in our house. I dug through her lab, reading her research and notes. Found her diary, and the like. It was weird to be all alone—I couldn’t stand it anymore. And so…I decided to come out here, to see it for myself. Been here a few weeks now, and honestly? I don’t really see what she was worried about at all.”
Wild story. Unbelievable, coming from anyone else, but the way Jake spoke made it clear that it was his realty. The guy didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body. Or, if he did, Dirk certainly couldn’t tell. But, he was good at sniffing out cons, and had a predilection for mistrust. So, since his own internal alarms weren’t ringing, Dirk decided to take him at his word.
“Well,” Dirk said, speaking into the pause Jake had left between them, “Assuming you’re somewhere around twenty, her memories of this place are two decades old, at least. History changes, and sometimes those changes come fast.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Jake’s expression had cleared a bit, the soft-melancholy of before turning boisterous again. “Gran used to talk about how this was a military base. It doesn’t really look like one, though.”
Oh. Dirk blinked. “Well. That’s because it isn’t. Originally, the city was just a trading port for pearls and salt. Nothing super world-changing, but useful enough that it needed to be protected, so a military outpost was set up around the trading operations. Then, as our neighbors across on Skaia started beefing up their military, and we got a little nervous, beefed up our own. Walls bristling with weapons, it all started to get built up into a serious force. This was hundreds of years ago, mind you.”
Jake nodded along, but Dirk could already tell that his eyes were starting to glaze over. A familiar look from Roxy especially called ‘Shut Up, Dork’. But, Dirk wasn’t a man who could stop himself when he got going. He was at least going to summarize it all, lest his library of knowledge trapped in his head explode from all the pressure. “Anyways, like, three different world powers fought over this place, kept capturing it for themselves before they realized, ‘wait, these chucklefucks are just making, fucking, salt. Who gives a shit’ then they’d up and leave us here and someone else would swoop in being like ‘hey, this some kind of military base?’ Capture us, ‘oh it’s just fucking salt’ then they’d leave too.
“On and on it went. Built and rebuilt, a port town is still too convenient to move. Sometime after everything was demolished again, we got really modular about it all. Build in boxes so that we’re more caved in, a little less military-seeming. The smaller we are, the better. So we all crammed in close. Then we just kept building, got big with no one destroying us for a while. And here we are. Finally no one is trying to demolish us, take over, or cares that we just make fucking salt and shit. And we’re just a normal city now, plenty going on. And massive as hell.”
Dirk sighed, leaning back to stretch out his arms, “Yeah, I know it’s totally boring. That’s the history of it all, in a nutshell.”
Jake, to his effort, did try to muster up an encouraging smile, “Well! It is… a lot! But I suppose that’s…well, it IS interesting!”
“You don’t gotta lie, bro.”
Jake huffed, “Well…then I won’t. I’m not one for textbooks myself, always put me right to sleep. But… well, we all find different things interesting, eh?”
“Sure.”
And yeah, he was stoic and cool about it, but Dirk really wasn’t bothered. Jake was far from the first person to be a bit bored by his prattling on. It was part of the experience, really. And the guy had still listened, and that was better than most.
Jake spoke up again, looking out again towards their surroundings, concrete upon concrete, modularity in abundance. “So…is that what you see in all this? The history of it all? The pieces as they fell into place to form today?”
Dirk shrugged, “I…suppose it is. I’ll admit—I have a hard time seeing what you see here. To me…it’s all banal.”
Banal, sure, but…interesting things did happen here. And even if he only had a scant few people in his life, he had some. Roxy, Jane, and maybe Jake too, if they stayed in contact. Maybe more, if he ever bothered to reach out to the mass of humanity that surrounded him every day, instead of languishing alone in his tower.
Perspective, maybe that was all he needed. Here was a guy who lived in actual isolation, who craved humanity, and had sought it accordingly. Who looked at this place of stone and history and saw wonders and experiences worth having. And maybe, Dirk thought, he’d be able to start seeing the point of it all. Jake’s life shedding light into his own. If Jake could leave loneliness to seek better, perhaps Dirk could too.
Maybe this was what hope was like. Looking at this place and seeing the good things in life. The breathing of a great creature, the coming together of lives like puzzle pieces, mosaics of shape and color. A city above and below, people crammed in but living, gentle rain, the ocean, endless neon lights shining through the dark like stars in the night sky.
“But,” Dirk’s lips quirked into a more genuine smile than he usually allowed himself, “Maybe that’ll change.”
Jake’s responding smile was dazzling.