The Long Walk

Even through my dark goggles, the glare of the desert would burn my eyes when the sun was high. From rise to set, the sun would force my eyes into a tight squint and make them water. By the end of each day, each side of my face would have a line of salt running down it, marking the path my tears had taken. The heat of the sand rose through my boots and scorched my feet, and every breath was like inhaling fire while the sun was up. Time was broken not by seconds and minutes, but by single trudging steps taken up and down the slopes of vast sand dunes. For days I had followed the silent man through the desert, maybe weeks. I had lost track in the unchanging cycle of cruelly hot days and painfully cold nights.

In the few seconds of rest and clear thought I managed, in the moments just before exhausted sleep or just after waking, I would question my choice to follow the silent man into the desert.

When Sachiko had mentioned the Sig Nomad to me as an option for making my way across the unfriendly reaches of the Boundless Realm, she had spoken of them as a group of freedom fighters, striking against the Realm's Jump Cops. When I had actually made contact, though, I found out that the Sig Nomad which fought for free travel in the Realm was only a small part of a large confederation of wanderers, most of whom were only slightly concerned with the actions of the Jump Cops.

The majority of the Sig Nomad were just that, nomads who wandered all the paths between realities, no matter how basic or esoteric they might be. Most weren't concerned with annoyances like the Realm because the Realm's ability to hinder the Sig Nomad's travel was negligible, at best. The Realm simply didn't know enough to be able to stop the nomads from going anywhere they wanted to.

So the small group who, more as a lark than anything else, bedeviled the Jump Cops, had passed me on to other members of the Sig Nomad who they said would be better able to help me. After some discussion, the elder members of the Sig Nomad had decided that I could be helped. Maybe.

I had always thought of my being able to Step across dimensional barriers as a gift, something that set me apart from most beings I encountered in my normal life. Sure, they could travel from place to place by gate almost as easily as I could, but only almost. They had to depend on gates, and spells, and continua craft for their movement, while I could Step at will from place to place, anytime I wished, mostly. But the Sig Nomad thought of my gift as the bare minimum of what would be considered acceptable for a nomad. My ability was circumscribed in ways I didn't always understand, which they found both unacceptable and hilarious in varying degrees. To the nomads, a gate or a bridge or a spell of traversal, and even my ability, were expressions of a misunderstanding about the nature of space.

The nomads saw all places as one, the seeming separation being an expression of the limits of the minds of most beings. They 'walked' from place to place only because that was the easiest way for the three-dimensional brain to convince itself to shift its focus from one 'place' to another. True masters were said to be able to manifest themselves anywhere they wished to, and in as many locations as they wished to. Like masters of any art form, though, nomad masters were rare as true oracles, honest politicians, and real love.

So the Sig Nomad agreed to let me learn to 'walk' from place to place, if I could. I was taken to a town on the edge of a vast desert, presented to the silent man, and told to follow him wherever he went. If I survived, it was possible I'd learn enough to get where I wanted to go.

So I followed the silent man as he walked behind the caravan for days, and I followed the silent man when he left the caravan and walked into the desert.

If all places are one, then all deserts are one. If you walk into the desert, away from anything else but the sand and the air and the sun, and into the place where there is only desert, where you aren't in a desert but in the desert, the desert that is the mother of all deserts, it's just possible that you can pass to another place altogether.

If the desert doesn't kill you first.

The silent man could have lead me through a forest, or out into the ocean, or across frozen wastes. The details would have been different, but the experience would have been mostly the same. Humans, in particular, have to be damn near killed before they can give up the attachment to being in one place, and one place alone. It's remarkably hard to let yourself be... indeterminate.

There was a change, one day that was exactly like the ones before. There was a change in where I stood in the universe. I was nowhere, and I knew exactly where I was.

I knew if I went that way, I'd be near home. So, I walked that way. It wasn't until night fell that I realized that the silent man had been following me.

For two day, I knew I was walking in the right direction, but my destination grew no closer. I'd found my way to nowhere, but I didn't know how to get out. Another day of heat and plodding steps followed, another day of moving without getting anywhere. At midday I stopped, feeling the heat of the sun through my head cover, and the heat of the sand through my shoes, and the pull of the place I wanted to go in front of me, and the feeling of nowhere at my back. I took a step forward, but I didn't move. The pull ahead of me was no stronger, and the feeling of nowhere behind me had not lessened at all.

I stood with my eyes closed. I willed myself towards the pull. Nothing changed. I was suspended between nowhere and somewhere, perfectly balanced.

If all places are one, somewhere and nowhere are both here; Right where I am, I thought. One being in front and one behind was arbitrary. It might as well be that one was above and one below...

Suddenly I was falling. My feet were firmly planted, but the feeling of dropping precipitously was undeniable. I fell, the sand painful against my hands and knees. While I tried to collect myself, something became clear. The pull of my destination was stronger. I hadn't moved, and yet I had.

What if my destination was downhill?

I stood up, and trudged up the next dune, all the time sliding downhill in my mind. When I crested the dune, I could see, shimmering in the distance, a small fort on the edge of the desert; a fort where just a short while ago, I had kidnapped a man in exchange for information. A fort that I knew was only a short series of Steps from home.

I looked back at the silent man. We looked at one another for a long moment until, with a short nod, he turned and walked back the way we had come. Two hours later, I walked out of the desert.