by G. L. Argain
Perhaps if Andrew got his engineering degree, he would get a stable job, save up some money, and go on a road trip. A really long road trip. One that would take him through every state and let him explore, experience all the scenic views that would delight his soul like nothing else had. He didn’t want to see gray skyscrapers—he wanted to see mountains, white from snow or green from vegetation. He didn’t want to see traffic lights once every hundred meters. He wanted to see an open, deserted highway on which he could drive for dozens of miles without seeing another soul. But above all, there would be no rush, no predetermined destination to worry about reaching on time. If…events aligned to his personal favor.
In the meantime, however, he worked at a minimum wage job, spending the rest of his time working on homework and applying for private scholarships. He didn’t talk to friends often, let alone knew many in the first place, and whenever he had a short break between college and work, he preoccupied himself with whatever he could find on the Internet. A temporary escape from reality that might be called a distraction.
It was definitely better in Pomona than it was in Searles, California. A small town in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do except school…not exactly the most glamorous place to live in, but in the end it didn’t matter. No one there behaved like small town folks; people were afraid to walk down the sidewalk at night, neighbors hardly talked to each other, and most of all, few people appeared to enjoy Searles for what it was. There was always griping to be had—griping at the wind, at the sand, at the heat, at the local druggies, at the gritty old roads, and at the “nothing” of interest to be offered in town. But there was never enough talk about the spring wildflowers, the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the opportunity to go hiking on a trail within walking distance from home. Perhaps that’s what all places are like these days, interconnecting with modern technology. Always hoping to live it up where the grass is greener, never looking at life through the big picture.
Trying to find a job was horrible, especially to those outside of the main industry of the mineral factory north of town. According to the town’s demographics, the unemployment rate was only 6%, but most of those employees were a part of the industry, and nepotism was a major problem. If the survey excluded the factory workers, Searles would have at least twenty percent unemployment. Andrew only had one job while he lived there: tutoring. Being a tutor didn’t count much as a job due to the little money and experience he got out of it. He once took up community service, but it was confusing and inconsistent—he wasn’t sure who to contact for whatever or whenever he had to do something. Lack of organization was a common problem among businesses in Searles. Therefore, the young human’s most valuable asset was to focus on school.
Andrew attended a junior college outpost nearby Searles for three years before transferring to Pomona. During this time, he entered a sort of neutrality in which his spirit had weakened. He felt emotionally stiff; he hardly cried when his childhood pet died, and he didn’t feel chills down his spine when he heard a lovely song. Even when something like this did happen, he was always expecting something more out of it, so he was continuously dissatisfied. He and his friends from high school talked to each other less and less often, growing apart to the point where they were friends no longer. He knew he wasn’t alone—there were plenty of people at the college who became depressed after losing most of their friends. However, seeing that Andrew hardly had a social life and spent most of his time in front of his computer, he certainly felt alone. He wouldn’t talk through the Internet—he was strictly a face-to-face person out of the fear of losing touch with the human world. He did not think, however, about how the idea of “cognitive dissonance” applied…
At Pomona, Andrew talked to more people than he did back at Searles, but his social life was still “dead” due to all the tasks he demanded to take. His validation: “I need to think about my future. If I don’t, then I might have as well not have gone to college at all.” His ultimate goal was a Ph.D. in some branch of engineering, even though that would mean spending several more years of his life in this same state. If successful, he would be working his ass off at some company to earn money for his family—if he had one. Andrew hoped to have two children, one of which would be a boy who wanted to be just like his father—who would have to keep worrying about his own future. It’s a big cycle—a cycle of dreams and ideals that say one must be successful to be content.
Andrew wants a change—always had, always will. A massive change that would influence and benefit everybody, get them out of the cycle as well. But all he could hope for was live to see the planet endure some sort of apocalypse…where the people who survived worked together to make something better out of the world. Although, it is entirely possible that the survivors would turn everything back to the way it was, maybe even worse.
When the latest “doomsday” was set on December 21, 2012, Andrew saw this as a possibility for his dream to come true. No more celebrities. No more fast food. No more Internet—the very tool he himself enjoyed most. All he wanted was to keep the cars—or at least the bicycles—as well as the landscape so he could explore the vast lands of Earth. Unfortunately, the closer the date became, the less likely it seemed the apocalypse would happen. There was nothing in the world or anything surrounding it that looked like it was going to end soon. Everyone was just getting ready for Christmas like they did every year.
On December 20th, Andrew drove his car to the foot of a mountain several miles away from Searles, hiked up the mountain, waited for the sunset, and screamed at the top of his lungs once the big orange light in the sky disappeared. He didn’t care who heard, yet at the same time he did. He himself couldn’t describe why he decided to do that, but if it were anyone’s guess, it would be because he couldn’t do it at home.
And so it didn’t happen. The world didn’t end, and everything stayed the same. Andrew didn’t change much either, although one can bet he was rather disappointed. Nevertheless, he decided to keep living on this planet he called home, not caring whether the cycle would ever change in his lifetime or not.
Chapter 5
Andrew Lockeford was twenty-one and a half years old at the time he left Earth, and was a month older when he met Juvir. For twenty-one years, he had been living life as a journey like everyone else, searching for answers to questions such as the purpose of life as well as its many features. Many people think that they are special, but Andrew believed he was even more so—to the point that maybe he had a purpose in life that would impact many, many individuals. In his mind, however, he was thinking only of humans…
A person’s purpose in life is whatever he or she makes of it. If somebody had the potential to start a business that would become so successful it would go global, but did not have the courage nor the will to do it, then that person’s purpose went from world-renowned entrepreneur to the average whoever. Unfortunately, because of varying circumstances, one may not even get the chance to establish a direct purpose. Sometimes a toddler playing outside has its life cut short because a nearby coyote was hungry. Sometimes a person’s purpose to live is just to live, not just exist. Everything has the ability to exist.
But Andrew truly believed he had a purpose, a meaningful destiny. He was just going to let it come to him rather than search for it himself, going with the flow until the time was right. The human also worried that he might screw up his destiny by searching too early. But he always ruminated over life and the wondrous experiences that came with it.
Many of these metaphysical thoughts can start at the age of early childhood. For instance, as his mother called the four-year-old version of our human to the other room, he thought, My name’s Andrew. That’s funny. Why is it Andrew? What if it was Bob?
Speaking of Andrew’s childhood experience, he had never been worried about monsters hiding in his bedroom during the dark. Maybe he was taught to think logically…or perhaps his parents never told them about monsters being in the bedroom at night in the fi
rst place. However, as a seven-year-old, after hearing about the possibility of aliens existing in outer space, he thought, Do aliens exist? I mean, it’s totally possible. Why would Earth be alone? Then there was religion; he had never gone to church, and he had never determined for himself whether God existed or not until he was a teenager. During that time, he recognized that some Christian ideas didn’t seem to add up, whereas some of the Atheist ideas didn’t seem to explain enough, so he decided to follow his own beliefs based on what he perceived and concluded. He welcomed the idea of an omnipotent deity, but he did not delve too far into the supernatural aspects out of existential fear. Beneath the surface, however, he felt that souls could exist, that everyone had a spirit that passed on into an afterlife when the physical body had not.
As Andrew had found out, he became very philosophical whenever he was depressed. If he came home disappointed because some girl rejected him, or that he had been bullied, or that he was just left out of something by his friends, his mind would wander to the point of developing completely irrelevant ideas. Such ideas included, “How come we’re born as humans and not fish?” or “How would zombies and unicorns react to each other?”
Answering such questions would not help anyone much with the questions that we search for the most, such as, “What should we do with our lives?” The ironic thing is that we can’t seem to answer these questions for ourselves until we die.
Andrew had lived a turbulent life, but as it was like the lives of many others, it could hardly be called unique. He was diagnosed with autism as a kid, meaning that he didn’t quite pick up on social cues like other children did until he was fully grown. He wasn’t very aware of his surroundings, particularly for news. On September 11, 2001, he had no idea at all that something tragic was happening at New York on that day; he didn’t notice whether people around him looked devastated or not, therefore he couldn’t tell if something was wrong. On a similar note, he would often sit at the table and hear his parents having a conversation when suddenly one of them says, “Tell us what you think, Andrew,” and he would reply, “What are we talking about?” “You!”
While our human couldn’t remember certain tragic events that didn’t concern him, he could remember sitting in an isolated part of the playground eating a colorful Pop-Tart, satisfied regardless of what the other kids were doing. On some occasions he would ask to join a game of kickball or foursquare, but ninety percent of his recesses were spent collecting acorns under the nearby oak trees and putting them into his pocket. He would usually take the acorns out and throw them back onto the grass because he didn’t need them—the simple act of collecting them satisfied the boy more often than kickball ever did.
He connected the most with a friend named Shaun, but even then they didn’t do much together. Andrew’s friend was two months older and always an inch taller; they bickered over random topics and laughed over others. When Andrew and Shaun met again after six years without contact, they were still similar, still best friends. However, there were times when important issues had separated the two. Being repeatedly bullied by a particular kid in the fifth grade, Shaun was led to act upon a dangerous stunt. He pulled Andrew aside to show him a firecracker he had obtained somehow, planning to attach it to the kid’s back in order to spook him. Andrew knew that this could go horribly wrong, so he stood up and tried taking the firecracker; Shaun didn’t see the reason, let alone agree, so he was not so likely to give it up. After a few short seconds, both of them noticed a “yard-duty” lady looking at them—the two boys stopped fighting immediately. Neither of them wanted to be found with a firecracker in their hands, so Shaun hid it in his pocket and later into his backpack. The lady did nothing, and Andrew told Shaun that if he ever lit the firecracker, he would not be friends with him anymore. Later that day, Shaun crushed up the firecracker into bits of paper and gunpowder, throwing it away into a trashcan at the park nearby his house; no one would be likely to see it, let alone use it. Aside from that, however, the two boys didn’t have much to worry about in general.
Then came Andrew’s move to Searles, where he would enter the hell known as middle school. Back in elementary school, he was more or less the comic relief of the classroom, but he was too socially awkward to know that the things he did were plainly idiotic. As he moved on into middle school, his socially awkward tendencies resulted in…consequences. Many of the students guessed he was retarded in general, so they had thrown him aside and taunted him repeatedly; somebody once threw a Master lock at his head for reasons unknown to this day. It was in the seventh grade that Andrew realized he had autism; he didn’t know what the symptoms were, but he knew now why his social life was so poor. The now more self-aware and externally aware human wanted to be like everyone else, even if it meant making some sacrifice to his dreams. The worst part was that he had already established the first impression for everyone else, so he believed it was too late to fix anything. He had been asked to hang out with some of the more popular kids during lunch, and although it wasn’t a joke, he had the feeling they did it out of pity. He had nothing interesting enough to talk about, so nothing improved in his social life.
Puberty kicked into high gear during the eighth-grade and his freshman year of high school, thus he became disheartened over one thing: lack of a girlfriend. Andrew felt as though everyone else was in a relationship, not knowing whom exactly was together or not. He pursued girls out of his league, and if by some chance he did receive a “Yes,” he would screw things up in a heartbeat. We are all dumb that way when we are young. And there is no set age where we automatically escape from that phase.
As the tenth grade approached, the boy found a group of friends that he would keep for the rest of high school. While they failed to meet up or talk with each other on average more than once a month, Andrew had never been pressured to smoke, drink, or go to parties—he had never been asked to. Although, he was expecting to experience it as a teenager because that’s what cultural media portrays: high school is full of people trying to fit in by whatever means necessary. Is it too surprising to hear that many people say real life is a lot more like high school than they originally thought?
The human cared less and less about fitting in as time moved on. The communication skills that he once lacked were growing. No more sitting in a special room with students that had social problems as well (all the while watching the movie on the TV rather than talking to each other) while thinking, What the hell am I doing here?
Nevertheless, there was always something to wish for. His overall desire shifted to two more things: a car and a job. Andrew didn’t obtain a license or a car until mid-way through his senior year, and by then he discovered how realistically hard it was to get a job. He had submitted twenty applications in one month, but he didn’t receive a single reply.
During junior year, he began to read more often. He hadn’t liked reading much, let alone English class, but things were coming to him more easily at this point. The English teacher he had had genuinely wanted the students to learn, but this new interest in reading was also due to sheer mental growth as Andrew’s adulthood approached. He enjoyed reading modern books for their realistic yet interesting themes, since the Romantic novels he was familiar with made him sick of useless details and ideals; he would prefer To Kill a Mockingbird over The Scarlet Letter any day. But his interests in English hadn’t flourished as much as engineering had at the time. Andrew took upon some engineering classes during his senior year, and with the arising thoughts and possibilities of helping to create a meaningful and useful design to society, he wanted to become an automotive engineer for his lifetime career.
It was around this time that his views on the universe changed again. A teacher told him that the Greeks treated what we called their “mythology” as their religion, and that all religions, like myths, are just explanations for supernatural events. Better yet, they were explanations for phenomena that couldn’t have been proven otherwise. He applied this statement towards science, think
ing that science was the only explanation with concrete proof in this world, and that everything in this universe could be explained through logical, possible science; he was officially an atheist. He still felt, however, that souls could exist and that they were just not logically explainable yet. Perhaps all answers are held in the future. Or perhaps not.
Then came the emptiness—he begun to believe that his life was so content that it was boring. He wanted nothing in particular, whether it be a thing, such as a video game, or an idea, such as watching the sunset. Whatever he did want seemed to be forever out of his reach. Even early on he was still satisfied with what he had—it was just until a series of events occurred that he felt unsatisfied and blank. Andrew gradually lost his interest in automobiles, not once knowing why. He lost a lot of his friends from high school after graduation, and he stopped talking to the friends that remained, simply because he didn’t take the effort to see them face-to-face anymore. He felt pessimistic and emotionless for months. He found no explicit reason for why it occurred in the first place, and no method of solving it by his own will. He acknowledged what he had in life but focused on what he didn’t.
The human wanted a change more than ever. But he didn’t feel like he himself needed to change as much as the world needed to.
Chapter 6
On May 30, 2016, in the city of Pomona, California, Andrew packed together his clothes for the road trip he had always dreamed of. While the thought of student loan debts lingered in the back of his mind, the young adult knew that there may not be a better opportunity in the future. College years are supposed to be the best years ever, after all. Planning out where he would go on the route and where to rest for each night, the first major stop on the list was Searles. Andrew still loved the familiar bushes and mountains that shaped many of his childhood memories, such as riding his bicycle up to the ridge of a tall hill and viewing the valley below. The spring wildflowers at the time painted the entire hill in gold, standing out in contrast to the barren, salty lakebed down at the valley floor. Perhaps another opportunity like that would happen again, he thought.