Beside the sulfur-scented pyroclastic rocks where pink and red flowed into one another; amidst the gray-white ashes that the volcano had hurled to the sky and then scattered around, Meyer's weary body lay surrendered to the harsh blows of the wind. His eyelids moved slowly. This was not his first dance with death.
His body, evolved to adapt to high temperatures, had witnessed many times the mountains awakening with violent explosions. The overflowing of magma to the earth's surface always reminded Meyer of the volatile rage of a human. Especially his father's fits of anger that kept appearing in his imagination... That man who would break and destroy everything, then sink into a deep silence.
When the violent force triggering volcanic activity ceased boiling underground and sought to reach the surface with all its might, only a god could stop it.
As Meyer felt excessively weak, Emma's faint face passed before his eyes. It was as if something invisible was embracing him from within those pink irises. He wanted to move his hand, to say something. Would the place he woke up in not be the earth?
The smell of sulfur burned his lungs, which had grown accustomed to it again. Only through that sharp scent could he understand: this was earth. This gas, which could have easily killed a human eight thousand years ago, now meant an ordinary, even—if exaggerated—'homely' atmosphere for Meyer.
Year: 10,250.
"Where am I?" he said; his hand involuntarily rising toward his glasses. He tensed when his fingers could not feel the crystals of the obsidian glass. All his energy vanished instantly—like a cable whose power had been cut—and his arm fell unconsciously to his side.
"Steve!" a voice was heard from around. It was a warm, soft voice.
Without moving his head from his body sprawled on the ground, Meyer shifted his eyes to the left and noticed the cotton-candy-like pink sky. He did not want to believe that the voice reaching out from within that shadow, that silhouette, could belong to Emma. He knew Emma from too many different angles to ever forget her. He could have written a multi-volume book on her every feature. Emma had once enlarged and embraced his tiny world, then, just like his father, had abandoned him halfway.
He wanted to knit his brows, but his lips ached. He felt like crying, but his eyes hurt. Finally, he looked slowly at his body. Was this body his, or was it not? If it belonged to him, it was perfectly intact. He recoiled in surprise. Soon after, he forgot why he was surprised. It felt as if his blood had once flowed just as wildly. As if one night, that red liquid in his veins had flowed as if leaving his entire body. And it had flowed, yes, he remembered.
Images passed before his eyes like the reflections of spiders in front of a fire.
"I didn't die," he muttered. "This isn't good at all. I should have died while I had the chance." His words sounded more like a delirium.
"Don't say that," Emma said in a delicate voice. Her heavy hand slowly entered Meyer's field of vision and stroked the skin covered with burns on his left wrist. "Never speak like that."
Both Meyer and Emma knew that the rest of this sentence would not come.
Yes... Emma was not a shadow. Neither a leaf blown through a thicket, nor the echo of a dream. She was Emma. A woman who spoke, laughed, and cried. The only person he had ever been in love with in his life, and the one who had betrayed him.
Meyer felt the heat leaking from his skin as sweat through his parted eyelids. The sounds around him were like the sound of a lava flow hitting the shore. A bat was gliding above; its wings were heavy and majestic, like those of an ancient eagle.
Emma's trembling face, along with her buried breaths, was being shadowed with every flap of the bat's wings. An expression—a mixture of stillness and regret—breathed like a plant on that feminine, beautiful face.
"Where am I?" asked Huyger; the light filtering through his eyelids was not helping him recognize the surroundings at all.
Emma's face finally stabilized; it was no longer swaying side to side. Meyer realized this was caused by his own dizziness.
"Exactly forty years have passed," Emma whispered, with tears suddenly streaming from her eyes.
Meyer's brows furrowed; he couldn't see his own face, and he didn't feel his body to be heavy. Besides, Emma hadn't aged. Her face was as clear as the first day he had met her.
"This must be a bad joke," was all he could say. His chest rose and fell slowly. "A terrible joke, even. Can you tell me just how bad a joke this is?"
Emma's lips were trembling; she simply took her phone, made of heat-resistant metal, out of her pocket and pointed it toward the air.
Year: 10,290.
At that exact moment, Meyer felt his back being kneaded less by the heat coming from the ground, and his heart beating slower. "Why?" he asked; "Why would this be true?"
As if his strength had returned, he pressed his hands against the ground; the ground felt cold to him. Was that sulfur smell echoing in his nose a moment ago, the year 10,250, a dream? If everything Meyer saw was a dream, which one was real? The world waiting to embrace him stretched out as far as the eye could see, as if it were at its end. The sun's appearance, resembling a burning bowl, was constantly flickering. While Emma's hand was still stroking his cheeks, only one night came to life in Meyer's mind. The time when the owner of this hand had cheated on him with his best friend.
A desire for revenge coming from years ago burned his throat like a bitter, spicy broth. "Is Magnus dead?" he asked. It was as if this was the only thing he cared about.
"I don't know," Emma said in a shaky voice. Her own actions slipped away like a curtain before her eyes. Her knees were trembling even though she had placed them on the ground, and her eyelids were twitching. When she slowly pressed her arms to the ground, her hand bones ached. Suddenly shaking, she began to sob inwardly. Meyer felt the warmth of Emma's hand withdrawing from his cheeks. Despite everything that had happened, the world had essentially turned cold when he was distanced from Emma's warm skin.
Even if forty years had passed according to Emma's words, the world had actually turned cold when he was first twenty-two. When he was betrayed.
"I thought I would die. What kind of sleep is this? I didn't see any dreams," he muttered. He felt a sense of guilt for not hearing the heavy ticking sounds of the passing time. The last thing he remembered was a spider wounding him. And with Meyer's own obsidian knives. Then, while their blood painted the ground like a watercolor brush, he recalled Emma's hurried steps. Someone was calling him Steve, and Meyer was cold.
"Why didn't you ever age?" he asked Emma.
Emma stopped crying, if only for a moment, and ran her index finger under her eyes, which were bruised from weeping. She trapped her sobs in her grief-stricken chest and, placing her hand lightly on her chest, said, "This place aged. While waiting for you, wondering every single day whether you would wake up or not."
"How did I survive despite all those wounds?" Meyer grumbled. As if his living were not a miracle, but a curse.
"Because..." Emma said, and pressing her lips together, she bowed her head. At that moment, she noticed a giant-legged spider walking behind them. This huge yellow orb-like body and head, with thick gold-colored metal legs, was emitting flames from its eyes. Its lumbering movements made Meyer miss his glasses. "Where are my glasses?"
"They broke," Emma replied.
Meyer felt this sentence fall like a brick onto his heart. He thought the spider would attack him, piercing him through and through just like that day. When he closed and opened his eyes, the image cleared slightly. The spider, with its large antennae swaying, was approaching him. Despite its metallic appearance, its legs were sticky. Like cobwebs.
"Why is it approaching us?" Meyer asked. There was something familiar in his voice rather than anxiety. Pressing his elbow into the ground, which shifted from orange to light pink, he half-sat up and drew his knees toward himself.
These words of Meyer made Emma cry again.
A voice echoed violently in the air; it had a strange tone. "Emma, come and see my new man!"
Meyer raised his head and scanned the surroundings. Emma's eyes turned toward the spider ahead, and the mysterious timbre of the voice whispered that the source was the spider. And the rhythmic steps coming toward them signed the bottom of this thought.
It wouldn't even have crossed his mind that he would suddenly spring up and stand on his feet. His right fist, flung into the air from his lunging body, struck the very center of the spider's face with resentment. When the spider lost its balance on its legs, Emma shouted, "Stop!" Meyer turned back in bewilderment; as he breathed rapidly, he felt a warning in his shaking chest. Emma's lips opened and closed. Under Meyer's harsh gaze directed at her, she spoke in a shaky voice. "I serve them."
When Emma burst into sobs again, Meyer felt his right hand tingling. The blood flowing in his blue veins was now growing hotter and hotter. His anger, boiling like fragmented, frothy lava, reached the heavens. The love for Emma he felt in the deepest parts of his heart was gradually crystallizing. All the minerals in his blood surged. He wanted to comprehend what he heard. The voice rang in his limbs like a broken cage.
Meyer looked carefully at the spider's unconscious body lying on the ground. "What?"
He looked at Emma; the woman was still trembling.
"What a vile woman you are!" Meyer said, remembering the massacre the spiders had committed in the town. "So that's why you were using a spider robot that day. To make money for pickpockets by killing people! To be able to screw a high-aiming guy like Magnus a bit more with your money!"
"No," Emma screamed. "No."
"What then, tell me!" he shouted.