Leaving Austin

And then she finally let her breath catch up. Sitting on the train, she could still feel her heart pounding, trying to catch up. It was not like her to almost miss her train. Then again, this wasn't just any trip.
Natalia started to analyze her likely hesitancy for the trip and quickly stopped herself. "No wasting" she thought to herself, and immediately started channeling her thoughts into the multiple cases of patients she was leaving behind. And the train started moving.

The trip to Mexico would take roughly 6.2 hours and she had only 1 hour left in the network of the Republic of Texas. She could finish the notes on the Tenneman case to Caroll in 15 minutes if she rushed.
As the train left the train station, the noise of metalworking and of building of the new Austin Terminus Central was deafening. She hesitantly lift up her eyes as she was departing, seeing the city she had not left in so long.
The beaming Revivalist buildings were a sight to see. The city was bustling and the lake looked as beautiful as she had once remembered it. The weather was perfect and people were out and about despite the sun being at the apex. She could see the main building where the old power central used to be and she felt enamored with her city once more. The green lush around the lake made her feel like things were finally on the right track again.
But then the train crossed the powered dome and the Yellow Zone landscape set in. She quickly looked down at her files and found the motivation she needed to dive in.

Rose Tenneman was a most unusual case by how textbook perfect it was. She was struggling with Temporal Dislocation Syndrome, "who wasn't?", Natalia thought. But she was adapting well to his job after a mix of talk therapy and getting a new dog.
She might be able to use her to write an article of the effectiveness of her therapy. "That is only if Bartosh doesn't ruin it with his cocktail". Her dimwitted colleague loved over-analyzing a case and throwing everything but the kitchen sink whenever people relapsed. She knew Rose would relapse. She was adjusting well, she was finally feeling herself and even seeing a guy. Natalia knew Rose would soon test her the boundaries of her new confidence by spending too much time with the guy, neglecting her pet lizard and sleeping too little to catch up on work. Then she would feel out of control and yearn for simpler times, which would trigger a 10-year long void in her memory that would send her into a panic, while trying to find those simpler times.
Natalia knew by now that it was better to accept that the relapse would come, but those memories wouldn't, she knew that all too well. But Bartosh didn't. He would be blindsided by this relapse and try every new experimental technique available to him, claiming whatever got her back on her routine a stellar solution. "Please don't try mud therapy…"

And like that, the Tenneman case was updated, along with the Zickler and Ybanez cases. And all under 25 minutes. She wondered if she should make headway into the Garcia and Fimol cases, or if it would be wiser to leave them for once she arrived in Mexico. "Maybe start reading up on the recent 'pets as grounding objects' study", but she had 5.9 hours of train ride and only 35 minutes left of network left, so she reached into her bag.
Her hand immediately felt the satchel she had quickly stuffed inside it. "Leon…". She found it in her mailbox with no note or receipient, clearly it had been dropped in person, but the mycelium feel of the leather immediately made her know no person in Austin was the sender.

She scrambled to find her other reports and made dutiful work of the remaining 34 minutues, until…"no signal".
She was officially out of the Republic of Texas, but even worse, when she lifted her gaze, she realized they were crossing a Red Zone.
The terrain was dry and ravaged. No sign of life as far as she could see. Or green. She could swear the sky looked a tinge of reddish rust. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the train seemed to be going faster, trying to rush past the desolate landscape. There were twisters in the distance pulling up dust and debris. The train should be protected, but not too much. There were clouds of dust that covered the sun, but you could still get the sense that you wouldn't last more than a couple hours out there from the heat. Or even less than that.
Natalia stood up from her seat and started pacing around. There weren't many people on this wagon, or this train for that matter. Communications between Mexico and the Republic of Texas were improving, but you still didn't hear much of the outside world. The weekly train was well maintained solely because Austin wouldn't be the last destination.
Although lately there seemed to be a higher influx of people going south. If the stories were to be believed, Mexico was seeing a renaissance of sorts. Mexico City was rebuilding after 50 years of being practically deserted and the city to the south was a bustling haven for the Green Hands. What was the name? She always seemed to forget…the city Dr. Leon was from.

She nervously thought of the satchel and whatever could be hiding inside it. She paced around the wagon and this old mad with a hat looked at her with a calm smile. That made her feel more unease. She decided to sit down and the man sent her what must've been a warm and reassuring smile. It made her feel uncomfortable nonetheless and she put her bag in the seat next to her. She couldn't avoid it any longer so she decided to take the satchel out and open it.

What? A conch, alongside a more familiar binder. But a pinkish seashell the type she always saw in depictions of the ocean of long ago. "Is this a souvenir? A reminder?" Natalia knew people long ago used to pair a conch with white, peaceful beaches. They were all over in modern works of the 39er artists. They said you could go to the beach and lay in the sun for hours, letting it melt your cares away and even getting in the water. There were plans of rebuilding the Galveston island in the coming decades, many miles away from the Houston bay.
Perhaps she too could one day take a vacation in the beach, perhaps this conch was a reminder of that hope. "Have you gone full Revivalist, Leon? Ha, not you."
But it did make her feel at ease enough to open the binder.

The binder was thick with text, photos and statistics. This made her feel a little eager. The first few pages were psychological profiles of cases very familiar to her. Page after page of the Returned who were experiencing Temporal Dislocation Syndrome in Revivalist cities. Leon had apparently been able to compile data from all over. Toronto, Chicago, Huntsville. It must've taken months to travel and compile all this information. There were detailed descriptions of treatment plans that were being attempted and the familiar results that Natalia knew. Revivalist cities all over were seemingly booming, but the more people that moved there, the worse the TDS cases seemed to get.
But there were also notes on the Green Hand cities and how they were slowly catching up…in all but TDS numbers. It was Natalia's belief that the Green Hands were exaggerating their success, a ploy that Leon was likely falling for due to his age, but she also believed there was usefulness to their methods. She had, after all, copied their idea of starting a community garden and adopted a pet lizard to calm her own symptoms. She hadn't had a dislocation episode in over a year.

The binder continued into a new section, recounting events Natalia had just read about in history books. The time before the Hum, when cities started to collapse and the endeavors to counteract it with technological inventions was coming to a clash. "200 million dead", "nations collapsing", "x species lost". She hated reading about the 2030s. The 39ers might think the solution was hidden in that decade, but all she could think about was the widespread misery that started during that decade…and how it kept going for decades to come. "Enough misery to go around". The topic depressed her, but when she looked up, she realized they were now in Restoriationist territory. There was finally some greenery here and ther, and you could see the Girasoles doing their work to keep it that way. The marvels of technology would capture the sun's power, release moisture during the night, intertwine with the local flora, produce nutrients and reflect most of the rays in its invisible net. They were purple towers, 10 feet tall, with petal-like structures at the top. They would always be rotating with the wind. She knew there were many prototypes now that worked more efficiently or did one of those jobs more effectively depending on the terrain, but to the desperate people of decades past, this was their last restort so they could hopefully come back to a better world.

She looked at the old man, who was looking out at the landscape, and she decided to approach him.
— They look peaceful, don't they?
— Yes, they feel peaceful.
— Were you around when they set them up?
— I was. I set up my share of them.
— So I take it you're a Remainer.
— Haha, I wish. It wasn't the full decade, but I missed some years.
— I see. I'm a therapist working with Returners. Can I ask you some questions? Do you ever get night terrors? You know, the--
— Yes, TDS, I know where you're going. Do you want me to respond the questionnaire or does it suffice to say that I still have it?
— I'm sorry, I didn't want to assume…. — The TDS is the least of my worries. I have 3 types of cancer that just keep coming back. I'm healthy enough to keep up with my work, but my son wants me to go south.
— You think they'll be able to cure it?
— No, I think it's a death sentence. He won't say it, but he thinks it's a good chance for me to enjoy the time I have left…so I'm choosing to try to think like him.
— I'm sorry…. — I had family down there. I realized I don't mind it if I get to see them again…I'm feeling hopeful about it.
— I hope you find them.
— Are you going to see someone? You seemed restless.
— A mentor I had, he sent for me. Bought me the ticket and all. I think he wants to believe there's been a breakthrough with TDS.
— And is that why you were pacing around?
— No…I haven't left Texas in the longest time. I don't know what I'll find.
— Haha, so you and I are walking the same road! I knew your anxiety felt familiar. What do you do when you feel jittery like that?
— I read. Take in some more patients. And you?
— I sing.

And the old man began to sing an old song Natalia couldn't make out, but that she could understand. She leaned into the headrest of the seat in front of the man and listened wistfully as he kept on singing. From time to time, the old man would smile and she'd respond with another smile. Maybe this trip would be good to her…. It was then that they went into a tunnel briefly and they came out the other side to find themselves inside a Red Zone. This one was worse than before, with the destroyed remains of a full town in the distance. They must be approaching Mexico City…

The old man stopped his singing cold and excused himself, giving Natalia a brief and weary smile as he got up to look at the remains from the window. "He must've seen it as it once was before", she thought.
She went back to her seat and picked up the binder her mentor had left for her. The details of the Decade of the Great Decay were gruesome and she tried to skim them, flipping pages faster and faster.
She makes it to the last few pages and sees a rendering of Mexico City as it once was, before the water ran out. At the same time, the train turned around the mountain and it revealed the shade of the city it had once been. It was like the whole city was in a gruesome display. It made her ill to think this was what had almost befallen Austin.
However, you could see some domes here and there that were surely the work of the Revivalists of the region. She gripped the binder and said a silent prayer to herself, that they could, that they all could, make it.

She turned the last few pages and found a depiction of the conch in the last one. "Instructions?"
She turned that last page and found a handwritten note pasted on the back cover of the binder, it read:

	  My dear Natalia,
	  May Cuernavaca welcome you with open arms, as it always did to me.
	  Don't let the wonders of this world run out on you.
	  You are my pride and hope.

	  Please,
	  Understand what I cannot,
	  Go where I will not, 
	  Forgive whom I could not.

	  Clear your mind, take a deep breath
	  And breath into the conch

	  Leon

And so, she did. Her breath seemed to spark up a faint green light inside the conch, that traveled through at the same rate her breath did. A faint green, then blue, then purple…and the whole conch started glowing. From the back tip, small vine-like appendages started growing and clawing around each other, forming an entangled surface that kept expanding. They formed a the edges of a rectangle and started filling in the space inside it. The conch started glowing more intensely, now yellow, then orange. The strange vines kept reaching to cover all the empty spaces, and a hard surface completed itself, which signaled to the conch to start sending glowing green bits to the rectangle, here and there and there too.
It started to look like a hefty book, whose hard cover protected the inside that was getting built and formed.
Natalia felt both like dropping the newly-formed book like it was hot like burning coals, but also felt like embracing it closer to her chest and protecting--maybe herself, maybe the book with that embrace.
She closed her eyes and focused on the sound, like falling sound that was filling up an empty glass. It took her back to the time of her childhood and the first time she went to the beach. Faces of people she did not know anymore, the feeling of wonder and a world ever-expanding and wholly unexplored…. It took her back to when she first met Leon, his husky voice and the whiskey aroma around him, then his tender way of treating her and his deep concern for doing what's right, how the clash made her feel the same way she did when gazing at the ocean. Meeting the sea when all you thought there was was land. The realization of how little she knew and how wrong she was about the few things she knew.

The book was as big as her torso when she opened up her eyes again. It had an intricate cover of what seemed like tree roots and a glyph in the middle that reminded her of those ancient Aztec codexes. "What is this?"
She turned the cover to find more glyphs in vibrant hues of blue, red, green and yellow. A whole map presented itself before her. She felt like she was starting into a storybook that was calling to her.

In that moment, the train descended down the misty clouds of the mountain and dusklight stuck her face. She could see Cuernavaca in the distance.
She could make out the train lines and the tranvias, as they got closer, she could make out the bigger buildings, and the rows of solarpanels and bouganvilleas.
Further away, she could see what she remembered of the Tepozteco, the small mountain that overlooked Tepoztlan. She had not been to either town nor city since the last time she saw Leon, but it was clear the people here had moved on since those times. A surprisingly big settlement could be seen between the two and she wondered if this was one of the new cities that had popped up in the missing decade.

The train rushed to the station, like it was in a hurry to finally get home. She felt a strange nostalgia and then choked up with a hint of pain. "A bad omen", she felt.

After grabbing her things and stashing the book away in the satchel, she got off the train and admired the plant-filled station with the stylish metalwork decor. She looked around until she saw-- — Monty!

The burly man was staring calmly at her. Seeing him made her tear up almost instantly. He was just standing there, with a peaceful smile, looking at her…. — Welcome back, Natalia. Let me handle that luggage for you. He effortlessly carried the bag that had been weighing on her all the way to the train station in Austin, then turned around, put it over his shoulder and started walking.
— Montante, where are you going? Is that all you're going to say? I haven't seen you in forever and--
— We need to take care of something before I drop you off home.
— An errand?
— Of sorts. I need to call off the search.

The excitement and relief she had been feeling, the sense of serendipity she felt when she saw him again, they had all faded by the time he was done.
— Thank you captain. For all your efforts.
— You be well, Montante. I'm sorry for your loss.
Natalia just kept following in disbelief as he dropped her off at the station.
— Ride the train to Trado. Go to this address (he handed her a piece of paper). I left some dinner out for you and Miss Lina will show you were everything is. I'll come by tomorrow to explain a little more. Try to get some sleep.
— Are you…sure it's him?
— Yeah, and judging by his telling you to come here, I think it was no accident. He planned it, Natalia.
— But he can't be…. — He's dead. I saw the body. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't suicide at this point. Whatever sick message Leon wanted to send, he wanted to make sure we were both here to get it. And that he made a statement with it. If that´s not the most Leon thing he could do to scamper off this world…

Natalia rode the train alone to wherever she was off to next. She felt intense pressure on her chest, that had been building up long before this trip, but that she had finally allowed to bubble up to the surface. "All for nothing…it was all for nothing…". She looked at the night sky and realized she was in a strange country, far from home, with a man she no longer knew and a dream that no longer lived. She hugged the book from her satchel and started crying, sobbing, while there was nobody on the train cart who could hear her.