Master Hughes was a very peculiar man, Alyn thought. Averse to company, averse to conversation. He had no more interest in listening than he did speaking, and when he did speak it was never anything less than harsh. When he listened, his body language spoke of only revolt or apathy. His attitude was not admirable, and his personality was yet to be determined. Even so, Alyn managed to find two qualities that she liked.

First, his hair. It told stories. It depicted restless struggles with the pillow during nights. Stress and age effected the color and thickness, and his trade left his locks with assorted defining marks like singed ends and brittle strands dusted with soot. It was fine, but there was a lot of it. The roots were graying, but the ends like new leather—and everything in between was like a painting. The shades changed from strand to strand, but it all seemed to blend together. Parts fell over his eyes and cast shadows over his brow.

His eyes. The second quality that Alyn appreciated was his eyes. They'd been traveling for around eight hours, and she did not see them often. Every now and then, she'd catch glimpses. There was something about them that drew her in. Though he seemed to avoid looking back to where she sat, to pretend that he was alone, every so often he would glance over his shoulder, paranoid that she would dig into his things or otherwise find her way to trouble. She wasn't stupid.

Though she admittedly desired to snoop, she would only do it as a last resort. She wouldn't be so interested if he would only grace her with some foundation on which to know him. He answered not one question about himself.

"So, where do you come from?" she asked, to silence.

She picked at the loose threads of her unraveling pocket. Master Hughes took brief pause to remove his fedora and swept the sweat from his brow. He ran his hardened, squarish fingers through his hair and Alyn absorbed each detail, for she seemed unable to learn about him from anything but his appearance. His hair was fine, but there was a lot of it, and each strand seemed to be of a different length. It made him appear disheveled. At the back, it reached just to the base of his neck, not quite to his shoulders. There, where it started to curl, it hid behind the stiff collar of his oversize coat.

"What's in your satchel? Did you bring all those books with you? Do you like books? Do you like picture-books? I, uh, I don't read too much myself."

Hughes replaced his hat, prodding a few strands of hair up under its brim. He shut the window. Alyn stood up and slid it open again, leaning out.

"How 'bout the chest? Whadd'you keep in there, huh?"

His whiskers rustled, his nose wrinkled, and his teeth bared. "Mind your own business!" he barked, and slammed the window shut again.

Alyn frowned. After a few minutes passed, she opened it again. She went and sat on the floor and kept on watching him, bored and reluctantly silent.

His hair fell from his hat over his creased brow and made blinds for his eyes to peek through. Only when he pulled aside these uneven curtains could she glimpse his eyes.

She would describe them as coffee stains. Not solely for their color, but for what she saw in them. Coffee stains are the result of a mishap. When hot coffee is spilled, and the spill is neglected, it stains. The stain grows cold over time.

As people do.

"What was your family like?" Alyn called. She called questions out to Hughes at least four times every hour. Alas, she hadn't received personal any answers.

His shoulders tensed at every hint of her voice. They remained tense for quite some time, and he offered no further response.

Surely there was a warmth beneath his hostile exterior. Those eyes couldn't remain cold forever.

Hughes shifted his grip on the reins and rolled his shoulders. He prodded his bangs aside, intrigued with something ahead, to his left.

"What is it?" Alyn asked. "What do you see?"

Again, he ignored her, despite this being a relevant question. From his wooden steering perch outside, he flicked the reins. The single horse picked up its pace. A surprisingly gentle word of praise slipped from the driver.

Alyn rose from the cabin floor and joined Hughes. He lifted his arm and shifted his position, as though repulsed that she might touch him.

Alyn settled on the bench. She hardly noticed his unwelcoming action. Though there was no sun to block, she raised a hand to her brow. It was rare to see the sun directly through the constant orange and gray polluted smog of day. Besides, the hour drew near for the sun to begin its sink to the horizon. Unsettled dust obscured the view.

"What's that?" Alyn inquired, when she found the object of his interest. There wasn't much else to see. The land was littered with rubble, abandoned machinery, deteriorating vehicles; devices that hadn't worked for centuries. Growing up in West Haven, a settlement built on an old parking lot, she had seen the remains of many cars. But, now there was far more.

They approached the largest thing in sight, a hulking wreck of an odd, nearly cylindrical, metal giant. Alyn could not name it.

Most of the debris she could not name. Old transport methods, including hover devices, teleporting pods, and old army tanks, only gave a small taste of the variety of human waste on the journey.

"What's that one?" she would ask. Or, "Is that thing supposed to look like that?" or "What was that used for?" or "Master Hughes, I'm dying to know what that is. Please!" Until Master Hughes, fed up, had tied the reins to a knob and dragged a stool out inside the wagon and said, "Alright, for Chrissake."

He gave a bitter sigh and looked to the ceiling, eyes pacing as though searching the canvas for his place to start. "They are little more than ghosts," the blacksmith had said, and his voice carried venom. Unfailingly, a note of cynicism traced his words. "All of that? It is what is left of the old world, where everything was easy. Convenient, advanced. Now, we're stuck reverting to the very beginning of time because our miserable species fu..." His whiskers twitched. "We messed up."

"I don't get it."

"Stupid girl," he'd snapped. "The world is deteriorating, can't you tell? It is the 29th century and all's gone to pot. We had flying cars, once! Teleportation, and tours to surrounding planets! What have we got now? Absolutely nothing. Dust, rubble, separated countries and states, and a whole lot of ruined old shit to remind us of what we once had. All it's useful for now is scrap metal and spare parts."

"Why? What happened to the cool stuff?"

"Wars, natural disasters. Greed..." He had trailed off in a spiteful way that suggested that he could go on for hours. "After the satellites went down in the 25th century, a lot was lost. Everything went downhill. Surely, you've heard of the Second Depression?"

"No, sir."

Master Hughes had cursed and massaged a knot of irritation in his temples. He'd sighed. "A long time ago, China went to war with the United States. They destroyed many of our military satellites, and the rubble from those, along with solar flares, and the the abundance of waste already accumulated in Earth's orbit, eventually—over decades—knocked every satellite from the sky. With them, we lost the internet. Stock markets went down. Telecommunication, military surveillance, global positioning systems... all gone. A lot of things that people really relied on back then. That was the Second Depression." Hughes had paused to push his bangs under his hat, and continued, "Before the last of the satellites fell, at some point in the chaos, things went nuclear."

"Nuclear?"

Hughes had forcibly exhaled. "Big explosion, yes? Radiation. Nearly half of the world's population was killed, either by the explosion or by the quarantine officers—the radiation didn't do the killing fast enough. So much of the technology, the agriculture, the transport, and the shelter was gone." Again, he'd rubbed his temples. "The next century, the 26th, was better. Not good—but better. It was recovering, mostly, but what had been done couldn't be undone. In the wealthier districts scientists worked, and they still do work, to restore the 'greatness' of humanity. The convenience... Really, at this point, it is hopeless. But, in the early 27th century, there was one scientist that finally did something right."

Something stopped the master here. Alyn's wide eyes took in his solemn expression, his tone. Perhaps this was a part of the coffee spill; part of the reason that his eyes had lost warmth. A few minutes elapsed.

"What did the scientist do?"

Master Hughes jumped, pulled from thoughts that he had barely been conscious of drifting into. He cleared his throat and stood. "Ferdinand Polcene," he said, staring out at the dirt road ahead, "August thirteenth, two-six-oh-three. He invented technology—oh, not even technology... He invented life! Then... August fourteenth, two-six-oh-three. Ferdinand Polcene burned in a fire, along with all his work. His inventions—living, conscious beings!—were taken, abused, and... gone. They were gone."

"Gone?"

Hughes shook his head and gestured out the open back of the wagon. "What you are seeing out there are cars, pods, etcetera. That is what you asked." He had climbed back out to the steering platform. "Forget everything else. The past is shit and it can't be changed."

Alyn had questioned him further, but this was where he had fallen silent again.

Until the present, when he finally decided to speak. He grimaced at the closing distance between the wagon and the large heap of old, rusting metal overturned in the barren land. "It is a steam engine," he stated, in response to her inquiry. "A train."

Alyn stared ahead. "What's it for?"

"Transport." He pulled on the reins. His stallion, Patriot, slowed and neatly stopped. The air smelled unpleasantly putrid, and the sound of flies hummed in Alyn's ears. "We will stay here tonight."

The girl's nose wrinkled. "It smells."

Master Hughes dropped the reigns and lowered himself to the ground. Sand flowed into his boot through the hole at his right big toe. He gave a pat to Patriot's muscular shoulder and burrowed his hands in his pockets. He trudged nearer to the deteriorating locomotive, eyes fixed to the shifting sand. Flies swarmed, visible to eye and ear.

Alyn stumbled to catch up.

She gasped.

Master Hughes took in the sight unfazed, as though he had expected to find the corpses lying there. He drew a silver flask from one pocket and flint and steel from the other.

He sloshed pale brown liquid onto the chests of the dead.

"W-What are you doing?" Alyn stammered. There was a man and a woman, wrapped in one another's sallow, sinewy arms. They looked as sickly as Abraham.

Hughes's whiskers twitched and he knelt. With one hand, he skillfully made sparks with the flint and steel. The ragged clothing of the deceased lit, and fire caught quickly. Hughes, with little expression, rose again.

Alyn's jaw hung.

"Don't look so traumatized." Master Hughes turned away, grumbling. "They were dead. What's it matter?"

"You- you didn't even check to see if they were alive! And you knew that they were going to be here! What if you could have saved them before they died—instead of burning them?" Alyn cried, riled by his cold, impassive attitude. "You could have at least buried them."

"I couldn't have saved them," Hughes snapped, glaring back over his shoulder. "They were the refugees that didn't make it to West Haven with the other one. The plague killed them days ago. I didn't have to stop here, brat. Take note that I did. Rather them burn than be eaten by flies. Who knows? The pests could carry the disease. I did what needed done."

Alyn, shaken, could not pry her eyes from the flames. Hughes shook his head behind the child's back and returned to the caravan. In silence, he brooded over his flask. He drew a vial from his pocket.

Alyn felt her tears evaporate as they came, so close to the foul, dry heat. Black flakes of burning skin rose with the fire and danced over her head, and she simply stared. In silence, in sadness, and suffocated by the feeling of cold, dreadful loss.