I’m disappointed to say that I haven’t thought about Isaac Asimov in some time. He’s the writer that got me back into reading. So I was pleased to discover this art that transported me back to that time, to that place, where I discovered the wonder of reading again. I’ve never looked back since.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Zezhou Chen
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1AOno
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Alman scanned a horizon bereft of jagged lines and clusters of buildings, looking for hoofprints. There were none. He took in the view from atop a dune, noting the plump foliage that spread across it. Pieces of emerald candy.
“It’s yummy.”
Alman turned in response to the phrase. An echo. They had been happening more lately. This one was always in the corner of his memory’s eye. An expression he’d gleaned from. . . .
An implanted series of frequencies. Not a person. There were no more of those. He would have found some by now. His journey had been long.
Wind hit him, stirring sand around his legs and up his body to reach his exposed neck. The grains trickled inside. If he turned his head just right, it almost sounded like a voice.
The ocean was blue because the sky was blue. Another implant sprung into existence.
Eyes. One blue, one gray. A most unusual combination. Pixels converged, shifted, colorized. She had black hair with a hint of red.
“You can’t eat it,” Alman said, looking at the ice plants. He had recalled their description.
“Why not?” she said. “They’re called ice plants.”
He could not retrieve the answer.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said and took his hand, urging him down the dune.
“I do not have the ability to fear,” he said.
A gull perched on Alman’s foot, his hand empty of the girl’s, the beach empty of her. He went to greet the bird, and it glided away to join the others gathered at the place where the ocean folded over to become thin and foamy, leaving behind a reflection.
“I thought you weren’t afraid,” she said. “They’re just waves.”
Waves. The birds appeared frightened of them. Perhaps it might make them flat like the sand, and that is what they feared. He hadn’t had the opportunity to touch a gull, but he hypothesized they weren’t malleable.
She twirled on the reflective sand. Her white dress was too big for her, so it collected mud and water at the hem. “It’s easier to walk here. Come on, Alman.”
“That is not my descriptor.”
“A number isn’t a name. And I gave you a good one.”
“It’s too short to be of any significance. There aren’t enough combinations to make a quality identifier.”
She threw a clump of sand at him.
He walked toward her, noting the difficulty. The sand changed shape when his ankle registered the proper rotation for equilibrium.
He would have asked her why if she would have been there. The color was different now, the sun in a different location.
From here he could see no hoofprints. Why was he looking for hoofprints? He had never questioned a directive before. Curious. He was sure the answer would become clear when he found them. At least he had an image, or a representation.
“Like this,” she said, presenting a canvas.
It depicted a mammal with four legs, hooves, a billowing mane running down its neck, twinned by the one on its tail. “I understand.”
She was taller now. The hem of her dress didn’t reach the ground. She collapsed the easel and returned to where it was dry, beside Alman.
She gathered her dress around her legs and sat. “I see you’re still afraid.”
Alman had already told her he didn’t have the ability for that emotion, so he didn’t repeat himself.
“They’re aren’t any more, you know,” she said. “There used to be so many. When I was young, I was able to ride one once. On the beach like this. Dad had said it was expensive and would be my birthday gift for the next twenty years.”
She smiled and traced her finger in the sand. “See, this kind is no fun. It doesn’t have a memory.”
Alman knew sand was incapable of information storage, but she would be displeased if he corrected her. Her posture and expression told him she was in a good state of mind. The slow pulse at her neck.
She leaped to her feet and held out her hand. “Come on!”
He took it as instructed. When she pulled, however, he did not move.
“Alman?” she said. “Have you ever wondered why I named you that?”
He had run through all the permutations before her lips completed the phrase. There was no logical answer.
“It’s silly, but I was a kid. Alman, short for Almost Man.”
Strange. He had not reached that conclusion through his calculations.
“Told you it was a good one.” She pulled him toward the water. A wave flattened a short distance away, thinning to a transparent sheet netted with foam. It stopped just before his toes and retreated back to sea. His foot displaced the sand slightly, but it indeed positioned his joints at a sufficient angle. He tried his other foot. She was, indeed, correct.
“Told you,” she said with a smile and a wink. She danced closer to the water, saw something there and dropped to her knees with excitement.
“Hurry!” she said, waving him over. “I haven’t seen one of these since that day.”
Alman studied the creature. A flat shell with short spines and a long protrusion he supposed might be a tail of some kind.
“A horseshoe crab,” she said. “Their hoofprints looks like this. Horses.” She blushed. “Of course you knew that.”
Alman did not, but he agreed that the description was accuate. “A good name,” he said.
She chuckled, looked at him, smiled. “It is.”
The water reached them. She yelped, but stayed where she was, leaning into him. When the water receded, the crab was gone. She was gone.
Alman was left alone, looking at his reflection, bubbling with foam, and then even that disappeared. He held his head low, eyes to the sand, waiting for the crab to resurface. Waiting for her to come back.
When neither of them did, Alman got to his feet, and continued his search for hoofprints, wondering when he’d see her again.