Segment 2:Anthony
Adam Bishops is not like me.
Anthony knew it upon first sight of him. The way he walked and talked, they were only subtly different, but different enough for Anthony to tell. The way he seemed to fit in with whatever mundane situation or setting was at hand. Adam was simply…human.
And Anthony knew that he himself was not. The way wind excited his senses, the way he could imagine the trees talking to him – and they would. Sometimes he could see the whole of the universe laid out in front of him sometimes, like a three-dimensional map. And numbers. Numbers and statistics everywhere.
Anthony saw everything in numbers: the height of every tree in this park, the distance from the picnic table to the lake (forty-three feet). He had counted every blade of grass in a three-foot circle seven times over in the last ten minutes. Adam had 119,347 brown hairs on his head, while Anthony himself had just over 140,000 blond ones.
There were countless more differences – but not just between Anthony and Adam. In fact, Anthony was astounded by the sheer variety in all the humans of the world. Even people that looked alike had small physical characteristics that set them apart, and everyone thought differently. Anthony’s family was what humans called Russian – besides the green eyes – while Adam was American. However, ethnicity didn’t matter where they lived, simply because every ethnicity was there. All survivors of the Flood had gathered in the great stronghold city of Bastion, regardless of race or age or other differences Anthony could notice.
And a bastion it was. A hulking behemoth of a city, about two hundred miles east of where Moscow used to be, sprawling out both above and below the ground. Great columns of steel and glass dominated the small vistas the proximity of the Wall offered, with endless walkways and tunnels and subways and bridges spanning every building’s structure. An energetic thrum vibrated about the place, simply reeking of activity. Anthony was sometimes awed by how different people looked, in fact, because Adam had only told him about Russian and American. Anthony didn’t know if there was a word for the people with slanted eyes, or the people with the glossy dark skin. Though once, he had heard a store owner call one of those people “a free can”, whatever that meant. He would ask Adam about it later.
Presently, however, as the breeze rustled his hair and brushed against his bare toes, Anthony watched Adam. He had blinked eighteen times in the past thirty seconds, so Anthony could tell something was on his mind. His mouth was pursed in a way that meant he was chewing on his cheeks, a habit he only pursued when he was thinking, and his eyebrows made four creases in between each other. Deep thought meant only three.
“Adam?”
“Yes?”
“You’re thinking. About what?”
Adam broke out of his stupor and sighed. “Nothing. . .nothing.”
Anthony flexed his toes and touched them to the ground, standing up. “I’m going for a walk,” he said, stretching out his legs and starting to walk around the lake.
Adam looked up vaguely, sighed again, and wondered some more about his abnormal friend.
