The Inventor was a small person, he’d had the same job for 56 years. He’d go in every day, meet with his boss, assess the state of his building (he tended to leave an absolute mess when he was done at work), go through yesterday’s work, burn everything because he’d been wrong, and start again. He hadn’t gotten something right for a long time. There had been a point where he hypothesised his increasing struggle was due to aging, except he hadn’t physically aged more than maybe 3 years. He did every test he could to check his cognitive functioning. All of them showed his brain to be as competent as ever. So what was wrong? He checked the tests, he had every other member of the royal court take them, and plotted his expected results and the results he got, alongside the national results for college exams (many of which were some of the tests he used, and all used a universal scoring metric).
The results looked fine. He went home early.
The Inventor woke up the next day in his bed, he looked around, scanning each corner, shadow, and everything else. “I don’t feel like going to work today,” he thought. “I haven’t taken a day off in… how many years has it been, 50 now? I don’t remember. Um… I think the last time I took a day off was Karuna’s funeral, in… 1415. I think. I think I shall rest today, I deserve this.” Karuna had been a good friend of his, and the person in charge of the actual fighting part of their uprising. He fell back to sleep quickly, exhausted after the previous night.
Almost the entire court took a day off that day. Nobody likes taking hard tests past midnight.
He’d never had a good day off. The last one had been Karuna’s funeral, the worst day of his life. That day had been dark, and pouring rain. The day was clear, the moon had covered up the sun, and the city had been in the path of darkness. They’d held a state funeral and national holiday for non-critical labour. The Farmers, who were supposed to work that day, got a day off due to the extreme weather. The Merchants, makers, bakers, builders, and workmen were off anyway. The guards who were supposed to be on half-days had to work 24 hours that day, clearing wreckage, cleaning the city and running evacuations.
The Royal court were all dressed up, rain-soaked and mud-covered. It was a human sight. They were expected to have helpers to carry umbrellas and lay down a clean surface, but they had none. The rulers of the greatest nation in the world, out, in the rain, alone, at a funeral. Some cried, not all. Some of them sat on the dirt, careful not to sully the graves of other heroes. They’d been young revolutionaries in 1410, they’d survived for a year and a half, then spent half a year taking over the country. Karuna had died in a stable, stabbed in the back, in a town they’d taken the previous month. They’d won the war seventeen days before her funeral, two months after she died.
The Inventor had been there since the beginning, a child from a broken home who fled at the age of eight, spent three years wandering around, before ending up in a large city, 600 miles from where he came from. He’d been a revolutionary at the age of 12.
54 years after her funeral he lays in bed, one arm hanging off the side. He looked almost the same as he did then. He’d had a lot of adventures while the Inventor, he’d gone places he was told not to, he had been changed by his adventures, from a naive child to an optimistic old man, or was he still a child?
As he slept in his bed, the rest of the world moved as usual. He woke up changed again. He’d adventured through the land of memories, and maybe he understood something now.
Never one to be risk averse, he grabbed everything important he had, stuffed it in a sack, and left. It was afternoon and days were beginning to get cold, so this was the best time for travelling. He ran out, rushing through the reasonably crowded streets. He gave a man what was for him a day’s pay, but for the man would be many weeks’ wage for a horse. He then put the sack on the horse’s back. The horse looked at him, thoroughly uninspired. He stared very hard at the horse, which seemed to scare the horse a little, then he closed his eyes, spun around six times, and pointed in whatever direction he faced. The horse whose name was Brick seemed to get the message. And started moving in the direction that was chosen, Brick, who the inventor did not know was named brick and instead called Sir. Harely Brown, kept moving until hitting a wall, then turned and moved a different direction with the inventor following.
They continued doing this, until they ended up somewhere neither had ever been. THe inventor thanked the horse with a very awkward hug. He took his sack then pointed at a forest, and Brick went that way, until he could not be seen.
The inventor was interested in this new place, it was a junkyard. It was exactly what he thought he needed.