Explorer

He had always wanted to be an explorer. To discover new lands, new animals, new ways of thinking. To name new lands. Bernard's Break, Two-Finger River, the Last Ford. Aged maps of places both real and imagined covered his walls, many places scribbled in. A figure or a creature would be etched in here and there, reminiscent of the days when maps were edged with sea monsters and whirlpools.

As he grew older he realized just how much of the world had been explored. Satellites swing constantly overhead, scanning and imaging the world again and again in a ceaseless, mechanical dance. Every valley seemed to be named, new animals were merely a slightly new variation of fly, or an ape with an odd nose that no one had ever seen. The world was not wild enough a place to hold his names and his dreams.

He searched on, unsatisfied.

So the maps came off his walls, one by one. He found the real, mundane names these places had. Hoover Dam had blocked off his Rising River, Vaulted Valley was all but destroyed in a volcanic eruption before he was born.

Then he discovered the way into a new world, a shining world much like our own in the early days. The sky was bluer, the grass greener, the animals even more strange and varied. No island was named, no river mapped. It was his world, though he named it after his mother. And he lived happily ever after, the end.