Within and Without the Cities, Rocks and Hard Places

 III. 

In the place that when it is referred to is referred to as Old Alaska, Sullivan Broca wakes up. 

He knows far more of what he isn't than what he is, though with an impenetrable calm that disconnects any stem of anything like restlessness or anxiety or fear or apprehension. He has become such a master of self-control he pretty much doesn't even fart if he decides not to. 
And he gets up from his blankets this morning after sleeping on the floor (there is a bed in the one-bedroom cabin, but he doesn't always use it) and he stands up into the sterile air of that room and breathes in with deep gratitude to another day alive. God is given no credit for this gift however as it was Sullivan who drew his name out of a hat when the times were as bad as they could be in 2014 and he drove himself up here, to this location north of every north, and he took care of himself not with prayer but rather effort. 
Sullivan looks around the cabin, the woodstove, the single dresser, the front door, and it occurs to him that after a period of what must be about fifteen years of self-imposed isolation, he has lived a monk's life for long enough. 

So he packs up a suitcase before going outside for a sturdy branch for a slingshot and he goes into the undriveable box-truck and gets a handful of rubberbands from the glove compartment and he goes back inside and makes a slingshot from the components and he looks around the place for what he knows will be the very last time, although its every detail is already perfectly photographed in his memory, and he takes all of this inside and sets out to cross Canada... 

Along the way, he finds virtually nothing but pebbles and clean air. A single traveler approaching from the direction of the states, a man in a longcoat, like diplomat or a dignified pirate. He does not speak to Broca and Broca does not speak to him. They merely pass one another -- and Sullivan moves on. 
In this way, and with much clear-headedness, the not-so-young young man surmises the vacated world is some testament to America's selfishness: those who were not a victim of its hubris have simply, if somewhat inexplicably, found a way parallel to everything America trampled. 

And when Sullivan reaches the ashes of America, that barren wasteland like a sunfryed coral reef, Sullivan does not shed a single tear. Rather, he gravely and slowly shakes his head at the pitiful ruin left him. A great man once said, "Books are made from other books," and another, perhaps less seriously, asked, "What did your father teach you?" Here, Sullivan Broca had nothing to work with. And so he began to walk around.... 

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