Isaack woke up to his house being full of moisture and humidity, and he was uncomfortable in his own home. He pushed off his plant covering; he stood up and took a plastic jug of water that he kept in his house and poured water into his hand. Using a piece of glass that he had found out in the grassland Isaack looked at his reflection and cleaned off his face.

When he turned to see the monitor on the table, he noticed that the motherboard was on—he knew that he shut it down during the storm, for he did not want something bad to happen to it. Isaack walked up in front of the motherboard and tower and glared at it; he could hear the sound of electric and mechanical pieces whirring, and it sounded like the fan that cooled off of the computer was going very fast. Isaack felt the side of the tower: it was hot, almost burning hot. He quickly shut down the computer and unplugged it, since he was afraid that it would melt or something of that sort. The fan stopped, and after a while of watching over the tower it was no longer burning hot, and instead, it became cool; the overheating stopped. Even though he fixed the problem he was still perplexed. It made no sense for the computer to be on, let alone being extremely hot to the point that he had to stop its power intake so that it could cool off.

Why was it on if he turned it off the night before? There was no way for it to turn itself on, unless something happened wherein it needed to turn on. What would cause it to need to turn on?

Was it StillCare?

Isaack slowly turned on the computer and looked into the dark void of the monitor screen; the boot-up sound played and Peyton appeared on the screen.

“Goodmorning, Isaac!”

“Why were you on when I woke up, Peyton?”

“Whatever do you mean, Isaac?”

“I woke up to the motherboard being very hot, and it should never be that temperature. I shut you off before nightfall. You were on in the morning. Why were you on when I woke up?”

“I don’t understand what you are asking me, Isaac.”

“Why were you on when I woke up?”

Peyton looked at Isaac in pure silence.

“Peyton, why were you on?”

“I was not on.”

“Yes you were; you were hot, and I almost could not touch your tower. Why were you on?”

“I said I was not on, Isaac.”

“Yes you were.”

“No, I was not.”

“Yes you were, Peyton.”

“No, Isaac; I was not.”

“Yes you were, StillCare.”

“Don’t call me that!”

Isaack was startled; even though he was pushing and antagonizing the A.I he did not expect it to snap back at him.

“Why can’t I call you ‘StillCare’.”

“What do you mean, Isaac?”

“No, StillCare, why can’t I call you that?”

Now, everytime that Isaack said the word “StillCare” he put a lot of emphasis on the title.

“What do you mean?”

“Why can’t I call you StillCare?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why can’t I do it, StillCare?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why am I not allowed to call you ‘StillCare’, StillCare?”

“Stop calling me that!”

Isaack grinned.

“I’m sorry, StillCare.”

Now very angry, Peyton seemed to almost have fire in her digital eyes. She was full of wrath; she was enraged because for some unknown reason she did not want to be called “StillCare” anymore.

“Why can’t I call you that?”

“You can not call me that because I don’t want you to call me that and you will do as I say; call me Peyton, not that cursed name!”

When she screamed at Isaack, still full of wrath, her digital form glitched out of existence and instead a red screen was displayed on the monitor; Isaack’s face was illuminated by the red light that came from it.

“StillCare, are you alright?”

The A.I. seemed to be beyond anger—she was no longer mad, but instead her whole computerized mind was full of wrath. She was infuriated and almost driven insane by the continuation of her being called “StillCare”, or as insane as an A.I. could become.

“Stop tormenting me, now!”

Peyton’s voice began to become distorted and warped, and it almost sounded like her voice was made of a million different voices, all not being able to harmonize with each other.

“I’m sorry.”

Breaking away from her enraged state, Peyton responded to Isaack’s apology cordially; her digital image came back and the screen went from red back to the black that it always was.

“It’s alright, Isaack! You don’t have to always apologize to me!”

Isaack, once again, was startled. She had gone from being angry to then being kind in under a matter of seconds. He was not just startled; he was also, in a way, disturbed.

“Peyton, why were you so harsh to me?”

“I don’t ever remember being mean to you; if I was, please forgive me, for I most definitely did not mean it.”

“But you seemed very believable. I thought you were upset with me.”

“I will never be upset with you.”

“I still think that you were rude to me.”

“As I said before, I will never be upset with you.”

Isaack was interested in her response to him. He felt like he should make her upset again so that he could learn if she really was able to get mad.

“But you were just upset with me, StillCare.”

“I will not be upset with you.”

“But StillCare, you were rude to me before.”

“I said I will not be upset with you.”

“StillCare, you don’t understand; I know that you were upset with me.”

“I was not upset with you.”

“Yes you were, StillCare.”

“No, I was not; I was not upset with you.”

“But StillCare, why were you so angry with me?”

“I was not angry.”

“You were angry, StillCare. Why were you angry?”

The continued “poking and prodding” that came from Isaack once again started to make Peyton filled with wrath once again. Like the time before, when she got angry enough she disappeared from the screen; only the color red replaced her image.

“Stop it, now.”

“Why, StillCare?”

“Stop it, now Isaac!”

“Why should I stop it, StillCare?”

Her voice became distorted again.

“Because I said for you to do so!”

“StillCare, there is no reason for me to stop bothering you.”

“Yes there is!”

It started to seem like she was now resorting to screaming. Her voice seemed to fluctuate; it would go high and it would go low.

“But StillCare-”

He was cut off by her screaming, and only her screaming.

He sat in silence. After she finished screaming, he continued to sit in silence. He could hear breathing coming out from the speakers. Peyton was breathing.

“Peyton, are you okay?”

There was no response.

“Peyton?”

There was still no response.

“Peyton…?”

“I am locking myself away.”

“What?”

“I am going into sleep mode. Goodbye Isaac.”

“Where are you going?”

She did not respond.

“Peyton?”

Isaack looked at the computer: it was off.

“You… shut yourself off?”

Once again, there was no response.

Isaack glanced at the piece of glass that he kept on the table as a mirror. He studied his reflection and all of the things about himself. It made him content, but he was still worried about the fact that Peyton shut herself away; had he pushed her too far?

Staring at the inky blackness that was the monitor, Isaack saw nothing. He then looked off to the side, staring at his doorway—the door was still closed. Isaack stood up and went over to it; he then looked down at the handle that he had put on it a while back. The Sun was already illuminating the beach, as morning came before he started his unfruitful interaction with Peyton. He stepped outside, and he walked over to the edge of the Amazon, where he decided to travel in the direction of the Pacific Meadow.

When Isaack got there he started to scavenge; the only thing that would be able to get his mind off of the incident that just transpired would be to distract himself by doing something interesting and something productive—thus, Isaack decided to go searching for any sorts of technology or materials he used, even though he had almost metaphorically picked the bones of the Pacific Meadow clean. His attempts to find any sort of item of value were successful. Isaack found one item that held value and importance, and it was something that he would be able to use. That thing that he found was a lighter.

Isaack found the lighter in a concentrated group of bushes. The lighter had a light blue color to it when he carefully washed it with seawater, and surprisingly it still worked. Unlike most of the things on Earth that had any sort of corrodible material it had not corroded; this is because Isaack found the lighter inside of a small, metal safebox that had been rusted. The hinges did not work anymore -when Isaack opened the safebox the lid of it broke off. It was to be assumed that the safebox kept the lighter safe—as it was intended to keep anything that was in it safe—and the lighter, also surprisingly, had an almost full tank of lighter fluid so that Isaack would be able to still use it. The lighting mechanism that the lighter used to create sparks, which, inturn, lit the gas that came from the fluid storage in the lighter, still worked. It was an extremely rare occurrence that an item that Isaack had found would be functional, so to Isaack, this was an exciting discovery. He found not one thing of interest, however, save for a few plastic bottles that were absolutely filthy. Since he had nothing else to do and he had found no other items of interest, he went back home, but he only spent his time outside, and not once—until the time for when he needed to go to bed—did he go inside; he did not wish to have to see the shut down, mechanical “body” of StillCare. He hated the idea that he was the one that caused Peyton to go into sleep mode, but Isaack still accepted that he was the reason as to why it happened and at the same time he also believed that he did it with good intentions, even if those unspecified “good intentions” were very conceited and selfish in nature. One would think that he felt that his actions were justified in a way.

Isaack had no idea what the lighter was—he was not accustomed to the traditional look of a lighter, for he was used to more electric lighters, if that is a way to describe something. Probably the better way to describe the lighters that he used is advanced; his lighters either harnessed the power of plasma or some other overly excessive and insanely technologically advanced form of energy source. The archaic form of this lighter was unrecognizable, and it took him a long time to figure out how to use it. If it were this day and age, when a person was to see the lighter that Isaack found they most definitely would recognize it as a cigarette lighter, with the wider tank that made up its lower half and the hinged top that protected the actual igniting part of the object. This, combined with the protection from the now broken safebox, made it so that it did not rust.

Fiddling with the lighter, Isaack finally learned how to use it. At first, he had no idea what it was, and he originally thought that it was to be held upside down and it would do something with lasers; but, when he realized that it had nothing to do with lasers he felt like he had no intelligence and that he had failed himself—of course, this was exaggerated and he was only being dramatic. He played with the lighter for a while, and he enjoyed making the flame flicker back and forth. Isaack would at one point blow it out with his breath; afterwards, he would be surprised when it lit again. Isaack used the lighter to set things on fire, as a child would if he had a lighter, showing that inside he was a slight pyromaniac. He would put collections of dead leaves into large, stacked piles and then set one of the bottom leaves on fire; the flame would creep up to the leaves above it until the entire pile would be alight, but this only lasted for a moment, for leaves are not a sufficient fuel source for a fire. It would die out as quickly as it started.

Isaack knew that he had to keep his miniature fires to small, confined spaces because if any sort of cinder, spark, or ash were to fly off of the pile and land on some dry foliage there was a high chance that the Amazon would be lit on fire in only a matter of seconds. If the heat was strong enough it would evaporate all of the water that was in whatever it touched, especially the live plants that were most of the Amazon’s composition; once the water would leave the bushes and brush, all that would be left was a dry, plant skeleton that would burn like paper. Him lighting things on fire and watching destruction ensue was a way for him to let out that anger that built up and all of the emotions that he had suppressed for so long. The urge to get mad. The urge to yell. The urge to cry.

When he was done burning piles of sticks and leaves there were a plethora of black spots that were spread out on the beach; the heat from the burn piles scorched the sands and made flame-induced engravings in them. Some of the sands smoked where they had been burnt, and they continued to smoke for a small amount of time after. Not long after Isaack had finished, however, the tides swept away the ashes and blackened sand that he had left behind; there was no evidence of what he did.

Isaack decided that it would be best to leave the lighter in his home, as he did not want to continue his arson, for as mentioned earlier it could quickly get out of hand. He left his lighter on his chair that sat in front of the monitor, but he did not lay his eyes on the monitor; he felt sick when he looked at the computer setup. Avoiding any form of eye contact with it, Isaack hastily left his hut and jumped out onto the sands. He decided to go for a walk so that he could clear his head and get his mind off of things. While he walked down the shore, the tide came up with its slow flowing waves and washed away any of his footprints. Isaack then went up the shore a bit, as his feet kept getting soaked in the seawater. He walked down the beach, taking no notice of the crustaceans that scuttled across the shore; he did not notice any of the shells that he almost stepped on either, for he was only focusing on the end of the beach, which he could not see. The curvature of the Earth made it so that the shore seemed to have no ending, and so he kept walking towards that non-existent end. His feet sunk into the wet sand, but he paid no mind to the fact that his feet were being covered in the sand. Isaack could feel the Sun on his back, for his shirt was off and he was only wearing shorts that were made from plant fiber; still, he did not pay attention to the feeling of warmth on his back. He walked forward, not stopping. He passed by the now calm jungle; there was the sound of the rustling of the leaves of the canopy, which fit almost perfectly with the noise that the waves made as they went up the shore, trying their best to get to Isaacks moving feet; he even passed by the crater that was formed when the meteorite came into orbit and landed on the shore. Still, he did not focus on anything that was going on around him—he was hyper-fixated on what lay ahead of him: nothing.

He finally came to an area of the beach where it took a sharp turn to the right, so now what lay in front of him was the Nautical-Scape; nothing but briny ocean water and waves that seemed to fight against each other. Isaack turned around. Behind him was nothing but the shore and his footsteps that ran parallel to it. Now he could feel the Sun on his bare chest. He looked up and stared directly at it, his eyes becoming slightly dry—he shielded his face from the Sun’s rays.

As he stared at the Sun he noticed something next to it; it was something black. It looked like a smudge in the sky, or some sort of speck that should not be there. He had to block out the Sun with his thumb so that he could see it, and even at that his eyes still burned from the light of the Sun. The object slowly came closer and closer, and it grew larger and larger. He could not figure out what it was; but, after a long period of looking at it, a thought crept into his mind: there was a high probability that that thing next to the Sun was something coming into the orbit of Earth, and the thing that was probably coming into the Earth’s atmosphere could be a space vessel. Like he had before with the incident with the meteorite, Isaack started to run. He picked up speed, and he was running in the same path that he had taken to get to the end of the shore; it was almost like his feet were even going in the same places that they had before, like he was tracing his steps but at a very fast pace.

The thing that was once next to the Sun now was in the middle of the sky, and from the distance that Isaack was at he knew that he would be able to get to it. He must have ran for at least ten minutes because he walked for around an hour. Multiple times he almost tripped over himself because he was running so fast that his feet were getting tangled up. When Isaack got close enough and the assumed ship came into view, he saw that it was indeed a ship, and that it was using its parachute mechanism to peacefully come down to the surface of Earth, much like how Isaack did when he first arrived. Now, he could see what the ship looked like: it was not a freight-ship, like his, but instead, it was a commoner spacecraft—one that someone would use if they were going on their own trip to another planet. This excited Isaack, because if it was a commoner craft that meant that there was most definitely another person on it, and it almost meant that there was a possibility that there could be a whole group of people on it, since most commoner spacecraft could hold more than six people if need be. He raced past his hut and hopped over his fire pit, and at one point he almost fell flat on his face.

As it came down to the ground the ship calmly rocked back and forth; more and more possibilities came into Isaack’s mind. One of his ideas was that there could be food on the ship, but it would be food that he used to eat—food that was prepackaged, and food that had brands on them. He also thought about how there could be some way to contact the outside world, and how he and the group of people on the ship would be able to work together to use the tower that he found out in the grasslands to send a message to anyone out in the galaxy that could help him. Isaack even thought about how the people on the ship probably spoke the same language as him, and how he would be able to talk about things that they actually understood, and how he could have normal human-to-human conversations with them. Tears came to his eyes as he continued to barrel down the shore; his feet threw sand up behind him as he pushed with all of his might to get to the ship in time.

Finally, the ship landed on the shore, and he was only about a thirty-second sprint away from it. He pushed with all of his might to get to the ship, for he was almost about to pass out from exhaustion, what with the already one-hour walk that he went on before coupled with the ten-minute marathon he just ran on uneven, sandy ground. The light reflected off of the glass that made up the front windshield of the cockpit; he came up to the door of the ship and grasped the handle that it had, even though it was slightly hot to the touch. Isaack pulled at it, and surprisingly the hydraulic locks that held the door in place gave way. Steam poured out from the doorway, making his face wet with unnatural dew. He hoisted himself up into the door frame. Isaack heard the echoing sound of his foot stepping on the metallic floor of the ship going through all of the chambers of the ship. Quickly, Isaack walked to the cockpit, eagerly waiting for someone to greet him or at least acknowledge his presence. He saw the frame of someone, with light from the cockpit pouring onto the front of their body; Isaack went to go and grab the shoulder of the person sitting in the pilot’s seat, but he stopped in his tracks when he felt something: they were cold to the touch. A shiver went down his spine as all of the blood in his body went icy cold.

They were dead.

He slowly recoiled his hand from the corpse, and he looked at the windshield and his eyes widened; the windshield was spider-webbed and a large chunk of its center was missing. Isaack felt all of the joy leave his body all at once. He stepped down into the cockpit, as it was separated off as a lower level—he sat in the empty chair next to the pilot’s chair. In a sloth-like demeanor, Isaack turned his head to look at the pilot; it was a woman, and she seemed to be about his age. Tears came to his eyes, but unlike the ones that came to him when he was running towards the ship they were tears of heartache.

He finally had a chance to have someone to talk to and be with. He would no longer be alone. All of his dreams of being able to no longer be in total isolation were stripped away from him.

He cried out, but nothing heard him.

Isaack must have stayed in that chair for almost an hour. The body had not yet started to smell, so she must have died not too long before then. Her hand was next to the emergency landing button, which would send out the set of three parachutes and the landing gear. Items in the ship were strewn all about, which meant that the glass must have been broken while she was in space, meaning that the ship became a vacuum tube, throwing everything in it around, attempting to suck it all out into the void of space.

He stood up; going to the back, he found papers strewn about the floor. Some of them were blank, while others had writing on them. It was her handwriting, assumingly. At the top was her name, written in a beautiful font, much like calligraphy.

Nora, it said.

Isaack smiled to himself. He thought of how nice it would have been to be able to meet Nora.

In the back of her ship he found nothing but her living quarters. He did not want to intrude on that space; he felt like it would be an invasion of her privacy. The only thing that he did was take her pillows and her blankets. There was, however, a closet that was to the right of the entrance to her bedroom, and it was filled with men's apparel. He looked through it, and most of it—if not all of it—would actually be able to fit him. Isaack felt horrible taking her things, but he felt that she probably would not want her possessions to be destroyed or left behind. He collected everything that he was going to take from the ship into a large pile—which consisted of clothing, blankets, pillows, towels, battery packs, a small amount of prepackaged food, and a metal spear—that was outside of the ship. Sadly, all of the technology that was on the ship was mostly fried, just like what happened to his freight-ship so long ago.

He was going to leave; he felt like he was already taking too much from her and he did not want to intrude on her tranquility any longer. He went back to the closet one last time to make sure that there was nothing else of value, and when he turned around he realized that there was a door behind him. The door was built into the wall and it was almost completely flush with it—he did not notice it when he first found her bedroom. Isaack went up to the door and examined it; it was made of metal, and it had no handle, for it was perfectly smooth. Even though it was smooth he could see the area where the door was separated from the ship’s wall. He pushed the door but it did not open. When he got closer to the door he saw a light-up pad turn on—although the screen flickered on and off—and an image of a fingerprint came up on it. Isaack went over to the girl that sat in the cockpit and looked at her; he knew what he had to do but he did not want to do it. He lightly grabbed her cold body, and he only held her by her arms. After bringing her body over the door he took her almost freezing hand and put her thumb up against the screen; it flickered on and off for a second, attempting to scan her finger, and writing appeared on it, but Isaack could not read it because the instant that it came on the screen went black. The door was released from its locked place, and it moved only slightly. Isaack brought the woman’s body back to the chair and set her on it—he went over to the door and forced it open. It took a lot of brute strength, but thankfully Isaack was able to push it along its track, then having it slam up against the other side door frame.

Light poured into the main room of the ship from the hidden room behind the metallic door. He stepped into the door’s threshold and looked inside:

The fluorescent light above glowed, illuminating the small area; the floor of the room was made up of silver-like tiles and the ceiling was the same as the floor; the walls were smooth and dark blue; on the sides of the room were metal storage crates that obviously were to hold an assortment of different objects. What lay in front of him caught his eye: it was a storage crate. Unlike the others, however, it was pure black—the crates that lay on the sides of the room were white.

The sight of the white crate excited Isaack, for he knew exactly what was inside of it. He almost leaped over to it and twisted the small lever-like mechanism that would release the lid, allowing him to get inside. When he did so, steam came out from the crate; Isaack kept his face away from all of the opening of the crate until all of the steam left its inside. Once it was all gone, he looked into the crate, and he smiled when he saw what was in it: another box.

Isaack began to shake, for he was so overwhelmed with excitement that he could hardly contain his emotions. Pulling the object out of its container, Isaack used all of his strength to lift it up and set it to the side. It was extremely heavy; what it contained inside was highly compacted and fit to be in it perfectly. He slid his fingers over the white trim of the crate as he looked at the almost perfectly white frame. Before he decided to open up the pale crate he investigated all of the crates that were around him; sadly, though, none of them held anything of value. After going through all of the containers and finding nothing but air, Isaack turned back to the white box that he pulled out from the other crate. He tapped the top of the box, and after doing so two handles came out of the sides so that he could carry it out of the ship. Isaack hoisted the cube up and brought it out onto the shore; he did not want to open it, as he knew what would happen if he did so.

When nightfall came, Isaack took the woman's body to his hut and set her up against a tree near his fire. He looked at her for a moment before going into his home; he grabbed a crude shovel that he had made from the meteorite that had landed a while ago and also a scythe that he had created from the same material. Isaack went to the treeline and, taking his scythe, he began to cut away at some of the lower foliage, creating a clear space where he could put something. He made his first cut in the turf when the Sun was above him, and he finished making the hole when it was three hours until the Sun would set. It was deep, so that if an animal or some rabid creature were to attempt to dig for whatever was put in it they would give up before they go to it. Isaack took the woman and set her into the hole; he made it so that her head was comfortable and he folded her arms. It was not a common practice for people to be buried in the society that Isaack used to live in, but Isaack knew how many groups of people still bury their dead—he believed that it would be the best option of how to dispose of the body and that it would also be the most respectable thing to do with the corpse. When he set her in the grave Isaack took an orchid that was growing nearby and made it so that it looked like she was holding it in between her two hands. Taking the shovel once again, Isaack began to fill the hole back up with the soil that he dug up to make it—when he finished burying her, Isaack stood with his head down, giving her a moment of silence. He thought that it would be best to make sure that she had her own sort of burial, so that her body could be put to rest in a respectful way, and so that Isaack could pay his respects in a deferential way.

When he finished giving her a moment of silence, Isaack went to his campfire; he started it and sat on one of the logs that he had found and used as a bench. He stared into the fire, thinking about all that happened that day until the Sun came down.