Information

Urim
Legacy Name: Urim

The Common Experiment #357
Owner: Holocryptic

Age: 11 years, 7 months, 2 weeks

Born: October 1st, 2012

Adopted: 11 years, 5 months, 1 day ago

Adopted: December 17th, 2012

Statistics

• Level: 41
   
• Strength: 103
   
• Defense: 104
   
• Speed: 101
   
• Health: 103
   
• HP: 95/103
   
• Intelligence: 204
   
• Books Read: 202
• Food Eaten: 0
• Job: Operations Specialist

"There's a house on my block
That's abandoned and cold
Folks moved out of it
A long time ago
And they took all their things
And they never came back
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked
And everyone calls it

The house, the house where
Nobody lives



Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means?"


"The House Where Nobody Lives" by Tom Waits.


---





“Don’t get me wrong, fella,” his deep voice rumbles, slightly muffled by the mask. “It’s not like I just think of you as fertilizer”.

There’s no response. Not that he expects one. Honestly, he’d be more concerned if the corpses started talking back. Though he knows there’s no one to hear him, speaking to them helps ease the guilt. There’s a sense of unease in just burying them like this, especially for this purpose, important though it is. They get no funeral, no tombstone, not even a name. Nothing to show that they’re more than…well…

Fertilizer.

He shoves the shovel into the earth once more. He presses his foot on it to drive it deeper. He looks to the corpse as he speaks to it.

“This is no fun for me either, pal. This digging is a pain in the rear, it is. But Eden here,” he gestures to the mostly bare tree with his thumb “-needs the meat”.

He stares at it for a moment. He leans into his shovel.

“She’s a beaut, ain’t she?” he asks the body. “Well, compared to everything else. A lil’ green is better than none, right?”

Eden is a crooked, short little thing. It’s still a young tree. But its leaves are (mostly) green and alive. The tree is the only speck of life for miles and miles. The only color on the flat, blackened ground…

He blinks.

“Man, it’s just one of those days, you know?” he says as he goes back to work. “You just don’t feel like doing anything!”

His voice grows more distant.

“Sometimes it feels like there’s no point…”

His voice and gestures suddenly become more animated.

“But enough of that! I wonder who you were in life. Looks like you used to have a nice suit there. A business man, I suppose? What about your name? Greg, maybe?” he looks at his horribly burnt face. “You look like a Greg”.

He stops digging once more. He glances at the shallow grave, then at ‘Greg’. He sets the shovel down.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you deserve better than this, but this is the best I can do,” He lowers himself and gently places his hands under the body. One hand supporting his back, the other the knees. He then slowly lifts him up off the ground.

Carrying them has gotten easier. Looking at them doesn’t even make him flinch anymore. This fact dampens his mood further.

He looks down at ‘Greg’.

“I’ll try and remember you, alright?” he lowers him into the grave. He shifts and moves the limbs until they looked ‘comfortable’. The body is now posed as if it were in an open casket funeral. Urim inspects his work, nodding in satisfaction. Then he finally shovels dirt on top.

The sad part is, this is his only form of social interaction.

-

He marks the new graves with sticks, as usual. There’s less this time, only three, including the burnt businessman. He just doesn’t feel up to doing more right now. His limbs ache and his heart feels heavy and…he needs a break right now.

He's been needing more and more breaks, lately.

Urim settles down on a fallen tree. It creaks from his weight. Once he gets comfortable, he awkwardly positions the violin. The instrument must look comical in his large hands. Maybe he should have grabbed a cello. Honestly he wanted a fiddle, but the dadgum music store had none…

He puts those thoughts aside and raises the bow. He takes a moment to prepare himself. He looks out at the world around him.

Nothing but barren dirt and rocks. Not that he expects differently. This place used to be a wilderness. But now there’s no (living) trees, no animals, nothing. The sky almost matches the land in dreariness, hiding the sun away in thick clouds. It looks more like a curtain of smoke, as if the fires had never gone out.

He plays.

The music is amateur and the notes are mostly picked at random. He just does what he thinks sounds nice. He had no interest in playing before, but he has heard that plants grew faster to music. It’s not like there’s much else to do.

Besides, the sound of violin gives him relief from the sound of…nothing. Absolute nothing. People used to talk about the quiet peace of nature but that was nothing compared to this. There were no sounds of birds or crickets or frogs, no background noise whatsoever. There aren’t even any beetles skittering across leaves.

No people to talk about their day, no radios, no jokes, no laughter, no singing.


The whine of the violin drowns out the silence.



---



Urim ( "lights" ) is one of the gems, along with Thummim ( "perfection" ), that were carried by the high priest of Israel on the ephod/priestly garments. They were said to translate God's will.

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