From woke up as the first on the first day, but as the last on the
second. He had been up most of the night, and hadn’t seen much to sleep.
It almost felt foreign to him, even though he had slept for so long
through the Silence.
This time, sleep felt like nothing he’d done
before, though. It was strange, tiring, almost like he hadn’t slept at
all. Yet, his bed was messy and he had laid in it. He had been there,
for a very long time.
His name was From, not because he was from
anywhere, but rather because he was from everywhere. He’s the From that
comes first, the beginning of the sentence, the loudest, quietest
moment, the implied causality, the whispered idea. His nature wasn’t one
to barge out loud, and he wasn’t one to scream, but he was there until
the talking stopped, and he was there after. Mostly because he simply
was. The From comes first, they say, yet the From comes last as well—it
stays, and lingers, across the room, listening to the Noise.
From’s opinion of the Noise wasn’t determined yet. He comes to it as the time goes by, the past making sense of the future, like a shadow tracing after the owner—an afterimage. From what, they ask? Yet, From doesn’t concern itself with wherefrom. It is from somewhere, and it will stay.
On the second day, From spent the time observing the others,
watching them figure out how to deal with the new noise around them. It
was just the Noise, in fact; the newness came because it was in contrast
to what was before: It wasn’t a new noise. It was just the Noise. They
knew that, yet they could not say how. It came from the Silence and
broke the Silence, and thus it must be the Noise. That was From’s
conclusion. Yet, he was interested in seeing how the others fared with
this different way of life. He didn’t worry too much about survival, he
was always from somewhere, so there was always somewhere else to go.
He did not like the cameras. They felt wrong to him. He couldn’t
determine where they were from, he couldn’t tell who used them. The
Noise came from the Silence, but the cameras? They were silent, that was
true, but the Silence didn’t need cameras. Right?
Yet, his mind was
not one to decide, it was one to listen and understand. He would watch,
and learn, and hopefully, he would one day know what the world wanted
from them.