When a man loses his memories, he loses his history—and with it, his dreams. Later, he becomes an empty man.
He didn't think of himself as a man without memories, but sometimes, when he stared at the corroded rust along the edge of his desk, he wondered if he had lost something greater—not his history, but the possibilities it might have held.
Memories make the man, or so they say. And if his memories were nothing more than a decaying workshop in an abandoned district, what did that say about his dreams?
Today was no different than any other. The small workshop, its walls made of peeling metal sheets, was silent except for the low hum of the old radio he was trying to fix.
The air smelled of cheap coffee, bitter because it was brewed from last week's leftovers. He sipped the cup slowly, his fingers stained with oil, as he worked on piecing together the battered radio a customer from the neighboring block had brought in.
The same customer. The same radio. The same problem.
"That's not a radio anymore," Corven had told him yesterday, his voice calm but tired.
"It's scrap. Buy a new one."
But the man, his eyes just as weary as Corven's, only shook his head.
"There's nothing new here, Corven. You know that."
And he was right. The forsaken settlement wasn't a place for new things. Dusty streets, hollow houses, even the wind carried the scent of metal and abandonment—everything here was old, used, broken. If Corven wanted something new, even a screw untouched by time, he would have to dream of the impossible.
The nearest "living" settlement was hundreds of miles away, where people lived in gleaming towers and got whatever they wanted with the tap of a finger. There, maybe he could build something worthwhile.
There, maybe the ideas—the ones that slipped into his mind during quiet moments—would find a way to become real.
He sat back in his worn chair, the half-disassembled radio before him, and allowed himself a rare moment of daydreaming.
If only he were there… in those faraway cities, with endless tools and resources… he could invent something no one had ever seen before.
A device that could change the world—or at least make this district a little less lonely. But the dream faded quickly. He looked at the scrap scattered across his desk—rusted screws, tangled wires, mismatched pieces—and realized this was his world.
Here, big ideas died in the trash bin, replaced by whatever was possible, whatever was at hand.
"Man is the child of his environment," he muttered to himself, quoting an old saying he couldn't remember where he'd heard. But he knew the truth:
The environment here was broken. Maybe the radio wasn't the only thing that deserved fixing.
He couldn't remember when the settlement had last been alive. Maybe it was an old memory, or just a story he'd heard from others—a tale of days when the streets were full of laughter, when water flowed through pipes, when food wasn't a distant dream.
Now, the neighborhood was just a skeleton of what it had been. People faded away with the resources. Dozens had died—of thirst, of hunger, or of something darker no one dared to name.
Those who hadn't died had fled, or tried to. And most likely perished on the road to those far settlements where, they said, the lights never went out. Those who remained, like him, clung to something—stubbornness, maybe, or simply the lack of another choice.
The nearest living soul might be in the next block, or the one beyond that—hours of walking across sands that had swallowed everything.
He finished repairing the radio, his fingers stiff from working with worn-out tools. A heap of tangled wires and rusted screws had somehow become something functional—or at least humming enough to be called a radio.
He set it on the dusty shelf beside his empty cup, expecting Frank—the old man who came every week with this same battered device—to show up. But he didn't.
Twenty-four hours passed, maybe more. Frank had said he'd be back by evening, but now the sky was turning that heavy gray that comes before night, and there was no sign of him. No footsteps crunching the gravel outside the workshop, no dry cough announcing his arrival as it always did.
Corven wasn't surprised. Here, absence meant only one thing. If someone didn't show up, they weren't sick, or lost, or asleep. They were dead.
Where?
How?
Those were questions no one asked anymore.
He remembered the first time he realized this unwritten law of the settlement—he had been younger then, still carrying the foolish hope that people might come back.
Now, it was simply part of life, like the dust gathering on the windows or the rust eating through his tools. He wasn't necessarily sad. He wasn't angry.
Just… a little empty.
He cast one last look at the radio. Maybe it was the last thing he'd ever fix for Frank. Maybe the last thing he'd ever fix at all.
He was pulled from his dark thoughts by a violent crash outside. At first, he thought it might be old Frank, finally dragging his feet over the gravel, grumbling about the dust or the wind or whatever else he'd chosen to blame that day. But the sound was too heavy, too sharp. It wasn't Frank. It wasn't even human.
Corven dropped the screwdriver onto the desk, his heart pounding unexpectedly fast. Through the dust-caked window, he saw shadows moving outside—fast, unnatural shapes, accompanied by a tearing sound like collapsing metal sheets.
A fight.
Something was happening out there, in the dead streets that had known nothing but silence for months. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what.
Of course, he'd heard the stories. Frank used to tell them in his raspy voice while waiting for Corven to fix the radio. Stories of people fighting those creatures.
"Heroes," Frank called them, his eyes shining with a childlike excitement as he described people with unexplainable powers, facing down monsters and sometimes even winning.
The radio sometimes carried similar news—fragmented broadcasts from far-off settlements, talking about battles and victories and names Corven had never heard before.
But he'd never believed them. To him, they were just myths people told themselves to cling to hope—like the daydreams he invented about inventions he'd never build.
He hadn't seen heroes. All he'd ever seen was dust, rust, and tired faces fading away one by one. But now, as he stared at the shifting shadows, he felt something stir inside him—not fear, but something closer to curiosity, laced with a bitter edge of doubt.
He picked up the repaired radio, his fingers gripping the cracked plastic frame. Maybe Frank wasn't coming. Maybe he was out there, among those shadows. Or maybe he was gone, like the rest, leaving behind nothing but an ancient device and the memory of stories no one believed anymore.
Corven hesitated, then set the radio back on the desk. He wasn't ready to step outside. Not yet. But the sound outside didn't stop, and deep down, he knew—the silence he had grown used to wasn't coming back anytime soon.