On the day it ran out and he spotted the tall silhouettes of the palm trees in the distance, he simply silently adjusted his course towards them but he did not alter his pace. He did not think “Ah, there is water there.” It was simply as good a direction as any.

It was only when he got closer, close enough to see the green of the leaves that he allowed himself to feel a flicker of hope, a flicker that was kindled into a flame by the sight of sunlight glinting off a silvery surface as he came over a high hill.

He didn’t have it within him to break into a run by that point, but the glorious sight gave him a jolt of energy and determination that kept him on his feet, kept him moving forward. It was there, it was real. He had not fooled himself.

A refreshing breeze sprang up as he approached the oasis, and he smiled a smile that froze and then faded. The fronds of the trees did not stir. There was no scent of wet earth or vegetation or anything alive, just the dust of the desert carried on the wind. He looked up at the greenery and saw that it was blocky, solid. The trunks looked waxy or plasticine. He stepped forward, cautious now… an artificial oasis was unexpected, but it might still save him. If someone had taken the time to decorate this patch of desolation, they might still be in residence. If not, they’d probably have built their tiny paradise around actual water.

That hope was dashed when he passed under the resin boughs of the artificial trees and found a “lake” of hard plastic with a rippled surface. A wooden post stood near the edge of it. It bore a placard. He stepped up to it and read it, his parched lips moving silently as he drank in the words:

La Mirage (R. Pescatero, 2017) – This outdoor installation piece, created during the artist’s prolific “asshole phase”, is intended to call to mind images of a lush desert oasis, an island of life in the midst of the most inhospitable terrain. The piece calls to mind the fleeting and transient nature of hope by luring travelers in with an illusory promise of sustenance and succor. Like the artist’s related works, Rotating Signpost (2015) and his ambitious Retreating Rescue Lights (2022), La Mirage has been known to invoke feelings of frustration, desperation, and even despair in viewers.

It had not made much of a move towards any horizon in all the time since then, instead passing a lazy circuit overhead, moving just enough that he could be sure it was moving, that time was passing in the midst of the single endless day.

The landscape was also not quite unchanging. The dusty plain was very flat and extended past the horizon in every direction, but as he walked landmarks did eventually come into view… a rock, a stubby little tree, a wooden post.

The first time he saw an indistinct shape rising up in the distance, he’d grown excited… and more excited still when it came into focus tall and narrow, like the shape of a man. He’d been slightly disappointed to find out it was a rough pillar of stone about five feet tall, but only slightly. Until he’d spotted it, he’d wondered if he was walking in circles, or if the whole plain was really one tiny plot of dirt that repeated over and over again. Finding that first little bit of variation gave him hope, hope that he was getting somewhere, that he was going somewhere, that the place in which he’d found himself was a real place… that there might be someone else in it, somewhere.

So he’d trudged on. He knew neither hunger nor thirst in his new body, nor real fatigue… when he walked at more than a moderate pace he felt the strain and had to slow down, but he never grew so tired that he had to stop and rest. He could walk forever, it seemed.

He kept an eye out for anything that stood out in the distance and veered towards it. What he was really looking for was anything that moved, of course, or anything that showed signs of human use or human habitation. With each aberrant item he spotted, he felt somewhat less hopeful but no less disappointed.

He’d thought of himself as a loner, during his life… he’d always felt he got on just fine in his own company. If he could be sure that he was alone in the desert, he was certain that he wouldn’t mind so much, but in the infinite expanse there was always the chance that he might encounter someone, he might find companionship for a moment or an eternity, he might find a friend or a lover or even an enemy, someone to give him a reason to keep going or to stop, someone to help him make some kind of sense of his new existence.

Time passed… rather a lot of it, in fact. Nothing of substance changed.

He walked on, alone.

Sartre had been wrong. Hell wasn’t other people, after all.