Final Era: August 2119 AD

Sylvan Grove, Kansas, USA

Historians call the transitional period in which humanity is still struggling to survive as the "Final Era." This is the greatest decline of humanity and the "end of the world". Forgive historians, the name isn't entirely true, but it's only because no one cared about giving the period a fitting name after that.

The years that follow may be called the "Age of the Fallen," or something that sounds gray (or purple). In this era, anomalies are the norm, and only a handful of humans and protists still walk the planet. Humanity is still alive in the world, and they can no longer be called human.

At the end of the final epoch, change begins. They turn into strange, uncomfortable things. Everyone you see has changed, and you have no way of knowing what it means to you.

I don't want to discredit them, though. There are many, many good, right people among them.

It's just that they were born wrong.

……

It's twenty miles to Selina now, whereas it used to be sixty miles away.

The Great Kansas Crisis of 2099 was a difficult time for people. And for those who survived the crisis, an even more difficult period followed.

A few days after the crisis, a tall, thin thing was seen walking on the miserable white dust of the setting Kansas sunset. These are the second transformations in Kansas, the "Walking Branches."

Humans believe that their existence is torture for them and that they must let go. As a result, the organizations that roamed the twisted ground of Kansas began hunting them down and breaking them off like branches.

But many of them escaped the sweep and settled in small areas of the wilderness.

Allen was now in their area, too, as he walked past the large, twisted spire and the car that once belonged to K-18, trying not to look at the tall, grotesquely shaped and ugly creatures. But they did disturb his mind, and he knew the fact that they were human beings, and he knew the path they had taken. A powerful psychic force made him want to kill them, but something kept stopping him from approaching and smashing one of them in the head.

He hated their indescribable sounds, which rose and fell like Shepard's tunes; He hated the stares they cast at him when he was just passing by or talking about something.

He tried not to pay attention to his thoughts, pretending that they were just dead wheat stalks behind him.

But he couldn't help but look at them.

A bunch of long, twisted sausages attached to the bulb head, with incredibly long arms dragging behind them. They follow a long "walking branch" from outside the district. They waved at him with their countless arms tied to their bodies, and spoke their horrific language.

"Get out of here!" He shouted, and began to sprint and trot, carefully glancing at the things every few steps.

He tripped over a sharp rock, lay on his back, and then saw the crowd behind him.

Then he saw it. What he saw fueled anger he had never felt before, even more than the emotionally charged magazines and the virus on his television.

The thing was small, and it was held in the hand of a "walking branch" with two heads and four arms. They brought it to him, and it looked like a beggar walking up to someone to ask for change.

They're multiplying constantly.

He got up and walked over to them, trembling and tears beginning to well-up in his eyes. He pulled out his baseball bat, and everything he saw went blank.

As he approached, he felt them all staring at him. He was surrounded by the stuff, thick tubular flesh spreading at his feet, and there was a mess all around him.

He shouted at the crowd, pushing a path out of it, his body brushing against the grotesque body. He ran straight in the direction of his home until he couldn't run anymore.