Later that day she was hiking through a grove of aspen trees in a state of utter despair when suddenly in the distance she noticed a bright fluorescent color. A shade of orange too vibrant to be natural. Em stood for a moment, breathing, staring, and then she realized that what she was looking at appeared to be a tent. Her heart leaped, and she hurried toward the tent, shoving back the hood of the poncho, smiling out of relief, already feeling embarrassed about having to explain to a stranger that she’d gotten lost, but then as she reached the tent her heart sank again as she realized that the tent was abandoned. The bright orange fabric hung in shreds from bent poles, fluttering in the breeze. Drizzling rain pattered onto the leaves of the aspen trees overhead.
Squatting there in what had once been a doorway, she looked through the artifacts in the tent. Binoculars smeared with dust. Stuffing leaking from jagged rips in a mildewed sleeping bag. A film camera. A tape recorder. Algae growing on the face of a digital wristwatch with a dead battery. A grimy beeper. A can of peaches that had expired over a decade before. Fungi sprouting from the pages of a stack of moldering fashion magazines. A utility knife whose blades were rusted shut. Mouse droppings. Wet aspen leaves. A moldy packet of crackers. Dew glittering on a spiderweb suspended between a pair of rubber waders. Popping the lid on an aluminum container, she found a faded lottery ticket preserved in a plastic bag. She slipped the aluminum container into her backpack, along with the binoculars.
In the dirt near the tent she discovered a rectangular steel plate engraved with a bizarre geometric symbol, and she stared at the plate for a while, wondering what the symbol signified.
As she was standing there the daylight suddenly dimmed and the rain began to fall in a downpour.