Today was just another boring day for 115. He woke up as faint rays of sunlight filtered through the cracks in his makeshift tent. Sitting up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Although he did not technically need sleep, he still enjoyed it, as it helped him endure the long days when he had nothing else to occupy his time.
As he stands up and stretches toward the sky, looking out at the seemingly endless ocean with the sun's rays glittering on the water, he yawns and continues with his daily routine.
As he walked toward the water, he jumped in and swam for a while. Swimming had become a habit for him, and he could easily outshine any human with his skill. After completing a few laps back and forth, he climbed out of the water and dried himself off with a makeshift towel made from leaves and vines that he had tied together.
Currently, 115 had been stranded on this island or continent—whatever it may be—for quite some time, longer than he could remember. Upon waking up, he found himself on a beach, with the ocean beside him. The only thoughts in his mind were the word "eventide" and the number 115. Apart from that, he had no memory of who he was, how he got there, or even how to speak.
Although he does not understand concepts like language or how to speak, he is capable of forming thoughts. He decided to call himself "115," mainly because it was the only real word or number he knew, aside from "eventide," which he didn't like as much as "115."
He led a very monotonous life, and nearly nothing interesting ever happened to him. He would wake up, engage in a few hobbies he had discovered, and then go back to bed. That was his routine, and honestly, he was content with it. However, occasionally, he experienced intense headaches that felt like his head was splitting in two. These episodes occurred about twice a week and left him feeling quite annoyed.
After drying off, he proceeds with the next part of his routine: walking into the forest and heading toward one of the many mountains. He begins to climb using only his bare hands. For quite some time, he has been trying to reach the summit, and each day he makes progress. However, it has already been many years, and the top remains elusive. Just yesterday, he managed to reach an altitude of 70,000 feet in about 22 hours.and since a day lasted 80 on eventide he still had plenty of time to come back down and finish his routine.
After climbing it for what seemed like ages 115 saw the marker he had made in the mountain to indicate he had reached his previous day's record and with one swift motion he hurled himself towards it from below, about 15 feet above him, and grabbed onto a ledge and pulled the marker out and shoved it into his mouth so he could keep climbing.
115 climbed for another few hours before he called it a day and started going back down, after another grueling 20+ hours his feet were back on the ground and without pause in his steps, he went on about his day onto his next task.
While 115 was occupied with his routine on the beach, something unusual was approaching from the sea. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be some type of floating construction. A man stepped to the front of the vessel, pulled out what looked like a spyglass, and looked toward the land.
After scanning the area for a bit, the man spotted 115's tent on the beach, his eyebrows furrowing in surprise. He then turned back to his crew and shouted.
“Alright boys get ready to disembark once we hit land and be on the lookout I spotted some type of man-made structure on the beach the “new land” may be populated.”
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To which the crew all looked at him and said in unison “Aye aye cap”
Back to 115 in the forest, he had been walking for quite some time now and figured it was time to head back to his tent for the day and get some rest. Turning around and walking for a few hours the beach was starting to come into view between the trees, 115 kept walking until he saw the construction from earlier parked right in front of the beach.
115 instantly became curious as he had never seen anything like it walking forward he set foot on the beach and as he was about to approach the construction he heard a voice behind him.
“Stand still and put your hands in the air,” the captain said.
115 hearing the voice speak tried to understand what he had just heard but with no knowledge of the language or the meaning of his words, simply turned around and looked at the captain. Now looking at the source of the voice 115 saw what appeared to be a man pointing something at him, the man himself was about 6 feet tall with blue eyes and black hair with a decently sized beard and was wearing something over his body 115 had never seen before as well since he did not wear clothes as he never had the need nor did he know the concept or how to make them.
The captain repeated his words so 115 again but this time much more firmly. “I said put your hands in the air do you not understand me!?”
115 tilted his head to the side while looking at him in confusion.
The captain seeing this realized that 115 might not understand his words at all and put his gun down while trying to figure out how to go about this… calling his crew over they all started talking while one of them kept an eye on 115 just in case.
“Cap, what's up with that guy? Why is he completely naked? Is he not cold? It's the middle of winter,” one of the men said while shivering a bit.
While there were no signs of winter that did not mean it was not freezing the temperature on the beach they were at was well below 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I honestly have no idea it's my first time coming across anything like this in my 30+ years of sailing to different lands but it is also not completely surprising as this is by far one of our biggest discovers considering it took us 7 years of sailing to reach this landmass and based on its size its bigger than the mainland back home”
“What should we do about him then? And how long are we going to stay here before returning home and reporting this to the headquarters?”
“Well like I said since I believe this is bigger than our mainland there is no way for us to explore this place on our own so with that in mind, I think we will stay for a few weeks or maybe a few months before returning home that way we can stock up on supplies as we are getting low after sailing for so long.”
While they were figuring out what to do about 115 and their plans to return home 115 was now back to looking at the boat that was parked alongside the beach in the water. Getting curious he decided to walk over and inspect it.
But before he could move he heard someone walking towards him from behind, turning back around 115 saw the captain looking at him while seemingly in thought.
One of the crew members walked over and looked at the captain and after some time the captain turned to him and said
“Would anyone be willing to try and teach him how to understand us? We need some way to communicate if we are going to figure out anything about this landmass” pausing for a few seconds he continued. “He should know some stuff about this place like where food/water sources are.”
While he was speaking to his crew once more 115 was just listening to everything being said and a strange feeling began to well up inside of him. While 115 had no way of describing how he felt all he knew was that the language they were speaking and just speaking in general felt familiar to him.
After spending some time listening to the men discuss, the feeling continued to grow until he decided to give it a try. “C-captain,” 115 said aloud, his voice a bit raspy since he hadn’t used it before.
After a few minutes of silence, he took a deep breath to gather his thoughts before speaking again.
“Do you… understand us?”
Once more, silence ruled as 115 stared at him, trying to form another word he had heard the captain say.
“Underst-and?” 115 said, looking utterly confused about what he was attempting to say.