The coastal town of Dibba, situated in Northwestern Arabia, was a patchwork of ramshackle buildings and rusting remnants of technology from a bygone era. Its weather-beaten walls stood as silent witnesses to a world that had been shattered and rebuilt countless times. In this post-apocalyptic world, where the sun hung in the sky like a glaring sentinel and the dusty breeze carried whispers of forgotten times, Jomana navigated life as a scavenger.
Sitting against the window ledge in her home, Jomana listened to the steady trickle of the gulf stream not too far away. This decommissioned Watchtower served as a historical monument at one point in time. Sighing, Jomana climbed up to enter an opening shaft inside the tower while jumping into a small room. With only enough space for her worn mattress, wires hanging on the wall, and various scavenged tech and gizmos, she takes one last look at her dimly lit surroundings. The house, completely devoid of electricity vibrated with shadows from oil lanterns. On the wall hung an old photo of her late Father, badly restored with faded colours. Jomana walked towards the only window in the circular room and slid it open, letting in the breeze that came from the nearby shore. Then, swiftly, she jumped from the open window onto the sandy pathway below.
Her daily routine was a dance with survival. With bionic limbs whirring in harmony with her determination, Jomana moved through the town’s narrow alleyways like a shadow. Competing with fellow scavengers, who shared her hunger for relics of the past, they searched for artefacts of a world that had once teemed with life and innovation.
On a particularly humid morning, a cryptic message addressed to Jomana in the form of a crumpled piece of cardboard with the letters DB lay in front of her makeshift tent. The letters DB, Jomana knew, spoke of a commission that bore an air of danger and secrecy—an opportunity that could lead her to the answers she so desperately searched for. As the sun painted the sky with hues of amber, she found herself standing at the town’s edge, surrounded by a handful of scavengers. They too, seemingly caught wind of cryptic messages making its round through the town.
The mission was simple in its complexity: journey to the Desert Boneyard, an eerie expanse where the detritus of civilization lay strewn across the sands. It was a place rumoured to hold remnants of technology, forgotten knowledge, and perhaps even the key to Jomana’s health—the elusive cure for her affliction.
Keeping a safe distance, Jomana followed the scavengers set out into the vast expanse of land, the crunch of their limbs harmonizing with the whispering winds. The world around them bore scars of neglect and decay. Abandoned structures sagged under the weight of time, their skeletal frames standing like mournful guardians. The ground, once fertile, had transformed into an arid wasteland, the earth cracking in protest against the relentless sun.
As they ventured deeper into the desert, the landscape transformed into a haunting mosaic of rusted machines, shattered glass, and crumbling structures. The Desert Boneyard was a graveyard of progress, where the remnants of a bygone civilization lay dormant, waiting for explorers like Jomana to uncover their stories.
The sky above started turning shades of faded blue, marred by wisps of smog that stubbornly clung to the horizon. The air was tinged with a metallic tang, a reminder of the pollution that had choked the world before its downfall. Jomana’s eyes scanned the horizon, her gaze drawn to a structure that once must have been a towering skyscraper, its windows now shattered and empty.
Her hand tightened around the hilt of her scavenger’s blade, a weapon forged from a fusion of old-world steel and advanced technology. Up until now, the need to use her sword had not yet arrived. But one day, she knew, she would have to brave the reality of what would happen if she had to defend her own life while taking another.