i just woke up. i slept on the floor as usual, even though there are beds around. i dont know why i do that to myself; i suppose it might be some form of anticipatory masochism. one day i wont have decent beds so i might as well pretend i dont now. to prepare, or whatever.

the night was uneventful as always. i woke up once to keep the fire going; thats about it, as with every night really. i am very glad people left digital watches around, that way i can have alarms. i picked up the most useful one and removed the batteries from many others to keep as reserve. i cannot make batteries anymore, and charging them would be a gamble, one i havent made yet, despite it being within my abilities. there are solar panels around.

regardless: today is going to be a quite uneventful day. i there is enough in the soup, and i have nothing to plant or harvest, nor a shortage of wood to fix. that means i will probably explore some. ive already been through many buildings, but certainly nowhere close to all of them. its easy to underestimate the scale of a city.

i have two buildings i would like to check out today. i wont do much inside, else i would only be able to comb through a single one or even less. both are on the outskirts, as far as that even exists. close to the abrupt end of any structures at all, the physical and metaphorical edge of the city. the two blocks sitting on the left side of the road that leads nowhere, coming from outside. both are old apartment blocks, as were most houses.

* * *

when i entered the first block, i was greeted with a somewhat unusual stench. most buildings have a rather neutral scent, though still smelling of old carpet, wet concrete, and stale air. this one however was consumed by a sickening sweet, mildly acidic, rotten smell. someone seems to have left food to rot, and the rot spread. but it wasnt so bad as to turn me off entirely, so i pushed on and looked into the long corridor to the left, leading to the vast yet claustrophobic sea of doors surrounded in dark green flocked carpet on walls and floor. i couldnt see all of it as it was largely unlit, but a few open doors provided enough outside illumination to guess. it was just like all the other houses.

as i looked through the occasional apartment, i found several things: first, i found the source of the smell. food, as expected, seemingly spared for long enough to have survived so many years. but now it, too, is re-entering the realm of microbes. i didnt enter that room, i did not want an infection. - later i found a place stocked with nine solar panels. i made a mental note of it to later return to. i dont know why someone would buy solar panels in such low quantities, but oh well. maybe they were intending to install them on the roof or something. everyone had shared access to the roofs after all, though barely anyone used it.

some places had some lighters, batteries, even computers left behind, along with other simple consumables like paper (i found an entire stash of old newspapers), soda cans, bottles of all sorts of liquid fuel, pills, and pens. i took the small stuff and made note of some bigger stuff. i also tried a can of soda. it still hadnt gone flat, meaning it was safe to drink. this was my lunch today, i wouldnt eat anything of particular substance until my return home - to my fire that is; the whole city is my home in a way, all things considered.

the second block had a more familiar smell. dust, very stale, slightly moist, hints of mold, but too little to matter. the rooms were mostly similar to the previous apartment block, though now the sun had come around and the light shone far into the building from the west where the city ended and nothing was there to obstruct the rays. i took ten lighters, the fullest of the hundreds i found, and bagged a few kilos of paper and some table legs for the fire.

* * *

the soup in the evening was good, but i put in some carrots, lentils, and peas after i was done, having gotten somewhat sick of the seemingly infinite amount of potato currently in the large pot. i went to sleep relatively in-sync with the sunset intending to wake up after approximately four hours to add some wood to the fire.