She interrupts his peaceful thoughts of sedition with her presence.The woman, Alex, soon joins our heroes life by chance. The first thought upon his threatened looneliness was an urge to fight. His sensitivity on such an empty night made a suprise such as this overwhelming and nearlyu incomprehensible. As she wanders closer, she becomes more human. He sees her tentative strides and feels her anxious energy. "can I join you?" she inquires.

Her thick platformed leather boots sound out each slowing step, as they finally come to silence, after a small nod from the man, she sits down on the beam of oak that surrounds the community garden. The sidewalk lies empty but the sounds of the nearby downtown and its livelyhood echo through the otherwise silent night. A single streetlamp has always been a comort to Trench, the man we are concerned with. Why, out of anyone in this small but bustling city, are we concerned with him. As a careful observer, he reflects it better than anyone, though he rarely finds himself lost in any of it's events. He strode out into the night seeking to experience anything but the chaos of his room, and the emptiness he feels being alone in it. So it seems it was fated for him to meet Alex. He looks up from the sidewalks details, which speak to him often like a novel, to see his new companion in her reality. The streetlamp illuminates these two character, catching them both reeling at the events of life. They immediately lock eyes, so rare on a first encounter, and he feels as though all that has been will now be changed. Bearing the weight of this reality, he draws a blank of what to do besides introduce himself. "I'm Trench", he says, holding out a lit cigarette as an offering. As if accepting him into her world as well, she takes it and offers her name, "Alex." 

As if they understood each others positions, they hesitate to fill the silence with the obvious questions on both of their minds. So instead, they take a moment and continue to experience the world in all it's gory and bland details. Breaking the peaceful silence with a sigh of acknowledgement, Trench finally asks the two questions on the forefront of his mind "so who are you, and what brings you out here tonight?" She pauses for longer than it should take her to respond, as if choosing carefully what to reveal. "Well, I was trying to see Grandma's Ashes perform but I had no one to go with so I thought, I'll go anyway, but when I got there I was too scared to go in alone and it freaked me out so much that I started walking becuase I didn't want to go home but I didn't want to go to the show anymore and then I saw you and felt like I should talk to you becuase I love it when I meet random people and even though I'll probably never see you again I thought that you seemed interesting and I might learn something from you." She had utterly failed to hide anything about herself as much as she wishes she could have. 

"I was planning on going to that, but I got a text from my friend that seemed off and I got too stressed so I stayed home until I couldn't stand it. As usual, I left because I was too lonely and came here-- like I do most nights.", Trench answered honestly, trying to relate but also wholly ignoring her tangent. 

Strolling to the front of an empty lecture hall, seemingly the epicenter for all that is valued, he asks himself "is a life uncounted a life to live." A swarm of students suddenly appears, he worries more and more. Struggling with an answer to a question wrought with such frustration, he begins his obscene lecture.

In retrospect he wishes he had succumbed to the winds of the world and drifted idly by, but such is not the life of obsession. Even the promise of evacuation escapes him, though he craves nothing more than a quick release. As all his knowledge pours out, he begins to cope with the isolation, turning his despair inwards. An answer strikes him as an antidote, and he begins his hollow prayer.

Under a watchful eye, the future only ends up bleak, an expectation slowly unraveling until it reaches it's conclusion. A journey once promising ends up wrought with obligation as to what it has been. A canvas painted by experience now just a scrutinized technicality. 

He falls to the ground as the thousands of eyes watched him realize his own failure, crushing an explanation, that would have been his salvation. As an arbiter, a judgement must be made. Even a journey with the intent of provoking success seems a futile exercise in meaningless pleasure. To please, to be pleased unquestioningly, such an impossible wish.

Sitting in a seat he takes the role of an observer, the only place where anything of significance could strike him(though he does not realize it). He finds himself a student of an empty room, here he finally rests. He finds it safer to be not reminded of anything, a state of stimulated unconsciousness. He notes the chair digging into his side and the awkward position at which he writes in a notebook. He notes the irony of what could be an empty abysmal place, which now reveals his only respite. The verdict clamors it's way to the front of his mind.

If I live as a judge and cast down wrath unto those who crave it, there will be no end to the epidemic of ideological degradation. However, if we all live only to document, there will be no reflection on what has been. Oh to have the luxury of fulfillment in a vacuum, where the counting of life is itself becomes an insignificant task.