Antiquities Keeper

If you wake up early enough in the morning, when the earth is still settled and hasn't yet woken, before those who remain stir the dust, you can see the sun. Well you can't see the sun. No one can. No one has for at least one-seventy years. But in those quiet still minutes you can see this bright glow through the hazy grim layer that fills the sky. And it's beautiful. The sun itself a deep burning orange with a haloed glow around it, where the smog almost looks like gold.

If the camera I found didn't have a broken lens or if the batteries weren't corroded, I'd take a picture of it. I'm not sure how you get the picture off of the camera, but hell it would even be worth keeping it trapped inside that camera.

I pull back the tarp covering the brown and orange rusted wagon I use to haul my finds in and shake out the thinning plastic. It's so worn, be it from daily use or surviving the apocalypse, that it's become somewhat sheer, practically see-through in some spots, but it still holds true. And I hope it always does because if it falls apart I have no clue where I would find a new one.

A quick stretch and crack of my back before setting out for the day. The earlier you get out the better. Once the city awakens the dust stirs and makes the thick air even harder to breathe. At my age, I'm not sure if it would even make a difference anymore, but I'm still trying to save up enough credits to buy one of those nice air purifying masks that some of the younger pickers have. They're either braver or stupider than I am, squeezing their starved boney bodies down into the crevasses of decrepit buildings. Once saw a kid, couldn't have been older than ten, get lowered down into the sink hole up on Old Main. The older boy waited there for three days for a sign of the kid. No one has seen him since.

There are risks you got to take to survive in this desolate place. And one of them is picking. You have to pick through the rubble, the scorched remains of what once was a glorious and beautiful world. Dad used to tell me stories as a kid of buildings tall enough to touch the clouds and automobiles that could go one-hundred miles per hour and shopping centers filled to the brim with food and clothes.

If you ask me, I think he's pulling my leg. How is it even possible that something so amazing could exist? Maybe he was simply exaggerating what he once had.

You see, I'm what they call an "Eden Baby." Mom was pregnant with me before the world went to shit. Back when green was a color. Back when you could see the sun. I was born just after the smog clouds blotted out the stars. Mom got Smog-lung in her third trimester and didn't make it through labor. I got a cough that could split the earth because of it, but somehow I'm still here.

The squeal of the wagon's wheel is my only companion as I slowly meandered my way down the man-made path through the rubble. What once used to be a sharp and treacherous trek has turned into a mostly-even smoothed-down walkway. The wagon rocks back and forth as it roles over the small hills and dips.

Us pickers, we're supposed to come out here to collect plastic that the Big Man can break down and use for fuel and god knows what else. The better condition and the more you find, the handsomer you get paid meaning the better you get fed and the easier it is to survive.

I used to be one of those hardcore pickers, overturning every stone, every brick, using my own spit and sweat to clean things off to see if it was worth a damn. Now, I look for things that came from the before. Those mementos, the little things that might have once meant the world to someone. A broken camera. A rusty wagon. A one-eyed doll. You can't trade these items in, though I've tried; to the rest of the world they're just junk. I suppose they don't mean much to me either other than the imagined lives these inanimate objects might have once lived.

There isn't really a system for doing what I do. I just go until my old bones can't go anymore. Or until my tattered shoes snag and trip me on a potential treasure. Or if the wagon wheel gets stuck and there isn't anyone around to help me dislodge it.

Today it's none of the above.

Most of the world is black or brown or grey. Almost all color has been burnt away. Anything that has survived is dark and dingy, but there in a pile a sudden flash of color.

My knees pop and crack as I bend down to lift a small cube with dozens of colored squares on it. Some of them are missing. Some are half gone. But, with excitement and enticement, I place it into the wagon.

I'm about to move on when something still half buried in the dust catches my eye. My nailbeds are already stained with dirt from past digs, I hardly notice the addition as I scrap away the ground and uncover a thin long chain. It's caked with dirt so the original color is unclear. I give it a small yank to free it from the ground, gentle enough to not break it incase it is fragile.

As it rises a small heart pendant appears with it. It's multicolored from age and tarnished; the initials Q.L. might once have been deeply etched into it's surface but now are barely visible. I run my fingers over the impression, wondering how many fingers have done the same. There is a small clasp on the side and I desperately wish to see what contents this little gem holds, but it's been welded shut--almost as if on purpose.

I study it a moment longer, wanting nothing more than to pocket it, but something like this, burned in the ground and welded shut...the owner must have wanted it to remain hidden. It's secrets forever locked away.

A low rumble comes from behind me, the other pickers beginning their morning rounds, dust swirling around my feet and legs.

Just as carefully as I retrieved it from the earth I return it before anyone can see what I've found and sweep a fresh pile of dirt atop it, once more burying the past.