Emergence

I had heard about the Wars. That they were the reason so many people were starving, and the world was burning. This was not my experience though. I had lived my entire life inside the military base where my parents served as high-ranking members of the Global Military echelon. My friends and I were insulated from the world outside, with everything provided for us...food, water, housing, even a Commons where we could play and spend time together. What very little we heard about the outside world as it exists now was easily akin to a scary story told for the thrill and novelty of it. That was, until today. Today, I was ripped from that comfortable chrysalis into the horrible reality of the world outside.

My ears were filled with the sounds of rumbling tires, crunching stone, and the squeaking of our hard seats as our vehicle continued moving away from the only life I had ever known. We hadn't been moving for more than 10 minutes before I felt the heat radiating in my cheeks and the sweat beginning to bead on my forehead. "I'm hot!" I whined at my parents sitting in the front. My mother, without speaking, reached forward and turned a knob on the dash, then gave my father a quick and serious glance. After some sputtering, a warm stream of air touched my face. All this did was make me more aware of the scorching heat in my cheeks, now throbbing to meet the air trickling across my skin. I crossed my arms and sat back in my seat, still hot and now increasingly annoyed. I had never left the base before, never seen the outside world, but from what I could see now through my heavily tinted windows, there was nothing to see. The desolate spans of rubble were all there was, everything covered in a monochromatic brown silt. I closed my eyes because at least in the dark I could replace those images with ones of my home back at the base. I could work to ignore the continuously expanding fear in my chest.

It had been another 10 minutes now. My clothes were drenched, and I could feel each bead of sweat slowly running down my face. I had made up my mind to complain again, but then I heard my mother start to speak, so I kept my eyes shut and listened.

"You know we had to do this." she said in a hushed tone.

"Shhh!" my father replied.

"Oh, for God's sake! He's sleeping!"

A long pause. I kept my eyes shut, waiting. Finally, my father spoke.

"We've paid our dues. We could have said no, could have requested a different assignment. You know that."

"This is the future of the human race, Cam. Societies like this are necessary. The planet is dying, and we need to buy time..."

"You seriously think I don't know that, Eve? Seriously?! But we have a son who we have taken away from everything he has ever known to live in an experimental colony, or "City State", or whatever they are calling it. We have no idea how safe it is, if the solar panels surrounding it will work or gather enough energy, if the towers will effectively block the Sun's radiation. Hell, forget the towers blocking it, we don't even know what the current plan is for getting from building to building without risking heat stroke or radiation poisoning. I for one am not looking forward to potentially risking my life every time I have to go to the Eco-tower for some Goddamned vegetables."

Another pause followed, I worked to keep my breathing quiet and deep so they wouldn't know I was awake. Then, my mother spoke again.

"I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But honestly, I am more afraid of what we know is happening to our world, than I am about what might happen in this new City State we are going to. We have to move forward because standing still is not an option anymore."

Silence again. I opened my eyes and saw my mother absently playing with the heart-shaped locket my father had given her when I was born, her eyes misty and fixed on the road ahead. My father stared ahead too, his jaw line taut and teeth clenched in frustration.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, I finally sat up in my seat, prepared to share my thoughts on this utterly unfair decision they had made entirely on their own, when I saw it. My breath caught in my chest as I tried to process the enormity of it. The looming wall, spanning to the left and right as far as the eye could see, and behind that, in fact, towering over that, were enormous dark solar panels angled up towards the Sun. I didn't know at the time what my future would hold. I didn't know about the class wars that would ensue, the corruption that would seep in, or the innocent lives that would be lost. As that ominous visage grew closer, everything within me began kicking and screaming out to turn back. To return to the blissful ignorance I was torn from, because I knew that my life would never be the same and that whether I consented or not, I could only move forward.