Glass and Ice

*0300 hours, day 5 New Year, sector 27, Acirame, P.G.R. (post-Great Revelation)

Sophia gloomily surveyed the broken glass on the floor, scattered across her small condo’s wooden bowels by the wild winter wind. It sprouted from the floor like a pointed, deadly carpet. 

She hauled Felicity from where she slept heavily against her protruding hip bone to her chest. Her hands tugged through her coal-black hair in a nervous dance. This was the third night this month that her neighborhood had been attacked by the Central Agency, a painful reminder for her community that the violence from the North was slowly seeping to their city, entering into their daily lives and their livelihood like a plague. 

Sophia stepped back and lightly placed Felicility into a faded crate, lovingly yet haphazardly stuffed like a bird’s nest, filled to the brim with scraps and fluff, anything soft that could be found in a sharp world. 

On guard for any stray fragments of glass, Sophia tapped across the small apartment and grabbed the grubby broom from the corner where it was abandoned. The broom was one of the few residents that shared this condo with Sophie and her child, accompanied only by a child-sized cot, burner, crate, and small dresser. They stood erected from the floor, like lonely cactus on a plain.

Flitting around the fractured pile of glass and snow, Sophie pushed the pieces into a far corner of the chamber and stiffly faced the gaping hole where the window once was. 

The moonlight reflected onto the scorched Earth, as fractured on the glass on Sophie’s floor. Winter breathed down their necks, and the whipping snow proved to be Sophie’s only barrier from where her window once resided. The burnt skeletons of past buildings and homes remained erected from the Earth, standing despite centuries of organic destruction, their concrete foundations withstanding the test of time.  

Despite their creation years later, the complexes in Sophie’s community were not much more appealing than the ruins around them. Their neighborhood sat in a huddled, chaotic mess, thrown together for outcasts like her, sent to the corner of civilization like an unwanted mutt. Houses were built upon houses; living conditions only a fraction above sleeping in the Wasteland. Their broken homes meant to reflect their broken place in society. 

Sophia tightened in frustration and her fist cut on a jagged remnant of that damned window. Bringing her wounded finger to her mouth, she tasted the iron, salty, fluid that coursed through her body and held on to the burning flame that threatened to devour her. It was that taste, that feeling, that condemned her to this skeleton of a world. It was her humanity that led her to live like animals. 

Sophie yanked herself from her place on the window sill, and coerced her body to drape across her cot, allowing the snow and the night to lead her to a rocky sleep. 

*Excerpt from History Revealed! The Great Revelation: For Kids, approved public text, origin: Central Agency. 

“The history of Acirame is like no other, with some of the greatest events of human history! 

Yet, no event is as important as the Great Revelation, which you may have heard your parents or other adults talk about. The Great Revelation is what we call the discovery of a special medicine, a medicine that lets humanity live forever! Look around you, do you see the bright, blue, sky, your beautiful neighborhood, and happy life? Can you even imagine what it would be like to be without it? Before the Great Revelation, you would barely get any time in this world, only 80-90 years at most! Now, with the help of the Central Agency and your special medicine, you will live happily and healthily forever! Long live Acirame!” 

*0430 hours, sector 27, Day 5 New Year, Acirame, P.G.R. (post-Great Revelation)*

Sophie was shaken from her heavy sleep by the soft mewls of Felicity. Her child’s cries leaked the sleepiness from her eyes and she carefully picked her way to the infant. Scooping the freezing child into her arms, she struggled to press the minimal heat from her bony frame into her. 

Sophie cradled Felicity through the first few hours of daybreak, watching the fiery sun leech into the sky, its burning tendrils igniting a spirit within her. She scanned the place that the last of humanity called home, rejected peoples condemned to living in the prison before her. People who refused to live forever, under the Central Agency’s domain, choosing a fleeting lifetime of freedom over an eternity of imprisonment. Yet, here they were, living in a prison of the past, forced to reside in the ruins of the rebellion from the years after the medicine was first created, when it was discovered only the elite and wealthy could afford the exorbitant prices and the rest of humanity was left to decay. 

Now, the medicine has divided the world; cryonic corpses living a life only warm-blooded people like Sohpie could dream of. Yet, despite all this, there was still hope. 

The Central Agency was a wall around all those who lived in Acirame, but even the strongest walls have cracks. Peeking through the Agency’s barriers are a window to a better world, and the deliciously tempting rumours of a world beyond. It was a light that Sophie and her community held onto, in a barren world it was a seed of hope. Sophie clutched onto this promise tightly, and while watching the world wake up, she too awoke from her complacent slumber and determined that she would leave. She would find a better world for her daughter, or die trying. 

*0400 hours, sector 27, Day 33 New Year, Acirame, P.G.R. (post-Great Revelation)*

A combination of nerves and delirium cutched Sophie tighty, rendering her unable to fall asleep. She mentally ran over her plan, checking off her to-do list, looking at the measly tarp bag, barely filled to capacity with Sophie’s meager belongings. A coat, for her and Felicity, a month’s worth of squirreled away food from the scanty rations Sophie was given, a flashlight, and slippers were all she packed for the trek. There was nothing else to pack away with her, her condo lay hollow as her groaning heart. 

She gazed at the gauze-like blanket that covered the hole in her wall, flaring to life by the vexed wind. She followed the burry light rise from the horizon and break through the threadbare cloth, its hollow light reminding Sophie of what was to come. 

*0800 hours, unknown location, Day 33 New Year, Acirame, P.G.R. (Post-Great Revelation)*

Sophie charged through the brink of the forest. 

She was going to make it. 

After following the rambling directions she pieced together from person to person, she had little more than a melting pot of rumors and wishes. Yet here she was, her feet pounding and cracking across the Earth, pressing her into reality.

With a crash through the forest's brink, She made it out of the Wastelands and into the New World. 

Her heart beat wildly in her chest, electrified from hope and the strain of too much running and not enough sustenance to power her aching muscles.

She dreamed.

Her dreams, the seeds of hope she had just allowed to grow, now bloomed in her mind. Dreams of a future, of a better world for her daughter, of a place to finally take root. 

Tears slipped down her cheeks and she tasted the salty fluid in her mouth. She smiled and pushed the final branches aside.

Her heart leapt, flying into her throat. And then fell. 

Dropping to her knees, she clutched her throat, as Felicity yowled beside her. Dejectedly she stared, at the barren wasteland, a huddled community of humans, a chaotic mess, that beckoned to her. 

With no choice, she succumbed.