Starlight Revelation

World War 3 was never given an official end date. I couldn't tell you for certain how long it has been since civilization ended. Nor do I care to find out. All that matters to me and those in my colony is survival. And despite the world being ruined beyond recognition, we have managed to do just that, survive.

It was tough in the beginning. Almost all of the infrastructure was damaged one way or the other. Roads were ripped open. Skyscrapers and bridges were cut in half. There was a global loss of power and communication which ushered in an era of darkness.

Towards the end of the war, many predicted that this apocalyptic setting would give rise to a violent, lawless state, the likes of which we have never seen before. The experts believed the post war survivors would give up and descend fully into chaos, just because we didn't have streetlights and the internet.

They were wrong.

As dark as it was, we showed better restraint than the world leaders that let this happen. Violence was an exception rather than the rule. We were too tired to rip each other's throats open. No, instead we banded together. Pockets of survivors now roam lands without borders. We barter goods and services. Food and water are rationed. We manage to get through the days, holding hands and being each other's eyes and ears. Somehow, the experts forgot that survival was a deeper instinct than our thirst for violence.

I wish I could tell you that post war society wasn't all bad. But that would be far from the truth. Though we live on, there are parts of us that have died. Living strictly from day to day has made it difficult to imagine a future. We no longer hope and wonder about what might be. We do not keep track of the days. There are no tally marks on my wall counting sunsets. I do not remember what it is like to be excited. I do not laugh. But I am alive, and that is all that matters.

There are some, however, in my colony that do not view the world same way. Some of the adults have tried to regain a sense of normalcy. They have tried to find ways to have fun again. Not all of them are able to achieve this. Except the children. In more ways than one, they are the life of the colony. They laugh loudly as they play pranks on unsuspecting adults. They play hide and seek with each other, hiding in broken car trunks and caved in walls. They wish to learn about all the strange objects around them.

During a recent interaction with a neighboring colony, some of the kids learnt about schooling. After which they insisted that we "open a school" for them. I remember the day clearly. I was stacking the canned foods we just received in an exchange when they came up to me asking about school. My heart sank a little. It was the first time in ages that I felt like a human rather than a machine.

We decided to start educating the children, as best as we could. Being the only one in our colony who was a teacher before the war, I was voted to become the principal of our little school. Every adult in the colony was assigned teaching duties in addition to their regular tasks. There was very little structure to our program. Every "class" was more of an open forum with the children.

I began to notice a change after we started the school. In myself, and in the colony. It felt like a part of our humanity began to emerge after being buried within for so long. Some of the other adults felt it as well. Nobody knew why they felt this way. We discussed it, hoping to understand what caused this awakening of sorts. The answer that satisfied the majority was that schooling these children had given us a sense of responsibility. For the first time since the war ended, we were looking forward to a future. Even if it wasn't our future.

I wasn't entirely convinced by this argument, but we all agreed that the children and the school were key to this transformation. I decided to take my role as principal more seriously. I designed a syllabus. I tried to assign one subject to each adult, but this was refused by everyone. People found it difficult to teach history. Nobody wanted to tell the kids about how the world used to be and how it ended up the way it is. So, it was decided that we would all share that responsibility equally.

"What's a star?" one of the kids asked as I was teaching them about the Sun. For a moment, I stood in silence. These kids had never really seen the stars. Most colonies operate only until sunset. Rarely would you find someone out and about in the dark. As safe as we managed to make ourselves in this new world, there were still dangers that surfaced only at night. Criminals still existed and they usually preferred to work at night. Even without the danger of crime, there was nothing useful that could be done outdoors post sunset.

The night sky was something that even the adults in the colony weren't well acquainted with. Even before the war broke out, the night sky wasn't the spectacle it used to be to the people of the past. Most of us grew up in in a maze of concrete. Astronomers were always telling the world how light pollution had reached new heights. While we were aware that the true beauty of the night sky was clouded by a sea of artificial light, it never seemed to bother any of us. Maybe because none of us had actually seen the real night sky.

And that's when it came to me. My bright idea. The kids in the classroom noticed as I pulled myself back to reality with a smile on my face. "How would you all like to go on a field trip?" I asked.

Most of the adults were hesitant to step outside at night, let alone take the kids along with us. But after much debating and pleading, everyone was in agreement. All we had to do was find an intact skyscraper and head up to its terrace. And then wait for nightfall. After a week of scouting, we managed to locate a decent spot.

We arrived an hour before sunset. All of us sat down together and watched the sun go down. The orange hues gave way to a darker blue shade. And slowly they began to appear. Glowing white sparkles dotted the sky in every direction. Some solitary, some in formation. All of them magnificent. None of us had seen anything like this. We couldn't have. The light from our progress as a society had extinguished the true lights of the universe. We traded the stars for skyscrapers and lost so much more along the way.

I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that something good had come out of the near collapse of humankind. But as I sat there like I was hit by a spell, I couldn’t keep my emotions in check. Thoughts raced about in my mind as quickly as light from the stars touched the Earth. I felt a sense of union with our distant ancestors. This was how the sky must have appeared to them. I wondered what they would have felt when they looked up. Were they amazed? Did it make them curious? Or perhaps, the sky was just another tool they could use?

Everything became a little clearer now. I understood what had changed in the colony recently. Our struggle for survival had eliminated anything that didn't focus on food and shelter. The school gave us a chance to go beyond that again. And the stars now provided a revelatory reminder of how powerful a sense of wonder can be. Something that the children knew much better than us.

We were faced with a torrent of questions about the stars, the sky, and the universe. Questions none of us could ever answer, especially under the circumstances we lived in. But we were happy to engage them regardless. For a few moments, we forgot about all the death and destruction. Sitting under the night sky, awash with starlight, some of the darkness faded away.