NECESSARY EFFORT

Morality is to do what the rest considers, 

ethics is to think a little and say no way.

Anonymous

The long journey culminated in stale air, breathable but definitely smelled tired (Or am I the tired one?). Coming from sector 22 I traveled over twelve kilometers of corridors and death. I guess it was a large group of people. I say I guess because since I was born I only saw a few old people: my parents and at the end my sister, Mindy; the place was huge, compared to the cubicle where we lived it was colossal, but no one from our group inhabited it. "It is to store and harness energy" they said, I think it was simpler than that, they did not know how to send voltage to the other sectors.

I scour the new territory with my tracker. I quickly learn that there is nothing but earth and sun around me, not a single trace of radiation, contamination or whatever it was that kept the whole group locked up and they were fine like that, only recycling specialists survived, they taught me everything, I learned quickly as their health was degenerating. The older ones were beginning to show a loss of mental acuity. I am sure it was from eating rotting corpses. Day by day we would venture armed with an LED flashlight through the huge dark areas, looking for bodies, we needed them; they knew so much about recycling that they never thought of producing, we had tons of compost and not a single seed to make it work. So it was with everything, every time we found meat in some unfortunate mummy and preserved by the low humidity of the habitat, the elders got to work: they carefully separated the meat, the skin (if it still remained) and crushed the bones, with them they made some pills that we all took, neither my sister nor I liked it but there was nothing else to eat.

I could see that the whole suit was still working. I look like a huge beast, the exosuit uses the sun and a small nuclear battery to function. I'm seventeen and look like a six-foot-two-and-a-half-foot giant, but it allows me to carry my load. It was great when my parents noticed the reality, the old people died too. Dad knew a little biology and could see that there was dead tissue in the brains of those geniuses, as he was the oldest (56 years old) he was left in charge and ordered everything to be recycled, except the brain; when we consumed those pills we felt much better, in my case it was better than ever, for the first time we were back, but by then the group was minuscule, there were only three families left, that Christmas my mom gave birth.

I say it was the old people's pills but it was the ugliest pink lump. it was the ugliest pink lump I had ever seen (and I could see the whole process of recovery of the dead thanks to some devices in the helmets). Mom said this is how it should look, when she arrived I was no longer the youngest, I had no one to play with, so I adopted her and took her everywhere and tried to show her everything in the sector, from our exercise machines to the areas where the manure was stored; the growing fields of the penicillin fungus; the bookstore with tomes and tomes of information contained in a small box with a huge screen for lectures and one of my size with which I showed him the wonders I knew.

Ten kilometers into the hike I have to make a stop, the sun is still high in the sky (thanks to the library I knew it was the sun) and I have no idea where to go, with a bravado gesture I draw my "nerve" gun (according to dad it was because I could neutralize people when I used it) and threaten the rocks to move. I laugh to think that my parents were making the same gesture as we moved forward, yes, they were the only ones who spoke clearly with the remaining adults: food and water supplies are scarce, going from sector to sector searching would only delay the inevitable, we had to get out... Ah, that word! Until then I didn't know there was an "outside", all my life I grew up seeing durasteel walls (who knew what it meant, none of the others knew languages), all except my parents refused, it was many kilometers of facilities, no one had traveled so far and they preferred to die in the place where they were born. Dad talked to them logically, mom tantalized their hearts, I could only hold my sister's hand and watch some stubborn old men (a year or two younger than dad, but decidedly more foolish) tell my father that he was only being a hero because he had a family.

That night mom hugged us in a corner and told us how everything used to be, when she was a child, the light that flooded everything, the hundreds of children she had to play with and her grandmother said that there used to be many families, that everything was full. I could have sworn that while mom cooed to us the sounds of dad's nervous gunshots rang out, and in the mists of sleep I could only imagine how nice it was to live there. The next morning dad had a transport unit ready full of food, we didn't ask where it was coming from, we got in the vehicle and let ourselves be driven.

It's already midnight, I better stop. I have dug a small pit to store the supplies so it won't suffer looting (that's what the manual said), but I'm not sleepy, or maybe I'm dozing, I can't stop seeing the images of my dad in the driver's seat, the stops to search the endless sectors of that place (he says mom is wrong, that there used to be millions of people here). Mindy rides next to me and asks me all kinds of questions, I answer her as best I can but take advantage of dad bringing the library to study with her.

I know it is a nightmare because the reality was much harder, I know and yet I remember in fragments what was left of my life, I see the car battery stop, the look of my parents, the false optimism of mom; that was where I started to make body, in the section where we lived we were forbidden to do sports, "it would make us more hungry" they said but here there is no other way, each one carries provisions. I am sure that for what they weighed the damn old people must be the best fed, the backpacks we used were special because they could filter liquids and dry the meat in a few days, so we had to drink and eat for weeks while we went into the labyrinths closer and closer to the exit.

I always see the same thing: sector 7, block 210. That's where mom fell, victim of exhaustion and malnourished, we took all the vitamins ourselves, Mindy cried a little but she already understood the responsibility we had. Dad took out the instruments and mom accompanied us for almost a week in each one's backpack; in sector 2 dad called me and asked me to learn how to shoot: "it's simple, each bullet comes loaded with an electric current waiting to be released". The following nights he asked me many questions: Did I know how to distinguish mushrooms? What were the most effective defensive moves? What to look for in a hostile environment? The image of my father's mischievous and resolute look made me answer everything; the last night he asked me to describe how to use the tools for recycling. I can still see him that morning when he demanded I aim at a target to his right, I can still see him moving in the direction of the bullet, his face when the projectile melted his brain, his fall, dismembered like a sack of nutrients.

Sector 2 was Dad's limit, as he was very malnourished we hardly recovered anything from him, my sister followed me a bit from afar, she blamed me for Dad's death but she ate every night her ration; I feverishly studied the structure of the place on a memory screen I stole since we left by car to our freedom. According to the map we were still 30 km away, we were not going to make it.

When I went out to the upper facilities I saw that part of what we were told was true. They were badly damaged, as if many people were trying to get in, but still everything was white, the sun dazzled me and raged in my eyes. 

In tears I told Mindy everything I saw: the emergency and combat suits were where the manual said and the combination no one had figured out. I told a couple of stupid jokes. I put away everything I could and got out of there.

It's 6.00 hrs. and I'm all packed up, yesterday I saw a construction in the distance and that I saw a construction site in the distance and that's my target, the sound trap attracted several insects, which were crushed and consumed as breakfast, I did it as the manual said. Mindy was not scared: she was not afraid, not even at the beginning of sector 1, when it was her turn, I did it with tenderness (I think), I needed her to have food until I reached the surface, there is still some of her in the backpack, but I prefer her to accompany me. I have no one to talk to and in case of emergency I will have something to eat.