Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(90)
For a while now, it has felt like my world is shrinking. I live and work in this habitat, spending every spare minute on the mission. I feel guilty when I’m not working. Personal time feels like an indulgence or worse: a betrayal to the people who are counting on me.
We haven’t had one of our Sunday dinners with family and friends for months. Everyone is consumed with one thing: the mission. Survival.
It’s affecting James too. He’s stressed, worn out all the time. He eats, sleeps, and works. He only takes about an hour off each week, and he spends that hour with his brother, on Saturdays, after work, playing cards or talking. I still haven’t learned what happened between them, but I know James treasures his time with his brother. We all sense that time is now a precious commodity, one that’s quickly running out.
Time isn’t the only thing slipping through our fingers. The last regions of habitable land will be gone soon. Our world is disappearing before our eyes, the ice eating away at it each day. It’s like we’re on an island, watching the sea rise, the ground beneath our feet disappearing, knowing we’ll drown if we aren’t rescued.
Before the Long Winter, this region of Tunisia was a desert. It's now a desert once again, of a different kind: a barren land of ice and snow as far as the eye can see, rolling snowdrifts like dunes, wind flowing over them, scattering the snow like sand.
Every morning I walk outside at first light and hope that I'll see the sun blazing bright on the horizon, that the solar array has moved on, or malfunctioned, or that fate has somehow spared us.
What greets me is a dim glow through the clouds, seen in glimpses through the falling snow, a lighthouse we're drifting away from, into dark and uncertain waters. Perhaps never to return. That is the feeling here in Camp Seven. It's not just the lack of sun. Or the lack of Vitamin D or the fact that the kids can't play outside or that we can't walk to work. It's a shared sense that the sun is setting on our time on Earth.
A snow plow rumbles by, its blade channeling fresh snow into white piles that settle in mounds like an icy hedge along the road. The bucket trucks are already out, parked in the middle of clusters of habitats, scissor arms extending over the domes, workers in parkas, heavy caps, and goggles holding the snow blowers over the solar cells, sending waves of white powder off, freeing the cells to soak up the scraps of sun that no longer fill the habitats' batteries. Every week there's less energy to heat the habitats and charge our tablets and cook with.
Last night, James added another blanket to our bed, and we snuggled close together, the way we do every night, but no matter how close we get or how many blankets we add, I still feel the cold on my face, pressing into me, aching in my lungs as I breathe. I've learned to sleep when I’m cold. I've adapted. But I wonder how much more we can adapt. It's not just the cold, it's what the cold is taking from us. Our freedom. Our food supply. Our future.
It's easy to think it's the government taking these things from us--that's what we see: the curfews that keep us inside after dark and the rationing that shrinks the food on our table every week. Some do blame the government. There's talk of riots, of an uprising against the government, but I think deep down people know that won't change anything. It won't make more food, or more sunlight, and without the government, we might just lose our last chance of surviving. If we haven't already.
I've wondered: even if we are successful--if we can vanquish the solar array strangling our sun--will it matter? What's under the ice that covers the Earth? The plants and animals are probably long dead. If the sun this world has always known returned, could it reignite life here? Or have we already burned down too far? Every time my mind brushes across the thought, I dismiss it. In those moments, I realize the true nature of hope. Hope doesn't have to be rational. Hope is an end unto itself, a renewable source of energy inside of each of us, a fragile thing that can be damaged with our darkest thoughts, dimmed almost to darkness, but never completely extinguished. And like our sun, when it returns, it brings life and energy to us.
I've put off telling Madison that I’m going on the mission. I’ve waited as long as I can, but I can't wait any more. The launch is in a few days.
Most of the families have moved to the barracks now. There's more heating capacity per square foot there, plus the combined body heat of everyone around you. Residents also get a slight bump in rations--an incentive for folks to abandon the free-standing domed habitats, which now funnel their paltry energy collections to the barracks. James, Oscar, and I would have moved here if not for the drone lab in our third bedroom.
The first time I entered one of these buildings to visit Abby, I was reminded of a rest home. The barracks now feel like a prison. The doors to the rooms stand open, allowing a modicum of fresh air to circulate. The residents inside stare out with hollow, hopeless eyes. They play chess and checkers as I pass by, their tablets lying in piles, dead with no chance of resurrection (the charging ports are off and being caught with a charged tablet outside of work carries a ration cut).
Despite the density of people, it’s quiet. The smell I can't quite place. It's a bit musky, like old air, confined and recycled and used up. Trapped, like the people here, with nowhere to go except outside, into a cold world where nothing can survive anymore.
Some of the adults are filing out, trudging down the central corridor in thick coats, ready to work another day in semi-darkness. They march like prisoners, people working to survive, knowing only a full day's work earns a full day's rations.