Episode 5: Flash Back to the Beginning
Living in Metro was so cool. I mean who wouldn’t want to live there. I would describe it best by one word - plenty. I mean Plenty! There was plenty of colors, plenty of food, plenty of games, plenty of toys like my flying hover shoes, plenty of dancing, plenty of parties, and plenty of fun! My parents were some of the richest in Metro so I lived like a princess. I could have anything I wanted. My closet was stuffed full of party dresses. I had so many stuffies that I have to wade through to get to my giant bed. I have ten pairs of hover shoes for the hover games and my team always won because mine were custom from the leading designers in all of Metro. They were so fast. No one could keep up with me.
This was just like any other night for us – munching down on a seemingly endless list of courses . Tonight was special because the last three courses were only desserts. One more tasty than the next. It is a wonder we are all not giant fat people – but playing in the hover games kept us all fit, trim and healthy. Only the healthy, after all, are allowed in Metro. They tell us they had to keep the diseased out if Metro was going to be a paradise. Honestly, I had never given it much thought. My biggest problem up that point was simply choosing.
“Aditi – what party do you want to go to?”
“Aditi – which flying car do you want to take? “
“Aditi – which designer dress do you want to wear?”
“Aditi – what flavor of ice cream do you want?”
This last one was always the hardest for me. I normally couldn’t decide so I would get a whole lot of everything. That night, however, I got stuck on the last course of dessert – and stuck to my favorite – bubble gum. After my 3rd bowl of bubblegum ice cream my belly was so full that when I got in our flying car I felt a little ill. Maybe that was too much. Maybe it was all too much.
Every day had been great since before I can remember. Metro was just the greatest in my eyes. Every day was just care free and fun. I didn’t think about where all the stuff came from. Or what having all the stuff meant for everyone else. So dad, mom and I are flying home after this great party in the endless stream of great parties. My belly was full. I remember being a little sleepy. Then something goes wrong with the autopilot when a bird smashes into the windshield. The hover car banked widely. I fall over the seat. Then the car smashes into a building. I see glass shatter. I scream and then only see darkness. I wake up in the hospital. Everything hurts. They tell me my parents are gone. I can barely move. I feel bruised and cut everywhere. My leg hurts. I cry. Darkness again.
After many hours, I wake up wet. I feel something dripping down my face. It is my own blood mixed with one of the few days of rain we see all year. I open my eyes. I am on the side of the street dumped in a pile of garbage. This is bad. But worse is the pile of garbage is outside Metro!
Where are all my friends from all the parties?
The dark scary walls of the city loom above me and the high metal door is shut. Fear. Fear like I have never felt before. Fear takes over my mind. I am alone. Dirty, hurt and alone. I look down. My left leg is missing and wrapped in bandages. At first I just sit there. I realize I have been discarded like last season’s party dress. Thrown out because I am injured. I am in shock. My own dress is in tatters. As the minutes turn into hours – I realize that I need to get up if I want to survive. I grab a stick and make a crutch. I start hobbling away from Metro. At first it is all just trash. Years of refuse from Metro dumped outside of the walls. In large filthy stacks an endless sea of waste just outside the gleaming interior of the walls. I had never seen this before. I never thought about where my old party dresses went or what happened to the imperfect people. Now I know, because I am one of them. I hobble past make-shift shacks of the jects that makes up the slum circling the city. I am scared of them. The whole place stinks. They are all poor and dirty. And as I will soon learn, hungry.
I hobble faster to get away from them, trying to get out into the wasteland. I don’t get very far. I am hurt bad from the accident. Where my leg should be is just aching. I start to feel dizzy and sit down. I keep going like this for hours, no food, I am really worried I will not last long out here on my own.
On a break, I soon realize that there are creatures worse off than me. I come to a stack of cages where it looks like some jects are capturing animals to either trade for food or eat. A small flying fox looks at me with huge eyes and cowers towards the back of his cage. I don’t think I have ever seen anything so sad – or maybe it was just my emotions pouring over me from my own predicament. I decided I would help him. “I am not going to hurt you little guy. I am just hurting myself. I may not be able to help myself, but maybe I can help you.” I look around, his captor must have gone in to avoid the rain. I undid the latch and opened the door. The fox flew out like he was shot out of gun and disappeared, behind the mounds of trash. I laid back. I knew there was no way I was going to outrun whomever was holding the fox. I had no food, no friends and not enough energy to get up, let alone fight.
I had just given up all hope when the fox flew back. It had something in its mouth. He landed on top of the cage and dropped it to me. It was a half eaten banana. The key word in that sentence was ‘half-eaten’. Not fully eaten. This is the kind of thing I would never have done in Metro, but I plugged my nose and bit into the browning banana. Amazingly it tasted so good...maybe it was the loss of blood or the fact I hadn’t eaten in who knows how long – but I inhaled the rest of the mushy banana greedily and licked the inside of the peel clean. I was starving and had already learned three important lessons that have kept me a live for years now in the wasteland: 1. Never waste food. 2. Anything that is edible is food. 3. Be kind to others….as karma seems to work out here in the waste land. I started calling the flying fox Slick – and we have been best of friends ever since.
