Runaway

Introduction

It's the year 2162, day 175. I'm startled awake by a loud crash outside. I check my wristwatch: 3:26 AM. I stumble out of bed, and creep to my door, opening it slowly. I head down the hallway, and carefully sneak down my staircase into the kitchen. There I find my dad, passed out on the sofa, beer bottles on the coffee table. My dad comes from a time before what they call "The Great Solar Flare" destroyed the earth, and had his body frozen in an attempt to "preserve culture" as they called it. This plan ended up backfiring, and my dad was told that he could stay alive as long as he told no one of the world that existed before ours. That didn't stop him from telling me all the stories of his teen years, though. He told me stories of wide open fields, a world with "months" and "seasons" (whatever those were), and long nights of "being in love" (something he said my generation could never understand). These days, everyone lives in giant class domes the government calls "Preservation Chambers". Every one is named after a different city, and where I live was ironically called "Bloomingdale". My dad said that a long time ago, Bloomingdale was a city named after the "Springtime", when plant life would start growing, and would look really pretty. Plants don't grow anymore, though. Instead, people get oxygen from tall, white towers called breathers, and the domes are nothing but cities for miles.

"Your mother loved the spring" he would tell me. "She loved how the flowers would bloom, and everything would smell fresh and clean, like a new era," My mother never made it past being frozen, according to the doctors. They said her machine was defective, and while her body stayed young, her heart  and organs never stopped, so she died of starvation. Ever since he found out, my dad has been a wreck. He spends his days off work going to the back alleys and buying illegal alcohol. In an effort to keep the "city" (Or at least that's what the government calls us) safe, they banned everything they called a "vice". Drugs, cigarettes and alcohol are illegal to have, and having those things land you in jail, with how long depending on how much you have and how long you've had them. If you tell the police where you got it from though, you can have your sentence reduced or even cancelled. My dad never tells anyone but me that he has alcohol. I never bring friends over either, just in case. I'm all he's got, and he's all I've got. Tonight though, that's all about to change.