Worlds Apart

Isolation

To feel the sun on my face, to witness endless plains of vast, towering greenery all around me, the scent of pine on the wind. There is such an inexplicable beauty to it all, a beauty I can only attempt to capture through the charcoal etchings littering the flooring and walls of my cell. In this moment best captured through the serenity of drawing, I am not in stranded in space, stuck aboard a space station set to house the last of mankind aboard its numerous ports. I am not locked away in jail, isolated from the chaos all while enveloped in that constant, unrelenting humming of machinery as I am constantly reminded of the hectic life that could have easily become my own if I were not already as good as dead. For an entire century, Superior kept the remaining members of the human race alive, sheltering us in a tantalizing orbit around our previous home that is still in the process of recovering from the nuclear apocalypse that killed nearly everyone on Earth, results of the war left the planet smoldering in a blanket of radiation. Fortunately, however, there were survivors who managed to both craft, enhance, and merge operational space stations at the time the bombs were finally dropped. We are told that the planet needs another hundred years to become habitable again. Four more space-locked generations, and mankind can go home, back to the ground where we belong. The ground, that's the dream.

But this is reality.

"Prisoner two-one-eight, face the wall!"

"What the hell... what are you doing here? I already got my rations-"

"What's that in your hand?"

"What, the charcoal?"

"Also a potential weapon."

"Are you serious? What could I do, eat it?"

"Enough sass, prisoner two-one-eight! Guards, remove this item from our prisoner's custody. We don't want her cowering out before her trial date."

"Trust me, Chief, I'm looking forward to spending every damn second of the rest of my short span of a life here with you. Wouldn't want it any other way."

"Stop talking and listen here, you little shit! I've got you for three-"

"four-"

"-more weeks. Down here, you've got no power, no influence, and certainly no protection."

"I thought you were supposed to protect me."

"Not if I don't want to. So please, kid, keep talking if you want me to act on that... Good choice. See you for your next meal. You better hope no one spits in it."

Reality sucks.

But I imagine the prose of how I even got here in the first place is enough to beg some questions. But, well, my answer is not honestly all that profound. It simply started with a feeling, a feeling that something was off, something that could not be fixed. Then over time this feeling grew, evolving into an intense form of dread that washed over me in an instant as I came to realize just how much my entire future was about to change, how much all of our futures were about to change. For one hundred years my people survived in space, people being different stationed units from each major country that eventually came together to form Superior. As soon as the threats of nuclear war became tangible, the wealthiest of each country were sent to space after several stations were created for each of them. This may sound repetitive as hell, but here is the actual context; my grandparents helped to brainstorm the eventual coming together of all the space stations, so with this being the case, my father, their son, had guaranteed his spot into Superior high status, privileged, as they call us, where his family legacy would forever mark the beginning of a new era for humans. How ironic that his death would also mark the discovery of the flaw in this floating fortress.