Infinite: Power

Chapter 1: GOLDEN

Angels, New United States

Year 2109

I'm used to the orange light of every day. I wonder how it would look like in blue. That's what I've managed to learn from some dusty, torn-to-pieces books that I've found about what the world used to be a century ago. It seems hard to believe. If the sun is yellow and orange-ish, why would the sky look blue? It just makes no sense to me. Still, just the thought of it in my mind becomes so vivid... I can't shake it off. It's like I have a faint vision of it, almost like a memory, excepting for the obvious fact that, well, I'm not a hundred years old. I'm only seventeen.

I also wonder what a night would look like. The sky never changes here, it's always orange. Time never seems to go by, and it certainly wouldn't to anyone if it wasn't for the Great Clock that the city has in the tallest tower, tall enough for us to see. To remember time will not stop.

As I stroll around the Pacific Desert while carrying my bag, I see a few other Cartoners walking by. I can't tell whether they're women or men, since we're all either bald or we get dirtlocks. Old Tommy told me that they used to be called 'Dreadlocks' and I like that name better. Most of people choose to shave their heads, even girls. I don't mind looking bald if my hair starts burning again like last time. It was set on fire. I had to roll on the sand to save my head and shoulders. Poor thing, my hair. Dry, dirty, ruined. Like everything here.

"Blair-ssi!" Chumpsey greets me from a distance. We Cartoners shouldn't exchange words while we do our job. We're pretty competitive and papers and cartons are not so abundant in these lands.

"Chumpsey-ssi! How are you?"

"As usual. Are you coming to play this weekend with us?"

"Hmm, I don't think so. What... what is that in your hand?"

"Oh, yes, I found a booklet of a... university? I don't remember its name." He picks it out from his bag. I see the long, thin, ten-page booklet and envy pinches me inside. Books. Papers. To gather them is a pain in the ass, but the government pays a lot for them. Not to mention if one could find an entire book. I'd be rich if I did. Old Tommy said that books today are the equivalent of money or gold before. At least books are useful, but gold...

Ever since the big waters – I was told they were called seas – disappeared, around eighty years ago, tons of gold were discovered. Nowadays, everything is made of gold in

Angels, from shoes to fake hair. I wonder why people would consider a piece of metal so important. But books... they contain everything we need to know about the earlier civilization.

"It's not of a university, babbo." I roll my eyes. "It's an airport. Can't you see that? It's the picture of a plane."

"A plain? What's that? A type of house?"

"No... it's a vehicle." I grimace, trying to remember what Old Tommy had taught me about it. "It was for flying in the air."

"Right..." Chumpsey looks skeptical. "Blair-ssi, stop kidding."

I shrug and turn around, walking away. I'm honestly upset. I have nothing but a few pages, and half of them are not even complete.

"Yah! Blair-ssi!" Chumpsey calls me from behind. "Did I say anything wrong?"

I ignore him and continue with my search. However, I can't feel more irritated. He's going to get well paid just because he's lucky. He didn't come here the whole week and now he gets paid. I'm the one who's doing all the hard work here! In this forsaken place, in this dying world.

I return home. I live alone in a roofless old apartment; I suspect it must have been the rooftop of a very lovely hotel in another life. There is half a column (broken, of course), square and thick, at one corner of the room. It doesn't make sense to place a column in a rooftop, I believe, but that's just me. I sit against it where my bunch of sheets are piled together and start counting the papers I gathered. The hope of finding a book was dying. I even thought of making one, but I don't know how to write correctly in English, and only books in English are accepted. They say English is a very valued old language, that the entire world used it a lot before they adopted our current universal language, Hangen.

Asian Culture had such an expansion that in less than a century, it conquered the planet. And Hangen, a new way to speak and write, came within. Old Tommy explained once.

I would have no idea about anything of the world of the past or even about the English language without him.

I lean my head back against the broken column in my home, staring at the eternal sunset. I just grew to hate colors yellow and orange.

They're the colors of my life. The colors of destruction... the colors of the desert, of gold, of the fire in my hair, of the gigantic sun that was dragging the Earth slowly towards itself to devour it. I hate everything about light. I cover my face with my hands and try to relax in the fake darkness that surrounds me.

I wish I could see blue. The blue skies of day and night. The blue of the seas, the green of the grass. Those colors are only a vague idea.

Some of the people I know are lucky enough to have different colors in their eyes. Most of people had them brown. I was never able to discover the color of mine. People can't find a name to them. Old Tommy, though, has told me that my eyes are the color of shining metal against the light of the moon – I've never seen the moon – and he showed me a silver coin to illustrate me. Things like mirrors only existed in the Golden City.

Anytime I stare at the sun at the coziness of my home, I feel something strange. A longing for something I have no idea how to call. I feel incomplete. Even now, when my eyes start to burn, I feel like something could come out of them. I feel it, and nothing comes out, but I know there should be something. I can't explain it and it frustrates me. It makes me deeply sad. Not deeply. Profoundly sad.

I look down to the streets. The rest of the Cartoners are returning to the building, to their families. The feeling increases as I begin to feel the absence of others around me.

I am alone and I have nothing. Nothing but void.

Around thirty minutes later, I walk down for my daily routine. As several families share a room together, it doesn't take too long. I carry my bag of papers. I only have sixteen of them. As I clap my hands to make myself noticed, the Cartoners and their families grin at me with shining eyes. Three little bald kids come to greet me and embrace my legs. I can't help smiling for a brief instant. Then, I proceed to give each of them a paper.

"You are always so kind, Blair-ssi." Morrey, a tall Cartoner's wife, says to me as I hand her a page with a map of the old world. "There is no need for you to do this for us."

"Of course there is," I reply, trying to hide my discomfort. "I rather give them to you than having you steal them from me."

Everybody laughs. Of course, I'm just joking. The families kindly give me gifts in exchange of a piece of paper that might be their lunch and dinner for the next day. Not literally. They will exchange papers for food or clothing. I receive different sorts of things. Necklaces, clothes, sharp, shining pieces of golden blades. Even when I like collecting unique objects, I like it more when they have nothing to give me. Sounds contradicting. But that's because... when a family has nothing to give me in return, they hug me tightly for a few

instants. I could never confess this to any of them, but it is something so unique, so irreplaceable and ridiculously short, that I need it more than anything they could have.

I believe aloneness makes people pathetic.

"We are having dinner all together tonight." Lyn announces to me when I give away my last piece of paper. "You're staying, of course, aren't you?"

"I'd like that." I nod, shrugging. "But I promised Old Tommy I'd go by his house later. Maybe next time."

"You better!" The others warn me. I nod again and leave.