A Journey to the Land of Fire and Ice

Chapter One

         I pull on my sneakers and step out of my apartment, heading for the elevators. I press the UP button and wait until the doors open. When I step in I see my friend, Norena. We ride the elevator in silence, as is expected. It's three AM, and others are sleeping. Our elevator takes about ten minutes to reach the 'ground level' though, of course, it is not actually the ground. we don't even live on the ground, twenty stories lower than where we stand now.  If you look over the edge of the railings on either side of the pathways of city two-forty, you can see, hundreds of feet down, the ground. By the ground I mean the green mist and rubble. You can occasionally see scorched patches of dirt, but nothing else. I heard that there used to be natural vegetation, which grew right out of the ground! All we have now is greenhouses full of man-made plants, that scientists have developed over the years. I turn around to look at my friend, "How does it feel to officially be an adult?" I ask her. 

     She sighs dramatically, "It feels... Like a lot of work." She says. We laugh. It's been a while since I've laughed. I haven't seen Norena since my sixteenth birthday, two months ago, when I officially became an adult myself. Adults aren't allowed to be in contact with children outside of their family's until their seventeenth birthday. Something about being able to grow up, and not be weighed down by younger people. I have, of course, been able to see my younger sister, Siranna, who recently turned twelve.

       I don't know my father. It seems he only married my mother in order to get the perks that come along with the responsibility. He flew of to Southern Earth when I was little and we haven't seen him since. My mother doesn't talk about him. I don't plan to marry, whether or not it would make me have the ability to be a cartographer, or a maker of maps, which has been my lifelong dream.

     As a kid I was obsessed with maps. I would save my allowance until i had enough money to buy an old map the collectors saved from some still-intact city. I would lay on my bed for hours studying the maps. When I turned ten, my mother bought me a map of Southern Earth from after the bomb. I took one look at it and realized just how much of the world is unexplored. Who knew if the continent called Europe was uninhabitable. No one from there came, that doesn't mean they died for sure, perhaps they rebuilt alone, and there were other people out there. I could be the one to mark them on a map. How I'd love that. 

      Though there are maps of Central and Southern earth, there are no maps of the rest of earth. No cartographer is willing to take the risk of exploring the unknown. I would be. But I can't. You're not allowed to leave your city unless you're either married, or  you are told to directly from the government. So I copy other people's maps, and I make maps of our city.  Those of our city, I can sell to tourists, or parents with kids that often get lost. But that's not my passion. 

    I tun to Norena and ask, "What job are you applying for?"

     "I'm going to apply for a job at the greenhouses. You?"

      I shrug, "I don't know, whatever I can get, I guess."

      I'm a bit worried for Norena, today is the day that every new adult applies for a job, plenty of which will want to work at the greenhouses, where fresh, cool air is pumped in, and you're surrounded by beautiful, luscious plants of all kinds.

      "Good luck." I say, and I mean it. I want my best friend to get her dream job, even if i can't get mine.

     She smiles and heads for the greenhouses. 

    I look down, over the railing, through the green mist that coats the ground, to the road which winds through the old city of Indianapolis. Those people had the kind of freedom I will never have. Not unless I take action.