Chapter 1
In the Fuge food is useful, not enjoyable. It isn't bad-tasting but bland and textureless, everything about it concentrated on providing nutrition to the expense of every other feature. I swallow it down in quick gulps, forcing myself not to gag at the consistency that carries the mind to watery mud. I am used to it, as we all are, but for some reason I will never stop wishing it was different. That everything was different.
From history class I know there was a time when life wasn't like this. A time when human beings didn't have to cling to survival so tightly that everything else faded away. It seems to me that we cling so hard it has made us forget, despite the lessons taught and learned, and the thought shakes me even though I don't entirely know why.
All I know is that life hasn't always been this – a desperate grab for continued existence – and I can't help believing that somehow it could be different again. Can't help believing that there must be some way out of this, some solution to the things that drove us here. I just haven't found it yet.
After dinner I head up to the roof. I have a little free time before it's time for chores and I like to spend it looking out the big skylights. My mother thinks I'm a little loony. There's nothing to see out there, she says. There's nothing alive outside the Fuge. I often wonder if she is right; if we really are the last survivors on this planet.
The bell chimes through the hallways, calling us to do our duties. I've got cleaning today. With a last longing look out the window I trudge down the stairs. The images etched in my mind carries me through the days. If I close my eyes I can see the city stretching out in all directions, the streets intertwining in a maze I long to get lost in.
I've never been out there. We are sealed in; have been ever since our forefathers took their refuge here. But I dream of it, sleeping and awake. I know the Outerworld only from history class, but it's always been more real to me than the bleak existence we lead inside the Fuge. I just know there has to be a way to get it all back.
