Second chances (Weekend freewrite)

He was anxious for everyone to go to bed. He washed his hands and cleaned his knife. Leopold was determined to get a look of the other side before he was sent to the University, which was said to be far away and there was no way to know if it still bordered on the Emptiness. But first he had to get to get rid of the bug as it was a known fact getting too close to the borderlands would trigger the alarm. Many kids before him had tried to sneak out before and although the punishment itself wasn’t so bad, somehow those children always ended up in the not-so-cool places - like the Skills School or, even worse, working the fields for the rest of their lives.
Leo was convinced that taking the bug out of his right shoulder and leaving it in the room no one would notice his absence over the weekend. He bit hard on the damp towel he’d stuffed in his mouth, but there was no need after all. The painkiller spray he’d stolen from the school nurse was so strong his shoulder went numb. The bug safely stored in a box under his pillow, he was free to go.
There were no maps of the Emptiness - why would there be since there was nothing to show? - but it was common knowledge that following the river you’d get there eventually. He wasn’t afraid of the forest, which he remembered well from his scouts days. Nothing to worry about out there since so few animals had survived the Strike that had wiped out most of the Earth. One of the things kids loved best about scouting trips were the nights around the fire with Jefferson telling old stories of wild beasts with jaws so strong ‘they could eat you alive’. The smaller kids leaping and screaming when their leader did his imitation of a roar, comically flailing his arms as he pounced and then tickled his prey to death, while the boy begged for mercy.
‘You know Leo means lion, don’t you?’, Jefferson once told him and it seemed strange to him why people of old favored such names that reminded them of great predators. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that all those dangerous beasts had been wiped out.
By dawn, Leopold reached the fence, too tall to climb, but he had that part figured out, he’d jump into the water and let the river take him to the other side.

I was unsure of her motivation for changing that pattern. For the past hour, the woman with the startling blue hair had been tapping on the glass wall in front of her conjuring images I sometimes recognized as the school playground or the central square where a public meeting was taking place, eyes strained and lips pursed, but now she’d changed to checking out places I’d never seen and knew didn’t exist in the Citadel.
Whatever the punishment, I’d rather be done with it as soon as possible. All for nothing, my future ruined and I didn’t even get a glance of the Emptiness. I’d always imagined there would be some interesting ruins, like the films they showed in school. Abandoned cities, burned buildings, a skeleton behind the wheel of a rusted car - something exciting. I knew I could never tell about it, but I wanted so much to get a glimpse of the place, sift through the wreckage and find something of theirs - maybe a coin, a key to a house long gone, something to make it all real.
All those months I’d been dreaming of my little trip I imagined a place returning to life, blades of grass fighting their way up through the rubble, a bird nesting on top of a ruined wall - and I, the first one to discover the planet was alive again. Being hailed as a hero for letting humanity out of confinement.
How was I to know there was another fence? I had no idea how I triggered the alarm but they swarmed on me before I had time to try and climb the outer perimeter.

‘What are we to do with you Leopold?’
She was staring at me and for all the sadness in her eyes, it could not disguise the contempt for the squirming boy in front of her. My guilt shifted to righteous indignation and I started to shout, defending my right to do whatever I wanted and go wherever I wanted. ‘It’s my home, too’.
The corners of her thin lips rose into a smirk.
‘As a matter of fact, this is my home, not yours!’

‘Are you sick?’
My head was exploding and I was shaking all over, as my brain refused to accept her despicable lies. I was sure she was lying and I shook my head furiously when she offered me a glass of water.
‘I’m sorry’, she said and her voice was cracking with real anguish, which only made things worse. If she was truly sorry, maybe she was telling the truth. I forced my aching head up high and there were tears in her eyes.
All that I thought I knew was a lie, we were nothing but a bunch of beggars, pitiful refugees on a planet that despised our kind and thought we were a foolish race. Tolerated guests in a world who viewed it as its mission to house us for as long as it took for our destroyed planet - the planet we had destroyed - to heal so they could sends us back and forget about us.
‘We’re prisoners here!’
‘No, don’t take it like that. There’s a reason you have to live in the simulation. If we had taken them in, your ancestors, if that had been at all possible, they would have become second-class citizens in a world far more advanced for their understanding. Their species, your species would have disappeared. We thought it our duty to help you preserve your ways, keep your memories alive until it was time for you to go home. When the time comes, your people will have the skills needed to survive and rebuild your world as best you can’.
‘Even if we screw up again?’
‘That is up to you, although I doubt there will be anyone willing to help you again’.
‘How long?’, I mumbled.
‘You have been here for a thousand years and it will be at least that long until there is hope you could go back.’
‘So I won’t ever get to see Earth?’.
She did not answer for a long time’.
‘When we’re done here and your memory of this is erased…’
She saw me flinching.
‘Consider yourself lucky, the Earth in the books you’ll find at the University is more beautiful than the one you left behind’.

Images are my own.