EASTWARD BOUND

The girl awoke, her vision red. The sunlight shone in through the window and filled the entire room with an unwanted light. Even with her eyelids closed, the girl could not escape the sun. The time of darkness she longed for had passed. The girl sighed, opening her eyes.

Later that morning the girl was boarding the bus. Aware that it would be an eight hour ride, she took a window seat near the back and removed her sunhat, attempting to make herself as comfortable as she could. She stared out through the glass and watched as bus after bus passed, each small chrome vessel packed with bodies and traveling neatly along it’s respected path.

“Is this seat taken?” a woman’s voice chimed from beneath a sunhat. The girl shook her head and gestured to the open seat. The woman sat down gingerly, removing her hat.

“My, what a beautiful shade of teal your suit is!” The woman beside her gushed. “Where ever did you get it?”

“Oh,” the girl said blushing. “Thank you. Um, it’s a bit old I’m afraid. It was my mother’s.”

“Yes of course, the model does look extremely outdated,” the woman said pursing her lips and studying the suit more carefully. Uncomfortable under the woman’s gaze, the girl instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, but the color’s simply stupendous,” the woman added quickly, sensing the girl’s nerves. Without warning, she reached out and ran the webbed fingers of her gloves along the length of the thick fabric of the girl’s teal pleurasuit. She gently took the girl’s wrist and flipped her arm over so that the rectangular black screen lining the girl’s inner wrist faced upwards. The woman tapped it once and the screen immediately lit up, asking for a touch ID. She held it next to her own. Compared to the sleek updated version of the woman’s screen which was both larger and thinner, the screen on the girl’s wrist looked like an enormous hunk of scrap metal.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the woman murmured deep in thought, “It still works?”

“I haven’t had a problem with it thus far,” the words slipped out of her lips before the girl could stop them. The woman dropped the girl’s wrist. The two sat in silence, those last words floating in the empty space between them.

“My god, that’s a bit of a gamble don’t you think,” the woman said incredulously. “Your lungs are a serious matter girl, it’s why they say you shouldn’t keep a suit past ten years. The filtration system, if it were to suddenly stop working one day and any unfiltered air made it into your lungs, your bloodstream…well I can only imagine,” the woman trailed off.

“No of course not,” the girl stuttered. “It really can’t be that old! A few years perhaps but nowhere close to ten. Besides, I hardly ever wear it and especially not outside for extended periods of time.”

“Well that’s reassuring. I was thinking only of your health,” the woman said seeming pleased enough with the girl’s answer. She smiled down at her in an almost maternal manner. The bus rolled to a stop as Alexa’s familiar automated voice announced the next stop.

“Whereabouts are you headed?” the woman asked.

“Nero,” the girl answered.

“Nero! Good heavens that’s far. What on earth could you possibly be going to Nero for? Or I suppose the better questions is, is there anything even left in Nero for you to go to? I thought that town was practically abandoned.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “It practically is.” The girl thought back to the stories she had grown up listening to. When her mother was a child, she and her family would take trips to Nero to visit the ocean. This was back when cars still existed. It was years before the bans began, before the fogs rolled in and never left, leaving the sky forever the color of thick, milky exhaust. She thought of her mother’s ocean, the salty spray licking her face, the water rising, tickling her ankles, and ebbing away just as quickly as it had come. What the girl longed for, the reason for her journey, was to see the blue, the blue she had only heard of in stories and seen on screens. The brilliant blue of the tides that was now absent from the natural world and only present on man made devices, the blue that once matched the sky, the birds, the blue that was now only faded, tainted, swallowed up by a surrounding world of scorched, colorless gray. There would be no telling if the ocean she would find would be the ocean her mother had once known, but there was only one way to find out.

Five stops later, Alexa’s voice rung once more loudly through the bus speakers.

“Well, this is my stop,” the woman said. She rose, grabbing her bag and placing her sunhat once more atop her head. She paused before turning, her eyes whit globes probing out from beneath the shadow of the brim. She gave the girl a hard look before adding, “Please, do be careful all the way out there dear. Whatever it is you’re looking for, chances are, it might already be long gone.” The girl watched the woman through the window, her diminishing figure being pulled farther and farther as her body morphed into a ghost and vanished in the dust.

There were only two other people still on the bus when Alexa’s voice shattered the silence.

“Last stop. Malaga.” The girl rose and walked to the front of the bus.

“Excuse me,” the girl said to the bus driver. “I thought this bus was going to Nero?”

“Nero is an eight mile walk east” the bus driver repeated without turning his gaze from the road. The girl placed her sunhat on her head and exited the bus. She heard the screech of the wheels in the dirt as the bus drove off behind her.

The girl tapped the screen on her wrist. The light twitched, the screen glitching. Lines flashed across the face of the screen in jagged movements and then froze. Panicked, she immediately tapped the screen repeatedly, praying. After a moment the screen faded to black. When she tapped the screen once more, it lit up and asked for her touch ID in the usual manner, as though nothing had happened. For a moment the girl did not move. Finally, she took a deep breath, and set off towards the east.