Quoted By:
“You’ll find plenty of people who lived through the Dark Winter. Some of your parents, even. Count yourselves lucky that your grandparents didn’t smoother their children, rather than risk seeing them starve to death. The rich and the poor, everyone unlucky enough to have been left behind by the Exodus Fleet…the Dark Winter was the great equalizer in bringing us all to the same miserable level of human existence…
“But you’ll find fewer who remember that slow transition. Hope as they exited the bunkers, only to find despair at having to live for an entire generation in the clasp of a thirty-one-year long winter night. Where the only thing colder than the planet were the hearts of men and women who did what they had to survive…”
Silence. Save for the noise of the storm, the entire cafeteria falls silent. There are some veterans with salt in their hair, who clutch their limbs nervously or shudder. Larkin’s words ring true, in that there are others who had lived through the snap ice age. The warm stew in your hands, congealed mess of proteins as it is, would have been a borderline inconceivable luxury during the Dark Winter.
With that pleasant thought, you shovel the last bit of stew into your mouth, trying not too hard to think about what went into the meal. It’s hardly the cooks’ fault that the storm’s delayed the bi-monthly delivery of supplies, but damn if you aren’t really tempted to take your chances with a fishing rod. At least the fish, radioactive or mutated it might be, would be fresh.
Larkin stands, to everyone’s surprise, leaving the story unfinished. He shuffles away from the spotlight, taking a seat at a nearby table. “…my recounting of Dark Winter will have to wait until tomorrow. I am in no mood to continue.”
The rooks look grateful, even as some of the more seasoned hands look like they might object. But cooler heads prevail, mostly from drillers and wellheads who glare at the more rambunctious ones to shut up. Everyone shuffles off, depositing trays and bowls in their receptacles before heading off to spend their free time until the next shift.
You aren’t in a hurry to join them. For one thing, the number of friends you have on the Duck can be counted on one hand, and most of them work the opposite shift. And your current shift mates…well, at least one and a handful of his cronies, really don’t like you.
The schedule you keep is odd enough as it is given your…unique position, but it’s one that you’re forced to live with. The pay, at the very least, justifies the disjointed hours.
The storm causes your brands to ache, and you scratch awkwardly at the back of your neck. Just last week, you had one removed. It’s comparable to a bad sunburn, only dialed up by a handful of levels. But you welcome the pain over one of twenty-five constant reminders of what had landed you in this situation in the first place.
Only twenty left until you're a free man once more.
(cont.)