Air Hunger

189,216,000. That’s how many breaths we are allowed during our short lives here in the Colony before we are sent out into the Wasteland. Most people make it to thirty years of age, give or take, before walking out of the protective dome that preserves our air supply. As a small act of mercy, the Tribunal allows you to take a respirator with you. It keeps you alive for half an hour or so as you make your peace with death. No one ventures out into the Wasteland to collect your body.

Humans have lived inside the Colony for generations now. As the star that serves as our sun began to heat up, carbon dioxide began to disappear from the atmosphere. Plants were no longer able to perform photosynthesis and produce the oxygen necessary to sustain us, dying off en masse. It didn’t help that we polluted the air and cut down the forests. Our day of reckoning eventually arrived.

So we formed the Colony to make our oxygen supply last as long as we could. We needed leaders, so the citizens of the Colony cast their ballots to elect a council of three rulers, the Tribunal. Over time, the laws have changed, but the Tribunal’s purpose has remained the same: ensure that oxygen is distributed as equally as possible to all living human beings. Every day, scientists measure the air quality and count the population, adjusting each person’s ration of breaths as needed to account for environmental changes, births, and deaths.

Each of us has a small microchip implanted inside of us between our shoulder blades so as to make removal almost impossible unless you are either very flexible or have help. And so few people are brave enough to defy the Tribunal that it is almost certain you will not find help. Some people find it unnerving, the daily status reports that count down the number of breaths until you face death, but I made peace with it a long time ago.

I glance at the small comm screen attached to a band around my wrist, watching my remaining breaths decrease. I deliberately slow my respiration and watch as the countdown decreases almost imperceptibly in speed. For a while now, I have suspected that my microchip is malfunctioning, as large deposits of breaths are added to my number, for no apparent reason. My best friend, Remi, and I have calculated that I will last approximately a year and a half longer than she will, even though we were born only days apart. I’m just lucky, I guess. Although watching my best friend walk down the gangplank into the Wasteland will be one of the hardest days of my life, second only to the day I watched my mother make that lonely journey. When my time comes, it will be easy. Everyone I have ever loved will be on the other side.

I remember my mother’s departure. That’s what they call it, departure, as if you are catching a flight or simply going on a trip. The Tribunal thinks it sounds less harsh, probably. I stood by tearfully watching as she walked away toward the exit of the artificial bubble that keeps us alive. I could see her hands shaking, and tears were running down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound, unlike so many people who have to be dragged, struggling and screaming the whole way. She was brave, my mother.

She and I were close. We had to be to survive. I was born during a time when reproduction was outlawed, as the Tribunal tried to extend the breath ratio of each living person by restricting the number of humans in the Colony. Remi and I were conceived and born in secrecy, accidents carefully kept hidden from the government. No one knew what would happen if they found out about us.

When I turned six, the Tribunal lifted the birth restrictions and offered amnesty to those who had borne children as well as the children they had born. I stepped outside our small home for the first time in my life, finally glimpsing the world I had heard about in my mother’s stories. Although my mother saw to it that I was literate and knew that I was loved, I had no other human contact until my first day of school, amongst the other children granted amnesty by the Tribunal.

I saw no need to interact with others at first, as I had never needed their company in my short life. However, after a few months, I developed a crush on a boy at school, Terrance Hardesty. Everybody loved Terrance with his perfect blonde hair and bright smile, his confidence. He could throw a ball farther than any of the rest of us, and he could climb to the top of the jungle gym faster than any of us.

The jungle gym scared me. It was a towering tangle of metal bars with large gaps that you could fall through and break bones when you hit the ground. Most children dared to climb it. Some dared to climb to the very top. I was one of the ones who simply watched. Then one day, Terrance asked me to climb with him. My heart was hammering out of my chest, and my palms were so sweaty that I could scarcely hang on as I climbed higher and higher. When our teacher called for us to come back inside, Terrance nimbly swung down between the bars and dropped deftly to the ground, landing on his feet. I cried and clung to the bars, arms and legs wrapped around them for dear life. “You’re such a loser, Nova,” he taunted, laughing.

It was then that I met Remi, the only other child as fearless as Terrance, only Remi was fearless in a kind way. “Leave her alone,” she had screamed at Terrance. Remi was the only person he was too frightened to bully. She was scrappy even then, as she and her mother lived in the hovels near the garbage dump. No one knew who Remi’s father was. She was the product of rape in a part of town that was largely lawless. Remi had quickly scaled the jungle gym and patiently helped me climb back down. “It’s alright,” she had repeated like a mantra as I slowly descended. We both got detention for failing to come back in from recess, but we have been inseparable ever since.

The Tribunal doesn’t usually monitor the departures in person. They have the Departure Bureau for that. But I remember Jackson Shaw attending my mother’s departure. He stood in silence in the crowd, a strange, almost pained expression on his face. My mother made eye contact with him before she stepped into the Wasteland. I could have sworn I saw him nod imperceptibly. His face looks oddly familiar to me, with his pale skin and gray eyes.

As the day of Remi’s departure approaches, I reach a decision. She will not go into the Wasteland alone. Whatever happens, wherever we go, we will face it together. I haven’t told her yet, but I am preparing for the journey. They say that morphine alleviates the air hunger, slows your respiration, and dulls the anxiety that takes over in your last moments, as your body realizes that there is no oxygen available to it and your fight or flight reflex takes over, your heart speeding up, as you gasp for air that isn’t there. They also say that when you mix the morphine with Haven, a synthetic psychotropic drug also available on the black market, death is easy. You see beautiful visions and experience peace like you’ve never known as your body shuts down and you drift off to sleep. I am saving the money my mother left me to buy enough for us both. I don’t know where my mother’s money came from, but I am grateful to her for it.

On the morning of Remi’s departure, I show her my supplies and promise to meet her at the gangplank, where our town will be gathered around to watch her go. They will donate my breaths to the community, dispersing them amongst all of the living human beings in the Colony. She argues that I shouldn’t have to go with her, that I still have life left, and I should try to enjoy it. “Wherever we are going, we will go together,” I remind her. She nods.

As Remi takes her place at the gangplank, I step forward beside her. Some people cry, some gasp, some simply take in the public spectacle. Departures always draw a good crowd. One of the agents of the Departure Bureau gives me a small salute and hands me a respirator like the one Remi has in her hands. I gesture back, thankfully accepting the device. I am afraid, but I am also ready for it to be over. Someone steps forward from the throng and places a hand on my arm, holding me in place. I look back and see Jackson Shaw. I ask him what he is doing here. “I promised your mother I would look out for you,” he says quietly, surreptitiously pressing a small, golden, heart-shaped locket into my hand.

It all makes sense now. His pale skin and gray eyes look familiar because I see them every day in the mirror. The extra breaths that are added to my life are from him. He voted for the amnesty so that I could finally come outside and see the world. He loved my mother, but he couldn’t save her, even though those elected to the Tribunal are allowed to live until they die of natural causes. I squeeze his hand silently, acknowledging all that I can never say to him before Remi and I don our respirators and step forward into the Wasteland.

The hot sun beats down on us as we walk into the arid desert, surrounded by skeletons and corpses in various states of decay. Once we are far enough away from the Colony, I open the locket. There is a picture of us inside from the day I was born. My mother lies in bed, holding me to her chest. Jackson’s left hand rests on her shoulder, and I clutch the index finger of his right hand in my tiny fist. I feel tears well up in my eyes. I would have liked to have known him.

We hold hands as we walk, and I am reminded of the jungle gym. Whatever we face, we face it together. We simply walk in silence until the respirators begin to fail. I mix the morphine and Haven, pouring equal measures into each of our water canteens. We tap our canteens together and take a long drink, lying down on the ground together, as the arid desert is replaced by a beautiful rainforest. I can feel the spray of the waterfall on my face, as my body slows and I become lightheaded. I describe my visions to Remi, who insists that she is floating in the clouds, surrounded by colorful birds that are singing. “What do you suppose the afterlife is like, if there is one?” she asks calmly.

“I don’t know, but we’ll go there together,” I reply, clutching her hand in my left and the locket that Jackson gave me in my right, as I draw my last breath and the visions fade to black.