One Small Step

Thin and worn, the soles of his boots were doing nothing to protect his aching feet from the heat of the road. He winced as his battered flesh crunched over another pebbly patch in the dust.

One foot in front of the other. That was all he could do.

If he stopped to think about how many steps he had taken, or how many he had left to take, he was quite convinced that he would stop and drop right there.

One more. One more. One more. His thoughts had narrowed down to this two-word chant, the syllables in sync with his steps.

He didn't dare look at the horizon - it was best to cling to the hope that the city was just a little bit further ahead. Just a little bit further.

As he walked, the furious sun continued its relentless journey across the sky. It was hard to imagine that once upon a time, the endless oceans of sand that this dusty road meandered through had been green, fertile and lush. Water had run freely in this land. Once.

The thought of water made him acutely aware of how parched his mouth was. The threadbare backpack he carried still had some dry rations, but he had run out of anything to drink a few hours ago. This journey could have gone a bit better, he had to admit. His ride had died two days ago, and he wasn't certain that he wouldn’t meet the same fate if he didn’t reach shelter by nightfall.

A glint.

Through the heat haze fogging his senses and blurring his vision, he noticed it. He didn't really choose to stop and pick it up - the distraction interrupted his chant and broke his momentum. As he tripped over his own bruised feet and fell to his knees, he could see that it was something golden weaving in and out of the sand, catching the sun.

Mindlessly, he bent forward and instinctively touched the thin chain. Weak and clumsy, he pulled on it. The chain slid out of the sand, dangling from one hand. It swung gently from the weight of something heart-shaped hanging from it.

A locket.

An old-fashioned locket, he thought... This had probably been dropped here when the roads still looked like roads and grass still grew along its sides. As its gentle swinging slowed down, his eyelids drooped. At least he had something beautiful to hold on to, in the end. The blinding brightness of the sun shining overhead faded to nothing as his body dropped to the ground, and his mind melted into dreams of water.

He could feel it now. Almost sharp against his parched, cracked lips before sliding into his mouth. He gulped it down greedily. His entire consciousness was focused on the sensation of that water as it slipped over his tongue, down his throat. Blessed water! His thoughts settled back into stillness.

His eyes fluttered open. Was he on his back? He could feel a gentle sway and the occasional jolt. Too weak to move, he sensed there was someone nearby. Was this the afterlife? No. It was still awfully hot. But the pain that had seeped into his limbs was now gone, so that was something. Through heavy-lidded eyes he took in the glorious golden and crimson colors of the clear sky. He let his mind linger here, watching the reds deepen as night fell. Distant stars started to twinkle through the garnet-tinged gloom. He slipped into oblivion again.

The low rumble of city-life roused him from unconsciousness. He sat bolt upright, his senses on high alert and his heart pounding. He was sitting on a rickety cart, facing the dark sea of sand and sky they had emerged from. He whipped his head around.

New Troy rose out of the shadows, alight and alive. He was here, but how? He saw a hooded figure sat at the front of the cart, loosely holding the reins attached to an emaciated and ancient horse. He tentatively reached a hand out and placed it lightly on the hooded figure’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely.

“You’re welcome,” came a voice from the back of the cart next to him. His breath caught as he twisted back around. There was someone else lying down on the cart, with their hands behind their head, their feet crossed at the ankles.

“What in Tartarus…” he muttered under his breath. The figure shifted, and he could just make out his fellow passenger’s features. “You!”

The cocky smirk boiled his blood, as it always did. “You might well have been on your way there, had I not seen you slumped on the side of the road on my way here, old man.”

He knew it was true. “Thank you, Cassandra,” he bit out through gritted teeth.

“It’s Cass. You know that.” Her eyes flashed angrily as she lurched upright and spun to face away from him.

Caught between the burden of gratitude and unyielding habitual resentment, he fell into an awkward silence. The cart was slowly working its way into the city of New Troy. They were being enveloped by the glow of the urban lights, the brightness comforting after the harsh hammering of the sun on the road. Shifting a little, he realized how stiff his body was. His stomach was aching with hunger, teased into wakefulness by the smells of hot food cooking as they twined their way through narrow streets flanked by soaring apartment blocks. Something hard and heavy was in his hand. Looking down, he remembered finding the locket through his dehydrated delirium.

He hadn’t meant to pick it up, much less keep it, but here it was in his hand - this memento of a bygone era. As he looked at the tarnished surface of the locket, his mind started to form an image of who might have last worn it. This piece was at least a few decades old. He opened it and shone his pocket light on the interior. Forgotten to the elements as it had been, the pictures within had long since disintegrated. Closing the two sides back together, he wondered if the last person to have held this had known what was coming. They must have known; everyone had been warned for decades. They had all known, and what had been done had been too little, too late. Had they been one of the billions abandoned on this planet with an angry, dying sun slowly incinerating life on it? He rubbed his thumb over the surface of the locket. It didn’t look like a particularly expensive piece of jewelry. Sadness welled up within him as he realized that whoever had owned this was unlikely to have been one of the few million able to afford the astronomical cost of escape. He wrapped his fingers closed around it.

“A trinket from a lost lover, old man?” Cass piped up.

He glared at her. “A relic of a lost people, more like.”

She shrugged. “I would say we could pawn it off, but no one cares about trinkets anymore.”

“Can’t say I blame them, when water is scarce and food even scarcer.” He remembered the sensation of water hitting his parched lips in his stupor. “How did you find me, anyway? I thought you weren’t coming on this little expedition.”

She was doing her utmost to look nonchalant, but he could see her stiffen up. “I guess I realized when you left that even though I know this is a lost cause, it would be boring to see out the rest of my days in an empty village with nothing but a decrepit horse and an obsolete robot for entertainment. Misery loves company, they do say. So - here I am looking for some as we face the end of the world,” she laughed harshly. She always laughed too loudly when she was uncomfortable.

He watched her for a few seconds. Of course, he could now see that what he had mistaken for a hooded human holding the reins was reliable old Servus. Pieces were missing, and his batteries needed replacing, but he was still here for now. He might not survive many more solar flares, though.

“I know where we can get some food,” he offered.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Food would be good. And if you know where we can find some water too, we need a refill.” She tapped the empty canteens sitting by her feet in the cart.

He nodded, and bent forward to give Servus the coordinates for their next stop. He finally started taking in the city properly as they meandered deeper and deeper into it. Tall towers teetered overhead, full of people and the lives they led. It was getting louder and louder as the night settled; it was too hot to do much living during the day now, and over the years people had adapted to resting and conserving energy when the sun was blaring. The sides of most buildings were covered in grids of solar panels with batteries to store energy for the night time, and sections of vertical gardening served the dual purpose of insulation and space-saving food growth. It was getting harder and harder to keep crops alive and producing food, though, and increasingly frequent solar flares overloaded power grids constantly.

The citizens of New Troy moved about their business calmly and consistently. But he could feel the undercurrent of desperation running through their lives. It had been getting stronger and stronger for decades now, in cities like New Troy across the world where the remnants of humanity gathered to cling to life, hoping that they, too, might find a way out.

They stopped in front of one of the older-looking buildings in the city. They parked Servus and the cart in one of the underground pods, leaving him there to recharge, then jumped into one of the elevators.

Cass was looking wide-eyed and overwhelmed. “Cool place to die,” she announced with forced indifference.

He sighed. “Let’s first eat. And then we will talk about Hector’s plans.”

They stepped off the elevator and found themselves in a narrow hallway. There were so many doors along it. “I still don’t get how they can squeeze so many people into these buildings,” Cass muttered.

He shrugged his shoulders. “This is what most people have known for a few generations, Cass. Our village was one of the last of its kind.” He felt churning regret rising up once again. Should he have pushed harder for the few of them left to come here, before it had gotten too hard to grow food, to transport the elderly, to battle the heat? It was too late now.

He knocked on the door marked 2117. He could hear a flurry of activity within before the door swung open. She stood there, looking a little worn and a little weathered, but still as warm and welcoming as ever. She gasped. “Aeneas, you made it!” She flung herself at him, and he caught her in his open arms.

“Dido, my old friend. Thank you for sending us the message.”

She welcomed them over the threshold. “Come in! Come eat!” She ushered Cass into the small apartment. They sat and ate their fill of a hearty lentil stew. Cass slurped down seconds as Aeneas and Dido spoke like old friends do. After a long rest to recover from the toll of the journey, they set off back out into the city.

“I know you think there is no point. But this is our only hope.”

Cass stopped and stared ahead. “You want me to hope that this Hector person can get hundreds of thousands of us off this dying planet, with obsolete technology? We don’t even know where the people who left us here ended up, and we’re supposed to just launch ourselves into the great beyond and hope for the best?”

Aeneas smiled. “Yes.”

She sighed and took one small step.

“Let’s go, then.”