Paper

John and I entered the half crumbling building, both of us hyper vigilant about where we stepped. The ground was littered with debris, and the haze made it hard to see.

“Turn up your headlight, the ground doesn’t seem stable.” John’s voice crackled in the ear of my biosphere helmet.

“Roger that,” I replied, stepping over a rusted, steel beam.

The atmosphere around us was an amber haze. A sandstorm had just whipped through the area, and even with my enhancement goggles, the conditions were some of the worst I’d ever been in.

“Let’s scan this area, and then head back for the day. These conditions are so shitty.” John’s sentiments mirrored my own thoughts as we trudged forward in our suits.

We’d barely collected anything of note, besides some silverware and an extremely fragile ceramic pot of some kind that was miraculously intact despite a small crack. It had a fluted spout and looked ridiculous to me. I chuckled when I found it and wondered what it’s use had been.

We entered the better half of a blown-up structure. It mainly consisted of metal beams and some sort of unidentifiable crumbling material caked in dust and sand. I turned my head back and forth slowly, hoping my light would catch something out of the ordinary.

I had just joined the Basic Forensic Ops Team, and I wanted to prove myself. Last week, a coworker found a plastic tub full of perfectly preserved, heirloom seeds. He got a promoted out of field work or hard labor. I hadn’t even seen him since.

The goal of Basic Forensics was always to look for any plastic containers that preserved long gone artifacts from the Old World. Plastic bins or any sort of valuable metal. A few months ago, someone found an old tub full of clothes. Clothes were a hot commodity. The heirloom seeds however, were the greatest discovery in my lifetime. The Colony had been abuzz ever since.

As I scanned the structure, I occasionally shifted light pieces of debris. I lifted a short beam, and to my delight, I saw a peek of color. I bent down and dusted off what seemed to be a blue lid.

“I think I’ve got something plastic, John.”

“Good, because there’s nothing in this corner.”

John crunched over as I dusted off the container. It was big, as wide as my arm span. John reached down and helped me pull it out of the rubble. It was hard to see through the smog, but the sides of the bin were clear plastic. I thought I could make out the faint outline of something brown inside, but I couldn’t be certain. The dusty air had a tendency to play tricks on your mind at the end of a long day.

“Good work, Kev,” John said. “Let’s carry this back to the rover.”

I nodded as we held the plastic tub between us. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but my elevated heartbeat pounded in my ears.

It was a grueling walk back to the rover as we trudged through debris. The air was so thick, I could barely see. The wind picked up and howled against my helmet.

“We picked a good time to stop!” John screamed into his intercom. I could barely hear his crackled voice through my headset.

The rover’s glowing lights beamed up head through the cloudy atmosphere and I sighed in relief. We quickly loaded the box into the rover’s back hatch, jumped into our seats, and shut the doors. Sealed off from the sand storm, we kept our helmets on as the rover trudged forward. It bumped along at a slow speed, but picked up when it found smooth ground.

John looked at the rover’s control panels and said “Just in time for dinner!” He was always hungry. We were all always hungry, but John was a foot taller than everyone at the colony. People called him “Giant John”. He was a constant reminder to everyone that people were bigger and stronger in the Old World. The rover crawled back to the station while my stomach fluttered in anticipation of opening the plastic tub.

The trek back to the station seemed like an eternity, and the descent down the rover elevator took even longer. Once we reached the Colony’s controlled atmosphere, we removed our biosphere helmets. I could hear John’s stomach growling. We unloaded the plastic box together, and carried it down to Forensic Discoveries. My favorite aid, Kyle, popped into the hallway to help us.

“Anything else to unload?” His pale face was sallow under the florescent lights. I’m sure mine looked the same.

“Some silverware and a ceramic pot. Be careful,” John called over his shoulder as Kyle scurried down the hallway.

“I wonder who the head tech is today, I really hope it’s not… Selena!” John exclaimed as the tiny women came around the corner. Selena was terrifying. Her eyes were so dark brown that they looked black, which was a shocking focal point against her milky white skin. She wore her black hair shaved down close to her scalp. She was such a no-nonsense person that she didn’t even have time for her own hair.

“You didn’t call ahead, asshole!” she barked at John.

John opened his mouth to reply.

“Save it!” she barked. “I don’t care.” We followed her down the hallway, awkwardly lugging the tub between us.

As we entered the Discoveries lab, Kyle hurried in behind us.

Selena appraised the silverware and pot in his hands and turned to us.

“That’s it?” She asked scathingly. John was twice her size, but he seemed to cower in her presence.

“Well… those and the box that Kevin found”. Her shaved head swiveled in my direction, and she looked at me as if she had just noticed my existence.

“Whatever’s in there better be good, rookie.” She called everyone rookie or some other derogatory term. Learning names was apparently beneath her.

I swallowed hard. My mouth was so dry. It was always dry. We were only allowed a specific amount of water with meals since it was the scarcest resource.

Selena glared at us. “Well, what are you waiting for?! Suit up, idiots!!”

John, Kyle, and I jumped to attention and put on our biohazard suits. Discoveries were normally harmless, but we weren’t allowed to take chances. The entire Colony relied on a specific population of people with a diverse gene pool. Keeping everyone alive was critical to our survival.

Selena air-blasted the outside of the plastic container. As soon as she got most of the caked-on sand off, she circled the table, assessing the box. It had become clear that the box held some sort of brown box inside of it.

“Lift the lid,” Selena snapped, and the three of us bumped into each other as we rushed to obey her command. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

John and I stepped forward and pried off the lid. It was surprisingly easy for something that had been sitting in the elements for so long. We carefully put the lid down, as we peered inside. The box did contain a smaller box. It was brown and wrapped in a strange material I’d never seen before. It wasn’t quite cloth. It was something else entirely.

“Holy shit,” Selena whispered. I looked up from the box to see her shocked face. She was awestruck. She met our astonished gazes and quickly snapped out of her trance-like state.

“Step back! All three of you!” she yelled. I hadn’t even noticed that Kyle had crept next to me to peer into the box. “Stand against the wall!”

Selena backed up to the speaker on the wall, never taking her eyes off of us.

“I have a Code Blue. I repeat, a Code Blue. In lab room four!”

She glared at us and said, “Don’t fucking move. Don’t even breathe.”

I’d never seen Selena this rattled. Her eyes darted back and forth between the three of us as her breath fogged up her hazard mask. The box didn’t seem to be dangerous, but something was wrong.

Within minutes, we heard footsteps marching down the hallway.

Minister Jones entered, wearing a tatty button-down shirt and a pair of patched trousers. His face was smiling in his biosphere mask.

“Selena!” he said, clapping his hands. The sound made her jump. “What do we have here?”

“It’s paper, sir.”

“Paper?!” the minster exclaimed in delight as he stepped closer. His eyes widened as he witnessed my discovery for himself.

A slow smile crept across his face. He looked up and quietly said, “Which one of you boys discovered this?”

“I- I did, sir,” I stammered. I’d only ever seen the Minister delivering his annual speech. I’d never seen him so close before, let alone spoken to him or any other important official of the colony. I felt sweat pool in my lower back and bead across my brow. I tried not to hyperventilate.

I glanced at Selena and she actually looked scared. Her arms were folded across her body and she was clutching at her elbows. The minister smiled again, his muscles moving slowly and deliberately. He smiled without showing his teeth. It was menacing. I had no idea what I’d stumbled upon, but something was off.

“Have you ever seen paper before, son?” I shook my head. “Come closer, it really is a marvel.”

I hesitantly stepped closer to the box. I’d only ever heard of paper in school. We were taught that in the Old Times, these things called books were made out of paper. I tried to pull memories of my school days into my psyche.

“Isn’t paper made of trees?” I asked. The minister nodded. He was staring at the brown paper-covered box, completely transfixed.

Suddenly, he clapped his hands. All of us jumped. He stared at John, Kyle, and I pathetically looking back at him. I was so confused.

“I’m going to tell you boys a secret,” he said. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. Alarm bells went off in my head.

“You found something very valuable to me. The contents of this box are very important. I believe it is a box that belonged to someone in my family. We’ve been looking for it for generations.”

His eyes narrowed as he took us in.

“Selena!” he snapped, as he turned towards her. “I believe you are needed in the dining hall.” Selena looked at the Minister, then looked at me. Her eyes met mine. They were full of emotion. She turned around wordlessly and the door slammed behind her.

The Minister continued to stare at us, and he reached behind his back and fumbled with something in his pocket.

“You boys can take off your bio-masks, paper is not dangerous.”

I stood there, dumbfounded. The minster wasn’t taking off his mask. I stared down at the brown box. It seemed harmless enough. John took his mask off first, and Kyle followed. I was standing in between them, paralyzed with fear. Could they not sense that something was wrong?

The Minister was still fumbling with something behind his back. Our eyes locked and we stood there staring at each other. Sweat poured over my face as I lifted off my mask.

The Minister pulled his hand back around from behind his back. He was holding a strange, metal object I’d never seen before. He grinned, a sinister grin that lit up his entire face. His eyes crinkled, and his lips pulled back to reveal a mouth full of yellow teeth. There were several missing.

He pointed the object in his hand at John. All of a sudden, the room was filled with a horribly loud banging sound. John crumpled next to me as I ducked down. Kyle dropped to the floor immediately after John. I looked up and heard another bang. I felt a searing pain in my shoulder. The minister let out a cackle. He took a step closer to me and pointed the object at my head.