Portal

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. He told her many times to stay out of his room, but she always found herself returning to stare out of the opening, at the world she could never visit.

The window was a circle, covered in inch thick glass and cut into the side of their home. There were no other openings that she could find and she'd searched the house from top to bottom.

Four rooms, each the exact same size, with no other windows or doors. Just that single opening. It occurred to her to question how they'd gotten inside their home, with no door or opening big enough to squeeze through. But he only shook his head.

"Isn't it enough that we live, child?" His voice is gruff and he doesn't look at her as he speaks. Father is the only name he has, but it means more to her than can be expressed in that one word. He is her maker and the one who protects her from the outside. She knows she shouldn't question his wisdom or his love for her, but she can't stop the curiosity from firing her imagination when she peers through the glass at the world beyond.

The tree stands alone in a field, it's twisting branches reaching up for a sky burnt and streaked with yellow and red. The sunlight is weak but the tree's branches are lush with greenery.

Once, according to father, the skies were blue, but that was long ago. Before the fall. Before the people burned the world.

As she stares at the field of tall grass surrounding the tree and the purplish hills rolling across the distant horizon, she fantasizes about the outside world. What were the people like? How did they live? She daydreamed about what it might be like to meet someone from outside. How would they react to her and her father?

Lost in thought, it takes her an embarrassingly long time to process the change when it comes.

A figure had wandered into view, walking slowly through the high grass. A boy, she thought, though it was hard to tell. The long dark hair curled thickly around his ears and the baggy clothes hid much, but an aura of masculinity hung around his face.

She takes an involuntary step back from the window and feels the breath catch in her throat. She knows she should call for father, but she doesn't. Instead, she watches the figure as it moves across her field of view.

The boy stopped walking and stood still for a long moment, his posture slumped as he turned to look back the way he'd came. After a pause, he appeared to shout at someone out of view.

No sound reached her, but she could sense the boy's frustration. It reminded her so much of her own. The room with the window was empty except for a dozen hatches built into the wall to her right. Each hatch led to a sleeping pod. Her father called them berths, as if they were aboard a ship. Inside, they were warm and comfortable, kept so by the house's life support systems.

She wasn't supposed to be in the sleeping room without father. But she planned no mischief and knew that father wasn't likely to check up on her this early in the day.

The other rooms in the house were a kitchenette, a lavatory with shower, and the library. All were sparsely furnished and sleekly designed, with smooth white walls and a floor carpeted in soft microfiber.

Her father spent his days in the library, watching dozens of holographic screens that continuously updated with infographics showing things like surface temperatures and radiation levels. Where the data came from, she didn't know. She didn't think her father knew either. When asked, he only shrugged and said, "Some of the old transmitters must still be operating, I suppose."

When she asked him what a transmitter was, he only shook his head. "Just something that used to exist before the world ended."

She used to ask him how the world ended, but he never answered. It took a while, but she finally stopped asking. Sometimes, father allowed her to watch things on the monitors. Films, he called them. To show her the world before. But that didn't happen often. The films made him sad, she suspected.

Outside the window, something new was happening.

More figures followed the first. There were four of them now. An adult and two smaller children had joined the boy. They were all bundled up much like the boy, but she saw that the adult was a woman. Her long red hair hung loosely from the open cowl of her coat and her face was visible. She had smooth skin and brown eyes and none of the terrible blisters or open sores that should have come with prolonged radiation exposure.

This made the watching girl frown. Her father had told her countless times about the horrors of radiation sickness and what would happen if they ever left the protection of their home. How they would lose their hair and their teeth would fall out, before the blisters and weeping sores came. All leading to a painful and drawn out death as their organs liquified inside their bodies.

She watched the woman as she knelt before the smaller children and began speaking softly to them and making small adjustments to their clothing. Tucking in shirts and tightening shoestrings. The boy stood watching them, his face twisted in annoyance.

They seemed so normal to her. Not at all what she expected after all the stories her father had told her. She felt a sudden urge to call out to them. To bang on the small window and get their attention.

But her father's hand on her shoulder stopped her. Kneeling beside her, he looked out at the family and said, "It cannot be, child. I'm sorry." And his voice did indeed sound regretful. "The toxic air would be the death of us both, I'm afraid. Their bodies have always known the poison and have adapted, but we would be as newborns to such as these. The sickness would take us quickly."

She didn't say anything. She knew there was truth in his words, but there was also something else. Something her father would never admit to her or even himself.

He was afraid.

After so long hiding behind their white antiseptic walls, living their lonely existence, the thought of being with others terrified him. The loss of control. The chance of abandonment. Those were not things he could make himself face.

So she said nothing. She watched the family through the portal and knew that their world was one that she could never share. And she thought of mother, locked away in her sleeping pod, unable to wake because of the sedatives that her father administered every morning and evening.

Mother had wanted to leave too. It had caused arguments with father until one morning when mother stayed inside her pod instead of waking like usual.

She'd asked father why mother was sleeping so long, but father would only say that she needed her rest. And not to wake her.

She didn't understand, but she knew father would never hurt them.

So she kept her silence.

And waited.