Out There (4 page)

“I hope so, it would be a huge honour.”

“Can you ask your mother?”

“She said that if she won, she wouldn't be able to tell me Council announcements before they tell the whole community.”

“That makes sense.”

The Bubble was so clear in the sky, like a covering over us. A protection. A mystery. In a way, it was a blindfold from the outside.

“What do you think it's like outside the Bubble?” I asked Katelyn.

“Full of wild animals and completely fogged up by gases. You know the robots that collect resources and build do it outside the Bubble.”

“Imagine life before it. What do you think it was like?”

“You mean when men still existed?”

“Yeah, when there were two genders and no Bubble.”

“Well, you know…”

And she was right, I knew all too well that men ruled with an iron fist and oppressed women. They were all evil and the world was a terrible place to live in. There was suffering, disease, cruelty, poverty, starvation and pollution. Then there were The Great Wars and the men almost killed the entire human race in their foolishness. I had heard it so many times that it practically recited itself inside my head. But for some reason I always asked anyway, maybe because some part of me didn't want to believe that such devastation could be possible.

“Yeah, I know.” I wriggled in my sleeping bag. “Men equal evil.”

“Well, it's true.”

“Do you really think it's true?”

“Of course it is.” She looked at me with a confused expression. “You don't?”

“Well, they did say history in the past had been exaggerated or changed and that's why they didn't preserve any of the old texts. So, I just thought…”

“You're crazy, Ava.”

“I know.”

Katelyn laughed. “I think we should sleep now, all that dancing took up all my energy.”

“Hey, it was me that was doing the hard core dancing, so really I should call the shots about sleep time.”

“Goodnight Ava.” Katelyn giggled and rolled over. “Night.”

Soon her gentle snores could be heard in the silence of the night. I stared at the Bubble ceiling and removed it with my mind, trying to envision what it would have been like without it. But I realised a real night sky was something I had never seen and no matter how hard I imagined, I would never know what it was like outside.

Outside.

What was it like outside?

I used to think that question would never be answered.

Chapter Two

Ava, The Next Morning

Katelyn and I had forgotten something important about the following morning. One minute I was sleeping peacefully and the next I was trudging up the stairs to pick out an outfit for the day. In Emiscyra, everyone wore simple clothes as that came with the simple lifestyle. They taught us how people used to have to take ages picking out clothes to wear and spending a fortune to look right. I supposed that we were lucky that there was no term ‘fashion' any more.

Soon we were down the street, standing outside the neighbour's door. Katelyn knocked and we waited until Georgina O'Connell opened it. She smiled at us. “Morning girls,” she said in her warm Irish accent, “I guess you're here for Brianna.”

“Yes, we are,” Katelyn replied.

Georgina winked at us and went back into the house to call Bri. “Good thing you remembered this morning.” I turned to Katelyn.

“I know, imagine if we had forgotten?”

“Would've been madness.”

Soon a figure appeared at the door, her fiery red curls were swept back into a ponytail and she tucked a loose strand behind her ear, opening the door wider as she did so.

“Surprise!” Katelyn and I shouted and ran over to hug our friend.

“Aw Ava, Katelyn.” Bri smiled, hugging us back. “Thanks so much.”

“Happy sixteenth!” Katelyn exclaimed.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Great!” Her baby-blue eyes lit up. “Finally I'm almost seventeen like you two.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, it's not easy, all that freedom and maturity…”

“Ava means to say happy birthday,” Katelyn teased. “So, what do you want to do today?”

“I get to pick?” asked Bri, delighted at the rare opportunity to choose the day's activities.

“It
is
your birthday,” Katelyn replied.

“Well…” She chewed on her lip. “How about we all meet at the café and decide together?”

Classic Bri – even when she got to choose for once, she passed it up to let it be a team effort. Every single bone in her body was benevolent. So, there wasn't much argument, and before I knew it, we were messaging everyone to meet us at the café.

Once they had something called a phone. Then Sylvia Carter, inventor extraordinaire, came up with the concept of intercoms. Each building had one and it allowed people to message each other through it. Most times everyone would intercom me asking what we should do that day and then I would decide on something and message everyone for feedback. They always agreed.

After getting yeses from Lexi and Jade, the three of us headed off to the café, our favourite place to eat.

“Hey girls, what can I get you? The usual?” asked the server, Roxanne, as we took our seats.

“For sure. Today is Bri's birthday,” Katelyn replied. “Happy birthday, honey.”

Roxanne once told us she moved from America to escape The Great Wars and then helped out a bit with the Movement. Her accent was different from most people's and she said that's how everyone talked in America before it was destroyed. I found it strange that more women didn't come here like her, but she said it was almost impossible to leave and the whole place was on lockdown. She had to fake an extremely contagious disease so they would expel her from the country and she then snuck over the ocean from a place called Canada. We all found her story extremely exciting.

“Five milkshakes – two chocolate, one vanilla, one banana and one special coming up.” She walked back to the kitchen to get our drinks.

“So, what's the special today, Ava?” Bri asked.

“I didn't check yet. But then again, the mystery is the whole reason I order it every time,” I said, just as the other two walked in.

“Happy birthday Bri!” they shouted and ran over to hug her. “Thanks,” she said from inside the mass of bodies.

“Did you order already?” Lexi asked as she pulled up a chair. “Yeah. So the birthday girl wanted us to choose what we do
together
,” I teased.

“What! No Bri, today is your day,” Lexi said.

“Well, seeing as it's my day, I decide that we should spend it doing something we all want to do,” Bri replied firmly.

“Classic Bri,” Jade said, rolling her eyes. We all laughed.

Then Roxanne came over with our milkshakes. “Here you go, girls. Chocolate for Lexi and Jade, vanilla for Katelyn, banana for the birthday girl and blueberry chocolate chip today for miss ‘the special is always the most exciting'.”

“Yeah, Ava, why
do
you always get the special?” Lexi nudged me with her elbow.

“Because she loves the unknown,” Jade remarked, leaning back in her chair.

“No, it's because it's way more fun to try something different and unexpected every day than have the same thing,” I replied.

“And because she loves the unknown,” Katelyn joked and everyone laughed.

“I don't understand why. Change is so… unpredictable,” said Jade, making a face as if change was the same thing as trash.

“That's exactly why! It's totally unpredictable!”

Lexi giggled beside me and Jade threw her hands in the air. “I give up.”

Roxanne patted me on the shoulder. “And congratulations to your mother by the way Ava, beautiful speech.”

“Oh thanks, I'll let her know.”

“And I really enjoyed
your
little show too,” she said, winking as she walked away.

The others laughed and Katelyn mimed my dance moves from the Election at me from across the table.

“Yeah, your mother must be so excited,” Bri said.

“Oh yeah! Congrats to her, I can't believe she's our Leader,” Lexi added.

“That practically makes you our superior.” Jade exaggerated a gasping motion and they all pretended to fan me.

“
Please
,” I said, brushing them aside with my hand, “today is all about Queen Brianna.” I slurped up the last of my shake.

Just as I said that, Roxanne came over carrying a small cake with a lit candle on it. We all sang Happy Birthday, the one song that seemed to have survived from before the city, and Bri blew out her candle. We all cheered.

“This one's on me, girls,” Roxanne stated as she sliced it into pieces.

For someone to pay for something out of her own share of income was rare and extremely kind. A business could not give anything out for free as all profits went to the Council. Roxanne was always generous to us, though.

“Oh Roxanne, you don't need to do that,” Bri said.

“But I do! Now have a good birthday, little miss. I'll see y'all tomorrow,” she said, taking away our glasses.

“She's the sweetest,” Katelyn said.

“She's plain awesome,” Jade stated and everyone laughed.

“Now Bri, what are we going to do today?” Lexi asked, leaning in.

“How about we go to the evening show?” I suggested and everyone agreed, of course.

“What about before that though?” Katelyn asked.

“The park?”

“The clothes store?”

“Someone's house?”

“Hey, what about the archives?” I suggested and the others all nodded in agreement.

We finished our cake and thanked Roxanne as we went to get on the tram.

The archives were open to anyone at any time and held artefacts preserved from before the Movement for people to see. Usually they used the archives for educational purposes, but many times people just went to see what was there. The secret truth was that the members of the community found it amusing to see how barbarically people used to live. Maybe it made them feel better about the lives we led or maybe it gave them a reason to let out their anger against men for almost destroying our world. For me, the mystery, the discovery, the finding of something completely unimaginable or unthinkable was why the archives were my favourite place to go. Once I found a book of photographs of different wild animals, and it was incredible to see features that one would never have thought possible right there in front of you.

The tram stopped and we all walked over to the archives. Pausing for a moment, I took in all the mystery just overflowing from the shelves. Divided into dozens of sections, each part was either a set of perfect white shelves or a screen showing a movie clip or a display behind glass. Each year they closed it for a week to check everything and clean up the exhibits. I was always the first one in the door as soon as it opened.

“Where to?” Katelyn asked.

“Let's split up and meet back here in fifteen,” Lexi decided and we all left to look at different exhibits.

Jade and Bri both went off to look at the documentaries playing and Katelyn went to the music exhibit, showing different instruments from before the Movement. Lexi followed me to the magazines and books section. There was something nice about the feel of a book. A portal to another world that you could hold in your hands and explore at will. There were no more books like that after the Movement. Everything at school was taught with touchpads and you never saw anything resembling paper.

“Hey, look at this,” Lexi called, pulling one of the magazines off the rack.

She flipped through the pages to reveal photos of ‘fashion' and women wearing different ‘fashionable' clothes. We scanned the pages and laughed at one of the photos of a man and a woman with hair sprayed vertically to stand half a metre high.

“He's having a bad hair day today,” said Lexi, pointing at the man.

“And look, it's contagious.”

Lexi giggled, slapping her thighs. “Imagine getting your hair to look like that. You know how much work that would be?”

“And for what? Who were these people trying to impress?”

“Men. Men men men!” She threw her spare hand in the air. “Everything then was about getting men's approval. Here, look at this photo.” She pointed at a woman drenched in water wearing a dress that only just covered her. “Does that look comfortable? Obviously not, nobody now would be caught dead looking like that. But for her that was acceptable because men liked it. That's justification enough.”

I'd heard it all before yet I still asked, “Why did men like women dressing like that so much?”

“I asked my mother once, she said they wanted to demean them.”

“And the women just went along with it?”

“Of course, they couldn't help it. They were pressured.”

“All of them?” I asked, wondering how a gender so strong could all do something they didn't want to, solely based on pressure.

“That's what they said at school,” Lexi said and shrugged her shoulders.

“I wonder if men ever did anything good.”

“Unlikely,” said Lexi. She flipped her glossy brown hair to the side and closed the magazine. “I just feel bad for our mothers, having to live in their shadows.”

“Yeah, and how weird to think that almost two decades ago men walked on these streets.”

“Gives me the shivers.” She put back the magazine and flipped through some other ones. I did the same. There were pages after pages of arrogant men boasting their assets and women either having no recognition or being portrayed as the evil ones, when it was clearly the reverse.

“Look what I found,” Lexi declared, waving a small leather book in the air.

“What?” I said, walking over.