The Wall: Part Five

It was getting dark in the bunker--the artificial lights had become dimmer, Peter noted, raising his head.  He looked around.  Rajesh was fast asleep; Winston and Quentin were snoring.  They sound like lawnmowers, Peter thought, chuckling to himself.  He fancied a walk; he got up, quietly, so he wouldn't disturb the others.

He walked without any sense of purpose or direction, and soon he found himself facing the door to Rose's room.  He looked around, startled.  The bunker was completely dark now, save the small, twinkling lights in the floor.  One light flickered, and then glowed brightly again.  He turned around, and listened carefully--he heard footsteps.

Another light flickered.

"Hello?" he ventured tentatively towards the flickering lights.

"Who's there?" A girl's voice.

"Rose?"

"Peter?  What are you doing here...right now?"

"I could ask you the same question," he smirked, "Wanna walk?"

"Sure.  I can't see where you are, though, so I would probably bump into you accidentally-on-purpose."

Peter laughed softly.

They followed the flickering lights as they walked.

"So, what do you want to talk about?"

"I don't know, you decide."

"I'm not a very interesting person, you know.  I'd rather listen to people than talk about myself."

"I don't believe that.  Have you ever been to France?"

"Yeah!"

"Then you're interesting."

He could almost see her grinning in the faint light.

"What's it like in France?" he continued.

"It's beautiful.  You have museums, art galleries, amusement parks, great restaurants, great hotels....great everything.  The Louvre is, like, amazing.  So many famous paintings, all in one place!  Just like The Pantheon."

"What's the Pantheon?  Another art muse--?"

"Ssh, do you hear that?" Rose whispered.

"No, I don't, where's it coming from?"

"It sounded like water," Rose took his hand and led him forward, "and it must have been somewhere around.." she walked a few steps to the right, stepping on his toe; he winced. "Sorry about that...here."

They squinted into the darkness.  There were no floor-lights here.  The dripping sound was now close.

Too close.

Coal Tar.

Image Source: dreamstime.com

Coal Tar.

Pitch black.
Blended darkness.
Secrets smouldering
In burning velvet
Lost forever
To the graying silvered
Ashes of time.
Rainclouds storming
Through the sky;
Thunder after,
Silence, deafening.
They forgot
The calming rays of
Sunlight everlasting,
The morning dew on the cut grass

The crisp smell of the wet earth,
As everybody forgets
There is dawn after darkness,
And darkness after light,
So there is peace after war,
And war after peace;
Words that have been said
Cannot be taken back:
Like burnt coal in the hearth
They leave scars on the hearts
Of people who once believed
That everything would turn out fine
They forget
The laws of nature
Pertain to all beings
And while their days away
In glorious despair
As the future runs its course
Without want of consultation.

~Vruta Gupte.

The Wall: Part Four

For Part One, click here.
For Part Two, click here. 
For Part Three, click here. 

She sat huddled in a corner. The day's events had drained the life out of her--she laughed sadly. How ironic, she thought, that this thought should occur to her mere hours after being told that she was immortal. 

The boys had asked her to stay with them, and she had agreed wholeheartedly. She couldn't see why she should not have.  She needed friends now that she knew she was going to be stuck here for the rest of her life anyway. 

“Rose," her father had said to her once, when she was smaller, “Be good to everyone you meet, because the countries of the world are taking up arms against each other, and might be at war with each other very soon. By then, it will be too late to apologize for past wrongs.  Be kind." The tears had dried on her cheeks.

And her brother, two years older than her, he was her rock, her guide, she would go to him when she wanted to talk about her troubles at school, or things she thought her parents would not enjoy hearing.  He humoured her even when she could tell he didn't find her words very interesting.  Where was he now? Was he even--no! She would not allow herself to think--she must be strong.

Now she allowed her thoughts to drift towards her present condition. Really, the High Council had no right to change them, much less this fundamentally. Then there was also the off chance that they were lying.

How was she to know? There was no way for her to find out stuck in this stupid bunker.  Of course, there was no other alternative really, now that the Earth was ridden with nuclear radiation from the--oh, yes, there'd been a war, too. She shook her head. After all these years of living peacefully--although they had seen the war coming, given the tension between certain countries--it was still very sad that humans had chosen to end this way.

But her mother had said that after a great fall, there was almost always a great triumph.

She'd been careful to remember the ‘almost'.

Was it possible, however remotely, that they would go home sometime?

Home.

The word stung.  She took a deep breath of the artificially purified air.  Everything was artificial here.  Except intelligence. Humans had learned not to mess with robots after the Fall of 2020, and that was enough to stop them from building advanced humanoids ever again. Now it was just machines--vacuum cleaners, computers, ACs. Innovation in the technological sector had been stalled for years after that, or so the governments said.

Of course, if they had found a way for humans to stay immortal, they wouldn't run around with banners proclaiming it.

Funnily enough, they still hadn't found a cure for cancer. That would have been on the news. 

She tried to stop the morbid thoughts racing through her mind, but there was nothing else she could think about except her family, and where they were, and other questions she had no answers to.

(To be continued...)