200 AE

Narul and Pespa sat in the warm outdoor seating of Narul’s house. Pespa looked around. It was a modest house, just like hers. ‘May be that is why we are friends’, Pespa thought. The house was a modest one, it was on the 180^th floor of 110^th building of the Inter complex. There were many such complexes around. These complexes were all very big and housed mostly such modest houses. The house was not decorated heavily, neither was it too empty. Pespa felt comfortable there, as comfortable as was allowed by the rules of the society. Narul looked at Pespa, “It is warm”, Pespa said, she kept the conversation going, although it was not much on that day, it was mostly a dull exchange of regular words, she had thought. Both Narul and Pespa looked ahead. Ahead, in front of them was an entire line and world of very tall building structures. “I am done here, I think”, Narual said, she looked at Pespa, “this place has nothing to offer us. It is the same old routine of getting up, getting out of  the  house and getting lost in a crowd of a million people, just to get to a nearby shop. Sometimes, I think, I’ll die just being here”. She stopped. Pespa did not say anything. “I feel the same sometimes”. She said after a bit of time.

Some more bit of time passed. “Why the hell do you think we were born here”? The question came, it took Pespa by surprise. Sure, she was also getting bored there, but, her views were not as extreme, as Narul’s. Pespa waited. “Do you think it is possible, here, to live a progressive and interesting life. Because all I see around is an extremely unnoteworthy crowd, with an extremely mundane set of possibilities. A thought  of doing nothing at all or just dying serving someone might come to the mind”. What Pespa thought had come to happen. ‘She is there now, she is not going to stop. There is no way to stop her now. She is going to go on and on about this place and future’. Pespa had to say something, “I hear that”, then she kept quiet. Both of them looked ahead. Ahead, an entire mountain, flat and gigantic, made of buildings, structures, bridges, trains and smoke, rose in front of them. It was not going anywhere. The mountain had a life, it had colours, but, grey stood out. It had all the things one would need to survive, but, no charm needed to make it interesting. Both the women looked ahead. They were sitting in the balcony section of the apartment on the 180^th floor. The ground was not visible from there, it was not going to be visible any time soon, it would take a summer and a good day to get that view, they both knew it and that view was not without the thoughts of falling down to one’s death or without some such disturbing thought. It was not a view, it was a vulgarity. The line came from a book Narul had recently read. The book, ‘20^th collection of shortest stories’, sat on a shelf in Narul’s bedroom. The book was a 20^th book in the series that had 3000 books. The book next to it was the ‘14^th collection of shortest stories’. ‘I have only 10 from the series’, Narul had thought on multiple occasions. ‘I hope I can finish them all’, Narul had thought, ‘in 120 years that I have here’. Both Narul and Pespa kept quiet.

The balcony grew hotter and hotter, as the two suns set slowly, on the horizon, it  was always like that. Smoke rose from below, engulfing the view of the skyscrapes. The skyscrapes was were they had spent all their lives. They knew no other way of life. None of the people around them knew any other way of life. “That’s what we do around here”, Pespa said, “we are born here, we die here. There is no other way. You are born, you go to school, you get your degreen, then, you get a job and then you get married, hopefully somewhere nearby. You say ‘hello’ to people you know and you become wary of people you don’t know. If something different happens, you go report it to the police”. Pespa was done. “Overall, a dull tone”, Narul said, “I wonder when this would change”, she added. They both enjoyed the extra warm, smoke filled grey evening of the evening. It was going to be over soon, to make way for the extra grey and black evening and night.

“Did you get your degreen certificate yet”? Narul asked Pespa. “Yes, what about you”? “Yes, I did get it too”. Narual replied. “What are you going to do now with it”? “With the current context, I am going to make a rocket out of it and fly to the planet Honkar, it is the nearest one, I don’t want to lose touch with the culture here”, Narul said. “Alright”, came the reply, they both laughed. They both looked ahead, out into the open skyscrapes view. None of them talked for a while, for the evening they were probably done. “Let’s just sit now for a while, then, we’ll think about doing something”, Pespa said. Narul got a little angry, she looked at Pespa up and down and said, “no, I am not going to just sit here, in fact, I am going to so something, I want to get out of this smokey jam, I need to get into my bedroom and start looking for something to do, you can join me or leave”.