Fragments Gallery
Survival
I have been walking alone in this wasteland for many months. There is death and desolation as far as the eye can see. When the raiders hit they took all they could and torched the rest. For them there will be no forgiveness in death. Their hands are forever stained by that which they have done.
I survived. Somehow. Myself and a few others, we made it through that initial attack. We worked together… for a while. Eventually they began to fade and slowly, one by one, they left me. Now I am alone. I have no purpose, no reason to be here. I have no place to go, and no one to go to. My only goal is to survive.
The raiders…. They came with their guns and their ships and they took all that I had away. I still see them flying by every now and then, scouting most like, but I'm stranded down here on the surface and they’re safe from me when they stay so far above. With a heavy heart I'm making my way towards the nearest settlement I know of but I'm worried. I fear that when I arrive nothing but rubble and death will greet me. It has happened before and each time I find nothing it grows harder to rise each morning.
Winter is coming soon. Food is already scarce but with the onset of the ice and snow I fear it will grow worse. This land is picked clean, my only hope is to move on and hope someplace was left unspoiled.
Occasionally I'll find strangers; other survivors like me. I do my best to trust them, to ease their burdens and share what little I have, but more often than not they turn on me at their first chance. It wearies me but still each time I try. When I hesitate and wonder whether it is wise for me to talk to the strangers I ask myself a simple question. If we don't try to help others how are we still people? How are we any different from animals?
Besides, even though I know I shouldn't trust most folks these days it's so nice to have someone to talk to.
A few nights ago I saw snow falling. Always in the past we have staved off the worst of the winter with our technology. Between our heating systems, hydroponics and weather drones we have always easily dealt with the elements and stockpiled food. But now those drones have been shot down, the hydroponics labs are barren and we have no fuel to run the heating systems which once kept entire towns warm. This is the first time in living memory that myself and the other survivors will have to live through the winter without those modern conveniences. I fear for us all.
A small part of me is awaiting the oncoming winter with great anticipation; I have never before seen the "untethered" storm and I have always wanted to see it with my own eyes. The old footage we saw in school never really showed us what it was like. Now I'll get that chance. That's the silver lining I guess. Although I'm not sure if I should even call it that.
Since the raiders came... Everything is so screwed up. I try so hard to put the past aside and just accept things for how they are now. I struggle with it though; it's so hard to stop feeling this longing for how things used to be. Even though we were alone here on this foreign world we had still felt invincible because of the technology that supported us. Now that all that power is gone we are proven to be helpless. Perhaps I fool myself in believing that some of us will survive this winter on our own. Maybe this will be the last written record from a member of the colony of the second habitable moon of Naris.
Still no matter the eventually outcome I never intend to stop fighting. Just as I will hold on to the belief that I can trust the other survivors; they can't all have lost their humanity yet. Surely some can still be trusted.