Glass Hat

::::::::::CONVERSATIONS_ON_SKIING::::==

"It looks so pale. I always thought it would be.. I don't know like a deeper blue, you know? God isn't that fucking underwhelming! Its like a computer screen in a dark room or something. I mean was it always so miserable looking or did we do that?"

That must have been a rhetorical question because she kept talking without waiting for an answer. That's ok though, I didn't really have an answer for her. I never thought of Earth's color that much, it looked the same blue it always did to me. Maybe we just like to think of it as a brilliantly deep, shining diamond or something, because if that pale dot is our mother, well our mother isn't too awe inspiring.

J kept going on about what she did on Earth before the move and how each breath felt when you were hiking or how the ocean felt and how the sun used to burn her even though she kind of liked the feeling. She remembers a lot more than I do, but she is a little older than me. I don't remember much about what Earth felt like outside of the Climate Safety buildings though.

"Did you ever ski Kwei?"

"Uh what? Sorry."

"Kwei have you ever been skiing?" J overemphasized every syllable to make it sound like she was talking to a slow person. "You know down a hill. Swish, Swish. Making little s's all the way to the bottom."

"Oh no. Have you?"

J gave me a kinda half funny, half terrifying glare for a moment before she sighed and said in a small voice "no, I don't think anyone here has." We sat in silence for a while before J regained her energy and started ranting about how if there were only snow, there would be perfect skiing here.

"Look how tall these mountains are! You could ski forever, just keep falling and falling and by the time you reach the bottom you'd have been going for so long you would be ready for a break. I bet the mountains would be a lot prettier with some snow too. I am so sick of all this red. It's suffocating you know. I really can't breathe. This is just gasping. Can you breathe Kwei?" no j i cannot breathe no one can breathe count every breath and enjoy every sensation I know it doesn't compare to before the move but it's the greatest luxury and the rarest commodity i love you j and when i see you for the last time please don't cry it will be easier for you and for me because i know when you were crying it wasn't for you and it wasn't for me but j we are just mammals with hair and skin and blood and milk and i know you always told me there is no use crying for spilled milk or however it went j but don't cry for them they are unborn they are spared and they are the lucky cry for me instead j cry for your mother who didn't make it through the move and cry for yourself j because you deserve better j you don't deserve this

But I didn't say that. Instead I laughed, it was a sincere laugh at least but I laughed at J. I laughed at the red mountains and what they would look like covered in snow, I laughed at a J covered in knit snow gear with poles and skis and a stocking cap ready to go down the hill, I laughed at the empty snow chairs left on Earth left to endlessly sway back and forth in the wind, I laughed at how dramatic J could be about being pent up behind the glass walls every day and I laughed to keep myself from feeling sad that I will never be able to ski. I will never spend the day in some alps with good friends and enjoy a hot drink in a mug when the night comes and relax and think about how great the day was or even take it for granted. Soon enough J was laughing too, and I don't know what exactly she was laughing about but it made us both feel better. The green light on the water pump changed to blue and we both drank as much as we could. We threw rocks at the trunk of the tree closest to the alfalfa squares until J went back to the women's dorm.

J and I used to call the tree by the alfalfa squares, Big Green. There weren't many people our age in the dome because not many children survived or were allowed on the Move. It was supposed to be easier to sustain the initial group if there were less children. but that was almost twenty years ago. There are other members of our generation but I don't see much of them, only J. A couple times the two of us would meet under Big Green -instead of going to Sustained Life training- and make up stories about how Big Green got to the dome from Earth.

Standing alone next to the tree I felt incredibly small. I knelt down at Green's trunk and started to dig my hands into the dirt as deep as I could get them, deep enough to start to feel the roots. I grabbed onto a root and held it firmly. The dirt began to feel like loose flesh. Just three days ago I thought. My fingers began to tighten on the boney root.

:::::

Leader Marcell is crying into my shoulder. Leader Marcell wipes some tears from his cheek and a little bit of mucus from his upper lip and straightens his back. Leader Marcell tries to form a sentence without beginning to cryagain. I am silent.

I understand what Leader Marcell is trying to tell my after some time. I am helping him regain his composure, three days before J and I talked about skiing. Leader Marcell and I are standing in the room we use to help monitor and take care of the bacteria tanks. The tanks give the whole space a rich blue coating that shifts with the slow artificial movement of the water. I bet J would like this room, it might remind her of Earth and what a good deep blue looks like these days. J isn't allowed in this room though and has never seen the tanks. Leader Marcell is talking again and I am too numb to respond, I can only think of what J would think of this room if she could see it.

We are running out of oxygen. This is what Leader Marcell is trying to tell me. The dome was initially set up to support a population our size maybe even a little bit bigger, but we got the balance wrong. We moved too quickly with not enough time to plan and set up. We didn't have enough research to go on, we didn't know enough about supplying oxygen to an environment and a population like this. We are going to die. We are going to suffocate. Leader Marcell is worried that the move was pointless and that everything is pointless. Leader Marcell is crying again.

:::::::

I am crying now. Three days after learning about my upcoming death, the death of every human being and the death of J, I am holding as tight as I can onto the roots of Big Green and I am crying. I am not thinking of all the history books that my father kept under his bed never being opened again, I am not thinking of the countless shrines and relics we made for ourselves as a species being left to decompose, isolated and I am not thinking of the infinite other lives that will never happen. I am thinking of Big Green and wondering what will happen to this giant, dumb tree when J and I aren't here to throw stones at it. I am thinking of the slower suffocation that Big Green will experience when the nutrient pumps under the soil run dry. I am thinking about how dumb it is to cry for a tree right now. In all of this though, I am glad someone cried for Big Green.