I choose to walk. Even though it is louder and bound to draw more eyes than my transport, I cannot force myself into that suffocating pod, even with my need for secrecy. So I choose to walk. To take step after step, only my feet controlling where I go, brushing the cold, smooth metal. Buildings rise around me, sleek and tall, wrought in silvers and coppers, warm and cold harsh tones. Not sinister, exactly, but too uniform, too similar.
Too perfect.
I try to visualise the world in my history books, the world where chaos was no stranger. Where the weather, the sky, was uncontrollable. Unpredictable. Hurricanes destroyed cities and droughts created deserts. Nature reigned, and humans were inferior to it. Its “seasons” and parks and creeping vines; its beasts and imposing trees. But all I can see is this contained world, everything prim and proper and in its place. Everything controlled. Even above me, the sky is just a shade too vivid of a blue, the clear weather – for five years straight – is just a bit too unnaturally pleasant. These advancements are a thrill, a near-utopia… right?
Then why do I feel trapped?
I sigh quietly. Immediately, my watch begins to vibrate. The display shows I am falling into negativity, offering a million things to be carried to me by drone. I decline.
I am so lost in thought, I don’t realise how far I’ve gone until the slight, almost undetectable humming of machines lessens. Something inside me relaxes, like an iron grip around my lungs has been loosened. Not released, though. In this world, you can never feel as though you’re completely free. Now, excessively conscious of my surroundings, I step off the path onto a trail with markings known only to me.
Twenty minutes later, I arrive. Orange leaves crunch under my feet, scenting the air with maple and pine. The low-hanging trees drip with molten golds and reds, leaves tickling my arms as I pass.
Then they are gone, replaced with a sun – a real sun – caressing rough brown bark and skittering rabbits, warmth flooding the area.
That, too, melts away, until snow dusts the ground, cold and real against my cheek. The snowflakes tumble down with a sort of practised rhythm, almost like acrobats.
Finally, it gives way to blossoms of pink and blue and yellow, and a world of earthen tones emerges. Unable to take it all in, I simply sprawl in the grass and breathe in the perfumes of nature. Occasionally, I pop a fruit into my mouth, feeling the tangy explosion of taste on my tongue.
My watch tells me I have been here for hours. People will begin to wonder, to get suspicious. I must go. I take one last long look at the garden of the seasons: the place I spent years building; my secret, beloved, place; the last remnant of the old world. And secret it must remain. No one can know I have built this majestic place, this wonder that breaks almost every rule I can name. As I leave it behind, an odd feeling of trepidation and – is that terror? – creeps up on me, but it is not until the silhouette of my house looms over me that I realise why.
I had seen footsteps.
And they weren’t mine.
