Wow, boring title, innit? In any case, I'd just been challenged to write a drabble in under ten mintues with the theme of electricity, and this… thing… was the result. xD Very close to part of the plotline of the anime No.6, in fact it could be looked at as slightly AU… but in any case. A/Ns aside, I hope you like the story!
"... We have not had electricity since then."
The fire sputtered and hissed as a fresh log was thrown in, obscuring the soft question. "Since when, you ask?" I threw my head back and looked up at the inky night sky, speckled with stars and pulled the brown hood of my clock off, baring my face to my compaion for the first time since our encounter. "The table is a long one, and not for the faint of heart," I said softly, memories blazing in my eyes. "Yet you say you are unafraid... Very well." I shut my eyes and delved into the recesses of my mind where I had stored my experiences...
It was the year 2017. I was in a classroom reading about the last and greatest war waged by mankind, which had resulted in nearly seventy percent of the population dying, and most of the surface land becoming uninhabitable. Flipping a page over, it continued. The government had imposed a total ban upon armaments, and the remaining habitable areas had been divided into six districts for the survivers, each governed by a system. Due to the lack of natural resources, people were forced to rely completely on electricity until the rehabilitation program was complete, which it would not be for nearly a hundred years. I remember thinking to myself how fortunate I was to be in the 6th District, as opposed to the deviants who were in exile for criminal reasons and had to stay outside the city. That was then.
Times change.
I was a few years older. I was in a sewer, injured and fleeing for my life. Heaving ragged gasps, hitching my loose clothes back onto my frame, tears dripping onto my cheeks out of utter despair. Running, skidding, forcing myself to get up and continue – only to find myself confronted by a grill that held me back from my freedom. Shaking the loosest segment until it finally pulled free and diving into the murky water below to barely escape my pursuers, swimming along with the current in the churning water until I finally washed up somewhere... somewhere beyond the walls of the 6th District.
Times change.
I was now two years older, and that much wiser. Years of living in a rough city had toned me to become one of the best, if not the best, streetfighters in the West District, the city of rejects and deviants. It wasn't as bad as I initially thought it might be. We had schools, hospitals, markets. They operated solely on the electricity supplied by the 6th District for 'humanitarian' reasons. The irony. We were forced to leave our comfortable lives, and often only on the pretext of criminal activity, as I was accused of. All the same, we were the few lucky ones who had made it out alive. We were here. We were alive. That was all that mattered.
Times change.
It was gone.
Gone!
Our life support, our only means of sustaining ourselves. Electricity.
Our numbers had begun growing as we adapted to our situation. We had finally begun to re-live a shadow of our former lives, when the 6th District decided there were too many of us. So they cut off our life source. Now we were unable to survive without hospitals. The gadgets we used to make our food would no longer work, and people had no memory of the means to sanitize the contaminated harvests we gathered crops from.
Our numbers reduced drastically by the end of the month. The few of us – hardly a hundred or so – who had survived were still waiting for the return of our support. Another month passed. More deaths. Did they plan to exterminate us? The number had dwindled to half, and it still looked like they did not plan on doing anything for us.
But times will change.
I looked up at my companion across the fire, flames dancing in my eyes, flames of steely resolution, as I opened my mouth to tell my tale.