Signal Fire (The 100)

by capturedrose

Whilst the 100 battle it out to claim territory from the Grounders, humans across the globe are emerging from their safe havens to populate Earth. Mliana is one of the few that believe that believe Humans can live alongside Earth without causing another disaster like the Cataclysm. But is this belief enough to overcome the obstacles ahead?

It's been years since the elders were in the bunker. Yet they still seem to struggle with life on Earth. Its like they don't know how to breathe the air outside that hasn't been circulated, filtered and then made either warmer or colder depending on their demands. It's the same with daylight. The notion that the sun rises when it pleases with no help from us is another thing they cannot seem to understand. There's no use trying to explain to them that what they read in the old science books is true, the Earth spins on an axis in the Solar System which is the deciding factor on when the sun rises and sets. They don't understand this because they were born in the bunker and thought they'd die in the bunker. Like their parents did before them and like their parents did before that. The pattern was destined to continue forever. Until the commander decided one day that it was time to take our chances and leave. The radiation must have left the Earth by now, surely?

It was a controlled experiment at first. A few people volunteered to leave the safety of the bunker were allowed to go above ground and test the atmosphere and ground to see if we would be able to live up there. They lived above ground for 6 months before anyone ventured out. And then it was only the insistence from the commander that everything was fine that enabled people to take those steps.

I don't remember any of this. I had yet to grasp how to feed myself, let alone what it meant to be leaving the tunnels of the bunker. At the tender age of 1, my mother took me above ground. She was one of the first people to trust the testing of radiation levels and her desperation to get out of the bunker and its overcrowding squashed any remaining doubts she may have had. The cataclysm hadn't destroyed everything in New Zealand. Compared to other countries, it had remained relatively unscathed. Maybe its distance from some of the larger and more overcrowded nations had given it a fighting chance. But none of that would have mattered if it hadn't have been for the bunker.

The bunker is everything it needed to be and more. Made for just under 10,000 people, it was big enough to keep a sample of people safe to carry on the human race when the cataclysm was over. Despite it appearing to only have enough beds and resources to keep 10,000, the designers had thought ahead and realised that due to birth rate, it would actually need to be a lot bigger. Hence the dozens of extra tunnels that were hidden behind fake walls and under strict arrangements to only be exposed when necessary. These tunnels lead deeper underground to other facilities such as extra medical rooms, storage cupboards full of medications, preserved food and apartments for residents, especially those with families. A 100 years into bunker living and an extra 4000 people later, these tunnels were opened and a strict one child per couple policy was set to control the ever growing population. Most people abided by these rules and those that didn't were forced to live in shame in one of the bunker's 2 prisons.

Due to the nature of those who were chosen to live in the bunker, crime had stayed at a minimal level and in the hundreds of years that people had lived in it, not one person had been forced above ground. This was the ultimate punishment that had been laid out in the original rulebook. It started out with a test. People were sent letters outlining the possible threats to the future. They were told that the world would end as they knew it and if they were interested in finding out more, then they were to visit the website at the bottom of their letter, type in their name and then browse the information and make their mind up for themselves. Only those that logged into the website could ever have a chance at being chosen to go into the bunker. Those people then had to show that they believed in safeguarding future population by going to support the cause in an open setting, this happened to be a protest in Auckland and Wellington. Although the people arranging the event knew that it wouldn't change the course of action, they just wanted to know for sure that they were making the right decision on who they were picking. They wanted people who were willing to sacrifice everything to change the world.

However people get lazy when everything is handed to them. Those that were once enthusiastic about changing the world for the better and 'doing it right next time' had already died and been replaced 2 or 3 times over by a different generation of people. Only a few of those originals had passed on those special traits which had lead to a population only half convinced that we were able to change the world. And, to be honest, a lot of them didn't even want to. They were happy living in the blissful ignorance of the bunker and any kind of change seemed like far too much effort when they already felt like they had the perfect life.

I felt differently of course. My mother had been an activist. Never wanting to sit down, never wanting to give up on the original dream founded by the creators of the bunker. She had wanted to fight for our survival on Earth, yet she was one of the few that did. I never met my father. He had died before I was born, but my mother always told me stories of how much he had wanted to see above ground and how much it saddened her that he never would. She had passed her determination to do the right thing to me, and I would work with her and the few others, to make these dreams a reality.