February 6

3001

I am woken up before the sun even rises. My eyes fly open in shock at the situation I am in. I am laying on my side holding Soren’s hand, he is curled around me cuddling me from behind. His head is rested against my shoulder and I can feel him softly breathing, still asleep. Why is he hugging me? Why am I holding his hand? What is Soren going to think when he wakes up? Oh dear, I can imagine how he would freak out if he wakes up like this. What am I going to do? If I try and move away he’ll wake up.

And then I have an idea. It’s not a great idea, and it might not work. But if I wake him up and make it look like it’s my fault we’re touching at all, he will still be freaked but hopefully less so.

I count to three and flip over on top of Soren and drop his hand in one swift move. It would have worked if Soren wasn’t so easily startled and anxious. He lets out a muffled shriek of surprise and twists away from me, arms up over his head.

“Oh Soren, so sorry! It’s just me, I didn’t mean to scare you.” I apologize, quickly recoiling off him and out of the bed. I hope he didn’t wet the bed when I startled him. I should’ve of thought of that.

Soren slowly lowers his trembling hands to look at me.

“W-What are you doing!?” He exclaims.

“Teaching you,” I say, just coming up with the idea, “I’m desensitizing you.”

Soren looks at me dubiously, and starts to sit up.

“No, keep sleeping,” I tell him, “it’s before sunrise. You need to get more sleep.” I push him back down on the bed and throw the blanket over him. He sighs and does as told. While he sleeps I make a plan for the day. I start by going over every inch of my Camper removing any knives, scissors, sharp tools, forks, and any other potentially dangerous items.

Then I go through my ration cupboards sorting the food. Anything without a lot of fats and sugars I will eat, the rest is for Soren. Then I go through my clothes. Sadly about half my wardrobe is men’s clothes, found or bought used in bulk for cheap, but I guess I can give them all to Soren now.

I mange to find two more pairs of men’s underwear as well, but I’ll need to get him more clothes when I can. Especially underwear because of his little problem. I’m sure there’s other things he’ll need, but they’ll have to wait.

As the sun rises red through the choking smog, I tear open a package of freeze dried scrambled eggs and tip them onto the stove along with two frozen sausages made out of an unknown mix of what I hope is mostly meat. I haven’t had a good meal in years. No one has, really, except maybe this punk that goes by the call sign Roivas LiveEht, the only rich man left. And I hate him. Anyone can tell he’s bad news if they decode his stupid call sign.

I call to Soren to come eat, as I dump filtered water over the freeze dried eggs, making them swell up as they cook. Soren arrives, shuffling into the room uncertainly, wearing what he slept in.

“Good morning!” I say kindly, “I’m making breakfast. You go get dressed, I found you some more clothes.”

Soren wordlessly turns around to do as told. I serve the food up and sit down to wait for him. He comes back a couple minutes later, wearing an severely out of style synthetic sweater and an even more severely out of style pair of black cargo pants. He still looks mighty fine all things considered. Soren studies the food in front of him uncertainty, and looks up at me questioningly.

“Can I really eat this?” He asks.

This time I just stare at him until he starts eating.

I keep a close eye on Soren all day, but he doesn’t show any signs of self destructive behavior. He is still very quiet though, which is a bit unnerving. I have made little progress finding out more about him, today all I learned was that apparently he was a really expensive and valuable project that BioMod will no doubt do anything to get back. I am not going to let them take my guy! He is mine now and I am going to fix him.

Oh, and I also learned that he used to be fierce and brave, and only became so messed up several years ago when someone else bought his project. He won’t say who it is though, and he got really tense and twitchy when I asked him about it. So there must be something strange going on there.

The day goes pretty uneventfully. We fly all day, taking breaks to eat. I’m trying to feed Soren a lot to thicken him up. The sun is setting into the smog on the horizon. The smog has gotten extremely worse, so we must be getting close. Sure enough, I see some small buildings on the ground below us. And now, jumbling against the red horizon, crumbling skyscrapers and rusty buildings crowd in ugly stacks as far as the eye can see, eventually blending into the rusty smog. We’ve reached the city. Well an edge of the city. Hard to tell exactly what part of the city, because the same continuous city takes over most of the continent.

I start gliding down into the smog of the city looking for a place to land. I circle a familiar looking

rusty casino. Every inch of it is covered in half burned out and flickering dirty neon signs, advertising games and food I’m sure are no longer available. Soren shrinks back in his seat apprehensively as I take the camper down towards the flat roof. The landing gear rattles out and the camper creaks as I bank sharply trying to find a patch of roof not littered with trash. I end up having to roughly bump down on some shredded tires and metal shrapnel.

“Ok!” I say cheerfully, “we’re here!” I turn around to look at Soren. He is cowering in his seat looking out the window uncertainty.

“I-I’ve never been in the city other then when I was at BioMod...” He stammers nervously. I rest my hand lightly on his shaking shoulder.

“Hey. It’s gonna be fine, trust me.” I grab him by the wrist and drag him out of the camper and onto the desolate rooftop. We would’ve been able to see for miles, if not for the thick rusty pollution clogging the air. Skeletons of other buildings loom out of the smog around us, some dark and dead, others dimly lit with grimy flickering lights.