Gathering food. Gathering parts. Gathering water. The only time we went outside anymore was to find supplies. Luke and I both agreed the safest place was the bunker. There was no arguing against it since we had used parts of machines meant for space travel to fortify our walls. 

Had it been necessary, we could have survived in space inside the bunker. It was gasproof, bugproof, and waterproof. Thanks to my design, our front door was probably bulletproof too. Though, we lacked such a weapon to test that particular theory. The only thing our bunker couldn't protect against was odor. It couldn't eliminate "stank," and ours had grown to an extreme too wretch worthy to ignore another day. 

"How long has it been since our last bath?" I asked while Luke escorted me through the jungle. 

Thanks to rolling gas storms that had blanketed the jungle for several days, everything had literally grown overnight. The paths we took a week ago had utterly transformed. Had we been unfamiliar with the area and its many deadly pitfalls, Luke and I could have easily gotten lost or worse. But the environment itself wasn't an issue. After all, there was finally an abundance of food we could gather along the way. 

The gasses we avoided weren't toxic, far from it. They were like "developmental boosters" to plants and animals alike. Theoretically, had we chosen to sleep outside during a storm, we could have woken up inches taller and with bigger, bolder muscles. But breathing in the gas for too long could also lead to hallucinations. Without a sophisticated medical AI like The Machine to help us, knowing how long the effects of those gasses would last was anyone's guess. 

I had been exposed to gas once, and everything that happened after was like a vivid dream. Luke told me I nearly walked off the edge of a cliff. 

"We could have gone another week," Luke argued.

"You could have," I laughed. 

"Are you saying I stink?"

"Yes. Yes, Luke. You stink. We both do," I joked while telling the truth. 

There was a build-up of shrubs and vines keeping us from crossing through a fallen building we often used as a bridge. Beneath the building was a denser, more convoluted portion of the jungle, sure to have had some breed of creatures waiting. It would take a minute for Luke to cut through the blockage, but before I could suggest an alternative, he had already started hacking away. 

I understood the world we lived in was a corpse of its former self, but there was a beauty to the destruction. 

Remembering my time on the space station, there might have been a single place to find plants and flowers. The observatory, because it was never dedicated to solely holding flora, was meager. It contained a broad yet limited selection of everything humanity had ever cultivated: music, art, even recipes to food dishes that hadn't been served in decades. I could faintly remember there was a section dedicated to botany. It was a small corner most people might have overlooked.

However, on earth, there were flowers, trees, bushes, and so much I had never seen before. And every day, I discovered more. Roots had broken up the concrete of countless squares of space, but the life of the jungle oozed. 

"Maybe we should find a way around," I suggested at the sight of sweat building on my lover's skin.

Luke had gone into a zone, treating his goal of clearing the way as a dire mission. It was almost scary how ferocious he could get at times. Though he hadn't used his weapon on another person, I never doubted he'd hurt someone. 

Needless to say, I let him do what he was doing. Sometimes Luke and I needed to relieve stress, and sex couldn't be worked into everything. 

With a shrug of my shoulders, I told him, "I'll go look for something to eat." 

Without breaking his rhythm, Luke told me, "Don't go too far."

As I stepped away, I could tell how far I had walked by the clarity of Luke's grunting over the atmosphere of the jungle. I knew he told me to stay close, but there was so much food, thanks to the gas storm. Rather than gathering fruit for later, I ate whatever happened to be on my walk. Had I not known better, I might have thought someone intentionally laid out a spread. There were so many berries and apples. 

By the time I noticed some of the food I had come across couldn't have grown from the bushes they were in, it was too late. 

"Who are you?" A voice, an unfamiliar voice, asked from behind my back. 

Surely I must have been daydreaming. Audible hallucinations weren't common, not for me. 

But again, the stranger asked, "Who are you." 

I tried to turn around, but before I could do a quarter step, something struck the back of my head. They tried to knock me out, unsuccessfully, but the gesture wouldn't be forgotten. 

"Fuck," I cried out as I finally turned well enough to see their face. 

A boy. I didn't imagine it. There was another boy. His hair was long and wild, and unlike Luke, he wore several layers of protective armor. I recognized the white metallic plates as repurposed pod parts. Though despite his well-designed suit of space armor, the stranger was holding a terrible weapon. 

A rock?

He had likely picked it up from the ground at our feet.

"Who are you?" I echoed, still holding the back of my head because it had started bleeding. 

His eyes seemed as surprised to me as I was to see him. Slowly I raised a hand, unsure what to do with it. But he quickly ran off before I grazed his frame with my fingers. 

"Preston!" Luke called from afar. 

He must have heard my yell. 

It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a hallucination. Looking at my hand, covered in blood, I had been struck. However, after adrenaline subsided, I passed out.