A Cold World
ania woke up and opened her tender blue eyes. Her long, soft, brown hair seemed neglected that
morning. It was likely that the party the preceding night was responsible. She glanced at the clock hanging in
the opposite corner of the room and she smiled. It would be time soon. Today was a special day. It was her
sixteenth anniversary. The preparation for this single day had taken months. She went to the classes and
successfully completed all of them. She mentally reviewed what she was about to do. Fresh in her mind was
the procedure. �It�s so simple� she thought. She exited her room and walked towards the stairway.
After the sun extinguished completely in 2352, the few surviving humans built shelters to protect themselves from the extreme colds the Earth was now suffering. Gathering the few remaining technological devices, they were able to build an underground nation. Time marched on, and children were soon born from the survivors. Generation after generation, humanity survived in the fantastic cities built by the first generation. The primary code of safety, deciphered by the first ones, included a rule that said that people may only go Outside wearing protective suits after their sixteenth anniversary, �due to the extreme roughness of the Earth climate as it is known today�. That particular rule was religiously and universally followed.
Tania grabbed her breakfast and thought about what was soon to be hers: the Outside wilderness. She was so excited about it she could barely stand in place. Tania was an only child; it had not been possible for her parents to breed another infant. They valued her like gold was valued a very long time ago, in a much different world. They had just woken up, and as they entered the room, they wished her a happy birthday. Joe was a caring and affectionate man. He loved his wife and his daughter more than anything. He appreciated his job as the weather overseer. The system was extremely efficient and failures rarely occurred, thus yielding the inhabitants comfortable weather on a daily basis. Tania rapidly guzzled her nutritional supplement, a small red pill, and headed off towards the sonic shower. It was so intricate to bring water from the surface or from the depths of Earth (and then cooling it down) into the cities that many such gadgets were an absolute necessity. In a few seconds, she was cleaned for the day. The low-pitched tones the device emitted could not be heard by the human ear, so the process was entirely painless. Her mind firmly locked onto the upcoming adventure, she called her best friend. Maria was only fifteen years old, so she was not allowed to go Outside yet. Tania chatted for a few minutes with her, then shut off the video display. Maria was, of course, very disappointed she could not participate in this wonderful activity with her friend of always. She had turned fifteen two weeks before, which meant she had to wait almost a whole year before imitating Tania. In six months, however, she would subscribe to the class and begin learning what her dearest friend already knew. There was a bit of jealousy within her, but deep within her own self, in the confines of her heart, there was profound admiration for her comrade.
After the first accidental death Outside, it was decided that no one would go there unless it was for fixing a critical problem (an unprecedented event). The funeral ceremony of the first child, in centuries, dead Outside, was extremely sad and attended by thousands. Of course, billions had died during the great cold- down of 2352. But this was the tenth generation, and no one had died Outside after the invention of the protective suit that was still in use. That suit had been created by the second generation. This threw the tenth society into a questioning period. How could a technology, used for centuries, suddenly break down? Soon, fear took over the cities: what was it, out there, that caused this to happen? There was no way to know what went wrong. The People had great confidence and pride in themselves, and those attributes were reduced to ashes for a great many. Some people even began to panic. A large quantity of rumors spread thorough the cities� artificially brightened paths and households. For some, aliens might have landed and their intentions weren�t exactly peaceful; for others, if such a reliable technology had failed, how long did they have until the facilities beneath the surface failed too, killing every single one of them?
Tania entered the hall leading to the access tunnels, that in turn lead Outside. Out of breath, she shoved her hand in the scanner. After her finger prints were properly analyzed, her identity was confirmed. A computerized voice greeted her: �Welcome, Tania. Happy birthday!�. Immediately, the steel door slid open and she was allowed in the primary section of the access tunnels. The equipment was waiting for her.
She slowly started putting it on, following the procedure she studied on schematics for so long. First, the lower part: boots, pants, cables. Then the upper part. She was about the put on her helmet, when a voice came through an invisible speaker: �Have fun!�. It was her instructor, who, for so long, taught her what she was now applying. He sounded so calm and detached, but she knew better. He was reknowned for this peculiar quality, and it did the same thing it always did to her: comfort and reassure her. John�s emotions might not surface often, but his students learned more than just procedures. They also learned to love him. They were his family, his children; the man was single, and his work was everything to him. She smiled, and put on her helmet. The door in front of her was now wide open.
She stepped in the secondary access tunnel. The temperature display, she quickly noted, had already dropped by five degrees. Ahead lied the before-last access door. She walked all the way across the long corridor. The automated door-opening system then asked her for identification and access codes. �Tania, authorization Omega-One�, she replied. �Confirmed�, responded the soft digitized voice. The dark, extremely thick door was now wide open. More anxious than ever, her hands literally shaking, she was now in the last room before the Outside.
Taking a deep breath, she shouted �Open Outside�. Slowly, the final obstacle between her and the Outside moved out of the way. The temperature indicator now displayed the absolute zero. For the first time, she set foot on the Earth�s surface. For the first time, she saw what her very own planet looked like. �It must have been incredible to live here before the cold-down�, she caught herself thinking. Kneeling, she grabbed some dust with her protective glove. A tear slowly ran down her cheek. This was Earth. This was her ancestors� world. But it wasn�t hers. It would never be hers. It was impossible that the sun ever came back. The sky would jealously retain its space-black coloration forever and ever.
She grimly looked towards the dark sky. She had been taught that before, when the sun shone, you could look at the sky during the night and see the moon. But now, that was impossible. Night and day didn�t really exist. The cities simulated them, but they were not real; merely an illusion, a compensation for dreams long ago lost and annihilated. The first generation had suffered the greatest pain. Abruptly, their innocence and freedom had both been taken away and thorn apart. Their dreams stolen, they survived. Who had been the luckiest in this mad course of events: the survivors and their children, or the dead? On the surface there was only an eternal night. She could see faint dot-shaped lights from distant stars. For a few minutes, she let her mind wander. Would the scientists ever develop technology to reach those other suns, would it ever be possible to quit the underground cities and travel to far away places?
Tania knew what she wanted to do during her lifetime now that she had seen the Outside. She would work her whole life towards finding that technology, no matter what. She moved on, the light on her helmet revealing the land as she walked. She could see distant mountains. It was so quiet Outside. There wasn�t a single noise, except for her, walking alone in the darkness. She looked at her feet; she was now standing on frozen water. That water had been like that for centuries and that would not change for those yet to come.
As she was still walking, a dark hole suddenly cracked open right under her feet, revealing a hidden pit. She desperately tried to hold or grab something, but she was rapidly sliding along the edges of the pit. Her suit absorbed the shock from her landing on the hard rock. She looked above her head. She had fallen down a good thirty meters. The walls surrounding her were totally flat and they seemed to prevent any escape. Panic filled her mind in an instant. A quick run here and there. No exits anywhere. Frenzied, she was punching as hard as a machine everywhere on the walls of her prison. She came down to the one and only possible conclusion: she was stuck in there, and no one would ever find her. Under normal circumstances, life support could last several days, but her suit, heavily damaged, would run out of power in a couple of hours. She would die frozen, Outside.
Knowing she couldn�t do anything and that she had met her faith, she sat and cried softly. It was over. Now that she had seen the Outside and wanted so hard to become a scientist and one day flee from the underground nation, she was stuck and she was going to die. Lying back, crushed, she wept bitterly. She would never have a chance to see a sun shine. For hours, she contemplated the empty sky, thinking what a world with a sun is like. What a real world is like.
Her suit started to run out of power. At first, it was only chilly, but afterwards it became increasingly unbearable. Violent convulsions agitated every part of her young and beautiful body. She couldn�t feel her hands and feet anymore. They were dead frozen. As time marched on, relentless, she lost her ability to form coherent thoughts. The images running in her mind obliterated the last parcels of resistance she could still offer. Her mind slipped away in a different kind of dank hole than the one in which she met death. The pain disappeared along with her five senses. It didn�t matter now, not anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. After a few hours, her entire body ran out of heat, and she died, a frozen tear permanently hanging, caught by deadly surprise, on her delicate face -- once warm, now dead-cold face.
Tania�s frozen body was discovered two hundred years later by a team of scientists reckoning the frozen lands. They found her in a deep pit from which an escape, without the appropriate equipment or third-party help, is totally impossible. They mourned the young woman who died with a tear. A minute of silence is observed every year in the underground cities in her memory.
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