Karmin

From Dust.

I was just a baby when Penelope Colony first opened and we began to experiment with moving up to the surface to try and live there. It was all so untamed, only the strongest and smartest where allowed to join the militia which set out to conquer whatever was out there. My dad was one of those. The rest of us had to stay behind in the safehouse, so we wouldn't be in danger if anything went wrong. It seems logical now, but being only two years old, I sure as hell missed my dad a lot. I didn't know how long it would be before I could join him in Penelope colony, no one did. It wasn't fun, but there was nothing I could about.

My mom is a teacher, so she made sure that both me and my sister got the best education possible. She forced us both to go up to the library on the first floor and read at least one book a day. My sister hated it. She would rather play games and run around, she was very active and I guess sitting around with a book wasn't dynamic enough for her. Not me though. I loved it. I could sit in those god awful chairs for hours and read through stacks of books, and then I'd check out as many as I could carry and read them at home. Before long I found that I had run out of books that seemed interesting and started reading through every other book in the building just to know what they said. I learn a lot about all kinds of things, and I found that I was able to recall enough of it verbatim that I skipped through seven grades almost overnight.

Years went by. Dad still didn't come home. We never heard any updates on their progress either, so no one knew what was going on out there. A lot of people were bothered by this, afraid and concerned about their friends and family and wanting to go and make sure everyone is still alive out there, but of course our overseer assured us that the radio silence could only mean good things. I also wanted to leave the safehouse, but for a different reason. I found it incredibly small inside the safe, not because I was particularly large but rather because I had spent years reading about the world that was on the other side of those thirty inch thick doors and wondering if it was even half as spectacular and intriguing as the texts made it appear. Being forced to live in what amounted to a metal box buried deep underground made me feel like I was in a coffin waiting to decompose rather than the last hope of humanity's survival kept healthy and propagating far away from the unforgiving wasteland that rested mere miles above us.

I remember it about two months and two days before my twelfth birthday that there was an announcement that a second group of colonizing militia would be sent out to join the first group. I was the fifteenth person to sign up for the program, which would give participants a crash course in survival before sending us out to find our way in the world.

It was an exciting development, and I began to swell with hope that I would be able to see my dad again, but what wasn't exciting was the looks of disapproval that I would often get from the instructors.