Chapter 10: The planet wants to kill us

When I was a child, we had very memorable tunnel trip. I guess on earth they called them "Field Trips". There are no fields here, basically it was time away from school.  We went to colony 1 where the central offices are so we could learn about our government. It was a normal day. We explored the offices. We saw the snake plants. We met one of the elders, Jacob Feldspar, he was one of the original 200 people. 

His face was so old. He must have been the last one left at that time, he was at least 70. There are none left now.  His skin was tinged with yellow, and he was wrinkled beyond belief. I have never since seen such a face. Even to this day, no one lives this long. 

    "It is very important that we retain the cultures established in the beginning. We have these to make our society strong and continue mankind. Having all the different religions and societies on Earth does not work. They are fighting. The weather is terrible. In here we have it all and we can keep having it all if we work together."

I remember these words long after he is gone and so do a lot of us. It is a pilar of our community. The reason we participate in some of the awful rituals, like the reckoning. 

As we were going in the outer tunnels on the way back, I heard the other kids talking. 

"I don't know what they do, they probably go to the outside." a curious child. 

"Can the outside really kill us?" a skeptical child. 

"I saw on Earth pictures the outside looks beautiful and green. Why don't we have plants outside here?" a solution-based child.  

All the chatter. Mostly about the air locks. I heard a lot about the airlocks. We are not allowed to touch them or go near them without suits on or an adult present. They certainly were curious. I think a lot of them exist because of the way they had to build all the buildings. They took a long time and had to be done in sections. They were large glass doors with big bright colored buttons on the outside. The teacher was clearly not paying attention. 

"Sylvia, I dare you to touch one.." little Dylan challenged. 

"Yeah Sylvia. You are always bragging about your parents working at the hospital. They could probably make you better if you got sick or something from it." some other child was now in the mix. 

"I bet you just have to hold your breath" a little girl added. 

Sylvia looked at her classmates. No one has ever touched those doors or dared go near them.  Slyvia pushed a red button, and the glass door flew open and sucked her in, she was gone. Alarms went off and the door shut. She was trapped in the airlock, with possibly the Martian sun beating down on her. 

Teachers appeared from nowhere, screaming ensued. Someone ushered us away; medical personnel came running down the tunnel. 

As I was being hauled away with the rest of the children, I looked back at an open door with lights flashing and an ashen, unconscious Sylvia being dragged off. 

The protocols around the air locks are a lot stricter now, also that teacher was sent away. I'm not sure what happened to them. Maybe they became a forgetting.