There was still something intimate about a slow dance. You're close enough to kiss, for one thing, just you and your dance partner. My heart always pumped twice as fast when I slow danced. It wasn't sexual tension; it was just a kind of excitement. Okay, maybe it was sexual tension. But I made like I was Mr. Cool. I could be a pretty smooth talker when I wanted to be. No kidding.
"So, what's your name?"
I never used lines on girls. The smart ones can smell one a thousand miles coming, and I like smart girls. Besides, lines are for losers. I was a little more imaginative than that. I tried to be straight up when breaking the ice, though.
"Victoria." She still had that cute little shy thing going on.
"Really? So, you going to tell me your secret?"
She blushed real pretty-like. Referring to Victoria's Secret when you first meet a girl is kinda risky, but she wasn't uptight about it. Humor is your best friend when it comes to talking to girls. Even an ugly guy can get a fine girl to fall for him if he plays his humor cards right. You'll ask her what she sees in him, and she'll get mushy-eyed and say "because he makes me laugh."
Yeah, but he looks like a hobgoblin, you want to say. But you don't.
Victoria laughed at my stupid joke. "Yeah, right. Everyone just calls me Vicky."
"Nice to meet you. My name is Lewis. How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
Two years younger than me. We were just kids, for goodness sake. The funny thing about high school is you swear to God that you're so grown up. When you get out and look at the kids that are still in, they seem like babies. It's such a trip.
I enjoyed just looking at her. She was one of those undercover fine girls. You know, the ones who don't wear a lot of makeup and don't dress all revealing, so they don't really stand out. But if you take note, you realize just how gorgeous they are.
Those were the kind of girls that always attracted me. Nine times out of ten they didn't have the attitude the glam queens had. You know — always wanting you to worship their looks and be at their beck and call and all that crap. Vicky wasn't on that ego trip. She had natural good looks and a pleasant attitude. That's a winning hand.
"You go to Canyon?" I asked. I liked my new school a lot better than my last one, mostly because the kids were a little less annoying. And I stayed out of trouble.
"Yeah. I've seen you there. You know, with your friends."
"Really? I don't think I've seen you. Guess I need to get my eyes checked."
That line was kind of corny, but I was feeling pretty good at that point. When a girl says something about seeing you somewhere, it's best to assume that she's been checking you out. Sure, she might have just casually spotted you just once. But as a rule, always assume she's been drooling over you. Does wonders for the self-esteem.
"I'll have to start looking for you now. Promise you won't act like you don't know me. It's embarrassing."
She laughed. "I won't." The song ended, and we separated but still locked gazes. She dropped her eyes first. "I guess I'll talk to you later. At school."
"Not unless I call you first."
I tried to be as nonchalant as possible when she smiled and gave me her number. Because when you're cool, you don't want to be too obvious. But when she left, the feeling didn't. I was still hyped. I really couldn't wait to see her again.
I danced absentmindedly, watching her walk over to her girlfriends, who made those teasing sounds to embarrass her. I smiled, just feeling good. A girl can just do that. You can be at your absolute worse, but a good girl can say just a few words and make your entire day.
I was feeling just that way when the sky flickered like the sun was about to trip its breaker. It was the weirdest thing. Colors I didn't even know existed flashed through the air; the ground rumbled like the big earthquake finally hit. People screamed and milled about as if the zombie apocalypse had started, but there I was feeling sorry for myself because the world was ending right when I met the girl of my dreams.
2
Of course, the world didn't end. Not then.
The Imperial War finally ended, though. And with a bang. They had all kinds of names for it, like the Skygate Collapse or the Imperial Disaster. But the term that caught on was the Cataclysm. Sounded ominous enough. It was the start of a three-year period where the atmosphere tried to hold together against the reality-warping aberrant energy from the Skygate's destruction. Humans had won the Imperial War, but in the process doomed the planet.
The news changed by the hour. Endless reports of phenomena that couldn't be rationalized or explained. Everyone gave up even trying. We became numb to reports of spherical holes in the sky, deserts turning into salt, walking corpses, huge insect swarms, Bigfoot, and even more bizarre stories and sightings. Day and night were no longer reliable. Everything indicated the truth — the aberrant energy from the disaster doomed our planet.
The public wasn't told that, of course. The good ol' New World Council told us they were working on a solution. We were told to be civil and obedient. Stay in groups. Duck and cover when nature went nuts and did things like dump a blizzard in July, or open sinkholes that swallowed entire neighborhoods. Still, they insisted that things were going back to normal, so kids were still forced to go to school once the rioting and protests ended. No one pretended it was about education anymore. Schools weren't much more than structures to keep kids in relative safety while their parents desperately searched for a way to survive the coming disaster.
When I graduated, I was hired by the Restoration Corps, which was a glorified way to say 'cleanup crew.' They gave us the task of rebuilding our communities and infrastructure from the damage of the Imperial War and the riots. The PR folks worked hard at propaganda that made the cause seem all noble, but the joke was on us. The sole purpose of the Restoration Corps was to keep people busy while the Havens underwent completion.
But the info was leaked, and the world slowly got out.
The world was going to end. The governing agencies of the world knew it and had been building the Havens for decades. Since the Imperial War began. The ultimate contingency plan based on doom-predicting algorithms. There was no way to stop the coming catastrophe. No way to save the billions of people on the planet from assured destruction.
Only a remnant would survive, placed in hibernation inside city-sized fortresses called Havens. Carefully selected candidates were chosen based on the likelihood of their potential contributions to the reboot of society once the Earth was habitable again. That meant scientists of all sorts. Qualified leaders. Military personnel. Medical personnel. Visionaries and geniuses. Even artists and writers, for some reason. Oh, and rich people. Lots and lots of rich people.
The funny thing about the end of the world was that people still acted like money counted for something. I don't know what it is about bank notes with a monetary value printed on them, but it makes the world go round, man. I mean, the idea is ludicrous when you think about it, but the pain is real. Ask anyone who found themselves on the outside looking in. Which was approximately eighty percent of the world.
Shortly after the rumors were authenticated, the riots started.
I don't like to think about that time. I used to see riots on TV and thought I knew what they were about. But these riots were more like another war. A lot of people were terrified, a lot of people had guns, and that's a horrific combination in the best of times.
It wasn't the best of times.
I'm talking complete upheaval of society. People stormed any and every government location, brandishing weapons and shouting demands. All it took was a tiny spark to set the entire confrontation on fire, and sparks were always igniting. The chaos resulted in the Haven Council deploying the Android Military Forces, and the AMF had only one directive: execute violent offenders on sight. A lot of people died in the aftermath, including my dad. The messed-up thing was that he wasn't even directly involved.