3

3.

The Winterists weren’t always a necessary part of your balanced governmental body. In fact, we didn’t exist until ten years ago. You see, about ten years ago, NATO asked for the codes to every nuclear weapon of every nation under its control. They did it completely in secret, implanting a chip with a copy of the code into the mind of a child.

I was that child, nine years ago.

No one told me what was happening. I went in for some minor procedure I don’t recall to this day and came out with the chip. When I was eleven, I started writing out these numbers that kept popping into my head, asking my parents what they were and what they meant. They tore the paper into pieces, burnt the pieces and buried the ashes in the flower bed. They explained to me that I was forbidden to write out the numbers in my head, unless they happened to appear on a test. They explained they were important, too important for me to fully comprehend right then. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that they explained that the numbers were codes to every nuke in every country controlled by NATO.

Then they told me I was in danger.

It was discovered that if a large scale nuclear war were to break out, the world would fall into what is called a nuclear winter. The sun would be blocked out by the resulting smoke and debris, plunging us into a deep state of winter. Crops and bodies of water would freeze. Trees would enter an extended period of dormancy, eventually dying. And animals? Well, all animals, including humans, would slowly but surely die off from exposure and starvation. It could be hundreds of years before we come out of it and by then we may all be dead. The code in my head was the key to keeping nuclear winter a scary impossibility, and there was a group out there, The Professionals, who wanted the codes. You see, as bad off as it sounds, they could benefit from nuclear winter. They are part of a company called Envirassure, manufacturing houses with internal climate controls and artificial environments for the wildlife, all of which are underground. Why go outside when you can have summer indoors?

Needless to say, and to the immense credit of the American people, they’d rather go outside.

However, in the situation of nuclear winter, it becomes a need, not a luxury. You can die frozen and miserable or you can have an Envirassure home and be guaranteed warmth and UV rays through your lighting system in every season. You can even tan if you’re really vain enough to think that’s still important! The only time you’re in the elements is to walk to your job, which is in another Envirassure building.

With nuclear winter, Envirassure can go global, which would be good, except for a few things:

1.       Envirassure is run by jackasses and fuckwits.

2.       There are dangerous chemicals in the air that line your lungs and make breathing anything but the factory filtered air they produce damn near impossible after a set time.

3.       They force you to repay debts with slave labor to cut their costs. After all, who will you tell? You can’t breathe the air outside your pod for more than two hours, so by the time you get to help, your face is frozen and you can’t speak.

The houses lean on the expensive side, so you’re constantly in some kind of debt to Envirassure in the event that you need some kind of reduced rent-to-own plan with them for the pod that is pertinent to your survival. They work you in their factories, building more pods for more people to come in to be stuck like you; tying the noose to hang the innocent. The longer you’re in the pod, the more you inhale of a molecule called Caelistaturopus, an addictive molecule designed to keep you in the pods. Eventually, your capacity for pure air becomes so reduced it’s like an addiction; your body thinks it needs the chemical in the air, and it begins to go into panic mode. Your lungs will burn and your entire body will feel like it’s on fire from the inside out. You’ll sweat. Your eyes will water. At the same time that you’re burning and sweating, you’re freezing from head to toe externally.  You’ll vomit, and I hope you aren’t puking when your facial muscles paralyze, because that’s how they’ll stay until withdrawal is over. You’ll temporarily lose basic motor functions like walking. You’ll shiver and panic, and can’t even express what’s wrong because you can’t freely move your limbs and facial muscles. It’s like heroin withdrawal on steroids, for lack of a better phrase, and you’ll dehydrate unless you can find a way to hydrate yourself or you kick it in a hospital setting, which you won’t. Envirassure will own the hospitals, so why would they just give you the tools for living outside of their pods? It’s also utterly pointless. Sure, it’s possible to kick it, but why kick it when you’re just going to walk right back into it?

Once Envirassure goes global, the corporate big rigs will inevitably make the rules. They have the master control to every pod, and locations of each, which makes them hard to ignore. You can’t disregard someone who can cut off the oxygen supply to you and your entire country. Who knows what they’ll do with us from there? I don’t. But I do know one thing.

I have absolutely no intentions of finding out.

Author's Note

This chapter might be a bit rough. Review away, and be honest :)