Life in a cage is still life. Or so he had been told when he would question the world, as young men were wont to do. When the world was opening in front of him at last, moving out on his own, looking at jobs, a nagging feeling from his youth was now rising like a heat around the collar.
The feeling of being trapped.
That cloying, sickly, sticky feeling that something has a hand around your neck. Trapped, and knowing there was no escape.
When Rick looked out at the town he lived in it was easy to let your eyes glaze over if you ever looked too closely at the horizon, to simply ignore the deep grey military cement bulwark which separated his life from the world outside. Houses gave way to a no man's land, from which arose the wall which surrounded their town and kept the world away, and kept him away from the world.
It wasn't exactly taboo to mention it, but nobody did regardless, and he could well understand why now that he was older. Like casually bringing up a tragedy, but one that never ended, as that wall served to remind them all. The world had been lost to them. All that was left of the world was that which survived within the walls, islands of normalcy that dotted a landscape overrun by...
He tried not to think about it. Largely because he didn't know how that sentence ended. What was outside was more or less left unsaid and unthought. In old books he'd seen pictures of the oceans, boats and more. His college library had kept some until they had been "bought by a private collector", more likely confiscated to stop anyone from remembering how things were before, but he'd managed to steal one in time.
As he sat on a bench, sun blazing down, on the roof of his new living quarters, he tried to angle the book in ways that would let him see past the edges of the images. Anything to see even a fraction more of the world he would never know. A world that was gone.
He peered over the top of the book, and there in the distance the grey walls lay. For a moment he craned his head up, here on the roof which was constructed to be low enough to not allow any chance of it, and tried to see anything over the edges of the wall. It was, of course, all for nought.
Naivete warred with curiosity and a lifetime of unspoken warnings. It was like discovering you were too late to a party you had no chance of attending. The world had been robbed from him before he had a chance to see it. Time had landed like a gavel, separating his life from the lives of billions before, a judgement passed down that he would grow up in this cage.
"What's that?"
Rick did an excellent impression of someone with something to hide by acting as naturally as he could, half-dropping the book before stumbling to his feet.
"Nothing," he lied, truthfully.
"Lost in your own world again, huh?" the girl he half-knew at college and fully knew now as Jessica tittered, hands crossed in front of her as she leaned over. Even if he hadn't been sat down she still would have been leaning over him, a few inches taller and carrying herself with a lot more confidence.
"Not my world," he muttered, and put the book down next to him.
Jessica had been on the periphery of his social circle since his final year of study. Occasionally at a party he would see her, or she would see him, but only really when the two circles overlapped. Now, however, he had a job offer at the same company she had begun working for halfway through her degree, and was living in the same building.
"Want to talk about it?" she offered innocently, but increasingly he had begun to suspect her intentions as anything but. This was punctuated when she sat down next to him and put a hand on top of his, on top of the book.
She always found an excuse to be in the hallway when he got back, or was going to the same place he was. A few shy discussions and snuck kisses had happened here and there. Rick would have been lying to say he didn't enjoy the attention. She was nice. Usually. And when she wasn't, he might have admitted he didn't mind that mischievous side either.
He had suspected that she had suspected what she suspected for some time.
"You remember what Dr Pross said right? Everybody goes through this."
He knew she was right, but as ever, that didn't change how he felt.
"Did you?"
"Yeah. I have family over..." for a moment she paused, looking at the wall for the first time as if she had been directly avoiding doing so, "there. That way, I think. A few miles."
Rick looked, following her finger, after spending a little too long lingering on her and her breasts which had been distracting him from the moment he'd first seen her in class.
"Might as well be on the moon," he mused, and then shook his head, "sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"It's okay. I've accepted I'll probably never meet them. Yeah, it's sad, but there's nothing I can do about it. That's the point I'm making, I came to terms with it. I went through it just as you are now."
She had sat down next to him on the bench now, and whereas normally he would have found this a little more intimate than he was comfortable with, especially given the topic of discussion, he was perhaps a little too downtrodden to care.
"You're not happy, are you Rick?"
He thought about an answer but didn't say it, just staring down at the roof below.
"All through college you were the guy who asked questions, got in trouble, and now you learn when to keep your mouth shut?"
He smiled a little at that, but shook his head.
"I'm a prisoner, Jessica. We all are."
"Are we?" she asked, pointedly, which shook him from his morose for a moment, "They had prisons back in the old days too you know. They still built walls to keep monsters locked inside. They still separated the world."
"Yeah, but back then the walls were facing inwards..."
For a while they just sat, not quite enjoying each other's company, but definitely more comfortable than being alone. She put her head against his after a time, and he sank into her shoulder, not solely out of obligation.
