Neverending

17

We're talking about living in a graphene-fibre suspended artificial bio-sphere, here.

There comes a time in a man's life where he needs to assess what he's bringing to the table. For me, it was that stretch between Lincoln and Latitude. I've studied enough psychology to know that there's a decent slice of ego wrapped up in these thoughts. Likely, there's a modicum of reptilian survival stuff, too. Lastly, but of course, not least, I wonder how good a friend/son/boyfriend I am to the people that make my life what it is today. For the second time in as many hours, I find myself listing what I consider to be my favourable personality traits. Whilst I don't come up super short, I'm not confident that if this was a 'pick your team'-type scenario, I wouldn't be hanging about near the end, hoping I wouldn't be last (I mean, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be last but let's be honest, we all want to aim a little higher than that).

I'm giving this some serious airtime because I don't know what to expect at Terrafirme. I've seen the ads, obviously. I know a bit about what we learned at school. But the sphere is by invitation only. If you're absolutely cracking at, say, Genetrix, you'll be on the guest list but otherwise, it's generally reserved for those that are committed to living at zero score. And those are the types of people who know how to get things done.

As a regular citizen, the unspoken rule is that I make a gargantuan effort to use below the mandated electronvolt per diem. I think pretty much everybody does because we're fully aware of the implications of not doing so. We had a pretty close call back in 2058 and no-one wants to be seeing anything like that again. Donna still raises her eyebrows at me when I forget to charge my car via solar and if she's really annoyed, she'll look me in the eye and ask me if I want to live in 2058. I'm never quite daring enough to point out that I wasn't even born then and that whatever pickle humanity got itself into couldn't have directly been my fault. Instead, I nod, fix whatever I can to make back the surplus eV and carry on quietly with my day. Eventually, the glacial glare reverts to Donna's loving default: a couple of degrees North of indifference.

These Zeros, though, they're living on the hard line of bio-impact. They're ghost-like in their consumption and aftermath. Their footprints are weightless. The equation is something like, we need 8% minimum of the global population at Zero or that delicate symbiosis we've worked so hard begins to fracture. Zealots argue the figure should be more like 20% but it's widely accepted that that's not going to happen, at least not in until Gen Iota. The Zealots remained steadfast in their beliefs but City Hall decided what they did, lead by the Global Traversis. In the meantime, we went about our merry, low-energy way, safe in the knowledge that the Zeros were keeping us, and the planet, where it needed to be.

Until, I suppose, now.