The morning starts with a blind grasping. Memory guides my hand to the pair of glasses next to my head. The corrective lenses seem almost archaic compared to some of the medical modifications that are available, such as the cochlear implant my partner rocks, but they are a necessity. The world is hard enough to navigate without impaired vision. I used to joke that once my glasses broke I would be a goner, but our community has managed to continue producing new lenses.
In the bunker there’s no real way to tell if it’s ‘morning’ in the traditional sense, so now we rely on the biological pattern that we have fallen into as a community. Nonetheless, the ‘morning’ brings a chill within the concrete bunker as the overhead lights and heat lamps have slowly started to turn on, easing us into our artificial morning. Electricity still has limited use as we expand our resources through kinetic energy generation, but it's better than existing in the dark and cold.
I slip a sweater on, grateful for the members of our community who have managed to generate new textiles and mend our clothes. Everyone is warm and any newborn is greeted by soft blankets and socks that gradually size up as the kids age.
Now those sock covered feet pitter patter around the bunker as kids chase each other, part of some imaginary world. At first I worried that these children would grow up crushed by a reality harsher than the concrete walls that surround us, but stories seem to soften the blow. Bedtime adventure stories filled with dragons and heroes, fairy tales, something to hope in. Something better than both the bunker we reside in and the world we left behind. It seems everything we do is in an attempt to soften the future for those who come after us.
Sometimes I want to resent people in the past because they didn’t soften the future for me. They lived outside in the fresh air and I am underground. But after enough time sitting in a bunker filled with that anger, I have to wonder where it’s getting me. I think we are all trying to practice forgiveness more, in the truest nature of the word. Acknowledging that harm was done and pain was caused, but releasing the desire for revenge. Again, we are just trying to soften the future; it’s hard to do that with a hardened heart.