Redemption

"Thank you, class. I hope this was a helpful and informative trip. I am happy to have had you as our guests, and feel free to visit again in the future."

The fog has been getting worse these days. The past few weeks the horizon has been a blur of gray, even from up here, in the main tower. I still enjoy the air, even if my vision is obscured. It is still early, and the only people I can see are two laborers that are repairing the front sign. I can't help but think how, in another time, that sign could be a mighty plaque, huge and eloquent. It could be gold, with the words neatly engraved, so onlookers could look at it with awe instead of contempt. Or maybe it isn't worth it. It's not like we got many onlookers anyway. Our sign is a large block of wood, with the word "edemption" written in desperately neat, red paint. By the end of the day the "R" would be back to make the word complete. This one word has become our entire lives here on our Earth. The irony dripped in every corner of the sign. I wonder who so aptly named it as such, because I don't see any redeeming here.

Somewhere out there the mighty skyscrapers of the past still stand, but to me they only existed in textbooks, and "Albert." Albert was Redemption's computer, the only one left in existence, and the most powerful ever built. It lay here, under me, in the second floor of the main tower. Only a chosen few could access Albert. Never has a laborer or peasant even seen it.

My pondering was interrupted by a soft, persuasive voice. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, you are ten minutes late for your next class. Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes. I'm sorry." I turned and walked towards the dank burrow of a spiral staircase that was surrounded by blackened brick and moist, humid air.

"That isn't like you," the man said. He raised his voice to scale the increasing distance between us as I continued, not turning to look at him, down the tunnel. "That's the first time you've been late for a class that I know of."

Three floors of these dimly lit cylindrical staircases separated the balcony, where I was standing, from my classroom. It was a claustrophobic's nightmare. Then again, all of Redemption was like this. The civilization's center, which was called the Guardian, was a lumbering castle of five towers, the tallest and centermost one of these being the main tower, which is where I spend most of my daydreaming.