The Year-Rounders

He had always dreamed of the old world.

It had been a place where vegetation grew naturally, out of the ground, and where you only walked or traveled a very limited amount each day, not because you had to; not because if you stayed in one place for too long you would die. It was a hard life but they all lived it.

His father thought he should apply for a position as a walk boss's assistant. He knew that it would eventually lead him to a position as a walk boss him self, and he would make a good one. However, this was the last thing that he wanted to do. Jonah could not stand the thought of forcing others to do what he hated; even if it was a necessity.

In the old world, before the rotation had slowed, there were no walk bosses or walk boss's assistants. It must have been grand!

What he knew of the way things had once been so long ago, was all derived from old texts he and all of the others had watched so many times on the learner.

The human race would not have still existed had they not had plenty of warning. Once the people realized what was happening and what would eventually be, they set to work saving themselves. The oceans as they knew them would one day be gone. The entire planet's surface would be changed forever. They would need to prepare. They would need to adapt themselves or die. Unlike almost all other species of plant and animal that had once existed, they had saved themselves... or had they?

Jonah sometimes wondered if they had made the right choice. Why did they cling to life like this? Perhaps it should have been their time long ago. Why did they refuse to let go? What kind of life was this; constantly chasing the setting sun?

The walking population had a fifty kilometre safe zone. Too far forward of that zone was a baking hot climate that could melt rock. A few thousand klicks ahead lava flowed in rivers. It was literally hell on Earth. Nothing lived there. The only way you would know that any life existed on the planet when you looked on the hot side, was the moisture towers that reached into the atmosphere year-round, and the huge, steel doors that led down to the catacombs. Even the great road would be regularly destroyed at the epicentre of the hot side, only to be rebuilt once again by the pushers; the huge robotic dozers that led the population on their constant exodus from the big freeze.

Behind them the cold side was no better. Too far back of the safe zone also lay certain death. Here everything was frozen to sub-zero temperatures. This was where the last group of year-rounders, just recently left behind, would be in just a very short time; as the planet made it's painfully slow, lumbering rotation. This was where Jonah slipped back toward ever so slowly.

Behind him walked the back line, an army of marchers traveling two-hundred abreast with at least a klick between each of them, and equipped with keen eyes. Their job was to make sure that nobody got left behind. Behind the back line came the sweepers, a team of rolling machines that did the final scan for any person or any item dropped that the back line might have missed.