What does one do when one is only living? What does one do when there is nothing to be done. Waking back to the abandoned reactor was already boring after only one night. It was late in the morning judging from the portals of light in the hall outside his cell. He was famished and athirst as he walked down to the central room. Only a few children milled between smoldering fires. He could smell food, though, and followed the scent. It was bacon, he thought, and his mouth began salivating. He hardly ever ate bacon, but he often craved it. He found older kids cooking in a functioning kitchen, though they had converted the sinks into fire pits and were toasting bread and frying bacon in iron skillets thrust into the hot coals. He waited in line for a helping and gobbled it down with his hands off the tin plate that they handed him. He looked behind the cooks and saw several large, blue coolers filled with milk cartons, eggs, and slabs of meat on top of mounds of ice. Zach thought that they must have brought that in this morning since there was no electricity at the facility.

A boy approached him as he leaned against a wall and drank deeply from the cup of milk that he had been given. You a hacker? the boy asked, stammering and averting his gaze just a bit as he spoke, then raising his eyes directly towards Zach until Zach returned the look. Yeah, I spose. Why? Oh, dunno. I’ve never touched a puter, he said, seeming proud of his accomplishment. Really? Zach asked. How long you been here? The boy grinned at him.… Read the rest