When the commotion had died down I approached a balding cop who was busy taking down people's skills.
"Name," he ordered.
"Peter King."
"Relevant skills?"
"I'm an engineer. Civic engineer."
The cop raised an eyebrow. "Engineer is on the list of needed skills. Report to Construction squad. They're in room 1141. Next!"
The cop dismissed me and the next disheveled leftover in line approached him.
Most people were being assigned to Scavenger roles - some others to basic things like cooking and cleaning. Anyone with medical experience was busy attending to the people who couldn't do anything at all - some had even been assigned to run a sort of orphanage. I wondered about the parents who’d fled the city, leaving their kids behind, and shuddered.
I reported to 1141 to meet the other members of the Construction Squad. They were a rag-tag bunch, a mix of engineering nerds like myself and some rougher construction types.
At the head of the table was Moira, looking stern.
"Excellent. Let's begin," she said, "take a seat, recruit." From her demeanor I could tell she probably had a military background, but from her stature it seemed unlikely. She stood a head shorter than anyone in the room, and it was hard to imagine her in uniform. That being said, I wasn’t sure I’d want to go up against her in a fight, either.
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"If you're not an idiot, you've noticed we have another city in our vicinity. London, by the looks of it. That makes maybe five cities in total."
"Five?" asked a dark skinned guy with glasses and a Punk-pop t-shirt.
"We have telescopes and binoculars, but the other two cities are too far away to see. But yes. Five in total." She turned back to the group. "London is even closer than Moscow. We actually might have a chance of linking up with them."
"Linking up?" I asked.
Moira looked displeased. "Who are you? Nevermind. I mean connecting with their island - if that's what we call these things. Building a bridge. That's why you're all here."
Immediately the group erupted into chatter. How would that be possible? And what materials would we use? And how long would it take?
The guy with the glasses stopped everyone: "No offence, but is that a good idea? What if there are millions of people over there, and they want our resources? As it stands, we have enough food to cover our group of survivors for years. How do we know we won't get, I don't know, invaded?"
"We don't," said Moira. "But we do know this:"
She took out some photographs and put them on the table. They showed pictures of Moscow, floating in the gray, as if taken from a telescope. In some, you could make out gray shapes circling the city; they were angular, blurred, but unmistakable.
"Fighter jets?" I asked.
"Yes. Moscow has jets - they might be coming any minute. We need to link up with London - we still don't know who started this war, but my bet is that the US and Russia had something to do with it. And I'd bet the Russians are still angry. We've got to pick our side now, and make as many allies as we can, if we want to survive."