I struck again and again. I believed that she would wake up. She would open her eyes, she would recognize everything and then finally, after such a long time, I could look into her beautiful eyes again. I would see her smile and hear her voice. I hit it again and again. However it all happened, we didn't know, but it was time for us to look more forward than always into the past. We were all still too afraid to even look outside. But what would it feel like to finally be able to live outside again?

I hit it again and again until a large hand placed itself on the boxing sinker and stopped it.

“Hey, tell me, what did that bag do to you?” Caleb stood next to him grinning and looking at me questioningly. I hadn't even noticed that my breathing and pulse had quickened and that I had started to sweat noticeably. My Thaler was already secretly wet. "I thought we didn't say until around 5," he then said and I nodded. “I wanted to let off some steam beforehand.” “I can see that.” He laughed. “Well, I still have to teach the little ones for a course, but don’t force yourself. You're welcome to watch or continue to mistreat this poor bastard." He winked at me and then went to the group of waiting kids who were already standing around a mat in their sports clothes. What had happened in the last few minutes from the serious and concentrated Caleb to the yellow, winking one? I shook my head in confusion and then went to the locker room. I spent the next hour watching the kids go through different fighting techniques while looking at each other and giving tips. Caleb seemed to be a good teacher, he always explained everything in a very simple but understandable way, but he didn't make you feel stupid if you didn't understand. I would have liked to have had a teacher like that when I was more into martial arts, I thought. I look around. In general, there weren't that many people training in Meer Halle at the moment. I suspected that many were either continuing with their work or simply wanted to take the afternoon off to digest what was being said. After an hour had passed, the kids said goodbye to Caleb and went to the changing room in a group.

"So," I said and went over to Caleb. "Oh," he confirmed and pointed to the bench at the edge of the hall. "Do you want something to drink?" I pointed to my water bottle. "I have, thanks." We sat down and Caleb seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he began. "Listen, what I wanted to talk to you about. You know what we do in our division, right?" I nodded. "

"You're always doing missions, measuring external values, looking for resources that we could use, and things like that." Caleb nodded slowly. "That's correct. But actually, as I mentioned earlier, we also seemed to be after other people. For movements that come from others, be it your own exploration tours, purchases or whatever rooms. Anything that pointed to other people. That's why what was shared today was so important. We found a base. That in itself is an incredible opportunity. We could contact the people there, we could exchange resources, we could join forces, we could help each other in everything and we would then have allies." "But," I asked, since it was very clearly in the air. Damen just hesitated. “Well, there are also voices on the higher boards questioning whether we should really do that. After all, our base is very well positioned. If the people of the other base see ours, they might think that they want to steal things from us or, in the worst case, even want to take over us completely. “I nodded slowly. “This fear, I assume, is not entirely unfounded?”= “We always have to be careful, that’s just part of it. But now no one is quite sure how it will be dealt with. In the meeting before, everything sounded so great and convincing, but in reality no one had any real idea how we should go about it. “I picked up all this information, I processed them and thought about how I should answer. But Caleb beat me to it. “But what I also wanted to discuss with you, which is connected with this, is something else. “Now he looked at me excitedly and I looked back in surprise. “We need a small team to scout the other base. A small, inconspicuous tea that, for example, will not use aircraft, but will travel on foot. The team will also have to sleep outside and get through. The missions can take a long time or end quickly, depending on how you go about it and what the goal is.” “Okaaaay,” I said, wondering what he was getting at. "I was thinking, maybe you'd like to be a part of it?" He left the question hanging in the air. I remained speechless at first. "I ? Outwards? “But why?” I said very unimaginatively. Caleb smiled slightly. “We can suggest people who should then form the team. You are a good option, you have a medical background and are now well experienced in combat and marksmanship. Of course we hope that this wouldn't have to be used, but it would always be better to have such experiences on hand." I nodded slowly, understanding, but still not understanding. Caleb noticed. “You can think about it until tomorrow, then we want to put the team together for the first time.” My mouth fell open slightly. “Tomorrow?” He nodded apologetically. "We don't really have time and the team should get started as quickly as possible." "And you,,,?" "I wouldn't be there. I have other groups to coordinate that are also important. But you will have an experienced team leader and that will be someone who has been out there many times and knows their stuff." "And how many...?" "8 people should make up the team," he explained quickly.

“Think about it until tomorrow,” he said, patting me on the shoulders and standing up. “Sorry, I have to go again." But if you have any information or something, feel free to get in touch.” With these words he left and left me with a decision that I now had to make by tomorrow. How was I supposed to meet her? She really wanted to go outside, she had wanted to for a long time. The reasons why he had thought of me made sense to me and I had to admit that I had also gotten better at fighting. But what should I do with my work? Who would take my position? And what should I do with her? I buried my face in my hands. What if she woke up soon and I wasn't there at that moment? I wouldn't forgive myself for that. But I knew deep down that this thing was important and that I could contribute something. The thoughts swirled through my head and gave me a headache. All of these things needed to be considered and I wasn't sure I could make that decision until tomorrow. But if I allowed myself to briefly think about the possibility, I had to admit deep down that I wanted to do it. I wanted to be on this team, I wanted to accompany the missions out there, I wanted that. Caleb knew it would open up possibilities if we could find out who these people were at the other base. I found myself wondering who else would be on the team and what it would be like to be out of it. Wait a minute1 I hadn't even said yes yet.

Frustrated, I grabbed my bag, went to the exit and headed for a destination. It was the landing stage, the place where hardly anyone ever went. And that wasn't the only one. There was another room on this floor that hardly anyone knew about. It wasn't used much and had therefore been forgotten and overlooked. But I had discovered it when I was sitting in the alcove again, watching the sun outside and feverishly thinking about what to do with the patient in the ward. The room I now entered was dark. I felt for the light switch to the left of the door, found it and turned it on. The light immediately flickered on, revealing a room that wasn't all that big, but was decorated in dark colors. On the right-hand side, chairs were stacked on top of each other, draped unused under a blanket. In the middle of the room was a round bench that you could lean on. On the back wall was a large screen. Now it was still free of radiation. But I closed the door behind me, looked in the cupboard for the built-in projector and switched it on. The light came on and I switched off the ceiling light. Then I lay down on the back of the round bench and looked up.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was a picture above me. It was a strong zoom that first showed the Earth. The earth as it once was. Then it zoomed out and showed the sky, then the first planets, then more pictures, then the Milky Way, then the stars and everything was quiet, but I imagined it was a voice explaining to me what I was seeing . It reminded me of how it used to be. I once went to a natural history museum with my little brother. There were also dinosaur skeletons there, but also, like here, a room with a bench on which you could look at the planets. And that's exactly how a woman's voice explained the structure of our galaxy to us. Or at least what we humans knew about it. After all, there was a lot that was still unknown. I had listened to the voice and found it incredibly exciting that people had traveled into space to find out exactly these things.

I closed my eyes, watched the light shine through my eyelids, and wondered if there was ever a real chance that anyone would ever fly into space again.

I sat there for a while until I noticed that my stomach was growling. I had to laugh quietly. Although there was so much going on and there were apparently much bigger problems than hunger, my body didn't want to hear about it. So I got up with a sigh, turned off the light and closed the door again. One day I would show her this dream. That was something I had already decided when I saw it for the first time. "So, what's for dinner today?" I asked Francis. She was an acquaintance from the shooting course and she was really damn good at it. She looked skeptically at the food on display. "Fresh rice with some kind of sauce? I hope and believe it is sauce, but I won't take responsibility if you." I laughed and we sat down at a free table with our food.

We ate and were one of the first. Our schedule today would actually allow us to go out to eat later, but I was allowed to make an exception because if I decided to do so today, I would later receive an initial briefing on the tasks of the new recruiting team. So I had to start working sooner. Since Hollow would be joining later, Francis had offered to help me in the beginning. As always, the porridge was a bit too slimy for my taste, but it served its purpose and that's what it was there for. “What’s happening today?” Francis asked me, who in turn enthusiastically devoured her plate. I thought about it. “Potatoes and pumpkins are ready. "I think next would be…apple?” she laughed. “It’s your first harvest season, right? The apple trees aren't even in the hall. You’re in the forest room.”

The Wäldersaal was another hall that was directly adjacent to the Harvest Hall. They had plants, fruit trees and other beds that had not found any plants here. “We only work in the harvest hall, I thought?” Francis added. I nodded slowly. “We have to look at the plan, I have no idea.” We quickly finished our breakfast and then made our way to the hall. Francis was smaller than me and had difficulty keeping up. But I knew we had to hurry. At this time a large part of the hall was empty again and only a few individual people stood between the rows. I grabbed a tablet and looked at the plan for the K3 group - Hillow and me. “Strawberries,” I said to Francis and frowned. From what I knew, the wedding for strawberries was in spring and summer? The climate conditions in this hall reflected the seasons outside, which was clearly already the beginning of autumn. Late summer at the most, if you turned a blind eye. She zoomed in on the map on the tablet I was holding and pointed to one of the lines. "Do you see? We're not even in this hall.” I frowned. But I was assigned here with Hollow. Francis seemed to accept this with a shrug and then gathered the garden supplies we needed to measure the strawberries. Because with fruit, unlike vegetables, we also had to take other values, such as fruit acid content and so on. Who then would continue the harvest with Hollow in this hall today?

So we went to Hall G, which was noticeably warmer when we entered. This hall was significantly smaller, and it was only used for certain things, as the heat that was generated here to make the food think it was summer consumed a lot of electricity. We picked out the appropriate row - 21-30, as the other rows had already been measured in the past few days. This time I was the one who entered the values that Francis told me into the table and carefully filled in row by row. It was so warm that we both quickly began to sweat and our hair stuck to our necks and our clothes stuck to our bodies.

“Why strawberries?” Francis then said with a groan and wiped his face with a cloth. We always had to be careful not to let body fluids drip onto the measuring devices, otherwise this could change the values. We worked our way through section by section and I was happy that it progressed quickly. It was the first time I worked with Francis and it went well. We hardly knew her, but she was precise and conscientious in reading the values. “How did you actually come up with this division?” I asked interestedly and was entering the number of the PH value of the plant she was currently examining. She thought for a moment and told me another value before sliding to the next 30cm. “I actually used to study landscape architecture and I loved it. I took it over from my mother; she was also active in landscape planning. And I loved knowing and understanding the individual plants and building everything so that together they formed a beautiful structure. Because you know, people usually love plants too. But many people don't know or understand them. Therefore, there are many places, plots, forests and gardens that have become overgrown, whose plants are dried up or dead and where you can just tell that they have been neglected. Things like that always make me sad because I know that they could actually look so beautiful and had so much potential if only they were given more attention. When everything went south and I came to the base with my mother, we were given a plan with the individual divisions. Since the harvest division wasn't that popular at the beginning, I volunteered straight away and was accepted. That's why I'm here now. I nodded. “That’s how it is for me with medicine,” I said without her asking. But she listened with interest. “I studied Meidzin until the tenth semester and then began my practical year. I was about three-quarters of the way through before everything happened.” “So you wanted to continue working on it here?” I nodded and wrote down the numbers she showed me on the measuring device in the table. "Well, apparently there weren't that many doctors at the beginning, which is why they started looking for them straight away." I was silent for a moment while I entered more numbers. “And I really enjoyed that I could help people, that I was needed. You really get that feeling here more than ever before, I think.” She nodded in confirmation. "That's correct. If you don't cooperate here, it won't take long for everything to collapse. “It’s pretty scary,” she added. “Why did you change?” she then asked. I was hoping she wouldn't ask the question, but I had started the conversation so it was my own fault. “I couldn’t stand it there anymore. Or rather, I focused too much on one particular thing and thereby neglected the other patients to the point where I was advised that I could and should work somewhere else for a while and then come back at another time “Go to the medical division when things get better.” She pursed her lips. “What are you focusing on so much?” I didn't want to answer at first, but then decided it was better. I liked Francis and I knew that if you wanted to be friends with other people you had to confide in each other and tell each other things. Secrets would only create distance. “My girlfriend,” I said shortly. To my surprise, Francis started laughing loudly. I looked at her alienated. “You fooled around too much with your girlfriend? Oh man, I would want to put you there too. The poor patients. That's why they always put pairs in different divisions to prevent something like this. You bad boy,” she was still laughing and shaking the button. I didn't answer and entered the other data in silence. She quickly noticed that I wasn't responding. “What is it?” She paused her examination briefly and looked at me with her bright green eyes. “She’s not in a different division. She wasn't in my division either. She is one of the coma patients.”