Carrick drove back that evening with nothing to show for his day. His nerves hummed with anxiety, excitement, terror, and wonder. Was he dreaming? Had he been beaten so severely by guards that he was in a coma imagining a more exciting world than the one he had always known? Today he had met an alien, or a human from another planet. Was there really a difference between the two? During their discussion, the man who claimed to be Lieutenant Angers had likewise claimed inhuman aliens existed, and were nothing at all like humans, in fact.

They had talked for nearly an hour in the chamber which Angers said it was likely the capitol building of the original human civilization under the Wasteland. He’d said he didn't know how or why humans had abandoned their initial landing point, but that a colony ship had dropped them off with only the terraforming device and a few vehicles for technology.

Angers had talked about the many incredible and nearly unbelievable functions of the terraformer. He claimed it could convert any element to any other element, literally changing lead to gold has in a story Carrick heard when he was a child. Angers had smiled when he heard this, saying it was a story that had been passed down from generation to generation of humans, a bit of shared history between their races.

Carrick had been required to excavate a slope up back to his tunnel before returning home. He simply had no time to do any work and had not even come close to filling his quota. Worse, he had damaged government property, had both crushed the truck’s bumper truck and burned out the winch he’d used to drag up Angers’ ship, which was apparently called the Blue Shrike.

We’ll skip the unimportant details. Carrick was beaten heavily by the Wasteland guards upon his return. He claimed that he stupidly tried to excavate a naturally occurring pocket in the rock which his computer had told him was full of nothing useful. Carrick tried to show on a bitter and arrogant attitude, as though he didn’t trust computers, only his gut instinct. He claimed he’d been required to use the winch to drag himself up out of a small canyon, his fall into which had damaged the bumper. Carrick made a big show of how Apple hadn't had the time to teach him how to use the truck before dying, that he didn't discover how to use the excavation function until after the damage had already occurred.

It didn't appear the question of whether the guards believed Carrick mattered. They didn’t accuse him of being a liar, didn’t offer him sympathy, did nothing except put in a work order for the truck and yell at Carrick to work with another prisoner and learn how to use a truck before he tried to drive himself again. Carrick walked away with a broken nose, a cracked rib, and bruises all over his body. When he returned to the Green group’s barracks, Old Oak called Carrick to sit with him alone by the fire for a moment.

Carrick had worked for the Family long enough to know that when you did something stupid, you didn’t begin your meeting with the Boss by making excuses or defending yourself. He stood until Old Oak commanded him to sit, and then simply stared at the fire with his hands clasped, trying to ignore the stabbing pain of his injuries. Carrick had already set his nose as best as he could and had packed ice against his face to reduce the swelling. It really didn’t help that much.

Old Oak sighed. “Carrick, this had better not be the beginning of a pattern of self-destructive behavior. Sure, you're torn up about Apple, but he will not be the last person who dies around here. You only knew him for a few days. You can't let yourself get so that you don't care about being alive anymore. He lost people on the outside too, right? It's no different here. This is your new life, Carrick. You have a responsibility to do what you can with it.”

Carrick nodded. “Yes sir,” he said. “I’m not trying to be reckless, sir. I was too arrogant, that's all. I thought I knew better than an old piece of junk.”

“I don't really believe that,” said Old Oak. “Carrick, you're smart. You're the smartest kid I've ever seen here. You know how to read a manual. What, were you trying to escape? Trying to dig some kind of tunnel that would get you out?”

He tossed a bit of scrap wood into the fire. “Carrick, I don't know if Apple ever bothered to tell you, but do you know why we have such lax security? Do you know why we’re allowed access to these dangerous tools that could be easily used as weapons against the guards or to break free of the gate?”

“No sir,” said Carrick.

“We're, irradiated boy.”

Carrick directed his gaze up.

Old Oak’s eyes were steely. “There's a unique signature of radiation that exists below the ground here. It's concentrated in ghostblade, too. Every time you drink a cup of ghostblade tea, the radiation builds up more in your body. I don't know if it's fatal, the way other radiation is. I'm no scientist. I only know what the guards have said, what information is then passed to down to me.

“That radiation signal can track you down anywhere on the continent. You're not the first person to escape. Or to try, rather. Getting out is easy. It's not much harder than walking up the front gate. There are no land mines, as you might have heard on the outside. You could drive a truck away and they wouldn't bother sending vehicles after you. Instead, as soon as you got close to a city, the nearest cop would receive a blip on his computer that would inform him there was an escaped prisoner nearby, and he'd simply walk around until the beeping got louder and he found you, no matter what you were wearing, no matter your disguise.

“Even a foot of lead wouldn't be able to save you, as a previous escapee discovered. They just shoot you dead right there. You wouldn't get any trial. They don't let prisoners leave, Carrick. You die here and the burn your corpse. All the radiation in your body floats up into the sky, along with your ashes, and that's the last the world ever sees of you.

He waved Carrick away. “Despite how stupid you were today, we'll cover you again. Three strikes, Carrick. Of course there'll be other days in the future when you need our help again, but if we have one more day where you do absolutely nothing in the next week, you're out of Green group. Don't forget that.”

“Yes, Mr. Oak.” Carrick left slowly and walked into his barrack. It was his turn to cook. He did a poor job of it, and while no one yelled at him, neither was anyone friendly toward him.

Carrick went to bed wondering how he was going to perform what he had promised to Lieutenant Angers over the next two days when he had been ordered not to drive on his own, when he could not pass another day without fulfilling his quota. He slept, full of pain, and dreamed of the end of the world.