Sitting inside a big drill vehicle, Ms. Moon recalled the day she first met Rebal. That day was her big day. She got access of interviewing the factory in the city.

She put on the bracelet after the shower. The bracelet had a small spike on the inner side. The spike could fit the hole on Moon’s wrist and inject her with a chemical that can protect her from the radiation flowing in the air. Moon always felt a bit dizzy after she put on her bracelet.

“Finally, after days and months of investigating and negotiating, I got the access!” the feeling of success flew smoothly into her mind. It was supposed to be the day she exposed the pollution problem of the factory and saved the city.

She got down from her apartment and rode on her bicycle. She once imagined that one-day fossil fuels could be used by commoners so that they wouldn’t need to ride their bikes for hundreds of meters every day. She reminisced about this childhood daydream but knew it would never happen. She didn’t really understand why it had no chance to happen, but she just thought so.

The wheels rolled rapidly on the road. Not a sweat came down from her forehead. In fact, she didn’t even know what sweat was. In another fact, she forgot everything she learned about ancient humans that were living on Earth. As a human who lived in space, why should she care about those extinct people on Earth?

She felt the wind past her face and left with a sweet and nice cool feeling. She looked up into the sky. The darkness of the sky and the shine of sky lamps made her smile even sweeter. The entire city was covered by a giant metal cage, with the cage’s top part being mounted with thousands of giant lamps. This city style was so unique even in the whole human history that historians decided that people millions of years later should call these cities “Cage Cities.”

The cage was not the only fantastic part of this city. Those bracelets on people’s hands were all connected to the servers and computers under the ground, by that these bracelets had tons of functions, taking photos, checking times, evaluating health status, monitoring all users’ every piece of information, and reporting all users' information to the government and corporations.

The convenience didn’t stop at the bracelets. Ms. Moon stopped her bike next to a bathroom next to the street. The bathroom was a small chamber that could fit about seven people into it if it was just evaluated from the outside. Before entering the bathroom, Moon stood before the door and clicked on the pad next to it. She chose “human” for the question “What species do you identify yourself as?” and answered the second question, “What gender do you identify yourself as?” by dragging the percentage bar for the female to a hundred percent. She kept the male percentage totally zero, like the default setting.

“Going to die if I decide to urinate during the interview,” the funny thought went through Moon’s mind, but it was still possible. Small thoughts like that always entered her mind. It was usually a question when she was a kid. Then, she grew up and realized that these questions in her mind were illegal. Starting from the day she gave up all her free-world curiosity, she picked up the caged curiosity. Although it was caged, it was still curiosity that she obsessed about.

Not sure why but a small question that she once had when she was a kid appeared from nowhere. “Why are there million choices in the species blank?” Moon’s hand stopped before she clicked confirm. Her index finger froze in the midair, but the bathroom door was already opened.

She knew that this question was dangerous and illegal. If anyone found out that she had this question, she would end up in jail for more than fifty different crimes. Her heart beat faster than usual. Her eyes were closed, and she focused on the sound of passers. She couldn’t tell what was wrong with her, but a crack appeared on the snowflake that she had been building when she was born.

She first tried a few animals that she was familiar with. The bathroom for mice was as same as the bathroom for dogs and cats. The last chain on her curiosity was broken. “If mice one is the same as for dogs and cats one, then why don’t we just have one that includes all three of them?” She also tried extinct animals like birds and fish. The result didn’t change.

She then tried to mix the percentage of “male” and “female”. She tried almost everything from 100% female and 100% male to 0%female and 0% male. The result of the bathroom never changed. All species and all genders shared the same bathroom, a bathroom with an ordinary toilet inside.

“Why are there so many options when the bathroom never changed?” she asked the question silently and stepped a foot into the bathroom. Immediately after she stepped her leg in, the alarm on her bracelet was activated. Just at that moment, she realized that she didn’t apply for consent to step into the public bathroom. She jumped out of the bathroom and continued her way to the factory.

She stopped her reminiscing. She really had no interest in experiencing that explosion in the factory again. Although she got hurt, she didn’t detest that explosion. Moon actually thanked Rebal for that explosion every night after she met him. She lay leisurely on her driving seat with her head looking at the back of the room.

Some sounds interrupted her dazing on the driving seat. She put her hands on her belly and gazed at the refrigerator at the back. The fridge was about the size of a classic cat cage. There weren’t many things inside. About ten apples and pears, more than fifteen bottles of water, five cans of expired carbonated drinks, and a jar of painkillers were everything inside. She had a story to tell with each of these things and Rebal.

She sat beside the refrigerator with her arm holding her knees to her chest. Her right hand held the red apple, and her mouth chewed a part of it. The juice leaked out from the bite and streamed past her hand. Golden drops of apple juice dripped down to the ground.

Red plus gold was the best combination of colors in the whole world. Before the bite, the red covered the entire golden flesh inside with its beautiful color that could make every single human in the space drool. After the bite, its golden inner part flourished like flowers in May. The red was like the calyx, and the gold was like the stamen.

It would cost her whole life to buy an apple if she didn’t meet Rebal. Before seeing Rebal’s orchard with a few apple trees in it, she only saw apples once in a lab. She was interviewing scientists. She only had a glance at that apple in the lab. She thought that was the best she had ever seen, but compared with the one in her hand that one in the lab was a very sickly skinny apple. She fell back to her memory again. She could never forget that orchard full of fruit trees that ordinaries could never have a glimpse of for their entire life.

“They are beautiful!” Moon goggled at the greenhouse in front of her. The ground was made of actual soil and grasses. Trees stood in the middle of grasses with other trees next to them. The roof had a big lamp that stimulated sunlight on it. The whole greenhouse was about twenty meters. It still took Moon many steps to run from one side to another.

“Hey, you aren’t fully recovered from the explosion. Don’t run that fast,” Rebal’s voice went down as he saw Moon getting faster and further away until she reached the pure white wall on the other side.

“These trees and grasses……. I…….” Moon hugged a tree, and her long golden hair was put between her and the tree so that she could have her entire self attached to the tree.

“They’re great. I know,” gazing at the girl wearing his red vest and his blue shirt, Rebal sat down in front of the greenhouse. The sunlight gleamed on Moon’s golden hair and long white skirt, but Rebal sat in the dark, moist hall with a cold iron bench under him.

Rebal touched the bulletproof mask on his face. He almost took it off but eventually had it back on. After that day, Moon played in the greenhouse whenever she could, which meant every weekend. Rebal got her a hack that could bypass the system so she could come to Rebal secretly.

Whenever she was in the greenhouse, Rebal would water the grasses and trees next to her with a hose. She always took an apple from one of the trees, and she always asked Rebal to take his mask off. She didn’t get to see his face, but she did learn how to climb a tree with a big wound in the belly.

“You know that these are worth millions of dollars, right?” Moon sat on the tree with a pear in her mouth. There weren’t just apples in the orchard.

“That’s why I hid this place well,” Rebal said as he moved up his hand and twisted his wrist. The flow slowly went up.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Moon got scared and scrambled on the tree branch. She almost fell off the branch, but it turned out that Rebal was just kidding with her using his hose.

Moon finished the apple and an extra pear and apple. A drop of tear was locked in each of her eyes. The weak light in the drill reflected in her moist eyes. She needed to hold the tears. She couldn’t just cry.

“If it’s Reba who’s doing this, he won’t cry, so I won’t cry,” Moon pulled her lips inward like sipping water, then bit the two lips at once. She wasn’t as tough as Rebal, but she was the one sitting in the drill.

Moon took out a bottle of water and a can of expired carbonated drink. She totally ignored the painkiller because Rebal once told her that painkillers could be addictive and led her to other narcotics produced by the same pharmaceutical corporation.

Water was Rebal’s all-time favorite beverage. He told Moon more than a hundred times that water was healthier and more effective than any other drink. Still, carbonated beverages were Moon’s favorite.

Moon took a look at the date on the can. The drink expired long ago. A line from Rebal popped up in her mind, “Those carbonated beverages in ancient times can last at least a year. Nowadays, they can’t because those companies do it on purpose to earn more money. It’s similar to Planned Obsolescence.” She threw the can away and opened the bottle. She didn’t know if ancient humans really had carbonated drinks that lasted for a year. It didn’t bother her at all. It wasn’t like she could ever find an ancient carbonated beverage in the drill.

After a sip and another, she guzzled down the water like a drunkard quaffing alcohol. Water was poured down from her face like a waterfall. There wasn’t a way to identify if what fell down was water or if it was mixed with tears. Like a fish, she dived into her memory again.

“When will you bring me with you, and when will you teach me how to use your cool crossbows?” Moon lay on the sofa, searching through Rebal’s shelves, finding the crossbow that Rebal once mentioned.

“First, these assaults are too dangerous. Second, you are still recovering. Third, this is called a rifle, not a crossbow. Only the most secret agents of the government have these,” Rebal answered with a finger tapping on his M14.

“I am recovered! See,” Moon pulled up her white T-shirt and showed her belly with an ugly big round scar, “and you are going to teach me that?” Moon was surprised when she noticed Rebal agreed to teach her how to shoot. She never expected that to happen. Rebal did share his experience of assaulting and how much that could delay the government and corporations’ plan, but he never told Moon anything about guns before.

“If he can teach how to use those guns, then one day he can bring me with him,” Moon thought.

She got back from her memory. She moved a few paces to a suitcase next to the wall. She opened the case and saw a rifle with its accessories and a metal bottle that had a sticky note on it.

She took out the gun and put the accessories on fast and smooth. She then took a look at the sticky note. Her tears burst and gushed out. The gun fell to the ground. She could not hold it anymore. She opened the bottle and swilled those brown liquid inside. The line on the sticky note was, “I know you like carbonated drinks, so I tried to mimic the ancient way of making this kind of drink. It can last more than one year, and I bet you will like it.”

As Moon drank all the liquids in the bottle, the sunlight slowly went through the window. After seconds, the sunlight had fulfilled the drill vehicle. Moon got out of the drill with a bottle and a gun in her hands.

She saw the blue-ist sky with the white-ist clouds in her entire life. She saw the shining sun that almost blinded her eyes hanging in the sky. She saw The most extensive orchard with various fruit that she didn’t even know some of them. She saw the most alluring garden with almost every color of flowers. She saw birds and mosquitoes flying in the sky and grasshoppers and rabbits running on the green-ist grasses.

She saw the most luxurious mansion she had ever seen and a bullet flying toward her.