For the next few days I stayed in my house, with the exception of getting more food tablets or going for walks, and did almost nothing. I incessantly checked the messages on my wall desktop and got even more annoyed every time. I checked so much that if I walked out of the room I would walk back in and check it again like I wouldn't be there to witness it popping up in my inbox. The same was for getting water or answering a phone call. I became so impatient that I started doing whatever I could to get my mind off the PH. I took unnecessarily long showers and set everything in my house to clean itself. I organized my clothing by color order and got rid of all the useless junk laying around. This was rather boring, though, because I wouldn't have done this on any given day.
When I was done with the small tasks I tried to be productive and ended up calling up Polar instead. We made plans to go into the forest after the sun went down. The officials around the city didn't want anyone to cross the zone's border. No one ever knew why they were so strict about these rules. The last of the remaining animals had died out about two decades ago, so there was no worrying over being eaten alive or attacked. They had made it so there was a forty foot wall around the zone and no one could leave, but Polar and I being the mischevous people we are, found a way to climb over.
We found the passageway one night when we were walking the streets looking for trouble. We found an extendable ladder built onto the side of a general store. I had unlatched the ladder and let it fall low enough where Polar could climb up it. I followed up the ladder behind him. It led to a roof garden. There were a lot in the central to keep the oxygen levels high and the air clean. Sometimes vines would grow over and onto the sides of the buildings which I liked. It gave the plain metal-everything-city a more naturey atmosphere. That was why Polar and I often went to forest.
The building we had climbed onto was only a few away from a tailor right next to the enormous wall that surrounded the zone. The wall was made of solid steel. The steel was brushed so it wouldn't reflect too much light. Everything was made out of this dull steel: the streets, the factories, the shops, park benches and anything else that was exposed to the outdoors. The steel was stain and rust resistant, so it never faded, it never turned and orange-red color, and it was meant to last for thousands of years.
Getting over the building's roofs was almost too easy. Most of them were close enough together that we could take one step over the gap between them to get to the next one. What was tricky was getting over the wall. Polar and I took a ladder onto the roof with us when we went to the forest. We leaned the ladder onto the wall and it rested on the edge of the roof. The climb was high. I got a feeling of power when I climbed so high, like I wasn't really confined to the officials rules. Polar was the same. He was all about adventure and he loved to live dangerously. We loved escaping to the forest and sometimes we camped out there. It was some of the best times I had. We built a shelter out of fallen branches. But we didn't just make a simple tent like shelter, that wasn't enough for us. It had to be the greatest hideaway we could build.
From the start we built a single room that started from a high enough branch that we could stand up in it. Every time we came back Polar would take some tools, and I would take things to hold it together. We kept adding onto it and repairing the damage from a thunderstorm or a windy day. We joked around saying that one day we'd have an entire condo made of dead trees. We didn't mind our childish routine, though. When there was practically nothing to do because of automatic machines that did every job for us these days, we would do anything to not die of boredom. Clubs were always open in the city at night, but it didn't interest us. We'd rather risk getting caught crossing the zone border and have something to laugh at when we were older.
Polar came over to my house before we went to the forest that night. We talked about the PH and how excited we were to get one. We were going to share one if only one of us won a PH, and we had made a plan to kidnap one off the streets if neither one of us got one. We played some virtual stimulation games on my 4D console until the sun went down.
Polar grabbed his pocket bed and I grabbed mine, some food tablets, two canisters of water and flavor packets and we set off for the general store in the city. We followed the same path every time to make sure nobody saw us. Though I never understood why they thought two twenty year olds carrying bottles of water was suspicious. We've been questioned many times, and every time we said we were just going to park.
We had made it to the first ladder and climbed up and made sure no one was around to witness us jumping and running across the top of the buildings. Usually there wasn't because all of the stores around this area were closed by six, and the clubs where everyone hung out were on the other side of the city.
We made it to the second ladder. We kept it leaning against the wall so we wouldn't have to drag it back and forth. Polar and I climbed up for what seemed like the hundredth time. We would sometimes stop when we got to the top so we could look down on the forest. We could only see some of it from where we were. At that time of night the only part lit up was the part closest to the wall. We could barely see the green lit up by nearby lamp posts. We didn't rest on the edge of the wall for long because we were always so eager to get back to camp. We had lantern like lights hanging from strings tied to the tree branches to light just enough so we wouldn't trip.
I followed Polar into the treehouse, and we set our pocket beds down on the grass and let them unfold themselves. I took the food tablets and handed one to Polar along with his water. We took the pills and washed it down with water and then went back to the open.
This was my favorite part of the whole campout. We lied down on the velvety grass and looked at the stars shimmer. Polar pulled me close to him and held me there to make sure I stayed warm. A breeze blew between the trees and over us. The leaves rattled against each other and the grass swayed. I got chills and used it as a reason to get closer to Polar.
He never talked about our affection which upset me some, but at the same time I didn't want to know what kind of relationship we had. Polar may think of it as a friendly thing, while all this time I was crushing on him. I was too afraid to say something about it. We had a nice thing between us and I was trying not to ruin it with my stupid girly emotions. I thought it might be a crush that I would get over in a week just like the other times, but Polar had something about him that made me think about him all the time. He was the only person I wanted to spend time with. He was my best friend, and that was the problem.
"Hey, Az?" That was my nickname. He insisted that Azetylen was too long, and he shortened it. No one called me that except for him.
"Yeah?"
"Did you ever think that these androids aren't as good as the company makes them sound? Like, what if we just wasted our money and they end up forcing us to do their laundry or something?"
I giggled at his boyish mind. "They could do so many worse things and you're afraid of doing laundry?"
"Well, yes, that's degrading. They could laugh at me and make me massage their back or fluff their pillow."
"If they took over the world, what would you do?"
"I'd join them."
"I can't imagine you ruling the world. You're too..."
"That's why I'd need a queen."
It took me a moment to register what he was saying but I still asked him, "What do you mean?"
"Well no matter what I'm doing I'd always want you to be there with me. You're like my other half."
I almost stopped breathing. I couldn't say anything, so there was a long pause after his sentence. I waited for him to continue.
"I'm sorry, I'm being weird. You're my friend, I guess, but I've liked you forever now and I couldn't hold it in anymore."
I lied there for a while in a daze. My heart was racing and my throat had completely dried up. It felt like everything was perfect now. The stars, the damp grass, the cold air, all of it was perfect. It was all falling into place.
"I like you, too," was all I could manage, and we didn't say anything for the rest of the night.
