Island Slowly Sinking

Population Count 78,000: Primal Ways

The rogue Outcasts were sorta like hippies if you ask me. They traveled in packs - the person who wore all black, who introduced himself as Gus, wasn't lying, they did have a few dozen people with them - and it looked like they had plenty of things to last for a few weeks.

I still wasn't sure whether I made the right choice, given that their stock of food and water, (recently refilled at our expense), had to be split with numerous people. Everybody carried something - whether a food bag or a water tank or a pack full of necessities. I carried the backpack that I dug up in the Head's closet, and I made sure that Chet never caught wind of the VR disc that I smuggled in.

"So," I prompted, "What the heck is going on, exactly?"

Gus seemed hesitant to answer. "You already know that we ran away from our refuge and gathered numbers from other Outcasts, and sometimes we joined alliances with other rogues. We have our own unofficial system if you would call it that. The Outcast numbers are so high these days that we've practically built up our own mini-community of people. We follow the same rules as the Law of Survival, but we all swear not to give away where our brothers are."

"The other Outcast groups?" I asked.

Gus nodded. "We're bonded by the same feeling of betrayal and unworthiness. Heads are always on the prowl for us, and when they finally catch us..." Gus gulped. "It's happened once to our group, in fact. We used to be three times as big and we were flourishing in resources before someone tipped us off. The Heads attacked us at night - only a small bit of us escaped with a meager bit of food and no water, and our chance of living seemed slim."

The sun was now rising above the sky now, and, as we continued walking through the desert wasteland, I saw my refuge slowly fade away into nothing.

"...We tried to get our brothers back, of course - followed the Heads back into the refuge and went for an all-out assault. It was a pretty fair fight if you didn't look at the numbers. They weren't expecting it, and our weapons were about the same, but like I said, there were plenty of them. A few of us died and plenty other also got captured, and we haven't heard from them since."

Gus gulped as if retelling the story was too much of a horror for him.

"One of our brothers managed to get a peek at what was going on behind the closed doors - what they were doing to all the captured Outcast rogues. Said they were strapping them into the Simulation, although I would have no idea why. Trust me, don't believe whatever the Heads told you about us. We might look intimidating, but really, we're just as soft as everyone else."

I eyed Gus' muscular build... the hair growing on his face that implied that he hadn't shaved for weeks, and the dirty, ripped parts on his black outfit. 

"We stop for our first meal now," Gus said to everybody, unslinging the backpack that he was carrying. "Eat up, we've got some good food from our last find."

*     *     *

Breakfast consisted of hard bread and some (clean) water. We didn't talk much during the meal, and Gus didn't seem interested anyway. Chet and I ate together, often eyeing one another saying This was your idea, and at last, the food provided was all eaten and we went on.

"Where are we going?" Chet asked Gus, as he had turned out to be the one that we now trusted the most. 

Gus grumbled something unintelligible, and then answered: "We don't know."

"Then why bother going anywhere?"

Gus grumbled again, and for a moment, I felt that he would start swinging until he said: "Can't be sitting ducks either. If we're lucky, we'll reach some random refuge and discuss how to break in and get what we need."