The camp bed creaks as Elli shifts uncomfortably, lying flat on the rock hard mattress. One of his legs snakes around the crumpled blanket. The night is longer than usual, with the bed next to his vacant. Shaan is still in the medical tent and without his soft snores which often serve as Elli's lullaby, his insomnia relapses. He has been tossing, turning, sprawling, curling and trying many different positions for the past two hours and his eyes are still wide open. When he can't sleep, Shaan usually chats with him and feeds him intriguing tales from the past. He is a few years older than Elli and spent a considerably longer time at school. He has told Elli about The Fall of A.I. and The Grave Apocalypse that took over the globe three centuries ago. Elli remembers marvelling at all the spellbinding historical details Shaan was able to recite.
'Three hundred years ago or so, there was this thing called artificial intelligence,' Shaan once told Elli. 'Our ancestors were intelligent enough to fabricate machines capable of possessing abilities equivalent to humans' and they named them "androids". They resembled us in many ways. They were made to look like us, to communicate, to move around and to accomplish tasks just like us. They could take on jobs abandoned by us, serve us in the households and assist us in further developing our world.'
'That sounds amazing,' Elli has exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. He has never learnt enough from his History lessons to know what happened after men succeeded in making allegedly one of the most phenomenal and advanced inventions.
'But that state of bliss didn't last long. Greedy and ambitious were our ancestors – they weren't satisfied with just the first batch of androids. They endeavoured to improve, amend and redesign their androids, eventually experimenting with machines that did not only possess human intelligence, but also human emotions and feelings. They started cloning and these androids, created to possess sentiments and memories, began to roam the streets. Blessed with superb intellectual abilities, strength and immortality, these androids were able to think and feel. No longer content with being the lowest in the hierarchy, they decided to mount protests. All at once, the machines our ancestors created to make our lives improve became our greatest enemies. They turned against their own creators and attempted to replace them. A war broke out. Androids went out of control and began defying their masters' orders, manipulating, harassing and slaughtering humans everywhere. Our ancestors spent years annihilating these machines and when the war was finally over, so many lives had been claimed. Since then, androids have been banned and artificial intelligence is to be handled with absolute caution. Our ancestors learnt from this fatal experience that gifting machines with capabilities equal to or greater than ours is a perilous decision. The incessant desire for advancement might end with dire consequences.'
'However, it is our distinctive nature to persist and never stop craving for the impossible. With our world plagued by aging populations, food shortage and severe climate change resulting in an explosion of infectious diseases at that time, our ancestors soon embarked on another journey of experiments and they gambled on another invention this time – a drug that could make immortality and enhanced immune systems possible. In the midst of inventing this drug, they accidentally created a lethal virus that leaked out and spread to different parts of the world. The virus turned half of the population into mindless, bloodthirsty monsters with inhuman strength and they started preying on the healthy humans. They bit one another and spread the virus, ultimately leading humanity to the brink of extinction. This, in our history, was marked as The Grave Apocalypse. The surviving humans spent decades battling with these monsters and when all the monsters eventually died of starvation, only one third of our human population had remained.'
'After the apocalypse, our ancestors rebuilt the world from ruins and reverted to rudimentary lifestyles. Population only began to grow in the last century and some technology managed to return. All was peaceful until The Great Catastrophe struck a hundred years ago, when the aggravation of climate change finally decimated nearly half of the Earth. Suddenly, the ground quaked and cracked everywhere; gigantic waves crushed to different shores; lava was spilling and bursting from every volcano; all the villages and rainforests were wiped out by tornadoes; radiation was leaking from several power plants, contaminating different rivers and farms; and on and off, some places either got frozen or burnt to tatters.'
Elli knows about The Great Catastrophe. His mother used to describe to him the horrible aftermath of those disasters that reduced the entire globe into merely five countries; the gruesome life the survivors had to face after losing their homes and families. Life hasn't got any better in the past hundred years, with the drastic reduction of land available for restoring lifeforms, the rapid declination of natural resources and the never-ending food shortage. There is a massive piece of land rich in oil, they claim, and another flourishing piece of land rich in soil. The first piece of land belongs to the affluent Kingdom of the Middle East and the second piece lies in the perfectly self-sufficient Eastern Empire.
And what do people do with riches?
They don't share.
Everyone wants to consume these two pieces of land – the last hope for humanity.
Elli wants the war to end, but it would never end. They have been fighting for three years and paying for their selfishness with blood and flesh. As time rolls on, their past grows vague. Everyone is seemingly fighting with a reason; however outrageous it is. Asher is here for his patriotism. He has been brainwashed into believing that his country – the United America, is invincible and deserves the best in the world. Kaiden fights because of Asher, the sole person he can cling to after both of their parents have perished. Ren wants to prove himself worth something because he's always been invisible at home and at school. And ironically, Shaan fights for world peace because he misses the days when he could simply stroll along the beach, dive into the sea or sit by the shore while launching fireworks with his friends.
Now the beach is covered with mimes.
Elli never knows what he's fighting for. There's only one thought in his mind – to survive. Live to see his family again.
At some point, Elli dozes off and he has two dreams. In the first one, he is a boy who has lost his lover and wakes up one day to find a mysterious parcel on his porch. He opens the parcel and there is an android, resembling greatly his dead spouse. They spend years living together and falling in love all over again. In his second dream, he sees himself as a mindless monster going for a hunt. He finds a prey but hesitates a second before he bites him. He lets go of the prey and the prey stays beside him, speaking to him every day. They read, sing and dance together. One day, he is no longer a monster and the prey in front of him has become his lover.
Elli wakes up early the next morning, rubbing his eyes and yawning as the first beam of light filters into the tent. Ren is still lying in the bed opposite his, mouth half open and drooling. He is a heavy sleeper and always gets punished for his tardiness. Elli doubts he will even twitch when a bomb explodes nearby. Elli leaps out of his bed and walks over to Ren, tapping his shoulder lightly. When that doesn't seem to work, he proceeds with a slap. Ren manages to grunt and open his eyes a little. Elli smacks him again, causing him to bounce up and whine.
'Time to check up on Shaan,' says Elli.
'Can't you spare me another five minutes?' Ren rolls his eyes and croaks, following Elli begrudgingly out of the tent. They wash themselves and head to the medical tent, where Shaan is lying on one of the shared beds, half-conscious. His wound has been wrapped with bandages and his face is clean. He has taken off his uniform, only wearing a plain white T-shirt and pants. Elli decides not to disturb the boy and drags Ren out of the tent, earning another groan.
'Thought we're here to greet him,' says Ren.
'He's sleeping.'
'Why did you wake me up so early?'
Elli ignores his complaint and just then, Kaiden waves to them, inviting them over to another tent where some long wooden tables and chairs have been set up. There is a vast stainless-steel tank near the entrance and personnel are stationed there to distribute the food. Each of them receives two bars of energisers that come in an assortment of colours. They are all in a rectangular shape, semi-solid, bouncy and soft like a pudding. They seldom serve actual food in the military since scientists invented and normalised this kind of energisers called BOUNCE years ago to cope with food shortage. The bars usually taste plain and sometimes, on lucky occasions, they come with a faint flavour of certain food. Elli has tried an orange one before that tastes like spaghetti Bolognese, but the flavour is weak. It's as if you're sniffing a cooking pot from metres away. An energiser fuels them with triple amounts of energy as a normal bowl of rice, but none of the boys is keen on seeing these bars. Elli felt uneasy at the texture the first time he took a bite. People usually get curious about the first few bars, but after years of consuming the same thing, they get fed up and sometimes scream at the sight of them.
When they are not eating these bars, they are taking a drink called BOOST –another energiser containing sufficient proteins and nutrients to sustain their daily activities. These drinks, in contrast to the bars, often taste sweet because of the additional amount of sugar they have put inside. Elli has to resist puking after drinking three bottles of BOOST.
Elli sighs when he sees two bars on his plate, greenish-yellow this time. He sits at the long table with Ren next to him and Kaiden across him. Ren is already eating and Kaiden is drinking some warm water.
Two boys are sitting near them and discussing how many countries there used to be. Ren gets interested in their topic and starts debating with Elli and Kaiden.
'I think it's two hundred,' says Ren.
'Should be one hundred and ninety-six,' argues Kaiden.
'What do you think, Elli?'
Elli is trying hard to finish his energisers. They're making him sick, but he knows if he doesn't eat now, he's going to starve later.
'A hundred and ninety something?' he answers, recalling what Shaan has told him about.
'See, I told you,' says Kaiden, grimacing at Ren, who simply folds his arms and pouts.
'Does it really matter?' Ren laughs. 'I failed in History.'
'The question should be – do you know which race came from?'
'Nah, ever since I could remember a thing, I've always been in the United America,' says Ren, but he knows he must have come from another race, since the other boys always point out that his dark hair, brown slanted, single-lidded eyes and high cheekbones are prominent features of a certain Asian race. Nobody remembers the exact name of what that country used to be called though. It might start with a C or a K or a J or something for all Ren knows.
'I'm so sure there used to be a country called Canada or something, but it got united with America,' says Kaiden. 'And there was another one named Mexico or Mexica... My grandparents mentioned it once.'
'My parents would remember, but they're drop dead,' says Ren, shrugging. 'Oh, I want to eat kimchi! These bars suck and they're destroying my taste buds.'
Elli and Kaiden raise their brows as they stare at Ren's empty plate. He has just stuffed himself with five bars and is halfway swallowing the sixth one.
'You came from the East, Ren,' says Elli. 'Shaan should know, because his mother is from the East and there are people who look like you.'
'Oh yes, now that I remember it, my ancestors migrated to America years ago,' says Ren. 'They probably came from somewhere else.'
'How can you forget something so important?' asks Kaiden. Ren doesn't answer him, concentrating on the final bit of his bar. Elli sighs.
'It doesn't really matter where we came from,' whispers Elli to Kaiden. 'We're all screwed in this war.'
'No,' says Kaiden as he shakes his head in dismay. 'The war isn't scary. The scariest thing is when we forget who we are and why we are here – he is fighting his own kind.'
Elli looks at Ren again. Kaiden is right. They're battling with the Eastern Empire and ironically, their soldiers all have dark hair and eyes like Ren. To Elli though, the appearance makes no difference. They are all essentially the same kind – they all belong to the human race.
And why are they fighting each other?