Golden Boy

Once outside we both knew it was going to be a good day. The plastic visor on our masks had remained clear in the first two mintues. I had also managed to think of bringing a shovel which I had found on the deck of our barge.

The area we lived in still had a few trees. This was unusual and my parents said it was because in their childhood someone had declared the Willamette forest as a refuge for some sort of animal that was now totally extinct. We had heard rumors that there were still several animals and plants surviving in the several corporate compounds that were spread around the world. These corporate compounds were really huge self-contained biospheres in which the very wealthy and very intelligent business leaders continued to survive. There were stories about how different these humans looked and lived from the rest of us. Since no one had ever been inside one of these corporate compounds and then been allowed out again, the majority of humans had no idea how these people really lived. The only contact people had with these leaders was through the 'computer work' and the rations that these privileged few doled out to the majority of the people of the world.