Titan

        “Get in, drop it, get out.”

        Soda Zahavy had one job.

        It wasn’t really a job in the sense that it was work she was getting paid for – on the contrary, she’d had to ration what food she’d been given more carefully than usual, sifting through each tin of dried matter and weighing it, squeezing what would fit into the cavernous pockets of her backpack. It was, in a sense, a vacation of sorts – but one with purpose – and she’d paid for it, if anything.

        Soda was a young woman, without the tendency to think too far ahead of herself and her current circumstances. The world, after all, didn’t have a place for those with grand dreams and vivid schemes anymore. The goal of survival was mutually shared across every continent, and more than enough for everyone. If Soda could reach her additional goal (“Get in, drop it, get out.”), then that was simply a colorful anecdote, part of an otherwise unremarkable personal history; simply living wasn’t particularly interesting by itself.

        It was important to Soda herself, Soda’s job. (“Get in, drop it, get out.”) Of course, it was hardly important to anyone else.

    Soda was a product of her circumstances. She barely remembered what the older women in her group called the “tail end of it.” The “tail end of it” had taken her parents, her sister, and her town with it, carving a murderous path across city skylines and countryside alike, until it had taken the majority of the world to the grave.

       Soda had survived.

       Friends in the wastes were a rarity, but Soda had gotten lucky. She’d found the Compound, a group of scientists dedicated to preserving humanity’s treasures and sealing them beneath the earth, in hopes that future generations – if there were any – would find them, and come to understand the world before. The Compound was home – and the Compound was full of life and even laughter, when so much of the earth stood still.

        Above all friends, was the friend who was accompanying her at the moment. The friend who’d been with her for over twenty years, who ferried her wherever she eeded to go, and kept her safe from the worst the arctic had to offer. Soda had a friend she never argued with, who never said a rude word, who sheltered her from harm when she was too young to know what shelter was.

       Soda had Twine.

(Now featuring Lachtaube's Heifer 11859, too.)