It began innocently enough, with a remark from our district’s public crier. It was at one of the filling stations that I first heard the rumors that prompted my investigation and led to my eventual enlightenment. I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky. In this way one can receive news from remote districts, even those at the very edge of the world, without needing to leave home, although I myself enjoy traveling. And just as lungs are passed between persons and districts, so are news and gossip. Many lungs are returned to the same filling station the next day, but just as many circulate to other stations when people visit neighboring districts the lungs are all identical in appearance, smooth cylinders of aluminum, so one cannot tell whether a given lung has always stayed close to home or whether it has traveled long distances. While this perhaps does not constitute air sharing in the strictest sense, there is camaraderie derived from the awareness that all our air comes from the same source, for the dispensers are but the exposed terminals of pipes extending from the reservoir of air deep underground, the great lung of the world, the source of all our nourishment. But by far the most common practice is to linger and enjoy the company of others, to discuss the news of the day with friends or acquaintances and, in passing, offer newly filled lungs to one’s interlocutor. If one has a few minutes to spare, it’s simple courtesy to connect the empty lungs to an air dispenser and refill them for the next person.
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If one is exceedingly busy, or feeling unsociable, one might simply pick up a pair of full lungs, install them, and leave one’s emptied lungs on the other side of the room. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal activity, a shared pleasure.
We all keep spare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one’s chest and replacing one’s lungs can seem little better than a chore. For the filling stations are the primary venue for social conversation, the places from which we draw emotional sustenance as well as physical. It is exceedingly rare that a person is unable to get at least one replacement lung before his installed pair runs empty on those unfortunate occasions where this has happened-when a person is trapped and unable to move, with no one nearby to assist him-he dies within seconds of his air running out.īut in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from our thoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that need is the least important part of going to the filling stations. If a person is careless and lets his air level run too low, he feels the heaviness of his limbs and the growing need for replenishment. Every day we consume two lungs heavy with air every day we remove the empty ones from our chest and replace them with full ones. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by which life will one day end.įor most of history, the proposition that we drew life from air was so obvious that there was no need to assert it. It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life.
Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.
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