[ IP ] Underneath the bridge .

My fingers pressed against the wire fence, I stare out over to the other side of the river. The only people who get to go out beyond the boundary are the draftees who get sent to the Capitol for training and induction into the National Army. We all know what really happens though, even all the way out here we ’ re at least that aware. I had no interest of getting to see the outside world for an hour, before becoming a lobotomite who knows only how to hold a gun and follow the orders of a machine. 
 
 I couldn ’ t swim through, I ’ d just drown, none of us knew how to swim. I couldn ’ t try the tracks, they were guarded, and I ’ d just get shot to pieces. I looked at the horizon, at the green hills in the horizon, at the vast blue sky, and my wanting became an obsessive desire- the longer I was confined here, the more I longed for freedom, so much so that I ached with a hurt that I had never known. 
 
 And surely in that moment, God must have sensed my pain and sent me a miracle, because at that moment, a peculiar object came floating down the river, something that never happened. Most debris would never be allowed to pass, caught by the various nets and filters located further up the river, at the National Army stations. The object was a large sort of sheet, made out of dark green plastic- I recognised the material, it was the same sort we used to hold water in large quantities. Even I could immediately figure out what kind of opportunity this presented me with. Why learn how to swim, when I don ’ t need to? 
 
 I walked back to the town, in my head turning over thoughts of a long forgotten technology that I had just rediscovered. Soon, though I did not know the name of the transport I was thinking of, I would have a way to traverse the river and reach my freedom, a vessel to achieve my dream.
