Chapter Text
A dull grey glow filtered through cave's entrance and dimly lit its interior. Gunhee laid sprawled across the cold ground and Jooheon sat lazily next to him, leaning back against a larger rock. It was Changkyun's turn to skin and gut their spoils for the day, and the youngest focused on the task at hand without complaint.
Gunhee sighed.
"Do you ever wonder what it was like? Y'know, before our ancestors fucked up?" He asked the stone ceiling. Jooheon thought for a moment, but Changkyun cut in without a moment's pause, not even bothering to look up from the carcass in front of him.
"They have books full of information on that shit. If you really want to know, read about it."
Gunhee rolled his eyes and subtly shook his head.
"We don't have time to read, Changkyun," he started, exasperated, "and how the hell do you expect me to get books in 13?"
Changkyun thought about Gunhee's words. Books were a rarity, reserved for those smart enough to qualify for scientific and governmental training or those with the connections to otherwise acquire them. The common people had no means to indulge in such luxuries, especially not in 13, a cluster known for its large wealth gap.
"Yeah, not everyone grew up like you did, Changkyunnie." Jooheon added.
Sometimes Changkyun forgot that not everyone had access to libraries like he did when he was younger and bright enough to be handpicked for academia. His childhood had been a vastly different experience to Jooheon and Gunhee's, albeit perhaps just as deprived in a different way.
Gunhee shifted onto his side to look at Changkyun more intently.
"Since you seem to know more than me n' Jooheon, care to tell us ‘bout pre-shithole earth?" Gunhee inquired, eyes burning with curiosity. Changkyun sighed, abandoning his work and turning to face his peers. This was going to take a while.
"First off, animals weren't so… vicious. Not all of them attacked humans on sight and some of them were herbivores."
"Herbivores?" Jooheon asked, genuine confusion written plainly on his face.
"Animals that eat plants. You know, like the vegetables that come with our daily rations."
Gunhee let out a hearty laugh. "You're telling me that animals back then knew how to bio-engineer vegetables?"
"No. Plants used to grow from the ground, Gunhee. The sky didn't used to be the sheet of grey it is now and it used to rain. The sun and the rain used to feed the plants."
"What the hell is rain?" It was easy for Changkyun to forget that Gunhee and Jooheon didn't know much about things they hadn't physically encountered due to their upbringing. They weren't dumb guys, per se, they were just two guys thrust into an unfortunate situation and forced to survive. Then again, so was Changkyun after his previous life fell apart.
"Water that fell from the sky."
Jooheon looked thoroughly impressed, but simultaneously skeptical. "Sounds fake to me."
"I'm telling you, it was in the books. We had to read them as a requirement for scientific training, to see if anyone could develop a way to reverse what our ancestors did to the atmosphere."
Jooheon and Gunhee both nodded. The atmospheric damage done by their ancestors was common knowledge, part of a mantra recited to the public every year on a certain date to remind everyone of the atrocities committed and prevent them from reoccurring. Every single person, regardless of upbringing, had this part of their history ingrained into their minds.
"Honestly, I find animals not being bloodthirsty monsters harder to believe than magic sky water."
"Well back then they weren't all that way. People even had pets."
"Changkyun, explain yourself better. Me n' Jooheon never went through the schooling you did." Changkyun looked vaguely confused, and Gunhee rolled his eyes. "Pets?"
"Domestic animals."
"And what the hell is a domestic animal?"
"Animals people kept in their own homes."
"Isn't that a bit dangerous?"
"They were tame."
"Tame?"
"They didn't harm their owners and were trained to do as they're told."
"Animals can be tame?"
Changkyun sighed. "Not anymore."
There was a pause as the three felt their own scars and injuries that'd been woven into their bodies, the accumulated evidence of the hostility of animals. It was Jooheon who finally broke the silence.
"Honestly, I wouldn't mind having an animal around if it wouldn't rip me apart in my sleep and would do my bidding. It'd be good for protection." Jooheon mused. "How'd they change so much?"
Changkyun quickly snapped out of his memories. "After the nuclear war and the effects of ozone depletion, all the radiation left on earth altered the genes of several animal species, including us. Our ancestors weren't as physically able and required more food, water, sleep, and warmth than be need now. That's not all that changed the animals either. All the plants dying due to the change in atmospheric makeup messing with the photosynthesis process meant all the herbivores died, and all the herbivores dying meant less food for the carnivores and omnivores. This meant that only the most brutal of animals survived in the end, leaving us with the unpleasant batch we have now."
"Jesus, Changkyun. Drop the bullshit science talk and speak normally. What the hell are carnivores and omnivores?" Gunhee was always the least tactful of the three.
"You tell me to drop the science talk, yet you totally understand the most scientific parts of what I just said and ask for clarification on carnivores and herbivores?" Sometimes it confused Changkyun, what the other two knew or didn't know. How could someone understand the complexities of what nuclear war did to the planet, but not understand a simple classification of animals?
"Nuclear war, ozone depletion, and dying plants are common knowledge, we get a speech on that shit every year." It was hard to deny that Jooheon had a point. They lived in a world of carnivores so it wasn't necessary for them to learn the difference, but they had the effects of nuclear radiation and ozone depletion drilled into their heads year after year.
"Carnivores are meat eaters, the majority of the animals on earth now are carnivores. Omnivores eat both meat and plants. Humans are the only omnivores left."
Satisfied with what he'd learned so far, Gunhee rolled back onto his back.
"It's hard to imagine a world where animals were less of a threat."
"Yeah, feels like all we know." Jooheon agreed.
Changkyun sighed, silently turning back to the carcasses he'd been gutting before he got distracted.
Gunhee continued his train of thought. "Can you imagine the people that could still be with us? The entire clusters of people that'd still be alive?"
Changkyun's grip tightened on his knife.
"Like clusters 5, 108, 73, 69 - " Changkyun clenched his jaw harder with each number Jooheon rattled off. Neither Jooheon nor Gunhee noticed, and Gunhee continued listing.
" - 82, 41, 16 - " Changkyun's gutting of the animals was getting sloppier. Jooheon continued numbering.
" - 24, 50, 93 - " Changkyun tried to control the rapidly increasing pace of his breathing. Gunhee picked up where Jooheon had left off.
"3- " Jooheon interrupted Gunhee with a pointed look, jerking his head towards Changkyun. Gunhee shut up immediately. Changkyun thrust his knife into the surface he'd been working on.
"Cluster 37. You can say it out loud if you want to. It's alright."
Changkyun was still turned away from the other two, but his tense muscles signalled that it was anything but alright to bring it up.