Flick’s eyes twitched open as the cold sweat on his brow began to seep over his eyelids. He carefully got up from his patchwork bed, feeling the stitches and checking the cracking wooden frame to see if he was truly awake. Luckily, this time, he was and he breathed a little lighter knowing that it was simply the dawn of another day. Shaken, yet not surprised, he sat in his own middling confusion, recollecting all the times this dream had came to him over the past year.

  “WOULD YOU BE QUIET MAN!” A shrill voice sounded from down the hall.

  Flick snapped out of his brief spell and quickly put on clothes, fashioning himself with a look of professionalism that he was naturally unable to wear convincingly. He hastily threw on his shirt and jumped into his crumpled-up jeans that lived in a dishevelled pile, along with all the other discarded clothing he wore. Fastening his belt loosely about his waist, he flung his favourite black jacket around his shoulders in one smooth motion. Just as he finished tying the last knot on his well worn shoes, the footsteps that were quickly approaching finally arrived at his bedroom door, and an old, withered Miss Witcherton burst through it, staring through straight Flicks fake performance.

  “Oh!” Flick said, making his voice sound as passive as possible, “Good morning! I didn’t realise you were awake yet, I’ve been up since…”

  Her aged eyes narrowed.

  A chill ran down Flick’s spine, “Good morning?”

  “DON’T GOOD MORNING ME FLICK!”

  Flick yet again was faced with a shocking, but not at all surprising result of his nightmare.

  She buried her fingers into what was left of her grey hair and continued, “Will you EVER shut up in the morning man!”

  “Okay, I can’t help when I have a nightmare miss,”

  “I. DON’T. CARE.”

  Her voice still carried the same fury he remembered from childhood,

  “Flick, I’m only in my…” she stopped briefly to count on her fingers, “Fifty’s! But your CONSTANT noise is ageing me like a damn fly on the wall!” Just as she said this, her hand reached into her back pocket and pulled out the same brand of cigarettes that she smoked 10 years prior. Flick took no time at all to point out the obvious irony.

  She scoffed, “I taught you that damn word you brat, you should respect you foster parents more”

  “Hey, I try as much as I can Lu- “

  Her ears twitched. Slowly, her eyes began to burn holes into Flicks, daring him to finish his sentence.

  Realising his own mistake he quickly backtracked. “… Miss Witcherton”

  “Good move boy,” she smirked, “I may be at the dip end of my life nowadays but these hands can still break necks like yours!

  “Anyway, regardless of how much you try it’s just not cutting it. So, either A: sort out your stupid dreams, or B: get someone to tie you down before you sleep, now I personally could assist you option B…”

  “Oh! Would you look at that!” He hastily pointed towards his own alarm clock, something that was proven ineffective in its purpose many nights ago.

  Most days his dreams would do the job anyway, and in the times that they didn’t Miss Witcherton was always on standby. With a spare pencil cup or two of school grade, lead-based ammunition to boot.

  He kept his eyes locked on the alarm, scared to see if his old teacher was buying his ruse or not, “My boss is gonna be reaaaaal mad with me if I don’t get there on time so imma just…”

  Witcherton stewed in her anger, as she did an innumerable times with her foster ‘child’. She debated keeping him behind and getting him fired as punishment, but instead simply pointed towards the door.

  “coolthankyousomuchbye” the words collapsed from Flick’s mouth as he bumbled through the hallway and outside.

  He carefully shut the door behind him and breathed a sigh of relief taking a few steps down the hill to look out at his home’s bustling countenance.

  The void-chilled snow kissed the dome of the pillar, its perfect glass surface rejecting the ice’s advances, containing its own innards from the cold outside. It was flawless, always had been too, decades and centuries came, went and yet the glass remained stagnant and clear. From the cluttered streets below you could still just see the stars themselves, glinting behind the sky’s projection. moving in those slow waltz’s across the air as the clump of rock, that was now the earth, span heinously and directionless through their dance.

  This chaos became condensed beneath the dome of the pillar, it magnified the ferocity of space with its beauty and concentrated it on the packed buildings. Each one was different, unique in their own distortions of form and function, like plants or trees they spiralled in every which direction.

  A slight gust would probably knock a bolt loose here or a sheet panel there, but with how interconnected each building was it would take a hurricane of sorts to dislodge any such one from their standing. The children of the pillar knew this well and took turns swinging and bounding off of the pipes and walls that fractured in wild ways. flurries of footsteps and laughter tunnelled past windows, past people, as they slung their path through the complex alleys.

  And at the very front of these orphaned packs, the one with which wind followed him like a pet, was always Flicker Torchwood.

  Those days were long behind Flick now though, the walls became more cramped and pipes became almost suffocating to be besides, despite how nimble he still appeared to be. And even with the buildings shifting location every other year along with the fresh faces that seemed to falter within days on one another. Flick would hardly change. He practically refused to, clinging to his sprawling jungle of childlike wonder with fervent desperation. The only thing that had been altered, in his mind, was his age.

  He shook himself out of his loose recollection of the golden days and took one last glance at the school before he set off. It had only been twelve years since Miss Witcherton adopted him, once she saw that he had no home. And it had only been ten years from the setting in which his infectious nightmare was placed within with such accuracy, except for the giant explosion at the end that seemed to seep into every dream he had.

  Flick could never quite wrap his head around why this returned to him on so many occasions, all that he knew is that in his now twenty-two-year-old life it only served as a minor nuisance amongst the usual pains of the adult experience. The pains which Flick paid no mind to.

  With the constant upbeat demeanour of which Flick usually carried himself with, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his favourite music playing device. Yellow rimmed and well-worn from time and his own occasional clumsiness, harnessing all the power of music from humanities ancient years.

  He toggled through to his favourite song and began his descent down the same disjointed steps as usual on his way to his job for another day of delivering Carbon ice to Simon at the furnace. The streets were much more alive in the late morning than they were in the usual afternoon haze of his dream, but they still carried the same, headache inducing complexities.

  As he rhythmically walked by the crowded streets the smell of the nearby vendors reminded him that he did not eat breakfast, and that further reminded him of just how late he actually was. Spurred into action he began to jog slightly, forced to tear his eyes away from the faces of persuading, crisp pastries as he made his way out of the west commercial district of pillar 7.

  The short, cobbled together, houses of the west side provided him with a direct view of his goal, the centre of the pillar. There, an elevator would take him down into the floor for him to get his equipment ready, preparing him for the unforgiving cold outside. Although the other workers could only wait so long before descending. After that the elevator would take a whole half hour to rise again, and at that point Flick would be promptly screwed.

  Utilising his childhood experience growing up in the alleys, he threaded through the gaps in piping with ease. He had travelled this route a thousand times over, the finest medal of his tendency to be late, and preferred it over any other. The slower, casual road could provide him with the morning scenery he craved, but this path gave him something nothing else could come close to. More than anything, being apart of the hustle and bustle in the pillar was what Flick loved, just like in his childhood where he felt welded to it. And, coincidentally, the late path just so happened to provide, if only for a short while, a way for him to be connected to everything again. After just five minutes of travel, he finally ended up at the civilised and clean, centre of the pillar.

  The atmosphere was distinctly different, as always, somehow the air felt smoother here than it was back at the west side despite both sections of the pillar being underneath the same dome. Flick could never quite get over just how different this area was in comparison to his home. No smells of street food nor any narrow pathways leading to nowhere. No still sleeping bodies planted on shop corners or kids throwing lug nuts like small dodge-balls. Just semi-organised people among a series of colourful shops, that sincerely contrasted the blank canvas of entertainment that was the west end of the pillar.

  Although, according to the reports of drunken bar hoppers that frequented Flicks home district, even this paled in comparison to the lush streets of the east side, of which Flick had only experienced through stories from his adoptive mother/teacher/landlord.

  “MOVE ALONG NOW PEOPLE” a booming voice heralded, cutting through the white noise of the crowds murmurs, “ONE WAY ONLY, YOU KNOW THE DRILL!”

  In these parts order was necessary, without it the roads would bend against the buildings from the humans they carried. One side had to flow in one direction, and the other must always go opposite. Stillness was allowed, when it was under coffee shop umbrellas or just in front of store windows, but never in the roads. The rules here mattered and they were to be adhered to.

  Flick quickly found himself with his head down in a fervent march, aware of his own lack of self-control when it came to the centre pillar. If even the tiniest glint of something cool caught his eye, not even the booming voice of the traffic officer would stop him from turning. he usually never had any time to visit the shops and entertainment here anyway, and today was no exception.

  But even with his eyes fixed on the ground the infectious energy of centre life called to him, just out of the corners of his eyes he could see the smiles on the people’s faces, and it tugged at every fibre of his curiosity.

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  What was it that they were so happy about? His thoughts surged.

  Maybe there’s an event going on that I should go to?

  Or it could even be a new shop that opened up!

  All of these thoughts compounded within Flicks mind as he walked along his pre-set path to the elevator, only further compounding his own desperation for this new side of life. Eventually, Flicks brief journey within the centre pillar reached its conclusion once he glanced up from the ground and found himself standing at the gate leading down to the huge elevator in the floor. The huge elevator that was now beginning its descent.

  He vaulted over the gate, barely managing to struggle his jacket over the metal that jutted out from the top and sprinted for the closing shutters that were now only the length of about a small buildings worth. His legs practically carried themselves over the distance, making his appearance as though he was gliding along the heavily textured metal flooring. All while his eyes burned with an incredible determination to not trip over his own feet, of which he had a nasty habit of doing.

  The people on the elevator platform where entirely out of sight now, vanished into the depths of the pillar, but the shutters hadn’t closed just yet. Their metal lids were slowly reaching each other though, closing up the hole in the ground inch by inch. As an act of desperation He ran along the steel of the shutters themselves, as they began to close Flick off to his only source of financial stability. But just as they were about to shut for good, Flick dropped to the ground and slid feet first into the now tiny gap, barely scraping himself through.

  Managing to land inside the circular shaped elevator platform without falling into anyone was probably some kind of miracle, the whole twenty-meter-wide space was filled from wall to wall with dishevelled workers who simply looked at Flick with stoic expressions of expectation.

  Flick panted, then raised his hand weakly, “Sup guys!”

  With that, they all turned to each other and laughed, their voices echoing off of the metallic walls creating a sound that could barely be registered as human. They each took their turn to collapse into each other, occasionally exchanging money while wiping stray tears, entirely satisfied by the dumbest possible response from someone like Flick.

  He smiled awkwardly in place before the elevator finally shifted itself into action. The moment it did the laughter stopped, and the atmosphere became almost immediately heavier. In an instant everyone’s faces turned from each other to stare off into nothingness, random spots on the wall here or the grid-lines on the floor there.

  Flick was still adjusting himself to make sure nothing was lost in the journey. Shoving his headphones in his pockets along with his hands, anticipating the elevators first of several stops on its journey to the bottom of the pillar. Of which, Flick would only have to get off the elevator for two; the stop coming up and the last. As anticipated the platform violently stopped, causing everyone on it to be flung a couple inches off of the floor. The metal heaved against its break mechanism and filled the corners with sparks, however no single person on it fell over or stumbled. Every man and woman on the platform had countless hours memorising each stop, each rigid bump, the journey down was like breathing air. Flick was no different.

  A light flickered overhead in a dim, unsaturated red, that spoke “Retrieve”. One of many floors dedicated to rows of lockers, each one containing the equipment and personal belongings of the number assigned to them.

  Everyone began to hop over the railings that remained the sole “Safety Feature” of the elevator, separating the passengers from the speeding metal walls on their descent. Flick awkwardly made his way to his personal container, something that on the surface was completely mundane and sterile, and opened it to reveal the colourful stickers that coated the inside door. Some were worn with age whilst others were still glistening as though placed the day prior (as they probably were). Whilst Flick saw this as something endearing, something reflective of his personality, it was evident by his surrounding co-workers that they all saw it differently. As a vain way of preserving any sense of childlike innocence that Flick may have held onto.

  Flick hated it, the way that their eyes would naturally lower at the sight of them, as if disappointed somehow. However, based off of his own stubbornness to peel the stickers away, he clearly thought the same thing deep down.

  “You’re gonna get caught one of these days, lad”

  206 stood just behind Flick, arms crossed, and eyes playfully locked onto his black bomber jacket. 206 wasn’t his actual name, just his position in the workforce. One less than Flick. The number was the only thing that he could ever remember about the guy, well, that and the razor-sharp layer of stubble that he sported with pride.

  Flick clicked his tongue and padded through his locker aimlessly, “Nah don’t worry ‘bout it, they’ll never find these bad boys-”

  “Not the stickers, Flicky,” 206 jutted his elbow out towards something inside Flicks locker. The item of question was his gloves, a flashy pair that were very clearly not supposed to be the bright red that they now sported.

  “O-oh! those things!” he let out a forced chuckle to hide his flustered expression “Well as long as I keep ‘em in my pocket I’m sure they won’t- “

  “I CALL DIBS ON THE JACKET ONCE HES DEAD!” screamed a far-off worker that Flick barely even knew

  “HEY NO FAIR! I POINTED THE THING OUT FIRST!” retorted another worker who Flick didn’t even know existed until just now.

  The distant bickering from a couple lockers down was quickly growing as several workers began discussing their own personal agreements on Flick’s personal equipment, once he was inevitably caught anyway. Or dead, the distinction made little difference in the long run.

  “SHUT UP THE LOT OF YA!” 206’s voice practically commanded everyone into hesitant silence,

  “We all know who’s getting Flicky’s jacket, now don’t we?”

  Flick was, at this point, shrinking into himself. Not necessarily out of fear, he was more than used to the other’s jeers, but from the sheer awkwardness that the situation provided. 206’s arms finally unfolded, and he took his place next to Flick to prepare for the job.

  “Relax kid! Were just messing with ya, we do it eeeeevery time for the young’uns like you” He let out a practised chuckle,

  “Like me?” Flick shot a quick glance around the room in a vain attempt to spot these like-aged people. “I don- “

  “There’s a reason why you’re the only one this time round,” 206 eerily smirked at Flick before reflexively resetting his face back to its stoic setting. “…I’m sure the next’ll be the same too”

  Flick went back to putting his equipment, entirely misinterpreting 206’s genuine insight as a direct threat, and quickly tried to ignore its presence from consuming his ever-growing curiosity.

  Sticking his hand deep into the locker, just past his stickers and the red gloves, he rummaged for his ladybird. This was the key to his survival outside the pillar, a skin-tight layer of heat absorbent fabric that was compressed within a black, bug shaped capsule that grafted itself to anything it was placed upon. This small pod was so ingrained into the pillar and its citizens that at this point, no one would be surprised if the homeless population each had their own personal ladybird for emergencies.

  Flick swiftly grabbed the capsule that fitted snugly into his palm and placed it underneath his shirt, dead centre on his bare chest. With a brief moment of pressure applied onto the device, it made a mechanical click, and suddenly the material contained within shot out across Flick’s skin. All at once and almost instantaneously, his skin was contained within a thin cocoon of insulating black fabric, protection from the freezing void that lay outside. Everything except his head, that was to be covered last.

  After adjusting the ladybirds fabric, shuffling in place to jostle any knots and bumps, he went on to the rest of his routine. He slipped both gloves on and locked them into place, clipping his dog tag to the little indents on the wrists.

  They were chunky by design, with huge pad looking things on each segment of his hand with gaps where they were prone to flex and bend, like at his joints. Flick lovingly called them tank gloves, he figured they were closer to that than anything else.

  Then he moved onto the final steps. The only things left to adorn was his helmet and holster. Company tradition was to have the holster on the right hip, but Flick wasn’t one to follow tradition. He usually fixed his in such a way that it laid horizontally along his lower back, purely for style and nothing else. The company let him get away with this, for some reason, but they would definitely not approve of his glove’s colour change. Nor would they probably accept the modifications to his helmet, despite all his good efforts in hiding it.

  Finally, he grabbed his fusion cutter from its stand as well as his helmet and made his way back to the elevator. He huddled low and made sure to nuzzle himself into the middle, to minimise his chances of being noticed as the elevator fell back into motion yet again. Flick had kept his secret equipment for this long, he didn’t plan on losing them now.

  After about five stops the elevator slammed into the bottom floor, with considerably less people on it from when it first began. A good thirty or forty people had left the elevator, replaced with hulking machines designed for transporting the carbon ice, that hummed with anticipation. A lanky man dressed in a deep blue cotton stitched suit stepped out before the main gate, dead centre in front of the remaining workers. Clipboard pinched between the base of his palm and his forearm like a lectern, ready to give the daily safety breakdown of the company.

  The man cleared his throat before starting, “As you all know, outside the pillar lies thousands of miles of carbon snow. In case you don’t understand what I’m getting at, it is cold outside.” His eyes glazed over the room half-heartedly, “If you haven’t already, please activate your ladybird now”

  Everyone stood still, practically looking past the man at the door behind him.

  “Good. Now, your oxygen supply only lasts for 4 hours before it needs to be refilled, if you run out of oxygen chances are you will not be saved. If you run out of oxygen that means that everyone else has probably run out as well and are most likely getting refilled as you choke and die...”

  No one flinched at this revelation, it was almost common sense to not run out of the one thing keeping you alive, although unfortunately it still had to be said. Too many people tended to walk just a fraction too far, not giving them enough time to return. The statement wasn’t necessarily an instruction, just a warning for liability’s sake.

  “… I would like everyone to now check if they have their three fuel rods for the cutters on hand.”

  Flick always found it strange how they use the cutters to cut out the carbon ice and yet they use the same carbon as fuel. He had a reoccurring fantasy of his where he would use the snow on the ground to light his cutter in an emergency, but this was something that he could never get away with doing legally. Plus he had no clue whether it was safe to do or not, for all he knew it could blow up a the mere touch of snow.

  He patted his pockets confirming his fuel’s position.

  “With that out of the way you should all know about the recent news about six disease. It goes without saying, but from now on when you come back inside from you shifts you should thoroughly shower off all traces of carbon ice possible.”

  Despite the soul shattering cold of the void outside of the pillar, extremophiles of a microscopic scale still somehow managed to thrive. Only recently have these extremophiles been causing problems in the public’s health, making the lifeblood of the pillars all over the globe potentially tainted with a nigh unkillable microorganism. It fought back against every kind of modern medicine and yet was almost undetectable, appearing seemingly out of nowhere as if willed by the earth itself. It was un-creatively named the six disease, the plague of the modern era.

  This wasn’t exactly on the forefront of Flick’s mind, but the constant reminder of its presence in his daily life continued to disturb him, and he was finding it harder every day to ignore it.

  Once the supervisor was finished, he calmly waked off, allowing the gates to be opened for the workers to begin. The man might as well had been faceless, as the moment he left the room everyone unanimously forgot who he was. Or if he was the same person that showed up the day before for that matter.

  As the first gate began to open, a blaring, single tone siren went off, signalling that the helmets should be equipped immediately. The sound of clicking went off all over the place, as one by one workers faces vanished behind black domes. Flick was one of the first to do so in an attempt to hide the mod he installed into the heads-up display.

  The helmets were usually just curved screens, stretching from the crown of ones head all the way down to their chin. All the technology was tucked neatly at the back, with sparse thingies and doohickies on the underside of the jaw. All in all, just plain black domes. The kind of plain Flick hated.

  Once his helmet was locked in place and completely airtight, he clicked a button on his temple. The LED curved screen on the front of his face lit up with two glowing eyes that followed his own, providing an extra level of expression to his helmet that everyone else’s didn’t have. Despite the other workers dispositions about Flick’s way of modifying technology, especially in such a juvenile way, a good handful appreciated them. Some even looked somewhat impressed, with his glowing set of eyes bringing a much-needed reprieve from the gloomy mentions of six disease.

  Once the first gate was opened the vehicles hovered in front of the second gigantic door, along with all the tiny faceless workers hobbling behind.

  The air began to vanish around them as the gap between the gate widened more and more, they were about to step foot on the real earth. For only seven hours, they will be able to see the real earth, and it couldn’t possibly be any more alien.