Everyone shook their heads.
"Great. Striving forward together," he said in dismissal.
"For the good of the population," everyone chanted back with extra enthusiasm.
I thumbed through the instructions quickly. There was a lot about protocol and what to do in case of an emergency. As far as I could gather the message was to radio back if anything went wrong. Then there was a lengthy reminder about the risks of contamination and our duty to the safety of the population. Blah blah blah. I shut the booklet and Taylor collected our pack while I studied our route on the GPS.
"Seeing as you're so insanely manly now, I'll let you carry that." I smiled and started heading south, trusting Taylor's long legs to help him catch up.
Within moments he fell into pace next to me just as we crested a hill. My mouth fell open.
The stark landscape suddenly gave way to a valley, filled with the strange box-shaped buildings. They were all about three or four times as tall as me but no more than that.
"Is this where they lived?" Taylor asked.
"I guess so. How many people do you reckon they housed? They look big enough for fifteen," I said, studying the small buildings.
"Or more - maybe even twenty? Are they like little apartment blocks? How are they split? I only see one door," Taylor said.
"The GPS says we have another mile to walk before we reach our search area," I said, glancing at it.
"Okay. Let's get going then." Taylor grabbed my hand and led me down into the valley, nearly at a run. I laughed as a rush of adrenaline flooded my veins and hurried to keep up with his longer stride.
We didn't keep up the pace for long. There was too much to look at. The buildings continued in rows on either side of us, clearly built around the roads we were walking down.
It felt weird to walk on broken concrete instead of smooth glass and I kept stumbling on the rough terrain.
The structures were all different shapes and sizes and stood alone with big patches of empty, dust-filled space around them. It was beautiful and strange and so open, I couldn't think of a place more different from the city I'd grown up in.
It was impossible to imagine the way people must have lived before. With the sky open above them and clean, fresh air flowing unfiltered around them. There were no rules about where you could go or when. They didn't have to worry about walking for twenty minutes just to find out a building had reached its capacity and you couldn't go in.
They didn't have to get permission to buy food for guests or spend the night at a friend's house. They probably didn't have to be poked and prodded by doctors every month or injected with contraceptives even though you were adamant you didn't need them. I doubted they even had to get permission to have babies.
There was a plastic sign in front of one house that read 'for sale'. I frowned as I looked at it.
"What's for sale?" I asked.
Taylor glanced at it too. He kicked the ground beneath the post that held it in place then looked beyond it to the building.
"Maybe the house?" he asked doubtfully.
"You think they could pick where they lived?" I asked.
"Why not? There's plenty of options," Taylor shrugged.
I bit my lip as I considered it and Taylor lead me on again. My parents had been promoted twice while I was growing up. Both times we had been escorted to a new apartment on a higher floor. When I was sent to live on forty, I was escorted there too. They even moved our things for us. We never had a choice. I couldn't imagine having a choice.
In front of a lot of the houses were rusted metal vehicles with fraying seats inside them. They sat on wheels which had deflated and corroded. The rubber was the only thing that still held its colour. Everything else was faded and ruined but the tyres were pitch black.
"Cars," I said, pausing to look at one more closely.
"Huh?" Taylor tore his eyes away from one of the houses to follow my gaze.
"That's why the road is so big: for the cars." I pointed but Taylor still looked blank. He'd never taken as much interest in Old World classes as I did. "They used them to get around. Like the Warden buggies, but bigger."
They didn't look anything like the images I'd studied; shiny vehicles that zipped along at high speeds on big, rubber wheels. The decaying remains they left behind after nearly a hundred years were barely recognisable.
"What's this?" Taylor asked, walking up to a large, brown column standing alone in front of one of the houses.