Antecedent aTod

Abruptly forced from the giant city's walls, the Latera and the boy were of the first generation in thousands of years to step foot to the world outside. Without any better choice, they joined the escaping people in a flood that had nowhere to go but down and out and away from the towering city's massive footprint on the land. The day the lights died in the Giant City's halls it was no longer safe to live in, and those not near enough to its outside edges would perish stumbling in the dark when the breathable air could no longer find its way through the winding corridors into the people's hungry lungs. The boy, child of 7, and the infant Latera were of the lucky few to find a gap in the hurried billions that washed as a wave would from a tear in the perimeter of the Giant's City. They felt their first winter that day, and in the years to come would feel, see, do, and live so much more than any human had in the millennia since The Giant had arrived to keep us safe.