"The ancient city of Las Vegas was only one example. Of course, there were those for whom the lack of appeal of the desert or other inhospitable region was considered an advantage. This was possibly because they wanted to avoid the general populace—whom they believed would avoid the area—either because they wanted solitude or because they had other more nefarious intentions that would have been considered less than seemly in more heavily populated areas. Ironically, though, many of these settlements thrived and became bustling cities, perhaps because their existence alone made them appealing."
"The locations that had no appeal thrived because people thought someone living there made them appealing?" Jessica13 asked. That didn't seem right to her, but then, there were a lot of things about the Cities-That-Were that she still didn't understand. Most of how people lived back when they had so much more was foreign to her, having lived in a bunker where every drop of water was contained and recycled, and nothing was wasted.
She had seen areas where they had left the water flowing out in the open so it would all evaporate into the atmosphere and generally be lost. Of course, it would rain after a while and replenish it that way, but they couldn't be sure about when or where that rain would come from.
Humans were odd, odd creatures in those times. She realized that she still had so much to learn and reminded herself that adversity had changed the way people lived. Perhaps she would have been the same had she lived a hundred or so years earlier.
Windchime finished working on his mech, climbed into it, and followed her up the side of the hill toward the top.
"How many people do you think lived around these parts?" Jessica13 asked after they’d proceeded for a while in silence.
As it turned out, even with the extra limbs, the hybrid Windchime had put together still struggled to reach the top. Its lighter, leaner build seemed to dig its boots a little deeper into the sandy soil rather than provide a flatter surface to offset the weight a little like Mini did. Each had their own peculiarities, and it meant they made similar progress.
"Not many, given the soil," he responded when she turned to look at him at the top. "They would have used this area to farm other animals—the kind they ate in larger numbers since they're the only ones that could survive on the greenery that lives around here."
"Why would—" she started to ask but shook her head. It sounded wasteful to feed animals they would simply eat, but waste seemed to define what she had come to expect from how people lived then. Still, she was a little reluctant to voice it. A part of her knew her upbringing had been sheltered and her beliefs shaped by what she’d since discovered were lies—or at least some of them were lies. She hadn’t had much time to sift through them all to decide which were or weren’t.
"Why would what?"
She shrugged. "It seems a little wasteful, is all. If they had paid a little more attention to the soil, they could have made it more fertile. It would have meant they could grow more food to feed more people."
"I think the point was less about the amount of food and more about the quality," Windchime explained as they began their descent. "I don’t know too much about it, but humans aren’t meant to only eat plant-based food. Meat and animal products like…milk, which I heard they got from cows and maybe goats, have nutrients we need that we don’t get from plants. We eat as healthy as we can, but plants can’t replace what animals provide."
She frowned as she considered this. “So what we eat isn’t really healthy?”
“Well…like I say, I don’t know too much, but I wouldn’t say it’s not healthy. Maybe less healthy is closer to the truth. We could have more kinds of nutrients available if we had animals, and it might be less wasteful to let them eat the vegetation than trying to make the soil more fertile.”
Jessica13 nodded because it made sense, even though a part of her still struggled to move past her rigid perceptions of what was wasteful and what wasn’t. If they had the resources, why not use them to generate more quality food—the kind that would apparently nourish them better—while they continued their existing strict food management?
"It still seems wasteful, though," she commented, “although maybe it’s because we have no animals and it seems wasteful to use them for food if we did.”
"I think our problem is we believe waste was a way of life back in the day," Windchime replied and hopped lightly down the short distance remaining to reach the bottom before she did. "We think those who were the most wasteful were seen as better off, or something."
"That's not entirely inaccurate," Mini interjected. “But many people in what we could call the last days became more conscious of waste and worked hard to avoid it. Not everyone simply abused the resources and made no effort to manage them.”
Jessica13 let him take control and jump them beside Windchime. The man scrambled out of his mech again, landed with a grunt, and remained crouched as he studied the soil in front of him.
"What are you doing?" she asked. While she knew it was relatively safe to be out of the mech but old habits didn’t simply vanish overnight. She still felt more comfortable in or on the Minato, and no amount of curiosity would change that.
"I’m inspecting the soil."
"I thought you already said it was no good."
He looked at her and ran his fingers across his clean-shaven jawline before he picked up a fistful of the dirt beneath his feet. "One can never be too sure. Besides,
