"Anyone has the right to stand for election," I said firmly.
"But would they have the funds in place or the connections required to run a successful campaign?"
I looked at him with my mouth hanging open ready to argue further but I couldn't think of anything to say. My mind raced back and forth and I tried to reject his arguments but couldn't. "Probably not," I conceded finally.
"So the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful and the rest of you work as hard as you can to try and reach the top floors whilst never really having a chance of making it up there." He smiled knowingly at me.
I frowned. I had to admit I'd never really heard of anyone making it very far beyond their original living area.
"Don't you know that the so-called contamination wasn't something that just happened entirely by accident?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I frowned.
"I mean people are the reason we're in this mess. I'm probably not the best person to explain it." He shook his head and turned away.
"Can you try?" I reached out a hand and laid it on his wrist. I had only ever heard one explanation for what had happened at the end of the old world and I wondered how much Coal's understanding would differ from mine.
Coal turned to look at me again. The point where our skin touched sent sparks down my arm. He pulled his hand away but shifted a little closer to me so that our legs were only millimetres apart.
"It had to do with there being too many people in the world, so there wasn't enough food." He frowned, concentrating. "Scientists developed chemicals to give to the plants to make them grow bigger and faster, but it went wrong." I nodded, I knew that much already. "They were supposed to spend years carrying out tests but they didn't. They just started pumping it into farms all over the world. Instead of focusing on the problems that were being caused by the effects of the chemical, like the creatures and plants growing like crazy and becoming completely uncontrollable, they threw more effort into making the cities secure and finishing the Walls.
We think that they knew overpopulation was the world's main problem so they weren't exactly worried about something happening that could eliminate a good portion of that problem."
"You mean they knew what could happen?" I gasped.
"Maybe. It certainly seems convenient that all of those Walls were already well underway before the crisis."
"Why did people think they were building them?" I asked, wondering how they could have gotten away with such a thing.
"Counter terrorist measures. At the time, they said they needed to create safe zones within Walls for people to get to in the case of an attack; the cities were already highly populated and lent themselves to being altered into a space ready for a massive population quarantine.
Then they selected people to live within The Wall. Supposedly it was a random ballot with some exceptions made for people who had particularly important skills. Though in the case of an attack, they said everyone would be protected inside.
They kept the news stories about the walls and the terrorists separate to the stories about the food crisis so not many people saw the link."
"But if they were ready to shelter people in the cities then why did so many people die?" I asked. It was common knowledge that in the old world there had been billions of people whereas now the cities held only a fraction of that number.
"The changes they made were only meant to affect certain plants but whatever they did mutated and soon all of the plant life was contaminated and it started growing quicker than it could be cut back. Then the animals that ate the plants started to change too, and some of the people. Eventually the world had been affected so drastically that it was unrecognisable."
"What happened then?" I whispered, I knew the version that I'd been told but I wanted to hear his.
"They became something less - civilised, more primal. I don't know really. Our Elders say they lost reason
and only acted on instinct, you know food, shelter, food again. And they would fight to the death for whatever it was that they wanted. They aren't people anymore, they're like a different species."
"Are they still out here?" I shifted uncomfortably at the thought.
"Yes, they live in parts of the forest far away from any civilisation. No one in their right mind would willingly go near a Creeper nest.
Everyone headed to the cities to escape. They ran for the protection they had been promised when their taxes were paying for The Walls to be built. But the gates were shut."
"How could they do such a thing?" I shuddered.
"Things settled down out here eventually. It hasn't always been a negative outcome. Take Kaloo, for instance. She's bigger and stronger than the old dogs would have been but I see no disadvantage to it.
A lot of animals gained intelligence, some of the most formidable predators that live out here used to hunt alone, now practically everything hunts in packs. They all had to change in order to survive."
"So why don't we change when we eat the food now?" I asked.