i remember the first day out of the installation better than most. we'd been locked up there for weeks, then months, under the impression that the bombs would fall at any moment. eventually we grew cynical, if compliant, for it was easier to keep one's head on straight when questioning leadership - while still obeying them. i knew the story about the radical resistor - the people in charge will chop of the head that rises up the highest, so it's easier to lay low and work in quiet.

once we realized that leadership's main goal was to turn us against each other with profit in mind, we snapped. it wasn't easy at first, because we still had our differences and found it hard to ignore them. a few of us realized that ignoring these flaws and defects of character isn't the right way to go - we must accept them and love each other for who we are, otherwise we're just as bad as leadership. that's what enabled us to break out, and then we found a jarring absence of bombs. or any real threat at all.

when i first stepped back out into those pine forests, my brush with peace was a foreign introduction. i remember there being an impenetrable quiet, threatened only by the songs of birds and the gentle rustling of pine needles far above our heads. or the distant cries of squirrels, or the dizzying stares of innocent does and fawns. i remember falling to my knees. i remember knowing peace.