Human touch, one of the most comforting sensations we can experience. It soothes, releases oxytocin, creates compassion, relieves stress. Apparently.

Maybe once this was the case, maybe there was a time when people could breathe, and stretch, and reach. But not anymore. The population had grown and grown and grown.

To provide enough shelter, governments around the world knocked everything down - museums, sports stadiums, palaces, large houses, small cottages, trees, barns - everything. They built high rises in their place, but these were not split into flats (that would be a waste of space) but rooms. The rooms, 3 metres wide by 3 metres long, have 10 occupants assigned to them by the Spacefinders.

Once the population had reached 1 trillion the world had to close down. No more restaurants, travel or dancing. There was simply not enough space left for that.

Food is served 3 times a day in halls filled with long, thin tables and benches. Residents sit elbow to elbow with their neighbour and back to back with the person behind. Signs hang on the walls saying “NO EXCESSIVE MOVEMENT” to ensure people don’t injure those around them.

Food is limited, to avoid over eating and any space being taken up by excess fat on human bodies.

Toilets are long troughs where men, woman and children sit side by side to do their business. There’s no room for privacy these days.

Now, no-one works, not properly. One high rise at a time is selected to go the fields for one week. There they plant or harvest crops or work the land. That’s one week where people get to have some space. Not much mind you, but enough to move. Enough to bend, and reach and feel the air on their skin.

Human touch made Hannah feel sick. When you can’t escape something it becomes a prison. Human skin had become the walls of her cell. She could never escape it. Every sticky moment of contact with another human make her feel nauseas, which was every moment, so her nausea was constant. Hannah was born into this world, she had never known anything else, yet somehow she knew that this wasn’t the way people should live. She had heard too much about the old world from the older residents.

One morning her roommates and her had woken, as usual, by the alarm that came through the speakers fitted into each room. It was summer, so the room was hot, and the smell of bodies and their various odours was particularly strong this morning.

As they performed their normal morning dance of dressing - jostling and bustling, limbs tangling, and bending into each other as they squeezed on their assigned one piece jersey suits, a new and unfamiliar alarm sounded, followed by a crackly male voice.

“Block 5403, you have been selected for field duty. Please advance to the buses outside of your block after your morning meal”

Hannah, and her roommates headed to the food space on the ground floor. Each floor has three allocated times a day at which they eat their meals. Breakfasts begin at 2.30am and evening meals finish at 1 in the morning to provide enough time get each of the residents fed. They are given 1 hour to reach the food space, 10 minutes to eat their food, and one hour to return to their room. It takes an hour to descend to the ground floor from the 600th floor. Not only is it a long way up, but you have to allow for the inevitable slow moving shuffle of large quantities of people, waiting for lifts, and navigating the passing of bodies moving in each direction.

Today though, they would only have to descend. Hannah had heard about working in the fields. She had heard stories of hearing the sound of birds - colourful creatures that could fly in the sky, and ants, thousands of tiny things that lived on top of each other, much like humans but they lived underground in tunnels they build for themselves, or things called flowers that came in all shapes and colours and emitted wonderful smells that you couldn’t even dream of. She suspected this was all just fantasy though, it was all too far fetched to be real, surely?

After they ate, the whole block shuffled out into the tiny road and onto the buses. There is only one step between the door to the high rise and the step onto the buses, barely any time to feel the air or see the sky. The residents of block 5403 were piled into the hundred of buses that waited for them on the narrow, one way streets. There is not space for pavements in the world now, only buildings and roads just big enough for the buses, and the Spacefinders vans. The bus windows were blacked out to regulate the temperature and the seats were removed to cram people on. There were enough bodies to ensure that there was no room to fall. The journey was long. Hannah couldn’t tell how long but guessed that it was probably about 3 hours. She was nervous and excited with no idea what to expect from this unfamiliar place they were being sent to.

Eventually the bus stopped. A sense of anticipation filled the air. One by one, people stepped off. As Hannah neared the door she could hear an unusual sound. She realised what it was. Gasping and crying. What was she stepping into? Should she be afraid? Her heart was beating and her palms were sweating. She stared at her feet as she shuffled off the bus, afraid to look up. Slowly, she lifted her head, bracing herself for whatever unknown she was about to face. She gasped. She could see for miles, everything surrounding her was green and blue and gold. The sun on her face was warm and she closed her eyes. She felt like she was being touched by something, and opened her eyes to see who surrounded her. But there was no-one. The residents of block 5403 had spread into the green space before them. Each of them completely in awe of where they were. She felt something touch her again, and spun, looking for who it was. She heard someone chuckling near her, and turned to see an elderly man, leaning against the side of the bus. “It’s called wind” he said. And gave her a warm smile.

She looked up, into the vast blue sky above her, and saw it. A creature, soaring above her with absolute grace, it swooped and soured and chirped, the most beautiful sound Hannah had ever heard. “A bird” Hannah whispered to herself. And then she began to cry.