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The year is 2882.
Our teachers say that six-hundred years ago, our world was changed by what history books call the Second Mechanized Conflict, but most of the younger generations simply know it as the Long-Ago War.
Even though only our books and computers remember it, pieces of the war are all around us. Ruins filled with rusting tanks, broken guns, and crashed warplanes litter our world. Most skyscrapers have crumbled into the overgrowth, but some still stand.
Yet, above them all, still, are the Husks, the mecha which, along with their pilots, struck down humanity's largest foes. None of them have moved for generations.
My friends and I live in a town called Column, named after the large radio tower in its center, and surrounded by forested mountains. Our books tell us that pre-war cities held millions of people, but Column only has a a few hundred at best, like most settlements these days. We still use phones and computers and electricity, like people did back then, but we don't use robots or automation for anything anymore, and cars are reserved for important business.
In the spring, once it starts getting warm, the adults give all 15-year-olds their first bicycles. It's like a graduation ceremony, even if we're expected to be in school for several more years.
A few of my friends want to celebrate by going to Husk Valley, where tons of mecha remain, grown-over by plants and trees. The adults say we're not supposed to go there, but other kids have in the past. As long as no one gets hurt, no one gets punished.
The Husks haven't moved for hundreds of years. Nothing ever happens there.
I'm not worried at all.
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