We drank from the same troughs. And when it didn’t rain—and it didn’t rain often, because it was a wasteland—the water was rationed. One year, the drought was so bad that the wells dried up and all the cattle on base died, and so did half the slaves. I lived by drinking puddles and licking condensation off of the moisture generators and ignoring how disgusting and scummy the water was. It was awful. Some days I was so thirsty that I wanted to die.
