The Surface's End

by David Joel Stevenson

  “That's honestly a question that I'm not too sure of myself... I've been makin’ things since I was a boy, so people have been comin’ here for every odd and end you can think of. I figure if Brick and I weren't here, then somebody else'd pick up the slack and learn how to do it.

  “But – as far as I can think is that I can't make things that look quite as… Well, even after all these years, some of it still looks polished. I guess they could of just been real good at makin’ stuff, so folks started paying em to bring it over here to get the better, polished stuff.”

  Jonah wasn't necessarily satisfied with the answer. Why wouldn't people in America just get better at making the same stuff? So that they wouldn't have to use the long distance traveling machines to bring them over? Jonah didn't want to keep pressing, when it seemed like the answers to these questions weren't bringing him much clarity.

  “You never told me where you saw the word 'China,' though, Jonah,” Schultz said, remembering how they arrived on the subject.

  Jonah cleared his throat, a habit he had when he lied since he was a child. “Uh, yeah, I just saw it on something in your yard.” He didn't feel good about lying to Schultz, but he wasn't prepared to reveal what he had found without getting to explore it himself. “Under a bunch of other stuff – I could barely see it. I don't remember where, though...”

  “Hmm... Okay. Tell me if you see it again.”

  “Absolutely, sir.” Jonah put his hands on the handlebars of his bike, starting to wheel it silently out into the morning sun.

  Schultz again chuckled at the word choice.

  As he crossed the threshold to the outside, Jonah motioned toward the small metal ring leaned against the wall. “What would you use a ring like that for?”

  Schultz walked to where Jonah was standing and noticed the ring. “I read about it in an old book – this is called a Valve. People would use them to close water pipes, or sometimes even doors.”

  “Doors? How would you open it?”

  “You'd just turn it,” Schultz said, picking it up and motioning it counter-clockwise. “I brought this one in here because I was going to try to use it on my shop door just for fun. It was too rusty, though, and it takes too much effort to open. Figured it wasn't worth it to break a sweat just to get inside!”

  “Interesting...” Jonah crossed over the wooden boundary into the beaten path, feeling that he might have just found the answer to the reason for his visit. “Oh – how much for the wire fencing?”

  “Nah, you don't need to pay me for that. Only, make sure you bring me another piece of your mom's famous pie when y’all get some apples in.”

  “Thanks! For the wire, oil and your help, Mr. Schultz!”

  “Jonah – one of these days you're gonna stop calling me mister and sir!” He tried to stifle a grin, to act like it bothered him. “It's my pleasure, son. You know you're always welcome here.”

  .- .-- .- -.- .

  Rolling the now silent wheels of the bike across his yard, Jonah pictured in his mind the valve protruding from the surface of the Deathlands. He had a vision of the wheel turning, opening a door into a cave – a cave that housed some terrible or wonderful beast. Perhaps an endless breeding ground of animals. Maybe the reason the game had not been near his usual hunting spot is because they'd all found a different way into some watering hole below the Deathlands?

  Still, as much as he was ready to test out the theory of turning the valve, he had a handful of questions about what Schultz said. And about the story that Schultz had said his father would have to continue.

  Across the yard, Jonah saw his father repairing a section of fence that held captive the family's small number of pigs. It was obvious that, because the pigs had rooted around one of the posts so long, it would only be another week or so before they would earn their freedom. Jonah ran over to grab the old fence post in place so that his father could drive the nails through the new wood. He was halfway sitting on a stool, his bad leg extended out of the way.

  “Thanks bud,” Thomas said, obviously happy to have an extra pair of hands. He sighed. “Takes me three times as long to do anything by myself anymore.”

  “But you still get it done, dad.”

  Thomas patted his son on the back instead of saying thanks.

  The two worked silently. Jonah had long since learned not to ask his father if he needed help. He was a proud man, and didn't like the idea of not being capable enough for simple tasks on his own. If Jonah simply inserted himself into the work his father was doing, however, it was as if the movement of their hands were deep conversation.

  “Get everything you need from Schultz's?” Thomas asked as they finished.

  “Yeah – only enough for one more trap, but honestly I got a little side-tracked.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he was telling me about where he got all the junk... And about China.”

  Jonah's father stiffened a bit and raised one of his eyebrows. “He telling you all his theories about the past?” There was a tinge of mockery in is voice.

  “He was just telling me about a long time ago when people would get stuff made across the ocean and send it here instead of making it themselves.” Jonah had no reason to doubt what Schultz had said – especially after seeing the globe.

  “Oh, well yeah, I suppose that could be true.”

  “Why – what are his theories about the past?”

  “I don't really want to get into all of it... There's a bunch of things that he says about it that seem a bit far-fetched. How'd you get on the subject?”

  Jonah cleared his throat. “I... I saw 'China' written on something in his yard... Just wondered what it meant.”

  Thomas’ posture eased a bit.

  Jonah continued, “He said that you might want to finish telling me about it...?”

  Thomas braced himself on his cane and started walking back to the house, their task complete. Jonah grabbed the remaining scraps from the old fence for firewood.

  “Not right now... It's almost lunch time and your brother and sister will be home from the schoolhouse soon. No sense in confusing them.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three days later, Jonah was legitimately in need of his satchel. After spending far too long butchering the deer, he realized just how reliant he was on his good knife. He had ruined one of his mother's kitchen knives trying to cut through the bone, for which he promised he'd find a replacement at Schultz's. He figured it was a good enough excuse to get back over there after he had another chance to open the object in the Deathlands.

  He sat in the town's small chapel with his family, barely hearing Brother Philip's sermon. Harrison had a friend beside him, and the shushing sound to them from Jonah's mother was one of the few things that kept Jonah's mind in the room at all. The preacher's words drifted in and out between thoughts of the exposed object. He pictured it jutting out in the middle of the desolate plain, wondering how long it had been there.

  His father hadn’t brought up the past again, and Jonah had not expected anything different. He already had enough to chew on, mainly daydreaming about what would happen when he opened the 'valve,' so he didn't speak of it, either. But, still, he wondered about China, and oceans, and everything else Schultz had said. It might as well have been something that Brother Philip had talked about from the pulpit. He always spoke of places of the past – like Israel or Rome or Egypt – but this town was all Jonah had ever known. Anything more than a few days' travel could as easily have been just a story from one of the tattered books that took too much effort to read.

  At least too much effort when there was already so much that needed to be done.

  After his previous trip's kill was packed into the icebox and the smokehouse, he had worked feverishly to get ahead of his chores to create a bit of extra time for a trip. He wouldn't feel right about leaving something undone, knowing that extra work would fall on his father. His motivation helped him get done with double the work each day, so that – along w
ith an icebox full of deer meat – there couldn't be any reason that he would need to stay. One of the things that his father did want to talk about was the frantic pace in which he worked; but something that Thomas Whitfield would never do is to tell someone not to work hard.

  Before he realized Brother Phillip’s sermon was over, his family stood up and were milling about, talking to their neighbors in the pews.

  .- .-- .- -.- .

  After Sunday dinner, he told his parents that he wanted to spend a couple of days simply resting. He loaded up his trailer with the new trap and a few day’s worth of food and water and was pedaling toward the burning question in the ground. He left later in the day in order to camp and get an early start the next morning.

  They were again confused, as he didn't normally talk about his hunting ground in a way that made it sound like a vacation. But they didn't question his motives – most likely because there weren't many other options as to why he would want to go there.

  After camping by the edge of the Deathlands, he woke as soon as there was daylight breaking through his eyelids. Following the flags that were still protruding from the dense ground, he arrived at the object of his obsessive thoughts. It was unchanged.

  He knelt beside the wheel and grabbed it with both hands, turning counter-clockwise instead of simply pulling up.

  It still didn't budge.

  He removed a thick metal rod from his trailer – another purchase from a previous trip to Schultz's that required nothing in return. Slipping the rod between the spoke of the wheel, he rested the end on the metal below. He braced himself against the rod with his legs strained and burning with the intent of rotating the wheel.

  After tremendous effort the wheel moved with the subtle sound of two stones rubbing together for only a moment. Bits of rust dusted the shiny metal below. His body relaxed and his eyes continued to stare, perplexed. It had rotated, but not by much at all – about the length of a bullet.

  He continued to push against the rod, his bent knees fighting to extend, digging his feet into the solid ground. It barely inched around, the rust slowly misting like saw dust.

  Jonah moved to straddle the wheel, both hands around the body of his rod, bracing himself. He raised the thick metal above his head, keeping the spoke of the wheel in his sights, and brought it down as hard as he could. When it connected with the spoke, the wheel edged around slightly. Once again, raising his arms, he swung the makeshift hammer. The impact again inched the wheel around.

  He repeated this process over and over, and eventually the wheel moved a bit more freely, the rust loosening up from the base.

  He set the rod down beside him and brought up the edge of his shirt to wipe his brow, which was now covered thickly in sweat. He grabbed the wheel on both sides, and turned. The movement was slow and rough – as if he were grinding wheat between two stones – but it did move.

  Eventually, it started spinning much more quickly, broken free from whatever friction that had held it back.

  Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. He tugged again, but whatever had kept it in place before once again seemed to have it locked.

  Frustrated, he stood straight up.

  I can't start this over again, he mumbled to himself. I don't have the strength to endlessly turn a useless piece of metal.

  But he knew that he would continue to turn it, even if it never gave him the answers to his questions.

  He decided that he would simply tug on the wheel again – up, as he had done originally – wondering if it would open like a door in the way that Schultz had intended for the small one on the floor of his shop.

  He planted his feet, grabbed the metal, and pulled. And the entire object lifted.

  As it lifted, it swung on hinges still connected to the larger mass of metal below. He stepped back, lifting the heavy circle as far back as he could lead it, and it came to rest slightly past perpendicular to the ground.

  Jonah stepped away, taking a few steps around to see clearly what it had uncovered.

  He didn't know what to expect, but this was not it. Down the shaft of the seemingly unending hole, a ladder was affixed to the side. A strange soft glow dotted the walls, lighting the polished surface as far as his eyes could see down the abyss.

  “Light?” he wondered aloud. “From the ground?”

  He had only seen the darkness lit up by something other than sun or flame at Schultz's. In his home, he often showcased one of his experiments to intrigued visitors – something he called Electricity.

  It took a great amount of effort to create the light from a glass bulb; he would extinguish the lamp and a volunteer would pedal a bike with no wheels, the chains and gears leading to a metallic box, with thin wires leading back to the bulb. It only took a moment for the bulb to come ablaze, lighting the whole room with absolutely no smoke.

  If the volunteer continued, the bulb would even create heat – but as soon as the pedaling stopped, the fire inside the bulb would die away, leaving the room dark and silent until Schultz relit the lamp.

  When Jonah was young, it simply seemed like a magic trick; a slight of hand, or a deception of the eye. In later years, Jonah would study the bulb much in the same way he stared at the Deathlands. But Schultz never revealed the secret; that is, assuming he even knew its secret.

  In this glowing abyss, however, there was no effort. There was no repetitive noise of chain against gear – only a steady, low hum.

  A strangely stale wind rushed out of the shaft in a constant breeze.

  He hesitated at first, then reached out to touch the glowing air. He perched outside of the hole, running his fingers along the ladder and the smooth surface of the wall. Without thinking, he eased his foot onto the first rung of the ladder. Step by step, he descended into the strange endless compartment.

  He stared around him, touching the soft glowing squares that projected light from the walls every few feet. They weren’t warm to the touch, even though it seemed that they had been burning for some time. They didn't flicker as Schultz's bulb did, and the glow was much brighter.

  In perfect, blocky letters set into the wall, he noticed the same peculiar message every fifth light: Surface Duct 37C.

  He eventually made his way onto grated ground, with a tunnel continuing to his left and right. The low hum had now turned into a loud pulsing, seemingly coming from every direction. The lights littered the walls, illuminating pathways that split off in the corridor.

  “What is this place?” Jonah whispered aloud as he took in his surroundings. This was completely unlike anything he had seen in his seventeen years. His world was filled with wood, earth, flame... The metal he interacted with, originating from the junk yard and possibly passing under the blacksmith’s tools, was crude and dented.

  Here, however, everything was pristine. Smooth. Polished.

  He pulled out a strip of his shirt sleeve from his satchel, which he grabbed from the tree the night before, and tied it on the ladder. If the Deathlands, which he had gazed at for years, was disorienting, this labyrinth would have him wandering for the rest of his life.

  Preparing another piece of fabric, he cautiously stepped down the hall, the shuffle of his soft soled shoes slightly echoing down the chamber. More letters lined the walls as he passed each option – Ventilation Duct 37C (14), Maintenance Duct 37C (22), Resource Duct 37C (10). Even though he recognized the language, none of it made sense.

  On a whim, he took the orange material in his hand and pulled it through the grating at his feet. Tying it, he pointed the excess in the direction from which he came, the ladder still plainly in view. The opening in which he stood, Ventilation Duct 37C (13), seemed as reasonable a choice to explore as any.

  He stepped into the new tunnel slow at first, but picked up speed. If he was going to accomplish anything while there was still daylight outside, he could not waste too much time. He opted not to take any further deviations from this new path, to lessen the chance of losing his way.

  After jogging a s
hort distance, the path narrowed, and the ceiling sloped downward. The echo of his steps on the metal grating changed to the pounding of the solid floor he crossed over, and he lowered onto his hands and knees. There were no glowing lights ahead of him. Stopping for a moment, he noticed that the hum was behind him – but there was another strange sound coming from the passage before him.

  Voices?

  He couldn't quite tell yet... But he could swear that every so often, there was a mumbled sentence. He followed it.

  “...so they just threw it in the trash shoot,” a man's voice said, backed up by a belly laugh.

  Jonah breathed heavily, sweat falling from his brow even though the temperature in his tunnel was cool and constant.

  People? In the Deathlands? It's impossible.

  “...looked at me, so I took control. Everyone was impressed with how I handled it,” the man's voice continued.

  “That's nice dear,” said a woman, nonchalant.

  As he continued on, he caught the scent of... food? But not quite the food he was used to – sweeter. He saw thin slits of light in the side of the tunnel and eased his eyes to look through.

  The room was bright, with light emanating from the walls which, strangely, looked as if they were windows overlooking a lush green valley. Colored squares lined the walls with rotating images of smiling uniformed people holding boxes or bottles. Words would spray across the walls, each seeming to compete with the other images for attention. Jonah couldn't help but stare at each of these surfaces, the voices from below his field of vision drowned out by the visual distractions.

  Jonah shook his head, trying to tune out what he was seeing, and raised his head slightly to peer lower into the center of the room.

  A family of four. Sitting at a table.

  Their skin was pale, and their shiny silver clothing was formed perfectly to their large bodies. The man's black hair was slicked back and greasy, and he chewed with his mouth open. The woman's lips were bright and the shadows around her eyes were blue. The boy's back was to Jonah, and it looked as though he had some sort of large helmet that covered his eyes.