“Right,” he responded, “but don't you ever wonder what it's like up there?”
Instantly, he felt a true connection with Talitha had been made.
“All the time,” she said as she looked at him, almost as he first looked at the Deathlands. Her green eyes studied his irises, as if she expected to find something hidden behind them.
“It's strange – I've never met anyone that seems to care about what's up there. I mean, between the Eduction Center lectures about the chaos of living on the surface before the Surface's End, and the leaders posting current radiation levels, I sometimes think that I'm the only one who wishes I could see it.”
Jonah wanted nothing more than to tell her I can show it to you, but he was afraid. Afraid that she wouldn't believe him. Afraid that she would believe him, but not knowing how she or her family would react.
“I don't think it's as bad as they say up there.”
Her face held an awkward expression. “Why do you say that?”
He hesitated, thinking of when he saw her lying down on the floor of her room through the slits in the ventilation ducts. “I... I can't tell you why, but I think that one day, you'll find out that there's just fresh air, and stars as far as you can see.”
“Don't you mean we?” she asked, peering at him with curiosity.
“What?”
“You said one day you'll find out... Don't you mean one day we'll find out?”
“Oh,” he cleared his throat. “Yes – that's what I meant.”
“I'd like to think that,” she continued, to Jonah's relief. “But after everything I've been told, I feel like that's kind of a hopeless thought. I'm afraid that if I actually hope for it, that I'll never be happy with things the way they are. At least that's what my mom always says.”
“Maybe...” Jonah said. “Or maybe you're not supposed to be happy down here.”
“Sector 20, you said? Maybe I'm just in the wrong sector,” she sighed, as the yellow alert on the wall let out a repetitive chirp as the words changed. “We might be here for a while – can I get you anything?”
Jonah had not realized it, but he was hungry, thirsty, and had to go to the bathroom. “Yes, may I use your washroom?”
Talitha's eyebrows perked up. “Washroom?” she asked. “Do you mean the Sanitation Unit?”
Jonah said, “Yes,” hoping that would direct him to the right place.
“Happily – first door on the left,” she said smirking, motioning him into the hallway behind her.
Closing the door behind him, everything in the Sanitation Unit was unfamiliar. Few in his town had indoor plumbing, but of all the washrooms he'd seen, none of them were quite as ornate as the Coomys'. Black glass lined the walls and illuminated upon his entrance, and each of the surfaces were also made of the same smooth material.
The most natural thing someone could do, and I have no idea how to do it in this room.
.- .-- .- -.- .
Some time had passed before he walked backed into the dining room and Talitha's family, minus her father, were sitting at the table eating. As he entered, only Talitha looked up.
Dawkin snickered, “Have some trouble in the Sanitation Unit? You were in there for thirty minutes!”
“Hush, Dawkin. He wasn't in there that long,” Talitha snapped at her brother, who immediately went back to being engrossed in his eyetiles.
“Sorry – they're a little different in Sector 20... I couldn't figure out—” Jonah stumbled.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” she said, immediately following up with, “well, not that you really have any other options while we're in lockdown.”
“Sure,” Jonah answered, making his way to the empty seat, “Thanks.”
He examined the table, remembering that he'd seen the family touching it to receive their food. While part of him wanted to figure out how it worked, the other more convincing part of him did not want it to end up on a plate directly in front of him. He thought about the Food Substance room, and his first reactions to it.
“Your father... Your mother said he was sleeping from the sickness. Is he okay?”
“Yeah – he'll be fine. The Wellness and Pain Committee said that the cure would take a day or two.”
Gabet was absent mindedly flicking at moving objects on her wristile. “Well, this is interesting,” she said looking up, surprised to see Jonah at the other end of the table, having not paid attention when he walked in.
“What's interesting, mom?” Talitha asked.
“The lockdown is about to be lifted – apparently the Regulation Committee found bullets in a Sanitation Center. But there's no need to worry – they're not real bullets.”
Jonah stiffened in his chair slightly. “What do you mean not real bullets, ma'am?”
Gabet smirked a bit. “It looks like someone was trying to recreate bullets from a long time ago, so they couldn't actually be used. The reports say that it looks like they weren't made with standard Facility synthesizing equipment – so it’s probably somebody in the labor class. Still, the Facility is going to dispatch extra Control Officers just to be safe. Sounds a bit ridiculous if you ask me... Why would someone risk imprisonment to make useless pieces of metal?”
As they were speaking, the yellow panels in the wall faded into the ocean scene.
“Well,” Talitha said in response to the end of the lockdown. “You can still stay for dinner, but you're free to go now.” Jonah was pleased to see that she wasn’t urging him to go.
Jonah looked into her green eyes, wishing he could overlook the sludge on the plates in front of the Coomys. To stay for dinner would mean eating their food, which wasn't a viable option. “Believe me, there's nothing I would like more than to stay... But, I really must be going.”
Talitha's face fell slightly.
“But, do I have your permission to see you again?” he said nervously.
Her lips spread wide in reaction, then slowly formed into a subdued smile.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER SIX
Jonah stood in the creek near the Deathlands at dawn, spending far more time bathing than he ever had before. He had taken a small cube of soap from the Coomy's Sanitation Unit, hoping that the next time he interacted with the citizens underground, he would not raise so many eyebrows – or noses. He had felt bad about taking the soap, but he would figure out a way to pay them back for it later.
He had almost made it up the ladder to the surface the previous evening, his mind wandering, before he remembered that he'd left his things in the Sanitation Center. He debated retrieving it, for fear that there might be Control Officers guarding it, but decided that it would be far worse if they found all of his belongings.
He planned on simply ducking into the room of buttons were there any trouble, but he found it to be completely empty. For all the sense of urgency from Gabet's relay of the Facility alert, there was no visual change, except that there were fewer people in the halls.
Letting his underground uniform dry draped over a branch, he quickly finished his breakfast of a squirrel from one of his traps.
Removing most of the contents, he placed a few pears and a handful of pecans from nearby trees into his satchel, which he hid under the extra folds of fabric of the uniform when he dressed.
He pondered not only the interactions he had with the people below the surface – mainly Talitha – but also something incredibly curious that he found when he crossed the threshold between the Deathlands and grass.
He was almost positive that when he placed the flags marking the trail to the entrance, he had started with a flag right at the threshold. However, when he exited the Deathlands the night before, the last flag was at least eight feet from the edge. There was obviously no trouble in navigating back to the grass, but he was racking his brains, trying to visualize himself placing this flag so far into the Deathlands.
In addition to that, there was a thick line of dead grass edging the threshold. Did he simply overlook that before? Ha
d he overlooked that all the years of staring out into the expanse? He could not once remember a gradual change from Deathlands to pasture.
He reminded himself, however, it had been less than a week ago that he chased the buck into the cracked plain. Before that, even if he had approached it, he had never crossed the line. Perhaps the dead grass had always been there? he thought.
It didn't matter, though. It was secondary to the thoughts surrounding Talitha.
He quickly made his way back down the shaft. After glancing through the slits into Talitha's empty room, he strolled out of Maintenance Duct Entrance 37C (13), passed the door to the Coomys' Family Unit, and ended up back in the room of blinking lights.
He wasn't concerned about actually standing in for Aile's assignment – apparently people in the Facility were rewarded for simply sitting in a chair for hours at a time with nothing to do – but he did feel that it would be good to keep up the appearance that he was sent to relieve the sick button pusher.
He studied the Facility maps, the faces, and the words covering the glass walls, quietly eating the fruits and nuts from inside his jumpsuit as time passed. He perked up with each change in Talitha's location, heart rate, temperature.
Rayev waddled in, again short of breath, and made an excuse about why he was late to his post – something about a Diplomacy and Sensitivity meeting because he'd pointed out that someone's hair looked unusual for the calendar. Jonah had the feeling that he was often late, and that there probably wouldn't be much of a difference if he weren't.
After saying that Jonah smelled much better today, he followed it with “Not saying you smelled bad yesterday – I'm not complaining... Forefathers know that I don't need another Diplomacy and Sensitivity meeting. I'm just saying... You smell better. That's not insensitive, right?”
Before Rayev slipped on his eyetiles, he called out, “See you later, Sector 20!”
Jonah headed to Talitha's Family Unit after stopping at a Public Sanitation Unit in order to save the embarrassment of trying to use theirs without much grace.
He knocked on their door for a few minutes, when it finally slid open with Talitha standing in the entrance. “Oh – hi Jonah,” she said with a shy smile. “Why didn't you use your wristile to notify us that you were outside the door? We almost always ignore the manual motion alert.”
Jonah raised the arm that the lifeless glass encased. “It doesn't work – something about the different sectors and my... My chip.”
“That's weird,” she said as she walked through the room, motioning him to follow. She walked into her bedroom, and Jonah waited at the doorway before entering.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
Jonah hesitated.
In his home, his parents would never allow him to have a girl in his bedroom, even if his siblings were there. But his parents weren’t here.
“Nothing… Nothing’s wrong,” he said as he took a timid step inside.
“Are you sure?” she asked with a smirk on her face. “You look like you’re walking through a force field or something.”
He wrestled with his thoughts of both excitement and trouble as he tried to muster a calm look on his face. “Your… Your parents don’t mind if I’m in here with you?”
She laughed a bit, as if he were joking, then noted his stony expression. “Of course they don’t mind – why would they?”
“I just... I didn't know if—” He stopped himself, not wanting to make the situation even more awkward. His heart was thumping loudly in his ears. “Never mind.”
“You're sure you're from Sector 20?” she asked, smiling. “I wouldn't expect that only seventeen sectors away, there would be so many differences in the way we live.”
“More than you'd believe.”
“Tell me about it, then,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Tell me about your sector.”
He moved to a chair at the opposite side of the room, walking softly as if the room itself were sacred. If his mother and father knew that he was alone with a girl in her bedroom, they would not be very pleased. Of course, they probably would not have been pleased that he had been watching her through the slits in the walls, either. He couldn't seem to stop himself from breaking what he considered to be obvious rules – especially when this didn't seem to be strange to her at all.
“Where should I begin?” he asked as he eased into the chair uncomfortably.
“I don't know – what are things like there? What is your purpose assignment? Do you have a brother or a sister? Any of that.”
“Well, yes, I have a brother and a sister – Harrison is eleven and Lillian is thirteen. I guess you'd say that—”
“Wait – you have a brother and a sister?” The perplexed look crossed her face again. Jonah noticed that she often held that expression when he answered questions.
“Yes,” he answered, “I'm the oldest, then Lillian, then Harrison.”
“I thought the limit was two children per Family Unit across the whole Facility?”
“Oh – uh... I don't know,” he stammered. Almost all of the families in the village had more children than two children. “There are a few families that only have one child, so maybe they're not as strict where I am?”
It wasn't a lie – there were a few families in the village that only had one child, but it was fairly rare, and generally because they weren’t able to have more. Most families around the small town had at least five children, with the expectation that they'd share the workload once they were old enough.
“I should start writing this stuff down,” Talitha laughed. “The Regulation Committee isn't as strict on family size, your Identification Chip doesn't work with our wristiles, you call your Sanitation Units – what was it? Washers?”
“Uh... Washrooms.”
“You've asked my permission to come into my room, and if you could see me again... Your skin isn't pale but I don’t think you're of a different melanin shade... You said you're muscular because of work, but that you're not part of the labor class... None of that was supposed to be insensitive – I've just never met anyone like you.”
“I've... I've never met anyone like you either,” Jonah breathed.
“So – you said that you're not part of the labor class... What did you say your purpose assignment is?”
Jonah thought hard to his conversations with Rayev. In none of them had Rayev used terms to describe what the job was called. “I'm here to stand in for someone named Aile,” he coughed. “I push buttons when alarms sound.”
“You're a Resource Officer?” she said, leading him.
“Yes – a Resource Officer.”
“It doesn't sound like you know much about it – what do you do while you’re in Sector 20?”
Jonah thought about the last seventeen years of his life, farming and hunting with his family. Technically, he thought, all of his time was spent gathering and maintaining resources. If that was the equivalent of sitting in a glowing room, pushing buttons that chirp, then he wasn't proud of the position, but at least there was a name for it.
“I am a Resource Officer there as well.”
“I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense,” Talitha accused. “Yesterday, when I asked why you were thin, you said you worked. As far as I understand, Resource Officers have one of the easiest jobs in the whole Facility. My brother wants to be a Resource Officer because he wants to play games on his eyetiles all day.”
“It's different where I'm from,” he said, worried that more questions would doom him. “What about you – you're thin and beaut... Er...” He blushed, as did she. “What do you do differently from everyone else here?”
Talitha's aggressive posture had melted a bit because of being (almost) called beautiful, and she had a sheepish grin on her face.
“I think... I think I'm just the only person that cares,” she said. “Everyone eats until they're sick, and stares at tiles all day – wristiles, eyetiles, digitiles... I walk to the Education Center rather than riding a Magn
et Cart. I'm not satisfied with eating a bunch of dessert. I just... I just want something more than everyone else here seems to.”
Jonah felt sorry for her. She was a bird in a cage, unaware that the door was unlocked. He felt that by not showing her the surface, he was condemning her to a prison that confined her with so many others that were too easily satisfied. But he was still afraid.
He looked at the sadness in her eyes and felt that he could at least dip his toe in the waters of what might be irresponsibility.
“Have you ever heard of pecans?” he asked.
She shook her head, her gaze on the floor.
Jonah turned his body away from her and awkwardly reached down into the satchel under his uniform. Pulling out two pecans that remained, he turned back around and reached them to out her.
She looked up and asked, “What is that?”
“Pecans.”
“What is pecans?”
“Pecans are nuts. They're food.”
Her eyes widened.
“I didn't know they made them – nuts have been outlawed for over a hundred years!” She abruptly stood up, whispering, “if somebody finds out that you broke into one of the Resource Centers and stole unprocessed food substance, you could be reassigned to the labor class, or worse! How do you know that you're not already contaminated by them?”
“I didn't steal them,” he assured her, his heart racing from watching the panic in her eyes. “And what do you mean contaminated by them?”
“How else would you get them? You said that you're a Resource Officer – is that how you work? You sneak into the Resource Centers and steal unprocessed food substance?”
“No!” Jonah forced out in a steady breath, looking out the door to make sure no one was nearby. “I promise – I didn't steal them. These are not from the Resource Center.”
“How do you explain them, then?” she said in heavy breaths, keeping her voice low. “It's illegal to try to make any private resources. My dad would be the first to call the Control Officers if he saw those.”
Jonah didn't know how to recover. The simple act that he hoped would give her a glimpse of hope had turned him into a thief in her eyes. “Like I said – it's different where I'm from.”
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