The Surface's End

by David Joel Stevenson

  When Jonah and Talitha climbed into a cube, he realized that most of the Facility's population were riding one per cube because of how little room there was. Even the two of them were a bit cramped – though he didn't mind – and he couldn't imagine that more than one of the average large underground citizens would fit at all.

  Talitha touched the glass wall inside the cube then touched her wrist. With a momentary jolt the Magnet Tram was moving at incredible speeds, though it felt to Jonah that they were sitting completely still.

  “Let's just say that you're really who you say you are,” Talitha said, breaking the silence of the speeding Magnet Tram. “And I'm not saying I believe you. But – you're not a Resource Officer. What do you do?”

  “I'm a farmer and a hunter,” Jonah said.

  “And what exactly does a farmer and a hunter do?”

  “Well, it's actually hard to explain to someone who has never eaten anything more than the Facility's Food Substance,” he said, a bit perplexed. “I work with the dirt, and with water, and with animals. I make sure things grow so that my family can eat.”

  “What do you mean, you make sure things grow? Aren't there machines that control your food supply?”

  “No – my family's hands control the food supply,” he said, picturing the metal contraptions that moved the animal cages in the Resource Center. He assumed those were the machines she referred to. “If we don't work, we don't eat. And pardon me for saying so, but I'd never trust one of those machines to take care of what I put in my stomach.”

  “What do you mean?” she said with a blank stare. “I've seen the lecture videos of Food Substance being made. I don't see how human hands could keep the raw materials so clean. And the Lecturers have said that the way the Facility produces Food Substance is better than methods used before the Surface's End.”

  “So you've seen the cages, and the animals with liquids being pumped into them?” Jonah asked, sad that she knew how the animals were treated.

  “Gross,” Talitha winced. “They don't use real animals - Food Substance is made of synthetics. Do you expect me to believe you'd rather have a dead creature for dinner?”

  Jonah shrugged, relieved. “I think there might be more secrets here than you would expect.”

  “I suppose we'll find all the things you say you've seen at the Central Facility Computer, right?”

  Jonah traced the lines of her sarcastic expression with his eyes, his heart beating slightly faster.

  “I don't know what we'll find there,” he replied.

  “And what about your family?” she continued. “I remember that you said you had a brother and a sister – three children.”

  “Yeah, Lillian and Harrison.”

  “How does that work?”

  “I don't really understand what you're asking,” Jonah said, perplexed. “Why can your families have only two children?”

  “Well – it's the only way it makes sense,” she started. “If a man and woman have two children, then they basically replace themselves in the younger population. If they were to have more, then there wouldn't be enough room in the Facility for them. Eventually, we'd run out of resources.”

  “Then that's how it works,” Jonah said. “The surface isn’t like that. There's more than enough room, and more than enough resources.”

  Talitha narrowed her eyes and stared at him, leaning her head slightly to the side.

  “Sometimes it sounds like you're just making up some fake utopia,” she said. “Like you've researched how it was on the surface, and are just pandering to everything I've hoped for.”

  “Sometimes?” he asked. “What about the rest of the time?”

  Talitha paused, biting her lip.

  “The rest of the time, I'm just trying to remind myself that it's too good to be true.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The area around the Central Facility Computer was much less exciting than Jonah anticipated. It looked almost exactly like everywhere else in the Facility, except for an authoritative seal placed every few feet. The circular seal was of an odd looking white-headed bird, with a black square between its outstretched red wings. Between its open beak it clutched an eye.

  He assumed, based on everything that Talitha had told him on the Magnet Tram, that there would be a tremendous amount of officers. However, he saw even fewer people than in the halls of the Coomy's Family Unit. Still, he stayed on edge. She also told him that only Regulation Committee Officers were supposed to have access to the Central Facility Computer, which worried him.

  “Through here,” Talitha said just above a whisper, pulling Jonah through a door.

  The room they entered was the largest expanse he had seen in the underground tunnels. Its ceiling was at least the height of two homes, and its length was at least sixty paces. The walls were abuzz with letters and numbers streaming in all directions – but the majority were scenes of hallways, dining rooms, Magnet Tram carts, and even washrooms. The people in the pictures went about their tasks, completely oblivious to the fact that they were being watched. In equal distance, the Sector numbers were written across the top of the walls.

  “Wait,” Jonah whispered, his eyes wide. “Do you mean that someone is watching everything that's going on in the Facility?”

  “Of course,” Talitha answered calmly. “How else would we be safe?”

  “But... That means that... Wouldn't they be watching us?”

  “Don't worry,” Talitha said as she gently put her hand on Jonah's chest. “My dad worked here when I was younger. He said that no one watches anything unless there's an alert or a reason. The rest of the time, he said that they would just play games on their eyetiles.”

  Jonah's heart sped up – not from fear, but from Talitha’s touch. She slowly slid her hand from his chest into his hand, clutching it. He struggled to catch his breath.

  “Don't worry,” she whispered softly again.

  She walked – dragging him slightly – toward the center of the room, where there sat a single large padded chair.

  “My dad said that everyone on the Regulation Committee has this as their assignment shift for at least a year, in order for them to be able to understand why the Regulations are necessary. But most of the time, just like every other assignment in the Facility, the Computer is actually what is keeping things on track. The only thing a person is really needed for here is to dispatch the Control Officers – though he's been part of a group that is trying to give the Computer complete access to everything. So that buttons wouldn't need to be pushed by people anymore.”

  She climbed up in the chair, letting Jonah's hand go.

  “Honestly,” she continued, “it all seems a bit miserable to me. I actually want to do something with my life... Pushing a button when the Computer tells me to doesn't seem... Well, like life at all.”

  Jonah gasped when she took a wire from the chair and plugged it into her wristile.

  “Jonah,” she assured, “I said not to worry. Dad said that when he was here, one of his friends disabled the security regulator on the chair, so that the Computer stopped registering when people did or didn't show up to their assignment shifts. When he did it, he accidentally disabled the access requirement, so that anyone can use it. He was afraid of getting in trouble, so he never told anyone. By the time that he was assigned back to our sector, Dad said that new workers were told by the Regulation Officers that it wasn't supposed to have an access requirement.”

  “Why did your dad tell you all of this stuff?” Jonah asked.

  “Well – he wasn't really telling me... He was telling my mom, and I don't think he realized that I was old enough to understand. He actually tried working for the Complaint Committee for a long time, but requested to be transferred to the Regulation Committee after I was born. Most of the new workers are a lot younger than he was. I think he couldn’t work for the Complaint Committee, because… Well, he complains too much. I think that's when I started getting unhappy with life in the Facility; when I fou
nd out that pretty much everything was pre-determined by the Computer and it didn't matter if I did something or didn't do something, but I’m sure his complaining didn’t help.”

  She leaned back in the chair, which had obviously been altered to hold a larger person than was originally intended. She patted the seat next to her, urging him to sit beside her.

  Jonah gulped. Even without anyone around to see him, he felt like his father’s eyes were on him, testing him.

  “Do you think it’s… appropriate… for us to sit in the same chair?” he asked without thinking.

  “Appropriate?” she responded. “Jonah – it's things like that that make me think you might actually be telling the truth... No one here would ever react like that, even as a joke.”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him uncomfortably into the chair. He smiled nervously.

  He watched Talitha scroll through various screens on her wristile, swiping at moving letters. She pressed on the screen, and the chair leaned back as the lights in the room dimmed. He couldn't help but focus on the fact that he was lying next to her, the skin on their fingers barely touching.

  The ceiling faded into the scene that they had seen earlier.

  A happy couple with bags walked towards an open door guarded by a uniformed man. Behind the couple was the same family of four as before, their toddler grabbing dirt. This time, he could hear sounds from the scene coming from the headrest of the chair.

  “That's right, Bug,” the father said happily. “You better play in the dirt a little bit longer, because you might not see it until you’re a bit older.”

  The child's mother, holding an infant, laughed at both of them as the man stooped down to feel the dirt as well. “Come on, you two!” she giggled. “We don't want to hold up the folks behind us.”

  The man picked up his son and then the bags he had placed on the ground. The family then moved in through the door, followed by others.

  Talitha sped up the scene briefly, then let it play out when a large red block with the word Classified overlaid the very top edge of the screen.

  The scene seemed the same for a moment, until a loud crack was heard in the distance.

  Jonah sat up, looking around the room, as did the people on the screen.

  “It was on the screen, Jonah,” Talitha said calmly, though she had also jumped at the sound.

  “That was a gunshot,” he said as he laid back down.

  The scene on the ceiling grew more frantic. The families pushed toward the door quickly, and the guards snarled, “Everyone stay calm! If there is an emergency, we will be notified first!”

  The families slowly calmed down and maintained their place in line silently. Moments later, a boxy vehicle drove up to the door and two uniformed men jumped out. The guards at the door raised their hands up to their forehead in a salute and stood straight, waiting as the men from the vehicle walked towards them.

  “At ease, men,” one of the uniformed men said. “We had a little trouble back there... Some narcissist was trying to smuggle in two unauthorized kids inside his luggage. The guy threw some punches and we had to terminate him. We let the kids go, but the guy's wife was flipping out. She ran off with the kids, so keep your eyes out for any possible targets.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” the door guards yelled.

  Talitha and Jonah watched as the vehicle drove off and the scene played as if all was normal. Families continued inside the doors, children continued to laugh, and adults continued to smile and talk.

  “What do they mean 'terminate him'?” Jonah asked.

  Talitha paused before mumbling, “It can't mean what I think it means... I don't know.”

  After some time, Talitha touched her wristile to speed the video up and the people vanished. As one guard began to close the door, a woman and two children ran towards the entrance, screaming, “Please let us in!”

  With no reservations, the guard reached for his gun and shot them, and then shut the door behind him as he entered the Facility.

  Talitha's hand covered her open mouth, and she squeezed Jonah's arm with the other. He shook his head and tensed his jaw.

  The scene was still; the three bodies silent in the middle of the screen. Talitha quickly tapped at her wristile.

  Mr. Adams was visibly older in the next picture. His hair was completely white and his skin drooped around his eyes, even though he had put on weight since previous images. His voice was slow and quiet.

  “This will be my last entry,” Mr. Adams said, barely above a whisper, in the same book-filled room. “I would not call it a lecture as much as a confession, though one that I doubt will ever reach anyone who will care.

  “In looking back, I'm afraid that I made the wrong decision. Like so many of us before the Surface's End, I was disillusioned. We, the Leaders, thought that we could destroy poverty, if only for a small subset of society. We set out to build the Facility, knowing that there would always be enemies, and there would always be needless death if people were left to their own devices. We were convinced that we could protect people from themselves.

  “It started innocently. My predecessors had laid the groundwork of taking from the wealthiest of their time, and redistributing it to those with nothing. We, like they, thought that the poor simply did not have the same advantages of the rich. I did not see it at the time, but I'm afraid that in doing so, we sped the process of decay.

  “Instead of things equaling out, it seemed that nothing was changing. The poor were still poor, and they continued to complain about the lack of opportunities. They quickly were no longer satisfied with the resources that we handed to them, and demanded more – which we continued to take from the rich who somehow remained rich. In recent years, I have realized that the more we regulated them, the more they simply figured out loopholes to remain as free to work and trade as they could.

  “We built the Facility with the thought that we could create a society in a vacuum. At first we accepted volunteers – and there were a great many – from all over the economic spectrum. We tried to keep the underground citizens classless, so that everyone was truly equal. We soon understood that that could never be the case, as we could not lead if we were not Leaders, set apart from the rest. And then we realized that it took certain skills to maintain the Facility; some menial and some talented. Before long, we knew that we had created the same structure that was on the surface. The reason the most talented and skilled were worth more on the surface is because their rare results warranted it. The unskilled were worth less because their results were easily reproduced.

  “Instead of creating a new, perfect society, we simply duplicated the one that already existed. But we couldn't admit that to ourselves, let alone the people we had spent so much time convincing. We continued to bring people in, thinking that we were on the verge of achieving our goals. Unfortunately, we angered many on the surface because of our selections of participants. Many of those that we selected to take part were found murdered shortly after they were announced, most likely because of jealousy. We started notifying people in secret, which caused its own problems.

  “Before the Facility was completed, the government had decided to move all operations into it, for fear that they would be exposed to attacks from citizens if they were to remain on the surface. Instead of a peaceful utopia, it was equipped with weaponry. Only a week or so after the doors were closed, citizens started attacking all entrances, and we voted to retaliate in order to maintain the safety of our people.

  “In a horrible, disgusting vote behind closed doors, military leaders decided to launch several nuclear missiles that they had access to – not to decimate its own people, but to create an electro magnetic pulse that would destroy all electronic equipment within reasonable ranges of the Facility. Their reasoning was that it would stun the surface, and that it would drive everyone away from the site of the Facility to cities that still functioned normally.

  “But something went wrong. We never knew exactly what happened – there w
ere investigations and secret trials for years, and many people were imprisoned or executed because of their connections to it, but the details were never clear. Apparently far more missiles were launched than were intended, and they not only destroyed the surface of the country above us, but the entire planet’s atmosphere. One theory was that it was a chain reaction; other countries started attacking once ours were launched. Either way, we knew that we couldn't go to the surface, and we couldn't let the citizens of the Facility know that it was our own fault.

  “At first, I simply regarded it as a horrific tragedy. However, I have fought for the last few decades to have access to the recordings of the meetings surrounding this decision, but the current Leaders revoked my Facility permissions and prevented me from entering the Central Facility Computer.

  “Now, I have become subject to one of the regulations that I helped create. Tomorrow is my one hundred and fifteenth birthday, and my stay of execution has been pushed as far back as it could be allowed. When we first implemented the birth limitations to keep our population under control, no one questioned us. Unfortunately, because of the Facility's technology, our citizens were beginning to live longer – much longer – than we would have on the surface. So even with the allowance of two children, when we saw the possibility of five generations alive at the same time, we realized that we had created another problem. Not only the limit of space, but also of resources. The Facility was built to draw resources from the surrounding land, and grow and raise food within its walls. However, as with living quarters, the space even for resources was not enough.

  “We have found a temporary solution for some of the gathering of resources, by simply extending the reach of our harvesting machines when we are low. We have set Resource Officers up at each each sector section to monitor our usage and capacity – but I'm confident that it will one day prove to be insufficient. At least unless there are plans to create another Facility, but I'm afraid that our own actions have prevented that.