Except there was one group that she’d heard of, but never saw.
“The laborers?,” she asked.
“The laborers,” he replied.
“Talitha,” he continued. “It takes a lot of effort to keep this machine running smoothly. There are many tasks that the normal citizen would simply refuse to do, and would in fact be disgusted by. These people never get to experience the life of comfort that the rest of us have, so they simply assume everyone in the Facility lives as they do. They are kept separate for a reason. If they even knew how you lived, let alone that there was a whole world separate from this place, it would be very difficult to keep them at their assignment shifts. You and I both know that if even half of the laborers left, then the machine would break.”
She didn't know. The way everyone had talked about the laborers, they would be easy to replace if all of them magically disappeared. They were, after all, unfit for prestigious purpose assignments like the Regulation Committee. Talitha assumed that laborers simply weren’t efficient at anything else, so they were relegated to menial work. But - what was efficient about the work that her father or his friends did?
“So, all I really need from you is to tell me how many people know.”
Talitha realized that his only concern was to contain a threat. If she and Jonah had told others, then word would still get out, even if both of them were dead.
“No one,” she said coldly.
“I knew you would say that,” Mr. Gisk laughed, “but I was hoping that you’d save me the trouble of having to question every citizen in this sector. Obviously, the laborers are the highest priority, but we’ll get to everyone. If you tell me now, then your partners can spare their families the humiliation of trials.”
Partners?
“Wouldn’t you know if I’d talked to anyone about this? I thought you said you knew everything that went on in the Facility?”
“Yes, we thought the same thing,” Mr. Gisk said. “But, we still can’t figure out the true identity of your friend Jonah, and we assume you’ve figured out a way to bypass or mask the signals recorded by your wristiles. The one he was wearing had never even been synced with his Identification Chip. We usually can pinpoint recordings of conversations between two citizens based on when their two wristiles are in close proximity, but we don’t know what wristile to track in your recordings. Previous to the decoy he was wearing, of course. And since it wasn’t powered on, it still didn’t help us.
“The only times we’ve listened in on your recorded conversations, it’s obvious that you’re both speaking in some sort of code. It doesn’t pick up much of his speech. As if you were talking to an imaginary friend or a ghost. It wasn’t until we listened to the recordings that we even knew he was at the Central Facility Computer with you. Without his wristile, we’ll simply have to have some of our Control Officers listen to absolutely everything you’ve ever said. Very time consuming.”
Talitha was amazed. Apparently the thing that all of the Facility citizens were reliant on was the very thing that betrayed their every word.
“Jonah was the only one I talked to about it. He was the only one who ever understood,” Talitha sighed.
Mr. Gisk snorted a contained laugh, and then bellowed, “How sweet! Young love! Stupid, stupid love. It never steers you right. Did you manipulate him into everything - destroying his Identification Chip, dropping off the Facility’s radar? Or did he manipulate you without telling you that he had already done that? Were his big blue eyes too much for you? I can give them to you if you’d want them.”
“Shut up!,” Talitha shot back. “Jonah didn’t manipulate me! He was from the surface!”
“So you’re saying you believed his story? Or you’re just sticking to the plan that you both decided on?”
Mr. Gisk stroked his thick chin. “That’s unfortunate… If you could’ve given me the new information I needed, I could’ve made the inevitable process easier for you and Jonah’s other co-conspirators. But, dead men tell no tales, as they say, so you’re my only option. The coming weeks will not be easy for you.”
Mr. Gisk slowly stood, bracing himself on the arm of the chair and the bars on the door.
“If you remember something, or decide that you’d like to be shown a bit of mercy, I’ll be listening,” he said as he pointed around the walls and ceiling of the hall.
CHAPTER TEN
The next day, Jonah’s body still lay lifeless on a mattress.
After he was declared dead, the Wellness Officers had tried to remove his Identification Chip to give to the Technology Maintenance Committee to see if they could determine his identity. While one Wellness Officer could not find a chip to pull out, he did find that Jonah had a heartbeat.
With the introduction of the Identification Chip, Wellness Officers were trained far less in actual medicine, and far more in simply reading the reports the chip generated. They had come to think of the chips as source of life - now implanted in the fetus even while the mother was pregnant - rather than an observation of it. If a chip showed no vital signs, the body was dead.
The only reason his body had not been disposed of is simply because the Wellness Officer had stubbornly asked for more time to try to find the chip, mostly because he wanted the recognition when he found it.
His colleagues marveled at a body not relying on a chip, and assumed that the chip had somehow disintegrated with the electrical black stick wielded by the Control Officer. They had no explanation for how, but they were not the kind of people to need explanations.
Jonah’s body stirred while a Wellness Officer was reprogramming a machine that had incorrectly changed a bandage.
“Uggh… Where…,” Jonah groggily spoke. “Where am… I…”
“You’re in the Wellness and Pain Management Center, Jonah,” she said smoothly, moving toward the door to press a large red button, and then returning to the machine. “Don’t try to get up.”
Against her wishes he tried to lift himself off the mattress, but found that he was strapped down at his wrists and ankles with bandages tied in juvenile knots. It wouldn’t be difficult to tear free on a normal occasion, but at the moment he felt like he had lost a fight with a bull surrounded by honeybees. He noticed that one of his wrists was covered in bloody bandages, and had a glowing wristile clasped around it.
“You’re the talk of the Facility, you know,” the Wellness Officer continued. “The last terrorist we had years and years ago was taken down by just one Control Officer. It took four of them for you. I’d say that’s impressive, but I wouldn’t want you to feel like you did something good.”
“…terrorist…?” Jonah breathed.
“Everybody still thinks you’re dead. We’re all fairly amazed that you survived, because your chip… Well, we don’t know what happened to your old one, but it’s gone. We added a new one, though, but it doesn’t have all of your information. We know you’re Jonah from Sector 20, but it doesn’t sound like any of your family wants you back enough to go through the embarrassment of claiming a terrorist!” She laughed, her entire body shaking. “The three families that had someone with a similar name all denied that they knew you. Can’t say I blame them. I’m Atria, by the way.”
“…how do you know my name…?”
“That girl you were with when you attacked the Control Officers told us. I don’t know her name - everyone on the Facility Messages is just calling her ‘T.’ I doubt we’ll ever get to find out who she is. The only reason I know you is because I’m the only one that learned how to program the AMT4C in the lectures,” she said, motioning toward the object she was working on. On the side of the machine he noticed the words Automated Medical Technician (Version 4C).
“Between you and me, I’m drawing this job post out a bit, because I want to know why in the name of the Forefathers you would attack those young men. If I take back some information from the boy who is the talk of the Facility, well maybe I’ll become the talk of the Facility!” She laughed again. “B
ut in a good way, of course.”
“…is she okay?,” Jonah whispered, his eyes fully open.
“The girl? I have no idea. I know she was okay when the whole thing happened three days ago,” Atria snickered, “but who knows now! I don’t think anyone would raise too many questions if a girl like her just disappeared out of a surface duct!”
“…Talitha…” Jonah closed his eyes, forgetting the pain in his body for a moment, focusing on his heart.
“Talitha, eh?,” the Wellness Officer noted, triumphantly tapping her wristile. “Oh - I probably shouldn’t say such things about your friend… I suppose even a terrorist might benefit from the statutes of the Diplomacy & Sensitivity Committee.”
Atria turned her eyes back to her work, tapping on blinking glass on the machine.
“…am I okay?,” Jonah asked.
“Well, that’s a good question,” she said. “I think the Control Officers weren’t taking any chances after you attacked them. They hit you with a level six stun! I didn’t think anyone could survive that. We don’t get to experiment with that too often, since we’re a peaceful people. Except for you, of course. But after we got the new Identification Chip in your arm, all of your reports looked fairly normal. You have plenty of bruises and burns from the Stunner, but I’d say you’re lucky. Still, word is that you’ll probably go out with the trash after you tell them what they want to know. But I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Let’s keep that between us.”
Moments later, the door to the room opened, and Quilen Coomy entered. Out the doorway, Jonah could see six Control Officers with the black stick Stunners in hand. He had a feeling they would have them set higher than level six if they could. The door closed behind Talitha’s father.
“Officer, I’d like to speak with the boy alone,” Quilen said.
Atria smiled. “Sorry, friend, but if I don’t keep working on this machine, the Wellness and Pain Management Committee will be calling on the Complaint Committee, who will probably tell the Purpose Assignment Committee to reassign me. I’m too old to learn something new.”
Jonah glanced at her. She looked as if she might be around the same age as his parents - but it was hard to tell with the amount of makeup that covered her bloated face.
Quilen bitterly sighed, “Very well,” and sat next to Jonah. Jonah got the feeling that it was a good thing Atria was in the room. Otherwise, it looked like Quilen would have added to his bruises. Thank you, Lord, for how nosy she is, he thought to himself.
“Jonah, you don’t know me,” Quilen began, “but I’m… very close to the girl you kidnapped.” He looked at Atria, choosing his words carefully. Jonah realized that he had not met Talitha’s father face to face, but only saw him through the slits in their dining room vent.
“Kidnapped?,” Jonah asked.
“I’m here to collect information that would confirm that you coerced her to take from the Central Facility Computer certain— Well, what did you coerce her to take from the Central Facility Computer?”
Jonah pictured Talitha’s face. He knew that if Atria was right, and his own fate was most likely sealed, he would have to answer very carefully to keep Talitha safe.
“It was my fault,” he said after a moment.
“I know that,” Quilen gruffed. “But we both know that the Regulation Committee - of which I am a part, mind you - will want a bit more information than that.”
Jonah was deep in thought, trying to remember something from all the videos that he saw three days ago that would satisfy the question. He was afraid that simply telling them the truth - that he was from the surface - would put Talitha in more danger, since he doubted she would recant that she knew the surface did not end. It didn’t seem that those in positions of power in the Facility wanted that kind of information to get out.
The machine Atria was prodding made a light chirp, and she cursed. Quilen looked at her across the room. “Something wrong?,” he asked.
“Uh… Nothing bad, I just need to fix something,” she responded, pressing buttons. To her dismay, the AMT4C moved to Jonah’s arm and efficiently replaced the bandage that covered his stun burn. As it moved around his arm, Jonah noticed a sharp object in a small pouch of the machine near his fingers.
“It looks like you’ve fixed enough. The machine is working - please leave.”
“Oh, but it’s just going to take a minute to run another diagnostic,” she whined.
“Officer!,” Quilen yelled. A Control Officer entered timidly, holding his Stunner out in front of him.
Jonah grabbed the object before the machine retracted, while Quilen and the officer were preoccupied with Atria.
“Take this woman out of here - her job is complete.”
Atria let out a loud sigh, and whined again. “But you were just getting to the good stuff! You’ve got me curious!”
Quilen’s brow furrowed as the Control Officer sidestepped to her, never taking Jonah out of the direction of his Stunner. He grabbed her without looking, to which she responded, “Oh, all right - I’m going.”
After they exited the room and the door shut behind them, Quilen grabbed Jonah’s face with his hands with aggression. “You’re ruining my life, you dirty little laborer!”
Jonah spoke muffled words through Quilen’s fingers. “Don’t you mean your daughter’s life?”
Quilen shoved the back of Jonah’s head into the mattress and stood up, letting go. “Are you trying to mock me, boy? You think you can come in and manipulate her by telling her lies? By giving her what she wants, however it is that you found out?”
“So, she told you?,” Jonah asked.
“No, she didn’t tell me, terrorist,” Quilen shouted. “She’s not even talking to me, and truth be told I don’t want her to. If I never have to go back to the sector detention unit I’ll be a happy man. She’s ruined this family enough, not counting the years of her constant dreams,” he said the word with disgust, “and never being satisfied. All we can do now is hope the Regulation Committee will keep her involvement quiet because of my position. The Chairman has allowed me to do everything I can to work into his good graces. We can just say she was killed in some accident so that we don’t have to explain why she disappeared the same time as your little stunt.”
Jonah was amazed. Anytime he had gotten into trouble, his own father would dole out punishment, but would always embrace him with a tender forgiveness. There were countless times that he was afraid he’d simply gone too far, and that his father would never look at him again, but it never happened. No matter how much pain he caused his father, Thomas Whitfield loved him.
And Quilen Coomy now hated Talitha. Jonah was quite sure that Quilen didn’t even know what his daughter had done, but was ready to crucify her in front of his peers. Just to protect his reputation.
“The chairman will see you in a few hours - he’s a busy man, you know. But I requested to question you if you woke up when he was unavailable. If I can get something out of you, then maybe that will be all he needs to keep Talitha’s involvement quiet.”
“I’ll only talk to Mr. Adams,” Jonah said coldly.
“Who’s Mr. Adams,” snapped Quilen.
“From the… From the videos,” Jonah said.
Quilen smirked silently for a moment, and then let out a laugh. “Mr. Adams from the children’s lectures?”
“Yes.”
Quilen shook his head, snickering. “Mr. Adams from the lectures, who has been dead for over three hundred years?”
Jonah had no idea how long ago the lectures had been recorded, but the lapsed time cleared the air. He considered the clothing and tablets of the people in the videos compared to the uniforms and tiles of the people he saw throughout the Facility now. It also shed light on why his town on the surface had little evidence of a previous civilization - three or four hundred years is plenty of time for structures to collapse and for nature to overtake them. And for its distant descendants to forget.
“Yes, Mr. Adams. I want to
talk to him.”
Quilen looked at Jonah differently than before - more like looking at a dog chasing its tail than a fox in a chicken coop. “You know that you can’t talk to dead people, right?,” Quilen asked, snickering.
Jonah hoped that that simply talking about Mr. Adams would buy him some time, since there wasn’t much other knowledge that Quilen and he would share. If it led someone to Mr. Adams’ last video, perhaps they would discover the truth for themselves. But for the moment, he was merely stalling.
“I think he has more to say, and I want to talk to him,” Jonah said, not budging.
Quilen stared at Jonah in disbelief, and then started pacing around the room. He puffed hard on Chemvapor, the blue tube lighting up between his lips.
“You’re telling me that my daughter got mixed up with a boy who thinks that he can talk to a man who has been dead for generations, and somehow convinced her to break into the most sophisticated security system in the history of humanity? Or are you just preparing to share a similar fate to his - much sooner than he did? I assumed that you had a gigantic traitorous plan, but could it be possible that you’re just insane?”
“If you let me go back to the Facility’s main video room, you can talk to him, too,” Jonah said. “Will you ask the men outside if they would take me there? That’s what I asked Talitha to do, but she didn’t let me talk to him for very long.”
“Yes, I suppose Talitha would listen to a lunatic like you, if you actually believed in your own fantasies.”
Quilen walked toward the door, which opened.
“The Chairman of the Regulation Committee will be here soon enough. If you tell him what he needs to know, maybe the punishment he’ll give you and Talitha will be swift.”
The Surface's End Page 15