by Eliza Taye
A breeze blew back my hair as a train several yards away from me passed by alarmingly close. Glancing around for any other means of transport, I failed to find any. Everyone else was simply walking around. Peering back at the fleeting train, it too was all white except for the black-rimmed windows and black stripe running down it. Elongated and tube shaped, they reminded me of the bullet trains we had all over the world.
Dylan grabbed my forearm and led me further away from the elevator doors. “We need to get you off the streets before people start to pay attention to your peculiar outfit.”
I glanced at my clothes. They stood out like a whale in a tropical rainforest. “Good point. Where are we going to go?”
Dylan led me down one of the less-crowded side streets that branched out from the entrance. “To where I live. In the meantime, you can wear one of my mom’s outfits.”
While Dylan guided me through narrow pathways behind buildings where there were hardly any people to notice me, I merely kept gazing around in awe. Very few of the buildings appeared to be lower than fifty stories or so and they pressed in so closely in some areas that I had to crane my neck at a ninety-degree angle just to see.
The handful of people we did run into had starkly different ways of dressing and styling their hair than I was used to. Short, straight, and tidily pulled back if long, seemed to be the norm for hair, unlike the short, rigid, spiky hair more common in cities on land. None of the clothes was highly decorated or had funny sayings on it. Most were some sort of geometric style with curves dominating the edges of what appeared to be casual clothes.
“How much longer is it going to be?” I wondered, my tired legs screaming at me from our swift pace.
“Well, usually it would only be around a five-minute train ride, but taking the train would draw too much attention to you, so we have to walk.”
I frowned. “You’re not answering my question.”
I scrunched my lips to the left side in an annoyance but kept quiet. I had to admit that the allure of the city was too much to resist and I found myself reading the names and observing the variety of colors of the various different structures we passed. Almost everything had a nautical element to it. Street-level windows were shaped in wavy curves instead of squares, and names like Ocean Tower and Seashell Shop identified the buildings. The benches lining the pathways curved like the waves on the sea. No adjacent structures had the same color painted on the outside, making me wonder what the designer of the city had in mind.
Dylan stopped me in my tracks and pointed ahead to a tall white building. “This is where I live.”
I peered up at the arch above the doorway. Two sets of double doors glided in what appeared to be gold taking up nearly the entire span of the archway. Wide, broad columns stood to either side, seemingly more for decoration than support. Grooves were carved from the top of the columns all the way down to the solid bottom platform. At the top edge of both the arches and the columns were intricately carved designs to give the building a bit of character. Somehow, it reminded me of the expensive houses out east in Boston and New York City with ample amounts of charm. Trailing my eyes up the side of the building, I roughly counted sixty stories. “Wow,” was all I could say, mentally kicking myself for my lack of varied interjections so far.
“Come on.”
Dylan gestured for me to follow through the door. A wide corridor took us to a large, oval-shaped reception area and beyond that to an elevator. We took the elevator to the forty-seventh floor and took a right immediately after we got off.
“We kind of lucked out since our apartment is pretty much right across from the elevator,” spoke Dylan, punching in a code next to the doorway of his apartment.
A thought suddenly occurred to me and I stated, “No one else is home, right?”
“Nope, my parents work during the day and usually even at night. They’re serious workaholics.”
“Oh.” Inwardly, I sighed in relief. There wouldn’t be any adults lurking around asking me questions.
Dylan must have been thinking the same thing because he replied, “Don’t worry, I’ve already thought up an excuse if anyone asks me who you are. I could always say you’re a new classmate that I met at the end of last year.”
Dylan opened the door to the apartment and I was immediately stunned. The entire apartment was very modern, clean, and as organized as can be. A medium-sized kitchen to the right divided the space between dining and living. From the foyer, a step down led to a living room in the center of the large space with floor to ceiling windows. Walking down the step into the partially sunken living room, I could see two half-open hallways branching off the main living space.
I didn’t know what to expect of a home beneath the sea, but this wasn’t exactly it. Beach-colored hardwood covered all the floors except those in the kitchen, which were a mixture of white and black marble. White-paint coated almost every interior wall save for one accent wall to the left that was the blue color of early morning dawn. The two couches to my left and right matched the sterile-colored theme. Sighing, I couldn’t understand the obsession with white that Oceanians seemed to have. What was wrong with some color?
Making a beeline for the left side of the apartment, we passed into the half-open hallway. Ignoring the first two doors, Dylan pushed open the one at the end, beckoning me to come on inside too.
I slowed, trying to get a good look at the apartment. A few holoscreens with indistinguishable images of paintings hung on the wall. Nearly every one of them displayed some sort of ocean scenery: the beach with seashells strewn just at the surf line, a sunset over the water, or coral reef fish swimming around bright red coral.
“Come on in here, Allie. I need to see if this will fit you,” called out Dylan from inside what I assumed was his parent’s room.
Stepping away from examining the holoimages, I entered the room, which was a lot darker than I had expected. A solitary lamp lit the corner next to the sliding closet doors where Dylan held up a blue and white matching top and bottoms. Both appeared to be a little large, but I figured I could fit them easily.
“I think these could work.” I took the outfit from Dylan and held it against my chest.
“Good. The bathroom is the door to the left. Change into them and I’ll take you around to see more of the city.” Dylan left the room and closed the door behind him.
I went into his parent’s large master bathroom to change, at the same time admiring the different kinds of décor inside. Like the rest of the house, it followed a nautical theme, making it appear as if belonged in a beach house somewhere.
I felt awkward wearing the clothes of someone’s mother, but they fit comfortably and were soft against my skin. Looking at my reflection, the solid white shirt with only trace lines of blue near the shoulders and sleeves contrasted to my dark hair. Seeing a hair tie on the counter, I borrowed it and pulled my mid-back length hair into a tidy ponytail.
Satisfied I could now blend in seamlessly, I left the bathroom and bedroom behind to enter the white hallway again. Taking the right at the end of the hall and stepping down into the sunken living room, I noticed Dylan standing in the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Somewhat.” I meandered towards the kitchen, still trying to observe everything. Beyond the couch at the edge of the living room, I saw two more doors on the other side of the apartment next to what resembled a robot charging station.
“What do you like to eat?” Dylan prompted, watching me impatiently.
“What do you have?” I wondered.
Tapping the screen on his refrigerator, a window listing a variety of choices came up. “Everything really…although I don’t know what you are accustomed to on land.”
“Do you have pizza?” I leaned up on my tiptoes to see over Dylan’s shoulder, part of the screen still obscured by his wild hair.
He twisted around with a smile on his face, the corner of his mouth twitching as he curtailed a laugh. “Of course, I h
ave pizza.” Once again tapping the touchscreen through a variety of selections, he asked, “What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Cheese-only is fine.” I watched as he ordered it from the fridge. “How do you get the food?”
Without pausing to respond, he explained, “Part of the fridge contains a box where food is delivered via an attached chute. Robots make the food in the City Nourishment House. It is packed into a box and cushioned to ensure it arrives in perfect form, hot and ready to eat.”
I gawked at him. “Is all the food here done like that? Doesn’t anyone cook?”
“Yes, people still cook, but only if they have the time or if they want to.” Dylan shrugged. “Why cook when you can have your food delivered straight to you hot, tasty, and perfectly prepared every time?”
“I don’t know, I guess.”
“How is it on land?”
“We cook, order in, or simply go out to eat.”
“Hmm…interesting.” Dylan pulled a small device out of his pocket and typed something into it.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking notes,” he answered matter-of-factly, taking the newly arrived food out of the front fridge compartment. “I want to know everything about your world at the same time that I’m I introducing you to mine.”
I accepted my slice of pizza, nearly as big as the plate. “Well, touché…I want to know the same.” I bit into the pizza, which tasted awesome.
Dylan sat at one of the island barstools and I joined him. For a bit, we ate in silence until he piped up and suddenly said, “Oh, I need to go to the Oceanographic Lab to update my report. The online information systems have been offline for maintenance the last couple of days. My latest observations report will be late if I don’t go now.”
My pizza still half-eaten and cheese hanging down from my lip, I watched as Dylan scarfed down the rest of his pepperoni pizza slice, filling his cheeks like a hamster as he chewed it. Grabbing his c-com off the counter, he ran to the door, gesturing for me to get up and follow him.
Chapter 6
Bustling streets crowded in on us as Dylan hurriedly led me to the train station about a block away from where he lived. I kept close to Dylan in the thicket of people so I didn’t lose him. Pressed so close in a throng of people, once again, life in Oceania mesmerized me. Parents or robots pushed boxy strollers with a mixture of rowdy and docile children through the streets. The robots were a lot easier to place than the ones I was used to on land. These had humanoid shapes but lacked the outer skin designs so similar to humans like those of the androids in my world.
“Hurry, Allie, we don’t want to miss this train.” Dylan grabbed onto my wrist again and weaved through the crowd across the main street to the train station.
Visually inspecting the train station, I noticed it only consisted of an overhanging area in which to sit. To me, it resembled a stop more than a station. The recently arrived train differed from the one I’d seen earlier. A white exterior would have made it seamlessly blend into the surroundings if not for the blue stripe running down the center of the long, sectioned train. Unlike the ones on land, this one hovered about a foot or so from the ground with no tracks lying beneath it, only lights on the ground indicating where the invisible tracks should be.
Dylan and I rounded the front edge of the long nose of the train to the side where the doors stood ajar. He went on inside and found an empty seat, but I couldn’t help glancing over at the nose section, where instead of a control panel, there was a roped off area for strollers, wheelchairs, and the like with a robot attendant standing at the ready.
Sitting next to Dylan, I leaned over and asked him, “How do you pay for the train ride?”
Dylan stared at me as if I was an imbecile. “Pay? The train is free. No one pays to get on and off the train. It’s always free since it’s the only mode of transportation.”
My eyebrows shot up into the air. “The train is free? And there aren’t any cars here either?”
The only response I got as the train took off and jerked me to the side was a simple shake of his head.
Craning my neck to look out the window behind me, I jolted as the cushion beneath my rear end began to shift. Before asking what was going on, I recognized that it was merely conforming to the shape of my body. Cradled in its comfort, I watched the silver, blue, gray, white, and black buildings blur into stripes of bland colors as the train’s speed increased.
Finally, the train glided to a stop so gentle, I wouldn’t have noticed the difference between the smooth sailing and the end of the ride had I not been peering outside. Changing my gaze to focus on the windows across the way from where I sat, I noticed we’d stopped at the entrance to an enormous courtyard.
“Come on, Allie, this is our stop.” Dylan stood and rushed outside, barely waiting for me to join him.
Stepping off the train, the vastness of the courtyard occupied my entire vision. Arranged in a circular array with beige, blue, and black buildings each over forty stories tall surrounding it, the courtyard broke the chromatic tradition of the rest of the city. Decorative mosaics covered the floor in a Mediterranean style that suggested Greek origins. A set of five steps led down from the train station, leaving a flat area broken up only by a fountain with all sorts of mythical creatures spouting up in the center.
Snapping back from my observations, I realized Dylan had continued towards the second tallest building just northwest of where we stood. Jogging to catch up with his power-walking stride, I tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Where are we?”
“In the Science District…it’s also known as the Ocean District due to the main focus being ocean science.”
“Okay…I see.” My eyes drifted around to take a closer look at each building. “So the lab you need to go to is in this building? Why are you doing observations anyway?”
“Yes.” Dylan continued to hurry across the courtyard, finally reaching the steps in front of his destination. “This is the main ocean science building. The lower levels are dedicated to the labs. To answer your other question, high school students have to choose a research topic at the beginning of their acceptance into high school. They then have to spend the next four years working on the project each summer. Senior year, they present their findings to the entire class during the last few weeks of school. It’s standard for everyone. I chose to do mine on intertidal research.”
Dylan held open the glass front door as I asked him another question. “How do the students choose their topics?”
Before answering, Dylan entered his code to access a stairway level to the right of the marble-floored lobby. “They choose them based on whatever they are interested in getting their professional or Ph.D. degree in.”
“What if they don’t want to get a Ph.D.?”
Dylan paused descending the stairs, nearly causing me to smack into him, and frowned at me. “That’s not an option. Everyone has to obtain the highest degree possible in Oceania.”
My mouth dropped. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Dylan hurried down the last set of stairs to the bottom floor and swung open the door.
Sliding through the door just before it closed, I found myself in an area smelling strongly of fish. In contrast to the rest of Oceania, bland concrete made up both the walls and floor. Looking left to right, I saw bulky fish tanks along with carts, laboratory machines, and desks scattered among them, leaving very little room for people to navigate. “What did you choose?”
Dylan must have found his teacher’s desk because he attached his communicator device to the square tablet in the center of a large workspace. “I chose marine studies.” He watched the upload intently as he added, “I guess I didn’t have much of a choice. It’s in my blood. My dad’s an oceanographer and my mother is both a marine biologist and marine engineer.”
“Whoa.” My mind was blown.
“Yeah, they’re both very intelligent people.” Dylan clapped his hands once and said excitedly. “Now that that�
�s done, we can have some fun.” Dylan and I left the oceanographic building behind to greet the artificial light of day once again.
“Where are we going now?” I wondered, sitting down on the bench just outside the courtyard waiting for the train.
Dylan’s face grew somber and he replied, “I think there is something that you need to see before anything else in this city.”
I merely stared back at Dylan, trying to figure out what he was getting at as a train parked itself in front of our stop. This time, the train had a brown stripe on the side of it. Boarding, we rode in silence until Dylan instructed me to get off at a stop where I noticed no one else exited.
“Follow me,” said Dylan quietly.
Frowning yet again, I did as requested and followed him down an elongated gray brick path bordered by fake pine trees standing tall as sentinels. At the long end of the path appeared to be something, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. As we drew nearer, the shape of a world globe materialized.
The ambiance of the place made me feel like dry autumn leaves should be blowing through, but of course, they weren’t. “What is this place?”
“It’s a memorial,” said Dylan, his voice suddenly deeper. “It’s to all the humans that died because of The Great Plague.”
Bending down, I read the plaque beneath the round globe that had to be at least ten feet in diameter. On it were names of countries, cultures, and languages. Each was listed in such tiny writing that, even with my perfect vision, I had to squint to see it.
“Come around this way,” instructed Dylan, winding his way around the globe.
The opposite side held yet another list. Ironically, this one was even smaller than the other one. They listed words with no meaning to me.
Dylan must have noticed my puzzled face because he clarified, “It’s a list of every animal genus recorded by the year 2130 when the city was founded.” Dylan crouched down so that he was on the same level as me. “This whole memorial is dedicated to every living thing that died because of the plague or man’s destruction.”