Greenhaus:Storm

by Reckelhoff, Bryan

  Part of me sure is. “No, but scouting is dangerous work, and if I don’t come back…”

  Jeremiah jumped in. “You know I don’t want to lead an attack, I’ve made that clear to you.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she informed him, trying to keep her voice down to avoid rousing the sleepers or being overheard by anyone outside the tent. “In fact, I’m not going to either, for many reasons, including some we talked about in the bunker.”

  “So then what, if we aren’t attacking?” he asked.

  “If something happens to me, take Niles, Ren, and Jordan and whoever else you want. Sneak out and go in search of this Oasis. For those wanting war, leave them behind. They will have no trouble finding it. They can sacrifice themselves at the walls of Glass City, but we both know that is a fight we can’t win. Zac and Swifty will figure out how to get the vehicles working, and they could be a huge help to you in your travels, but Zac for sure will want to seek blood. His parents were taken in a Ranger raid and his blood runs hot. Head south and enjoy the adventure. Life here has gotten so… stale. There has to be so much out there better than this.”

  “Other Glass Cities would be my guess. I’m sure there is more than just the two,” he theorized. “Ella, the number of us Masked dwindles every day. People seem to get sick faster up north than we ever did down south.”

  “It’s the old city. The toxicity is much higher there and it’s in our water. If you flee here, avoid the ruins. They are the reason your old camp is dropping its rolls daily,” Ella explained. “Head south. Niles said the air is lighter down there and easier to breathe.”

  “Will do,” he replied as he started to walk toward the exit.

  “Hey, one more thing to ask of you,” Ella said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Take care of Ren and listen to her counsel. A strong camp, no matter how big or small, needs people like her. She is smart and versatile, and most importantly, the three of us are like-minded on this,” Ella explained. “If the Masked are to have a future, it will be with people like us leading them. The warmongers will surely lead us to a quick end if they are given the chance. Right now, we are playing a game we can’t win. So I’m attempting to invent a whole new game, one that will change the destiny of the Masked.”

  “I see. Well, if anyone understands the futility of an attack on Glass City, it’s me,” Jeremiah said.

  “How ‘bout we keep this talk between us for now?” Ella asked.

  “Sure thing, but if we aren’t attacking, then why do we have to rearrange the fortress?”

  “Dammit, Jeremiah, just do it. I want everyone to at least think we are planning to attack, okay?”

  Jeremiah nodded and departed in silence, visibly not pleased with his assignment, but off to perform it nonetheless. Ella believed that he understood her reasoning and would go along with her advice, but she also felt he may leak her plan to those he worked alongside. They happened to be the most aggressive people in the camp. Ella had bought herself some time, but at what cost? Time, the vanishing currency, would run out and eventually Ella would have to tell the camp. At times, she wondered if running away was her best option, but even the thought of such a cowardly act made her stomach turn.

  She woke Niles and Jordan with a gentle nudge. She watched their mannerisms as they went from deep sleep to sitting up and starting their day. They rolled over and stretched the same way, then swung their feet off the bed and sat with the same posture. The actions of both were very similar, like twins separated at birth.

  When they stood up and started to walk, something about Jordan seemed especially familiar to Ella. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. Whether it was something in his gait, his slight limp maybe, or the way he swung his arms when he walked, she somehow recognized this distinct strut. The trio chatted and chomped down on some grubs and a cold wild root soup. Afterward, Ella dismissed the pair of older men and caught a quick nap before departing for another round of scouting.

  She now understood why Elder Stone always kept her camp busy. If they had things to do, it would not allow their minds to wander and question orders. It worked brilliantly in Ella’s case. She thought back to all of her scouting missions and wondered how many of them were necessary and how many of them were busywork. The missions kept her from going crazy, kept her occupied, and most importantly, kept her out of their way. She had delegated tasks to those under her in the same manner, to keep everything humming along. It was a tactic she planned to employ as long as she could.

  Ella hardly remembered falling asleep, or waking up. The walk to the bunker, getting situated, and her first nap were all a blur. She slept so much recently that she had lost track of her days. The dark sky gave no clues as to when the light would return, and Glass City offered none either. Having lost her bearings, Ella had no idea how long she had been out or when day would come.

  Except for the rare dreams where she fled for the Oasis, she never felt refreshed. The more she snoozed, the more tired she seemed. Ella felt a pressing need to regain control of her days. She didn’tt want to be nabbed during a power-down raid, plus others from her camp would come looking for her if she stayed away too long.

  Scouting at night bored her, with little else to see other than the tubes leading out of the top of Glass City, transporting things to and fro. With nothing to learn from watching them, Ella passed the time in the dark by guessing where they went. Jeremiah’s guess of more Glass Cities was as good an answer as any she came up with.

  The dome on the latest project got closer to completion every day. Ella knew the Insiders’ routine like the back of her hand. The new crew had no variations in the way they went about things. Arrive. Unpack everything. Work. Midday break to eat. Work. Pack up supplies and disappear until the next day.

  Truthfully, her scouting became more of a time-killing exercise than an information gathering session. She knew when the power-downs would occur and how long they would last. She knew the optimal time to attack, had she chosen to do so.

  Ella thought of the letter and wondered how many of her camp would live in Glass City when it was done. Part of her still thought the letter could be a trap, but she knew if the Rangers wanted to, they could hunt down all the Masked anytime they so choose. Jeremiah’s testimonial backed up her suspicions. She wouldn’t have to tell anyone if she continually delayed the attack until the Rangers eventually came to recruit them to the Inside. To escape boredom, she pondered life on the Inside.

  When the sky began to brighten in the east, she started scouting again. The workers arrived at this time every day, as they had done since she started scouting. A night filled with restless sleep and painful movements had come to an end. The lights went on in the dark section of Glass City and Ella grabbed her binoculars. At first glance, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She jerked away from the eyepieces and slapped herself, just to be sure it was real and not a dream. She brought the binoculars back to her eyes.

  He’s back! She thought before repeating it aloud several times. “He’s back. He’s back. He’s back. Stranger Friend is back!”

  Chapter 27 (Jacob Niles)

  There is only one way out. The last statement from the opening page of the Charter closed a door in his life. Sylvia‘s implication that more than a single force pulled strings in the ‘Haus opened a thousand others. Jacob wondered if joining the Whisperers without weighing the consequences might have been a mistake, despite his father’s status as a founding member. Too late to worry about that.

  His first official assignment awaited his return to New St. Louis. Eyes would be on him, but how many different groups were doing the spying remained a mystery. It mattered little to him whether two or a hundred and two different groups watched. Jacob had chosen a side and now had a job to do, a job he planned on doing to the best of his ability.

  Over the previous four days, Jacob had gotten a thorough tour of Newer Orleans, making mental notes of places he wished to investigate further when he returned
. The Beebe zipped along its tube as Jacob sat alone with his thoughts. All the new things spinning around his head might have overwhelmed him before, but his focus level was intense, developed by years working on the beams, and kept him level-headed. Just like then, one false step could be my undoing.

  Jacob practiced the signs Sylvia had taught him to pass the time, cruising above the wasteland. Even with limited training time, he had learned many things: knots, knives, self-defense, how to eavesdrop through the glass, how to ride ATVs, and a tutorial on things that could be used to make weapons in a pinch. In addition to some basic signs, they spent an entire day on the other nonverbal communication techniques used by the Whisperers.

  Sylvia also schooled him on the structure of the organization that he had signed a blood contract to join. She fed him information in small bits. Knowing what he now knew, part of him couldn’t help but think this training wasted time, keeping him busy and distracted. Paranoia knows no bounds.

  While approaching the Newer Orleans colony, Jacob had noticed the physical differences from his home colony. During his visit, he observed other differences, none stranger than citizens leaving through underground tunnels and not needing blood work upon return, even though exposure occurred.

  On trips to the Oasis, Jacob asked many questions. Some remained unanswered, though none burned at him more than the motive behind the fallible Sustainability Charts. A closer examination of them exposed potential corruption, possibly in his own department, something that bothered him a great deal. He and Sylvia determined that programmers relied on antiquated algorithms and human input to set demand, instead of considering the improved techniques and better trained workers that could increase efficiency. Jacob had no idea why more efficient methods weren’t utilized. It made no sense to waste anything, let alone the most precious resource of all, the one thing that couldn’t be recycled: time.

  Killing time couldn’t be the sole purpose. Jacob felt a deeper reason existed. Something so deep that in all the years since his father’s death, the Whisperers had made little headway, failing to identify a primary target.

  The opposition is just that good.

  Jacob set out to change that, and he knew his father had discovered something major before his unfortunate end. What, exactly, he couldn’t be sure, but Jacob knew this: he had the same intuitions as his old man, the same blood coursed through his veins, and the same voices in his head caused the same paranoia. Like father, like son.

  With the cooperation of Doyle, Jacob hoped to transfer to Newer Orleans, primarily to find answers he believed only existed there, but also to expedite his training with Sylvia. Even though her grating personality overpowered her flawless looks and took the initial shine off of Jacob’s impression of her, Sylvia remained an alluring presence. Maybe the wealth of knowledge she possessed caused the attraction, maybe the connection to his father or Jasper, but something about her created mixed feelings in him. Though relieved to escape her verbal jabs for a while, he didn’t even make it halfway to New St. Louis before he started to eagerly anticipate her arrival.

  According to Sylvia, courting rituals dictated couples spent time together, and above all else, he had to sell the relationship. Jacob played his role perfectly after a rough start. ‘New’ Jacob knew so much more than ‘old’ Jacob. The main reason for his enlightenment, Sylvia and her training, would arrive in days. As the Beebe cruised through the blackness of the wasteland, Jacob took a break from his signs to laugh at his former follies.

  Jacob distinctly recalled the day had he moved into his own place for the first time. His mindset was no different than anyone else’s in the ‘Haus. He remembered how his eyes were closed to things that mattered while he longed for things that held no actual meaning. From his apartment in Zone 5, Jacob spotted a beautiful hand-crafted table and chair set, one of the few artifacts recovered from Old Earth by the Rangers, sitting in a shop two floors above in Zone 7. His gredits were not nearly enough to gain him access to the shops on that floor, so he hunkered down and saved, saved, saved.

  To conserve energy and his gredits, Jacob used little water, opting instead to use his post-work detoxifying sprays to cleanse himself. He turned off his thermo-control system, allowing whatever the natural temperature of the ‘Haus was to be his climate. He rarely used any lighting systems in his apartment; using the light from his neighbors saved him many gredits, though it kept his apartment dim at night.

  Jacob walked to work, saving the gredits that pod or elevator travel would have cost him. The fees were small, but using conveniences daily added up, plus he enjoyed the exercise. Others opted to use the costly systems, and back then he had laughed at them, thinking himself enlightened. Now his new self laughed at his old self that had been only marginally more aware compared to those he chuckled at.

  All these measures helped him earn gredits, but he still had a long way to go before access to the shops he wanted would be granted. Even after gaining access to Zone 7 shops, something on a higher level would catch his eye. That was the way it worked in the ‘Haus. Luckily for him, Jacob had overcome his material desires.

  The gredit system was designed flawlessly. It kept everyone humming along with their heads down, striving to get to that next level of the ‘Haus, while at the same time living more sustainable lives. Those from the Outside would learn the way of the ‘Haus and then be slotted into a position.

  As the machine grows, it needs new cogs.

  Jacob now wondered if the Founding Fathers knew the system could be corrupted or if they were the original corruptive presence in the ‘Haus. He couldn’t fathom the latter thought. Their mission and purpose seemed too pure, even though he was told by Sylvia many times, ‘It’s important to open your mind to possibilities that may, in fact, seem impossible.’

  Old Jacob had stretched his meals, only eating five ration packets every two days instead of the six allowable by the Sustainability Charts. Back then, Jacob picked up stray refuse while he walked the ‘Haus, then flipped it to Recycling for the extra gredits it would earn him. ‘Every little bit helps,’ he remembered his father saying. ‘One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure,’ another of Harvard’s ‘golden nuggets’ that remained imprinted in Jacob’s brain.

  Those who ignored these rules remained in the lower zones and earned the nickname of Downers. A stigma surrounded them, but now Jacob wondered: How many of them are just like Jasper, wasting their gredits to keep a low profile? Could there be a third group out there operating in secret?

  Jacob tilted his chair back as his Beebe passed another glowing Tesla coil. The blue power lines lulled him into a trance. It transported him to a more innocent time, one of the last days he had worked with Jasper. Jacob wanted to arrive on site before the sky brightened. A half-hearted daily race to see who could arrive first, which Jacob never won, spurred him along. A brief pause at the Gardens to observe the many plants, animals, and trees that called it home preceded a quick glance into his childhood apartment.

  When he had arrived at Annex 23 that day, the disappointment felt the same as it did every day. “Someday I will get here first,” Jacob confidently told him.

  “Yeah, well, that will be the day after I die,” Jasper replied, and then grumpily barked, “Now get your ass over here and help me undo these straps.”

  Jacob remembered how much everyone hated lockdown and the unpack, though the laborious processes had its purpose. Like most other days, he stared several times at the tunnel, wondering if that day would be the day. The tunnel’s barricade was easy to remove, the last defense by no means impenetrable.

  At that time, he suffered a type of blindness, but now he could see. It triggered a memory of another of his father’s sayings, once that made much more sense now. ‘All are watching, but only some can see.’

  The next time he slipped on his orange Engineering Nu-Skin, he would look differently at the wrench on his left pec and the bold, lowercase ‘e’ on the back. He knew his department played at least some
part in all the waste and corruption. Sylvia had pointed that out. No longer fooled by works of beauty like the Gardens or the Waterways, he now saw them as distractions. He no longer set goals to attain material things in the Shoppes. Obtaining knowledge became his driving force.

  Future daydreams wouldn’t be consumed by pointless topics. They would be spent pondering the waste throughout the ‘Haus. Discovering the reasons and the people responsible for it. Thinking about how greater efficiency and better use of space would allow more Outsiders to be brought Inside. He would examine the fraudulent Zero Waste Initiatives with a closer eye, hoping for a clue. Whatever was being covered up, the information was there and he was driven to uncover it. If you just know where to look.

  Jacob had enjoyed his break in Newer Orleans, but was ready to return to work. As the Beebe put distance between him and Sylvia, it sped closer to someone else. Someone he had dreamed about on numerous occasions since they had locked eyes. A girl he had met through the glass. The pain in her hazel eyes couldn’t be erased from his memory. Her haunting of his dreams served as a constant reminder of why he had started building annexes in the first place.

  To help those on the Outside get in the ‘Haus.

  Only now, he wondered if it wasn’t him that should be trying to get out.

  Chapter 28 (Ella Storm)

  Ella’s heart beat in a funny rhythm. Stranger Friend had returned to work, but she saw no sign of the old man. Odd, Ella thought, since the elder of the pair arrived first every day. This made her double check, since the men behind the glass looked so similar in the bright orange suits they wore. She couldn’t recall exactly how long Stranger had been gone, but the mannerisms and features matched enough to brighten her day. Seeing him brought her back to the moment they shared at the glass. The moment that began to break her rebel spirit and tame the rage that burned inside of her.

  Since that day, everything had changed for her, quickly, and in ways she could have never imagined. Her inner torment was eased. Seeing concern in his eyes had challenged all she believed about the Oppressors.