Quilen didn’t even have the courage to save his daughter rather than himself.
His daughter.
He didn’t like thinking about her. She had caused so much disruption to his life while she was alive with her constant longings for the surface. He never understood how she could be so unsatisfied with their comfortable world. And now, in her death, she was continuing to make him uncomfortable.
Rather, she wasn’t the one making him feel uncomfortable. He was doing that to himself. After sacrificing his daughter for his own well-being, he again offered someone else on a platter to appease someone who had control. He assumed it would be the last time that Gisk asked him to do something like that, but the question hung in his mind.
Is this where it ends?
The subcommittee he was leading had not dissolved, nor was there a plan to do so. It was no longer questioning laborers on a daily basis, but they were still discussing ways to keep them quelled, in case there was some reaction to Azazel’s death.
In the two weeks since the execution, Quilen slept less and less each night. At first he assumed it must be normal – he had gone through a lot of trauma lately, after all. Everything in his life had changed, and every good thing he now had required a large price.
He rarely talked to his wife or son, though that wasn’t out of the ordinary from how things had always been. Each were generally consumed in their own lives, their own wristiles, their own entertainment. The difference was that now all three of them seemed to be actively avoiding each other.
Quilen walked through the dim halls to his office, turning on the light from the walls with a slight motion of his hand. He chose no view or landscape to show up on the walls – just a cold, dull glow that he hoped would sterilize his mind. He glanced around the office he had been occupying for several weeks now, realizing he had spent more time here than in his own sleeping unit. While it was bigger, he realized it wasn’t much different from the one in their old family unit. At least not different enough to justify his current stress.
He sat in the chair parked in front of the smooth glass desk that was always blinking with alert messages. He didn’t want to sleep, but he didn’t necessarily want to do anything else, either. He grabbed a tube of ChemVapor – the strongest he had – and forced all of the thoughts out of his head.
.- -.-. -
“Yidel, you’re still working on the resource harvester extenders, right?”
Reena stood near the wall in her sleeping unit, surrounded by a group of fellow laborers. Some were from the sleeping unit itself, but others came because of whispers about what she might be talking about. She had a large sheet of used paper stuck over the only wall tile in the room, and was writing on it with grease on the end of a small cleaning brush.
Paper was barely found anywhere in the Facility, as there was generally no need for it. The common citizen had access to an endless supply of digital storage, so anytime they wished to write or draw, they would do so on their wristile or a wall tile so that it would be saved forever. If they wanted to recall a specific work they had created, all they had to do was type in their access code to see it.
It was not so in the Midlet, however. The laborers were not given wristiles, and could only watch incoming feeds on the public wall tiles. Reena and her friends didn’t know any difference – they were aware that the citizens in the Upper Levels had such devices, but they had never used them to see what they might be missing.
Anytime a scrap of paper was found anywhere in the Facility, it would be carried back to the Midlet for children to use. Generally, the adults didn’t write but only talked, passing their words on from generation to generation to memorize. But at this moment, Reena was doing something with it that had never been done before in the Midlet.
Planning.
“And Onjo, you’re in sanitation?”
Reena was announcing the names of the attendees and their assignment posts. As each nodded, she would write it down. She wasn’t quite sure what she would do with the information, but Hokmah seemed to think it would be useful. He sat at the edge of the group, giving silent approval anytime Reena glanced at him with a questioning look.
Every three hours, assignment posts for the laborers would be updated on the public wall tiles. The chip embedded in their arms would sync to a tile when they walked by, and their assignment would display if nothing else was on the screen. If one of them was called in an emergency, the nearest wall tile would post an alert for them to drop whatever they were doing. The laborers had never before planned, because they never before thought of their time as their own.
“Is that everybody?” Reena asked as she stepped back from the wall. The group exchanged glances and nodded unsurely.
“Great,” she said after no one spoke up. Looking at Hokmah, she asked, “now what do we do with this?”
Hokmah stroked his beard, his eyes darting across the faces and ended on the paper covering the wall tile. He squinted.
“Read each of the assignments to me,” he said after a pause.
Reena started reading the list to him, “two on live resource maintenance, three on resource harvesters,” naming each of the thirteen jobs including her own.
After she was finished reading, Hokmah stood.
“Do any of you notice anything in particular about these assignments?”
He continued to look around the room, waiting on a brave soul to follow the train of thought that was obviously running through his head.
After a moment of silence, one of the men from a different sleeping unit asked, “The majority of the assignment posts are for resources?”
Hokmah nodded his head. “Very good, Yidel,” he said. “In fact, if you asked every person in the Midlet what their main purpose assignments were, I would assume most of them would also work with resources.”
Another pause.
“So what does that mean?” Yidel asked, throwing his scarred hands up in the air. All of them stared at Hokmah with confused faces.
Before the old man could answer, Reena’s voice came out in a daze.
“We’re in control,” she said, her eyes pointing at the ceiling.
Hokmah laughed.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Reena,” he said. “But tell the others what you mean.”
The group of laborers, still confused, all turned to face her.
“We are in charge of maintaining the resources – even the water that is drawn up from below.” Her eyes darted around, as if she were searching for her thoughts somewhere in the corners of the room. “We are the reason that there is always Food Substance and fluid in the tubes. Without us, they would starve.”
“Not immediately,” Hokmah said, nodding. “Much of the Facility is automated, so we’re not the ones who are actually filling the tubes. But we are the ones who keep the automation running.
“When I was a young boy, my father was in charge of the resource harvesters. He would meet with one of the Leaders at the time, who came down here more often than they do now. I don’t remember his name. I would never say that they had a friendship, but perhaps that they were simply friendly with one another. He was the only man that greeted my father with the salute of the Upper Level.”
Hokmah crossed his right hand to his left shoulder, as if he were greeting a ghost.
“The two of them would talk about the state of things – the important work that we were doing down here, and how those on the Upper Level appreciated what we did. My father always told him that he was happy he could serve the citizens. When the man left, my father would always shake his head in disgust. It was as if he knew the man had lied – that those in the Upper Levels didn’t actually care – and he was disappointed that he would always lie back to the man by saying he was happy.
“I remember following my father as he trained younger men on how to work on the harvesters and how to add extension lines. Not only would he pass on the knowledge of how to maintain the machines, but he would also stress the importance of the work tha
t they were doing. That they were important, not just to the Midlet and the assignment post, but to the whole Facility. He told me the same thing when he taught me how to weld, even though I was assigned to the thermoelectric generators.
“Back then, we maybe only had three or four people in this whole sector working on resource harvest extenders, but these days we have dozens.”
The group in the sleeping unit looked around at each other, processing the words from the older man. Reena continued to stare into space, seeming to be on the verge of a breakthrough.
Onjo, the woman who was assigned to sanitation, finally spoke up. “Hokmah, what does this have to do with us?” she said.
“Everything,” Reena answered, as if the question were directed to her once again.
Hokmah sat down, motioning for Reena to explain.
“We are adding extenders to the resource harvesters faster all the time,” she said. “And the live resources – the animals that I am assigned to – they are harvested sooner and sooner. They are barely matured before they are added to the Food Substances.
“The Facility is automated, yes. But it needs our hands to support the amount of food and fluid that is passing between the units. If we were to simply stop maintaining those assignment posts…”
“But we would starve,” a man yelled. “The same Food Substance that they eat in the Upper Levels is what keeps my family fed.”
Reena raised her hand to halt the man’s worry as she looked into his eyes. “No one will starve,” she said. “I’m not saying we do anything yet. But to understand that we are the ones that keep each family in the Facility fed… We have more power than all of their control officers put together.”
“Reena,” Hokmah said as his eyebrows raised. “Don’t put too much faith in yourself and this small group of people. If thirteen people stopped showing up for their purpose assignments, then it would be those thirteen who would die by the hands of the control officers – not the other way around.”
Reena nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But not if it’s more. Not if it’s all of us.”
Yidel stood.
“That’s impossible, though,” he said with fear and anger revealing itself in his voice. “To get everyone in the Midlet to stop working would only cause more of us to die. They kill us for no reason, and fighting will only make it worse on all of us. We don’t have weapons or armor. We don’t even have control of our own lives.”
“Which is exactly the reason we must try, Yidel,” Reena said. “If all of us are together, then they can’t do anything. None of them have ever been down in a resource unit or underneath a harvester extension. If we can unite, they’ll be so concerned about themselves that they won’t even notice that we’re making our way through the hallways that lead to the surface.”
Hokmah walked over and put a hand on Yidel’s shoulder with reassurance while still facing Reena.
“Your intentions are good, Reena, but your ideas are still young,” he says. “You are right that the Midlet must unite. Every one of us. But you forget that much of what is happening now is because the Upper Level citizens are already completely concerned about themselves. If we all stop showing up to our assignment posts, they won’t be distracted. Rather, they’ll be more focused on us than ever before.”
The small group sat in silence for a moment. Reena knew it was true, but she wanted too greatly to have hope. It was the first time in her life that it seemed that there might be a way to freedom. It was the first time she allowed herself to believe that there was even a place to go, besides a different corridor or sector. She so badly wanted to have the answers now that Hokmah had convinced her to start to lead.
“What do you suggest that we do, then?” she asked, slightly defeated.
Hokmah looked deep into her eyes.
“Don’t lose hope,” he said, first to her, and then looking around the room. “All of you – don’t lose hope. I believe it is absolutely possible that we could be free of this place and on the surface. But we must be patient. If we act too quickly because of excitement, then at best we’ve accomplished nothing. At worst, we die and the rest of our people suffer consequences for our rash decisions.
“I’m not asking questions and making us go through these conversations because I enjoy watching everyone squirm. I don’t have answers either. Not only will it take all of us to execute whatever plan we make, it will also take all of us to create that plan.”
Reena nodded. She didn’t want to lose hope, but it would be so easy to do so. Her own history gave her no promise of a different future, and she had nothing else to rely on except for stories. But if she was going to lead anyone, she couldn’t allow her fear and doubt be her guide. The people she led could not put all of their hope in her, so she had to point them to something greater. Something that she could also hope in.
“You’re right,” she said. “We won’t let Azazel die for nothing. We won’t let anyone here die for nothing. When we act, it will be because our plan is decided. If the Maker helped his people in the stories that we’ve all heard, then we will trust that he will help us. Like all of you, I’m impatient. I want out now. But not if our haste forces us to lose any more of our people to men like Quilen Coomy.”
Words of agreement drifted through the group.
“So we don’t necessarily do anything substantial at this moment,” Onjo said. “But what do we do now?”
“We unite with our people,” Hokmah said while looking at Reena in confirmation. “We find anyone in the Midlet who is willing to act with us, and people who will help us plan. The greater the number, the more likely our chance of success.”
“Yes,” Reena agreed. “And one of the first tasks I think we should focus on is confirming what the messages from Jonah and T said. I do believe that we can live on the surface, but we have to make sure. If we create a grand plan, only to die from opening a single seal to the outside, then we are fools.”
The room agreed.
“We all know how important it is that none of this gets back to the Upper Level,” Reena continued. “As we saw with Azazel, who didn’t even pose a threat to any of them— They will not hesitate to use us as puppets for their own purposes. If they find out that we are planning to break free from the Facility and leave them to clean their own pigs, they will do far worse to us.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“You’re doing it perfectly,” Lillian encouraged Talitha.
The two were sewing patches onto holes in worn out clothing. Helen had spent several days teaching Talitha how to sew, after Lillian first introduced her to the skill. Lillian had quickly volunteered to help continue lessons when she seemed to get comfortable with it.
“Thanks, Lillian,” Talitha said, smiling. Jonah had told her that Lillian generally wasn’t very excited about this chore, but jumped at every opportunity to spend time with her. The last couple of months were spent surrounded by people that seemed to truly love each other. She had never known deep conversation, where the other person’s eyes weren’t flitting back and forth to distracting tiles.
Not only did they love each other, but they seemed to love her. And she wasn’t completely sure why. She hadn’t helped or added anything to the community that they didn’t already have. In fact, she felt like she was a burden – that any activity that included her took three times as long and ended up half as good.
But she tried to allow herself to sink into a patience that she didn’t yet know or understand. It was hard, even in comparing the stitches that she and Lillian made. By the time she had almost completed one patch, Lillian had already tossed aside three freshly patched shirts and was most of the way through her fourth. She had assumed that something like this was only ever done by machine, or otherwise by an “unskilled” laborer. Looking back at her family and their friends, they were definitely the ones who were unskilled.
“Wait – could you show me how to tie this off again?” Talitha was only slightly embarrassed, because Lillian seemed overjoyed to he
lp. Her hands were quickly in the younger girl’s, the two of them tying it together.
After initially regaining her strength, Talitha only spent two or three hours outside each afternoon. She would still get sick every few days, but Doc Thorton assured her that her body was adjusting to everything quite well. Rather than continuing to eat and drink only what they knew she could handle, he was insistent that she introduce questionable things into her diet. She slowly could eat more of their food and would drink a small amount of unfiltered water.
She was still living in one of Doc Thorton’s rooms, but she was slowly integrating into the small town. Besides children who would giggle while trying to catch a glimpse of her through the windows, she started having regular guests. Girls her age and older women would stop in for quick snacks, sometimes asking questions about her life and sometimes telling her about their own. It could sometimes be overwhelming, but she considered the alternative of no one ever talking to her. She would much rather people be too friendly.
Helen and Lillian were the most frequent guests – besides Jonah, of course, who was with her anytime he could be. She started spending her days at the Whitfields’ home, learning whatever she could. There had also been talk of her attending the small schoolhouse with Lillian and Harrison. Even though she could read and write better than everyone else in the village, she was completely oblivious to the kind of knowledge that really mattered here.
“Did you know that is the same kind of sewing you do on someone’s skin if they get cut really bad?” Lillian asked as she finished her own patch.
“What?” Talitha responded, surprised.
“Yeah,” Lillian answered. “One time, when Doc Thorton was away, my mom had to sew up Harrison’s knee because he fell down a hill.”
“That’s gross,” Talitha said, a bit sick to her stomach at the image. She wondered why Lillian would bring up such a thought.
Lillian frowned, disappointed. “I don’t think it’s gross,” she said. “I think it’s neat that something as silly as sewing a patch on a shirt can be the same thing as saving somebody’s life. I mean, mom didn’t save Harrison’s life when he hurt his knee, but it’s the same type of thing, you know?”
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