Darklandia

by T. S. Welti

  “There is no such thing as a darkling disease,” Nyx corrected me. “There is no such thing as darklings. We are all human. We all suffer the same emotions and urges.” He paused to look me in the eye, to make sure I understood him before he continued. “The government has taught you almost from birth that you belong to a superior species, more evolved, less violent. The truth is that there is no difference between your DNA and the DNA of a darkling.

  “The only difference is the synthetic mixture of drugs and propaganda you’ve been fed, that courses through your veins and pollutes your mind. That is what makes you different. Whether that makes you better or worse than a darkling is for you to decide, but the so-called darklings are no more diseased than you or I.”

  I looked past Nyx at the safety pole, which reflected a distorted view of us: life through the lens of the rations, everything fuzzy and rounded, everything safe.

  “Why did you tell me to drink my ration before you arrived?”

  “Because that wasn’t your ration,” he replied with a grin. “I adjusted your dosages in the system. You can drink your rations on the same schedule as before, only now your rations won’t turn you into mush. You’re going to feel a little strange the first week. I know you already experienced the dark feelings and hunger from going without the rations for a day, but that’s nothing compared to what you’ll feel in a day or two… maybe sooner.

  “Your body is going to slip into a state of withdrawal and you’ll feel as if your insides are being clawed to shreds. But don’t worry and try not to raise your mother’s suspicions. You have to try to pretend that everything is okay. If the pain gets too bad, you can always get in touch with me and I’ll try to adjust your ration with a proper dosage of pain relievers. But I can’t make any promises. I’m no health specialist.”

  “That’s not comforting,” I replied.

  “That’s real life.”

  My stomach growled, and my embarrassment diffused the tension. “Are you going to adjust Darla’s rations?”

  He turned to me as a hollow whir filled the subway car. “With her consent and commitment, I’ll consider it. But you have to understand this is not an after-school club, this is a serious movement. That’s why I’m taking you to the detainee facility to help you decide. I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “I understand the government wants to control everyone with these drugs, but what about Darklandia? And the breeding regulations?” I asked.

  He looked up at a screen above the subway exit before he answered. “We only have a few minutes, so I’ll have to save those very long stories for another time. Right now you need to know what to do when we get to the detainee facility.” He waited for me to nod before he continued. “Okay, when we get there you have to pretend we’re there because of your evaluation yesterday. When we spoke in the courtyard in front of the Felicity building, I offered to show you the detainee facility to help set you back on the right path and you were a little reluctant at first, but you soon came to your senses. You hope to one day work at the facility.”

  I didn’t like the idea of telling such a despicable lie to high-powered government officials. Of course, it seemed Nyx was one of those officials if he had the security clearance to use the subways.

  “What exactly do you do at the Department of Felicity?” I asked. “You seem very young to have such high security clearance.”

  “I’m just your everyday tech geek. Well, I guess you could call me Head Geek. I’m the senior analyst on the Darklandia mainframe. I make sure the system runs without glitches.”

  “What would you consider a glitch in Darklandia?”

  “What I would consider a glitch someone else would consider a sign that the system is working properly. However, a glitch in Darklandia can sometimes be very serious. We had a glitch a few days ago, just before your grandmother’s rapture, I mean, just before your grandmother’s murder. That glitch is the reason Commissioner Baron stabbed the mayor. His feed was corrupted.”

  8

  “I promise I’ll explain more about that later,” Nyx said, as the subway came to a screeching halt. “Now it’s time to show you why Felicity is a sham. You have your lifesaver, don’t you?” I slipped the blue vial out of my tunic. “Good. Drink it if you start to feel overwhelmed.”

  We stepped out of the subway car into another station. Colored tiles on the wall spelled out the words NEWKIRK AVE. We climbed more flights of stairs to the street level and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  The streets were not only completely deserted, but the buildings here were destroyed, reduced to piles of broken concrete, twisted metal, and dust. The asphalt suffered large gaping holes where I could only assume bombs had once ravaged this street. Across the broken landscape, as far as I could see, only one building remained mostly undamaged.

  The building stood at least twenty stories tall and nearly as wide as an entire Manhattan city block. A few rusted electric letters above the glass entrance doors hung loose and two of the letters were missing, but one could not mistake what the sign had once read: D_RK_ANDIA.

  “Is this… the amusement park?” I didn’t realize how strange this sounded until I spoke the words aloud.

  “Yes. This is where it all began,” he replied. “Come on, let’s get inside before there’s another raid.”

  “What’s a raid?” I asked, as we crossed the slanted street, our boots crunching on glass as we stepped over the shattered remains of a building.

  “This region of New York is not fully protected by the missile defense system. Sometimes the smaller missiles still get through the shield.”

  “Missiles? As in bombs?” I asked, as we approached the glass entrance doors of the former amusement park. “Then why is this building still standing?”

  “It’s been bombed eleven times in the last forty years. The rebuilding process never ends here,” he said, as he held his wrist inside a scanner near the entrance. “No more questions.”

  The doors slid open and I couldn’t believe the glass doors were as thick as my foot was long. The heels of my boots clacked against the shiny concrete floor as we crossed through a glass corridor. At the end of the corridor, two Guardian Angels stood straight as lampposts with their hands clasped behind their backs.

  “Good afternoon, Blake,” Nyx said, and the angel on the left nodded at him. “I’m giving a tour today. Is Hispa here?” The angel nodded and Nyx nodded in return. “Great. I think this one needs a real thorough tour, if you know what I mean.” The angel winked at Nyx and my shoulders trembled. Nyx held his wrist up to a circle etched in the center of the glass door separating this corridor from the enormous lobby beyond. The entire door flashed green then swung open.

  I followed closely behind Nyx, so close I could smell he had showered recently. Once again, I was struck by how utterly clean his clothing appeared. Did employees of the Department of Felicity get special washday privileges? This made me so angry I wanted to turn around and leave, but I knew this would only cause a scene and more suspicion would be cast in my direction.

  Then I saw it. Something even worse than extra showers and laundry privileges.

  Across the vast open space of the lobby, past the row of angels lined up in the front of the lobby like the battleships lined up in the Hudson, there in the center of a dozen concrete pillars holding up the ceiling, stood a gushing fountain of water. My mind flashed quickly to the parched fountains in front of the Department of Felicity then back to the water blasting upward and cascading into a circular pool of sparkling clear liquid. It was obscene.

  “Don’t stare at it,” Nyx muttered from the corner of his mouth. I wanted it so badly. The tickle in my throat returned and I had to swallow my thick saliva to keep from choking. “This way,” he said, pulling me sideways into a long corridor lined with six elevators.

  “Why can’t we have it?” I whispered. “I want some.”

  “Not here,” he whispered, as a bell dinged and a pair of elevator doors
opened behind us. “Don’t turn around,” he whispered.

  So many rules. Did Nyx really have the entire Code of Felicity, all 752 pages of it, committed to memory? I wanted out of this building. I had seen enough.

  But I hadn’t seen my father yet.

  I resisted the urge to glance over my shoulder at the set of heels clacking against the floor behind us. The elevator in front of us opened and we rushed into the cabin at once.

  “Don’t turn around yet,” he whispered. His words were quickly followed by the ding of the elevator doors as they shut behind us.

  More rules. I was so tired of rules.

  Section 10-42.15: All females over the age of five must keep their hair between twelve and eighteen inches long to conform to social norms contributing to healthy interpersonal relationships.

  Section 8-12.63: The use of warm colors, including but not limited to red, purple, orange, yellow, and pink, is strictly forbidden, except when written consent is obtained from the Executive Minister of the Department of Felicity.

  “Warm colors stoke the flames of suffering by invoking anger and passion. Cool colors promote unity, humility, and tranquility. Cool colors promote Felicity.”

  Nyx gawked at me and I realized I had spoken these words aloud. My skin ached with another surprising emotion, but I recognized this one: mortification.

  “Are you feeling okay?” he asked, the elevator bounced beneath our feet as it stopped at the twelfth floor.

  I nodded as the doors slid open, though I didn’t feel okay. My skin burned and my thoughts were cloudy with questions. The loudest question of them all: Was this world I was experiencing, my father’s detainment, my grandmother’s rapture, the subway ride, the fountain… was any of it real? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had no way to compare virtual reality to actual reality.

  Without knowing how we got there, we were now shuffling down a harshly lit concrete corridor bustling with health specialists in white lab coats. All their faces pointed downward at the lumens in their hands as they typed and dictated messages, or possibly ration dosages, into their handheld devices.

  “Roberts?” Nyx called to a man with dark-brown skin that gleamed under the fluorescent lights. The man looked up from his lumen and a smile barely pulled at the corners of his lips. “Is Hispa in her office?”

  Roberts nodded. “Good to see you, Aaron. Hispa has been in her office for days, working on something big,” he replied. “I’m sure she’ll be glad for your company.”

  Roberts turned his gaze back to his lumen as he continued down the corridor without another word. None of the health specialists paid us any mind as they navigated the halls, like the now-extinct pigeons that had once soared over the icy streets of Manhattan with one goal lifting their wings: get south. They were guided not by sight, but by something unseen. Instinct? Magnetic fields? An invisible puppeteer?

  My mind raced back to what Nyx said about Commissioner Baron. He claimed that what the commissioner did to the mayor was caused by a glitch in Darklandia. This explanation didn’t sit well with me for two reasons. One: This implied that good citizens who served their hours as required were not in control of their actions. Two: If they weren’t in control, who was?

  9

  Nyx pushed a button on the wall next to a door near the end of the corridor.

  “Speak quickly,” a gruff female voice boomed through a speaker.

  “Hispa, it’s Aaron.”

  The door buzzed loudly before it slid open. I followed him inside the office where a slender woman with glimmering silver hair stood behind a desk manipulating something on a large touchscreen built into the wall. The door slid shut behind us, but the woman did not turn around. She pinched and swiped her fingers across the surface of the screen, which looked like the touchscreens used in the classrooms at Fillmore, only larger. She seemed to be working on some type of math problem that I couldn’t make any sense of.

  “No progress on the algo?” Nyx said, pointing at a chair for me to take a seat.

  “You’d think I was trying to solve the meaning of life,” Hispa replied. “This algorithm is tighter than a blue ribbon on Rapture Day.”

  Nyx’s eyes flashed toward me as a shock of pain surged through my chest. “Hispa, I’m not alone,” he said, casting an apologetic look in my direction.

  The woman turned around and fixed me with a puzzled expression. “Sera Fisk?” I looked back and forth between Nyx and Hispa before I nodded. “Beautiful! Nyx, why didn’t you tell me Sera was here. Oh, you must think I’m such a brute. Nyx, I should beat you properly for this.”

  “You don’t have to beat him,” I said.

  Hispa laughed heartily. I had never heard anyone laugh so hard in my life. “Oh, dear, I’m not really going to beat him,” she said, noticing the frightened look on my face. “Look at you, scared as a seal in a shark tank. I apologize. I hope you didn’t take any offense to that ribbon comment. What happened to your great-grandmother was a tragedy.”

  This woman had absolutely no language filter. I found her negative words, spoken with such candor, both frightening and exhilarating. I immediately glanced around the ceiling for cameras.

  “There are no cameras here,” Nyx said, as he took a seat in the chair next to me. “Hispa’s work for the Department of Felicity is a secret to everyone, even the angels. Hispa is supposed to be working on a new algorithm for the security cameras to pick up on code words used by rebels.”

  “Rebels,” Hispa replied, with a huff. “At least, that’s what the bastards think I’m doing. If I had a drop of water for every lie I’ve fed those idiots, I’d have… well, I’d certainly be able to offer you a shower.” My eyes flitted toward the filth crusted beneath my fingernails and I tucked my hands between my legs. “Oh, don’t be ashamed. It’s not your fault.”

  Now that the subject had been broached, I began to notice how dirty I looked compared to Nyx and Hispa, compared to everyone and everything in this building. How did they keep everything so clean?

  Nyx reached across the distance between us and pulled my hand out of hiding. A chill passed over my skin as he held my hand up so we could both get a better view of the dirt under my fingernails. “It’s a horrible feeling the moment you realize you’ve been sleepwalking through life, isn’t it?”

  “Sleepwalking?” I had never heard this word. It wasn’t possible to walk and sleep at the same time. Was it?

  “Sleepwalkers: All the people out there who’ve been anesthetized with drugs and lies,” Hispa said, as she took a seat on the corner of her desk. “You can pity the sleepwalkers, you can even empathize with them, but don’t envy them. For the love of numbers, never envy the sleepwalkers; even the ones who wear clean clothing and shower every day. They’re just as dead as the rest of them.”

  “I was a sleepwalker,” I said, realizing this is how they must have referred to me before I stopped drinking my ration the day before yesterday.

  “Yes, and we’ve been waiting two years for you to open your eyes,” Nyx replied, as he placed my hand gently in my lap.

  “Are you ready to walk amongst the living?” Hispa asked.

  The lights in the office flickered with my resolve as Nyx and Hispa stared at me. Nothing about the past two days seemed real and according to Nyx this experience was only going to get more painful. I desperately wanted to know what had happened to my father. I wanted to know what happened to all those who had been purified.

  “Sera, if you choose not to go any further we will understand,” Nyx began. “But we won’t be able protect you from the angels. They will come for you, just like your father.”

  I thought of the look on my mother’s face as my father pitched his blue Felicity pin down the garbage chute. She didn’t appear upset or even shocked. The look on my mother’s face that day was one of pure, blissful ignorance; ignorance of the ramifications of what my father had done.

  Ignorance.

  That was a filter word we learned in school to describe
the darklings and their inability to understand the principle of Felicity. That word belonged to them, the sleepwalkers.

  “I want to see everything,” I said and Hispa wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I tried to swallow the painful lump in my throat. It was my first hug in more than two years.

  After Nyx and Hispa spoke briefly about the mathematical algorithm on the touchscreen, while I composed myself in the corner of her office, he led me down the corridor again toward the elevator. The health specialists paid us no mind, which made me wonder how often Nyx brought people here for the “grand tour”.

  “There is only one stop on our tour today,” Nyx said, as he stabbed the elevator call button. “Level 17.”

  “What’s on Level 17?”

  The doors slid open and I entered behind him.

  “I’m going to show you what a purified human looks like,” he replied, as he punched the number seventeen.

  My stomach twisted inside me as I imagined what I would find on Level 17: humans with half their heads missing.

  “Are you all right?” Nyx asked, as the elevator came to a stop.

  I nodded my head, trying to shake loose the gruesome image. “I’m fine,” I said, as we stepped out into yet another corridor.

  “Okay, when you see what I’m about to show you, you’re not going to believe it, but I need you to promise me you won’t make a scene,” he said, as he guided me briskly toward an iron gate that blocked off the entrance to another corridor. “No matter how unbelievable it is, you cannot yell or scream. You have to stay quiet. Do you understand?”

  I nodded as he scanned his sec-band and the blue flash was followed by the clack of the lock. The gate swung open and quickly shut behind us after we entered. We turned a corner onto another darker corridor, this one lined with dozens of doors. Nyx stopped at the first door on the right. He scanned his sec-band again and the door slid open. He placed his hand on the small of my back to usher me inside.