Lovers of Babel
By: Valerie Walker
Chronicles of the Underground
Above their heads was hell. The world as they once knew it was being destroyed by an act of nature that had threatened Earth for millions of years. And like the presence of an unwanted enemy it came in the night to steal life and destroy human existence. During Earth’s destruction the people underground hid themselves under thousands of feet of earth.
The governments from all around the world knew of the coming catastrophe a long time before and prepared for it by building underground cities in secret. In 2112, fifty years later and over a billion dollars spent in construction, beneath the surface of the earth was a labyrinth of streets and structures that connected all seven continents. Unbeknownst to the majority of Earth’s inhabitants, there were those wealthy enough to secure a safe spot underground for Armageddon. Six million people out of over six billion were able to buy a spot underground. Meaning, less than one percent of the world’s population survived the destruction of the human race. The rest of the unlucky souls who hadn’t sixty million dollars to save themselves, died in the fire.
The Underground was made to pattern the real environment with trees and plant life; only there was no sky, no sun or moon for 30 years when the inhabitants of this subterranean city would come back to the surface. It was damp and dark and even though they had light it was never organic. They used high wattage UV lamps to mimic day and millions of twinkling ceiling lights to mimic the starlit night sky. The ceilings were so high in some areas of the underground that they nearly disappeared making the atmosphere feel spacious and vast. However, in the areas where the underground wasn’t as deep, some people felt confined by the weight of the world. Despite the confines of living beneath the earth, the citizens of the underground enjoyed the security of their earthly haven. Each family had their own home that they had built to their liking. Each home had its own kitchen, living room and bedroom. Each bed had its own peacefully sleeping person with not a care of the destruction that was befalling the entire world right above their heads.
Every building on earth was either threatening to fall and crush the people underneath it or had already done so. Each continent was a flaming mess and the people were hopeless to escape. The earth was being swallowed up in fire. Trees, once green and alive, were colored in fire and suffocating from the relentless smoke. The grasslands were a field of fire that filled the once blue sky with a dirty film of ash. People once hopeful in the wake of newfound peace were abandoned and lost and they clung to each other in search of comfort. But there was none. Their homes had vanished in flames along with the legacies of billions left behind. Their end came and went like the candle light.
The buildings of the underground were new and waiting to be entered. They were built by the world’s finest architects and were designed to fit the subterranean environment. The underground looked like a space-age Bedrock with structures made from mud and stone, but designed to look strange and futuristic. Each family owned one car that was also designed to fit the environment. The cars were small and narrow so as to not take up too much space on the gravel streets. Individual cars were convenient for quick trips, but because of the extreme fuel prices, most people opted to travel by lightning rail. The lightning rails of the underground were subterranean subways that traveled nearly as fast as the speed of light. This speedy mode of transportation was something that existed in the old world, but in the underground these rails were able to travel through continents. All of the luxuries of the underground were a comfort for the citizens. They continued living their comfortable lives as if nothing ever happened. The underground generation ignored the devastation that happened to the very people who they shared the Earth. They justified their insensitivity by saying, “what hope can we have for our future if we continue to look back?” In fact, their hope was not hope at all, it was relief. They were relieved that they no longer had to share the planet with so many unworthy people. It made their lives much easier that way. Their underground was a kind of utopia for the elite. They enjoyed the luxuries of the sublime lives they lived on the Earth’s surface. If anything, they enjoyed their lives even more because they no longer had to hide their extreme wealth from the underprivileged. They could swim in their massive pools, drive their Rolls Royce’s, eat caviar and fillet mignon while boasting about their plans for the new world once it was safe to rise again. It wouldn’t be safe for 30 years when the radiation would disappear from the atmosphere. The chemists and scientists on board would constantly check the air and sample specimens from the surface of the Earth to check the safety of the atmosphere.
Ten years after their decent underground, the more dominant citizens came together to formulate a new system of governance. They felt that the old democratic system that had ruled the old world had to be destroyed. They looked at the old system as a social experiment. There was no more need to put the power in the hands of ordinary citizens. Those who lived underground were not considered to be ordinary. They had acquired great wealth and prestige in the old world and were considered to be the fittest. The leaders concluded that the best way to improve underground society was to put the power of improvement into everyone’s hands.
In the blink of an eye, society morphed into utilitarian governance where everyone worked for the welfare of society as a whole and not for the individual. This was the elitist’s dream. The old Declaration of Independence adage about the pursuit of individual happiness was now obsolete. The happiness which would be sought was the happiness for society as a whole. They each held jobs to contribute to society and got paid in credits. Physical currency was a thing of the past. In the underground all a person’s credits were stored in a computer system as a record of time worked. Once they were able to enter the new world, they were given license to use their credits however they wanted. The credits were stored in individual chips that before they left the underground, were implanted into the eye for safe keeping.
The idea of credits was just that; an idea. There was no just way of regulating what a credit was worth and how much credit a person deserved. Credits were the people’s word against the credit distributors. Once credits were introduced to society those who were once rich were forced to start from scratch. This invisible currency was a way to keep the blood pumping throughout the system up into the top. It was an incentive to keep everyone working and earning their capital. If much credit was earned, more trust was given to the individual; with enough trust that person could gain power and authority, but this was an arduous process. Many never got to this point, but there was one man who did.
Amias Riley was a gifted child. He was born in underground Manhattan in 2112, the year of the apocalypse. Amias was considered a genius by the age of ten and was taught metaphysics and cognition by the most prestigious professors in the underground. While at home, he would learn from his father the ins and outs of the system so that one day he would become a great leader. By age nineteen, he had become a budding cognitive scientist and had gained enough credits to buy a mansion in underground London. He received praise and recognition from the higher ups and by age 23 he was the head of the mind sciences department in underground Washington D.C. There, he would win several awards for his breakthroughs in cognitive sciences and would marry a Haitian woman called Willow. The wedding ceremony was held in a cavern in underground Mexico with over a thousand candles lighting the cove.
Amias Riley did not miss the sky and was never disturbed by the absence of the sun or moon. He had no idea what a cloud looked like in real life. Never accidently ran over a squirrel with his car or watched an eagle as it soared toward the sky until it was out of eyesight. He still loved the animals of the underground. He was particularly fond of the
baby albino monkeys, who due to the absence of the sun, lost their natural pigment. He felt a sort of kinship with these subterranean creatures. Whenever he was not devising some master plan, he would be seen with his wife at the Underground San Diego Zoo playing with the monkeys. Amias was tall and lean. He had black hair, cut short, the palest skin and his eyes were a deep forest green. His jaw was often clinched and his lips disappeared when he smiled, but mostly they were full and slightly parted ready for their opportunity to speak.
Not long after Amias’s meteoric rise to success in the world of science, there were certain groups of citizens who were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the system. They began working less and would sabotage their duties in order to send a message to the leaders. When this didn’t work, they started protesting outside of various institutions around the underground for more credits and greater freedoms. The leaders saw nothing wrong with the way the system was being run. In fact, the system was thriving. Each man, woman and child contributed to the advancement of the underground by doing specific jobs that had been given to them by the job authorities. Children up to five years old were in charge of dropping fluorescent liquid onto plants that was a growth hormone that would prove beneficial to the citizens just in case the Earth’s surface was uninhabitable. The teenagers had a slightly greater responsibility. They were in charge of gathering new plant life that they discovered and sending it over to the hundreds of lab testing facilities that existed underground.
The economy seemed to be better than it was in the old world, but the citizens underground were tired of working all the time with no freedom to enjoy the fruits of their toil. Finally, after a year of protests the leaders relented and allowed the citizens to have two days off every week to tend to their personal lives. Most citizens were appeased by this new policy, but others were still unhappy with the lack of fair credit distributions.
The citizens of the underground were the nucleus of the entire world. They were the only living creatures on earth for 30 years. They were masters of their own domain despite the limitations of living thousands of feet below ground. Their new ground was infant soil that was without blemish; light brown and soft. And yet they were contaminated from the world they once knew. They tried to erase the memories of the former life. Still, they thrived in their new societal structure. Every citizen in every corner of the netherworld, from China to the Bahamas and back again, had to learn the tenants of a new constitution. The teachers, being trained themselves, would lecture on the importance of living for the good of the whole. They would tell their students: “This is where true unity lies. We must all come together in order to form a perfect union where all citizens seek happiness from giving of themselves to the system. When we reach the top, our surroundings may be changed, but nothing of this new system will change. It is the only way to secure our reign.”
With this new message of unity and the freedom the people were granted, there was much less desire to seek individual satisfaction. People worked around the clock to improve society and it seemed as though they didn’t miss the former way of life. Amias saw this as a great improvement to the system, but felt that there was one element that was missing in order to secure the trust of the citizens. Amias believed that what the people needed was a sole leader.
It was 2140 when Amias managed to prevent the only murder to ever happen in that age. After noon break he was headed back to his lab in the northwestern underground hemisphere. He bought a lettuce and tofu sandwich from a vendor who was parked a block away from the lab. He appeared to be the only one out that day. Given that it was New Year’s Eve everyone was allowed to leave work early; a luxury that only came once a year. Amias, however, was a fierce workaholic and was severely dedicated to his craft. As he rose from his bench overlooking the replica of the Washington monument surrounded by one thousand gallons of water brought in before the apocalypse, he heard two gun shots coming from outside his office building. He heard a woman scream and immediately dropped his sandwich and ran to her aid. When he arrived on the scene, only one other man was there to help subdue the gunman. Since crime was of little to no importance in maintaining, there were few employed police officers on duty. As the gunman swung his gun at Amias, he quickly snatched the gun from the man’s hand and told him to put his hands up. Amias was able to subdue the man and hand him over to authorities. They later placed the man in the only prison that existed in the west that had never been used.
It was a shock for many people to see such an act of violence. It had been 28 years since the old world had passed and not one criminal act under any continent was committed ever since. For some reason on that day, at that time in history, a man decided to become violent without any probable cause to do so. The public erupted into a fury of gossip and speculation. Publications all throughout the underground finally had a news story other than the rise and fall of food prices and credit extensions. This bazaar act of rebellion had enhanced conversations across the world. There were theories thrown back and forth about what could have caused this man to snap. The people in underground Korea figured he had been neglecting a full diet of vitamin D. When living underground the sun was no longer a vital source of this mood enhancing vitamin. They blamed it on the lack of sunlight, but the Australians figured that he’d had plenty. In fact, the citizens often enjoyed a popular fruity cocktail called ErgoChill that was plentiful in vitamin D and other mood enhancing ingredients. The Aussies figured the gunman had a vendetta against the new system and was going on a rampage to stir the pot. The Americans saw him as a man who couldn’t assimilate into this new life. He was 18 when Armageddon destroyed the world and was having trouble giving up his individual freedoms. Each theory was credible in its own right, but none was correct. Regardless, this incident caused people to question the security and credibility of this new system. Amias saw this as his opportunity to get what he had always wanted since childhood; the title of leader of the underground. A few days after the incident, he went to the House of Representatives and proposed a theory as to why this violence happened and a solution to it never happening again. He stood confidently in a suit and tie in front of what looked like the seven dwarves dressed in judge robes.
“Sirs I come to you today as a concerned citizen. I was shocked to see a man so desperate that he would end someone’s life for the sake of his own selfish ambition. In the world we live in selfishness is deplorable and cannot be tolerated. And murder certainly cannot be tolerated either, but how can someone think to murder in the first place? In this new world we have all been given equal opportunities to contribute to the advancement of society. There is no need for selfish ambition because we all have a responsibility to serve the state first and foremost. After that, well, there’s not so much left for individual want, right? After all the sustenance and life that is being fed to the system all that should be left is the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our collective labor. Right? Ladies and gentlemen it is very difficult to completely remove the human motivation to want. This is why we are given credits in order to reward the labor so that the individual can enjoy the time that they spend away from work. And although that time may be short, it is precious nonetheless. This only proves that, while the citizens may work long and hard for the union, they still have the ambition to pursue individual happiness. This is a danger to the current system. How long can a system continue to run that produces only limited fruit for the workers while they are constantly told to not seek their own happiness? What happened today is proof that when a person is pushed too hard they will start to push back. What this society needs is a goal. The people need a target to look at, a horizon to fix their eyes upon, a future to look forward to. You think you’re giving them that with credits, but credits run out and must be constantly replenished. What they need is something extra; an internal motivation that will push them even harder without them even noticing. What the system needs is a leader,” Amias said.
The silver-haired speaker spoke up sternly.
/> “Mr. Riley what you are suggesting completely undermines the purpose of this new operation. In the old world there were always leaders and yet the people continued to destroy each other and themselves and the system up until the bitter end. Now, if you think one small incident like the one today proves that we should go back to the way things were before, you are just as manic as the gunman.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am not suggesting we go back to the old system. I’ve read countless books on the old constitution and Declaration of Independence and I don’t think it did what it originally set out to do. However, this current system is missing the only ingredient that the old system had right all along and that is one leader who the people can trust. We can all continue to work for the good of the whole, but with a leader the difference will be more ambition from the people. What good is a system that is run by a bunch of complacent zombies who are always content with the way things are? With this, nothing ever changes or improves, because nobody cares to improve. We must give the people just a little motivation so that the system can continue to evolve.”
The oval room rang softly with the last part Amias’s sentence. The house committee sat still contemplating his intriguing proposal. There was not an ounce of color in that room aside from the dull replicas of pastel paintings of Greek gods and goddesses looking down on Amias in frozen judgment. A light chatter commenced between house members. Then there was more silent deliberation. A sudden creek of a chair. A throat cleared.
The last stout and old committee member spoke up. “If, by chance, we do as you suggest and we invite a leader to govern the world, how on earth could this work? How could one person lead an entire world by himself?”
Lovers of Babel Page 1