Beyond: Book Four of the State Series

by M. J. Kaestli

  “Wow. Who do you want to talk to?”

  “I don’t know. The church gave it to me to use the raw materials, but I thought we should play with it a bit first. We were just going to take it apart and melt down the pieces we could use, but we don’t even know how many groups of people we have around here. If you managed to wander into our parts, maybe we’ve got some neighbors. It might be good to meet them.”

  Hope lost the pit of her stomach. It was so much to take in at once. If we make contact, what if he finds out there is no group anywhere near here? What if the only other civilizations are too far away? Reuben will know the truth about me. There were still far too many people in this community who would like to see her gone.

  She loved Joshua and was happy living with him but there was a restlessness inside of her. There was a mental stimulation she knew she was missing, but Hope didn’t know what it would look like if she had it. All she knew was if she didn’t at least try to fix the radio she would always wonder. It might be possible she couldn’t fix it, or there was no one listening. The reward outweighed the risk.

  “I’ll take a look at it.” She shrugged. “I’ve got the day free, if I won’t be disrupting you I can look at it now.”

  He put down his blow torch. “I’ve got it set up. I was going to play around with it but just haven’t taken the time yet. I didn’t know where to start.”

  He closed the large door to give them some privacy and led her off to the side of his workspace where there was a door to another section of the structure. It appeared to be a partial living space attached to the main structure and a stairwell leading into his home. There was a kitchen and one room off to the side. He led her to the side room which contained a table set up with a device sitting on top.

  “The only part of this that I have figured out is how to plug it in. There are lots of switches and such but none of them have ever lit up, and no sound has come through.”

  “It does have a functioning power source?”

  “I think so. The plug fits into what we have. We didn’t change our power plugs from before the war, we just switched to solar energy.”

  “War?” As soon as she asked, she regretted it.

  He looked at her sideways. “Your people didn’t teach you about the war?”

  She nearly held her breath, hoping she could keep it together. “No. Is it a common part of your traditions here? Joshua has never mentioned it. Was it with the dome people?”

  “No, it was before they built the dome. We used to live as one big country—the United States of America. Then there was a massive war which wiped out most of the people around the world. We managed to survive because God had told a handful of people about what was coming, and so our people were ready to get through the destruction. Most of what we have came from before the war. A few of the underground homes were built before then, and the church. We also took stuff apart from the old abandoned homes to build the places we have here as we grew once the war finished.”

  Hope sat at the chair in front of the device, attempting to make her inquisition look casual. “If the war wasn’t with the dome people, then why do you think they are bad?”

  “Because we had a group of our people out searching for materials and supplies, they ran into a bunch of them wearing funny suits, traveling between their mountain and dome.”

  “There are people in the mountain also?” Of course, she knew the answer to this, but she needed the confirmation they were, in fact, the same group.

  “Yeah, they were always running back and forth between the mountain and Denver while they built the dome. We had watched them for quite some time before we tried to talk to them. Our people simply tried to say hello peacefully, but they opened fire. There were two people who got away and made it back, warning us of the danger.” He shrugged. “We have stayed clear of them ever since. We build our homes in a way to stay hidden from them. We don’t have the weapons they have, so we simply hide to make sure they don’t have a reason to hurt us again. They seem to stick to their dome and mountain. Every now and again, they get a bit closer, but it’s usually groups of four that we’ve seen come.”

  “Groups of four?” She blurted before she could stop herself knowing full well she had been one of those groups. “What do those groups do when they get close?” She held her breath.

  “Not too sure. They pull up in some big vehicle, get out and set up equipment. They fiddle around with it for a while then pack it back up and leave. Never there for more than a few hours, and never at night. We figure with how they responded to us before, if they saw us they’d kill us. So we often watch them but we make sure they don’t see us. In all these years we’ve never tried to contact them or lived out in the open.”

  “And how many years has that been?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. We tell the stories of our people and pass them down orally but it’s never been recorded with names or dates. It’s not something we really talk about. The Lord will come and cleanse the earth when he sees fit. He will take care of those dome people himself. If he wanted us to do anything about it, he would have told us. He will sort them out, then we will inherit the earth to rebuild it as he sees fit.”

  Sometimes the communities religious convictions irritated her, but at this moment she was nearly crawling out of her skin. What she needed was solid facts. If only they had recorded how long it had been since the war, she could at least get her bearings and understand why they were in a dome and mountain to begin with.

  It seemed ridiculous people in the dome segregated themselves from the outside environment. She suddenly understood what the blue suits had been for. It allowed them to go outside while still maintaining a barrier between them and the rest of the world.

  An electric current began to build in her core. A tingle was radiating through her as the understanding set in. The dome people, her people, believed that if a person went outside, they would die unless they had the protective suit on. She had been living outside of the dome for months now and she felt perfectly fine. The dome people lied and killed others who disproved their fabrication. Nausea threatened to overtake her. The people of the dome were evil, and she was one of them.

  ***

  It took time for Reuben to find her the tools she needed. Most tools she couldn’t remember the names, so she tried her best to describe what they looked like or what their function was. After some hunting around, she had a screwdriver, a bright light with a magnifying glass, a soldering iron and all the basics in the way of pliers and a wrench.

  She found the screws in the casing and opened the lid. There were a series of wires and boards. The first thing she did was to examine the power source. It was infuriating to discover that they disconnected the perfectly intact power cord on the inside. The wires feeding from inside the cord divided into two different posts in the back of the radio. She stripped the casing off the wire and soldered it back into the post. Once she finished, she reattached the casing and flipped what she assumed was the power switch. The device lit up. A whirring and static sound broadcasted out of the radio.

  Her jaw clenched involuntarily. “Someone disconnected the power.”

  “That’s it? It works now?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “Do you know why someone would have done this?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember a time we ever used it. I’ve never heard people talk about it either. I don’t know if we’ve had contact with anybody since before the war.”

  Hope leaned in closer and played with the dials. She slowly turned the dial all the way in one direction and then back. She flicked another switch to change the frequency but heard nothing on that frequency either. She went through the process again but instead of listening for noise; she listened for silence, giving the knob the slightest tweak, stopping to listen for a moment before she moved it again. Each turn of the dial created a crackle or whirring sound, but only one frequency was completely silent. If it was silent, it meant it could
be an open frequency capable of broadcasting. It was possible that there were others out there who would be capable of communicating if they listened.

  She experimented with the device a little more to find where she was meant to speak into. The radio itself wasn’t terribly technically advanced. Her navigation through the process seemed more intuitive as she had a natural aptitude with electronics rather than something like welding which felt familiar. It appeared she had never used one before and concluded it must have been something which wasn’t used inside the dome. This was an ancient technology.

  “You can’t make it work?”

  She nodded. “I think it works there is just no one there to talk to. I would like to come back here regularly to see if there is anyone on at different times.” She looked around the radio for a moment longer and then back at him. “Was there any other parts that came with it? I’m specifically looking for something you would speak into.”

  He rummaged around behind the table and then produced a piece she immediately knew was missing. It was a microphone that was free standing with a long thick black cord with a metal end which would plug into the receiver. She inserted it and tested it.

  “Hello? Hello?” She saw a button at the base of the microphone and held it down while she tried again. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  This time she heard her voice sound through the radio. She knew if there was anyone tuned into the frequency they could hear her. After she tried a few more times, she turned to Reuben and shrugged. “I really think this works properly and I’m on the wrong frequency.”

  “You’ve used these before?”

  She pondered the question for a moment and the answer came to her and somehow she knew it was the truth. “No, we didn’t have them, and I’ve never used them, but they taught me about them. I know this is set up correctly but I don’t know if anyone is listening. Maybe this technology is so old it has been abandoned.”

  “Maybe that’s why they gave it to us to melt down.”

  Hope nodded in agreement but felt it wasn’t the case. Someone had detached those wires. It had nothing to do with Reuben, so she decided not to make a fuss about it. “I think you might be right, but I’m also not ready to give up on it yet. Will you tell me if you ever hear anything on it?” She gestured to the microphone. “If you push this button, you can talk to them and let me know what they say.”

  He winced. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what to say to anybody out there. I think you should be the one who talks to them.”

  Hope sighed. How could she talk to them when he wouldn’t tell them she wanted to? “I would love to but you might have to come and get me if you hear something. They won’t ever know we have our radio back on and want to talk to them otherwise.” She looked around the room, wondering how long she had been there. “I think I should go home now. If you hear anything, let me know. If you hear them during my usual work hours and we aren’t delivering a baby, I think Miriam would let me step out for a time.”

  “I would think so. People will be excited when they hear about this.”

  Hope took in a sharp breath and put her hand on his forearm. “I think we should keep this between the two of us for right now. We don’t know why our community stopped using the radio. I’m afraid if we tell them it will just get taken away from us before we find out if anyone is listening.”

  He contemplated her remark for a while. “Do you think this is dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so. But I think the people here are very set in their ways and beliefs. What if they shut it down because they were talking to people who didn’t have the Bible? Speaking as someone who came from a people with no Bible, I can tell you a lot of your customs here are not familiar. It leads me to suspect the disconnect could have been a cultural difference rather than any type of a threat.”

  “I don’t know if I feel right about this, but hot damn! I want to meet more people.” He looked away from her, teetering his balance from side to side. “I’ll keep this between us for now, but if anything harry happens, I’m going to take this to the town council.”

  “That’s fair.” She nodded. “We can also just shut it down again. We need to practice a few precautions. Don’t immediately give away our location. Let them speak first to get a feel for who we are talking to. If you simply help me plan a time to speak with them, I can handle the communications.”

  “Okay,” he blew out a breath, “our little secret.”

  Chapter 15

  She had not completely recovered her memories and wasn’t sure she ever would, but she was finding many dots to connect. The people in the mountain were the same as the dome, except more elite. She was sent out there because she was special. Everyone in the mountain was special. She was working on a project to help the people of earth to colonize another planet. This was what she had remembered, but it made little sense. Why would humans need to colonize when there was so much unused space here on earth? And why did they segregate themselves from the other survivors of the war?

  Reuben had told her about the mountain people killing those people from this village. She felt somehow that incident had to do with the reason they segregated themselves. They wanted to stay away from the rest of the world—zero contact or communication. They killed those men simply because they saw them.

  Although she was becoming confident she wasn’t an evil person, she decided against telling Joshua what she remembered. The dome people may deserve their reputation, but she didn’t deserve to share their title. It wasn’t just that he thought the dome people were bad; it was that she didn’t know how he would take the news she had been married before—although she still believed they didn’t use the word marriage. Would he be jealous or feel threatened? Weston was dead, this she was sure of and therefore she had nothing inside the mountain, or the dome to return to.

  There was a part of her that wanted to be something other than a midwife, but it wasn’t a terrible calling either. At least it was more challenging than most of the jobs around the community which a woman could do. Most of the women were baking, gardening, or making clothing—those who were not raising a family. She knew she had some challenge and mental stimulation from being a midwife. She at least had to be educated and understand a great deal about the female body to perform this duty.

  Miriam led her to the next household they were to visit. When they crossed the path to the church, Reuben came running out of his shed.

  “Hope, I could really use your help. I’ve got something broken and I’m struggling to figure it out.” He turned to look at Miriam. “Can you do without Hope for your next visit? I don’t know if she has told you she used to fix things where she came from. I’ve found her mighty handy and a great deal of help to me.”

  Miriam seemed irritated he would try to take her apprentice for something trivial. “We have to make one more house call and then she will be free to do whatever she likes.” Miriam smiled warmly as though she had just done him a great favor.

  Hope turned and looked at him intently. “I’m sure you can do something to keep all the pieces in one place until I return.”

  He looked scared, but he nodded. “I guess I just have to push the button and hope for the best.”

  “Yes, I think that is a splendid idea. Push the button and I’m sure that will keep the pieces in place until I return.”

  He nodded to her and walked off briskly.

  They walked on a little further before Miriam spoke. “Hope, I don’t suppose you want to hear my opinions about spending time with a man who is not your husband. So, I’m just going to focus on the part of this mess which is my business—you are my apprentice. You are free to do whatever you like in your free time, but your work is here. I’m sure the savages you originate from didn’t teach you this, as I’ve noticed they certainly didn’t teach you a woman’s place, but I have to ensure this information is properly passed on. I need your focus because I need you to be fully competent before you start to have children of your ow
n. There are three trained midwives not doing any midwifing as we speak. I train all you girls in case something happens to me or to one of you. I believe that you will be with child any day now and my time with you is limited.”

  “I understand that Miriam, and I’m sorry for the disruption. I will speak to him about this when I stop by. My work has to come first.” She took a deep breath. “I hope you can appreciate that I have technical skills he was never taught. My intentions for spending time with him are not inappropriate and I’m not trying to switch over to his task. I simply wish to impart my knowledge with him for the betterment of this community. If my people had expertise in anything else, even being a midwife, I would want to share what I know so I can help to better the community. I’m sure the time will come quickly when I don’t have more wisdom to impart and we will go our separate ways.”

  Miriam remained silent until they reached the next home. “Alright, try to keep your focus through the examination. You are doing a full check on her and I will observe and critique.”