by Rayya Deeb
“Waited for what? To get captured because you were setting me up?”
“Not at all.”
“Good thing I followed you and found out you were with S.O.I.L., before it was too late.”
“It’s true that I was assigned to your detail by S.O.I.L., but S.O.I.L. isn’t just bad.”
Jadel and I stared each other down. I feigned indifference, but that didn’t stump him. He spoke with passion, “I left you so that I could tell them you escaped at the train after I found you. That was to divert their search for you to far away from here. I was going to come back and bring you to your dad.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“I already explained this to you. My allegiance is to your father and the protection of Doromium. Period.”
Jadel lifted his Dm pendant.
Wow. The Dm stood for Doromium— that emblem was all over Seneca. My outdated defense mechanisms screamed, “Don’t fall for it!” But this totally added up. Jadel wasn’t playing games. In fact, in thinking back, he hadn’t told one lie that I knew of.
Our vessel stopped. A door opened with a quiet swoosh and my face was lit by that seductive, glowing blue hue. I looked to Jadel. With his hand he requested I step off. I did because I wanted to, not because he asked me to.
Behind him, I saw the outline of a man’s shoulder in the light. It was a stance I knew like the back of my hand. I took a few more steps in and the man took a few steps towards me, too, so that we were both under the same light. My eyes fell to my dad’s and I froze. So did he. In an absolute beat of disbelief my heart fluttered and grabbed for this moment to stick. It felt like a dream, but it wasn’t. Surreal began to hand the reins over to real. My dad and I were breathing the same air. The vast space between us shrunk to nothing as he hugged me. Love and comfort filled me up. I held on. For the first time in a long time I held onto someone and I could not let go. I just couldn’t. He held on to me just as hard. I don’t think I took a breath in those moments, but, when I finally did, it was a deep, eyes-closed, massive, stretched-to-the limits inhale. I held it all in at the top of my lungs and exhaled all the toxic crap.
“Dad.” I was hurt but bursting with happiness to be with him. He wasn’t a hologram. He wasn’t a memory.
“Doro,” he said, as I took my first breath back in.
“You’re alive,” I whispered back, “I knew it.”
My dad nodded. “Of course I am.”
It was the truest thing I’d said since he’d been gone. My heart was realizing a relief it had been seeking for years, through a thousand cries, and a million breaths. It was a relief that spread through my whole being and washed away all the scars of foul play. But I was so hurt by him, knowing he let us believe he was as good as dead.
My dad’s breaths were short and hard and they made me worry. He looked like he was in extreme emotional turmoil and he didn’t know how to release any of it. I had my music as an escape, and he used to have his long walks outdoors— but this was far from the great outdoors. He didn’t talk. He just stared at me. “Dad?”
Tears welled up in his eyes. His face was flushed with guilt and happiness and sadness all at the same time. It was like he had so much to say but couldn’t find the words. He was never a verbal or outwardly emotional guy. He gently shook his head, I could see the tension in his forehead.
“You chose to leave us?” I asked, scared of his reply.
“I didn’t make a choice to leave you.”
“Then why?”
“It’s not something I can easily explain, and I regret that, even if I try, it won’t make sense.”
“I’ve grown up a lot since you saw me last. I can handle the truth.”
“Believe me, I have imagined this day over and over again but I just never figured out how this conversation would go. This isn’t numbers. It doesn’t make sense because there are no correct answers.”
My dad fidgeted. He was so great at being in the zone and solving problems, but when it came to real life emotions and relationships he just kind of froze up. My mom was always so good at getting us to open up and talk in our house. But she wasn’t here now and I realized it was up to me.
“Then let’s figure it out, together.”
My dad smiled. “I’d love that.”
“But you have to tell me what is going on. All of it.”
My dad gently shook his head. “Where do I even begin?”
“Did they bring you here against your will?” I asked.
“No. I originally came to Seneca because I knew what this meant for the future. It had to happen, Doro. It wasn’t a choice.”
There it was. I dropped my head. He had chosen Seneca over me.
“Doro, I know it seems like I left you, but you have to believe I never would. I never would. It’s not all black and white.”
“You did leave us, though, and I know it isn’t all black and white because in the past four years that you’ve been gone, I learned the hard way.”
I saw it register in my dad’s face the instant he realized my innocence was no longer. He shook the look off his face. “We have a lot of catching up to do, but we have to do it in a fragmented fashion because if you know as much as I think you do, you know it’s not safe to carry all information of value in one place and time.”
“Okay, but I’m just struggling to understand how you could pick Seneca over mom and me.”
“You two are everything to me.”
“It doesn’t make sense then! Why would you leave us?”
“Doro, it is the hardest choice I have ever made in my life. Stay home and watch the world fall to pieces, or leave everyone I love behind and come here in order to… for lack of less clichéd words, make a better world for you. I say that because I mean it in a perfectly literal sense.”
Considering I had been given practically the same ultimatum, I began to empathize with him, and understand how this could have possibly gone down. But I didn’t leave my kid. He did.
He continued, “They called us the selfie-generation. Accused us of being self-absorbed and not connected to others. But we didn’t create Seneca for ourselves, we created it for others. For our children and grandchildren and all the generations to come. I am here because this is it. This is my purpose, to do this for you. To leave you the best Earth I can.”
We both sat in the space of letting that sink in.
“Why didn’t you bring us with you?” I quietly asked.
He hugged me.
“Your life was beautiful when I left. I wasn’t going to rip my wife and child away from the life we had, a real life with dirt, sun and ocean, into a social and science experiment. That’s what it was when we began, Doro.”
Although it somewhat clicked, I was still upset. I knew there were a lot of moving parts and people that had to make this happen, but why did this have to happen to us? Surely he was not the only person out of billions that could fix the devastated planet. That just seemed preposterous. Why couldn’t my dad have been selfish? Why couldn’t that have been the world I got to live in?
“I would have so much rather remained in a sucky-polluted world with you in it than some cleaned-up leisure world without you,” I said.
“Doro, those were never options. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I always planned on coming back for you.”
“When?”
“I wish I could tell you what you want to hear. But I can’t. I just had to commit to the process of trial and error, by believing that I could succeed and that that time would come.”
“It still doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, but it will. Seneca is not synonymous with instant gratification,” my dad replied. “What happens here is the actualization of the thoughts, hopes, and bravery of many more people than me alone. That is what it takes to create a world that can uplift humanity.”
“Everyone keeps making blanket statements like that, but you know as well as I do, that means nothing. I need facts. Data. Truth.”
> “And that is where we go next,” he said, finally revealing the confidence in his voice that I once knew. It put me a bit at ease that maybe my dad hadn’t simply succumbed to the dream of some unrealistic idyllic world. There was more. There always was… and it was coming.
26
I WALKED ALONGSIDE my dad and for those brief moments I felt safe. Normally in these tight, dim tunnels I was claustrophobic, but not this time. Being with my dad gave me an innate sense of security. My cheeks were full with a fruit and nut bar he had given me. Meals were few and far between these days and I got used to surviving in starvation mode.
After zigzagging through a maze that was obviously familiar to my dad, we reached the end of the tunnel. My dad stepped the tips of his tattered sneakers onto a metallic white line on the slate ground and stated his name, “John Campbell, requesting access.”
There was a ‘swoosh’ and a slight wind blew through my hair.
When the door disappeared, a whole other level of incredibleness filled the space before me. It was an enormous expanse illuminated with my beloved soft blue light that emanated from the skyscraper of blue liquid. This area was similar to the place I had first seen my dad on the other side of the glass, only it was the on-steroids version. Cascades of tubes oozing bubbling blue liquid past floor after floor, up and down, for as far as I could see. Dozens of metallic cylinders spread out equidistant. They reached across several hundred yards, with steel walkways and platforms, through which scientists traveled. Propulsion fans the size of the Pacific Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier bookended each side of the expanse.
My dad smiled when he saw the expression on my face— pure awe and wonder. Like a child seeing her first rainbow. My head was frozen in amazement with the rest of my body while my eyes moved about taking it all in.
“This is all for you, Doro. This is why I am here. This is why we are all here, and this is why we will be able to save our planet and stay here. This, my love, is the world of Doromium.”
Then, none other than Ellen Malone emerged from the blue. Without trepidation, my dad gave her a friendly hug. It didn’t sit right in the pit of my stomach. Why was Ellen all over Seneca like she owned the place? Had she been a friend or associate of my dad’s all along? She had to be holding something over him. Had she coerced him to come here like she did me? My blood began to boil and this overwhelming protective instinct over my dad kicked in.
Ellen must have noticed the lack of warmth in my eyes. “Doro, I know this seems to just get more and more confusing, but now it will all start to make sense.”
“The only thing starting to make sense is that you had a part in taking my dad from us.”
“I understand that you’re hurt, but please realize nothing I’ve done has been with a malicious intent. It’s actually the opposite.”
Meanwhile, the guy I knew who, busy swimming inside his own head, was so often at a loss of words, had just the right words to her defense, “It’s true, my love, so much has been at stake. Ellen isn’t our enemy. She is a friend and an ally. She dedicated her life to protecting all of this.”
I looked at my dad who was both everything to me and a complete stranger. He and Ellen looked at me like I should be happy about this situation. But nothing would make me happy until my family was back together. It was the meddling of outside forces that had destroyed our sweet little peaceful unit to begin with.
Ellen knew my dad was alive this entire time— I imagined from long before she was in my room in Culver City convincing me to come here. She had deceived me and she had deceived my mom. She had literally put my life in danger. I felt sad for my dad that she had managed to pull one over on him, too. Up until this point Ellen Malone was merely questionable, but now she was millimeters away from being categorized as the enemy.
Then, at just the right time, she placed a temporary immunity on herself from reaching that status, but believe me she was still at the top of the watch list. “Doro, your father’s discovery, the Doromium element, was the basis for the creation of the Seneca Society. Without Doromium, without your father, Seneca wouldn’t exist. As we began to embark upon the path of Doromium, a world of opportunity presented itself. We accepted these opportunities with the intention to create a place where great discoveries could be developed, void of political agenda, and subsequently released to the entire world.”
I needed more information. I needed it fast and I needed it bad. I looked at my dad. “What does Doromium do?”
My dad pepped up. “Remember how excited I was, Doro?”
I nodded. The little girl in me remembered just how joyous my dad was when he had made the discovery after years of dedicated work. It’s as happy as I ever remember him being before POOF! He was gone.
“It’s because I found something that would change everything. The element Doromium protects living organisms from Solar Ultraviolet Radiation by creating a shield of atmosphere that settles in to fill gaps in the ozone layer, once believed to be irreparable.”
I let that settle in. The implications began to race through my mind. In the Aboves people could only go outside at certain times because of the damage to the ozone layer. Farm life, marine life, the entire eco-system on the face of the planet was nose diving to its demise, and I imagined how this could change that. My dad, Ellen and Jadel all watched me coming to these realizations.
My dad went on bursting with enthusiasm, jutting his head forward and talking with his hands, “Here we are refining Doromium under pressures hundreds of thousands times the regular pressure of sea level. Mining, capturing, condensing, then releasing it into the atmosphere in a vapor, through Lake Titicaca.”
This was the guy I knew and loved and missed more than my tiny heart could ever cope with. I wasn’t surprised but I was indeed blown away.
Ellen told me, “Doro, your dad is the mastermind of Doromium.”
I looked at him. His smile was tainted by knowing he had broken my heart. I had to understand though so I asked, “Why here, so hidden from everyone? Hidden from your family?”
My dad didn’t take his eyes off of mine as he explained, “Doromium can only be produced on a large scale deep inside the earth under extreme pressures. I had to come here, and unfortunately, because of the secrecy of the discovery and struggle that has ensued to take control of it, you and your mom couldn’t know about it.”
I looked to each one of them, imagining the various pieces of information each one of them possessed, and they, in turn, looked at me as if they were waiting to see a light bulb go off. But I was still processing fresh data. If what they were saying was true, it would have been simple-minded for me to continue thinking they had taken my dad from me and that was that.
“So it is true, then. You chose chasing science over staying with mom and me.”
“I chose science for mom and you, Doro. Every choice I’ve made has been based on what I believed would be best for you.”
I nodded. I got it. I had made the choice, too, to leave my mom and come here because I thought it would be best for her, not because I was choosing this world over my life with her. “Kind of ironic that I lost my father to Doromium, isn’t it?”
Ellen softened. “You never lost your dad, Doro. He just had a job to do in order to become your hero.”
“I don’t need a hero. I just need my family back.”
“Believe me, I want that too— so badly! I always planned on bringing you and your mother here. But the months started adding up, and then they became years.”
“You could have come back for us.”
“I couldn’t, Doro, I would have risked all of this. I would have risked your future. That’s something I could never allow to happen.”
Ellen added, “Doro, the political landscape in the Aboves is so out of control right now and the struggle for power is so ruthless that we had to keep your father protected here, in Seneca.”
My dad went on, “At the same time we had to keep you and mom far away from me, and the knowledge of what
I was doing. Believe it or not, there was a detail assigned to you two from the day I left, and I had constant updates.”
I didn’t want to accept it, but I got it. On top of coming to this place of understanding my dad, so many things Ellen said and did finally clicked. She had to safeguard information while exerting integrity and levelheadedness.
My dad held my hand. “I am so proud of the person standing right here in front of me.” I closed my eyes for a beat and let his praise permeate my whole being. He continued, “These times have been trying, but I promise if we stick to our guns, we will see the light at the end of this tunnel.”
27
IT WAS WITH complete unease that I left my dad and headed back to where it had all begun— Hub 144, but I had to do what I had to do. My dad had asked me to go with Ellen, Senator Gilroy and Jadel. He assured me that they were on our side, dedicated to protecting us as well as Doromium, and that they’d explain more as we were on the move. I didn’t know if this was the right choice or if I would ever see him again. I had to choose between answering to my wary protective mechanisms and refusing to go, or trusting my dad and this whole squad.
This trust thing seemed like it would haunt me until the end of time. Why couldn’t it just be clear who I could trust? I had complete faith in my dad before he was gone, but then everything changed. Even though he had explained why he’d left my mom and me for Seneca, I didn’t have certainty that what he said was true. Believe or not believe— I just wasn’t ready to rest one way or the other. Nothing could change the heartbreak I went through when he disappeared, but I was relieved we were united and I wanted to keep that momentum on the up and up. I decided to comply with the urgency expressed by the group and go with the people with whom my dad had entrusted me.
I had come to know a thing or two about how valuable time was. Every second counted. Every single breath was numbered. I didn’t want to overthink and play out the debate to every end because I knew it would make me crazy and I wouldn’t find a definitive answer. It was as simple as this: Had I stayed, I might have gained my dad, but in turn, been far away from my Mom and Dom.