The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1)

by Michael Beckum

  * * *

  MILTON AND I SAT until the early morning hours, essentially back-to-back, drinking beers from a small fridge he kept beside his desk, talking about everything from the best cannoli we’d ever had to what it would mean for society and religion if he had been able to find life on Mars. At some point during the night he’d finally climbed inside the thing with me so he didn’t have to keep craning his neck up to talk to me.

  “I don’t think religion would collapse and implode, as many have theorized,” Milton said. “Instead I believe it would grow, and expand, becoming more inclusive, deeper, stronger, and more accepting of divergent points of view. God will still have created it all, Brandon. Just not with a snap of His fingers.”

  “In your opinion.”

  “You don’t believe in God?”

  “Not one that robs men of their lives and dreams. Or lets children starve in Africa, or get cancer, or die in car crashes…” my voice became quieter, and more somber, “or let’s someone ruin his life simply because he lost his temper.”

  I tore at the label on my beer bottle and thought of my night. Milton was respectfully silent.

  “Will you visit me in prison,” I asked, smiling.

  “Can we eat something besides pizza?” he replied, and I could hear the grin in his voice.

  “My dad used to say that everything was more intense for the young,” I said, “more dramatic, more immediate, the consequences apparently greater. We know—because older, more experienced people keep telling us this—that life ebbs and flows, goes up and down; but at our age, we only know that the ups and downs are so intense that they couldn’t possibly get any more intense. So, when a dream is taken away from you, or an opportunity is lost…” I paused, and thought about it. “When a girl doesn’t want you the way you want her, you think ‘I’ll never love this way again.’ The emotions are so powerful that you can’t conceive of any love greater, or stronger… or better. It’s just horrifying to contemplate there being something more passionate than what you feel now—because a pain that big would destroy you.”

  Milton didn’t answer for a while, and I just picked at my bottle.

  “Believe me,” Milton finally answered, kindly, “the ebb will end, life will flow, and you will feel that way again, someday, Brandon. Only next time—she will reciprocate.”

  “Did someone ever reciprocate for you?”

  “Oh, HELL no!” he said, and we both laughed. “But you’re younger and better looking than I. You still have time. God will provide.”

  “But there will always be games,” I said. “Codes, and indirectness that I will never understand.”

  “Not when she’s the one who’s right for you.”

  “And will God provide an outlet for you and your dreams, Milton?” I asked.

  Milton didn’t respond.

  “Maybe you can get someone like that Virgin trillionaire guy to finance you,” I said. “On an all new mole that APL doesn’t own.”

  “Yes,” Milton said, his voice telling me he didn’t think he ever could, not in a million years. “Perhaps.”

  I wanted to say more, to encourage him further, to make him know that this wasn’t the end as it had been for my father, but a click at the door silenced me. Someone was using a card key.

  The two cops from earlier burst in, guns drawn, aiming them pretty much at my face. Obviously they hadn’t bought Milton’s story about no one being inside the mole.

  Scared shitless, but thinking I was glad it was actually over, I raised my hands and told them not to shoot.

  That’s when Milton’s mole suddenly rumbled to life, shaking like an earthquake. In fact, at first, I thought it was an earthquake.

  “What did you do, Brandon?” Milton yelled.

  “I don’t know! Nothing! Maybe I bumped this switch!”

  “You turned it on?”

  “What do you mean, ‘I turned it on?’ This thing is functional?”

  “Of course it’s functional!”

  The noise was deafening. The movement terrifying. I tried hitting whatever buttons I’d hit before, but nothing happened. For a full minute neither of us could do anything but cling with the absolute desperation of drowning men to the inner walls of the screaming, whining, drill machine.

  “SHUT THAT THING DOWN!” The nearest cop yelled to be heard over the noise.

  “WE DON’T KNOW HOW!”

  He pointed his gun more forcefully, as if he needed to, and yelled louder.

  “SHUT THAT DAMN THING DOWN!”

  And suddenly we dropped!

  I watched as the floor rose up past the half-closed hatch, and slammed it shut. The mole instantly ripped through tile, sub-floor, wood, wires, and whatever the hell building materials were between us, and the room below. A bullet exploded through the shell of the mole and scraped my cheek. Then another, and another!

  “SHIT!” I yelled.

  Damn those fast repeating police Glocks!

  After a minute of deafening grinding, we suddenly fell, the drill lurched sideways, there was a horrible grating screech, and a massive flash of light as we ripped through something electrical that seemed to blaze through my eyelids, pierce my brain, and rip open my soul. As quickly as it struck the light faded, the inside of the little vehicle began to smell horribly, musty and dank, as we—I had to assume—drilled headlong through the ground floor and into the earth below!

  “Are you okay, Milton?” I asked.

  “Fine!” Milton replied.

  “Not shot, or anything?”

  “I don’t believe so!”

  “How do we stop this thing?” I asked.

  “With the controls in my office!”

  “I don’t think I can reach those from here!”

  “I’d be surprised if you could!”

  “There’s no way to turn this off from the inside?”

  “Not from where we’re sitting!”

  “Milton! What do we do?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The vehicle rumbled for a while, grinding and ripping its way into the planet, God only knew how deep under the hills below APL.

  “How far can this thing go?” I asked the old man, calming a little.

  “As deep as it needs to.”

  “And how deep is that?”

  “I don’t know. Until it hits bedrock, I suppose. But that might not even stop it. Just slow it a bit.”

  “Will people be able to get to us?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I knew he was thinking the answer was ‘no’.

  “Can we turn around?” I asked.

  “Not without those controls.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Again, silence was my only an answer.

  “Just getting laid off,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “isn’t looking so bad right now, is it?”

  Still nothing. Then a slight snicker.

  “How much oxygen do we have?” I asked. “Will those bullet holes be a problem?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I’m so sorry, Milton.”

  “I know, my boy. I know.”

  We sat in silence as the thing drove us God only knew how deeply into the seemingly endless earth. Once or twice the thing popped, or lurched, and I thought we’d reached the end of our journey, but the damn thing was too well-designed, I guess, and before long the sound of the engine returned to its steady drone, the rasping of dirt and grit once more scraped upward along the outside walls surrounding us, and we continued inexorably down.

  We were going deeper and deeper into the Earth, further and further from people who might be able to rescue us, essentially inside a self-burying coffin.

  * * *

  BREATHING

  IS

  OVERRATED

  * * *

  MY CELL PHONE stopped working less than five minutes into the journey, and it was too dark for Milton to read his watch, so I had no idea how much time had passed. Hours? Days? Weeks?
I was beginning to get hungry, and wondered if it was more than just psychological.

  “Will it run out of power?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Milton said, then continued in a half-whisper. “In about five years.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It is very well-designed.”

  “Damn you, Milton Alvarado.”

  He laughed, a little.

  “We’re probably beyond anyone’s reach by now, aren’t we?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so, Brandon.”

  Milton was a quiet, somewhat religious man, and I’d often interrupted him in prayer as he asked whatever God, or gods, he thought might help him with a particular problem or concern. As time dragged painfully on, I assumed he would do something similar, now.

  But to my astonishment—with death staring him in the face—Milton Alvarado was transformed into a new and completely different man. From between his lips flowed—not a prayer—but a clear and steady stream of undiluted profanity, every word directed at the grindingly stubborn, unyielding machinery surrounding us.

  “Not exactly what I expected to hear from you at a time like this,” I noted.

  “Fuck that!” he snapped. “I’ve prayed my entire life, Brandon, and if anyone had been out there listening—a god, a deity, or even just a semi-intelligent hamster running in a wheel that powers the universe, this would never have happened! I hoped to one day wind up in heaven, and instead I’m currently on a collision course with the eternal fires of hell!”

  “Or the Earth’s core.”

  “Same thing!”

  “What can we do?” I asked, hiding my concern and fear behind a low and level voice.

  “Nothing!” he snapped, and I heard him fidget in his seat. “At some point I have to believe our air will run out, long before this Goddam thing ever stops drilling!”

  “Because of the bullet holes?”

  “No, the bullet holes are meaningless unless one of them damaged a part of the mechanism, somehow. This thing doesn’t need air to run. It’s because we could end up miles below the surface, very far away from a free-flowing oxygen supply.”

  “Oh. So… we’ll suffocate, probably,” I said, my voice betraying my fear.

  “Well,” Milton said, softening, his concern for me tempering his tone, “perhaps we have a slim hope that we’ll hit a layer of stone that will deflect us, and turn us back toward the surface. But suffocation does seem most likely,” he continued on, forgetting to be comforting, and building up some emotionless, analytical steam. “I suppose it’s possible that we could be cooked to death slowly as the temperature rises, or perhaps we’ll actually make it deep enough to be crushed by the extreme pressures of the earth’s crust and unceasing gravity, just as the review committee believed. But, no… more likely I think we’re simply going to suffocate to death very, very slowly.”

  “Nice.” I said.

  “Not really.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh.”

  We dug along for quite a while before speaking again.

  “I’m sorry, Milton.”

  “I know.”

  And, again, more silent traveling.

  “It’s getting hot,” I noted. “Is it possible we could hit lava?”

  “No, Brandon.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Grind, grind, grind.

  “You said we might cook to death…” I said.

  “Temperatures rise the further down you go… upwards of a hundred forty degrees—no lava—or rather magma—required.”

  “Oh.”

  We traveled for a while longer with nothing else to say, so I started repeating myself.

  “I’m really sorry, Milton.”

  “Please stop saying that.”

  AFTER WHAT MIGHT have been another hour of total quiet, Milton surprised me with a potential out.

  “We could hit water,” he said, sounding hopeful. “At least then we would drown, instead of suffocate.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “That would be… something to look forward to.”

  “Statistics show that drowning is the most pleasant way to die, you know.”

  “More pleasant than dying on top of a naked woman?”

  Milton laughed.

  “Perhaps the study was done by scientists who go the other way,” he said, giggling, and I laughed, as well.

  “Then wouldn’t they prefer to die on top of a naked man?” I asked.

  “Okay, asexual scientists, then!”

  Now we both were laughing, so hard I thought we’d pass out. Eventually we both settled down and became serious again.

  “So… in theory… this thing could keep right on drilling long after we’ve suffocated.”

  “I think that’s pretty likely, actually.”

  “And eventually we could hit something, rebound, then come up somewhere weird, a giant, spinning, mechanical mole, with two, cooked dead guys inside.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Be funny if we came up in the middle of someone’s party.”

  “Are you getting light headed, Brandon?”

  “Maybe. Either that, or I’m just losing my mind.”

  “Perhaps the air is getting a bit thin.”

  “Is it on a diet?” I asked, and laughed hysterically.

  “Don’t talk, Brandon. You should conserve your air.”

  “I’m tired of conserving. Green this, green that. Now we have to conserve air? Where’s the oxygen recycling bin?”

  “Brandon, please.”

  “God, it’s so hot!” I yelled. “So fucking hot! Will you please turn down the thermostat? I keep telling you, I’m not made of money!” I laughed like a giddy lunatic. “And close the front door. What are you trying to do, heat up all of the great outdoors? Jeez! Letting all the flies in…”

  In my delirium, I hadn’t noticed Milton’s voice getting quieter, and weaker, so I continued rambling on senselessly for several minutes more until it finally penetrated my non-oxygenated skull that Milton was no longer responding.

  “Milton?” I asked. “Yo! Miiiiil-ton!”

  Nothing. I tried a few more times, and then it hit me that the old man had actually succumbed to the lack of air. My dear friend, dead. And I’d killed him.

  Inexplicably, I began to sob.

  “Oh, God, Milton. I’m so sorry. So, so, so, so, so, so soooooooorry.”

  Against my will and all my efforts, my eyes closed, my brain dimmed, and darkness enveloped me like a hot blanket, making me comfortable for a sleep that would go on forever.

  And ever.

  I OPENED MY EYES and struggled to keep them open.

  Breathing was difficult. I gasped and sucked at the nearly nonexistent air around us, my head fuzzed—my limbs heavy.

  “Milton?” I asked, hopefully.

  Nothing.

  I struggled to stay awake. Or, rather, to become more awake. To not die.

  I was still a young man. There was so much I had never done, or tried. Prison now seemed like a preferable alternative to death. I didn’t want to let go of what little life I’d had.

  I struggled to pull my head off of the floor where it had become wedged between metal struts, when it suddenly dawned on me that my head shouldn’t be on the floor. I pulled myself around, and noticed Milton, slumping similarly, only a few inches from me. I wriggled nearer to him, and heard raspy, little, panting breaths.

  He was alive!

  And I wasn’t on the floor. I was on the ceiling, and so was Milton. But why were we stuck on the ceiling?

  I managed to scootch myself around and get my butt against the metal of what had been the top of the mole and looked around. Other than the stench of urine and shit because we’d both apparently lost control of ourselves while asleep, nothing had changed as far as I could tell, not that I understood any of the lights or displays blinking around me. Even so… something seemed different.

  Wait.

  We were turned around.

&n
bsp; Somehow the mole had reversed itself and come back around, heading toward the surface. And I was alive! And so was Milton! We might make it out of this after all!

  It was all I could do to keep from shouting and shrieking with joy. As it was, I did a little happy dance, bouncing up and down in my seat before realizing I was still almost out of air, and had no solution for that little problem.

  Suddenly the mole rocked and shuddered, and fell over on one side, throwing me practically on top of Milton. The drill above me roared and rumbled, moving very fast against nothing.

  It had broken through the surface! Spinning madly—running loose—in air! I could feel it rushing in through between the seams of the mole! Air that filled my lungs, energized my body and what was left of my brain!

  We were safe! We were going to live!

  As air gushed in, I gasped it down, waving some over to Milton, who was now breathing more normally. But suddenly, unexpectedly, I realized I was once again getting light-headed, feeling faint and exhausted, and before I could wonder why, I lost consciousness.

  * * *

  WEIRD WORLD

  * * *

  I WAS OUT FOR LITTLE MORE than a moment or two, because as I fell, I slammed into a metal crossbeam that hurt like hell, and startled me back to a fuzzy, light-headed form of consciousness.

  “Son of a…”

  Regaining my senses, my first concern was for Milton. I was horrified at the thought that right on the very tip of salvation he might actually have died. Tearing open his shirt I placed an ear to his chest. I could have screamed with relief—his heart was pounding, healthy and strong.

  I searched around against the walls of the mole, but couldn’t find a lever or handle to release the hatch cover, so leaning back a bit I raised a leg and kicked hard at the damned thing. It took four or five tries, but I was eventually able to bend it outward until it flew off and landed with a clank and a thud somewhere below.

  Sticking my head out I looked around for water, or anything else that might help revive Milton, assuming he might be dehydrated. A small, stream fed pond rippled nearby, but it turned out to be unnecessary.