“I wonder how this works. I mean, if they still work, why don’t they produce electrics for the lights?” Eve asked, staring at the picture. “Because I think we have to have light bulbs to make light. We’ve run out of the light bulbs, not the power. And no one knows how to make a light bulb,” Dirk replied. Eve stretched her neck to relieve the muscle tension she got sometimes after spending too much time at the looms. Dirk reached over and rubbed her neck until the muscles loosened.
They both looked pensive for a moment, remembering the shining light even a single bulb gave off. They ran out of bulbs when Dirk and Eve were five years of age. Everything was dimmer after that. The only remaining bright light was found near the Boardroom Building…and of course in the greenhouses from the solar lights.
“But then what will happen when we run out of solar bulbs for the greenhouses? What happens if the greenhouses go dark? Can we grow things with candle lights?” Eve wondered aloud. She and Dirk both remembered having to go play in the greenhouse under those bright solar lights when they were very small. The medical clinic said it had something to do with a thing called vitamin D.
“I think you have to have brighter lights than candles can make. Let’s ask the head greenhouse worker. Let’s go ask old Ben Greenfield,” Dirk replied. He got up, planning to go directly to the greenhouse. It was one of the things Eve loved most about Dirk. He said something and did it right then. But unfortunately the clock chimed five times, and Eve knew she had to go home to help with cloth folding, dinner, and the dish washing.
“I can’t go now, Dirk. I have to go home and help with the chores. We can go tomorrow during the festival. We get a whole day off before we start our jobs. Let’s go tomorrow,” Eve explained, standing to leave. “But we need to find these things out now, Eve. Things are going bad. I overheard someone from The Committee talking about it when I went to the bakery yesterday. I was picking up the weekly loaf, when Committee Member Blakeley came in. He was talking to the Head of the Committee, Mr. Miggly,” Dirk now whispered in Eve’s ear. He glanced furtively around to be sure no one from security was listening.
“What did he say?” Eve asked, scooting closer so as not to be overheard. “That if they did not get replacements from the other place soon, we would all go dark…in a year we will go dark unless we get something called replacements. Replacements are things you need when something does not work anymore, or when you run out of things,” Dirk whispered.
“I know what the word means, Dirk. We get replacement parts for the looms every other year. Mother gets them from the carpenter’s shop. So you’re sure what they said…that we will go dark in a year?” Eve asked. She looked over her shoulder to ensure the man from security was not watching. But just in case, well, and because she wanted to, she wrapped her arms around Dirk’s neck and leaned into his rock hard chest. He immediately responded by engulfing her in a soft hug.
“Yes, in a year…they said something about a target date…so we have to do something fast. You remember the dark holes in the dome? I think that’s what they were talking about. Mr. Miggly said the dome is breaking down, and that we are running out of things to make light, or even to repair the dome. And then he said something about five hundred years, and some stone, but I didn’t catch the rest,” Dirk whispered in her ear.
“If that happens, won’t we all die from the freeze or air drop in the void? Does anyone else know this?” Eve asked, also in a whisper. “No, it would surely cause a panic. They stopped talking as soon as they saw me. I pretended to read my book so they would not notice me listening to them. I don’t think they know I overheard them. But, that’s why we have to find out what’s going on…fast. And it’s why your job is so critical. Find out everything you can about the steam machines, Eve. I think they are the key to our survival…to making more power and light before we run out,” Dirk said.
“What else did they say, and what about the stone thing?” “I didn’t understand anything else. They talked about needing to get inside the Boardroom Building. But everyone knows it’s impossible to get inside that building. People have been trying for maybe three-hundred years,” Dirk mumbled, now watching the security guard, who appeared too interested in them despite their hugging...and sometimes other add-ons.
“The last person who tried was killed from the shock. Do you remember when that happened back five years ago?” Eve asked. “Yes, it was in the newspaper. He was from the trade district. But maybe Mr. Miggly and Mr. Blakeley have a way inside. I’m not sure, but maybe the Book of Rules explains how to get inside using some other door. They said something about needing a stone to get inside. Anyway, we have to do something now, Eve,” Dirk said, sounding urgent.
“I can’t; I have to go now, Dirk. Mother expects me at home to do chores. Let’s meet tomorrow near the greenhouse right after they sing the Atonement Day song,” Eve replied. She stood and began to leave, nodding to the security guard who had been carefully watching them. He would be lenient because he’d noted their numbers, 12, on their uniforms, so understood they would be officially matched in another three days, right after the Atonement Festival.
Before she left, Dirk whispered he would check out his latest find in the decay zone before he went home. She kissed Dirk lightly on his cheek, and then slowly on the mouth, but stopped before things got out of control and the security guard’s leniency was stretched too far. They could be reprimanded for an open romantic display, because they were not yet official. As she left, she knew soon they would live together, and secrecy would no longer be an issue.
Eve turned right off Lightfighter Square and jogged the four blocks to her home. She loved her town. She could tell everyone the names of the families who lived ten streets away, what they worked at, and even what was carved on the fronts of those abandoned and decrepit tall buildings out in the decay zone. The buildings had strange names like, Intergalactic Research Institute, or Cybergenetics Research Facility engraved into metal plaques near where the doors used to be. Eve and Dirk had tried to find those words in the library books, but were told by the librarian they were in the restricted section and that only members of The Committee had that access.
Still, she loved to explore and uncover the secrets of those old buildings. Eve thought maybe her new job would also provide secrets. She walked to the solid, but old door of her home and entered. It was unlocked as were all the buildings in their city. Locks were unheard of. There was no need for a lock.
Chapter Two
The Boardroom Building
Eve often took an alternate route home just to find something new, although the buildings and streets were more or less all the same. Each was a two-story cinder block building, now unpainted or faded, and with brown, woolen cloth over the long-since-broken windows. Intact windows did not matter much anyway, because the plasmon dome always controlled the temperature of their city.
But today she’d taken a more direct route through the park and by the back door, because she was anxious to tell her mother of her news. She ran as far as Tanner Street, right by the long line of people patiently waiting to exchange their daily worker chits for whatever was currently being sold from the greenhouses. That day, Eve noted turnips were for sale, which meant she would be having turnip soup for dinner. She then slowed, because only a single candle lit the next two streets leading to her house.
The streets were veritable storehouses of exciting things…old broken furniture, rusty tools, even metal cans, although those were gathered up by the Recycle Workers at dark time and melted into useful things like metal cups and spoons. But many things were in need of repair. Everyone in her city was used to faded and broken things. Eve thought of Dirk’s remarks as she trotted home. “Was everything really almost gone? What about the dome? Was it breaking down? Is that what they’d seen in that hole into the black void? Would they all die?’ She pushed those thoughts from her mind as she turned into her street, skirting around a pile of discarded clothing set out for the recycle pick up the next morn
ing.
Eve sometimes dreamt of her city from long past; she’d used her pencil stubs and cloth/paper to draw what she imagined it had looked like centuries ago. The streets were clean and bright from the many electric lights, and the tall buildings were still inhabited, and painted in bright shades of red and blue. In front of the buildings was a broad open square, decorated with colored mosaic tiles. There was a fountain filled with golden-colored fish in the center. In front of the buildings were large trees with orange fruit growing on each.
She sometimes also dreamt of another city out in the void, or in another place, with a huge underground bunker filled with many levels of people busy walking about, and carrying out their daily routines. Sometimes she heard those people trying to contact her…at least in her dreams. But she knew the place probably did not exist because the Book of Rules told them this was the only place left in ‘forever’, and that it was surrounded by the eternal darkness of the void. Eve had seen that eternal darkness through those holes in the dome; she knew no one had ever gone out there and returned to tell of it.
Eve sometimes had other dreams; they were dreams of a building made of shiny silver metal, with long pods, each with a person sleeping inside. Sometimes one of them would suddenly open his or her eyes and blurt something out to her, calling her by name, startling her awake. But then, it was only her mother calling for her to wake up and go to school. Once in a dream, she saw herself open a door by inserting an odd metal device into a hole, and then turning it. After, she would speak a word and a series of numbers, and the door would slide open. She never told anyone about her dreams…except Dirk.
Eve arrived at the front of her mother’s shop, noting it was dark and that the sign out in front was no longer even readable because it had faded and said, “…loth Re…ycle…Sho…,” instead of Cloth Recycle Shop. But at least a light from one candle gave off its dim glow in the upstairs window. Her mother was always waiting for Eve to get home. She climbed the stairs to their upstairs apartment two at a time, noting that several steps were broken and would have to be nailed back together once she’d earned enough worker chits to exchange at the markets for the very expensive nails.
Her pale, muscular legs carried her like she was flying. And in her mind she was. A job in a new category…Steam Machine Worker…was something to think about. Maybe it would be exciting, or she would find out secrets, or maybe it was even a mysterious, magical thing. She hoped it would lead to her discovery of the tunnels she had dreamt about.
Eve opened the door to the space she shared with her mother and brother, James. It was a three-room home, with a separate sleeping room for Eve and her mother and a tiny room the size of a storage closet as a sleep room for her six-year-old brother James. Eve thought at one time it probably was used as a closet; but that was back when people had all sorts of things to keep in closets…like extra coats and shoes.
Now, after centuries, no one had extras of anything…at least anything that was not recycled or that still worked properly. Eve only had her brown wool school clothing, a set of similar home clothing that was her own, some hemp woven sandals, an ancient pair of boots, a jacket that formerly belonged to her father, and one faded flower print shirt with black wool pants she wore to high city occasions…like to the yearly Atonement Festival. Those items, given to her by her mother when she turned sixteen, were hand washed and carefully stored in the single closet now shared with her family. She knew the dress clothing had once been worn by her mother.
“Ma, I’m to be a Steam Machine Worker. It’s a new job category. I think I’m to be the first. Have you ever heard of that type of job?” Eve immediately asked her mother upon entering their home. She reached around her mother to grab a piece of week-old bread, stuffing it into her mouth before her mother could protest. Eve’s mother stood over a rusty, iron stove fired by the coal mined outside of the dome, down under the void in the bee-low.
Only the older adults did the mining down in those tunnels because it was deadly dangerous, what with the low air and freezing cold. Usually the older adults would be assigned a two-year mining job right before they were up for their Atonement Festival recycle. That meant when their life years had been spent and they were sent off to die, and then to be recycled into the ancient dirt. Eve knew it was awful, but the city had to maintain a set population or their supplies would run out even sooner. It was all carefully explained in The Book of Rules. Everyone had seventy years to live…that was the limit unless you were the last adult in a family or had to take care of someone less than eighteen years of age.
“I have not heard of that job, Eve,” her mother answered. “But I expect it has to do with the steam engines down on the lowest levels. There’s talk of trying to modify them so we can get the lights going again. I’ve never been down in the steamworks, but it’s supposed to be very warm and humid. You’ll be seeing the waterworks down there too. What an opportunity!” Eve’s mother finished, ladling out the turnip and ground potato soup with a piece of potato flour flat bread for each of them.
Eve handed James an extra piece of bread slathered with goat cheese, because at six, he was always hungry. He wolfed it down in two bites, licking the rest from his fingers. She examined her brother with concern. Would he live to become an adult if they ran out of solar light bulbs for the greenhouses? She was always afraid something would happen to her tiny brother. He was a gift from the void gods…it was what her father had told her a year before he died.
But Eve knew that was not the case; that her father had volunteered before his time for a dangerous mining job to obtain another birthing license when her mother became pregnant again…and without a permit. It was considered a capital offense to become pregnant without a permit, and was the main reason she and Dirk had been so careful with their romances. She knew that she and Dirk would not be permitted a child for ten years. Every time Eve looked at her brother, she thought of the sacrifice her father had made to bring him into their world. She did not want Dirk to have to make that same sacrifice.
“James is a gift from my father, not any fake made-up void gods,” she thought as she slurped her soup. She was glad she’d gotten that secret medicine from the clinic…to keep the babies from coming. It had all been explained to her in school; how babies came about, and the need for careful control of their population. Once she was married, she would be given the pills each month, as was allowed by the city rules. But until then, she had to obtain the medicine in secret.
Eve, her mother, and tiny James sat on rickety, ancient wooden chairs eating dinner around an upturned metal storage chest. The tiny apartment was crammed with moldy pieces of recycled cloth, old discarded single shoes with holes in the toes, single socks, and crumpled moldy rugs. Eve looked around, reminding herself to collect some of the worst of the lot to take to the recycle bins before they ran out of space.
In the corner of the main room, a torn, grey sofa and two iron chairs stood in a circle around a small table with a single candle in its reflective holding device. Eve had done many school assignments sitting on the floor next to that table, trying to get enough light to see the print in her official school books. She reminded herself that she must return the books to the school supply office by tomorrow or incur a rather large fine. Books were considered city property, and were not replaceable.
The room she shared with her mother held a small bed, and was dark when not occupied because they only had two candles allotted to them now with the rationing. Eve was glad she would be working because it also meant a third candle permit would be given to their household. Eve ate in silence for a bit, and then continued her conversation with her mother.
“I report the day after tomorrow to the chief steamworks engineer. I don’t know why they selected me for the new job category. I mean, I can fix some things, but not a steam machine,” Eve continued between mouths of steamy soup. She reached over and tickled her little brother, who giggled and squirmed away. “I think you’re lucky. I want to be that when I gro
w up,” her brother replied with a dot of goat cheese on his tiny chin. He looked up at his big sister with abject adoration.
“Watch and learn, Eve. You never know how you can be useful,” her mother replied, running a calloused hand through her dark brown hair. Eve looked nothing like her family members, and she often wondered why she looked so different from her mother and father…or even her tiny brother. Sometimes she thought she’d been gifted to them by the unclaimed babies’ department…the place where they raised the children whose parents had died. Eve’s mother watched her children eat, adding some of her own food to James’ plate when she noted he was still hungry.
“Are you still hungry, James? Here take some of my soup. I’m full,” she said, while switching her own bowl for his. James gulped down the soup with loud slurping noises. Eve had noticed the food was less lately, and that her mother was getting thinner each day. She hoped the extra worker chits from her new job would change that. Now finally, she could contribute to the household expenses. Maybe she could even purchase a honey cake every so often for James, and even get those replacement parts for the biggest loom.
Eve finished her soup while thinking of Dirk. They had been friends for what seemed like ages; she’d been elated when their pairing was first announced. Some were not so lucky and so were paired with someone they hardly knew…or sometimes did not even like…like Rene had been. Rene’s partner had been a bully, once giving Rene a black eye. Dirk would never do that. Eve was so happy The Committee had unpaired Rene, even though it might mean her friend would not have a mate, or have to wait several years until an appropriate genetically matched individual was found for her. Eve supposed it was why they made the announcements when you were only twelve…so you’d be used to it once you finally turned eighteen and started to live as a family unit, sometimes in a separate house if you could afford it.
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