The Black

by Neil Mosspark

  “Tony, who is this guy? He one of yours?” Dave tried to stand, and he reached out for the walls of the tunnel. “Are we still inside?”

  His fingers touched only open air, and the world spun. Sitting down, he flopped onto the grass. The soft blades under his fingers blew in the gentle breeze.

  “We’re outside,” Tony said.

  The old man spoke up and placed a hand on Dave’s shoulder. “No, you are inside.”

  Both Dave and Tony froze solid.

  Dave spoke first. “Inside?”

  “Yes. Inside. Everyone’s from inside,” the old man stated.

  “What are we inside?” Tony asked.

  “The dome. It keeps us safe. You’re inside now. You’re okay.”

  “Who are you?” Tony asked.

  “My name is Bradley Zimmerman.”

  “You sound old,” Tony asked, shuffling over and sitting next to his friend.

  “Hmm,” Bradley pondered for a moment, “I suppose I am. I’m the oldest man I know.”

  Dave stood weakly. “I can see grey shapes now. I think my sight is coming back.” He tried to look at his hands, but they were just dark blobs against an even darker background.

  “Where did you come from?” the old man asked. “Your clothes are strange.”

  “Outside. We have been trying to get into the dome for the last ten years,” Tony stated.

  “There are a lot of people that are going to be upset about this,” Bradley stated.

  “Why?” Dave asked. He blinked his eyes, trying hard to focus them.

  There was a heavy sigh. “Well, to begin with, we thought that the world outside was destroyed. At least that’s what my parents thought. They said that the Dome was here to keep us safe.”

  Dave struggled to stand now and could feel his friend’s hand reach out for his foot. Cognizant of where Tony was, Dave turned to the direction of the old man.

  “Can you take us to your parents?” Dave asked.

  “No, they are dead. Died twenty years ago.”

  “That’s not possible. The bubble has only been here for ten,” Tony argued.

  The man shuffled. “Suit yourself, but it has been here as long as I can remember. It’s nice to know that there is something beyond these walls. I always wondered. I read a lot of books about how the world was before the dark curtain fell.”

  “We’re here to get you out,” Tony stated. Dave could hear his friend try to stand and grunt.

  “You okay?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, I twisted my ankle pretty hard in there.”

  “In where?” the old man asked.

  Dave could see his blurry outline. Blinking a bit, he focused hard and could see the hunched form covered in dark clothing.

  “We were in the tunnel. Didn’t you see the explosion? Must we have gotten thrown clear? It would have been loud and bright.” Dave’s hands mimed an explosion.

  “The aether dropped you here. It drops things occasionally. Sometimes it takes things too. It only happens close to the edge like this. I gather the things it brings. You’re the first people I have ever found, though. Usually it’s just junk or stones.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Dave’s eyes could see the man’s face. It was blurry, but he could make out the dark clothes. Each rag was carefully hand-stitched together to form a patchwork of clothes. His eye picked up t-shirts and sweater material. A hodge-podge of quilting. It extended to his legs, covering them in oddly patched pants.

  Around him, Dave could see a dimly lit landscape, like a vast crater, filled with grasslands, broken by rising spires of stone and ancient buildings. Some were human, some looked as though they were grown. All of them looked like someone had overlayed a volcanic crater within a city. Dave turned trying to gauge where they had come from. The gentle slope of the crater spread downward. Looking upward, he gauged the distance to the grey sky as about a kilometre.

  “It has to be around here.” Dave turned, stepping away gaining his bearings, “Where the hell is it?” he muttered.

  “Where is what?” the old man said.

  “The entrance to the tunnel?” Tony finished standing on his good leg, hobbling on his one loafer.

  “I told you, the aether dropped you off,” the man said, picking up Tony’s shoe and handing it to the man.

  The shoe looked melted and deformed.

  “That’s leather,” Tony said, taking it.

  “Don’t whine about how much it cost. This isn’t the time,” Dave chastised. He walked up the hill a few steps, surveying the grassy hillside in the dark. The smooth grass of the slope didn’t betray an opening.

  “No… Look… Leather doesn’t melt. It burns. It doesn’t melt. It looks like it’s stretched and melted. Deformed.”

  Tony reached down and tried to slip on the shoe, but it was contorted enough that it didn’t fit. Kicking it off, he picked it up, comforted more to hold it than expecting to ever fix it.

  “Where are we?” Dave looked at the old man.

  “Here.” The old man shrugged. “Come. Let’s get to my village. We can talk about this like civilized human beings. At least that’s what my father always used to say.”

  “Where is your father?” Tony asked, turning and following the man.

  “Buried next to mother by the garden.”

  Dave stood there for a moment, not willing to give up the search. Turning, he circled where they had awoken. A roll of det-cord lay on the ground. Instinctively he picked it up. Leaving it here would be akin to leaving a loaded weapon on the ground, waiting for someone to find it. His hand absently touched his pocket where the chemical detonators lay. Dave wandered back and forth, searching in the dim light for the tunnel entrance. No crater. No smoke. Not even a loose pile of stones.

  Frustrated, he turned, looking down the hill. It felt as though he was standing on the upper edge of a crater, looking down into the bowl. Beyond the grass lay a basin containing a distorted landscape. In the failing light, he could recognize familiar, contorted buildings mixed with an alien landscape. It stretched on for as far as he could see.

  “Where the hell are we?” the large man asked himself, looking at the city at the center of the crater.

  “Come. We will have some tea,” the old man encouraged them, shambling away down the hillside.

  Dave took some of Tony’s weight, helping him traverse the grassy hillside. Tony couldn’t put much weight on it and winced each time he placed it down to steady himself. Dave suspected that if the ankle wasn’t broken, it was severely sprained.

  As they walked, Dave surveyed the environment they were passing through. The grass was covered in dew, and he noted that the rising glow of the curved dome above their head was different on the inside. It wasn’t the matte black surface he was expecting. Instead, it was a dull grey glow that was rising into a shadowless light that seemed to project from all angles like on a cloudy afternoon.

  They had been walking along for an hour, caught up in making observations about the inside, when Bradley stopped and turned at ninety degrees to walk around a depression in the ground. The waist-deep crater-like shape was the diameter and depth of a large car, and the grass that grew in it looked compressed and yellowed, like grass that had been growing under a brick or an object laid too long on its surface.

  “What was there?” Tony asked, pointing to the depression.

  “Hmm?” the old man asked, stopping slowly and turning.

  “There was something in that hole. What was sitting there? It looks like it was a boulder. Where did it go?”

  “The heavy?”

  “What?

  “That’s a ‘heavy,’” the old man stated. Bending down, he pulled a handful of grass. Old hands tossed it quickly into the bowl-like depression, and the green blades floated through the air, but once across the invisible threshold they were sucked to the ground quickly.

  Dave, still bracing his friend, kicked a stone hard enough to send it in an arc across space, only to watch it land lik
e it was made of lead a foot or two inside.

  Dave and his skinny friend looked at each other.

  “What is that?” Tony asked.

  “A ‘heavy.’ I just told you that,” the old man stated, looking at them as though they were a pair of fools.

  “We have never seen this before,” Tony stated. “It’s new to us. There is nothing like this on the other side.”

  The old man looked surprised. “You don’t have heavies?”

  “No,” Dave piped in.

  “In that case, don’t walk into them by accident,” the old man said, turning away to continue. “You can get trapped inside.”

  The two men carefully walked around the outside, giving it more room than they had before.

  Tony thought for a moment. “We expected something different inside, past the field. The researchers had told us that there might be changes to gravity, but that’s not what I expected.”

  “What about time?” Dave asked.

  “Time?”

  “Yeah, like how we watched a slow-motion explosion in the tunnel? Or how you suddenly appeared? You told me that I had been gone a half hour, then you showed up.”

  “Makes sense. We figured that the black is like the event horizon of a black hole. Time and gravity distort.”

  “I thought black holes suck things in and destroy stuff.”

  “They usually do.”

  “We seem to be doing fine,” Dave stated.

  “Let me see your watch,” Tony asked.

  Dave lifted his watch and showed his friend. “Ten forty-five.”

  Both men, as well as anyone who worked near the field of the bubble, had to use winding watches, since anything electrical would discharge completely and become unusable.

  “Did you wind it today?”

  “Always do. I wind it first thing in the morning when I wake up. It’s a habit.”

  “Look, mine’s different.” Tony thrust his watch toward his friend, causing them to stop for a moment to compare.

  Tony’s watch read eleven fifteen.

  “I must have forgotten to wind it,” Dave stated.

  “Did you forget how long you were in the tunnel? I didn’t. We stood up there for a half hour waiting for you before I went down to check. That’s not including the time it took me to walk to you.”

  Both men digested the facts and continued to follow the old man.

  “Don’t fall too far behind,” he turned to tell them. “We still have ways to go.”

  The men trudged on, walking past at least two more “heavy” gravity wells over the next hour, each a varying size. There was no path, and the old man picked his way through the shin-high grass, changing direction from time to time.

  “How much farther?” Tony asked.

  “Just down there.” The man pointed with a crooked finger.

  “Let’s stop for a minute or two,” Dave said, cognizant of his limping friend’s discomfort. Tony wasn’t a heavy burden to carry, but the awkward shuffling was beginning to wear on his shoulder and back.

  “I will never turn down a nap.” The old man came to a stop and eased down into the grass, immediately snoring.

  Dave and Tony looked at each other and opted not to say anything. They sat there on the slope of the valley, looking across, enjoying the mild breeze. The surreal cityscape below reminded Dave of a what a termite mound would look like. There was a large metallic object in the centre, like a skyscraper that was leaned at a slight angle against a tall glass building.

  “Does anyone live down there?” Dave called out to the old man.

  The man smacked his lips for a moment and opened his eyes. “Hmm... yes. There are lots of people. They work for the queen and dig in the city to look for things she wants... Stay away from them. They are only trouble. City people are different than country people.”

  Dave considered this, since he could see a fine mist-like cloud cover move across the tops of the buildings.

  “Why are there clouds?” Dave asked Tony. “There shouldn’t be a breeze either. It’s sealed, isn’t it?”

  “It’s likely because of the absorption. The black is using our atmosphere and water to generate the field. I just don’t know how. We could be seeing vaporized water from the lake condensing; that might be why there are clouds. It feels a bit more humid, but not by much.”

  “Does it rain?” Dave asked the old man.

  The man nodded, keeping his eyes closed. “Every so often.”

  Below them they could see a small group of dwellings, clustered together around some trees. A few people were milling about the small village.

  “My big concern is where are all the buildings?” Tony said. “There should be most of the downtown business district here. Not grass. Those stone pillars, and some of the buildings, those are not from here. Look at the one near the closest edge. Near the tree line. It looks like it has been sheered off. Cut cleanly.”

  It took Dave a moment to find what his friend was looking at, but after a bit of direction, he could see the small, short building. Its rooms and hallways were open to the elements. Some cables and insulation flapped in the breeze.

  “Maybe there was an explosion? I’ve seen that kind of damage before,” Dave commented.

  “That’s not an explosion. Where is the rubble? Where’s the collapsed half of the building? That looks like half of it just evaporated.”

  Dave looked across the green plains and could see a few fallen buildings but nothing that indicated a blast. No pattern of distributed concrete or debris field.

  The trio sat on the grassy hillside for a few more minutes. As unceremoniously as he had sat down, Bradley stood and began sauntering forward again.

  “We’re almost there. I’m sure the village will be happy to see you. You are the only visitors I have heard of from the outside!” He waved to the villagers below, who after a moment waved back. Some were congregating near the edge of a cobblestone walking path, eyeing them suspiciously.

  Down the hill they continued, slowly closing the distance.

  Dave could see that they were all dressed in the same patchwork garb, cobbled together from material that they had found or woven.

  “What have you brought us?” a middle-aged man asked, calling out to the old man.

  The old man smiled. “New friends from beyond the curtain. From the outside. One is hurt.”

  The group whispered back and forth, turning their heads to confer amongst themselves, eyeing Dave and Tony suspiciously.

  “It’s true, they were brought by the aether. I was out picking mushrooms on the slopes, and there was a bright light. There they were, lying on the ground, smoking like a burned-out cooking fire.”

  “Do they speak english?” The man asked

  Dave nodded. “Yes. We do.”

  “Welcome. My name is Joseph. I’m the mayor.” A warm hand reached out and gripped Dave’s, shaking vigorously. “Please come with us. Let’s get your friend to the doctor.”

  The mayor walked them down the packed earth road, past the small one-storey brick houses. They looked as though they were cobbled together from parts of other buildings. Many of them were storefronts, with hand-carved or painted signs hanging out into the street. They passed “grocer,” “shoes,” and one the for some reason read “cats.” Eventually, they got a small red-and-brown-brick building with a bright metal sign hanging out front. It looked suspiciously like a stop sign but painted white, with a large Red Cross emblazoned on the front. Stepping through the front doors, the interior of the foyer was clean, with old couches in the waiting area. A small desk at one end was occupied by a gaunt older woman who reminded Dave of his mother but perhaps ten years younger and but much more pleasant. She looked up and smiled at the mayor. “Good morning, Mayor. Who is this?”

  The mayor, still excited about the visitors, turned to them. “These are visitors from the other side of the curtain.” Turning back, he faced both of the men. “I’m sorry, I forgot your names.”

  “Dave T
hompson.”

  “Tony Young.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Mr. Thompson, can you bring your friend back to the treatment room for us?”

  Dave assisted Tony to the treatment room door, and she took over, letting the man shuffle along with her under his arm. A moment later she emerged and motioned the mayor to the side. Dave could hear whispers about payment and costs associated with the medical treatment. The mayor nodded and told her that whatever was needed, she should send him the bill.

  The mayor turned to Dave. “Your friend, Mr. Young, is in good hands. If you don’t mind, perhaps we can chat… Where exactly are you from, Mr. Thompson?”

  The crowd that had pushed their way into the waiting room hushed, listening intently. Occasionally some words would be spoken, but Dave couldn’t place the language. It reminded him of punjab smashed together with chinese.

  “Originally, I’m from Toronto, Ontario,” he told the mayor.

  “And where is that?”

  “Canada...”

  There were mumbles as people shook their heads. More of the strange language could be heard.

  “How much do you know about the outside?” Dave asked.

  “We have books and newspapers from just before the fall of the curtain. We have preserved them. I know what Canada is. It is a country, but it has been a hundred years since our people were cut off.”

  “It has only been about ten years outside. We were trying to dig a tunnel to get into what we refer to as the Black Dome. Something happened, and there was an accident; an explosion, and we woke up here.

  “They were dropped off by the aether,” the old man chimed in.

  The mayor nodded understandingly, raising a hand. “Were you able to break through with the tunnel?”

  Dave shook his head. “No. The accident happened when we were trying to blow out a wall that looked like people had constructed out of stones and mortar.”

  A look of worry crossed the mayor’s face.

  “What is it?” Dave asked.

  “That was a long time ago, well before I was born. There is a story about a group of people began digging, and they were told to stop digging by the queen because she said they were endangering everyone. Well, the story goes that the rebels didn’t stop. They continued to dig. The queen killed them all off. Then sealed the tunnel forever and told everyone that if anyone was ever caught digging near the curtain, the same fate would befall them.”