Revolution in the Underground

by Michaels, S. J.

  “I don’t care about that,” he said with an acerbic laugh in-between sniffles. “That doesn’t matter to me.”

  Maggie brought her forehead to his and put her arms around him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. I thought you were great.” Ember did not so much as twitch. He had already assumed that his sister had seen everything. “You know,” she continued, “this wasn’t their paradise either.”

  Ember looked up suddenly as if some tremendous insight just dawned upon him. All his tears seemed to dry up at once. He was looking directly at his sister, yet he seemed to be looking through her. “No, it wasn’t,” he agreed with his eyes still transfixed. Without any need for clarification, they were both on the same page. They knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, whom they were referring to. “But… Is it yours?”

  Maggie tilted her head to the side, as she usually did when she wanted to avoid a question or when something innocently dangerous popped into her head. “Let’s do something fun!” she exclaimed, extending her arms out with her hands still on his shoulders.

  “You think that just because I looked up, you can coerce me into doing things?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know what you need?”

  “No, tell me?”

  “A visit to the landfill!”

  Ember was surprised. That was exactly what he wanted to do—and he hadn’t even known it. Not wanting to sound too excited he said simply, “Ok, let’s do that,” and started walking.

  For most Erosans the landfill was hardly a place to get excited about. Many were unaware of its existence altogether—and for good reason. The community had no need for landfills. Erosa was, and always had been, very much in tune with nature. In fact, Erosa had achieved one hundred percent sustainability a hundred years before either Ember or Maggie were born. The landfill was, for all intensive purposes, an antiquated concept. For some however, the landfill was an important remnant—the only link to a forgotten time and a mysterious past.

  Reaching the landfill was always a slightly more-than-minor undertaking. It was located on the forest floor about half a mile out from the rest of the city. Since it’s putrid smell was known to attract dangerous creatures, diligence was required on the part of all travelers.

  As Ember put his foot on the forest floor, he felt a shiver go through his spine. Ember and Maggie stood silently, admiring the majesty of the forest before them. The birds, crickets, and other insects became an orchestra—their chirps, hum and clicks a gentle and soothing serenade. The ground was soggy and damp, and a light mist blocked the sight of the deeper forest. The air was wet and smelled almost like mildew. Maggie looked up at the wooden platforms of her village and then at the magnificent trees that surrounded it, and at once felt insignificant and un-worldly. Ember’s heart beat fast as his foot sank into the soggy soil. He breathed in heavily and, for the first time that day, was really glad to be alive.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Ember! I haven’t been scared of the forest since I was… like… eight.”

  “Hey, I was just asking. I know you’re a big girl now,” he said mockingly.

  Maggie did a little curtsy and said, “thank you,” in a high frill voice, as if to indicate that she wouldn’t let him bother her. She picked up a fallen twig and smacked it against the trees as she walked. According to Erosan lore, the sound of a twig hitting bark attracted forest creatures. Though it was generally regarded as a myth amongst Erosan scholars, the general populace accepted it as true. Maggie looked back at Ember and smiled, as if her actions proved how unafraid she was.

  “You’re brave now… Let’s just see you do that when we get further away.” Maggie distanced herself from her brother and weaved in and out of the forest trees, hitting them loudly with the twig as she went. “The brave Maggie Oaks! If only your friends could see you now!” Ember shouted after her. Sure enough, as they traveled deeper into the forest, Maggie’s interweaving path grew closer to Ember’s—each strike weaker than the previous. Soon the twig became limp in her hand. By the time they got far enough away that they could no longer see their village, Maggie had dropped the twig entirely and was walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her brother.

  Though Maggie and Ember had visited the landfill nearly a dozen times before, they were never quite prepared for the feeling they got when Erosa fell out of view. They weren’t more than half a mile into the forest and already their entire world seemed to be a distant memory. Out in the forest it didn’t seem to matter if you were half a mile away or twenty. If they happened upon a creature, it could have its way with them all the same. It didn’t make a difference.

  The forest transformed, as it always did, from a place of tranquility to one of hostility. From the safe balcony of their huts back home it was easy to see a harmonious nature. It was easy to let one’s mind fantasize about the forest’s mysteries. Out in the forest, however, it was another story. Suddenly nature didn’t seem so harmonious—suddenly the mysteries weren’t something to fantasize about, they were unknowns to be feared. The once sweet and calming symphony became a dissonant and threatening cacophony. Everything was so inescapably real. There were no facades, only objective reality. It was terrifying. There was something about the deep forest that always awakened a primordial fear within Maggie and Ember—an undeniably, unmistakably powerful instinct to hide, protect, and run.

  Maggie felt like a helpless animal. She couldn’t shake the feeling that some terrifying prey was stalking her. She knew her brother couldn’t protect her from a creature but it comforted her walking by his side.

  For her sake, Ember started the conversation up again. “Tell me… honestly… did it sound okay?”

  “What? You’re speech? At the Evaluation?”

  “Ya. Sometimes I have all these thoughts… All these things I want to say… and then when the words come out, they don’t come out the way I like.”

  “You mean, they don’t come across how you like?”

  “Sort of. It’s just, when I go to bed tonight I know that I’m going to think about how stupid it all was. I know I’m going to feel silly. I hate divulging my feelings like that. I hate it. I don’t want them to see me as just some overly-dramatic up-and-comer.”

  “Ember, but you are overly dramatic.”

  “I just wanted to know if it made sense.”

  “Ember,” she said with utter sincerity, looking him directly in his eyes, “it made sense… It made a lot of sense to me.”

  “Did it? I just know I’m going to feel stupid tonight. I mean what difference does my little protest—”

  “Ember!” Maggie interrupted, “Stop regretting things. You didn’t do anything wrong. You spoke from your heart and that’s all that anyone can ever ask from you. I respect what you did. You were honest to yourself, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Thanks,” Ember managed to say after an unjustly long silence.

  Maggie stopped dead in her tracks. “D’you smell that!” she cried with an enthusiasm so great that all the anxiety of the day seemed worthwhile. “It must be close.”

  Ember looked around as if his eyes might aid his nose. A rancid odor struck him. His head jolted back in protest and his upper lip issued a natural, almost instinctual scowl. So fetid and offensive was the odor that Ember nearly suggested going back. Eventually his higher order faculties took control and reminded him that soon he would habituate to the stench.

  “Come on, it’s not that bad! It’s the smell of adventure!” Maggie jumped up onto Ember’s back, throwing her legs to his sides and her arms around his neck. Ember nearly toppled over. She knew Ember didn’t like carrying her. She knew she wasn’t a little kid anymore and she knew the feeling of her breasts against his back made him uncomfortable. She didn’t care. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and tradition was tradition. Ember lumbered his way into the landfill and set her down near the entrance.

  It was a very old landfill. Its existence predated even that of Eros
a. So old, in fact, that many parts of it had already been colonized by pioneer flora. Looking out from the center, one could see a clear snap shot of ecological succession: heaps of trash in the middle, spots of moss and rudimentary plants as one went outward, and a gradual accumulation of shrubberies and saplings towards the edges. So smooth was the transition that it was hard to see where the landfill ended and where the forest began—a fact that led Ember to speculate, on more than one occasion, exactly how much of the landfill the forest had already eaten.

  Nearly all paper items had long since deteriorated and the few that remained were far from legible. Any scraps of metal had long since been removed by the engineers and recycled into useful pieces for their mills. All that remained were the non-biodegradable material—mostly semi-rigid, translucent items and dark flexible scraps that Ember and Maggie were told were called “plastics” and “rubber,” respectively.

  Maggie climbed a mound of decomposing trash, using her outstretched arms for balance. “Why do we even bother coming here,” she shouted back at Ember, “no one ever finds anything good here.”

  “That’s not true, one time Mom and Dad found a book.”

  “Mom and Dad?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I don’t know… It’s just weird to hear you refer to them that way.” Maggie mulled her brain for what it was exactly that perplexed her. She ultimately decided that it wasn’t what he said but the way he said it—as if they weren’t absent, as if they had been there all along.

  “Huh?” Ember mumbled with his mouth closed.

  Maggie stared for a few moments, looking for the right words to express her newly realized feelings. Believing the pursuit to be too difficult she moved on. “A book? Like, an actual book? From the landfill? From the past?”

  “Ya… well sort of… The front cover and most of the pages were missing but the last chapter was mostly intact.”

  “How come I never heard about this?” she asked with a touch of indignation.

  “I showed you once before but you didn’t seem interested.”

  “I don’t remember you showing me anything of the sort and that most certainly doesn’t seem like something I wouldn’t be interested in!” Maggie felt cheated.

  Ember shrugged. “Well you weren’t.”

  Ember walked over to another mound and began kicking aimlessly at the trash, hopeful that something of interest might be unearthed. Maggie meandered over to Ember’s pile and started prying at a thick plastic sheet wedged deep beneath the trash.

  “What was it about anyway?” she inquired, feigning disinterest.

  “Once upon a time there was a very clever king named Sisyphus,” he began grandly, “So clever in fact that he could even trick the Greek Gods!”

  “What’s Greek mean?”

  “Umm… I think it was a large village that existed a really long time ago.”

  “Hmm,” she voiced, simultaneously expressing satisfaction and intrigue.

  “Anyway, eventually the Gods grew so angry of his treachery that they decided to punish him by forcing him to push a heavy boulder up a large hill.” Ember’s tone lost its grandness and became increasingly informative as the story went on. “No matter what he did, however, the boulder would always come crashing down just as it reached the top. And so he was doomed to repeat this trial for all of eternity.”

  “How morose!” she shrieked.

  “Ya, but according to this one guy, we’re supposed to imagine Sisyphus happy.” Maggie paused and waited for the explanation she knew was coming. “Sisyphus always has a goal—he has a meaning and knows his purpose. Never does Sisyphus contemplate the hollowness of life. Always hope remains.”

  Not wanting to appear insular she took a moment before responding. “That’s silly. How could he be hopeful if it always falls down. Either Sisyphus is profoundly dumb or extremely irrational.”

  “Well… the thing is… ahh…” Despite having thought long and hard about Sisyphus’ tale on more than one occasion, Ember was at a loss for words. “Well… ah… you’re not looking at it right.”

  “How should I be looking at it then?” she asked with a wave of her left eyebrow. Maggie knew that Ember was off guard and wanted to strike while she had the chance.

  “Well… ah… You see, sometimes life just seems so absurd… I mean, there is no difference between our goals and that of Sisyphus’. All are… ahh… what’s the word… equally irrational and absurd. To call Sisyphus’ toils torture would be to call our lives torture… Therefore we must imagine Sisyphus happy… so our lives will be happy too… so we can make sense of the world.” Ember’s articulation came out so disjointed and her sister’s face appeared so unsatisfied that he was forced to admit, “The reasoning sounds a lot better in my head. I’m a little flustered right now.”

  Maggie took a break from kicking at the plastic wedge and stared at her brother until she knew he was uncomfortable. The silence seemed to make bare his words. The vacuum seemed to diminish the weight of his reasoning and the more she waited the more he squirmed. “It seems to me,” Maggie began already feeling that she won the intellectual argument, “that your belief is predicated on happiness requiring goals.”

  “Hey, I never said that I believed this stuff… I’m just saying what this one guy said.”

  “But you do believe what he said don’t you?”

  “Yes… I think,” Ember admitted after some time. He wasn’t used to being on the losing side of a discussion. He had many philosophical conversations with his sister before and usually it was he who had the upper hand.

  Maggie usually partook in such conversations only to see the inner workings of Ember’s brain, which is why she typically defended the opposite viewpoint, whereas Ember saw such conversations as an opportunity to explore the soundness of his argument. This was usually Ember’s way of resolving a genuinely powerful thought from a silly one—if Maggie laughed within the first few minutes it was usually a silly one.

  Ember felt a tremendous desire to rise up with such an intellectual force that his sister would have no choice but to recant her words and see things his way. Maybe it was Maggie’s previous kindness or the memory of his emotional Evaluation, but for some reason he decided to let Maggie have it her way. He would listen to her with an open mind.

  “You know, Ember, there are a lot of people in Erosa that are happy and very few of them have real goals. You don’t need a goal to be happy—”

  “But having a goal doesn’t preclude you from happiness,” Ember added, feeling the clarification was important.

  “No, but maybe it makes happiness harder to obtain. All I’m saying is that maybe you should try it…”

  “Ambitions are different than goals and curiosity is different than ambitions,” Ember retorted, feeling that the snappiness of his own words was enough to derail her.

  She paused for a moment. “Do you identify with Sisyphus?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think you’re like Sisyphus?”

  “Well… ahh…”

  “You do, don’t you! You just can’t help but be unhappy. You’re not happy unless you’re unhappy. You’re the only one in all of Erosa—”

  “Maggie, I’m not unhappy, I just feel incomplete. I don’t think I am like Sisyphus because I, like everyone else here, have no real life goals. I think what you meant to ask was whether or not I want to be like Sisyphus.”

  “Well do you?!”

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  Maggie laughed semi-condescendingly, “Yep, that’s my brother. The only person in all of Erosa who would be happier perpetually pushing a heavy boulder up a large hill.”

  Ember thought for a moment before asking, “Maggie, why does it bother you so much?”

  “Huh, what? Nothing bothers me, I’m the happy one.” She wasn’t sure if she liked where the conversation was heading.

  “I mean, why do you care so much about my happiness? Why does the thought of my sadness bother you? And why brin
g it up today? Of all days?” He was asking now with a greater sense of urgency, as if he was about to uncover something truly insightful. It started to rain.

  Maggie looked up at the sky and then at Ember to see whether or not they should return home. The look on his face suggested that they shouldn’t. “What do you mean? I care because you’re my brother?”

  “Come on Maggie, who are you trying to fool? Cut the sweet talk.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “Maggie…”

  “It’s the truth. I care because you are my brother and I love you! Is that so hard to believe?! Would you not feel the same for me?!” she proclaimed indignantly. Maggie was speaking from her heart and Ember could tell that she believed in what she was saying. His fire died down slightly upon this realization. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe… I believe…” he said slowly, “that you believe that is the reason.”

  “Well, Ember, tell me what you think the reason is?” The rain was coming down hard now.

  “I think you’re sad because you know that you don’t feel all that differently from me. You put on airs and pretend like you’re the happiest girl in all of Erosa… and everyone loves you for it. I think you feel sad because you feel like you have made all of your friends on false pretenses and I think I am a constant reminder of the lies you built up… and I think you’re depressed because I remind you of who you really are.”

  “Are you calling me a phony?”

  Ember didn’t want the conversation to degenerate into name-calling. “No, all I’m saying is that… well… the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… We are related, you know? Clearly there is some adventurous spirit in our blood. I feel it, Mom and Dad felt it, and so I assume you have it too. I just think that maybe you’re not being honest with yourself… that you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re something that you’re not.”

  The mention of their Mom and Dad instantly changed the tone of the conversation. She wiped away a tear from her eyes but it wasn’t clear for what reason. “How do you do it? How do you always bring me into your dramas.”