Revolution in the Underground

by Michaels, S. J.

  “Sir? Excuse me sir?” Ember grabbed the shoulder of another man passing by and was quickly jabbed in the face. Ember fell down to the ground, not so much by force as by shock. He still wore a startled expression when Maggie came to help him up.

  “You okay?”

  “Ya, I’m fine,” he said, brushing off some dirt.

  “Excuse me Ma’am?” Ember asked once again grabbing hold by the shoulder. The woman turned around and sharply slapped him in the face. Ember stumbled backward and brought his hand to the side of his face to feel the burn as she walked away.

  “Ok, new plan,” he said to Maggie, more than a little embarrassed. “We continue walking until we get to the residential areas at which point we will resume our mission and, if necessary, ask for a place to rest. In the meantime, we’ll study our surroundings and observe their culture. We’ll follow a straight path that way it will be easy to come back to the start, just in case.”

  “Just in case, what?”

  “You know… just in case… At least we know that somewhere around this area, there is an exit… even if it’s unreachable, it’s a good starting point. Plus, if we don’t find a domicile then we can always come back and sleep among the trash. We’ll take things slowly at first and maybe in a few days when we gain some confidence, we can start taking side streets. For now, however, no diversions.”

  “Wait, you can’t seriously expect to stay down here for a few days!” she said with a worried expression as if this was the first moment the idea came to her mind.

  “I expect,” Ember said slowly, trying to take on the air of calculated rationality, “that we might be down here for more than just a few days… We’ll have to learn to act and think like the locals. We’ll have to earn their trust before we can help them. We can go a few days without food, but we can’t survive very long without water. If we cannot procure these resources tonight, then we’ll have to address the issue first thing tomorrow.” As Ember’s enthusiasm grew, Maggie’s seemed to wane—as if the product of their individual excitements was a constant so that when one went up, the other necessarily went down by a proportionate factor.

  “But… I don’t want to stay down here, Ember. I want to go home.”

  Ember was too excited to begin their new adventure to truly comprehend Maggie’s emotion, but knew that he had to say something. He moved close to Maggie and put a hand on her shoulder. He flinched slightly, half expecting to be slapped again, before saying, “Maggie, I know this place looks and feels different than Erosa… and it is… But, I have a feeling that things aren’t as different as they appear. Consider, for example, that we are all members of the same species. Sure they dress differently, but they have the same appendages and structures in the same proportions. They are people too, and they can be understood… it just takes time.”

  “And we speak the same language,” she offered as further examples of their commonalities.

  “And we speak the same language!” he repeated as if he had already taken this thought to its conclusion. “Think about what that means. The people of Erosa and the people of this massive underground city are inextricably linked by some common past. These people hold clues to the past and we,” he said looking at Maggie’s necklace, “hold the key to their future.” Ember looked at Maggie intently to see if his words were making any headway. They were. “Who knows, we might discover that the Council back home knew about this place the whole time! We need to find out why they were keeping it a secret! Or why no one from here came to find us!”

  Maggie’s eyes widened as if divined by another great epiphany. A tear strolled down her cheek, but this time it was accompanied with an elated smile. “Oh Ember! Maybe Mom and Dad are down here!”

  Ember’s heart jumped. His eyes widened too, though no water pooled in his. He had not yet considered this possibility and was grateful to Maggie for bringing it to his attention. “Maybe! Maybe…”

  Maggie and Ember felt as though this singular prospect was enough to sustain their sprits for years. Suddenly, spending a prolonged period in the Underground didn’t seem all that bad. And so, they began walking forward with a newfound gusto—practically skipping along the way.

  The first two hours seemed to breeze by. Both of them were so consumed by the thought of casually running into their parents that they were hardly aware of the hoards of people that they passed by without studying. The compacted dirt path was far less forgiving than the forest floor to which they were accustomed—unlike the forest floor, the dirt path did not sink under the weight of their steps and provided no cushion. By far the more serious concern, however, was the sharp rocks and hardened dirt clumps that scratched and cut through their calloused heels. At this time, however, neither Maggie nor Ember felt any pain.

  It wasn’t until they got to a fork in the road that they resumed talking. They slowed to a stop as they approached the bifurcation. “I think we should take the right one… It more closely approximates the straight path,” Ember explained.

  “Okay,” Maggie assented, not having any particular reason to disagree. “Hey Ember? I was thinking. You were only eight years old when Mom and Dad disappeared, right? And I was only five. And that was about twelve years ago, right?”

  “Ya,” he said, walking towards the right-most junction, “what’s your point?”

  “I was just thinking… We were so much younger then, and it was so long ago… We probably look a lot different now… and they probably look a lot different now. I don’t think they would be able to recognize us if they saw us…. and… I don’t think I would be able to recognize them.”

  Ember pondered her point briefly. “I could,” he said confidently.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think I can… Perhaps,” he suggested, “we won’t have to rely on our sight alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have all of our senses and our sub-consciousnesses… If the moment comes, I’m sure you will be able to detect it.”

  “It’s been a long time, Ember. I don’t even remember what they look like!” Maggie felt ashamed. She was embarrassed that she did not remember more of her parents. She felt as though she should be rightfully blamed for her lack of memory—as if it were a byproduct of lack of care.

  Ember saw her embarrassment and resolved to comfort her, “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Three years back then was a lot of time. Three years at that time is the difference of major critical developments. It is only natural that I would remember more than you. If it makes you feel any better, if everything works out like I hope it does, we won’t have to find each other—someone else will do it for us.” He looked at Maggie, waiting for her to ask for clarification.

  “How so?” she complied.

  “Word of mouth… You know how it is… rumors spread faster than foot. And, I have a feeling that you are much better suited for that task than I am.” Ember winked at her.

  Maggie laughed, “What’s that?! You never do that?”

  “Do what? Wink?”

  “Ya, is that a new thing? You think that just because we’re in a new place now that you can do those types of things?” she jested playfully. Deep down, Ember’s comments did make her feel better. He smiled and lightheartedly shot her several awkwardly forced and successive winks.

  Motivated by the realization that communication would be key to finding their parents, Maggie spent the next two hours walking up to strangers at random intervals and telling them her story. Most people ignored her completely, some people listened long enough to call her crazy or insult her clothing, and others stopped to flirt with her. Paradoxically, the more she seemed to get rejected and insulted, the more motivated she got. Verbal abuse, that just a few hours prior seemed to cut deep, now seemed to bounce right off of her. She was proud of how quickly she was acclimating to the new culture and found inspiration in the prospect that she was laying the seeds for rumors. She found comfort in the fact that the fruits of her labor would remain invisible for at l
east a few days. It allowed her to remain unduly optimistic.

  Strangely, it was the compliments and flirtations that made her most uncomfortable. Maggie was exceptionally pretty in Erosa, but compared to the dirty women in the Underground—with their oily hair and dirty yet sickly pale skin—she stood out even more. The men here were far more aggressive than in Erosa, and she found it difficult to steer their conversations away from a coquettish direction. It was because her pursuers had built her up so much, that she felt so bad when they walked away confused and annoyed. There was something about falling from an object of affection to one of ridicule that was far worse than never being obsessed over in the first place. If there was one silver lining, it was the fact that it made the other rejections and insults more tolerable.

  Ember for his own part, was mostly silent, although he did stop to talk to a few people. He mostly stood by the sidelines and watched his sister—appreciating her developing repertoire of lines and studying the response of her prey. He had originally justified his passivity by telling himself that he should stand by just in case one of the men got too aggressive, but this concern quickly proved to be unwarranted as Maggie was more than capable of handling her own.

  Slowly, Maggie’s stories grew less and less fervent and less and less believable, and after another hour of trying with diminished passion, she gave up altogether. She spent the next two hours joining Ember in reverie—meandering through what he thought was the straightest path, in silence. They stared hypnotically at the never-ending storefronts and shacks. In fact, everything in the Underground seemed never-ending: the stores, the people, the dirt road, and even the dark cavernous sky—which they both stopped to look at from time to time. They both observed their new world with amazement—but even amazement fades after a few hours.

  Presently Maggie looked down at her feet and was shocked to see them covered in blood. Their feet were so callous and their nerve endings so desensitized from years and years of walking around Erosa bare-foot, that they didn’t even notice the gravelly rocks ripping into their feet. Maggie stopped to complain about it. “Ember, my feet!”

  Ember looked down at her scratched toes and bloody heel and then down at his, which were in even worse condition. “How’d that happen?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “I don’t know Ember!” she said angrily, looking for an excuse to complain. “I don’t know why any of this happened. This is all of your fault, you know?! I told you that we should’ve turned back. I told you that we should’ve left a note. Maybe you didn’t like it there, Ember, but I did. Life was good and simple. We had food, we had a place to sleep, and we had fun—at least I did. It was a carefree existence and you just had to go and ruin it for the both of us, didn’t you!”

  “Come on, that’s not fair,” he said defensively.

  “Oh it isn’t? Do you remember how I pleaded with you to go back? Do you remember how I laid down plainly in your own rational language why we should tell someone where we were going?! Do you remember that?”

  “Sure I do, but…”

  “But, nothing… This is entirely your fault… If you had just been a little bit more patient, none of this would’ve happened. Now we are here, in the middle of an unknown place, amongst potentially hostile people with unknown intentions, without food or water, and no place to sleep. Tell me how this is possibly good.”

  “I know,” he said calmly, hoping that pity might take the place of her anger, “I am sorry. We are both in this together… there is nothing we can do about that now. We just have to make the best of it. I know it all seems strange now, but I think soon it will all start to make sense.”

  “Did you ever think about the people back home that care about you? What will Jade do when she finds out that I’m gone. She’ll think I am dead.”

  “Onyx will see the sign I left for him.”

  “Onyx? That ignoramus? The one who can’t even get his onomatopoeias right? How do you expect him to help us out?! He can hardly dress himself in the morning.” This was completely out of Maggie’s character. She almost never resorted to circumstantial attacks and the fact that she did indicated to Ember that she was losing her sense of identity.

  “I have an idea,” he suggested, hoping to break her verbal assault, “let’s go inside a store.”

  Maggie looked at Ember to see if he was serious. “But we have no money… Nor anything to barter.”

  His ploy had worked, she had calmed down. “It’s okay… We can just go inside. There’s nothing wrong with just looking. If we’re going to be here for a while, we might as well check places out. It will be good for our spirits.”

  “Okay” she said with a nod, fighting back tears. “Maybe we can look at some of those twilled cotton pants that every body here seems so found of,” she said in reference to jeans.

  “How’s this place look,” he said, pointing at a small, well-lit store with a few fancier articles of clothing displayed in the glass window.

  “Okay,” she said, seemingly unable to say anything else at this point. She was surprised that she was able to look at the storefront without having to peer through scores of heads. She noticed that for the first time, the street was mostly empty, though she did not care to note this to her brother.

  When they went into the store they were greeted by a kindly old woman and a blast of cold air—both of which surprised them. “Welcome!”

  “Hello, we’re just looking around,” Ember explained.

  “No problem! Let me know if there is anything I can do for you,” the old woman said, returning her eyes to her knitting.

  Maggie walked over to a messy heap of jeans and rubbed the denim fabric between her fingers. Upon observing that the jeans were moist and evidently soiled, she gagged a little.

  “The clean piles over there sweetie,” the old woman explained, “but if you should want something from that pile, I’d be happy to wash it for you.”

  “I see, thank you,” Maggie said, moving instead to examine the colored blouses and dresses nearby, which were also clearly pre-used and dirty, though not soiled like the pile of jeans. Ember inspected a pile of mono-color t-shirts of the bright red, sharp violet, and neon green varieties. These were colors and fashions that did not exist in Erosa, and he beheld them with a noticeable sense of awe.

  “Do you like those?” the woman asked Ember.

  “Yes, very much, but we’re only looking today.”

  “So, are you two dressed up for a party?” the woman said, evidently trying to strike up small talk.

  “No,” Maggie said with a smile.

  “It’s okay, you can tell me… I might be old, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what young people do these days.” She smiled and winked at Maggie. Maggie looked at Ember in hopes that he would find it interesting that the locals also winked, but he was too busy examining the shirts. The woman’s smile was so disarming that Maggie couldn’t help but be taken in by it.

  “I have a question, if you don’t mind me asking” Maggie said.

  “Anything. Ask away.”

  “How exactly,” Maggie began, doing her best to give the face of someone who was embarrassed for not knowing something obvious, “do these lights work? Are they like little fires?”

  The old woman was confused, but didn’t want to make Maggie feel ashamed for asking. “These lights?” she pointed, asking for clarification. Maggie nodded. “Umm… Electricity… There is a current that passes through a coil with a resistance, when it heats up it gives off light.”

  “E-leeecctt-ric-ittty,” Maggie said slowly with some appreciation. “And when does it go out?”

  “Go out, dear? You don’t mean when I turn it off do you?” the old woman demonstrated by flipping the switch off and then back on again.

  “Yes! How do you do that,” Maggie squealed with excitement.

  “You just flip this switch,” the old woman said, demonstrating again.

  “Can I try?”

  “I don’t see why not,” the old
woman said confused but happy to see Maggie so excited.

  Maggie flipped the switch up and down in rapid succession, laughing with excitement. Ember turned around to see what all the fun was about. “And when do the lights outside go off?”

  “The lights outside?” the old woman said, no longer hiding her perplexity.

  “Yes. Out there,” Maggie said, pointing out of the store.

  “Those never go off,” she said, looking at Maggie to see if anything would click.

  “So, how do people know when to go to sleep?”

  “The time, of course.”

  “And what time is it now.”

  “Why, it’s almost eleven o’clock… I best be closing up soon… It’s well past my bed time. You two better get headed off home as well… It gets a little dangerous around these parts at this time.”

  “I see,” Ember said from the back of the store, “thanks for everything.”

  As Maggie and Ember made their way to the front of the store, the old woman asked curiously, “You’re not from around here are you?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but Ember put his hand on her shoulder, and spoke instead. “We don’t get out much,” he said with a laugh.

  “What happened to your feet!” the old woman said suddenly, looking at the bloody trail on her floor.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry about all of that,” Maggie said, her cheeks blushing with embarrassment.

  “Hold on one moment,” the old woman said, running as quickly as old ladies can run, to a place behind the counter. Maggie and Ember looked at each other helplessly. Ember shrugged his shoulders. “Here you are,” she said, bringing a bucket of soapy water and two sponges. “Please, clean your feet.”

  “We couldn’t,” Maggie politely declined.