“Nonsense, it would be rude if you didn’t.”
So the two of them sat, washing the dirt and grime away from their wounds, carefully peeling off torn skin. The old woman came back with a roll of special tape and, after much insisting, proceeding to wrap their toes and heels in it. She gave them both worn socks and shoes to put on, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“But we have no money,” Maggie explained.
“Here in the Underground,” the old woman said with an understanding smile, as if explaining to a complete foreigner, “we take care of each other.” She smiled and waved to Ember and Maggie as they walked slowly out of her store in disbelief.
Ember and Maggie had a new feeling of confidence. The rubber soles of their shoes were a new experience to them. The patterns of pressure seemed all wrong. Walking became a strange but enjoyable task. Maggie found herself intentionally walking over the more jagged rocks, never tiring of the fact that she did not feel a thing.
“She was nice,” Maggie declared to Ember as they walked off into the distance.
“Ya, and we didn’t even get her name.” Maggie looked back at the woman’s store, which was now too far to see, as if the mere sight of it might give away her name.
After half an hour more of walking, Ember suggested that they rest in what appeared to be an abandoned shack, remarking that they had probably skipped a full sleep last night. Maggie assented to the plan and walked in behind him.
The shack was dark and small, and was cluttered with boxes, broken toys, loose springs, nuts and bolts. Maggie accidentally bumped into one of the larger boxes and was startled when a few toys crashed to the floor. Ember heard a faint wind-up music box playing from the back of the store and went to go explore it.
“Come here Maggie. Look,” Ember commanded, winding up the toy box as Maggie came over to inspect it. “It makes noise if you let it go.” The soft hollow twang of box’s chimes seemed to cut through the dark air, reverberating off the nearby walls.
“It’s beautiful,” Maggie remarked in awe.
“Do you like it, it’s my favorite” came another woman’s voice. Maggie jumped instantly, nearly a foot straight into the air. Ember gasped and faltered backwards, propping his hands up against some of the boxes to keep from falling over. “Please, please don’t be afraid,” the woman said desperately, to no avail for Maggie had begun screaming and Ember had fallen to the ground. “Please, I mean you no harm,” the woman said, turning a flashlight on herself.
Her face was pretty and youthful, adorned with a sharp but gentle nose, a sweet mouth with thick lips, and deep brown eyes. She was nearly Ember’s height, which is to say, for a woman, was quite tall. Ember and Maggie’s fear subsided—now that they had a face to attribute it to, the mystery was gone and the world didn’t seem so scary. Curiosity about the beam of light had largely replaced their horror. The woman shone the light on them, but as the beams swept across their faces, they both cried again in terror.
“It’s okay, it’s only a flashlight.” She handed the contraption to Maggie who observed it with considerable suspicion. Maggie, in turn, passed it onto to Ember, who wielded it liberally before passing it back to the woman. “Do you need a place to stay,” the woman asked.
Maggie nodded, and then upon realizing that the woman probably couldn’t see her face, said, “Yes.”
The woman pushed some boxes around and placed a large blanket on the cleared space. Maggie and Ember lied down on the floor, feeling pressured into doing so but nonetheless grateful to be at last lying horizontally. They were both far more tired than they realized, and yawned almost instantly upon touching the ground.
“Lift up your heads,” the woman commanded, slipping pillows under them as they complied. Maggie and Ember were both uncomfortable with her hospitality. The fusion of fear and comfort seemed strange, but they were too tired to protest any longer.
“My name’s Maggie, and this is my brother, Ember,” she said, with her eyes closed.
The woman put another, heavier blanket on top of them before giving them her own name, “I’m Luna.” Her voice was smooth and silky—sweetly melodic and agreeable. “Where are you two from?”
“We’re not from around here,” Maggie explained, automatically returning to her spiel, which seemed to have become a fixed action pattern at this point. “We’re from up-above. You know, where the sky and forest are and everything. We came here to save you guys.” Luna looked down on the tired bodies and turned off the flashlight. “You probably think we’re crazy.”
“I believe you.”
“You do!”
“Yes, of course.”
Maggie opened her eyes and struggled against her sleepiness to keep a clear mind. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” A few minutes of silence passed before Luna asked casually, “Can I sleep with you two?”
Maggie opened her eyes again, trying hard to make out Luna’s intentions. She had no reason to refuse her, other than the fact that it seemed unusual to share a bed with strangers. She did not want to be rude. It might, she thought, be part of her culture. Feeling in no position to turn her down, after all of her hospitality, Maggie finally acquiesced.
Luna walked around back and then crawled underneath the covers between them.
“Ember?” Maggie called out, to see if he was okay with the new arrangement.
“He’s asleep,” Luna explained matter-of-factly.
“Oh… Okay… Goodnight then,” Maggie said politely, still feeling uncomfortable but increasingly drowsy.
“Goodnight Maggie.”
Chapter 10: A Rendez-Vous at a Party
As with before, Ember awoke sore and bewildered. There was a sharp throbbing in both of his feet, and his knees seemed to be on fire. Even his face and hands felt raw and worn. As he sat up, his joints cracked, loudly protesting the previous day’s labor. Ember did a few seated stretches in an attempt to break their stubborn inflexibility, but was not successful. Through the as of yet unfamiliar yellow glow of the incandescent light bulbs, Ember saw his sister chatting with a woman he scarcely recognized from the night before.
Maggie and Luna were having a grand time—using emphatic language and effusive hand gestures to explain nothing in particular. When one talked, the other listened intently, and when neither talked, they laughed gleefully. In this way, their passionate chatter was broken at more or less even intervals of laughing, with the occasional guffaw to break the tedium. They possessed the type of jovial manner that could only be properly understood by one who had witnessed the nuanced progressions of their conversation from the very beginning.
Ember couldn’t help but feel like an intruder as he approached the pair. “Good morning,” he announced after they failed to notice him. He was still a bit hazy about yesterday’s details, but wanted to begin the day on a positive note—plus, he felt that, for some reason or another, his inquiries would create an even more intrusive presence.
“Good morning Ember!” Maggie said enthusiastically. “We’ve made a friend.”
Ember waved awkwardly at Luna, who was far too close to him to warrant a hand wave. “Hello,” he managed, his voice cracking mid-syllable.
“This is Luna,” Maggie said, feeling the need to re-introduce them.
Her hair was long and black, with purple highlights. Ember had never seen someone with highlights before, and was surprised how well they complemented her face. Though Luna was only about as tall as Ember, she had an intimidating stature—owing in no small part to her impeccable posture. She wore a long but tight black dress with laced shoulders. By far the most prominent feature about her, however, were her enormous breasts, which seemed to want to explode out of her dress. Though her breasts agreed well with her curvaceous figure, they gave her more of a nurturing and motherly appearance than an enticing and seductive one. This quality gave her a more mature air, despite the youthfulness of her face. Maggie, who was by all accounts fully developed and well endowed, appeared, by comparison, o
nly childishly feminine.
“I brought you food and drink,” Luna said, gracefully waving her open hand in the direction of the meal as though it were an elaborate feast.
Ember’s eyes widened. He looked at the meal greedily and then back at Maggie. “I already ate,” she said, “go ahead, it’s all yours.”
Ember fell to his knees and quickly devoured the bread and potatoes, stopping halfway to gulp down all his water in one slug. He looked at Luna with insatiable eyes, but when her shrug suggested that there was no more food, he toyed at his apple and carrots—slowly chewing them to make the flavor last longer.
“Luna says that they have lots of artificial biodomes here in the Underground—that’s what they call it,” Maggie explained, so excited that she couldn’t help but interject herself, “that are so big that it can fit thousands of trees and crops and stuff. That’s where all this food comes from.”
“Uhh… What’s a biodome?” Ember asked, chewing with his mouth open.
Maggie looked at Luna to see which one of them should answer the question. Luna’s face seemed to suggest that though she was perfectly willing to explain it to him, she would not derive any particular pleasure from it and that Maggie should explain should she find the act enjoyable. As such, Maggie decided to answer.
“It’s like a giant, clear enclosure with artificial sunlight… and conditions conducive to plant growth. Oh Ember, this place is huge!” Ember motioned to speak in-between mouthfuls of food, but could not manage to clear his throat enough to mutter any actual words. “No, you don’t understand Ember,” she said, incorrectly guessing what was on his mind, “this place is GIGANTIC! Hundreds, no thousands of times bigger than Erosa. Luna said that it is at least ten miles wide and at least fifteen miles long and it’s all underground!” Maggie looked at Ember for any signs of incredulity, and then back at Luna for a reassuring nod. “And at some points, the ground falls even deeper into the Earth.”
Ember was confused and perhaps a little annoyed about how much of an expert his sister had become. He was also a little mad at Luna, though he would never admit it, for explaining everything without him—he had hoped that he would unravel this new world’s mysteries alongside Maggie and could not help but feel as if Luna had stolen something from him. His meal, as light as it was, had, however, already infused him with a new sense of optimism so that all of these negative emotions seemed to slide right off.
“Did you tell her about Mom and Dad?”
“Sort of…”
“I was just telling your sister,” Luna said abruptly as if she needed to remind him of her existence, “that if you want someone here to find you, you first need to make your presence known. That means you got to go to places where everyone else goes.”
“There’s a huge party going on right now!” Maggie blurted out.
Ember shot his sister a judging glance, “Do you really think Mom and Dad will be hanging out there?”
“It’s not about whether or not our parents are there, it’s about whether or not there are other people there,” Maggie explained with the promptness of a person to whom this same explanation had just been offered. “The more people that see us, the faster the word will spread that there are two outsiders in weird looking white clothing. If Mom and Dad are here, they will know what it means and will come check it out.”
Ember nodded, content with the reasoning. “Also, it will be important to understand this culture if we are to survive in it.”
“You cannot understand the Underground without experiencing the raves,” Luna added to Ember’s point, delicately tucking a band of purple hair behind her ear.
“Raves?” Ember and Maggie said together.
“You’ll see,” she answered ominously.
“Oh Luna, you will come with us, won’t you?!”
“Of course,” she said with a happy nod.
Ember attempted to comb his fingers through his hair as he walked out of the shack with Luna and Maggie. He was pleased at the pace of the morning and was overcome with the promise of a productive day. Maggie, for her part, was just thrilled to have made a new friend and was excited about the prospect of making new ones.
Maggie and Ember asked Luna surprisingly few questions as they walked towards the rave, and those that they did think to ask had pathetically low potential for useful insight. Ember, having assumed that Maggie had already asked all the important questions, was only slightly excused. It hadn’t even occurred to them to inquire about Luna’s life and circumstances. It was as though they hadn’t realized that Luna was herself a child of the Underground—coming fully equipped with an infinitely greater knowledge of everything pertaining to anything Underground. Maggie and Ember were blissfully unaware of just how superficially they had scratched Luna’s reserve of information yet walked with the pride of people who had just done some good investigating. In Maggie and Ember’s defense, they had conceived of the rave as little more than a large Erosan party—which is to say, quiet and somewhat intimate—which is also to say, they were shockingly unprepared.
They were several blocks away, but already they could hear the music. “If you get lost,” Luna said, feeling some responsibility for the safety of the group, “just wait outside and we’ll find each other.”
“We’re not going to get lost,” Maggie said confidently, having no idea what she was talking about.
“These things can go on for quite a while, so don’t expect to stay until the very end,” Luna continued, ignoring Maggie’s comment.
“How long do they go on for?” Ember asked.
“It depends… anywhere from a handful of hours to a couple of days… there’s really no way to tell.”
“A couple of days?!” Ember said incredulously.
“What could they possibly talk about for so long?” Maggie asked, again having no idea what she was talking about.
Luna raised an inquisitive eyebrow. The music was now so loud that they could hardly hear each other. “Well, the party can take many directions depending on the circumstances… and the event is by no means homogenous.”
“Homogenous?”
“Ya, I mean some sections of the party may be dancing while another section might be doing something completely different… you sort of just need to migrate to the area you like the most… People do that… there’s a kind of current to these things… you’ll see.” Maggie and Ember could only hear every other word, but feigned understanding by nodding. “Just don’t be afraid... It can be a little scary at first, but you can get used to it.” The sound from the approaching rave had grown so loud that it had now drowned out all other noise, but Luna continued all the same. “Raves are a sort of massive catharsis for the Underground. It’s the peoples’ way of accepting their grim realties for all its flaws and misgivings. It’s our way of saying that we don’t care how miserable everything else is. It’s the one time that everybody just lets go, forgets about the rest of the world, and just has a great time.” Maggie and Ember stared ahead blanklessly, completely unaware that Luna was still speaking.
As they approached a large, open-roofed structure, a thick offensive stench filled the air. Pools of people loitered around the entrance, perhaps waiting for the crowd to lessen, while others haphazardly squeezed their way into the building. Had Maggie not been pulling Ember by the hand, and had Luna not been pulling Maggie by hers, the two siblings probably would have elected not to go in.
They squeezed through the hot sweaty bodies by the entrance doors—which were far too narrow for a party this size—and were instantly separated on the other side. Everything was different inside the rave—it was like a whole new world. Before either Maggie or Ember had time to contemplate just how wrong their expectations had been, they were swept up by the current of people and taken to other sides of the room.
Though Maggie and Ember were both initially overcome with great bewilderment, their subsequent emotions were very different. Ember was panicked and uncomfortably vulnerable. He clawed backwards
against the current of the crowd, frantically trying to reconvene with his sister. The memory of his sister’s hand being ripped out from his as they entered the scene convinced him of a greater danger than really existed and instilled him with an immense urgency. He shouted at the crowd in vain, futilely endeavoring to appeal to their sense of morality. He pushed, with all his might against the surge of the crowd, erroneously believing that the quickest route to his sister was also the toughest.
Maggie, who was promptly hoisted up atop the crowd, was more confused than anything. She wasn’t sure whether or not she should feel violated by the plethora of hands grabbing at her body, passing her along as though she were nothing more than a pillow. Though her heart was beating fast, she felt surprisingly serene and hardly noticed the blaring music. Of course she initially screamed and struggled to get down, but after a few minutes of crowd surfing, was overcome with a strange feeling of helpless ecstasy. She just stared acceptingly up at the cavernous void ceiling of the Underground as she move from one end of the room to the other—only barely noticing the blur of fingers that painted the bottom of her view.
The music could be felt through the air—each bass note literally compressing the air and radiating pressure waves. Sound had become as much a tactile experience as an audio one—as much palpitations against the skin as beats within the ears. Just as the electric music seemed to lower in volume, it would rise up again in a terrible crescendo—shaking the room with a wicked vengeance that reverberated throughout the whole body. So loud was the music that it seemed to transcend the offensive and went straight to the sublime. It had it’s own dimensions—its own pulse and depth that was impossible to ignore.
Identity is the first thing to go. When you get enough people in a confined enough space you reach a critical density and create a singularity—the only defining quality of which is the mass, or number of people, held inside of it. Names, faces, individual emotions and aspirations all become meaningless. Beyond the event horizon, whose boundaries are vaguely marked by the walls of the building, the party seems to be consumed by the capricious will of an amorphous super-organism that is perpetually in the midst of some slow peristaltic reflex. To an outsider looking in, time seems to be moving more slowly. For an insider, however, the steady rotation of the swarms of people is all too swift and inexorable. Large, critically dense parties are, in this way, a great paradox. They are also very dynamic creatures—constantly vacillating between accreting mass and losing it—whose life only ends with either a gradual evaporation or giant explosion.
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