Beyond: Book Four of the State Series

by M. J. Kaestli

  Hope sighed.

  “I’m serious.”

  She shook her head. “Weston, I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk like this. I’m sure the State has its reasons for segregating departments.”

  “Oh, I think they have reasons alright, and it’s probably rather shady at that.”

  Hope nearly gasped and slapped his arm. He looked back at her questioningly and she raised her eyebrows at him in response. He shrugged, and she looked around the room as though he could read her mind and understand what she couldn’t say.

  “If something upset you, Hope, you best come out with it.”

  She kept her mouth sealed and shook her head.

  “What? It’s just you and me here.”

  Hope kept her eyes and her voice down. “It’s never just us in a room. Some things are better left unsaid.”

  “What? The State? We are not monitored anymore.”

  She looked at him, her confusion written all over her face.

  He pressed on. “There is no security system in the mountain.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Hope, remember whose job it is to monitor video footage and watch the cameras?” Before she could answer, he answered with another question. “How many Security personnel have you seen inside the mountain?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know that for certain, Weston. There is still a military presence; they could carry out the monitoring.”

  Weston gave a half laugh. “No chance. There are not enough of them and they seem way too busy to handle the trivial matter of watching the civilians to ensure compliance.”

  “There could be more than what we have seen living here. It is better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Hope, they built this place long before the State took power. It was not built for civilians to occupy. They built it for military personnel and politicians. The people who should be inside the mountain are not the same group of people who would need to be monitored.”

  “That doesn’t mean they didn’t install monitoring equipment later. This is where all the surviving citizens lived until they could build the dome. Saying there is no surveillance equipment because civilians weren’t originally meant to dwell here would be the same as assuming there is no underground walkway or military level under the dome because when it was built, it was a normal American city. Upgrades are readily available when the government is motivated to pool their resources.”

  Weston shrugged. “Well, you do have a point, but there is no video surveillance or microphone equipment setup anywhere in this room.”

  Hope looked at him for a moment and shook her head. “You have no way of knowing that.”

  “Then show me where it is.” Weston gestured to the room.

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never looked for it.”

  “Really? I have. I have checked the light fixtures and the lamps. I have checked every corner of this room, actually. I have yet to find anything which could monitor us.”

  Hope’s mind couldn’t accept this concept. Monitoring civilians was something so ingrained in their society she could hardly comprehend the State would allow such a crucial area to be left unsupervised.

  “Hope, one more time. Who monitors civilians of the State?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Who do you think has a higher clearance to classified information? Us, or members of Security?”

  It suddenly clicked in her mind and she felt so foolish for not working it out on her own. “If we can’t share information with the rest of the people in the mountain, it means no one can observe us either.”

  “Exactly. They can’t allow anyone else to know what we know.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe I never thought of it.”

  “You never thought of it because they don’t want us to. The moment they bring us here, we are completely overworked and threatened. That doesn’t leave us much time to sit and ponder the inner workings of the mountain. We have a lot of material to not only learn, but to become an expert in. Sometimes I question if we are working against a deadline or if we are just being overworked for the sake of keeping us too busy to be anything but compliant.”

  “All they had to do was send us here. Since we are so used to being monitored and too busy to look around—”

  “Everyone assumes we are still being monitored.” He gestured around the room. “We are free to talk about whatever we damn well please inside this room. We don’t have to worry about being recorded or monitored anywhere else in this mountain either; they have certainly kept us so isolated that we could not conspire as a group. We wouldn’t want anyone to overhear us having a conversation such as this because no one is our friend. The only way they can discover an inappropriate conversation is if someone overheard us.”

  Hope thought for a moment before responding. “I don’t think we can trust people on our project either.”

  “Of course we can’t. They have made us all so afraid of getting thrown out of here to become breeders. I’m sure they will routinely squeeze the lowest hanging fruit. Bring the bottom-rung group in for questioning, who will gladly pass along negative information about their colleagues to save themselves. It’s a totally different method of ensuring compliance, but their objectives are clearly the same.”

  “What should we do?”

  Weston shrugged. “We keep to ourselves as much as possible and we keep working. I’m not sure what is going on here, but I get the feeling the truth is far from what they tell us. I don’t know why we were brought here, but I know I like it better here than living inside the dome. Back there, I was bored out of my mind all the time. At least here it’s interesting and I have a companion who is my intellectual equal. I can’t fathom going back to playing board games in the common rooms with a bunch of Neanderthals.”

  Hope shook her head as she processed the information. “I think you are right. I would rather be here than there. They say after we finish this module, we get to go outside, and not just to take a ride. We get to take our time and walk around.”

  “My point exactly. I mean, most people never step outside of the dome in their lifetime.” Weston gave a half laugh. “It sounds like we will go out regularly. I’m certain whatever we build will need extensive testing and they want us to do that away from the mountain.”

  “Exactly. Our lives are far more interesting here, regardless of why they brought us. Plus, the food is way better and I like the freedom of our schedule.” She looked away for a moment. “Okay, freedom may not be the right word as we have no free time and all we do is work.”

  “Flexibility.”

  “Yes, thank you. Flexibility.”

  “And besides, is there anything you’d rather be doing?” He shrugged. “I mean, sure they put a lot of pressure on us, but our work is exciting. Can you imagine how boring it would be if we were instructors or something?”

  “Don’t say that. We could very well end up instructors inside this mountain to the next group of kids that come in. Once our project wraps, I doubt they will move us to another one. If we can’t collaborate with other teams, a second project would make us privy to too much confidential information.”

  “Well, let’s try to make this take as long as it can.” He shrugged. “Which is exactly what they are trying to avoid. We just figured out what they are concealing. Work less, have an awesome life for longer. That’s why they keep threatening us with flunking out and becoming breeders, to make sure we don’t do exactly that. But if we stall the project, we might take long enough to get us past the prime breeding age—ensuring we are too old for a mass of kids. We could only have 2 or some other normal amount.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s the problem with us and why they don’t want us to talk to anyone. Each generation produced from breeding families is smarter than the last. They have to control us for as long as they can because we are the most intelligent people who have ever existed.” Hope stood and stretched, reaching her hand towards Weston.
“I’m serious about needing some breakfast.”

  Weston grabbed onto her hand and stood up, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Okay, boss.”

  Chapter 8

  6 years later

  “I’m a little nervous today.” Weston fidgeted with his spoon, clicking it rapidly on the side of his bowl. “Are you nervous?”

  “We’ve done this before.” Hope reached over and steadied his hand. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t our adjustment last time.” Weston sighed and slid his mug of tea between his hands on the table. “We’ve gone out to test the device, but it wasn’t our modifications we were testing. We are responsible if this is a flop.”

  “Or they would nominate us for the Nobel Peace Prize if society still celebrated scientific breakthroughs instead of keeping the information concealed and us isolated from the rest of society.”

  Weston froze, and he stared at Hope. “That was rather cold. Sexy, but cold. I mean, I like a bit of attitude—”

  She smacked his hand before he could complete his potentially incriminating sentence.

  “You’re cranky.”

  “I know. Sorry, hormones.”

  “Hormones?”

  Her eyes squinted slightly and her head cocked to the side. “Yeah, I had my shot at my check up yesterday.”

  He looked confused until it clicked. “Yes, of course. I never think about it.”

  “Because you’re not the one who gets it every three months and gets cranky and irritable for the next few days.”

  “I’ve never noticed you get cranky after your medical check-ups.”

  Hope huffed. “I guess that means I’m cranky all the time.”

  “I have said something wrong. I am uncertain what it was, but I’m terribly sorry.”

  Hope shook her head. “Forget it.” She took a few bites of her oatmeal. “Today will be fine. Stop worrying about it.”

  “I know that no one has been eliminated from our group and we have been here for a long time,” he cupped his hands around his mouth and lowered his voice in nearly a mutter. “And we may have ulterior motives to make this project take as long as possible, but what if we mess up and are the first to wind up in a breeding center? You are nearly twenty; ideal age for reproduction.”

  So much of her wanted to roll her eyes, but she knew her neurotic partner just needed a little reassurance. “We will not get kicked out. It was an idle threat. If our modifications are not a success, then everyone goes back to the drawing board.” It was her turn to cup her hands over her mouth and speak cautiously. “Besides. It’s not like we have done anything to deliberately sabotage this project. We just aren’t working to our full potential, and I don’t think we are the only ones in the group either. We are getting close—too close. With our modifications, this might work and we might all be at the breeding center in a year, maybe less.”

  Weston looked around to assess the distance between them and the others in the cafeteria before he leaned in closer.

  “Yeah, they can’t kick us out when we have been working blind this entire time.”

  Hope smiled softly. “I know. You’ve said it a hundred times.”

  “Well, how about a hundred and one. Why won’t they tell us if this transport device is using teleportation or a wormhole?”

  “Because they don’t have to. That’s why. They have given us the specs and measurements and we know what kind of power source we need to create.”

  “But it’s the fact they won’t tell us.”

  “I know.” She waved him off. “Their philosophy of keeping us focused on only our task at hand—”

  “Is crap.” He looked around for a second and lowered his voice. “They won’t tell us where the new colony world is located, and they won’t even tell us how the device we are working on will transport matter between here and there. Do we even know colonization is real? Or are we building this for something else?”

  Hope looked around the room to see if anyone had taken notice of his off-color remarks. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

  Weston looked around. “I don’t know either, but that doesn’t make it alright. Just because we can’t think of a malicious use for the power source doesn’t mean we aren’t still pawns in some game we don’t understand. I mean, I’m sorry, but this whole segregation of departments is crap. It isn’t to keep us focused, it’s to keep us from knowing what is really going on. I don’t even know if I can buy into this colonization bit. Could they be telling us we are colonizing to get us to work harder when we are really building a weapon?”

  Hope shook her head and whispered. “There is no one to build a weapon against. There is just us.”

  “How do we know that? What if there are other domes and other survivors and the State needs to neutralize them?”

  “Weston, you sound crazy now. I’m not denying that there could have been other survivors around the globe, and maybe we haven’t been taught about them because we aren’t in communication with them. Or, with how limited the population is we have no reason to communicate with them. I can’t believe for a second that there could be a threat when there hasn’t been enough time lapsed since the nuclear war—”

  “But that’s just my point,” Weston interjected. “We don’t know how long the State has been in power. We don’t know how long we have been living under the dome. We don’t know if the entire world was as damaged as we were or if there are areas unaffected. I mean, this all started on our continent, but they have never told us about the other continents. What if they have been just fine and now have a huge military and want to expand onto our land mass?”

  The crazier Weston’s theories got, the less concerned she was about being overheard. She loved the guy; he was her entire world, but sometimes he was a little nuts.

  “Do you remember that North America contained millions of people? We have one city. One. And I don’t even think it was a huge city before it got re-purposed, making it smaller. Our population has to be under fifty thousand. All we have is one city and one mountain. I’m pretty sure that if there is another group of survivors, they would have plenty of space to build whatever they wanted with no need of ours.” Hope took her last bite of oatmeal and pushed her bowl away. “You ready?”

  He nodded, and they got up from the table. “We have a little time to kill before we have to go.”

  “Let’s just go back to our quarters for a bit.”

  The moment they arrived back in their room he began again. “I think you put far too much faith in the State; I think everyone does. There is something about this project that doesn’t add up. There are reasons they move us out here other than to avoid possible contamination. They separate us and keep us from speaking to our peers for a reason.”

  “Well, I don’t agree with you, but I will not argue with you either. I think they have created a system based on trial and error. I’m sure the scientific community used to communicate more, but they found this system more efficient. I mean, one of their biggest priorities is efficiency: electrical, agricultural, educational. Their mission is to eradicate waste since they see waste and excess as reasons for the destruction of the previous civilization.”

  “I know you buy into it, Hope, and I hope I am wrong. I hope we are building a device which will open a new world to us so humanity can take its next step forward. I want it to be true, I just don’t buy it.”

  “I know,” she said, “but can we do a little revision and go over our calculations again before we head out?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m rambling because I’m nervous about today.”

  She smiled. “I know.” She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and opened their file on her tablet.

  ***

  Weston helped Hope secure her helmet. They did a quick radio check with each other and their escorts. The four of them then left the mountain and packed into the vehicle. Field testing was conducted in a remote location two hours east of the mountain. From what their
military escorts had shared, also two hours southeast from the dome. It seemed like such a waste to drive so far away from the mountain built to withstand a nuclear holocaust—which it had. Protocol is in place for a reason, is what they were always told. They would drive for almost two hours and spend about one hour testing their device.

  As their trip out had become fairly routine, they sat in silence and tried to relax. She wished she could read on her tablet or do something useful with the time, but the suit made it awkward to sit in a vehicle, let alone to read through the mask. Their job was to be the hands, the physical test monitor. They would set up the device and the equipment to collect the data and broadcast, then their job was basically to switch the device on. Their colleagues were standing by to read and interpret the data transmitted.