by Joel Arnold
Yet he hadn’t. Clay had not seen his father in five years.
Sometimes, when the oxygen was low, Clay imagined his father down there next to him, watching him work. Was it possible he was still alive? Could he have survived all these years in the tunnels? Did he make it out in the year and a half that Clay had been down here?
He remembered watching his father being hauled into the tunnel’s entrance on a mining cart, arms and legs manacled. His father looked up at him and smiled just before the entrance of the tunnel swallowed him in one pitch-black gulp.
Maybe that was the worst — the fact that he remembered the surface. Remembered feeling the fresh air on his skin, the sun like a kiss on his face. Fresh water, the sound it made lapping at the shores of old crushed rock and bone.
Best not to think too much. Best not to let fading memories instill too much hope.
Some of the men sang to keep from thinking too much. But Clay didn’t believe in that. To him, their voices sounded pitiful and lonely ricocheting through the tunnels, and whenever he tried to sing, his voice returning to him unheeded in diminishing echoes, it reminded him of how much of his life had been wasted in the mines.
No. It was best to concentrate on the swing of the pick, the connection of metal to bone. Keep the senses tuned to the rhythm, the *chink* an accent to every fourth beat of the heart. Even though it made a crude clock, a cruel reminder of the glacial passage of time below the surface — at least it denoted progress. Momentum. At least each strike at a tunnel wall was a strike toward freedom.
Clay struck.
Two cubic meters of compacted bone and dirt loosened and tumbled around his work boots. He held his breath a moment, listening for signs of instability, the telltale rumblings of a potential cave-in. But the debris settled around his ankles and the tunnel’s walls held tight. He leaned over, kicking apart the remnants of a not-too-distant past. There was a femur. A jaw-bone. Half of a skull. A set of ribs.
Amidst the rubble, something winked at him in the weak cone of his helmet’s light. He reached down, but stopped short. It was a copper penny. He looked behind him into the tunnel’s dark throat. He waited, straining to listen above the sound of his own breathing.
You can never be too careful. That’s what his grandmother always told him. They’re always watching, Clay. Always listening. And she was right. How else could they know where to find you, to dole out their pitiful ration of food, have it delivered to within ten feet of where you toiled? Their little rusty-can robots on squeaky wheels, the food tray balanced on top of their short squat bodies, and if the food spills on its way to you, that’s your own tough luck. Another good reason not to dig at too sharp of an angle. If the damn things have to find you on a steep upsweep, half your food’s going to be soaking into the ground, soaking into the upturned bony mouths of the hundreds of skulls that lined the tunnel floors.
He squatted over the penny, pretending to dig at a phantom stone in his boot, then quickly slid the penny between the boot’s hard leather, and his own callused skin. He stood.
You can never be too careful.
He filled his cart with the bony detritus hewn from the tunnel. Pressed a button on the cart that signaled another worker, another Player-of-the-Game, to bring an emptied cart and haul the full one away.
There’s always someone lower than you, he thought. Always someone worth less no matter how worthless you are.
He heard steps coming toward him, the dull crunch of hard boot rubber on old bone. He didn’t turn around to look. What if it was one of them, one of the enforcers sent to terminate his play? Had they seen him take the penny?
The light from another helmet threw Clay’s shadow flat against the tunnel wall. If he had been caught, if it was time to leave the game, he didn’t want to see it coming.
He felt a presence behind him, waiting. Clay stared straight ahead. Lifted his dull pick and swung at his own shadow. It struck weakly against solid bone.
Get it over with, he thought, the back of his neck hot in the glare of the other light. But there was only the receding squeak of the cart’s wheels as it was hauled away.
His shoulders sagged. The smell of his own sweat, the feel of heat prickling his face, overwhelmed him. He wanted to drop to the ground and sleep until the game was over. Sleep until the sun engulfed the planet. The sleep of eternity. He often envied the previous owners of the bones he picked through.
But he heard his grandmother’s voice again. The last words she said to him before he was swallowed up in the tunnel’s maw.
“We’re not quitters, Clay. Don’t you ever give up.”
He rolled his shoulders back. Let the tears flow down his dirt caked cheeks. He took a deep breath, the dust-filled oxygen like glass shards in his lungs. He swung his arm, the pick bouncing impotently off the mass of bone in front of him. But he forced himself to keep swinging.
“Did you hear it? Eddie made it out.”
Rumors.
“Hey, did you know — Frank broke through.”
The miners thrived on them.
“They’re sending people down from above to show us the way out. They’re going to help us. They’re actually going to help us out of this goddamn mess!”
Rumors of the sunlight above, of how far they had come, of how close they were to the surface. The rumors gave them hope. Yet the rumors could kill. There were times they stirred a man’s heart past the point of acceptance, shook it up until he couldn’t take it any more, and he had to get to the surface right the fuck now. He’d dig like a madman, burrowing up through the dirt at a dangerous angle, not paying attention to the intricacies, the textures of the earth. More often than not he’d become trapped. The earth, the bones, would cave in around him, crushing him, jamming his fingernails, his teeth, his eyes full of countless generations of the dead.
Clay ignored the rumors as best he could. What good were they? If he was near the surface, he’d find out soon enough, rumor or not. Best not to let glimmers of false hope lead to pain and agony further down the line.
He believed that the only way out was to work methodically. Dig slowly, carefully, consistently. Eventually, his pick would break through the surface and the fresh air would fill his lungs, the sun fill his heart.
“I know your father.”
The voice arrived at Clay’s ear like one of the many insects that scurried about down here. Clay continued to face the wall of bone and dirt, his heart quickening.
The stranger was only inches away, his breath painful in Clay’s ear. “He made it out. I saw him on the outside.”
Clay struck his pick hard in the conglomerate before him, hard enough to make his hands go numb and his wrists scream with pain. He let go of the pick and stepped back, the metal tip deeply embedded, the wooden handle vibrating with the force of the blow. He wiped the sweat from his face, tried to keep his breathing under control.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice quiet and hoarse from disuse. He knew they sent spies down here to gather information and tempt the miners to lose their cool. “How do you know who I am?”
“He sent me down to find you.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“No. It’s true. He made it out.”
“You didn’t answer my question. How do you know who I am?”
The man took a step back, looking Clay up and down. “You think I wanted to come back down here? You think I’m enjoying this?”
“You’re not a miner?”
“Don’t you get it? He made it out. He won.”
Clay studied the man. A light tan, a lack of calluses. The dirt on his face was only surface dirt, not deeply ingrained in the wrinkles and pores.
“Shit, kid. What’s your problem? I thought you’d be pissing yourself with joy right now.”
Clay turned away from him.
You can never be too careful.
“Wait.” The man pulled a small gray envelope from his shirt pocket. He opened it and slid out a photograph. “Here. Take
it.”
Clay turned. His fingers trembled when he touched it. He slumped forward, grabbing onto the handle of the pick, still protruding from the mine’s wall, for support. It was a picture of his father. Standing on the surface. Squinting from the sun. Even though Clay hadn’t seen his father for five years, he knew the picture was recent, knew it couldn’t have been taken before his father was sent into the mines. He looked older. Deep wrinkles. Hair gray and balding.
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“Are you kidding? It took him four years to get out. You think he’d want to come back here, risk getting lost? Maybe he thinks I’m full of shit when I tell him I know where you are. Maybe he thinks it’s a trick to get him back into the mines.”
Clay couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. Tears made pink slash marks through the dirt on his face. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”
“Can’t help you with that, kid. That’s up to you to decide.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was drawn a map. “Here’s where we are now,” he said, pointing. “And here’s where you wanna go.” He traced his finger through a convoluted maze of tunnels, criss-crossing and switching back on each other, all rising steadily to the surface. “Once you’re in this area, you can dig your way out. That’s the main thing, kid. You still gotta dig yourself out. Otherwise, if you follow me on up to the main entrance, they’ll cry foul and toss your skinny ass back down to the bottom.”
Clay took the map. Studied it. Used his fingernail to mark his current location.
The man gently pried the photograph from Clay’s hand and pocketed it.
“Can’t I keep it?” Clay asked.
“That’s not the way it works.” The man turned, looking up the dark maw of the tunnel from which he’d come. “I have to go now.”
Clay nodded. His eyes went back to the map.
“What should I tell him?” the man asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Should I tell him you’re coming?”
Clay didn’t answer. He stared at the map, the narrow hand-drawn lines like thin dark worms on the paper, the trembling light of his helmet making them dance.
He’d been in the tunnels for so long now, kept to himself so much he didn’t know whom to trust, wondered if trust was merely a commodity of the past, discarded like so many glass bottles and cans and bullet shells. The inside of his mouth tasted of bitter bone dust.
He didn’t know what to do.
Ten hours later, he had traversed most of the map. At least he thought he had. He couldn’t be sure. The map was hard to follow, the proportions off. He’d passed only a handful of other miner’s, most of them resting against the tunnel walls, their eyes glazed over, the pupils wide and hungry for light. He passed a fresh corpse, only the feet sticking out of a collapsed wall, as if the remains of the long ago dead had devoured him.
He trudged forward, his body aching, his heart racing. It was hard not to let the excitement eat him alive, hard not to sprint ahead. What if this was a trap? Just one more twist in the game?
The map ended. He looked ahead, following the dim cone of his helmet’s light. Had he made a wrong turn? He saw nothing beyond the light. He stood still. Tried to quiet his own breathing. There were no other sounds. Not even the far-off echo of the other miners’ picks connecting with the tunnel walls. Not even the drip of moisture as gravity sucked it hungrily from above.
Where do I go? he wondered. What’s left?
He stepped forward. Stopped. Turned around. There was nothing. Nothing. He looked at the tunnel wall. Reached out and touched it. Felt the debris crumble beneath his fingertips.
He closed his eyes. Thought of his father waiting on the surface. Is he standing over me? An earthly angel above this dehumanizing crust?
He made up his mind. Stepped back. Hoped his father would be proud. Lifted his pick in the air. Took aim at the tunnel wall, his cage, his prison, and swung.
Over and over again, he swung. The earth crumbled around him. He kicked it away. Kept swinging. The earth fell in great clumps. The air was thick with dust. He quickened his pace. Clink! Clink! One swing after the other until his muscles burned, his head spun with the lack of oxygen, yet still he kept swinging.
He struck higher. His father, the one he’d glimpsed in that picture, filled his mind. Beckoning him. Urging him forward. Swing! Clink!
And the earth caved in around him.
The earth swallowed him whole.
He was encased in it, like a caveman frozen in ice.
He pushed his hand forward, the only part of his body that could still move. He sucked in the stale, rancid air, bits of dirt and decaying bone entering painfully into his lungs. Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic.
Think. Take it one step at a time. Slowly. Methodically.
He forced his left hand forward, the only appendage he could move, through the putrid soil. A shard of glass from a broken bottle cut into the base of his palm. Coarse dirt embedded itself deep beneath his fingernails. The pain was intense and he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t even do that.
He remembered the copper penny he had found. Would some miner in the future pry it from his rotting bones?
Find a penny, pick it up…
He struggled once more for breath, inched his hand forward, feeling the skin peel back, exposing raw nerves.
Father, he tried to whisper, but could not.
When he inhaled for the last time, dirt filled his mouth, and his bloody fingertips felt the sting of fresh air.
He had won.
Mr. Blue
Mr. Blue had always been Mr. Blue. At least for as long as he could remember. He did not remember any other life. Not his arrival on the train, nor his stop at the Melanin Alteration Room, nor the pneumatic elevator ride up. He did not remember the days in the isolation room as his dosage of Happy and Sad pills was perfected, nor the slight discomfort that had occurred. But as soon as his dosage was correct and the contentment process began — none of it mattered any more.
And although he didn’t exactly remember marrying Mrs. Blue, it seemed she was as natural a part of his life as anything. Like a pill on the tip of his tongue. As good a match as any.
The wonderful thing about living on the forty-first floor of building #812 was that every possible biological desire was fulfilled and every urge was accommodated. For one thing, everywhere the eye could see was an orgasm of color. The eye couldn’t help but be pleased. There were enough visual stimuli to satiate an army. All the citizens of the forty-first floor were free to come and go from their rooms as they pleased. They could gather in the commons room. Gather in each other’s rooms. In the dining area. The hallways. The rumpus room. They could gather in the view room and watch the ColorMaster on the television all day long if they so chose.
They could eat when they were hungry. Take Happy pills when sad. Sad pills when the happiness became too much to bear. They could have sex whenever and wherever they felt like it; there always seemed to be someone ready and willing to perform the act. Strategically placed vibrating phalluses were abundant for the women, and masturbation tubes were always ready for the males. It didn’t matter whom it was done with, either, all jealousies having been genetically removed.
What more could a person want?
* * *
Nick Johnson was a Controller who lived on the sixth floor of building #812. He was assigned eight Melanin Enhanced citizens. He distributed the Happy and Sad pills via pneumatic tubes and measured the amount of sperm collected and distilled in the masturbation tubes. His main job was to watch his charges on monitors and make sure they were content at all times.
Contentment was the number one priority of a Controller.
The problem with Nick Johnson — being a Controller and not being as constantly content as the Melanin Enhanced — was that he had retained the traces of a sense of humor. What an embarrassment! In the Controller Recruitment Act of 2005, potential Controllers were courte
d with the promises of free will. Free this, free that… Although it sounded good at the time, the Controllers often looked upon their charges with a certain envy. A certain longing.
Of course, the Controller Recruiting Act of 2005 was abridged in 2006, 2007, and 2008, each abridgment altering the free will sections, one of the abridgments being the removal of a sense of humor. And since the process of humor removal had yet to be perfected, there were those Controllers who still retained trace amounts.
Nick Johnson tried his best not to let it show. But there were times when he could not help himself. Changing the dosage of Happiness in Mr. Blues’ Happy pills was one of those times. When Nate Johnson giggled after typing the change into his computer terminal, he pretended it was just a hiccup when the Controller next to him looked discreetly in his direction. He excused himself to get a glass of water.
* * *
The ColorMaster was a favorite TV show of the residents of the forty-first floor of building #812. It was a favorite show of all the Melanin Enhanced citizens throughout the city. He changed colors like a psychedelic chameleon at regular five-minute intervals, so that nobody watching would feel superior or inferior, nobody’s bodily function monitor would fluctuate from the prescribed guidelines.
On his show were puppets, singing animals, dancers, singers, comedians, sex performers — always ending each hour-long show with the words — often mouthed by the residents of the forty-first floor of building #812—
“Won’t you be my friend?”
Of course the ending of one show always meant a new one would soon start. The new one would begin with the ColorMaster singing the words — also mouthed by the residents of the forty-first floor—
“Hello friends, so happy to see you. So happy, so happy, to see — you.”
Although many of the residents ate food, swallowed pills, or sexually interacted in the commons, most of their faces were turned to the five-meter square screens placed throughout the floor. Unless one decided to put on Quietgear, it was impossible not to hear the soothing sounds of the ColorMaster’s hour-long shows.
