Iris (The Color of Water and Sky Book 1)

by Andrew Gates

  “We’re here to hide from the war,” she answered. “We can’t live on the surface or we die.”

  Iris nodded. It was a more simplified answer than she expected, but she had to remind herself that these were first year middle school students, not historians.

  “That’s right. And what is your name?”

  “Tanya,” the Indian looking girl answered.

  “Okay, Tanya. Yes. So…” Iris paused. She wondered how to go about phrasing her next question. “So what happened? Why are we living in the station? Why did we need to come here at all?”

  “Uh…” Tanya paused. “Well we can’t live on the surface,” she eventually said. “It will kill us.”

  “What will kill us? Does anyone know?” Iris asked.

  More hands went up. Iris chose a Sub-Saharan looking boy a few rows back. He was not as prompt to raise his hand, but Iris wanted to get a feel for her students first, not to simply choose the fastest responders.

  “Yes, you there,” she said as she pointed to him.

  “Toxic gas. Everybody knows that. There is no air and we can’t breathe,” he said, again more simplified than Iris expected.

  “You guys are all on the right track. I see you’ve been taught bits and pieces of the story, but perhaps you need a fuller picture. By the way, what is your name?”

  “Jordan,” the boy responded with a grin on his face.

  “Yes, Jordan. Well you guys are both close. I don’t know how much of this you learned in the past, but I’ll let you know the story. As I’m sure you all know, many years ago, humans lived on what’s called the surface, large bodies of rock sticking out of the ocean where people lived outside in the sea above the water. They didn’t need filtered oxygen. They didn’t need to pressurize their homes. They could survive outside on their own. The surface even gave them food. And there used to be many more people than there are today. Does anyone know how many people used to live on the surface?”

  The room was quiet. Either nobody knew or nobody wanted to answer. It was not a hard question so Iris just assumed nobody knew.

  “Well,” she continued, “does anyone know how many people live in the station?”

  Many more hands came up now. This confirmed her assumption. Iris pointed towards a Nordic looking girl in the corner who seemed almost two years younger than the rest of the students in the room.

  “Three and a half million,” she answered.

  Iris nodded.

  “Closer to three point seven,” she clarified. “That may seem a large number to you, but I assure you it’s not a lot. On the surface we used to have billions.”

  The pale faced girl’s face lit up as if she understood the weight of that number.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Really. What is your name?”

  “Margery.”

  “Margery, on the surface three or four million people were enough for a large city. Earth used to be covered in cities. But we turned to war. Old treaties were broken, super weapons were developed and we doomed ourselves by blowing each other up.”

  A confused looking boy in the back raised his hand. He looked a lot like Jordan, only with longer hair and a bit taller. Iris stopped and pointed to him.

  “Excuse me, I have a question,” he said eagerly.

  Iris nodded.

  “Great, what is it?” she responded.

  “Why did we do that?”

  Iris almost chuckled to herself for a moment. She had forgotten that these kids knew little of surface history. They are not historians, she reminded herself again. They are students. This is why you are here. She took a moment to think, wondering how to respond in ways they would understand.

  “War,” she eventually said. “It’s a terrible thing. On the surface, people had it all. People could go wherever they wanted. People could buy more, build more, do more. They weren’t concerned about survival or making it to the future. They were concerned for the present, the here and the now. It’s just the way their world was built. They lived in a world where food came up from the very floor they lived on. They lived in a world not bound by walls and constant maintenance. They did not understand the doom that they were bringing to themselves. Imagine going through life not ever feeling restricted. It was as free as could be!”

  She could see she was starting to ramble.

  “Of course, when the war happened, they were only concerned about winning. The victors dropped the bombs and destroyed their enemies, but when they did that, they also destroyed themselves. They poisoned their own atmosphere. Food stopped coming up from beneath their feet. Air was no longer safe to breathe. It got very hot. Many people got diseases, infections. The poisonous atmosphere only got worse and worse. Before the Descent, scientists predicted that surface humanity had only six more months to live before the atmosphere got bad enough to kill everyone.”

  “So is that when people went down?” the boy asked. “Right before they were about to die?”

  Iris paused.

  “I’m sorry, what’s your name?” she responded.

  “Jaycn,” he said.

  “Okay, Jaycn,” she repeated, trying to commit his name to memory. She was never very good at this. “People didn’t exactly go then. By that time, it was too late. People were already down in the stations at that point, but we got messages from the surface.”

  Another hand went up. This belonged to girl from earlier in the front row with the uncombed hair and the pink headband. Iris struggled to remember her name. Was it Tiana? Something like that.

  “Yes,” she simply said, pointing to the girl.

  “I don’t get it,” the girl replied. “So were the stations down here this whole time?”

  Iris paused. She was caught off guard again. These students truly seemed like they knew nothing. The Descent was the single most significant event in the entire history of the world and these kids barely knew any of the details. If she was to do this right, she would have to start all the way from the beginning and really tell this story in detail. Iris took a deep sigh, glanced down at her white plastic desk and then stood up from her chair, staring intently at the class before her. All eyes looked back at her, attentive and alert. Suddenly what was left of her fears went away. She liked this sudden wave of confidence that ran through her, though she was not quite sure what brought it.

  Tanya, Iris suddenly remembered. This girl’s name is Tanya.

  “The year was 2520 AD, that’s two thousand five hundred and twenty years after the birth of Christ. Humanity had grown to what it could. People were exploring new worlds, taking what was theirs and unfortunately, with all this success came arrogance. War was declared between the United Powers, that’s the European Union and the North American States and their eastern rivals, mainly the Asian League. Do you all know where these places are?” she asked.

  She opened a few maps and sent them over to the students’ screens before even giving them a chance to answer. Iris began pointing out the different areas.

  “Here we have the North American States, the European Union here and the Asian League is this here. There had been a long standing clash of ideologies between east and west on the surface, dating back to the early years of the Silk Road. Don’t worry; we’ll get into that a bit later. But for now what’s important is to know that surface people killed each other. Each side favored victory over defeat but in the end, victory gave them their defeat. The weapons, as I said, destroyed their enemies but also contaminated the atmosphere. Fortunately, scientists anticipated this outcome ahead of time and pressured their respective governments to construct backup fallout shelters in case anything like this ever occurred. The United Powers built their facility here in the Puerto Rico trench, the deepest part of the Atlantic. Two more stations were constructed, one in the Pacific Ocean by the Asian League and another in the Indian ocean by the nation of Australia and some of the neutral powers.” Iris paused for a moment after all that. She knew it was a lot of information and wanted to make sure she
was not losing any of the students. “Do you guys all follow?” she asked after a while.

  It seemed like a thousand hands went into the air. Iris was overwhelmed. She pointed to the first hand she saw, belonging to a chubby brown haired rosy-cheeked boy in green.

  “How long did it take to build the station?” he asked.

  “Good question,” Iris answered. There was really no easy way to answer this. It was a heavily disputed topic, but Iris did her best. “The actual construction of the station started about 50 years before the bombs dropped. As I said, it was fortunate that scientists predicted this well in advance and had enough time to begin work. The hull and several other important features had been constructed by the time the bombs dropped and people came down to live. Unfortunately though, many basic life systems were not running. The station could not generate enough breathable air, the waste systems were still being developed and the agricultural sector needed months before it could produce any food. There were numerous problems. People came down before the station was ready, so that is why, as you probably know, the first people who came down were frozen in suspended animation until the station was livable. We don’t know exactly how long, but most scientists and historians believe humans were in suspended animation for about two months. We call this as, well as the next several years that follow, the Dark Years. During this time nobody knew what was going on and adapting to this new environment was extremely difficult. So that’s where it gets its name, the Dark Years.”

  “Who fixed the station while people were frozen?” the large boy asked.

  “Nobody,” Iris replied. “Repairs were made automatically. The station updated itself. Everything was automated and once it was done and ready, the station woke the people from their deep sleep. That’s why we aren’t exactly sure how long the suspended animation lasted. Sorry, what was your name?”

  “Palm,” the boy answered. “Well, Palmer but everyone calls me Palm.”

  “Didn’t they have watches?” Jordan called out.

  Iris looked up at him.

  “Yes, but everything stopped when the bombs dropped. All clocks froze. You can imagine fixing watches isn’t going to be your first priority when all of humanity is moved from the surface of the Earth to an underwater station. There’s a lot of chaos there, a lot of confusion and difficulty. People did not bother to deal with that until after the station woke them up. Today we know the date and time but during the Descent, it was madness. A lot of people couldn’t believe it when they got down here. They felt trapped like a prisoner. Imagine spending your whole life on the surface of the Earth where you can walk and walk and walk and never stop. Today, we’re used to living like this but back then a lot of them couldn’t stand it. Many people killed themselves before they even saw the freezer. Those that went through with it and did freeze themselves often had a lot of psychological issues when they woke up. It was tough for everybody.”

  Iris caught herself rambling again.

  “I know that’s a long answer to your question, but what I’m trying to say is that clocks were stopped for a long time and nobody was particularly eager to get them going right away. They had other priorities to worry about.”

  “So it could be years though, right?” asked Margery. It seemed nobody bothered raising their hand anymore. The students just took to calling out questions now.

  “The suspended animation? Theoretically, it’s possible, yes. Since we don’t know how long people were frozen, it’s possible it was a few years, but that’s probably not true. The suspended animation chambers were never built to last that long,” Iris answered.

  “What about the other stations?” asked a short South American looking boy with a bright orange shirt.

  “The other stations have a very similar history, as far as we’re aware. It’s hard to know what exactly happened there because we haven’t spoken to the other stations much since the Descent,” she answered.

  “And why did we stop talking to them?” asked Margery. This girl was asking a lot of questions. Iris wondered about her. She seemed so young, attentive and curious. She suspected this girl had skipped a few years of school to get here. She looked as if she belonged in her fourth year of elementary school, not her first year of middle school.

  “Well,” Iris answered, “we aren’t exactly sure. Nobody really knows. The three stations have always been separate, but we used to communicate occasionally from time to time. Years ago, all of that stopped. First we lost contact with the Pacific Station and then the Indian a few months later. Again, we’re not sure why, but we suspect they just don’t want to talk to us anymore. But you see, the unique thing about these stations is we are completely self-sufficient. So we don’t need to rely on anyone but ourselves for survival.”

  “What if they got attacked?” asked the boy in orange.

  “It’s possible,” Iris responded, “but who would attack them?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Also, what’s your name? Sorry.”

  “Sarego,” the boy responded.

  Sarego, now that’s an interesting name. She had read all of these names on her roster at one point but forgot them all pretty quickly. She guessed she would have to study them later at home if she was going to remember them.

  It brought her tremendous pleasure to see this high level of interest from her students. This was a stark contrast to how the class began. It’s all new to them, she thought. They’ve never heard this before so they’re fascinated by it. She hoped the rest of the year would continue this way. She doubted it, but remained hopeful. For now she was just excited to see what questions they had next.

  A hand bolted up from a kid in the back, this one large like Palmer but with darker skin like Jordan or Jaycn. He had a bald head and a long white shirt, a size or two too big for his already large body.

  “Yes, you in the back,” Iris said.

  “My dad says we’ve never lived on the surface. These are just crazy stories,” he said.

  For a few minutes now, Iris had been running on a boosted level of confidence. She was standing up, engaging the students, eager to speak and answer questions. But now she felt that confidence leave her like water flowing down a drain. She started to feel hot and glanced down, hoping to see a glass of water waiting for her on the white plastic table. But there was nothing. She looked around the room and realized she could no longer name a single one of these students. She turned around awkwardly in her dress and walked over to her chair. I must look so weird in this thing, she thought. She let out a deep sigh as she sat down. She knew this moment was coming.

  “Your father is wrong,” Iris said. She heard a hush fall over the students as if they had not expected her to be so blunt. “And you can tell him I said that.”

  “Are you calling my father a liar?” the kid shot back.

  Iris paused. A few moments ago she would have been able to respond immediately. But now she was nervous. She glanced down and realized her hands were shaking. Don’t look intimidated, she told herself.

  “He is not necessarily a liar,” she said, trying to be calm. “He is simply misinformed.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense does it? Why would people destroy themselves like that? If we can’t live on the surface now, why could we live on it then? And when’s the last time anyone’s seen the surface? We’ve never seen it so how do we know it’s even real?” he asked. Iris had heard all these questions before. These questions infuriated her.

  To Iris, the truth of the world was obvious. She could see the proof all around them, even down to the way humanity behaved and lived. Natural law of the surface became the basis for surface morality, and later carried on after the Descent. How could anyone deny the existence of the surface when the roots of post-Descent human morals have no other logical origin? Oh how Herbert Hart would be appalled by the thinkers of today, Iris thought, remembering back to the philosophers of old. But of course, these were concepts far too complex for her students to understand. She would have
to use simpler arguments if she was to win them over.

  “Have you ever seen the other stations?” Iris asked, trying to provide a counter example.

  “I’ve not, but we’ve heard from the other stations. At least we’ve talked to someone who’s seen it,” he responded without hesitating. This kid was loud and quick, Iris realized. She was quiet and slow by comparison. He’s making me look bad, she thought. The last thing she wanted was for this outspoken kid to convert all the other students.

  “What about the ocean floor, have you seen that?” she asked.

  “Of course I haven’t been outside and seen it, but where do you think we are? We live on the ocean floor!” he responded. “We’ve always lived here.”

  Iris thought about what to say. She sat there and sat there, waiting for a response to come to her. The students looked back at her, waiting too. Finally she spoke up.

  “We haven’t always lived here. Where do you think we came from? Why do you think we speak the English language? In fact, where do you think the word English came from? It’s the surface,” she said. As she stared at him, she realized he remained unconvinced. She hoped none of the other students had attached themselves to his mindset.

  “I think what she’s trying to say is we aren’t meant to live down here,” another voice said. Iris turned her gaze towards the speaker and realized it was the younger blonde girl. Iris had forgotten her name.

  “Yes, that’s correct. Look at human evolution. We can’t live down here. It’s not natural. We’ve taken so many things down with us, like language, culture. These things didn’t come from the station, they came from the surface,” Iris clarified. She was very grateful the young girl had spoken up to take her side. Her remarks had given her a brief confidence boost again.

  The boy seemed upset. Not only had the teacher clashed with him, but now other students were joining in too. Iris understood why the boy was upset, but did not have much sympathy. He is wrong, she reminded herself. He needs to know the truth.