by David Estes
I continue slowly, trying to delay. “We went into the hatch and the door closed behind us. My mother had been silent for most of the trip, until now. ‘Where the hell are you taking us?’ she said. It was the first time I’d ever heard her curse, and I could feel a surge of anger, or maybe fear, coming off of her.”
“And she never got angry,” Roc adds, finally breaking his silent streak.
“Which scared me,” I say. “My father wouldn’t answer her, just kept saying, ‘You’ll see. Just wait.’ He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he did wear his typical arrogance like a cloak that day. As usual, he knew he had all the power, and we were forced to cooperate with his every whim.
“The pod started moving. It was very hard to tell which direction it was moving—sometimes it felt like we were dropping, other times rising, and sometimes moving to either side, maybe even diagonally. It’s very possible we were moving in all different directions. There was nowhere to sit, so we were all stuck standing for about thirty minutes, until we finally felt the pod start to slow.
“My mother demanded to know where we were, even going so far as to grab my father’s shirt. I’d seen her argue with my father before, but never raise a hand to him. He slammed her against the side of the pod—you should have seen his face, all red, veins popping from his forehead. ‘Don’t ruin this, woman!’ he yelled, and then slung her to the floor.”
I realize Adele is rubbing my hand with one of her fingers. There’s a tear in my eye but I don’t care. It’s for my mother and she can have it.
“I should have gone to her, comforted her, but I was too scared of my father, too scared of what he might do to me. I’ll never forgive myself for just standing there, watching my mom huddled on the floor.”
“You were just a kid,” Adele says.
“It was two years ago,” I say.
“You’ve changed a lot in two years,” she says, and despite having not known me when I was fifteen, she’s right. I squeeze her hand.
“Just finish, Tristan,” Roc encourages lightly.
“When the door opened it was dark and there were men in orange plastic suits with big clear bubbles over their heads. They had black guns and black boots. The way they charged into the hatch I thought they might shoot us, but they didn’t. First they checked our bracelets, scanned them with a handheld device. Then they escorted us from the pod into an alcove, using flashlights to guide us. We entered a monster tunnel. The tunnel kept getting brighter and brighter as we moved forward. By the end I was squinting.
“The passage led into a holding area, which we entered without the orange men, who closed a hydraulic air-lock door behind us, locking us into a glassed-in section of tunnel with showerheads all over the walls. ‘Prepare for detoxification,’ a voice droned, before the showerheads burst into life, spraying us with hot water that smelled a bit chemically. We still had all our clothes on and soon our tunics were sticking to our skin. When the water stopped, the door on the other side of the airlock opened, and men wearing black and gray uniforms entered, scanned our bracelets once more, and escorted us by the elbows to a room with two doors, one for women and one for men. My brother, father, and I took the right door, while my mom was forced to enter the left door alone.”
I pause, realizing my mouth is dry from speaking uninterrupted for so long. I hope someone has a question to break up my monologue, but no one does. They’re all just staring at me with eyes that want me to continue. Thankfully, Roc hands me a canteen and I’m able to swish some water around to moisten my tongue and lips.
“There were dry clothes in the changing rooms. We put them on and then met my mom back outside. She had new clothes on too.
“We went down another tunnel to where the men in uniforms were waiting, none of them having spoken a word to us since our arrival. Finally, one of them spoke, an older bearded guy. ‘Do you want to tell them anything before we head through?’ he asked my father. ‘No,’ was all my father said. ‘All right,’ the man said, handing us each a pair of sunglasses. ‘You’ll need these.’ Then he opened the door.”
The breath leaves my lungs. There’s tension in the room, as if all the air’s been sucked out, as everyone leans in closer. Adele’s fingers are no longer stroking my hand, but are frozen, waiting for me to speak. I take a final deep breath, feeling sudden and unexpected emotion well up in my eyes.
“We stepped onto Earth and the sun blinded us,” I say.
Chapter SeventeenAdele
His words have no meaning to me. They’re just words. Either he’s not being very clear or I’ve been dumbstruck.
…stepped onto Earth?
…the sun blinded us?
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Trevor says, ironically all joking filtered from his tone.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Tristan says, his expression more serious than I’ve ever seen before.
“You walked ‘onto Earth’?” Tawni says. Evidently she’s having trouble with the wording too.
“Yes,” Tristan says, confirming the meaningless words.
“Like a pile of rocks or what?” I say.
“No, like the surface of the earth. You know, up above.”
A shiver runs up my spine. My head spins. I feel faint. What? I’m missing something. A punch line or a piece of information—like maybe I dozed off and didn’t catch a detail or two. But I know that’s not true; I was wide awake, riveted the whole time.
“That’s the biggest load of bat turds I’ve ever heard,” Trevor scoffs.
“It can’t be,” Tawni says heavily.
But Tristan’s ignoring them, his eyes boring into mine, his face clouded with concern, his eyes thick with emotion. He’s worried about my reaction. I realize I’ve pulled my hand back from his, a reflexive sign of separation.
“You’re saying you went above? To the surface of the earth?” I ask again, because I’m still not sure what I’m hearing.
Tristan nods.
Which means…
“Earth is safe again?” Tawni asks.
Still watching me, Tristan says, “Not exactly.”
“You should tell them everything your father told you,” Roc suggests.
My head is getting hot. Tristan is still staring at me and it’s starting to annoy me. Like what he’s telling us only affects me. My hands tighten and I tuck them at my sides.
“Tristan?” Roc says again when Tristan doesn’t respond.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” I growl. “And don’t give me any of that crap about it not being the right time.”
“I was scared of how you would react,” Tristan says, his face a blank piece of paper.
“We deserved to know before we went on this mission.”
“I know,” he says. “The longer I waited the harder it got. It’s the best-kept secret in the Tri-Realms. It’s why my father tried to capture or kill me back in the Moon Realm—when we first met. I think he knew I would tell someone eventually.”
“This is ridiculous,” I spout, my anger growing.
“Would it have changed anything?” Tristan says, his voice rising. “If I told you just before the mission, or the moment we met, or anytime along the way. Would it have changed your mind about coming, or changed the Resistance strategy, or had any impact at all?” His own hands are fisted now, too, his jaw a tight line.
I fill my lungs once, twice, three times. Try to get control of my emotions. Think logically. If he had told us there were people on the surface of the earth before we left on the mission, how would I have reacted? My shoulders slump.
“No,” I say. “It would have just fueled our desire to overthrow your father. Knowing he’s kept such a truth from the very people he’s meant to be leading…”
“Unforgivable,” Tawni finishes for me.
“That was my reaction when he told me,” Roc says. “It took him a few weeks to tell me, too. Give him a break, this is a big deal. It’s not something you tell someone in normal conversation. Can you all just back off
and let him tell the rest of the story? It’s important.”
Tristan’s eyes flit to Roc’s, soften somewhat, and then return to mine, seeking approval. “Okay. I’m sorry,” I say, not sure if I mean it yet.
“Are you guys really buying this?” Trevor says.
“Shut it,” I say, warning him off with my eyes.
“Thanks,” Tristan says. “And I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. We literally walked outside onto the surface of the earth,” he starts again, trying to hammer home the crazy truth that I’m still trying to come to terms with. “Even with the sunglasses I couldn’t see for ten minutes, forced to cover my eyes with my hands, letting through a little more light minute by minute. My mother and Killen were the same, but my father adjusted quickly, because it wasn’t his first time above.”
My heart leaps suddenly as a thought hits me. “Were there clouds?” I ask, my voice a little too squeaky for my liking.
Tristan smiles for the first time in a while. “You should have seen it. The sky was dark red, spotted with bits of grainy clouds, which moved across the heavens faster than you would believe. The sun was nothing like our artificial suns. Compared to it, they are but a single hair on a person’s head, whereas it is the entire head of hair. Bright enough to light a thousand earths, it turned my skin red in only fifteen minutes.”
“It burned you?” Tawni asks.
“Yes, my gosh, how it burned. My skin ached for days and then became paper thin and peeled off as if I was a snake shedding my skin. There were trees and plants everywhere, but only in the Bubble.”
“The Bubble?” I say, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Sorry,” Tristan says. “I’m not explaining things right. I mean, there’s just so much to tell it’s hard to decide where to begin.”
“Tell them about the city,” Roc prompts.
“There’s a city?” I ask, my brain buzzing with too many questions to ask them all.
“Yes. That’s where we were. The only city left on Earth, at least as far as anyone knows. It’s called the New City, although informally people just call it the Bubble, because there’s a huge glass dome surrounding it, which looks like you could pop it by sticking a sword in the side. In reality though, it’s three feet thick and nearly unbreakable.”
“Who built it?” Tawni asks.
“Aha. Good question,” Tristan says, looking more and more comfortable with the subject now that we’re asking questions and not giving him a hard time about not telling us sooner. “Everything I’m about to tell you my father told us, so I’m assuming it’s true as he had no reason to lie or volunteer the information. Two hundred years ago, well before my father was born, my great-grandfather had his engineers build unmanned probes to send to the earth’s surface. When they returned, the rock and air samples they brought back were very encouraging. After weeks of analysis, fact checking, and experimentation, the scientists determined there was a greater than fifty percent likelihood that Earth could be safely inhabited once more.”
“But you just said it’s not exactly safe on the earth’s surface,” Tawni says, her eyebrows raised.
“It’s not exactly, but I’ll get to that. My great-grandfather had a grand vision of building what he called the New City, the first city on earth since Year Zero. But he wasn’t about to go up there, not without some pretty strong evidence that it was safe. Nor was he willing to put sun dwellers in danger. So he personally recruited a collection of moon and star dwellers to be the guinea pigs.”
Trevor grunts. “Look, man, I’m trying to believe this—I really am—but do you really think your grandfather—”
“Great-grandfather.”
“Whatever. Do you really think he could’ve kept it quiet? Once he started involving people from all the Realms, surely someone would have gotten the word out.”
“I asked my father the same thing. Keeping it hidden all these years is what he was most proud of. It was easy, really. When the moon and star dwellers were recruited, they simply acted like they’d won some kind of a lottery, a chance to move to the Sun Realm, live the high life. But really, they sent them to the earth’s surface. No one was any wiser.”
“What happened to them?” I ask. Everyone’s so worried about all the damn details, but what matters—what really matters—is what’s happened to all these so-called recruits.
“They died,” Tristan says, looking down.
“All of them?” Tawni asks.
“Yes.” Tristan says the word into his lap, slightly muffled.
“That’s horrible,” Tawni says.
We all agree, which is why no one speaks for a few minutes. I stare at Tristan, who refuses to look at me. Tawni plays with her fingers. Roc taps a toe. Trevor, well, even he’s quiet, although I can tell the silence is getting to him, because he keeps sighing and looking around at everyone, as if he wishes someone would speak but doesn’t want to be the one.
“How did they die?” I ask finally. Now I’m interested in the gruesome details for some reason.
“Exposure to semi-toxic air,” Tristan says, raising his head slowly to meet my eyes.
“Semi-toxic?” Trevor says, almost bursting to join the conversation. “If they all died it sounds fully toxic to me.”
“Only to us,” Tristan explains. “They weren’t used to the air above.”
“But it’s the same air we breathe down here,” I argue. “We get it from the earth’s surface.”
“Yeah, but ours is highly filtered, going through multiple air locks where potentially harmful dust and bacteria are removed from the air. Our lungs aren’t used to the real air up there. Maybe we never will be. The initial earth dwellers only lasted a little over a month before contracting various types of irreversible cancers.”
“Let me guess, they got more moon and star dwellers for round two,” I say, feeling slightly ill.
“Yes. This time they equipped them with heavy-duty protective clothing, an earlier generation of the orange hazmat suits the guys were wearing when we first arrived on the surface. Even wearing the suits around the clock, they only lasted six months before their bodies gave out. But they had made a significant start on building a city—a city that was uninhabitable, at least if you wanted to live to see your next birthday. My great-grandfather was getting old at that point, so he passed the torch to my father’s father, who realized that even if he continued to use dwellers from the Lower Realms to build the city, replacing them as they died, he would still be stuck with a city that no one could live in.”
The story is coming together, feeling more and more real with each added detail. “So he built the Bubble?” I ask.
“Not him, of course, but yes, more ‘recruits’ built it, an airtight globe that protects the New City both from the dangerous rays of the sun and the noxious air on the earth’s surface. It filters and recycles the air using a system very similar to what we have in the Tri-Realms. A hundred thousand people now live in the New City,” Tristan says.
A big question remains. The biggest, really. “Why didn’t your grandfather tell the rest of the Tri-Realms once the city was livable?” I ask.
Deep lines appear in Tristan’s creased forehead. “Because he’s a Nailin,” he says. “Look, he and my father are cut from the same marble block. They’re cold, hard-hearted, and think they’re better than everyone else. My grandfather had a good thing going. President of the Tri-Realms, a good life, everything he ever wanted. A drastic change like Earth being inhabitable again? That might have destroyed everything he worked so hard to build. The hundred thousand people up there aren’t allowed to come back down, which is fine by most of them. Ninety percent of the earth dwellers used to be sun dwellers, and were selected over time to populate the surface of the earth.”
“And the other ten percent?” Tawni asks.
“Moon and star dwellers. Up there only to do the jobs that the sun dwellers don’t want to do, like garbage disposal, cleaning, cooking, all the same stuff they do in the Sun Real
m.”
“Slave labor,” I say. The messed-up world we live in has just become even more messed up.
“Pretty much,” Tristan says.
“And your father wanted to maintain the status quo, too?” I ask, already knowing he’ll answer in the affirmative.
Tristan nods. “He knows telling the people will just encourage them to rebel. They’ll demand to go above, to see what they’ve been deprived of their entire lives.”
“Then we have to tell them,” I say firmly, clasping my hands together, daring him to contradict me.
“I agree,” Tristan says.
Roc, who’s been relatively quiet for a while, says, “Tell them about your mom, Tristan.”
Tristan’s eyes immediately go glassy. He closes his eyes, opens them when he starts speaking. “My father took us on a tour through the New City, told us the whole story along the way, bit by unbelievable bit. He didn’t hold anything back, probably because he didn’t realize how negatively my mom and I would take it. I’m not making excuses for Killen, but he was younger, more in awe of what my father had accomplished than anything else.
“Well, my mother just took it all in, not visibly reacting, just listening to every word, capturing every sight with her eyes. I took my cues from her, staying mostly silent and trying not to miss anything. When the tour finished, and it was time to go back into the pod and down to the Sun Realm, my mother refused. She said she wasn’t done taking mental notes so she could accurately share what she’d seen with the world.”
“She was a strong woman,” I say, immediately thinking of the risks and sacrifices my own mother has made.
“She was. But not strong enough. My father was livid. What he did to her on the way up in the pod was nothing to what he did now. He punched her in the face, breaking her nose and blackening her eye. When she fell to her knees, he kicked her in the ribs repeatedly, until she collapsed from pain and exhaustion. I tried to stop it, but he was stronger than ten men, such was the intensity of his rage, and he threw me across the room like a jewelry box. I broke my wrist and couldn’t walk for a week. My mom couldn’t get out of bed for a month.”
