The Descent

Two teenagers explore the underworks of a self-contained, futuristic metropolis that flies above a world long-since destroyed by global war.

       Sam pulled aside the manhole cover and looked up at Linnia, noting the slight updraft of warm, petroleum-scented air that he had become so accustomed to. Her mouth hung agape at what he was asking her to do. He said he was taking her out someplace. He wanted to show her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His hair had caught the sun when he asked her, and his green eyes had burned like traffic lights, always urging further. She could smell the oily air belching up from the cavity below, and wanted to cry now.

         "Linnia, I promise. You'll love it." he said, and she wiped her eyes and nodded.

        He gave her a warm smile, pulled one of the pink road flares from his backpack and dropped it down the hole. It fell for longer than she would have liked before finally striking concrete. She looked down at it, burning several stories beneath the city streets that she felt so safe on. The pavement always seemed to vibrate slightly because of the machines below, and as an engineering student, she found herself intrigued.

        The underworks were forbidden, except under dire circumstances, and odds were that she would never get a chance like this one again. Sam was always missing school, and she had always taken him to be one of the bad kids who cut class and failed tests, but he always skipped to do things like this. In truth, a classroom wasn't the sort of place for a boy like Sam to learn, and she could see that now. The forbidden city underworks were his classroom, and her cheeks flushed slightly as she watched him mount the ladder and begin his descent.

 

       The internal mechanisms of the city had maintained life there over the years. Everything was self-contained and renewable, each piece of trash recycled and reproduced into usable materials through solar power. Their city had been a great shelter during the Final War, and as far as they understood, they were the remnants of mankind. Their city floated over a mile above the surface of the Earth, far out of harm's way, and had protected them from warfare and the barren, scorched world below for hundreds of years.

        Some things had worn down over time, of course. Their communicatons equipment didn't seem to function anymore, and they had tried several methods to contact the outside world to look for survivors below, but had recieved no signals, nor any responses to their own signals.

        According to the video logs in the library, there had been cameras on the peninsula of land nearby placed to watch the world, but all they had managed to record before getting destroyed were bombs falling in the distance just as the war proceeded to scorch the land and poison the sea with radiation. In class, they taught that nothing would be the way it was before, and that it would be many hundreds of years more before the half-life of the radiation would reduce the harmful energy to livable levels.

        The climb down had been long, and her arms ached from use after a life of general disuse, but Linnia finally reached where Sam waited with the road flare. He had poked it into the end of a pipe that he used as a torch.

        "Old Swanny lives down here, so don't be scared if we run into him in the dark" Sam said nonchalantly.

        "The drunk? Sam, I'm worried."

        "He's not a bad drunk. He's more harmless than, say, Akintosh" Sam laughed.

        Linnia relaxed some. Akintosh was one of their literature teachers. Essentially, most adults went into service after graduation. Either as doctors or janitors or police or teachers. Mostly teachers. The city could never get enough teachers, really. Akintosh buried himself in writing and spent all of his days reading and composing feverishly in the town library. He was known to go into violent fits when students did poorly or showed disrespect for the books.

        "Are the sewers down here?" Linnia asked.

        "No, no. This is strictly a maintainence access tunnel. This is where the workers would come down to service the machines."

        "So you've seen them personally?"

        "Of course."

        She blinked at his easy manner. No one was allowed down 

here. The police would throw him in jail if they caught him. There might only be a handful of people in town who were qualified to service the underworks, and even they were restricted unless prompted by city hall, though this never happened. Someday, she would be one of those qualified technicians.

        "Watch out ahead. Big step down." he said coolly.

        He stopped at a sheer ledge and looked over the side. The only discernable features below were distant, twinkling lights across the room. Sam pointed at them.

        "Swanny's place. He had to move down there so the police would quit harassing him. They got brave enough to come down into the first chamber and hauled him off one day, so when he got out he moved a little deeper."

        "You know him?"

        "Yeah, he's a really nice guy. A professor, actually."

        "That's a lie. Laura's dad said he's listed as a drop-out."

        Sam smiled wryly, "Our fine councilman. Your tax dollars at work."

        "My what?" she asked, genuinely confused.

        "An old saying. Come on, you can meet him."

        He found the top of the ladder down and dropped the torch over the side. It clanked onto the pavement below, and Linnia estimated they were going to be over 60 feet below the streets when they reached the bottom. Sam began climbing down toward the pink flame. He held it over his head and waved for her to follow. She swallowed the rest of her fears and decided finally that today would be the day. She would be the only person she knew to see the machines.

 

       They walked over toward the distant lights across perhaps 30 meters of rumbling, empty space. Great support pillars reached up to the ceiling, and Linnia recognized these.

        "Those house the water lines" she exclaimed, "We must be right beneath the tower."

        "Correct-correct!" sang a cheerful voice from above them, and Linnia nearly jumped out of her skin.

        "Sorry, I forgot to warn you", Sam whispered.

        A small robot, mostly just a talking head, glided along tracks attached to the ceiling far above them. He slid down a pair of tracks running down one of the columns and rolled along beside them. He was little more than a cylindrical capsule with a Mr. Potato Head face and a speaker for a mouth. The serious expression on the face made Linnia giggle.

        "Hello? What's your name?" Linnia asked, race walking to keep up with the robot who was trying to seem busy.

       "I'm M-dash-info-dash-13-i, but the doctor calls me-me Middy for short!" he exclaimed and sped up slightly, his eyebrows taking on a troubled expression like a person being bothered.

        She quickened her pace to a slow jog and Sam trotted along behind her. Middy was just shy of new guests.

       "I really must be going, much-much to do!" he explained and sped up, taking a track that forked toward the glow of Swanny's abode.

        "Wait up! Middy!" called Linnia from behind.

        "Professor, help! A guest!" Middy called, his short arms stretching up above his barrel-shaped head.

        They neared the lights that Swanny had hung around his little slice of heaven down below the city, and Linnia could see that he had built himself a sort of cabin out of plastic crate material. The way the crate sections were locked together was actually quite creative. The door opened, and the old man with his wild, starch white hair stepped out and waved. Middy zipped between Swanny's legs and into the cottage.

        He scratched his head bemusedly at the little robot, "Brought company, Sam?"

        "Yeah. I wanted to show her."

        "Well, I guess it's only human nature, I suppose" he chuckled, "Who are you now, young lady?"

        "I'm Linnia" she said awkwardly, standing safely behind Sam.

        "A guest", Middy groaned from inside, "Ugh!"

        "She's an engineer. The best in school" Sam interjected.

        "Oh?" asked Swanny, and Linnia picked up a strange look he threw Sam.

        "Yeah. Well, we'll be going now" Sam said anxiously.

        "Be careful, m'boy" Swanny said, walking back inside with a dismissive shrug.

        "G'bye!" called Middy, who poked his face through the doorway with a shy smile.

        Linnia waved back and winked.

        They continued deeper, down an access tunnel with rubberized floor that Linnia recognized as safety insulation. There was likely a lot of wiring beneath their feet. Sam was walking faster now, and she was having to hurry to keep up. The air was getting warmer in this part of the facility.

        Something about how the old man had looked at him and how he didn't approve of what Sam was doing made her nervous. She wanted to trust him, but was beginning to less and less. Swanny wasn't a drunk out of his mind. He seemed like he could have easily been one of her teachers. He was very cognizant and lucid. His tone seemed to be a warning, and the more she thought about his words, the more she wanted to go back now.

        "Sam..." she called from behind him.

        She saw him spin with the torch, not realizing that she hadn't been right behind him for the last few steps.

 

       "What's the matter, Linnia?" he asked patiently.

 

       "I want to go back. This is dangerous."

        "It's just a little further. I promise" he said calmly.

        "No, I really want to go back. We've been walking for over an hour now and I'm tired" she said, standing in pitch darkness, save for the torch burning ahead of her.

 

       "No. Come with me." he said, not budging.

        He said no. She looked behind her and couldn't see anything at all. How many turns had they made in this twisting corridor? There had been other passageways and they all looked the same to her. Besides that, there were no lights between here and Swanny's, and that was over half an hour ago.

        "Please" she whispered, realizing that she had lost control of the situation entirely.

       He held out his hand to her, "No, now come on."

        She had always clicked her jaw when fearful. Right now she was working it up and down and wondering if he could hear it in the silent room. With great reluctance, she walked forward and took his arm. He had taken great advantage of her naivety, and as the top of her graduating class, she hated herself in this rare moment of stupidity.

        Linnia followed quietly, but wondered whether she could escape if she stole the torch and ran. She wouldn't be able to fight him, that much was certain. Sam was quite a bit stronger than her, which wasn't necessarily saying much. She had always been petite and slender, standing a mere 5'2" with a willowy build. Sam was at least 6' and, while wiry, seemed strong from climbing around in tunnels all day.

        "How much farther are the machines, Sam?" she asked nervously.

        "We're not going to see the machines. This is better."

        "Better? Why would you bring me if it wasn't to see the machines?" she asked cautiously, wondering what his ulterior motives were.

        "You'll see" he said flatly.

        She had heard of boys doing this. The city's residents weren't immune to human impulses, despite their sophistication and highly educated lifestyles. She started to cry, and Sam stopped and turned to face her.

        Linnia looked at him through streaming tears and watched him snub out the torch. She stood sobbing, but abruptly stopped when she realized there was still somehow light in the room. He walked over and put a hand gently against the small of her back.

        "I'm not raping you, dummy" Sam laughed "This is what I wanted to show you."

        He led her down the hall as she dried her eyes, smearing her 

eye liner. Sam pulled a retracting broom handle from his backpack and extended it. He came to the corner the light was coming around and stopped her, peering slowly around it. Something was moving on the other side, making a metallic rasping noise as it shifted.

        "GYAHHH!" Sam darted around the corner with a fierce warcry and swung the broomstick and she heard it thud into whatever creature was living there and a piercing bird shriek filled the hallway followed by a fluttering of giant wings. He reappeared and grabbed her by the sleeve, dragging her around the corner. Her jaw went slack as her mind tried to process what she was seeing.

        They were standing in a bird's roost in the vent and vista stretched from below them all the way to the horizon. She could see ocean perhaps a mile below them with a tropical coastline perhaps another couple of miles inland. Rivers flowed down from the coastal mountains into valleys. She could see the beastly bird that Sam had clobbered with the broom handle, soaring down on golden wings toward what she realized were small, lazy clouds. They were casting rolling shadows down onto a ripple of gentle hills. She could see the massive silhouette of the city sprawling over an immense section of the ocean below.

        She collapsed.

        Several minutes later, she revived. Sam was sitting beside her, and she realized he had draped his jacket over her while she rested. He was pouring water into a couple of Chan-Chan packaged noodle meals he had brought for them to eat.

        She buried her nose into the collar of the jacket and caught his scent. This was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. Her cheeks were glowing and warm, and the air rolling in through the open shutter that led to the world below smelled of something she couldn't place based on anything she had ever smelled, but drew her in on some animal level beyond logic.

 

       "It's beautiful. How?" she asked.

        "How?" he mused, looking up from the noodles as they began to boil themselves.

        "Yeah, how" she repeated "They say the world as it was got destroyed and turned into a barren wasteland during the final war."

        "I've been thinking about that since I saw this as a kid."

        "As a kid?"

        "Yeah, Swanny showed me when I was ten."

        "You came down here and did all that when you were ten?"

        "Yeah. I was left in the orphanarium when my mom died, since my father was labeled a misanthrope. He was an engineer, you know. He didn't listen to the ordinances and came down here anyway with some of the other engineers. They wanted to see what made the city run."

        "What happened to them?"

        "Officially, they all died. The records all say that they came down here and never came out again, most likely due to suffocation or some sort of accident, but one of their team still lives down here and told me all about it."

        "Old Swanny?" she asked with amazement.

        "Yeah. He found me and told me what really happened. They went down, or tried to. He said they attached themselves to the support cables and started lowering themselves. Eventually, they just slipped out of view."

        Sam looked over the edge of the duct at the ground, a dizzying drop that might take several minutes to reach the bottom of. His eyes spoke the rest for him: longing, abandonment, jealousy. Maybe even secret pride, knowing that he was becoming a 'misanthrope' just like his father.

        "What makes this a wasteland?" she asked, rhetorically and with wonder, gazing across the expanse.

        "Nothing at all. I'm guessing it was at one point, after the Final War, but everything evolved. The scorched desert land and contaminated oceans they show videos of were hundreds of years ago."

        "It's beautiful" she said, dreamily.

        "That's why I brougt you here" Sam replied, sitting beside her.

        She wanted him to kiss her, or compare her to the landscape below like one of those harlequin romance tales, but he handed her a cup of Chan-Chan noodles instead. She peeled off the plastic lid and folded it into the fork it formed when you followed the directions.

        "I need to get down there" he said firmly.

        "What?" she asked, holding her fingers to her lips to keep from spilling food from her mouth.

        "Like my father did. You're the best engineer I know, and Swanny won't help me. Please?" he looked at her, tormented and pleading. Just like before, the sun was in his hair and his green eyes were flares.

        "Sure" was all she could manage to say and he smiled at her just like when she had agreed to come along back on the sidewalk that morning, a million years ago.

        They looked out the window at the expanse below as they ate their packaged noodles. A green viscera stretched toward the mountains, and beyond them, a bright blue hint of ocean forming a crescent along the curvature of the earth.

 

       She eyed the support cable nearest the window, it was maybe 10 meters away and attached to a metal cleet hanging from the bottom of the city. The cable continued down endlessly straight into the ocean.

        "You said they lowered themselves down the cables?" she asked, curiously.

        "Yeah, my guess is they swung a grappling hook across in an arc like a pendulum and attached it to the cable and then someone lowered them toward it from the window. Can you make something like that?"

        "Not really" she said, thinking critically, "but I can see how that would work. Sort of like rapelling. I've read about it. It's how people used to climb around in mountains. I could try, but what if it didn't work? It's too dangerous."

        "I'm not afraid of the danger" he said, with determination, "And it doesn't have to get me back up here afterward."

        She shook her head and stared at the cable reaching down. Nothing even guaranteed that the cables were still in good condition. Afterall, steel would rust after hundreds of years. And even if he were to rapel down, what's to say the cable wasn't worn in some spots where he might get his gear stuck. He'd starve to death, dangling halfway down the cable for a week. She shuddered.

        Another of the birds flew out of a vent somewhere else, and she watched it riding the thermals down lazily. Thermals. The city didn't have any such thing available, but a sort of paraglider could probably make it to the mainland.

        "Maybe you could glide down with a parachute" she suggested effortlessly.

        He gaped at her, "Can you make one?"

        "I'll need to make several. We're testing them until they're foolproof before you try to ride one down."

        He put his hand on her shoulder, "Thank you so much for doing this. I don't know how to repay you."

        She reflected on this for a moment when he suddenly spun around and started rummaging in his bag. He produced a long, golden feather.

        "The bird left this behind. I found it after you fainted, but I want you to have it. Maybe it'll inspire you as you work."

        She took it thoughtfully and admired it's pattern and lustre. She poked it in her pocket, and it was long enough to tickle her elbow as she walked the entire way back. Sam passed Swanny's without saying goodbye, and she sensed that an old friendship was being tested as Sam plotted to follow his father. She began to laugh dryly and awkwardly.

        "What is it?" he asked, looking at her as though she were crazy.

        "Nothing, forget it" she said, embarrassed.

        "No, come on. Tell me."

        "I'm going to be like Swanny when you leave. Just some crazy getting left behind."

        Her smile faded. Hearing herself say it made her sad and a little angry. She stopped walking and stared at him, not knowing fully what she wanted, but needing to hear something. He stood by the ladder holding the torch, which was beginning to flicker.

        "Last ladder" he said, shuffling anxiously, defying his previous charisma. The sidewalk was overhead, and the electric motor of a police scooter could be heard cruising by overhead.

        She waited for a moment, and then made the ascent dejectedly. He followed, leaving the flare of the torch at the bottom, but sticking the pipe back into his backpack. He thanked her again, but her eyebrows were still knitted together in a slender, angry line and her bottom lip spoke of unsatisfied wants.

        "Look" he said, not sure if it was the right thing to say, "If 

you're so worried about being left behind here, make the parachute for two and come with me. Would that make you happy?"

        She thought for a moment, her features softening, "Yeah. It would."

 

       He looked skeptical, "Really? You'd just up and leave with me?"

        "I don't know" she reasoned "But I'll make it big enough for two, just in case."

        "Okay then" he said, nodding reluctant approval.

        He shook her hand awkwardly, and she walked toward home, the feather still tickling her arm. Linnia took it and looked again at it's shimmering pattern. Was leaving what she really wanted?

        Just this morning, she would have said that her life plan was to graduate, live her whole life here and die here. Her children would feed her into the crematorium after a ceremony, and that would be that, just like everybody else. But a lot seemed to have changed since then.

Author's Note

Let me know if clarity is an issue. If you find yourself asking things like: "What the hell did he just hit with the broomstick?" or "Where are they supposed to be, again?" then please ask them.

I'm notoriously unclear about setting and a chronic non-describer.

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I think it has some flaws in the setting and doesn't really give enough information in the story to satisfy the questions it obviously brings to mind...if the earth is below them...then how are they suspended...how did they survive the last great war...etc. and so forth. On the other hand... who cares? It's "in the script"///it's entertainment, not life. It makes for a good sci-fi story and I enjoyed reading it. It reminded me of a Star Trek episode I saw years ago. The title is the same as a popular novel that was made into several motion pictures which aren't nearly as good as the book. (Are they ever?) But because I liked it enough to read it all the way through and because it was interesting and entertaining I give it highest marks. You've got talent as a short story writer. You packed in enough to keep me interested and kept the action alive. I think the "engineer" perspective might have been a bit overplayed...you might be able to subtle that up some. My best advice is keep writing. You're too good at this to quit.

[Mockingbird]

i enjoyed the story thoroughly. it was suspenseful throughout, you didn't know what was coming around every bend. it was a rite of passage for the both of them. even for linnia, who thought how insipid her life would be if she stayed. i like that for the both of them it was all or nothing...i think the setting is just the way it should be, the anonymity, and ambiguity of where they are. the story is rich with inferences and an intelligent person will appreciate that. you have a talent for dialogue. this is setting enough. you learn a lot about their circumstances and the state of the world they are living in just by what the characters say. reads like a sci-fi piece in which case you have to suspend your disbelief and just take it for what they're worth. only idiots will tear this piece apart just because their world is suspended above the earth. i would ignore self-congratulatory pedants. excellent job.

[moxielady]

I really enjoyed reading this. It kept my attention up to the last work. Well done. I do feel like Fabian, in that is it unclear how they are suspended or floating above the earth. But that is a minor thing. Thanks for the story.

[SM Davis]

Sterling piece. Wonderfully written, perfect dialogue, and characters that are believable and fun to read. Nicely done! I disagree with Fabian's opening remarks. The questions are not imperative to the storyline or the character interaction which is firmly the focal point of the story.