Impervious (The Ascension Series Book 1) (4 page)

The words of a First-Gen.

Fran―a Fourth Gen, born and bred underground—knew of her lineage. Mom—a Third-Gen Impervieite—lived a similar life to Fran’s. Of course, her Second-Gen grandmother was the first round of babies born into the city. But before that? Sanctioned accounts didn’t reach back that far. But, this? This account from fifty years ago, by a man who had seen the world before the war
?
It read like a crime thriller…

Radiation. The mere mention of the word had the ability to send most Impervieites into a fit of unsolicited shivers. To say The War of Annihilation created a nuclear mess would undersell the severity. The political and social climate had come to a boiling point. We knew what lay ahead and had anticipated the complete obliteration of 70% of the earth’s land surface would turn the globe into a melting pot of whacked-out weather patterns and radiation fallout.

Even if an above-grounder survived the initial flares, the ensuing radiation sickness, innumerable plagues, nuclear winter, and plain old starvation would have left him wishing he had perished in the blast. However, being academia from the old world, I wasn’t one to fall prey to the urban legend of Geiger-ghosts. Radioactive zombies who roam the earth? Sensationalism at its finest.

Having been one of the original designers, I knew every last detail of the containment city. Yet at DEFCON-1, even I had experienced unwarranted dread. Panic sparked gossip, and soon rumors of permeating radiation flooded the bunker, and with them, a tsunami of fear.

But then good ol’ Marcus— Head of the Building Council—became the man in charge. He managed to calm the masses like a cup of warm milk. Just a touch over thirty, with a premature sprinkling of grey at his temples, he spoke with authority and kept a level head. Like a courageous father, he led his family.

He exuded authority as he stood on the platform, speaking to the last survivors of the world—the ones who’d paid a small fortune for salvation. His blue eyes sparkled with sincerity as he promised the residents that each and every last one of them would witness the day of rebirth. The Epoch. Even now his words, embedded deep in my brain, reverberate in my ears.

“… And rest assured no one and nothing can permeate this bunker. It’s… Impervious!”

But is it really? Just a few years after that great speech, the plague ensued. Like a demon, it stole the minds and bodies from seemingly healthy residents. It made no sense. It had to be the radiation. We fortified our impervious walls with an entire second layer of metal and filled every conceivable minute gap with innovative lead soldering. But the plague continued.

We filtered water with manufactured solar splicing and stored it in impenetrable holding tanks. And yet the decline of humanity raged on. Even food products that had never seen the light of a natural day underwent strict irradiation techniques to squelch this radioactive killer. Yet death gained momentum.

As I write this, the average lifespan has been reduced to forty short years. What will become of the second generation?

“Come on Pete. We’ve played
The Mad Hooligan
for hours, and I’m getting hungry.”

She shouldn’t have told Pete about Chan’s reader. In fact, Fran would have kept the secret to herself, had Pete not snuck up on her—
again
―while she slept with the reader hugged to her chest like a favorite doll.

Busted.

She had fallen asleep reading the diary, and now couldn’t wait to get back to the story. She’d kept the
Diary of a First Gen
to herself, pacifying Pete with
The Mad Hooligan
when he’d insisted on seeing Chan’s secret games. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now impatience gnawed on her nerves. Pete kept his eyes trained on the reader and continued to manipulate his avatar with one hand while holding up the index finger of his free hand.

“I’m serious, Pete.” Fran whipped the reader from his lap, and the game timed-out. She shoved the reader down her canvas jacket and began to crawl away. Pete didn’t follow. 

Good.

Although she’d warned Pete about waking her, she’d welcomed today’s wake-up call. Throughout the night, Fran had wrestled with nightmares of dragon-like creatures chasing her through a dark labyrinth. Then, the terrors morphed from dragons to zombie forfeitures who ravaged her flesh to steal her life. Pete to the rescue? Maybe, but he blew it by overstaying his visit. 

Fran wheezed a frustrated breath and coughed a little soot from her lungs as she snaked through the labyrinth. She whooped as she passed Folsom’s niche and soon emerged into the Agora.

She hung unnoticed behind an acrylic art sculpture just as a trendy West Winger passed by and pitched a half-empty bottle of infused water toward a disposer. The bottle rested on the edge of the transfer, clinging to its precious life. Either the femme hadn’t noticed, or she didn't care. Either way, Fran arose the victor. Her eyes widened, and she licked dry lips. The plastic bottle balanced on the rim of the disposer and she knew one false move could suck it into the vacuum of the waste transfer. She snatched the bottle and gulped the sweet berry-flavored water. With dreamy eyes shut, she reveled in the delicious accident, sucking down every last drop until the bottle ran dry.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and, following a grunt and a throaty belch, lifted her lids. The passing residents came back into focus, including a few snobs who tsk-tsk’d her objectionable behavior.

Whatever.

As a nearby squawk rang out through the courts, Fran turned to check out the commotion. And then froze.

The crazy body piercings. The garish makeup. The outlandish hairstyle. And riding a
Drag-Racing, Air-Generated, Original Nanocycle
?

Moving walkways, for the super-lazy, lined the perimeter of each housing sector, so nobody—other than city workers or craggy Superiors—rode motorized vehicles. Except, of course, those being treated to an Allocation of Inequity. A night of ultra-decadence and hedonism. A gift bestowed upon the super elite. A reward for dedication to the Council serving a dual purpose: Incite jealousy and encourage submission.

“A-O-I.” The words came out on a whisper.

The bottle fell from Fran's grip and bounced onto the floor. She raced to a nearby bench, hopped up and scanned the court. The scooter, otherwise known as the DRAGON, tricked out with high chrome handlebars, spewed a brilliant rainbow from the luminescent exhaust. And Nissa sat upon the steed.

Shrieks rang out from all directions as her sister-in-law circled the court, sans helmet, on the low-riding bike, whipping to and fro. Fran’s blood boiled. The careless witch even zipped past a new mother, almost clipping the edge of an electronic buggy without acknowledging the near miss.

And then she spied him. Curls fell about his face, almost hiding his easy-going brown eyes. Her chest squeezed as she remembered his gentle kindness. His classic good looks, as well as amiable smiles and nods, seemed to sooth the victims of his wife’s mishaps.

Fran’s eyes welled. “Ted.”

The thunder of the second scooter sounded close by, and Fran flicked a gaze back to Ted’s wife. Although she’d almost rammed her roaring DRAGON into a café table, Nissa tossed her head back and howled with laughter. The café patrons scattered and others ducked and swayed as she whipped around the courts. Although annoyed, Fran used the opportunity to her advantage, pocketing a few table scraps while the dynamic duo entertained the crowd. For the grand finale, they each threw their ride into hover mode and jetted high above the heads of their audience to the awaiting elevator. They dismounted and finished their departure aboard the glass-enclosed lift—up six stories and through the doors of the very ritzy Waltonian restaurant.

Fran heard a few sighs and snickers from the crowd before reverence gave way to chatter, and the court slipped back into its usual state of chaos. Loaded with enough food to slake her greedy appetite, Fran returned to the hidden venting and burrowed into the guts of the city.

As she wriggled through the darkness, she couldn’t stop processing the scene. Ted and Nissa lived in the West Wing? No wonder she had never found him. She hadn’t bothered to entertain the idea they were over
there
. She inched along, lost in thoughtful annoyance.

After a few moments, when her brain emerged back into the here-and-now, she felt Chan’s reader digging into her skin. How could she have forgotten? Prickly excitement tingled the bottoms of her feet, and she welcomed the distraction as she pulled the reader from her jacket. After waving her hand over the surface, she dragged a finger to the image of a green and blue globe—a supposed picture of how the earth looked from outside―her icon for Diary of a First-Gen.

I stare at the calculations on the screen. It’s safe out there… It has to be safe. I toggle over to the latest readings. Gamma rays, alpha particles, beta particles… the numbers all line up. Yet without a doubt, the Quality Factor Reading is not even close to the safe level.

It’s been over twenty years in this bunker. How I yearn for the aroma of fresh cut grass on a warm spring day. Yet, I can barely recall the scent of a single blade. Will I even live long enough to see the re-emergence?

We hadn’t anticipated being down here more than ten years. And the longer this bunker remains our home, the more bells and whistle Marcus creates to keep the masses happy. Every time we blast through another chunk of the earth to make room for more residents, we seem to discover more building material. Of course, it was planned that way, but I never really thought we need so much room… or that we’d have so many mineral-rich rocks at our disposal.

We’ve had many new lives born into the bunker—a second generation of inhabitants. Some are already calling their children Second-Gens, as if there will be more. Yet the number we are able to house at this same level of opulence remains to be determined.

Recently, I thought on my days at MIT, twenty-something years ago. Back when I had two trains of thought: Beer and nuclear disasters. I was the designated beer-guy. At the liquor store checkout, I had felt cocky and told the cashier that I was crashing an AA meeting. She gave me the stare of death until, with the smugness of youth, I added, “I meant, Apocalyptic Analysis, ma’am.”

We thought we were something back then: The few… the proud… the physics geeks.

Science club may not have been a popular after-school activity for most, but we, fascinated with the idea of nuclear catastrophes, had spent hours of free time tinkering with apocalyptic disaster mock-ups.

We had saved mankind and rebuilt the earth with great success several times. Of course, over the years, as we moved through our undergrad and then graduate studies, we created more complex situations. Nonetheless, no matter the consequence, a decade had always been the longest cooling-off period before the rebuilding phase.

Now, here I sit in real time—Second Generation Post Apocalypse—without an end in sight. I’m the last Mohican of the original AA’s. I often wonder if I will ever smell the summer grasses again.

Fran blew out a breath and reached into her pocket for a few of the scraps she’d yanked from the café tables. She felt sad for the author, knowing he never had the chance to smell the grass again. Then again, what if she never had the chance either? The reader dimmed with inactivity and Fran sat in the dark for a long moment burdened with melancholy.

Her thoughts bounced between the anonymous First-Gen and her brother. Did she despise Ted, or did she just feel sorry for him? She wasn’t even sure anymore. Emotions, once so easy to separate, now converged into globs of darkness and shafts of light.

Her brother was alive.

Her brother was a sellout.

Anger and disappointment had long ago woven together into a dark cloak Fran often tossed over her naked shoulders. Fear and loneliness combined to create a snarky mask she didn’t like to peel away. Sarcasm painted any light in her life a dark color, and joy? Pretty much packed up and moved out. Of course, she still clung to hope, but every day even that thick lifeline frayed a little more.

Fran wondered about the aroma of fresh cut grass. She had visited a park reproduction once long ago with Mom and Ted. Mom had guarded her credits until she saved enough for the cybernetic outing—Fran’s tenth birthday present. The simulated park seemed as real as anything. She remembered laughing with Mom as they chased colorful holographic butterflies while the sensation of a warm breeze brushed past her face. After shedding her thick boots, she’d trounced through lush grasses, enjoying the cool slipperiness between her toes, and plunged her hand into the icy depths of a simulated river. She splashed, swam, and lifted fistful of the water to her lips to taste the sweetness. After a full hour of delights and surprises, just before the scene de-pixelated, a lone butterfly landed on her outstretched hand, tickling her skin with its delicate wings. Although at the time that experience had satiated her curious mind, now she wondered…

Did everything smell right? What about the temperature and the strength of the breeze? Had she experienced the world as a First-Gen would have on any given day? How would she know?

On the heels of that thought, she remembered one of the morbid CyberTrain videos she’d experienced in Advanced HAZMAT. It had been a lesson for her and her schoolmates titled
Realities of the Open Air
.

In a much darker way, it had felt as real as that day in the park. The landscape of her classroom morphed into a mottled-appearing earth with mounds and mounds of ash under a murky gray sky. A cold wind whipped through the air, scattering the dust in a swirling storm, and Fran felt the sting of acrid-smelling flakes.

The head of a holographic man emerged from a hatch-like opening where her teacher’s desk had sat. As the holograph climbed into the atmosphere, his eyes grew wide and his hands went to his neck as if he was choking. His skin sagged as he transformed from the image of a young man into a hideous, aged person. Within seconds, the sagging became more intense, and like gelato running along the edge of a crunchy cone, his chin dripped onto his chest. The man roared in agony until a skeleton, with gaping holes where eyes and a nose had once been, stood frozen in his place. Then…
poof
! He disintegrated and joined the heaping mounds of dust. The wind picked up his remains, pulling them into the storm, and

Fran remembered a sickness she felt as the computer-generated ashes of the holographic man touched her face.

With vomit in her throat, she closed her eyes, laid her head onto her desk, and waited until the show ended. The intense mock-up, although nothing more than an artistic rendition like the simulation in the park, achieved the desired effect. She and every classmate vowed never to go outside.

Yet now she wondered. Could the earth repair itself to the pre-war state? The idea seemed as far-fetched as her day in the park. Yet this guy―this First-Gen scientist―thought so. If still alive today, he’d have seventy or eighty years under his belt. Fran laughed at the thought. No one, except Superiors, lived that long. And since Superiors didn’t write black market tales, this guy remained just a cool piece of history, as lifeless and dried out as the ashes in the storm.

Too much thinking made her brain hurt, and she paused to rub her temples before reaching into her front pouch for a water packet. She sucked down the contents in a huge, hearty slurp and then waved a hand over the reader.

When the device came to life, a huge skull-and-crossbones hovered mid-screen. She knew the Rebel brand and tapped the icon. A welcome screen morphed into an E-vite to an all-nighter. She sighed and considered her options. Nope. She just wasn’t in the mood. She hit the “decline” box, and laid her head onto the hard venting floor, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what the earth would be like when the Epoch came. Would it be like the movie she'd seen or like what this First-Gen described? Her thoughts faded, and sleep took over.

.~.

Fran jerked upright. Her entire body felt stiff and cold. Her heart raced, and breath came in ragged gasps. Was someone there? She pressed her back into the pipe, trying to become one with the metal while warring to hold her breath.

She tuned-in to the surrounding sounds. Creaking and moaning―the usual noises of the pipes—filled her ears. The subtle dance of a venting-bug tickled her face. She wanted to brush it away but resisted the urge to move. The muffled sounds of a family in nearby quarters reached her ears. Maybe she had only imagined the intrusion.