Revolution in the Underground (9 page)

“Maggie!  Maggie?!”

“I can’t breathe.  We’re going to die!  Help!”

“Maggie?!  Maggie?  I need you to listen to me.  It’s going to be okay.   You can breathe, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.  I need you to do something.”

“No, I can’t… I can’t breathe, Ember.”

“Yes you can.  Big breaths.  In and out.  Can you do that for me?”  Ember demonstrated, she repeated.  “Now…  You can still move forwards, right?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay, now this is what I need you to do.  I need you to crawl towards me and use your hands to widen the passage around me so that I can move forward.”  Ember flattened his back side to let her walk on top of it.  She moved forward, moving cautiously on his back—her knees and elbows digging into him uncomfortably.  “Now,” he said with some difficulty for his lungs were now under greater pressure, “remove the dirt from the top and push it behind me.”

She clawed at the dirt and carefully swept it away from him and towards her body.  He wiggled spasmodically and struggled hard with his elbows against the dirt walls.  Then, suddenly, the corridor collapsed… but not from the ceiling, from the ground.  Neither Ember nor Maggie had the time or sense of rationality to ask why they were suddenly and inexplicably free falling.

As they descended, their pit of darkness became a strange and foreign world of yellowish artificial lighting.  They landed decidedly in crinkly heterogeneous mixture of soft and hollow solids, and were promptly knocked unconscious.

             
The house was in total ruin: shattered windows, broken furniture and upside down chairs.  Even the couch cushions were torn up—the stuffing clustered around the surrounding floor and dangling from a nearby broken lamp.  Three large bookshelves, rested unnaturally on the floor.  Shelves, formerly nailed into the wall, were now slanted or hanging by only one end—their previous content—mostly plants, pots, framed pictures, and botany books—were now in disordered heaps.  The distance of each heap from each respective shelf seemed to carve out the paths through which the objects fell.  A few books on DNA sequencing and comparative genomics were scattered across the room with random pages torn out.  Myriads of scientific writings, engineering sketches and journal entries blanketed most of the dark, wooden floorboards.  The front door hung uneasily on one hinge when a handsome man, in his mid-twenties barged in.

             
He moved slowly but purposefully—his worn brown boots stepping over the shattered shards of ceramic and glass.  The man looked around, systematically studying the room for any forensic evidence.  He picked up a piece of paper from a broken chair and casually glanced over the random scribbling before tossing it aside.  If he was upset, he did not show it.  He ran his fingers through his long dirty blonde hair.

             
“George?” he called out in a deep voice.  There was a soft, hollow moan and the sound of crinkling papers, and then a violent cough.  The man walked swiftly to the other end of the house and toward the sound.  It was the walk of ownership.  There was a certain reciprocal familiarity between his steps and the home.  The bounce and pace seemed to resonate with the house’s natural frequency—it was the steps of a man in a home in which he had spent his formative years.

             
“I’m over here,” George cried from underneath a fallen bookshelf, his legs bent nearly backwards.  “We both knew that this day was coming.”  The man nodded in agreement.  “Come closer.”  The man squatted down and brought his ear nearer to George’s mouth.  The sound of breaking ceramic and the piercing squeak of crushed glass underneath the shifting weight of the man’s boots reminded George of his immense pain, and he winced at the memory of it.  “You know, you were a child to me.”

             
“And you were like a father,” the man returned out of customary politeness and perhaps a little emotion.

             
“Ahh… but there is no need to get emotional.  This departure was long overdue.”

             
“Who did this to you?” the man asked with urgency.  “Was it someone from a minority party?  The Social Authoritarians?  The Egalitarian Communalists?  The Democratic Libertarians?”

             
“No, I do not think so.”

             
“Was it one of our own?  An opposing rebellious faction?”

             
“No… though there was undoubtedly an informant among us.”

“Was it someone from Imperium or Auctoritas?”

              “Yes, almost certainly.”

“Which one?”

“What does it matter?  They’re both the same,” George lamented in a hopeless despondent tone.  “You know how it is in the buffer zone.  The Tyrant and The Despot work together.  It doesn’t matter.”  George put his hand on his bloodied, contorted knee and wiped a spot of blood from his lip with his other hand, wincing once more in pain.

“Did they find it?!” the man asked, showing some passion for the first time.

“Not all of it,” George reported.

“Where is the rest of it?”

“You never were like the other boys,” George said sentimentally, ignoring the man’s questions.  “At your fifth birthday, you asked for a science book, do you remember that?”  George paused, waiting for the man to join in his nostalgia.

“Yes, I remember everything,” the man said coldly.

“You are not like the rest of us, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“I know.”

“You were made to do great things… and you will, someday, do great things… whatever that may be.”  The man nodded, gazing deeply into George’s tired, old eyes.  “I know it doesn’t come naturally to you… but… I know you have a heart…  I know you have good intentions…”

“Are you dying?” the man said, recognizing George’s tendency to give inspirational parting words.

“Just promise me this,” George said, once again ignoring the man’s question, “promise me that you will trust your heart.”  The man nodded.  “If we can’t crack the sequence, you know the rebellion is the only way.  I want you to join them.  With your skills, they might have a chance.”

“They’re all jokes.  They can hardly plan a meeting let alone an orchestrated attack.  All they cause is chaos and terror.  They do more to justify the existence of the establishments then all the propaganda put together,” the man said, uncharacteristically verbose.

“Yes,” George sighed, “but at least their hearts are in the right place… never doubt that.  It takes a brave and committed soul to sacrifice one’s life for the cause.”

“A soul or heart without a mind is energy without useful potential—it goes nowhere and offers false hope.”

“You’re wrong.  All one needs is a heart to make a splash.”

“Useful movement isn’t left to chance.  All they leave is destruction in their wake.”

“That may be, but even blind men can wander on the right path, even if it is by accident.  I know you don’t like them, but they can be useful.  If the sequence isn’t found then there is no other way.  Things will not right themselves.”

“Did they take the computers?” the man asked, returning to business.

“Yes.  All of them.  The algorithm is safe though.”

“Where is it?”

George sighed deeply and held out his hand for the man to grab.  George pulled him closer and whispered in his ear.  “It’s under the floor board.”

“Why did they keep you alive?” the man asked aloud.

George smiled acceptingly.  “There are cameras.  They wanted to see if they forgot anything.  They are waiting for you.  They knew I would tell you where the algorithm was and they think they can take it from you.  They don’t know you.  You will prove them wrong…  You are… however, but one man… You might be able to take them on this time, but next time there will be more.  They have your face.  From now on, you are a marked man.  Take the algorithm and find sanctuary amongst the rebels.  You know what to do.  They will be here soon.”  The man rose slowly to his feet.  “Styles,” George said with a tearful eye, “this is where we say goodbye.”

Styles knelt back down and looked one last time at the face of the man whom he had once called his father.  He kissed him on the forehead and then got up and walked to a creaky floorboard.  Styles paused for a moment to ponder his childhood.  “Goodbye.”  The moment his fingers pried open the floorboard, a swat team of heavily armed officers, stormed the room.  Styles grabbed the computer chip and calmly headed for the door.

“Stop right there!” one man yelled.  Styles walked up to the man and confidently kicked in his kneecap, simultaneously upper-cutting another officer in the jaw.  Two other men ambushed him through the window.  “Resistance is futile!” exclaimed one of the officers.  Styles brushed the man off his feet with a lower leg sweep, and violently knocked the wind out of him with a swift kick to his abdomen.  The other officer, seeing what happened to his friend, nervously went for his gun but was quickly incapacitated by a sharp blow to the head.

Styles kicked the front door off of its hinge and walked casually onto the street.  He glanced in both directions to see if anyone else was following him and then confidently walked into a dark alley.

             
The stone walls of the dark corridor were cold and greasy.  Soft, yellow glows from irregularly spaced torches made the passage navigable, but then only barely so.  The rib-vaulted stone ceiling was equally grimy but seemed to pay homage to some more important past.  Though the ceiling was not low, at least not by most standards, the tall man who walked beneath it had to bend his neck to prevent from hitting it.

             
He was in upper twenties and besides being immensely tall, was also considerably fat.  Beneath the fat lied heavy bones on which a generous helping of muscle rested.  The man looked as though he possessed an understated strength—as though he were capable of herculean feats but was tragically unaware of it.  His hair was long and black and though it matched his generally gothic attire, fell in sharp contrast with his excessively pale skin.  His afternoon shadow complemented his dirty face and sweaty skin, and seemed to go naturally with the powerful musky odor that chronically followed him around.

             
By his side was an exquisitely beautiful woman, who appeared to be roughly ten years his junior.  Her long brown hair bounced gracefully in the air with each step.  Her breasts were sizable but not overly large—and had the particular quality that, when seen under the right light and from the right angle, seemed much larger than they really were.  Her skin was light too, but not nearly as pale as her male companion.  Though her face wore the dirt and grease of prolonged squalor, she was, by the Underground’s standards, incredibly clean and well kept.  So much shorter was she than him that their mere companionship seemed to be a pointed proclamation to the rest of nature—though, it should be noted, it was he who was extraordinarily tall and not her who was extraordinarily short.

             
“We must be careful how we hold ourselves today.  After last week’s meeting it will be hard for them to take us seriously,” the woman explained, as if coaching the man.

             
“What do you suppose we do Kara?  We can’t be quiet,” the man challenged with a serious tone.  “I’d rather our voices be heard and ignored than never have been listened to in the first place.  This is why we joined.”

             
“You’re such an idealist Sven,” Kara bemoaned as if both complimenting and criticizing.  “We need to be smart about how we go about things.  What good is it if they don’t follow our advice?  If we slip up now then they will question all of our methods and we will undo all of our efforts.”

             
Sven stopped to consider her pragmatism.  “They will do,” Sven stated slowly, as if reciting a cliché, “what they want to do.  We can’t stop that.  All we can do is hope that our words and thoughts will take root in some of them.  Let it fester in their sub-consciousnesses.  In time they will see that there means aren’t working, and then they will see that we were right.”

             
Kara scratched her head as though frustrated with his optimism, “They can’t think that we are a joke.  We need to be careful.”

             
“They already do,” he replied.

             
“Well, we got to change that!”  Kara was upset and now seemed to desire to break his optimism.  “Do you ever feel like this is all a waste of time?  Like nothing we do matters?  If we can’t even change the philosophy of our own local rebels then what chance do we have influencing the fate of the Underground?”

             
“All things take time.  All journeys begin one step at a time.  All actions, no matter how small, can gain momentum at any moment,” he said, hoping that she wouldn’t notice that he repeated the same platitude in essentially three different ways.

             
“Five hundred years, Sven!  Five hundred years!  It’s not going to change now.  Not now, not ever!”

             
He put his long, heavy arm around her right shoulder.  Her entire right side seemed to lower itself under its weight—the girth of his forearm nearly the thickness of her neck.  “Don’t lose hope.  What would your father or mother say?”  They were now standing in front of an intimidating metal door—its hinge, practically bolted into the wall.

             
“Please…  not now…  I can’t get emotional now…  Just promise me that you will control yourself.”

             
“I will do my best,” Sven replied calmly, pounding on the door.  Though he tried to knock as lightly as possible, his natural strength made each beat seem like a violent hammer thud.

             
A narrow rectangular slit opened, and out peered the cold eyes of some man.  “Who is it?!” the man from behind the door snarled.

             
“Kara and Sven,” she answered politely.

             
“Password?”

             
“Mystic fountain,” Sven answered emotionlessly.               The heavy door creaked open. 

             
Inside was a dark tavern, littered with people and sprinkled randomly with neon lights and bright blue cocktails.  Sven and Kara walked in and headed to the bar as though they had done it many times before.

             
“It is going to be great,” they overheard one man shouting to another.  “This is what I live for.  This is going to be the party of the year.  Everyone is going to be there!”

             
Two men were fighting by one of the corner tables.  A woman looked on, crying hysterically as the two men pounded each other’s face.

             
“Are you going to the party?” a woman asked a group of her friends. “Everyone is going to be there.”

             
“And I’ll tell you what…” an inebriated man mumbled as he bumped into Sven. 

“Pardon me, sir,” Sven said though it was clearly the drunken man’s fault.

“Hey!  What’s the big idea?  Watch where you’re…” the drunken man’s words trailed off as he looked up for the first time at Sven’s towering presence.   Turning his attention to Kara, the man said, “Hey cutie, how about you let me buy you a drink.”

Kara gave a disgusted face and continued walking forward.  The man went to grab her arm but Sven intercepted.  “You’re intoxicated.  Go away,” Sven said coldly.

The man looked Sven up and down again and gave a violent scowl.  “You’re not so big.  You’re just fat.  What would a pretty girl like her want to do with a loser like you?”

“Get lost,” Sven said coldly, squeezing the man’s hand uncomfortably before tossing it aside.  The man scowled once more, spat on Sven’s shoes, and then stammered back to his table.

“Long day, Barney?” Kara shouted towards the bartender as Sven caught up from behind.

“Huh?” the bartender shrugged, cupping his hand around his ear to indicate that he couldn’t hear.

“I said, long day?!” she repeated, shouting even louder.

“Yes,” the bartender said with a nod and a smile.  “Sven and Kara, what can I do for you two?”

“Words behind the walls would be just fine,” Sven replied.

“At what lengths would a dog take to find repose?” the bartender asked.

“Sojourning warriors know no repose,” Kara continued.

“Right this way,” the bartender said calmly, opening a door and motioning for Sven and Kara to follow.  He waited until they got to the kitchen before he took up conversation again.  “You’re a little late today.  I’m afraid they started without you.”

“That’s preposterous, we’re half an hour early,” Kara exclaimed indignantly.

“Don’t look at me,” the bartender said, raising his hands as if to prove his innocence, “talk to Bradbury.”  The bartender rolled up a rug and pulled up a large loose tile underneath it.  “Here you are.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, we’ll talk to Bradburry,” Kara said with a laugh.

“Thank you,” Sven said politely, helping Kara down into the passage.

At the end of the short, dark passage was another door. Again Sven knocked and again a doorman asked for a password.

“Cataclysmic Happenings,” Sven answered.

There was some shuffling behind the door, followed by a few mutters.  “That’s not the password,” the doorman said, almost apologetically.

“Yes it is!” Kara said angrily, “Check again, we changed it last week.”

The doorman closed the eye slit, and mumbled to someone.  “Just let them in,” Kara and Sven could hear one man say.

“Names?” the doorman said, returning to his post.

“Sven and Kara.”  There was a short silence, and then the door opened.

“What gives?!” Kara expressed angrily, walking over automatically to her seat around the round table.  Sven sat down next to her.

“We changed the password,” a dark skinned woman explained objectively.  “You didn’t get the memo?”

“No!” Kara said, disgruntled. 

“Ya, it’s ‘fierce darkness’ now,” another woman replied.

“Good to know,” Sven said politely.

“I thought we were supposed to meet at eight?” Kara said towards the one man standing, evidently Bradbury.

“It was all in the memo,” another man answered.

Bradbury seemed frustrated.  He crossed his two hands and then swept them horizontally as if to motion for everyone else to be quiet.  Bradbury was in his mid-forties but still had the rugged composition of a fighter: sharp jaw line, bulging biceps, and ugly scars around his face.  A part of his left ear was mysteriously missing, but Bradbury did little to hide it—as if he were proud of his wounds.  His beard was thick and brown, and his hair was very greasy.  Though he was far less intimidating then the other men in the room, especially Sven, he strutted around with the air of someone who was unquestionably in charge.

“Do you have any more news from your friend?” Bradbury asked in a raspy voice.

Kara put her hand on Sven’s shoulder to indicate that she should take this one.  “No, we haven’t heard from Daryl since he crossed into Imperium last week.”

“And I don’t expect you ever will,” Bradbury expressed condescendingly.

“What was he thinking?!” one of the men called from around the table.  “Even if they don’t catch him, they’ll never let him join their ranks.  Commoners never join the ranks… and if they do, they’ll brainwash him first… he won’t be the same!”

“He’s compromised our whole mission,” cried the dark skinned woman. 

“We’ll have to find a new meeting place,” continued a bearded man.

“Reform,” Bradbury explained, pounding his fist on the table for dramatic effect, “will never work!”  This apparent truism got some rowdy cheers from the crowd.  “They are too far gone now.  The inner ranks are too entrenched in power and greed to care for morality, the lower ranks are too brainwashed by the cult of personality to listen to reason, and the commoners are too impoverished and deadened by alcohol to do anything about it.  Daryl should have known better.  There is no hope from within.  If there is going to be a revolution, it must come from within the Buffer Zone.”

Sven stood up, shrugging off Kara’s hand as though it weren’t even on his shoulder.  “You misrepresent him!  Daryl was not a reformist; he was a revolutionary like you.  He sacrificed himself to infiltrate Imperium.  If you are to have a successful revolution, you will need someone with inside information.  How can we expect to get to the Gate without insider knowledge?!”

“There is no Gate!” a few men from the crowd yelled in unison.

Bradbury waved his hands to silence the crowd once again.  “The Gate is real,” he said as if it were painful to admit, “but… it will never be opened.”

“Why?!” Kara said, jumping to her feet.  “How could you know?”

“It won’t work,” Bradbury said with a quiet air of confidence.  “And that’s the problem with you, Sven, Daryl and the rest of you revolutionary pacifists.  You just don’t get it.  You just don’t understand that the only way to free the people from the Underground is through violent means.  Sacrifices need to be made, and innocent life is necessary collateral damage.”

“But,” Sven said, seeking some common ground, “You would use the Gate if you could.  I mean, if there was an option of opening the Gate and avoiding the bloodshed, you would take it?  If there was a way to free everyone without losing human life, you would do it, right?!”

Bradbury brought his hand to his brow and massaged it slowly, as if the conversation was taking a serious toll on him.  “Yes, of course I would.  But…  We don’t have the code… and even if we did, we couldn’t reach the Gate without legions.  Face it, it’s a lost cause… and I’m sick of wasting time every week discussing it!  It’s a waste of time and counterproductive!” A few people gave assenting cheers from around the table.  Kara and Sven sat down, angrily.  “Now if you don’t mind,” Bradbury said, “I would like to continue with what I was talking about until you
pacifists
came in.”

Kara did not like how Bradbury used the word disparagingly but knew that now was not the time to quibble over semantics.  They had made enough of a scene.  “By all means,” she said sardonically.