The Eden Project: Humanity's Last Chance (7 page)

Gen knew this was no laughing matter. She knew Doctor Hossler might really be torn apart tomorrow or the next day by a pack of infected and she knew that she really did have a dark side. Today proved that.

Her hostile response to Sylvia may not have been premeditated but it was by design, instinctual design. Just when Adam was falling under Sylvia’s sweet spell, Gen stole his attention in the roughest and surest way possible, wooing him with the darkest thought she could muster.

Adam was not the bad one. It was her. Could there be anyone in the dome who would react so brutishly and selfishly to their best friend just for what, smiling affectionately at her own intended?

She knew Sylvia loved Adam in her own way and she knew Adam had never been overly attentive to Sylvia. She had comforted Sylvia many times when Adam had ignored his intended for weeks on end.

Sylvia had been waiting for a night like tonight when his eyes would meet hers and an intimacy would be born between them, an affection that could be nurtured and grown.

Gen snatched that moment away from her best friend and she did it without tenderness. Adam was hers. What that meant or how that would ever benefit anyone was unclear. What she was clear about was that her soul was petty and hostile and selfish and her ugly heart was a perfect match for his ugly heart.

His smile slid off his face and he looked at her. She received his eyes fully for the first time. Her friends’ laughter faded. The heavy electric beating of her heart overwhelmed her senses. His eyes were green and they turned oxygen to ice in her throat. If he touched her now, she would shatter into a thousand pieces.

“Adam Thirdborn!”

She could not place that voice in her dream. Adam heard it too, his eyes left her.

“Tyler Secondborn!”

Her senses returned in full force. She turned back to find the grave faces of Milo and Isaac.

“You are to report to the briefing chamber immediately.” Milo made a hand gesture toward the exit. Tuna turned to Adam.

“Let’s go,” Adam directed popping up and walking past Milo. The other six watched Tuna stand reluctantly, eye his plate before following Adam to the commissary exit.

Milo and Isaac nodded formally down to the remaining six before they hurried to escort Adam and Tuna.

Tuna followed Adam into the empty briefing chamber. They approached the two chairs in the middle of the barren room. Tuna glanced back to see Milo step out. The door slid closed and its lock clicked. Tuna turned to Adam. “Dude, this is not good.”

Another click and the room went dark. Tuna’s heavy breathing was the only sound in the pitch-black silence until a small light appeared in the middle of the viewing wall. They sat down.

Then they could hear the wind and more, a flag flapping wildly. They could see a slowly emerging, high-angle view of a deserted city street which eventually covered the entire wall. Neither boy had ever seen anything like this before. The world as it was now.

Adam suddenly gasped. The view zoomed in too quickly down to the street. He realized that it was not just the world now, but right now.

This was a live feed.

Tuna swallowed hard. He saw details on the pavement, splashes of darkened cement and scattered sticks. Not sticks, bones. Too close. The camera pulled back. He guessed that Doctor Quarna was controlling the camera from the island.

“It’s live,” Adam finally said. Tuna flashed his terrified eyes and nodded in agreement.

The angle slowly changed. In the distance, there was movement. Humanlike figures moved slowly closer. A quick zoom and the figures became more discernible. Long, unruly hair. Clothes stained and ragged to the point they seemed like brown, shredded flesh hanging from their gaunt bodies. A tall one trailed behind. His face was caked with so many scabs he looked made of cracked leather.

The others were much shorter. “Children,” Tuna whispered as the truth hit him. “Chained.” It was true. The infected adult trailed behind four small children and he held tightly a series of chains. Each chain led to and wrapped around the neck of a child.

The two healthy boys who had lived their whole lives in the most sterile, sun-filled place on earth labored to breathe as they witnessed the horrific images of the world outside. A city center filled with overturned vehicles, scattered bones, disease, filth, emptiness.

The distant camera recorded sounds too, sounds that haunted the briefing chamber, lonely canyon winds that had long since replaced the burgeoning sounds of urban hustle and bustle. No car horn would ever sound again in that naked city. No high-pitched screech would ever escape another police whistle there.

Even the massive structures beyond were filled with the most hollow, dead-eyed windows one’s soul could ever imagine. Mankind had managed to build a tomb the size of an entire city.

In the near dark, only their faces reflected the light of the screen. Adam had lost all of his fire. His mouth hung open in horror. Next to him, Tuna sat broken. A tear fell from his right eye, racing quickly down his cheek to fall beyond the reach of light.

Up on the wall, the infected moved closer still. Suddenly, the tall one pulled on his chains. Adam and Tuna jumped back in their seats as the heads of the children jerked back in unison choking from the pull of their chains.

The small faces filled the screen with absolute hideousness. Eyes black and unfeeling, mouths open and trembling like beasts of prey. Their skin was lost to open gashes and layers of scar tissue.

The tall one reached forward and unhooked two of the children from their chains. The children lunged forward with alarming speed and alertness, then stopped and sniffed the air.

“What’s happening?” Tuna asked in pained horror.

The camera panned right to follow the children’s alert eyes. A sick, mangy dog limped helplessly down the street. The two children walked quietly, spreading out like hunters.

Adam’s eyes panicked beginning to understand. “Turn it off,” he said barely. He looked to Tuna who still did not understand. “Turn it off,” Adam yelled. “Turn that off. Now!” He leaped up from his chair and screamed it. “You have to turn it off!”

Tuna began trembling. He looked back to the screen realizing what was about to happen. The children sprung like animals down the street after the dog.

The lights clicked on and the images disappeared.

They sat stunned, somehow still able to see the infected children running and then pouncing on the sickly dog even without the live feed projected on the viewing wall. They closed their eyes tight trying to make the gruesome details disappear.

Tuna shivered, shook it off. He turned to Adam. They locked eyes, unable to speak and then turned back to the blank wall. Nothing. They examined the empty room. Nothing. Tuna breathed heavily while Adam seemed not to breathe at all. They waited for something, the voice of Doctor Quarna perhaps, but the sterile room remained silent.

A click and the door slid open. They considered the door, looked to each other again, unsure. Tuna stood to join Adam on his feet. A moment passed and then they did the only thing they could think to do. They walked to the door and left the room and all its horrid images behind.

* * *

THE KIDS OF THE EDEN PROJECT left the commissary and filled the corridor. Adam and Tuna exited the viewing chamber in a daze and were quickly overtaken by faster moving kids. They did not see the world around them. They did not speak to anyone or each other.

Ozzie made his way past smaller kids to catch up with Adam and Tuna. He slowed down and stepped between them, squeezing the back of their necks. They were both non-responsive to his rough friendliness.

“Okay, should I ask? You must have pissed off Quarna somehow.” Ozzie grinned, hoping they would at least acknowledge him.

Tuna peaked sideways to Ozzie, but quickly returned his eyes to the path of his own feet.

Ozzie noticed something in Tuna’s eyes. “You guys helped Hoss, didn’t you?”

Tuna stopped and turned angrily to Ozzie. “I did no such thing.” Ozzie and Adam stopped to look at Tuna. “I had nothing to do with it. He’ll get himself killed out there or worse.”

“All right, man, don’t bite my head off.” Ozzie flashed a little anger of his own. “You guys are so touchy, lately. I just came to see if you guys were up for a little competition. Zeke’s headed to flight simulation. He says he’s going to break Adam’s record.”

Tuna hung his head. “Sorry, Ozzie, I’m just tired. Long day.”

“Not tonight, Oz,” Adam said. “I’m a little tired too. Tell Zeke he needs all the practice he can get.”

With that, Adam and Tuna walked on down the corridor, leaving Ozzie to shake his head. When Ozzie spun back to go, he nearly collided with Gen.

“Did they say anything?”

“They said they were tired.” Ozzie answered, matter-of-factly, then stepped past Gen and hurried back the way he came.

“Tired?” Gen said to herself. “Both of them tired? At six thirty?” She watched Adam glide away from her through a sea of kids.

Something had changed. Adam and Tuna were rarely together after that day. Gen spied on them whenever she had a chance. Not only were they never up to anything, they had become the model students in the dome. Adam continued to break his flight simulator records and Tuna learned to dismantle and rebuild each component on the ships.

Adam had changed most profoundly. Not one drop of sarcasm ever escaped his lips. Weeks and months passed without Adam paying any unwanted attention to her. He was polite, courteous and respectful. What an exemplary bore he had become!

She had begun to think Adam’s prophecy had come true. The kids were losing their individual souls to the greater good. There was no greater evidence than the boy himself. He had become a virtual clone of Zeke, a replicant like in the age-old science fiction movies. Alert, expert, graceful and in every way a positive force to everyone he encountered.

Adam had lost his individuality and become a willing gear within the collective machine. This was the same crime, she realized, that Adam had accused her of before the body snatchers replaced his brain.

The old Adam would not have stomached the new Adam for one minute and yet she was finding herself in league with that old Adam, the one she had despised for his self-serving, ultra-destructive pessimism.

And what of Zeke, her doting, dashing prince? Every time he opened his mouth or displayed fine manners or listened patiently to her every syllable it was all she could do not to scream at his respectful face.

Zeke and this new Adam were shiny, perfect little beings born in some scientist’s laboratory to be trained and mated and bred. Maybe she could have been happy in that distilled world had she never known the longing that echoed inside her like a fever, a longing caused by a very sarcastic and now very absent boy.

If she was to become like Adam she had decided to use Adam’s old tactics. She would enlist Tuna. He knew things, not just things about past endeavors with Adam, but she was convinced he possessed some skill Adam had needed, something to do with Audio Relay Systems.

Gen decided to stop by Eden Sphere 2 to check on Cassie’s gardens or so she was prepared to tell anyone who might ask. She knew Zeke was just about to finish the weekly systems check on her ship which meant Tuna would be doing the same on ES2.

She approached the flight deck just as the rest of Tuna’s crew was exiting. They passed her talking among themselves. Only Lexi, a twelve-year-old engineer, noticed her at all.

Gen locked eyes with Lexi ready to mutter something about Cassie.

“Hey you,” Lexi said, pleasantly. Her pure, sweet smile and utter lack of suspicion made Gen feel even more villainous about her mission.

She smiled unconvincingly back to Lexi, but could form no words to respond. Awkward, sure, but at least she had lucked upon Tuna alone.

Gen entered the flight deck to find Tuna seated and punching numbers into his scrollpad. He was immersed and did not bother to check who had entered. She walked around behind him studying the lights, switches and embedded punch keys that made her feel like she was walking inside an elaborate computer.

“So this is what Tuna’s garden looks like?”

Tuna’s fingers froze in mid sequence on the scrollpad. He turned to watch her walking around his space like a predator. “Hey, Gen, what’s up? What are you doing here?” He forced a smile and then clicked his scrollpad off and slid it into his hip holster.

“I was on ES2 anyway checking on Cassie’s crops, thought I would stop and say hello.” Gen walked toward Tuna who was trying to seem happy to see her, but with mixed results.

“Cassie’s crops?” Tuna repeated with a hint of doubt. “That’s cool. She works hard at it.” He turned away from her intense gaze to review some numbers on a wall monitor. “She really values your gardening tips.” He kept his eyes busy on his console.

Gen tapped her finger nervously on the panel in front of her. “I don’t see you hanging out with Adam much anymore.” She waited for his response. He leaned forward to read another screen.

“I see Adam in class every day.” Tuna finally faced her. “We launch these ships in 197 days. Every bolt on the ES2 is my responsibility. I no longer have time to hang out.” A certain mix of emotions, part hostility, part fear, rose to the surface of his cheeks.