Isle of Man

CHAPTER 4

Returning to Holocene II



“Did we really need all this?”

The professor hefts another pallet from the train onto the platform.

“Most of it,” he says. “But we also needed a reason to call up the train ahead of its scheduled monthly visit. You of all people should know how important routine is down there.”

When the last of the supplies are finally offloaded, we eat a quick meal then retire to our bunks for some rest before the journey down to Holocene II. The professor has moved back into his room in the living quarters, so it’s just Hannah and me left in the submarine. She makes an attempt to crawl in with me, but the bunks are just too narrow, and she jumps into the upper bunk and falls asleep within minutes.

I toss and turn beneath her.

Several times I get up and climb the ladder to the hatch and look out toward the tunnel, hoping to see Jimmy returning. But each time I’m alone with the eerie LED glow and the distant sound of dripping water. When I do get to sleep, it’s restless, with dreams of Jimmy being killed by drones, or eaten by bears, so I’m grateful when the professor pokes his head into our bunkroom and announces that it’s time to leave.

Hannah and I pull on our new zipsuits, brought up on the train from Holocene II. It feels funny to be wearing one again after all that time nearly naked in the cove, and later wearing Dr. Radcliffe’s hand-me-down clothes. But while I’m clawing at the closed neck and uncomfortable, Hannah seems to be happy to have shed the threadbare dress she’d been wearing, admiring herself in her new zipsuit from every angle in the small mirror.

My pipe feels bulky in my zipsuit pocket, but I don’t want to take it with me down to Holocene II anyway. If something happens, at least my father’s pipe won’t be buried down there forever with me. I remember Jimmy’s look of shame that day in the cove as he apologized for stealing my pipe—shame over something so silly when I have done so much worse. I wish he were here now so I could tell him what he means to me. So I could give him the pipe to keep as a token of my thanks. He deserves it. He’s a better man than I am.

I tuck the pipe and case of tobacco in a drawer beneath my bunk and head up with Hannah. I stop at the edge of the dock for one last look, before Hannah tugs me along by my sleeve.

Boarding the train is hard. I remember climbing in on the day I left Holocene II, and I remember Dorian with his clipboard locking me inside for the ride. I remember the terrible accident that came like a surprise bomb while I slept in my seat. And I remember crawling through the crippled car to get free.

The professor shuts the train car door, and I’m immediately claustrophobic. My heart pumps with panic, my head pounds with pain. What am I thinking? Back in a zipsuit and heading down to Holocene II? Remember the reasons, I tell myself. We’re going to save lives. I sit in a metal seat and rest my head between my legs and breathe—I breathe good energy in, and I breathe bad energy out.

Hannah sits beside me for a while, but I’m in no mood to talk, and eventually she goes and sits next to the professor and they discuss the plan. I never knew five hours could last so long. I can feel the train moving deeper, as if the weight of the rock above were somehow increasing the air pressure as we descend. Fortunately, I drift in and out of a restless sleep, and just as I finally give up on wondering when we’ll arrive, I feel myself press back into the seat as the train glides to a stop.

The door lock clicks free, and the professor stands and grabs the handle.

“Straight to the elevators now,” he warns, looking back at Hannah and me before opening the door.

We cross the dim-lit loading dock like thieves, walking on our tiptoes even though it’s deserted. When we arrive at the elevators, they stand waiting and open, their polished steel interiors reflecting back our warbled shadows as we pass. The professor counts them off out loud, ushering us into the sixth. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his hand, staring at his empty palm. He searches himself with increasing panic.

“Frickle nick. I just knew it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Wait. Aha! There you are.” He produces a keycard from some hidden pocket in the folds of his coveralls and waves the card in front of the panel. The doors slide shut, and the elevator begins its long descent.

“Why this elevator?” Hannah asks.

The professor waves his card. “Other than our once a year population exchange, only freight elevators operate between the levels. They’re direct shafts, each connecting only one level to the transfer station.”

“But why?” she asks.

“Well, to provide a modicum of control, I guess. It helps to prevent fraternization between levels.”

“Smart,” she says, nodding.

I shake my head.

“Cruel is more like it.”

The elevator drops for a long time. Maybe three minutes, if I were counting. When it finally stops, the doors don’t open.

“Oh, no,” I say. “Here we go again.”

Hannah opens her mouth to ask me what I mean, but her question is cut off by the blast of disinfecting gas rushing into the elevator. She panics, just like I did my first time, and backs away from the vent. But there’s nowhere to go. The professor’s smile disappears in the white cloud, and I reach for Hannah and try to comfort her as I suck the gas in and try not to cough.

When the doors open, we pile out into the dim gray glow of the all-too-familiar LED lights and cough out the inhaled gas, fighting to catch our breath. Hannah looks upset, but she sucks it up without a word and walks with us onto a grated bridge. Below us, a channel of murky water meanders through the dim valley. I’m overwhelmed by the smell of human waste.

Hannah plugs her nose.

“What is this place?”

“Sewage treatment level,” I say, happy to know more than she does for once.

She points down.

“You mean to tell me that that’s crap?”

The professor laughs.

“That’s just gray water, young lady. The crap is coming up soon enough.”

We wind our way over various walkways, past windowless buildings and islands of pipes and valves that seem to sprout from the ground. The rotten smell builds steadily as we go until the professor stops on a high bridge and points down to an enormous field of circular pools, bubbling and burping out hideous gases that are sucked up by giant vent hoods hovering above them like hungry, mechanical mouths.

“Gross,” Hannah moans, her fingers still clasped on her nose. “This is disgusting.”

“There’s nothing disgusting about the beauty of bacteria, young lady,” the professor says, playfully tapping her nose. “Did you know there are more bacteria cells in your own body than there are human cells? We have more in common with those fellas feasting on our shit down there than we do with anything else in the world up there.”

“What do they do with the methane?” I ask.

“Good question,” he says, smiling at me. “It’s looped back and burned to heat the pools, thus speeding the decomposition process in a self-encouraging cycle.”

“Very smart,” I say, genuinely impressed. “You know all those years growing up on Level 3, I never even thought about what they did with our waste.”

The professor nods.

“Nobody ever does.”

“Can we keep moving?” Hannah asks.

Once past the main treatment station, we cross another bridge and follow a footpath on the inside edge of the cavern. It is worn smooth as glass by a thousand years of boot marks left by workers trudging to their daily grind. As we round a bend, I get a glimpse down into the cavern valley where small apartment buildings cluster around an open square, their yellow windows appearing to wink as the residents’ shadows cross in front of the backlit shades.

“Shouldn’t the residences be on higher ground than the treatment plant?” I ask.

The professor shakes his head.

“Methane rises.”

After we pass the fork leading to the valley of apartments, the path turns hard left, and we enter a tunnel in the cavern wall. Unlike the well-worn workers’ path, the tunnel seems neglected, mostly because of trash lying in corners and graffiti written on the walls. I notice one tag in particular that reads: JAMES + ERICA FOREVER, with a chalk line through “Erica” and the name BETH scrawled above it.

The professor stops at a steel door. A yellow warning label barely visible beneath the dirt and dust reads:

DANGER, BIOHAZARD.

He fumbles his pockets again for his keycard and waves it in front of a panel. The panel opens, exposing a keypad. He punches in a long code—nothing happens.

“Son of a sheep.” He closes his eyes for a moment then tries again. This time the locks release, and the heavy door pops open with a woosh of pressurized air from inside. A short hallway leads to another door with another keypad. The professor unlocks it, and we enter a cavernous room lit with orange vapor lights, a welcome change from the gray glow of LED. The walls are lined with yellow barrels all marked with three interlocking black circles that I recognize from my lessons as the biohazard sign. It’s a symbol that makes me instantly uncomfortable.

We cross the room quickly, our footsteps echoing in the quiet chamber, and enter yet another elevator, this one much smaller than the other. As the elevator descends, fear grips me again, and I lean against the wall and close my eyes. I try to calm myself by thinking about Jimmy. I imagine him miles above us, walking free beneath the bright winter sun. I imagine Junior gamboling along beside him, frolicking in the fresh snow. I imagine them making camp on the dry ground beneath a giant pine, huddling together in front of a warm fire. I think I’d give anything to be there with him right now.

As the elevator drops, the temperature rises, and sweat beads on my brow. Hannah grips my hand in hers, and I can tell by her clammy skin that she’s nervous, too. The professor whistles, seemingly more comfortable the deeper we go.

After what feels like an eternity, the elevator stops, and the doors open to reveal a circular room humming with the sound of hidden fans.

“It’s hot in here,” Hannah says, fanning her face.

The professor nods.

“Believe it or not, this is cool for this depth. If it weren’t for the fans, we’d be cooked alive.”

Several tunnels branch off from the room, all radiating in different directions and all with strange symbols etched into the walls above them. The professor stands staring at the tunnels, as if trying to remember the correct path.

“What language is that?” I ask.

The professor shakes his head.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Haven’t you been here before?”

“Of course I have,” he says, his tone edgy with offense. “But you might remember that Holocene II was a government research facility long before Radcliffe negotiated a private and public partnership for the Foundation to run it.”

“What did they do down here before?” I ask.

“I don’t know much,” he answers, with a slight shiver in his voice. “And I what I do know I wish I could forget. I think it’s this third tunnel. Follow me now. Let’s hurry along.”

We enter the tunnel, and I feel a noticeable and welcome breeze that smells of chemically conditioned air. The tunnel is dim, lined with closed doors on either side. Above each door are symbols in the same alien characters as were above the tunnels themselves. The professor stops at a door and puzzles over the symbol. He reaches for the handle, then hesitates. He changes his mind, pulls his hand back, and moves to the next door, mumbling to himself as we follow. Seemingly sure this time, he opens the door. A blue ceiling light illuminates glass, liquid-filled pods from which shadowed mutant humans stare with unblinking eyes, their grotesque faces pressed to the glass and watching the door with patience possible only to the dead.

“Verdammte!” the professor says, jerking the door closed.

He leads us back to the first door, clenching his teeth and opening it quickly, in the manner with which one might pull a bandage. Fortunately, the room is much less spooky. The LED lights come on automatically as the door is opened, revealing a mess of antique computers stored on racks. Cables spill from boxes; a file cabinet stands against a wall with its drawers ajar.

The professor sighs with relief and leads us into the room. Hannah taps me on the shoulder and points to a bin filled with reading slates. They’re of an earlier generation than the one I had growing up on Level 3, but they appear to be in working condition. I grab the one that looks the least abused.

We join the professor at the back of the room where he fuddles with a combination lock on an enormous free-standing safe. He spins the dial, stopping on random numbers, then immediately second guesses himself and curses as he spins it again. He continues like this for several minutes before Hannah reaches past him and tries the handle. The safe isn’t locked, and the heavy door swings open. At first, my heart sinks because it appears to be empty. Then I see a small black box tucked into a corner of the bottom shelf. The professor slides the box out and holds it cradled in his hands.

“Open it,” the professor says.

I release the seal, and the glass lid jumps in my hand as the vacuum inside is filled with pressurized air. Then I reach in and remove a small solid-state hard drive, less than a third the size of the slate I’m holding in my other hand. It’s hard to believe that such a small and mindless thing containing nothing but ones and zeros holds the mastercode for a software system that has systematically murdered millions of people on its relentless quest to eradicate all human DNA from Earth.

By the time I realize I’m standing there looking at the hard drive in a trance, I hear Hannah and the professor arguing.

“But I want to look around some,” Hannah says.

“No,” is his stern reply. “We’ve got to keep moving. I had to program the train’s return departure from the Foundation before we left. If we miss it, young lady, we’ll all be spending the rest of our lives down here.”

That’s all I need to hear. I’m at the door in a flash, holding it open and ushering Hannah and the professor into the tunnel. Hannah looks longingly at the countless closed doors we pass as we make our way back toward the elevator.

Up and out of the biohazard room again, I slip the hard drive in my pocket and clutch the lesson slate to my chest as we walk-jog our way across the sewage pools, retracing our steps. My panic doesn’t subside until we’re back in the freight elevator moving up, safely on our way to the transfer station and the waiting train. Hannah squeezes my hand and shoots me a sexy smile on the sly. Sometimes she can be very cute.

We stand hand in hand and take in the gas this time like pros. Then the elevator opens, and we step off and hurry in a single file line across the loading platform toward the train. The hydraulic hiss of another opening elevator door catches my ear, but before I can turn my head to look, something slams into me and knocks me to the ground.

I scramble to my feet and spin around.

“Red?”

“Aubrey?”

Standing before me with a look of panic on his face is Red, my old childhood nemesis from Level 3. He’s shorter than I remember him, his boyish freckles faded and a new patch of red, wispy whiskers on his chin. But otherwise, his enormous head covered with thick, red hair remains unchanged. He looks me up and down.

“You look different,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I was fixing to ask you the same thing.”

“I asked it first.”

He looks down and kicks at the ground.

“I was going to see my girl.”

“On Level 3?”

“Yeah.”

“But I thought you were moved down to 5.”

He holds up a lanyard with a dangling keycard similar to the professor’s.

“I’m apprenticing in freight.”

I laugh.

“Still sneaking around during rest hours, eh? Good to see some things haven’t changed.”

The professor grabs my arm.

“We need to keep moving.”

Red looks at the professor, a confused expression falling over his face.

“Hey, wait a minute. You’re a senior, aren’t you? A real, live senior. If you’re only thirty-five, I’ll eat my head.”

“No small task,” the professor grumbles, sizing up Red’s big head with an irritated glare. “Let’s go, Aubrey.”

“Are you all older up there?” Red asks. “And what are you doing down here?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, taking a step away. “And don’t tell anyone you saw us here, either.”

Turning away, I follow the professor toward the train.

We both stop when I hear Red scream.

I turn back and see Hannah leading Red along behind us, pulling him by his ear. They pass us by, Red flailing his arms and crying.

Hannah says: “No way is he staying behind.”

Before I can protest, we’re all on board the train and the door is closed and locked. Red slumps down in a seat and rubs his ear, already bright red and swelling. Hannah storms to the back of the car and sits with her arms crossed. The professor looks at me and shakes his heads, leaving me to sit down and explain things to Red. No easy task for sure.

By the time we approach the Foundation, nearly five hours later, I’ve somehow managed to confuse Red more than I’ve managed to enlighten him.

“So ... ,” he scratches his head, “Eden wasn’t really Eden, but now it’s been destroyed by a flood anyway? And this guy’s how old again?”

“Don’t get hung up on the details,” I say, not wanting to go over it for the thirteenth time. “Just know you’re taking part in something big up here now. Okay? Something that you’ll be remembered for forever.”

“You mean freeing the people?”

“Yes, freeing the people.”

“And what about these drones again?”

The train glides to a stop, and Hannah struts to the door and yanks it opens. We follow her onto the Foundation cavern platform.

Red looks around.

“So where are we now?”

When Hannah shoots an annoyed look our way, the professor says: “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you let me show Red here around the Foundation, explain some things to the lad. Might be nice to dust off my old teaching skills, you know. That way you two can go get some rest.”

“What about the mastercode?” I ask, holding up the hard disk. “Don’t we need to load it?”

“I’ll start a system backup,” the professor says, taking it from my hand. “But that will take hours. I’ll come and get you when things are ready to be rebooted.” Then he nods to the lesson slate in my other hand. “Would you like me to give that a charge while I’m at it?”

“Please. Thanks. I miss reading a lot. And I am pretty beat. I think I will go get some rest.”

“I’m not tired,” Hannah says. “I’m going to go see what’s salvageable in the lab.”

Hannah takes off toward her lab, the professor leads Red away, and I head for the welcome relief of a submarine bunk.

I descend the ladder and make my way to the bunkroom, navigating by memory and not bothering to turn on any lights. I crawl halfway into my narrow bunk and freeze. Someone’s in my bed! I have one leg on the mattress, and one leg still on the ground, and all I can hear is my heart pounding in my chest. Then something warm and bristly rubs against my ankle. Still not daring to move, I squint until my eyes adjust to the low light, and I notice Junior lying on the floor by my feet.

Hope leaps into my heart.

I turn and look at Jimmy’s shadow next to me, his sleeping face fading into view. He looks peaceful and calm, not a care in the world visible on his features. I’m reminded of those fearful days hidden away in that cave, nursing him back to health, hoping the homemade antibiotics would help. I remember the same innocence on his sleeping face then. And I remember the horrors of what happened in that cove flooding back into his eyes the moment he was awake. As much as I want to, I can’t bring myself to wake him now. Instead, I do something that surprises me. I lean down and kiss his forehead.

Then I ease myself off the bunk, climb onto the empty one above, close my eyes, and fall fast asleep.