Author Archives: Eric Toribio

The Judgery

by Eric Toribio

You wake up.

How long have you been asleep?

You look at the clock…10 minutes; A good night’s rest. You usually only sleep 5 minutes, so this is a big improvement. Your doctor told you to start getting more sleep. He gave you steps to help you improve your sleep. You followed them. They worked. 10 minutes is good, but you probably shouldn’t sleep more than that.

You remove the SleepFast device from your head and place it back on it’s stand at the side of your bed. It looks almost like a pedestal. It stands so tall that from your bed you have to look up. You only look down at it once you’re out of bed.

Your feet hit the floor. A light races from one edge of the black baseboard to the other side, turning the baseboards white, lighting the carpet beneath your feet. A voice greets you:

“Hello! Good morning! The sun might not show his face today, and it is going to rain, but don’t despair! Tomorrow looks to be sunny with a high of seventy degrees! Wednesday is always rain day! It is necessary for the beauty of the planet!”

The cheeriness of the male voice was a little too much for this time in the morning. It always was. It had a way of getting under your skin. The cheery voice was supposed to make you happy and keep you in a good mood. But it almost had the opposite effect.

* * * *

The morning commute to work is dreadful. It must be taking 5 minutes. There was a jam somewhere. Traffic got backed up for miles. You left for work a minute earlier than usual to compensate for any delays. You hope you don’t get there late. Again. And get reamed by your boss. Again.

Luckily, you reached work just in time. The doorway scans the chip in your wrist and you’re officially on the clock. In the system. The elevator wasn’t working, so you had to take the Escastairs. Up 3 floors. Could this day start off any worse? You think to yourself. You know your coworkers are thinking the same thing. Everybody has this look of dissatisfaction as they walk up the moving stairs that inconveniently wind their way around the facility with little exit points for different floors. You get off on the third and head down another moving walkway.

You reach your department. You walk into the cube matrix and take the transport to your cube. It’s in upper-middle-northeast corner. There are one hundred cubes in this matrix. You are one out of a hundred. You strap into your floating chair with the rounded bottom and back. It’s comfortable. More comfortable than it has any right to be. You guess they had to make something comfortable. You spin the chair around and look at your wrap-around desk. It comes out from the wall in a never ending loop. Everywhere you look there is desk. It sickens you. You look down. The floor is about five feet down. It would be dangerous if the gravity was turned on in here. Luckily, the gravity was only turned on for the desk to keep all papers and tools from floating away. You laugh. “Luckily”.

You decide to get to work and manipulate the chair over to the edge of the desk. It doesn’t matter where. Your arms, having been free floating all this time, latch down onto the desk like they’re being suctioned. It’s a feeling you never get used to. It’s probably not good for your arms. But they never really think about what’s good for you. They only think about what’s good for them. The bastards. Best not to think too loud. They might hear you.

You start on your paper work. Sometimes you get to thinking this job is designed so that you never get your work done and you always get more and more every day. It sucks the life out of you. It sucks the life out of everyone. Everyone is lifeless. Everyone is dead. What are we even doing here anymore? On Earth, you mean. You wonder what the point of life is now that humanity’s soul and vibrance is gone. It’s a miracle you even had a thought like that. Maybe that’s hope enough. But you doubt it.

That voice that greets you in the morning every time your feet touch the carpet starts to make more sense. It’s a last resort to try and keep some kind of life alive. Even if it is artificial. Could artificial life be more living than real life? You need to stop thinking. This is getting too deep and serious. You need to focus on your work. Maybe if you work hard enough and fast enough you can get through the whole stack of papers and have less tomorrow. Or is that just how they want you to feel?

Dammit. You have no idea what’s them and what’s you anymore. They’ve screwed with you so much that it’s fogging your mind. All the stuff they’ve done is atrocious. They made a device that allows 10 minutes of sleep to do as much good for your body as 8 hours used to do. Then they extended the work day by 6 hours. Then they made transportation go exponentially faster so you can get anywhere in a fraction of the time it used to take. Then they extended the work day another hour. How much time was there in a day anymore? How much was spent at work? What do people do in their free time?

You stop yourself. You’re doing it again. Just get to work. It’s not like the faster or harder you work, the more you’ll be rewarded, but at least you can get your mind off of things. That’s all you want at this point. You just want to stop thinking. It feels like a curse. You envy the people who have fully accepted their robotness. Which brings up a good question. Why haven’t they just replaced everyone with robots?

You pick up the first paper on your pile. At first you just stare at the words. You stare through the words, into the white space between the black letters. You stop thinking altogether. You get into a sort of trance and it fills you with peace. A bright flash hits your eyes and you snap out of it. You notice an arm retract into the ceiling. It was one of those robots that scans your life systems. If it thinks you might be dead it comes down and scans you to make sure. Great. Even a robot thinks you’re dead. You look at the page again. This time you actually read it:

Name: Ben Fit

(All names and surnames were shortened to one syllable to save time).

Occupation: Construction worker
Claim: Jen Goop stole one of his spoons. He wants one million dollars in compensation.

Is this a joke? You don’t even have to debate yourself on this one. You write on the line at the bottom:

Rule in favor of the defendant.

One suit down, about one thousand to go. Why do people even bother anymore? You guess you shouldn’t complain. If people didn’t file ridiculous lawsuits against each other you’d be out of a job. Sometimes you regret going to law school, but there are worse jobs than being a Judgery. Although most of the time you feel like law school was completely unnecessary. Most people with half a brain could determine 90% of the suits that come across your desk.

You read the next one:

Name: Ron Yunk
Occupation: Cobbler
Claim: Dan Hup ruled unjustly. Wants one million dollars in compensation.

What the hell? You think. That’s your name. Why is this file on your desk? It’s clearly a conflict of interest. It’s against the law to judge yourself. This file should have been sent somewhere else. You try to remember the procedure for something like this.

“Call boss,” you say. The cube goes dark and a square pops up in thin air with your boss on it.

“Yes, Dan?” she says.

“I got a suit against myself by mistake. What do I do with it?”

“That’s a breach of the law. I’m sending someone to arrest you. Just sit tight.” The screen goes blank, then collapses on itself. Your cube turns red.

“What the hell?!” you scream.

You try to jump, but you’re still strapped to your chair, so you just kind of spin around until you’re upside down. You unbuckle yourself and start floating toward the door at the ceiling. Suddenly, gravity kicks in and you are pulled to the floor like an elevator with a snapped cable. It hurts. It hurts a lot. You try to figure out a way to get to the door. You can reach the desk. You climb onto it. From there you can reach the door in the ceiling. You open it and climb out.

What now? You can’t just take the transport down. You’ll have to scale down the outside of the cube matrix. It’s not going to be easy. No time to waste. You run down the hallway and to the edge of the cube matrix. You’ll have to break through the wall. They’re coming. You can hear them. Luckily, everybody’s very cheap about buildings. You punch the wall repeatedly and it tears and breaks fairly easily. You rip a hole big enough to fit through and look down.

The outside is smooth. Not much, if anything, to grab onto. You might just have to slide. You climb out, hanging by your fingers, then turn around and let go. Your butt touches the side as you slide down the length of a football field. You start wondering if this was a bad idea. Once you get to the last cube, you grab onto the protrusion of its wall and stop yourself. It hurts your fingers. You let yourself calm down a bit, then let go. You fall to the ground. The pain sensors in your brain go off, but you ignore them.

You run. There are guards coming toward you. All the guards. You’ve never fought. Never been trained to fight. First your first attempt here, you don’t do too bad. The guards level you within about 30 seconds and beat you into submission. It hurts. They cuff you.

* * * *

You wake up in a room. You don’t know when you went unconscious or how long you’ve been out. You’re not sure you even remember what all happened. Your boss sits in front of you. You’re sitting at a table in a bland room. It dulls the senses.

“I didn’t do anything,” you say. The boss doesn’t respond. “It’s just a mistake. The wrong file got put in my stack.” The boss kind of leans back.

“Then why did you run?” your boss asks you condescendingly. You don’t respond. “It’s standard procedure to make an arrest in this situation. Then it gets resolved. Then you go free. There’s nothing to get excited about.”

“You can say that again,” you say, to the confusion of your boss.

“Unfortunately, I have no choice but to fire you.”

“I figured.”

“I also have to send you to jail.”

“That I didn’t.” You don’t know why it hadn’t crossed your mind, but it makes sense and you don’t fight it.

“You will spend thirty days in jail. Upon release they will assign you another job utilizing your skillset.”

That is the end of it. The guards haul you off. You travel to the prison. You wonder if it will actually be so bad. You hadn’t been to prison before. It couldn’t be any worse than work. Maybe it would be better.

You reach the prison and see a giant cube of a building. When you enter, you start to get a sense of dread. You are quickly filed along and get into put into your section. You’re in prison attire and you aren’t entirely sure how everything happened so quickly or where the clothes came from. Within five minutes of arriving, you are brought to the door of your cell. It opens and you go in.

It’s a damn cube. It doesn’t look much different from your work cube. Same desk. Same chair. You have the undesirable task of building parts for machinery.

You look down. There’s a bed on the floor.

You work for hours. Hours upon hours. The walls turn black. It must be time for sleep. You float down to the bed and get situated. You see a SleepFast sitting there beside you. Not tonight. Tonight you’ll enjoy a nice long sleep. After thirty seconds of shut-eye, a robot arm comes down and scans you. You cover your eyes with your hand. A cheery voice says:

“Hey, buddy! Please use the SleepFast! It gives you all the sleep you need in a fraction of the time!”

You groan and shut your eyes again, hoping the robot will go away. It’s the same damn voice that greeted you in the morning.

“Hey, buddy! Hate to be a stickler, but I’m gonna have to ask you to use the SleepFast! It gives you all the sleep you need in a fraction of the time!”

The voice seemed a little menacing in that last sentence. Was it threatening you? You ignore it again, hoping it will leave you the hell alone.

“Hey, pal! Sorry to bother you, but I’m gonna need you to use the SleepFast! It gives you all the sleep you need in a fraction of the time!”

He was definitely threatening you that time. You ignore it again just to see what happens. The robot shines a blinding light in your face.

“Look alive, buddy! I hate to do this, but you really need to use the SleepFast! It gives you all the sleep you need in a fraction of the time!”

Or what? You think. Maybe it would just keep annoying you.

“Hey! I just got a great idea! How about I play some soothing music to help you sleep! If you use the SleepFast, it gives you all the sleep you need in a fraction of the time!”

The most horrendously happy song starts playing. Bubbling its way into your brain. Fine. It wins. You grab the helmet and strap in, then turn over to sleep. The music stops. The light fades. The robot ascends. At least the future got prison right.

To Start Off Alive

by Eric Toribio

It was already a long commute to the heart of the city. But it got even longer.

It was only five minutes after I got on the subway that it happened. Five men got on. And they took over the train. They pulled out guns and that was that. They didn’t look too much different than me. One of the men had a nasty cough. That made us all a little uneasy.

We couldn’t hear what was going on when they started talking with the people in the control room. They could’ve stopped the train if they wanted to. I suppose they didn’t because the terrorists probably threatened to kill people if they did.

About twenty minutes went by and someone else on the train had developed a nasty cough. I must not have noticed it before. Come to think of it, a couple people had the same cough. They all sounded like they’d been smoking ten packs a day for thirty years. Maybe they had been.

I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t feel tense or scared. At least, not at first. It’s not like terrorism was routine or anything, but I just didn’t feel afraid. And looking around, nobody else really seemed to be scared either. We all were just at peace with the situation somehow.

By half an hour into it, over half the people on the train were coughing. Needless to say, I covered my mouth with my jacket. I doubted it would do much good, but it made me feel better than doing nothing. But even then I hadn’t started worrying. It was ominous for sure, and a little unnerving maybe, but it didn’t actually frighten me. But then something happened. Something that changed everything. And it was then that I started to worry. And it was then that everybody got scared.

Forty-five minutes in, the terrorist with the cough took to the ground. He coughed up some kind of black liquid. That didn’t bode well for the other coughers. The man started to shake violently and fell onto his back. Then his skin started disappearing. He was still alive when his skin had completely dissolved and all you could see was his muscle. Perhaps the most terrifying part was that he wasn’t screaming. Then it got weird.

The black liquid he had coughed up started moving. It inched toward his body and wrapped itself around him like a cocoon. It looked like he was in a body bag. His body stopped moving. For the next five minutes there was complete silence. Nobody even coughed once. They were probably trying to stifle them. Even the terrorists stopped terrorising.

After those five minutes, the cocoon opened up and out stepped less of a man and more of an insect. Or reptile. It was hard to be sure. But it was out of this world, I’ll tell you that much. Maybe it wasn’t out of this world. Maybe just from one of the dark corners. But it was ugly as all hell. It didn’t seem hostile, though. Terrifying, but not threatening. The whatever-it-was looked at his friends – or whatever they were to him now – as if he still recognized them. Then it ripped open the train doors and leaped out.

The biggest question we all had was: How long had he had the cough? Was it days? Hours? Did it start just before he got on the train? The terrorists had the presence of mind to let the control room know what happened. They understood the gravity of the situation.

The government tried to quarantine us, but we all knew it didn’t matter. It was too late. That thing already got out. It would infect others. The battle was already lost. After another few hours, almost everybody on the train was coughing. We were all just waiting for someone else to cough up black stuff. It was the worst waiting game I had ever played.

Another few hours passed. One person started shaking. Then another. Soon half the place was shaking and vomiting black stuff.

Then I coughed.

Back and Forth

by Eric Toribio

The city glowed neon in the nighttime. Maybe it was just my goggles. They made everything look a little funny. Not that everything wasn’t funny. Not “haha” funny. Peculiar funny. The kinda funny where crooks and politicians do things that don’t make a whole lotta sense. But who’s the crook and who’s the politician?

I’d been followin’ this guy for the better part of an hour. Waitin’ for him to slip up. My client had their suspicions, but I knew he was guilty. They always were. My feet kicked up water from the puddles forming from the rain. It was making my socks wet.

The world flickered. Damn goggles. Hadn’t worked right since I got ‘em. But as much as they failed, they also helped me keep track of whoever I was following. It helps in the private investigation business. Made my job easier, that’s for sure. The guy I was followin’ turned and entered a building. Finally.

I turned to follow and the world flickered again. Instead of a door, I found a brick wall. Smacked m’damn nose on it. I stepped back and tried to make sense of it. The world flickered back and I saw the door again. I grabbed the knob and then-

Brick wall. My hand was encased perfectly in brick. This was a helluva conundrum. What the hell was going on? I didn’t see anybody else on the sidewalk.

“Little help!” I called. No reply. Looks like I was stuck. I’d have taken my goggles off if not for fear I’d get stuck in that personless void. I tried the usual. Kick the brick wall. Punch the brick wall with my free, non-dominant hand. Headbutt the brick wall. As usual, nothing. I just had to wait for the flicker.

***

Hours passed. I actually started to think about life and philosophy. I didn’t like it. Thankfully the world flickered back just as I was getting too deep for comfort and I shoved the door open and dashed inside the building. I ripped the goggles off my face and threw ‘em to the ground. Then I went down the stairwell and into whatever dive bar this guy led me to.

I saw him. Sittin’ there like a typical bastard. He gave off the stench of the type-a rat you wouldn’t even let touch the bottom of your shoe. He was chattin’ up some broad. They held hands and I saw the transaction. When they got up and started walkin’ to the door, I got in their way.

“Norton,” I said with my best mean face on. I stepped forward and grabbed his throat.

*flicker*

I held nothing. I stood in the middle of an empty room, losing my balance. I fell flat on my face. My patience was wearing thin. I ran around trying to find a door. I found it and ran out to the empty street. No cars or anything. Weird. Without rhyme or reason I just started running.

*flicker*

I bumped into somebody and we fell to the ground. The back of his head looked familiar. I flipped him over and it was HIM. Norton.

“I caught you, you son of a bitch!” I said. I went to smack his face for the trouble.

*flicker*

My hand flew through the air. I nearly smacked my own self in the face. I just sat down. What was the point?

*flicker*

Somebody’s knee hit my nose, breaking it. They’d been running. They tripped over me. I was in pain, but not showin’ it. I stood up and hailed a taxi, asked him to take me to my office. I was done for the day. Everything was getting a little too crazy for my taste. We made it halfway there, no incident. Then-

*flicker*

I was sailing through the air at a good forty m-p-h. There was no way this was ending well. I flew through the air for a long time. Before I hit the ground-

*flicker*

I landed on an oncoming car and was terrified, the wind nearly blowing my face off. The startled driver stopped the car and it threw me forward. It took a bit to get my head straight. The driver was angry at me, of course. I threw him aside and, uh, commandeered his vehicle. Bless my stars, I made it to my office. I quickly called my client and told her I discovered her husband cheating. I didn’t want any more part of it. There was no telling if it was the case that made these weird things start happening or if it was just a coincidence. I looked out the window. How could I even be sure what was real anymore? Through the window I didn’t see any people. No cars. No lights. No rain. The buildings looked like cardboard boxes. Everything bland and lifeless.

I’m in the other world. Maybe it’s better here. No funny stuff. Everything’s just the way it is.

I’m hungry.

They Are In and Over

by Eric Toribio

The room was pristine, like it had been freshly built and without a grain of dirt ever touching a surface. But this room had been around for nearly a century. The door was like a thin membrane, both existent and non-existent. Jensen stepped into the membrane and for a moment it formed around him and followed him into the room. Then the room made an affirming sound and let him pass through.

Jensen was a middle aged man with a sort of common handsomeness. Although middle aged in Aero had risen to about 130 years old. He wore a very expensive, light colored suit and beige shoes. He walked over to his kitchen counter and put a coffee mug into a machine. It instantly filled his cup with steaming hot coffee, exactly the way he liked it. He walked over to the French doors leading to the deck. The whole house was very open. No small doors between rooms, but big wide openings.

The French doors opened by themselves from the middle. Jensen walked through and stood against the railing, looking out at the sky. The ground was far below, and he saw mostly clouds.

“Jensen, you there?” asked a voice from what looked like a ball bearing inside Jensen’s ear.

“Of course,” Jensen said. “What do you need?”

“I need you to come down.”

“Sure thing, Vic.”

Jensen took a second to breathe in more of the view, then walked back into his house. The door shut behind him. His coffee mug transformed into what looked like more of a travel mug. He passed through the front door membrane once more, this time going out.

***

Jensen entered a bright white control room.

“What’s up?” he said. Vic looked up over at him.

“Not sure yet,” Vic said. “But I thought you should take a look.”

Jensen looked at the instruments and screens. He didn’t seem troubled by anything. “Probably just an earthquake or something.”

“It doesn’t look like one to me,” said Vic.

“They don’t all look the same, Vic.”

“What if they’re coming back?”

“I doubt it. They’ve been down there for a hundred years. We scared them pretty badly. They won’t be back.”

“Alright, Jensen. You’re the boss.”

Jensen walked out into the corridor. It was just a small walkway from one floating building to another. He breathed in the fresh air and strolled to his favorite restaurant. He ordered a perfect steak. Cooked perfectly.

***

Back in the control room, Vic stared at the monitors. After careful consideration, he mentally dialed the Organizer.

“Deora, you there?” he said.

“I’m here,” she said. “What do you need?”

“I need you to come look at something.”

“Down in a minute.” Hayley looked at him from her chair.

“Don’t trust Jensen’s analysis?” Hayley asked playfully. Vic looked at her.

“I’d just like a second opinion.” He paused. “But no, I’m not convinced so easily. He underestimates them.”

Shortly after, Deora arrived.

“Take a look at this and tell me what you think it is.” Deora walked gracefully over to the monitor and stared at it for a few seconds, studying it.

“Could be some kind of volcano,” she said.

“May I propose another possibility?”

“Of course.”

“What if they’re coming back up?”

“I doubt it. But I suppose anything’s possible. Just keep an eye on it.”

“What should I do if it is them?”

“Lookup the protocols. They’ve been in place since the beginning.”

***

Jensen arrived back at his house and went straight out to the balcony to finish what he’d started earlier. A fresh cup of coffee sat in his hand as he admired the scenery. His attention was drawn to something coming towards him from the ground. Flying towards the city. He adjusted his eyes and zoomed in about 400 percent. It was a person on a flyer. It was a girl, and she didn’t look like she was from Aero.

“Vic?” he asked.

“I’m here,” said Vic coldly through the earpiece.

“You seeing this?”

“Yeah, I’m seeing it.” Vic was clearly annoyed.

“Sorry, Vic. I’ll be down.”

Jensen bolted out of the house and out into the city. Down the walkways and back into the control room. Vic shot him a dirty look when he came in.

“What do we do, boss?” Vic asked.

“Charge the cannons,” Jensen said. “She can’t get through the shield anyway, but better to be safe than sorry.”

“She?” Vic said, puzzled.

“He must not have seen it, Vic,” Hayley said.

“Seen what? What the hell are you talking about?” Jensen said.

Vic showed him. He displayed on the monitors the view of the ground. There were millions of people in a swarm heading for Aero. Jensen was shell shocked.

“Looks like those illusions didn’t work,” Vic said. “Guess they got tired of it down there and figured we were full of it. What do we do now, Jensen? It’s your call.”

“Just fire everything we have. These bastards are going back underground one way or another.”

***

The flyer was simple enough to control. It was specifically designed so that anybody could use it. Petra wasn’t some cavewoman who didn’t know how to do anything, despite the fact that she’d lived underground all her life. There was technology down there. And it was easy enough to see the big red start button and pull the flyer in whatever direction you wanted to go. Push forward on the handlebars and you go forward. Pull back, you slow down. It took her a bit to get the hang of it, but after a while she was able to maneuver it well enough.

But there was only one flyer. At least that she could see. And the mass of people following her had to just run along on the ground in the direction she was headed. But the swarm was in the millions. They weren’t sure what they were going to do once they reached the floating city, but they knew that’s where the battle was. Petra didn’t even know what she would do.

Petra was getting closer. She was almost there. She felt the surge of adrenaline pumping through her veins. Then, just as she was within a couple hundred yards, she saw two things. A gigantic cannon swivelled in her direction and just sat there, aiming at her. Following her. The other thing she saw was a shimmer. Like the glare on a pair of glasses. She couldn’t exactly see it, but something was surrounding the city. Like a bubble. Maybe a glass dome. When she reached the edge of the bubble, she leapt off her flyer and landed on the surface of the shield. She was running before she hit the ground and kept running along the shield. Her bike exploded when it came in contact.

It must’ve looked funny to people below. Seeing somebody running in the air above them. She didn’t want to look down, but when she did, Petra noticed the cannon still following her every movement.

The swarm below reached Aero and just stood amassed underneath, looking up, wondering what to do. That’s when a light started to glow and a humming noise started so low they couldn’t even hear it at first.

As Petra was running, the shield gave out and she started falling. She almost panicked, but instead became resourceful and slowed her fall with a nearby building. Her feet landed on the side of the building and she started running down it. As she approached the ground, she stopped running and grabbed onto a protruding ledge. The rest of the descent was accomplished by jumping from one ledge to another. She landed on the ground and reality kicked in.

The buildings were strange. They all looked the same. She had no way of discerning any importance from one to another. She looked around for the cannon. When her eyes caught it it started to glow and hum.

***

Jensen watched Petra from the control room, his arms crossed.

“What’s the charge?” he asked the room.

“Eighty percent,” someone said. Jensen paced around a bit. Not worried, but annoyed.

“Whenever it’s ready, fire.”

Eighty-five percent. Ninety percent. Ninety-five percent. Then the technician made a swiping motion on the screen.

Jensen watched the ground monitor. There were millions of people. And then there weren’t. In a flash there was dust. He turned to the monitor of Petra. In mid step her body turned black, then blew away into the air.

“Poor bastards didn’t stand a chance,” Vic said. “Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”

“Because we thought they’d be happy underground,” Jensen replied. “We wanted them to be happy. But they lived in a different world. They couldn’t join us in the sky.”

“Well sir, you just committed mass murder. How do you feel?”

“It was extinction. They’re pests that brought this on themselves.”

Jensen turned and walked out. Vic looked at the screens for a moment, then turned them off.

“That wasn’t the protocol, Vic,” Deora said in Vic’s earpiece.

“I know,” Vic replied. “Take it up with Jensen.”

Dig

by Eric Toribio

They dug for almost a century. Burrowing deeper and deeper into the mantle of the Earth. They needed to be close to the core. But more importantly, they needed to be away from the crust. Millions of people were driven underground. The ones that managed to survive. They were forced to form a new society.

“Sir, we’ve hit a wall,” said Dawn.

“Mark it,” said Leon. “Start digging in another direction. Are all the pillars holding?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check them?”

“Not all of them. The ones I’ve checked show no stress.”

“Good.” Leon swiped his hand across his forehead. “Can you get Hans for me?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.” Dawn exited the room, which resembled an office.

It was rough and looked like it had been carved out of a rock. The door was also rock and opened like a sliding glass door that receded into the wall. Leon sat at a desk, also carved from the rock. It was connected to the floor and had three sides that came up and a flat top. As flat as crudely carved rock can be. The chair he sat on was also was carved from rock. Though it was hollowed out as much as possible to make for easy lifting. He also had a bed. But it didn’t look comfortable at all. Nothing looked comfortable. Nothing was comfortable.

Hans walked down the corridor leading to Leon’s office. Fitting with the theme of the place, it was uncomfortably narrow. To fit two people through you’d have to walk sideways. But it had to be this way. Anything to make less digging. There were many rooms along this hallway. All dealing with what little regulation they had in this new colony.

Hans took a deep breath and looked at the chiseled name “Leon” on the door, then entered. He said nothing when he came in and Leon looked up at him.

“How’s the food doing?” Leon asked.

“It’s okay for now.” Hans looked a little sheepish.

“But?”

“But it won’t be for long.”

“We’ve lasted the better part of a century down here. What’s gone wrong?”

“It’s a little hard to grow things underground. In rock. With no sun. And no resources. We made preparations, but we can’t last forever unless somebody makes some kind of major invention.”

Leon sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“There’s not really much you can do,” Hans said frankly. “We’re screwed.”

***

Petra swung her crude tool at the rock. Ever hollowing it out for the millions of people that had to live there. She was one of many diggers. Time came to quit and she put down her rock hammer. Not quite the rock hammer you might be used to. This was more along the lines of a sledgehammer. Her earpiece had been going bad for a long time now. Sometimes it would cut out, sometimes it would get different transmissions at the same time. She heard “quitting time” clear enough, but then it started fizzling and she heard a bunch of different conversations at once. As she was about to take out the earpiece, she heard something that made her stop dead in her tracks. She heard How..food doing? *fizzle* then silence. Then a bunch of other transmissions trying to fight for attention. Then We’re screwed. *fizzle*

How she picked up the transmission was unclear to her. She didn’t know exactly who was talking. It sounded like the Organizer, but she couldn’t be sure. She ran up to another digger and asked, “Did you hear anything about a food shortage?”

Her new friend blinked at her. “Food shortage? What the hell are you talking about?”

Petra looked closely at the other girl’s earpiece.

“Get away from me!” The girl cried, smacking Petra in the arm.

“Is your earpiece working?”

“Yeah, it works just fine.”

“It doesn’t intercept other transmissions?”

“No. Don’t walk so close to me.”

Petra walked away and decided to let it go. She was surprised to find later that day that everybody was talking about the food shortage.

***

“How did this get out?” asked Leon, slouched back in his chair. Hans just stood there, hands folded in front of him.

“The only two people who know about it are you and me,” Hans said.

“Apparently not.” Leon gave him a cold stare.

“Before talking with you, I told nobody. After our talk, I said nothing more about it.”

“Well put an end to it. The last thing we need is a panic.”

***

As Petra was eating the bowl of mush that passed for food her earpiece began to crackle. How…get out? she heard. She pounded on her earpiece. Only…people..know about it…you and me. She stopped and listened. Put an end to it.

She realized what she heard must have been true. They’re running low on food. And they’re keeping it secret. A righteous fury overtook her. She was part of the working class stiffs that hacked away at the rock every day. And they were sitting in their uncomfortable chairs with no clue what to do about anything. She didn’t want to be them. There was no part of her that desired to have the kind of responsibility they had. But they had a responsibility. And they were squandering it.

Petra stood up. “Listen up!”

Surprised, everybody in the cafeteria looked over at her. This was highly unusual behavior from what they’ve become accustomed to. They were used to drudgery and just “doing your job” all the time. No yelling.

“I can hear everything the higher ups are saying!” she said. They listened. “A malfunctioning earpiece has given me the gift of revelation. There is a food shortage. And they’re trying to keep it a secret.” There was an uproar. “Instead of asking for help from the millions of people that live here, they try to come up with a solution by themselves. What else aren’t they telling us? What if the surface of the Earth is just fine? I say we leave! Who’s with me?”

They all cheered. Hans looked on in horror from the edge of the hallway and immediately ran back to Leon’s office. He swung the door open and slammed it shut behind him.

Hans slammed his hands on Leon’s desk and said, “Sir, we’ve made a horrible mistake.” Upon recounting what Petra said, Hans and Leon ran down the hallway and out into the common room. There was chaos. Running, screaming, fighting. Hans followed Leon through the corridors leading to the room that led up to the surface. It was open and there was a line of people barreling through.

“This isn’t good,” said Leon. Hans didn’t have a response. “They don’t understand what’s up there.”

“We had a good run. Looks like it’s over. At least we didn’t starve to death.”

“You wanna follow them up there?” Leon almost wasn’t surprised.

“Why not? We won’t survive long down here anyway.” Leon knew Hans was right.

“It’s a thirty five mile trek.” A last ditch effort by Leon to discourage the thought of returning to the surface.

“After you.” Hans extended his hand. Leon looked back at the people fighting in the common room. The ones not joining the mass exodus.

“What about all them? We can’t leave them behind, can we?”

“They’ll follow. They always do.”

Leon looked back at the tunnel leading to the surface. He joined in the crowd. Hans followed.

***

Luckily the tunnel was inclined enough that it wasn’t like climbing a mountain. But it was still walking up an incline for thirty-five miles. It took several days. They would stop at springs of water or little trickles running down the rock to keep hydrated. To keep millions of people hydrated. There was some fighting. It was unavoidable. There will always be fighting. The need to survive and the threat of not being able to takes over people’s instincts.

Lights lined the tunnel. Self-powered by little perpetually moving mechanisms. Put there by the original diggers. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Then came another, much bigger light. Staring at the multitude from the end of the tunnel. Petra was in the front of all of them. She was too tired to run towards the light, no matter how badly she wanted to. Everybody was too tired for that. But then she finally reached it. She could smell a different air. The light blinded her. And then she emerged. It was odd. On the one hand, she had been selling everybody on the notion they were being lied to about the surface being uninhabitable. But deep down she had the sinking feeling that they weren’t lying. And here she was, standing on the Earth, looking out, and seeing all sorts of green things and crisp air. Not a threat to be found.

Hans and Leon emerged and expected to die pretty much instantly. But they hadn’t been hearing screams. And when they got to the surface, they were surprised. Leon nearly kicked himself.

“It was all a lie,” he said.

“Maybe the monsters are lying in wait somewhere,” replied Hans. “Or maybe they died out.”

Leon looked up. He saw things floating in the air. They looked like giant aircraft carriers. They were little cities. Leon had heard about them. How the more wealthy took to the safe skies, while the less wealthy were forced to go underground. He turned to Hans and said, “Or maybe they didn’t want us here anymore.”

Final Stand

by Eric Toribio | 1 Comment

I managed to fight them off for one more day. It wasn’t easy. Seems like every wave is bigger than the last. Maybe they’re multiplying. Under other circumstances I’d wonder how they’re multiplying so quickly. But right now? I don’t care. I couldn’t care less about these festering piles of garbage or the way they work. I just want off this planet. I’m sick of just surviving every day. If only they’d leave me enough time to actually make some progress on my ship, maybe I’d have been out of here earlier.

Now that I’ve reached another eye in the storm, it’s time to get to work. My crew is dead. The first to go was the mechanic. As the only one left, I have to figure this out by myself. I should’ve paid more attention in flight school. But I’m not ignorant. It doesn’t take long to see what needs to be done and take care of it. The problem is that there’s a lot that needs to be done. I fix one thing, then realize that something else needs fixing. I can’t see the damage as a whole. I can only see the next step.

Hopefully I can get it working today. Though that may seem obvious, I can’t help but say it. I need to get out of here. Food is really hard to come by. I don’t know what I can eat or not. Anything could be poison. I might just have to take my chances soon. Perhaps it’s better that I’m alone here. My crew would only require even more food. Food that barely exists. That wouldn’t fly. And neither will this damn spaceship.

I’ve also noticed that I’m starting to lose it. Something strange is happening to my brain. I don’t know if it’s the food here or what, but something’s getting to me. I’ve been getting mild hallucinations and paranoia. It comes and goes. Just like those festering stink bags that come at me every day. That’s probably part of the problem. Bigger wave after bigger wave keep coming and trying to kill me. Maybe they’ve run out of food, too. But it wears on a man. There’s only so much you can take until you get battle fatigue. Combined with my diet, isolation, and lack of sleep, you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I need to leave this planet immediately. The only problem is, how long will it take to get back to civilization?

We were already out in the boonies when our ship malfunctioned and sent us down here. It could be months before I see another human. Assuming I leave today. But judging by what I see in this engine, I’m betting I’ll be spending at least one more night here. Another two hours of sleep.

This engine is a shambles. But I should be able to fix most of it by nightfall. If I can get the ship to at least turn on I can use the canons. It might not be flight ready, but I’m gonna damn well make sure I can incinerate the next wave of slime balls. Figures. It’s only when I’m almost ready to leave that I make my job a lot easier. Part of me wants to just find where these bastards are coming from and blow the whole lot of them to hell. But I’m not that psychotic and murderous. More than that, I just don’t care. I’d rather get out of here and back home as quickly as possible.

There’s something odd about this engine. I can’t put my finger on it. Guess whoever we were delivering the cargo to is gonna be disappointed. They won’t be receiving the package. I don’t even know where it was going. Only the messenger and the ship’s computer know the destination of the package. They tell the ship which direction to head and we go there. I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. This is the first time something’s gone wrong.

We were right on course, but then one of the engines started powering down. It shut off completely and we began to fall and turn. But even amid the chaos nobody panicked. I have a good crew. Had a good crew. When we first crash landed here I wanted to find out what happened. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve been here too long. My crew is a pile of bones. I’ve got the shakes. Besides, my paranoia would probably just make me jump to ridiculous conclusions. It’s no use.

I remember when we crashed. I wasn’t the first to wake up. The damage didn’t seem too bad externally. But it was enough to keep the ship powered down. Once we started investigating, we found a whole slew of internal problems. Most of the systems failed. We didn’t realize the extent of it right away. It was only when we started on the repairs that we realized how bad things were. We also realized that we couldn’t repair everything at once. The way things were connected, we had to repair them one by one to get from one system to the next. It was a mess. Then every day we had one less person to help. Those freak faced monsters started attacking a few days after we arrived. We made a good effort, but they always managed to kill one of us.

And now it’s just me. Here. Fixing this godforsaken engine. What the hell happened to this thing anyway? It looks like it doesn’t have all its parts. I understand that it was damaged and things probably broke off in the crash, but it looks like there are parts that just were never there to begin with. It certainly wasn’t like that when I got the ship. It’s like somebody took them out or something. Nothing’s broken. It just isn’t there.

I hear scratching. Or something moving around. I swear, if another animal got on this ship I’ll kill it. That’s funny, it sounds like it’s coming from the package. That can’t be right. We weren’t transporting anything living, were we? I didn’t hear anything before. The best thing to do is probably to open it. It’s not like this thing’s getting delivered. Maybe I could at least get some supplies or food out of it. Now I’m kind of hoping that an animal did get on the ship. Then at least I’d have a meal. I’d like have real animal meat.

The second I open the box, something jumps out at me. I don’t get a good look before I fire and take it down. What the hell is- no. It can’t be. Please tell me one of those stink bags didn’t try to sneak onto the ship. Wait… there’s nothing else in the box. You mean this was the cargo? Where were we- you’ve gotta be kidding me. That damn messenger. Son of a bitch crashed us here. Was he trying to kill us? Who would want a delivery team dead? Maybe this is why those things have been attacking me. They were trying to get to this guy. Whoever he was. Doesn’t matter. I’m grabbing what I need, fixing this engine, and getting the hell out of here.

I managed to finish the repairs ahead of schedule. That doesn’t mean I can take off right away, but it does mean I get extra sleep before the next wave. I have a feeling my dreams will be strange tonight.

Three hours. That’s a record. And here they come. Same as always. But at least now I have an easy solution. I can pick them off from a mile away. These canons are fantastic. I’m so happy to have them back. Time to fry their ugly mugs. If you would’ve asked me fifteen years ago where I saw myself in fifteen years, I would not have said enjoying blasting the living daylights out of weird ass aliens. That’s not me. This planet has changed me. Isolation has changed me. Not getting enough sleep has changed me. Getting attacked every damn day has changed me. Eating my crew has changed me. It’s a stink you can’t wash off. And something that doesn’t leave your brain. I beat this wave in record time. Let’s see if I can’t finish the repairs and lift off.

The rest of the damage wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Looks like I’m heading home today. If I survive the trip is another matter. I’m just glad that if I do die it’ll be in space, and not on this stupid planet by the hands of some ugly beasts. The ship doesn’t seem rocky. Feels smooth. Guess I did alright at the repairs. As soon as I get out of orbit, I’m setting course for home and getting into a cryo chamber. Have a nice long sleep.

Finally. It’s nice to see the darkness again.