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The Fire of the Soul
Roan-Hinsky Receiver Transcripts
Received Broadcast #0470542 (DALTON)
[static]… Here, Dalton, you can use this one…
[light equipment noises]… [background conversation]…
[walking noises, followed by silence]…
I don’t really believe in you. I just want to put that out there up front. I’m not going to worship you. I would, however, like to establish a discourse of sorts. Well, as much as can be had with one-way communication. I’m not going to lie – I’m hoping that my words may in some way… sway your favor… toward helping me in my planned endeavor. I don’t believe that you are gods, but I’m not stupid. I’ve seen some of your minor miracles. I call them minor purposely, to goad you. Others are astonished and amazed when they broadcast their ‘prayers’ to you in times of need and a piece of equipment suddenly appears, or a failing component of our domain is suddenly fixed. Amazing, yes, but the question still remains – why is that the extent of your actions in our existence? Why do we still have to live underground? Why do we have to struggle and task and fight to grow food in artificial soil by the sickly light of the mists?
This is my first time talking to you, Those Who Came Before, so perhaps I should tell you more about who I am. I also think I should do this because I have always had the strange notion that perhaps you simply do not know enough about our lives to take major action. The most purported miracles are usually specific requests about specific locations, and all regard problems with simple solutions. My own father was once trapped in an air-machinery room by a heavy door whose rust finally sealed it shut; when those on the outside ‘prayed’ to you for help, a can of oil mysteriously appeared in the room with him, allowing him to remove the rust and escape. Though you did put the can there somehow, I’m certain you didn’t know the full story. I just wanted you to know that I recognize and appreciate your help, even at the same time that I demand explanation for why that is all the help that you provide. You’ve never once answered us with words, so I don’t truly expect any answers from you, but it can’t hurt to try.
You’ve probably already noticed a difference in my communication to you, as well. Amid hundreds, or possibly thousands, of mundane requests and simple-minded broadcast prayers, a voice speaking to you at length and as an equal must catch your attention. I’m hoping this is true, and that you’re not offended. I am simply one of those with the rare mixture of intelligence and curiosity that causes me to diverge significantly from my fellows. The saying among my people is that I have ‘a fire in my soul,’ and I understand why, for I feel constantly compelled by a burning spark of energy to seek, question, and understand practically everything.
It’s quite painful to be who I am, as I am surrounded by small-minded and mundane people that have very little will of their own beyond the desire for friends, family, and becoming ‘successful’ within the confines of our underground domain. It is both sad and terrifying to me that literally everyone else in our civilization can grow up, live, love, lose, be sad, be happy, and scoot around like bugs in a puddle, completely oblivious to the possibilities of existence, entirely within the confines of the four habitable floors of this underground complex.
Many times in my youth I feared that I would be driven insane by the unquestioning and plodding nature of the rest of humanity. From an early age I questioned like every other child, recursively asking ‘why?’ until adults grew angry, but, as others grew up and lost their sense of wonder, I remained insatiable for knowledge. By my eighteenth harvest season, I had already delved into most of the knowledge in our computer database. Now, twenty-four, I have long since exhausted all the topics of history, biology, physics, and astronomy that our computers have preserved for what must be untold centuries. This centuries-long age I have estimated by the corrosion of various metals in the machinery rooms; chemistry, too, I learned from the aging glass monitors.
Astronomy, as you might guess, is what tore open the largest gash in my soul, exposing me painfully to the fire that burns within. I’ve been underground my entire life. I’ve never seen ‘the atmosphere,’ or ‘the Sun.’ I want to see ‘stars’ so badly! When I was younger I would seek out specific hallways within our four-floor world that allowed me to see the longest distance possible. The farthest I’ve ever seen at once was five hundred feet, in the interconnected cloth processing rooms. The prospect of seeing into unbridled space, absorbing light millions of years old from stars and worlds across the distant universe, has seized me utterly.
I made the mistake in my youth of mentioning that, if the surface proved habitable once more after whatever cataclysm forced humanity underground, we might even move our civilization into the open heights and infinite expanse of ‘land’ and ‘sea,’ where we could abandon the rigid hierarchy and monotonous industry of survival that has held our four-floor civilization together for so many centuries. The ‘rigid hierarchy’ did not like that at all. It has taken me many years to convince them to let me undertake my expedition to higher floors, and, even now, I believe they are only allowing me to leave as a clean method of removing me from society. My constant questioning and overcoming of decades-old structural and engineering problems normally left to the upper hierarchy to solve has always caused them endless trouble… though, among these plodding dullards, the slightest mental elevation, the slightest curiosity, the slightest frown of thought, is considered a drastic response.
No, I shouldn’t be so harsh. There are a few whom I feel… attached to… though I doubt that I could ever love them as others of my kind love each other. We are simply too different. It would be like one of them loving a fly – the fly simply cannot feel or respond in kind to a human, ever. In the same way, none of the people in my world will ever truly understand me or be able to comprehend the heights to which my mind has soared, the worlds that I’ve imagined, and the understanding of reality that I have achieved. Though, my small few friends are precious to me nonetheless, for being slightly less monotonous, and for keeping me sane in my younger despairing years.
Belby, my best friend, has always stood by me, even when others would cast us both out because I caused them too much distress with my questions. He has, in some small way, absorbed a tiny bit of the fire of my soul, even sometimes able to discourse with me over the possible nature of other floors. I am careful, however, never to mention the surface, let alone the Sun, stars, and other worlds, for the few times that I have let slip concepts to that effect, Belby suffered night terrors for several months. Belby is going with me on my expedition – I pray that I can somehow, while on our journey up, expand his mind enough to handle those important concepts, before we reach the surface, or else he may go insane if we actually reach it. Wait, let me rephrase that. I hope I can do that. I don’t pray. I’m not praying to you.
Rowina, in her singular and unstoppable affection, has also become someone I care about. I feel strange saying that. I have feigned annoyance at her constant and unwavering attempts to emotionally engage me since the earliest age I can remember… three, maybe four harvest seasons old. She has never courted another, and refused every other courter, despite my two decades of rejection. Even today she brought me a yellow weed she found on the corner of a food-patch. Her intentions were true, but the weed only reminded me of the ‘flowers’ I read about on the computers, and of the fact that she had no idea why the giving of colored plants was part of romantic initiation. She merely did it to follow tradition. I wish I could explain to her the hollow emptiness that her attempts cause in me, but she could never understand. She will go with me to the surface, I’m sure of it, if only to follow me blindly as she has done all her life.
The only person I care about that is not going with me is Elder Fahl. My own father and mother had no idea how to handle one with fire in his soul, but Elder Fahl, in his old age ‘wisdom,’ at least understood that I was compelled to be inquisitive. It was not something I chose to do to annoy thos
e around me. Many times, Fahl saved me from social punishment, pulling me aside and instructing me on ways to fit in. It was an extremely painful process, learning to hide the greater part of myself from others, but necessary.
The smallest of the concepts buzzing around in my mind could easily destroy this mechanical and plodding society. I think each and every person around me sensed that deadly threat in my dangerously pointed questions, and an eventual fearful frenzy of violence directed at me was the only possible result if I did not learn to restrain myself. In many ways, Elder Fahl saved my life. When he passed away a few weeks ago, I finally built up my resolve to go on this expedition. In his old and waddling ways, he was the closest thing to family I had down here. Now, there is no reason for me to stay, especially if Belby and Rowina are coming with me. In many ways, I knew this day was destined to come, for the fire in my soul has raged against the walls of every barrier I’ve ever found, from learning to walk, to mastering the information in the database, to improving inefficient jobs as I grew older, and now to the very walls of our four-floor civilization.
I am compelled to go exploring. I have no choice.
In many ways, I imagine myself like you, Those Who Came Before. You lived – wait, are living? Yes, I suppose ‘are living’ is the correct phrasing – you are living in a time before the cataclysm. You must be on the surface! I’ve read our history data, and much of it is intact before the ancient blank-data period that I believe marks the beginning of life underground. I have always counted myself as one day being among men like Columbus and Clark & Lewis. Tomorrow is that day. Tomorrow, I go to seek a new world… actually, no. Tomorrow, I seek the Old World. Discovery and rediscovery are both important. Perhaps people will read about me hundreds of years from now, while they sit under open sky on distant worlds, reading by the light of stars and Suns. That thought, a stark contrast to the cramped gray prison of stone and tradition that now encases humanity, literally brings tears to my eyes.
Received Broadcast #0470551 (DALTON)
[static]… [male voice]… Want some food, Dalton?
In a minute, Belby.
[distant female voice]… Will you eat with me, Dalton?
In a moment, Rowina. It’s been a long day. I’m going to speak to Those Who Came Before, and update them on our journey.
[distant female voice]… It’s good to see you finally praying, Dalton.
[long moment of silence]…
I wish I had the heart to explain to her that I’m not praying. Or, I wish she had the ability to understand the fine differences in theology I hold. I believe you exist, I just don’t believe that you are gods. This technology, this tachyon communication, sends electronic signals to the past. The people of my society know that, and they believe that you are our ancestors, which is technically true… but they elevate you as gods in the nebulous and mythical past. I have studied physics and time and history. I know that you are simply monumental lords of technology, lords who, at many points, mastered the entire world, and even visited other worlds, called ‘Moons’ and ‘Mar’ in the ancient tongue. Or is the ‘s’ switched? I can’t remember. I’m sure you understand me.
[distant male voice]… You ready for that food yet, Dalton?
In a minute, Belby.
Today we breached the sealed staircase door on two hundred and eleven, the fourth and highest floor of our civilization. Twelve members of the upper hierarchy were there to bring us supplies, see us off, and to seal the door behind us. Myths tell of the terrors on other floors, so they had no choice but to weld it shut again. We have three months to return, before the guard posted to listen for our knock will no longer stand watch. For all their intent to be rid of me, they did equip us rather nicely, with food, ropes, and leather air-suits in case we encounter places with damaged air systems.
Belby and Rowina were terrified, but followed me with some coaxing, especially at the promise that I would protect them. In some ways, even though people fear me, they regard me almost as a hero. I have saved many lives and improved many inefficient jobs and machines, a fact which many conveniently forget when I later become a disruption to the status quo. Belby trusts me to protect him, while I feel that Rowina would walk into certain death simply to follow me. Her ‘love’ would inspire me, if it didn’t feel like the dogged and dumb affection of a pet rat-dog, constantly returning to its master even when kicked.
For my part, I was immediately filled with apprehension at ascending to find the staircase was emblazoned with rusted metal numbers at the next floor that denoted, not two hundred and ten as I expected, but two hundred and twelve. How or why the floor numbers go up instead of down is perplexing, but I don’t pretend to understand your logic, Those Who Came Before. Perhaps ‘one’ or ‘zero’ is the deepest floor, and ‘two hundred and fifty’ the shallowest. At least, I hope that’s as far as we have to travel. If the floor numbers go up to some arbitrary number, there is no limit to the number of floors we might have to traverse to reach the surface. As of this broadcast, we are on floor two hundred and twenty-one.
Furthermore, the glass walls that house the energy mists continue to exist on each floor, providing power and subdued light to the strange and numerous plants that we have encountered on the ten floors that we have traversed today. I can’t yet discount the myths of the horrific and bizarre dangers of the fabled ‘other floors,’ but, so far, we have stayed quiet and stuck to the rubble-strewn stone staircase, which has its own upward well. For each floor, a door leads from the staircase into the main open areas. We have merely peeked inside each of the nine before, until our safe well abruptly ended, not at a cave-in or collapse, but at a naturally artificed design point. At floor two hundred and twenty-one, the staircase simply… stopped. We are camping on the inner side of the heavy metal door, saving the true beginning of our adventure until after a period of rest.
We haven’t gone far, but I need to give Belby and Rowina time to adjust. They are visibly agitated at having walked up ten floors – already two and a half times the extent of our entire society. There are no energy mist containers in the walls here, so it is dark enough to sleep well if we turn off our electric torches. I’m too excited to sleep. The fire in me has been fanned irreversibly by the prospect of exploring the true unknown for the first time in my life. I’ll let them sleep, and I’ll keep watch, and then… adventure!
Received Broadcast #0470623 (DALTON)
[static]…
[male voice screaming]…
Please, Those Who Came Before, I need your help! I need… bandages, surgical instruments, stitching material! I’m… I’m…
[female crying]…
[male voice screaming]…
… in the central shaft on floor two hundred and twenty-one! We’re on a small ledge next to the open air pit! Please, help us! He’s going to bleed to death!
Received Broadcast #0470631 (DALTON)
[static]…
… thank you so much… I got the kit… he’s stopped bleeding…
[distant ragged breathing sounds]