Received Broadcast #0470635 (DALTON)
[static]…
… again, thank you! He’s going to live! He’s going to live…
[relieved sigh]
That thing… some horrific thing… it bit him! It was slimy, tentacled, disgusting in appearance and smell… I’ve never seen or even conceptualized anything so horrifying… it came out of nowhere and laid ten jagged teeth right in his calf. We couldn’t get it off, Rowina was screaming… I took the power cell out of my electric torch and burnt the thing’s eye. It abruptly released and disappeared into the thick undergrowth. I couldn’t see it by the dim light of the energy mist walls, and the lights overhead were long since destroyed… it’s still on this floor somewhere, and there are probably more of them all over these levels…
These floors have a unique ecosystem all their own. I believe that at least ten levels must be interconnected via decayed openings or broken air-system controls. A creature like that could not have survived and adapted down here without a significant food chain. We have seen several crawling meaty bugs that may be the bottom of the ecosystem that has developed here over the centuries. The strange plants here seem to efficiently live off of the energy mist containers’ life-giving light, get eaten by the bugs, and then unknown varied animals must live off of those… and then that horrific predator must feed on those animals. It would be amazing to research if we had the time or instruments… or if our first encounter with this new mini-world had not been so violent.
That disgusting predator creature is probably the source of our fearful myths about the other floors. When we get back, I should recommend their destruction. A minor alteration of the air-system balance should wipe out the plant life on these floors, and eventually eliminate all the offending alien life through starvation. The upper hierarchy members may actually listen, for such a minor effort could result in the expansion of our society into many more floors.
I’ve cauterized Belby’s wounds and wrapped his leg. We’re going to rest here, sealed behind the metal doors to the central shaft, until he recovers. This shaft makes me nervous. I don’t understand what the purpose of an empty shaft is, especially not one that disappears ominously into darkness above and below us with no discernible function. There’s a completely separate air system, so what could this shaft possibly be for? The narrow ledge that we are resting on is nerve-wracking.
Rowina calmed down a bit ago, and is sleeping quietly against my side. I hope I don’t wake her up with this conversation, but you helped me save Belby’s life, so I feel a debt of gratitude toward you, Those Who Came Before. If it had been anyone else but me there with him, that thing would have killed him outright. Intelligence is an amazing weapon… but I’m sure you know that. As jarring as that first encounter with new beings was, the fire in me is only growing hotter. I can’t wait to see what’s above. Belby and Rowina both want to go home – I can sense it – but we can’t stop now. I told them that it’s too dangerous to go back right now with that thing out there, and they uneasily accepted my reasoning.
Ah! I see a ladder across the shaft from us, leading both up and down. It’ll be difficult climbing for Belby, with his wounded leg, but perhaps I’ll tie us together with some rope that we brought in our supplies, for added safety.
Received Broadcast #0470935 (DALTON)
[static]…
Awhile since my last broadcast. I apologize. Once Belby was well enough, we climbed the ancient ladder. At many points it was broken or missing rungs, so the going was exceedingly difficult. We are now holding on tightly to the end of the ladder, and indeed the end of the entire shaft. I estimate that we have traveled up at least thirty floors, and I am anxious to leave this nightmarish ascent… although I am equally hesitant to open the shaft’s metal doors and encounter a new floor. The last one we had to traverse ended up in Belby nearly dying. This one is over ten times higher than the height of our entire civilization. What terrors will we find here? We might as well do it, for there is no way I am turning back…
Received Broadcast #0470939 (DALTON)
Those Who Came Before, do you know what these machines on floor two hundred and thirty-five do? I am standing here now, wandering around with Rowina. Belby is resting by the shaft. There is no danger here – no plants, no creatures. I almost wish that there were. This floor is disconcerting and sublimely terrible in its efficient design.
Everything is white, and bright. The lights overhead are penetrating and absolute. Every tile of the ceiling emits a powerful glow. Great white walls, massive clean metal boxes, and skirts of glass create a maze almost maddening in its simplicity. There is no attempt to entrap us with complicated pathways – in fact, I can easily find my way to the outer energy mist walls from any point – but that only makes the purpose of the floor that much more mysterious. Who, if anyone, lives here? Why and how is it so clean? What is its purpose?
A vast portion of this place’s undercurrent of unease is related to its similarity to the description of Heaven given in our holy text. All of the details are here – bright light, whiteness, purity and cleanliness… and, most of all, exacting order. None of the rust, decay, and chaos of the lower levels exists here. I am not a believer in our holy text, but that almost makes this worse. I don’t know how to process this place. Belby and Rowina simply stare around at things with a suffusing happiness, smiling at the sheer purity of everything around us, with no thought as to its physical function or actual meaning. I, too, feel a stark contrast here to our dirty and cramped existence, but I also know that appearances can be deceiving.
Come on, let’s look for another staircase or shaft up.
[distant female voice]… are you sure we should leave, Dalton?
Yes, we can’t stay here indefinitely…
[distant male voice]… why not, Dalton? Do you know what this place could be, Dalton? If we just stay here forever, what happens, Dalton?
If we stay here forever, we’ll starve to death. Besides, if this is the place you think it is, then we’re surrounded by ghosts, spirits, and dead people. They’re probably touching you all over right now, causing the hair on the back of your neck to raise or making you shiver.
[distant female voice]… I’m scared, Dalton. Can we go, Dalton?
I thought you might not like that idea. Hey, there’s a staircase over here! But… it’s sealed off by strange glass and metal walls… how do we get inside? There’s some kind of interface with nine squares, and one digit on each.
[male voice]… it’s a password device, Dalton!
Very good, Belby! Very perceptive. But what’s the password? Let me try one…
[four varied tones]…
[abrupt beep]…
I guess that’s not it. It took four tones before it beeped. There are so many combinations, we could be here forever! Those Who Came Before, I hate to ask you yet another favor, but can you somehow help us get through this? I’m going to try 5, 6, 7, 2 next in the mean time…
[four varied tones]…
[slow beep, and sliding sound]…
It worked! Did you do that, Those Who Came Before…? I find it hard to believe that I simply got lucky. But wait, if you can change the combination on this door, that means you really are the builders of this whole underground facility! The holy text is actually right in that regard! This is amazing!
Received Broadcast #0470939 (DALTON)
[static]…
The facility is getting smaller the closer to the surface we get. I firmly believe that we are almost there. We followed the staircase up another fifty floors. At intermittent periods we opened the door to the main area of a floor, and found many strange and varied habitats within. Many floors were empty. Many were filled with strange growing things, each floor highly distinct from the others. One floor had no air at all; probably due to a serious air-system malfunction. Poor Belby almost got sucked right in, for what surely would have been a most horrible death. Rowina and I managed to pull him back and shut the thankfully air-tight door.
/> By far my favorite was the last floor we peeked in upon – neon blue moss covered the hard cement floor, apparently growing purely by the light of the energy mist containers and the natural moisture in the air. For what reason this moss was neon blue, we could not discern, but we dared not touch it to investigate. Rather, we stared out of the door at the extent of the entire floor, which was now down to a roughly square area approximately two hundred feet wide. I was almost driven to distraction by excitement at this point, realizing that our entire underground complex must terminate at the surface very soon if the floors continued to shrink in size.
Currently, we are resting in an empty floor, oddly devoid of absolutely everything except the omnipresent lifeless air that we’ve all breathed our entire lives. Belby is sleeping, still tired from his wound, and Rowina hangs on my arm, staring into the energy mist walls with me. For whatever reason, humans, including myself, often find it comforting to think while staring into the energy mists. I have often wondered why, and personally decided that I enjoy looking into a space into which I cannot go. Living such a limited existence as we do underground, it is paradoxically reassuring to know that there are still strange unexplored places nearby that no man has ever gone.
Nobody knows what the energy mist is, really. It has one very simple function, and that is to provide power and light to all the floors of the underground complex. Yet, its nebulous and unreachable nature – it is always behind heavily shielded glass so as to protect living beings from harmful radiation – somehow entices fancy even among the dullard society which humanity has become. In part, it is because we can see a short distance into the energy mist, and what we can see in that short space is as perplexing as it is beautiful.
The stonework of our complex can be seen extending a short distance into the mist, and, in some places, there is fanciful artwork or protruding spikes and buttresses. I truly believe that some cantankerous One Who Came Before artist put his strange creations in the stonework on the other side of the energy mist glass purely so that people would see it and wonder about it for as long as the structure was in use. I don’t know, however, if he knew it would serve as humanity’s dwelling place for so many centuries. In some ways, the unreachable stone art barely visible in the mists is the only thing left down here that reminds me that I am not alone in my mental strivings. You, Those Who Came Before, were all like me, and that thought comforts me at the same time that it saddens me that humanity has fallen so far and become so ignorant and dull.
Received Broadcast #0471439 (DALTON)
[static]…
… have finally reached the door to the surface! I feel like I’m about to explode with craze and wonder and curiosity! We came to a floor only five by five, with one stolid and heavy door. Knowing full well this meant the surface, we prepared ourselves for any eventuality. For their parts, Belby and Rowina were actually excited, and I found myself swelling with pride at their excitement, thinking that perhaps humanity is not so far gone after all!
We were lucky that Belby almost got sucked into a vacuum floor days ago. This caused us to tie ourselves together and to the wall, and don the air-suits that we brought with us, as a precaution. When I opened that door, all hell broke loose. It was not a vacuum at all – it was much more terrifying and wonderful. A massive fist of air immediately assailed us, almost ripping us from our rope and back down the stairs. It wasn’t a vacuum – it was air from outside the complex, rushing in! I should have expected it – we’ve been sealed for centuries! Why should the air content, temperature, and pressure be at all similar?! Most of all - you won’t believe it – there was light! True, non-electric light! I almost screamed with happiness at the sight of light pouring in through that open door.
After a few moments, the rush of air settled to a powerful flow, and I shut the door as best I could so that we could devise how to handle this. Now, we are preparing for our true foray outside. We will see the surface, the first human beings to do so in centuries! It’s got to be habitable by now… and even if it’s not… I’ll let the fire of my soul surge through me as I run around on open terrain, protected from radiation or toxin by the leather air-suits. I’ll see the stars. I’ll see the Sun! The Sun! Pure joy awaits, the utter bliss of successful exploration that makes me feel one with my humanity. For the first time, I look at Belby and Rowina and see companions, not pets. They smile and chatter about what they might see. Could this lead to a rekindling of the old spirit? Could others begin to open their minds as you, Those Who Came Before once did? I’m going to burst if we don’t do this already!
Received Broadcast #0471445 (DALTON)
[static]…
[female crying sounds]…
Belby’s dead.
You bastards… what did you do? What did you do to the world?
[male sob]…
I can’t… I can’t think of anything that could… do that… I expected nuclear war, perpetual winter, biological warfare… something recognizable from history texts… but that… WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE PLANET?
We opened the door. We let the air normalize. We went outside, sliding our rope along a metal rod that split and ran to many places on the stonework of the surface of the complex. The rod seemed there as if exactly intended for what we used it for – to keep the high winds from tearing us away into the sky. I was enthralled by the sky at first – solid clouds in every direction, roaring, open wind – but I soon came to realize that something was horribly wrong.
Belby and Rowina screamed questions at me from inside their air-helmets, but I couldn’t hear them over the titanic winds. I looked around, desperate to understand the insane maelstrom we found ourselves in. Grey vapor, exactly mirroring the energy mists but no longer separated from us by a glass wall, rushed by us at tremendous speeds, buffeting us back and forth. If not for our tie to the metal rod, we would have been torn away and destroyed.
Overhead, there were no stars, no Moons or Mar, no Sun, only glowing gray clouds. We seemed to be inside a gigantic sphere of rapid-flying mist, whose edges were pure impenetrable cloud in every direction. I followed the inside edges of the sphere of visibility with my eyes, my extreme hope quickly turning to confusion and dismay as I noted the clouds continuing down, down, all the way to the surface. We stood on a gray square of stone, representing the top of our complex. Behind us, we saw that the five by five room we had come from was actually above the surface – so we had emerged onto the top of our own structure.
None of this was itself terrible. It was only when I realized that our square stone top, with its imbedded metal rods, was the only visible detail in the entire maelstrom of roaring fog – only then did true horror begin to enter my soul. I already guessed, at that moment, that my concept of reality was fatally flawed, but I could not yet discern exactly how.
We appeared to be the only things in existence, lost in a realm of terrifying blasting mists, fogs, and clouds. The ground, precious dirt and earth, was hidden under the damnable fog. All we could see was the stone square on which we stood – and that was not what we came for. I wanted to see ground, actual dirt, before we retreated back to civilization with the terrible news that the surface world was a gibbering maelstrom of ether and nebulous death, and that nothing could live there.
I slowly led us down the leftmost metal rod, holding on tightly to both the rod and the rope holding us. I had to get close enough to see it. If I could, I wanted a handful. The fire in my soul was now angry, burning with resentment at the cosmic joke that had been played on us. I refused to go back to civilization without at least seeing dirt, maybe even touching it, or bringing back a handful as proof.
I confess that tears of rage were flowing under my air-helmet as I reached the end of the rod and could still see nothing over the edge of the stone. As for the fog, it seemed to change markedly in structure and composition at level with the stone beneath our feet – a detail which led me to the conclusion that would prove to be tragic, that dirt must be just underneath the fog, barely hid
den.
Unable to let it go and return defeated, I told Belby and Rowina to stay put, and unhitched myself from the rope. They screamed in terror at this, but I held the stonework with a death grip, flattening myself to keep from being torn away by the insane winds. I wish with all of my existence that I had relented to their screams and returned to the safety of the rod and rope, but I couldn’t let it go.
[male sob]…
I…
[moment of silence]…
I got to the edge, finally, my fingers bleeding inside my leather air-suit gloves, and a strange film or residue accumulating on the part of my head and arms that were foremost against the fog. It was sticky, and wholly unpleasant to have on my air-suit. I leaned over the edge, which I realized had much slower winds, which, again, ceased almost exactly on level with the stone surface I was lying flat against and clinging to for dear life. I saw a dim flat gray below, so, ostensibly, I let myself drop over the edge… in retrospect, one of the worst decisions of my life.
The wind still roared overhead, but I found myself standing on something solid in much more agreeable currents of thicker fog. I leaned down and patted the surface, finding it to be stone, the same that I had just left. I hadn’t yet reached the dirt level. Looking down, the fog was very dark, so I presumed the dirt to be somewhere very near. On a whim, I wondered why the rushing weather didn’t etch all this stone away, so I pulled my knife out and attempted to nick the stone beneath my feet. My blade shattered before I was able to even put the slightest scratch against the carved blocks. I threw the broken knife into the dark fog, but could hear no impact over the roaring wind.
It was only when I truly looked at the building next to me, where I would have to climb back up to rejoin Belby and Rowina, that my mind began piecing together the nightmare. Instead of a solid wall, I found myself looking at glass. Peering in through the glass, I found myself looking at the empty space of the floor immediately before the five by five room. In shock, I clambered to my right, finding one of the strange rat-dog-esque statues that I always believed a cantankerous One Who Came Before had carved. It was quite clear that I had somehow climbed down into an open or malfunctioning energy mist container.
Confused, I leapt up to get my fingers on the edge of the stone surface above, where Belby and Rowina waited. To my dismay, I found ascending almost impossible. Between the sudden change in wind velocity, the sticky residue on my suit and blood in my gloves, and the height and slipperiness of the stone, I couldn’t get back up! I was about to be overwhelmed by terror when a pair of legs, and then a body, slid down over the edge. It was Belby! Rowina followed him, the two of them joining me on the ledge. It was wholly uncharacteristic of them to brave danger unprompted like that, and their appearance filled me with pride and positive warmth. I had been very afraid I was going to die there, alone, in the fog, kept prisoner by fear and the simple inability to climb up a glass wall.
Belby grasped my arm, glad to see me alive. Rowina pressed her air-helmet up against mine and mock kissed me, and I returned her affection for the first time in my life, truly sharing her smile. Overwhelming relief filled me for many moments while we considered how to get all three of us back up the glass wall… until an ominous resistance started to build in me. The fire in my soul was returning, whispering to me of how close I came to dirt, to the surface, and… failed! One part of me said I should go home, enjoy what I had discovered, and live to return another day. Another part of me whispered that I might never be able to come back, for why would anyone follow me through danger just to come to this nightmarish wind-world?
I found myself turning around to stare at the dark fog, my hard-wired animal brain functions telling me that, from the consistency and darkness of the fog, the surface had to be just below. Perhaps a leap of faith would do it? It could be as little as a foot down in the fog. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous, after all these centuries of underground prison dwelling, to turn back because of a foot of fog? I found myself almost stepping off the ledge I was on, and it took all of my strength not to do so. In the end, it was Rowina’s terrified grip on my arm that finally turned me back. It was then, in that moment of contemplation and decision, that I made the fatal mistake.
Standing in the slower air currents, I explained my thoughts to Belby and Rowina. I told them how hard it was to turn back, how close the surface was, how I felt, how terrible it would be to go back knowing how close I came – it would hurt even though I knew that jumping blindly wasn’t worth the risk. I violated everything Elder Fahl taught me: I exposed them to the workings of my mind. I told them of the encroaching overwhelming curiosity I feared I would feel the rest of my life, slowly driving me to madness. They listened to all of this, doing the most dangerous thing that they could do in their dull-human states: they thought about it.
We began the process of lifting ourselves off the ledge, and I went first. I helped Rowina up, both of us clutching the stone for our lives. I clung to the edge, holding an arm down to Belby, ready to lift him up… but he didn’t reach up. He simply stood there, frozen, as the pain in my limbs from resisting the wind grew. I shouted to him to come, but he just looked up at me, a cosmic confusion and terror in his eyes at the life of maddening curiosity that I had told him of. I suddenly remembered his months of nightmares at the mere concept of things outside his world. What had I done to him by speaking of life-long mental anguish born of curiosity, an emotion so new and strange to him?
Then, he looked down at the dark fog. For my part, I finally noticed a detail which had previously eluded me due to the shifting and chaotic nature of the clouds – they were significantly brighter above us. The brightness of the clouds seemed dependent upon our angle of viewing them, relative to some light source high above…
The Sun! The Sun was on the other side of the clouds! Of course! And it lit the clouds and fog and mists below, penetrating as a diffuse glow. It was only then that I pieced together several details of our journey, such as the rising floor numbers, the placement and omnipresence of the glass energy mist walls, and the shape of where we were. I made the most important human realization in centuries, moments too late to save Belby:
We were never underground at all!
I screamed at Belby in soul-wrenching terror even as he jumped, almost falling off of my edge in my attempt to grab at him. I watched him plummet into the clouds, leaving a dark silhouette for several moments before fading entirely. No sound or impact came, and I expected none would, for it was all too obvious now: we hadn’t reached the surface at all… we had simply reached the roof.
[long silence]…
All this time… the energy mist… it was just thick, never-ending fog, backlit by the distant and hidden Sun… all the stars that I dreamed about… we’ll never see them again… if it’s this bad up here, the surface, three hundred floors below, must be instant death… I can feel it now, the true nature of our existence. Abortive, mechanical, unquestioning… because it has to be. There could be other gigantic buildings, filled with humans living in isolation, all unaware of the true situation of the world, because they have to be… because the truth is too horrible to face. I pushed, and I pushed, and I couldn’t let it go… I have the truth now… and… I don’t want it anymore.
[silence]…
Belby, you poor fool…