Connor and Vince fight their forbidden attraction as they attempt to rescue themselves and fellow residents of the underground Refuge facility from a toxic breach.
*****
Conn...
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That night I met Vince in the library. He stood near the shelf of vintage children's books that towered over him. He ignored the digital tablets that stored every book and tons of information, preferring the hardcover book he had splayed open in his palms.
Next to him, on the wall, a digital poster flicked through several images and messages. The first message on the poster was a report of toxicity levels from the outside, and then came a list of recent deaths or major injuries in the facilities—which was always short or blank—and other news. It transitioned to a second poster with a picture of a smiling young man and woman, their fingers interlocked, and the words: Save a life. Think twice. Take eX-lement in bold letters at the bottom.
eX-lement—a mandatory medication administered to prevent pregnancies and diseases, including those that were sexually transmitted. I always scoffed at the ridiculous tagline, especially the line Think twice. As if we had a choice. The stuff was flowing through our water. It has been traveling my system since entering the facility as a child. And Save a life referred to the dire condition we'd be in if we continually had children.
The philosophy was every life required a death, and vice versa. The more people we had to feed and care for, the less we had for ourselves, threatening our survival within the facility. If our survival in the facility was ever endangered, then we jeopardized our possibility of returning to the surface and repopulating Earth, if we ever found a cure for the noxious atmosphere.
The phrasing of the tagline was necessary. I assumed the people behind it had learned to create the illusion of freewill to prevent disobedience. I understood. It was a necessary evil. Still, after the unforeseen deaths of many people years ago due to the breach, I anticipated the day the news would include announcements of births. I guess all the reproductive planning was still in progress.
The entire facility was housed in an underground sphere made of mostly metal and concrete that would never oxidize. The spherical design was much stronger than an angular structure, evenly distributing the tons of weight, preventing it from collapsing under the immense underground pressure. At least anytime soon.
There were two halves. The lower hemisphere was the habitable zone—what we called the southern or lower hemi—and contained ten floors, each floor built to house up to one hundred adults comfortably. Each floor was equipped with a cafeteria, medical center, recreation center, and even empty neonatal nurseries among other rooms where the machinery to make synthetic products and goods—like plastics and polyester—were kept. Thanks to the upper hemisphere being sealed off due to the rupture somewhere in the upper air system, causing a contamination leak, with so many crammed into the habitable half of the facility, news of pregnancies or births probably wouldn't appear for quite some time.
"Hey." Vince spotted me and waved me over. "Have you read this one?" He lifted the book titled The Wonders of the World.
At eight years old I had read it a dozen times. "Probably." I shrugged. Not sure if I wanted to confess. Vince enjoyed surprising me with knowledge every once in a while. I imagined conversation not being so interesting if the person you were speaking with knew damn near everything.
