Three Months Ago

“How many people live in the city?” Kaĉjo wondered, though he knew the official answer. Glancing above, he noted the snow that had started to speckle the glass dome and wondered what it would feel like to touch it. Don’t go there again.

“You know this,” Channer insisted, mounting a board next to the trainee, Ivan, and leaving Kaĉjo to follow behind.

“I know what the books say…” Kaĉjo raised his voice over the mechanical whir. “…but I wondered if there was another answer.”

“Does he always do this?” Ivan asked, and Kaĉjo couldn’t tell if the younger man was curious or irritated.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Channer shrugged. “You know these streets backwards and forwards, Kaĉjo. You know the answer.”

“That’s the thing,” he replied. “I’ve…noticed something odd.” He wasn’t about to tell his partner that he had been seeing visions every night for two years, and that he had started to think maybe he wasn’t actually crazy. He had heard the stories of Deplorables who begged and were granted admission to the cities. He had also seen the numbers that had entered the dome for business, and they were definitely a small portion of the whole population outside. So, what happened to all those people? The small number of Relenters per month – usually less than a dozen – would soon be overcome by the immigrants from outside. Yet the number remained consistent, even with the hundred or so children who reached Majority in a given year. Where did all the Deplorables go?

“What does that mean?”

“First of all, the dimensions aren’t right. Benevolence takes up at least five hectares in the middle of the city – that takes the space of ten residences, so we’re at least down to 99,990 people.”

“Is that really important?” Channer countered. In the couple of years since Kaĉjo’s recruitment, the guy had mostly given up his overly inquisitive tendencies, but Ivan seemed to bring them out again. Where Ivan tended to ask closed questions with simple answers, though, Kaĉjo always delved into areas that Channer couldn’t touch on – at least, not until he felt confident enough about the man’s loyalty and commitment that he could trust him with the more difficult realities of dome life. That kind of knowledge required a cold ability to ignore the individual needs of the inhabitants of the dome for the purpose of saving the whole dome system. He didn’t know that Kaĉjo held that kind of objectivity, so there would need to be some serious assessment or a transfer of Ivan if the curiosity kept up.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be important if that were everything, but I’ve noticed something else. Why do we only have three gates?”

Ivan glanced back at him, obviously interested, and Channer’s eyes fixed on something in the distance. “I hadn’t really noticed that…” he hedged.

“And not only that: there’s a sky-high shrub on the outside of the dome there instead of trees. In the south. You can’t see anything through it, like it’s a wall or something. And the dome is deformed.”

“Deformed?” Ivan challenged, definitely intrigued.

“There’s – I don’t know, some kind of bubble in the glass.”

Channer shook his head. “It’s not glass.” Sure, let’s talk about the shape of the dome instead..

“I know, but it’s whatever it is, and it looks like glass. There’s a strange bowing of the glass, and the hedge runs the full length of the bulge, which is almost wide enough for around twenty-five houses. What is in there?”

“You mean out there…” corrected Channer. Maybe this guy’s problem was that he was too aware, not that he was too curious. Since Channer had started as a Cull six years earlier, no one had ever noticed the discrepancy. And no one has looked as intrigued as Ivan looks now.

“Except, I think it’s enclosed. I think the dome goes past it.”

“Should you guys really be talking about this right now?” Ivan queried, peering nervously up at the cross over the entrance. As much as he wanted to know the answer, he didn’t want to be kicked off duty right when he had started.

“You’re right,” Channer agreed, surprised that it had been Ivan who reined things in. Not that Benevolence could discern anything, since the SD had limited its input mechanisms to text only, but Advocates didn’t get that knowledge – only Culls. Fortunately, Kaĉjo seemed to agree with his friend, and the trio lapsed into silence.

In reality, Kaĉjo didn’t know why he cared so much. Before he started receiving Mitigation, he had never paid attention to anything beyond his Diversion screen or his artwork, the occasional book – though those were pretty boring for the most part. Channer had sworn that the side effects of Mitigation would wear off, but they really hadn’t eased much. Kaĉjo still had the visions almost every night, and even during the day, he saw things that would have passed right by him two years before.

“Advocates detected,” announced a disembodied female voice, and the men stood at attention. “Elevated heartrate,” she continued. “Please allow one moment for pathogen scan.” Kaĉjo breathed deeply, forcing his heart to slow. Fortunately, he had been practicing for almost two years, and the scan found nothing. “Scan negative. Heartrates normalized. Please continue.”

“I’ve got the atmos,” Kaĉjo pressed, and the other two men split off for the other tests. As he approached the screens, he wondered why they even involved humans in the management of the system. Couldn’t they just monitor and maintain the levels themselves? They didn’t even seem to notice if something was off kilter, so they didn’t even monitor. “Something about isolating systems…” Channer had responded to the question when Kaĉjo had asked. Well, the fact worked for Kaĉjo since his visions had spurred him to a lot of curiosity about what he was doing with the “atmosphere.” Why the specific numbers?

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He knew he couldn’t move them too much percentagewise without creating serious issues, but a nudge here, a nudge there…Surely that wouldn’t have any major impact. He stared at the current settings:

Nitrogen, 75%

Oxygen, 21%

Water vapor, 1.8%

Trace gasses, 1.6%

Sernat Inhibitor, 0.3%

Arflaxin, 0.2%

Mendisone, 0.15%

Parillix, 0.05%

Lethadine, 0.0%

With a quick glance around himself to make sure the others were caught up in their own tasks, Kaĉjo bumped the levels. Water vapor up to 1.9, Sernat down to 0.2, he considered as he adjusted the buttons. He had tried a couple of the others, and they had changed nothing he could discern. Either Mitigation rendered them impotent, or they had nothing to do with what Mitigation treated. So, he would try one last chance to see if it affected anything significant.

Ever since the first jab he had received as an Advocate, Kaĉjo had wondered how much of his life had been a lie. Was he truly just a machine, manipulated and managed by chemicals in the atmosphere? Besides the strange night visions, he had begun to find himself quicker on the reaction to anything. Not quite as physically adept – Channer had immediately put him on an exercise regimen – but mentally readier to adapt, to notice, to question. Somehow he knew that he could not reveal all of his questions to Channer. No doubt, he was not the first to notice the change, but there was nothing in the literature, and his monitors had mentioned nothing.

If the last chemical change showed no improvement, Kaĉjo would mark his insanity up to a personal flaw, and maybe he would report himself as unfit for the job. He probably considered the option several times a week, but so far, he had refrained, though he didn’t know why. Turning away from the screen, he stepped back toward Channer. “Are we ready?” he prompted.

“You got the easy job today. Go see if Ivan needs your help.”

A nervous smile on his lips, Kaĉjo rounded the corner past the little grey foyer and into a much larger room with stacks of silver metal boxes dotted with blinking red and green lights.

“This place reminds me of Christmas,” Ivan grinned as he noticed Kaĉjo’s approach. If Ivan read his companion correctly, there might be some interesting conversation to be had between them.

“Christmas?” Kaĉjo wondered.

“It was a special day before the Divestitures, back in the ancient cultures. They would mark time by the sun, and they celebrated certain times of year with decorations and food.”

“Food hardly seems a celebratory thing.”

“It was back then. They ate for more than sustenance, and the food was not like it is now - mildly salty with little texture or variety. They killed animals and ate their flesh, they lit bright colored orbs and hung them on trees and bushes. I’m not sure what ‘sweet’ means in regard to food, but apparently, people grew fat with sweets because they tasted so good they couldn’t stop eating.”

“They just ate until they popped?” Kaĉjo questioned as he monitored Ivan’s progress in adjusting the micronutrients of their own, less sensational, fodder.

“Not all at once; over years, until their bodies just shut down from overusing their body’s systems.”

“I’m not sure I believe people could live that long – how do you know this stuff?”

Throwing a furtive glance toward the door where Channer worked, Ivan lowered his voice. “I’ve made friends with a Deplorable.”

When Kaĉjo didn’t respond, anxiety crept over Ivan’s face, and it was obvious why. Making friends with a Deplorable? People didn’t even really “make friends” inside. Not because it was forbidden inside; no one really sought out the connection. At times, there was a fleeting sense, a vague attraction to the idea of connection, but it passed quickly. Admittedly, Kaĉjo had sensed the desire more since his promotion to Advocate, but it had grown into a nuisance – certainly not something he would court on purpose. No, the sensation ached, as much as anything nonphysical ached. He probably worked harder to suppress that yearning than any other strange behavior that had manifested after the shots. “You obviously know you shouldn’t tell me that…” he finally adjured. “Besides, how can you trust anything they say? You know they’re broken.”

“But you don’t seem like him.” Ivan jerked his head toward the other room.

Kaĉjo couldn’t respond for a minute. How was he different than Channer? “We’re all pretty much the same,” he insisted.

Ivan’s mouth quirked up. “But some of us are more ‘same’ than others. When I’ve ridden along with Channer on other days, the guys we’re with even walk like him, not to mention talk like him and dress like him – fix their hair like him.”

“So, they’re normal…” Kaĉjo challenged, resisting the urge to reach up and swipe his finger through his hair to bring it more in line with the usual standard. He would use the chair for a cut as soon as he got home.

“I guess so. But didn’t you ever wonder why we do all these things? Since I started getting the shots, I can’t stop asking myself.”

“Don’t say that!” Kaĉjo hushed the young man.

“Are we not allowed to?” Maybe he was wrong about his coworker.

Kaĉjo paused, unsure of the answer. Somehow, he instinctively knew they weren’t allowed to ask why. If his fear of asking about the visions told him anything, he didn’t even think he should ask “what.” Like, “What is happening to me?” “Just…You’re new. Give the shots time, and your questions should settle down. This whole city runs on ‘normal,’ and it works pretty well.”

“Except, I’ve been noticing something lately, and it’s making me question a lot of what we do.”

“Don’t talk so loud!” Kaĉjo hissed. “What are you questioning?”

“You know that music the ANGELS sang to us when we were young?”

“I don’t remember much before majority.”

“Well, I remember enough, and I’ve been hearing people singing. Randomly, as I walk through the streets. People, not ANGELs, and I don’t think I ever heard that before the past few months. It’s always under their breath, as if they don’t want to draw attention to themselves, but it’s like they can’t help themselves.”

For a moment, Kaĉjo said nothing. “What do you mean?”

“Just, in yards when people feel like their alone, when they’ve just stepped out of their house or are just stepping in. It’s a very subtle sound, but it’s haunting.”

Kaĉjo couldn’t think of anything to say. He should reprimand Ivan for making up stories, or for not reporting oddities, but he couldn’t make himself. What would a human’s singing sound like? And why would someone on the Cure even feel the urge? He had to shut down his own questions or he would be drawn in beyond his ability to fake normalcy.

“Just – don’t ask anyone else these questions, okay? I don’t know why, but I don’t think asking will get you anywhere good. I’ve known probably a dozen Advocates who have been transferred from the city; what if they were transferred for asking questions? Just check your gauges and live your life. You’re a nice guy, and I don’t want you to do something stupid until you have a better idea how things work.”

Fortunately, Ivan just shrugged, and by the time Channer approached, the air had calmed. “He looks like he knows what he’s doing,” Kaĉjo advised. “I think you have done a good job just like you did with me.”

“Of course, I did.” Channer bared his teeth in a show of arrogance. “Let’s get out of here.”

At the last minute, Kaĉjo glanced over at his monitors to make sure Channer hadn’t noticed the adjustment and fixed the “error.” The numbers still showed as Kaĉjo had intended, and with an unusual sense of elation, he stepped out into the waning light. He wondered if his visions would be more intense tonight with the altered chemicals. He didn’t know whether the idea excited him or made him anxious.

The men shared a nod of farewell and hopped their boards, making their way through the emptying streets back to their separate dwellings.