LIKE OTHER CITY CENTERS in Prosperity, multiple branches and sub-branches split off from Bayfield’s central dome. Daisy and Sord at least had a rough map to guide them.
Though they believed their general direction was correct, they needed to find the hill that Miss Lam referred to. If their destination was a kilometer away, it should become visible soon enough. Daisy held the map in her right hand and Sord’s hand in her left as they strode eastward down a dimly lit tunnel.
“I’m so excited to be here with you, Sord,” she confessed. “This excursion has my science juices flowing, to find out what happened. You’d think there would have been more news about the event or even more investigations so things weren’t left up in the air. Did anyone ever tell you what happened after the fact?”
“No, only an overheard conversation my mom had with one of Dad’s colleagues. I was almost eleven, though, and my thoughts weren’t on science or accident causation at the time. I was grappling with never seeing my dad again. It’s enough to shake your foundations.”
“Hmm. I get that. We’re schooled constantly about the realities of life. Live in the moment, if not necessarily for the moment. Deal with all that faces us. Unafraid, but not unaware. Life and death. Health and sickness. Fortune and misfortune. Funny how what we’re taught emphasizes so much on acceptance of things passed. The unchangeable reality.”
“Interesting that you phrased it like that since the guy who visited my mom that day mentioned something about a changeable reality. My memory is fuzzy, but it was as if Dad was involved in something impossible or infeasible. Playing with reality, like time and space. Something about quantum actions not adhering to the macro world, but attempting to find linkage between the two.”
“Wow. That gives us some clues.”
I don’t know,” he continued, shaking his head. “Maybe I’m getting mixed up between what I heard and what I wanted to hear. Somewhere there, in subsequent reports about the lab disappearing without a trace, I hoped Dad might return. I thought perhaps he was magically teleported elsewhere and would come back alive, the same way he went out and none-the-worse for wear. As irrational as that sounds, I still wish it was within the realm of possibility.”
He felt Daisy’s hand soften and slip, so he grasped it harder. She wiped her eye.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, taking notice of her saddened face. “I shouldn’t have gone crazy on that topic.”
Daisy pulled away from him and turned toward the tunnel wall. She bent over slightly for a moment, hands on her knees.
“Daisy?”
“No, wait,” she requested, signaling him not to approach her. “I need a few seconds to get past this.”
“Really, I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” She stood up, throwing her head backward to fluff her hair.
“I can’t tell him now,” she considered. “This moment is about his father, not my mother. An appropriate time will come for that revelation.”
She stepped toward him, grabbing his hand again. “Over it now. Do you see how we’re on a slight incline?” She pointed to her left. “This curves upward and around, so I’ll bet we’re getting close.”
They continued walking in the otherwise empty tunnel, both peering at Miss Lam’s map.
“Looks like this is it,” he observed.
By her reaction, he was concerned the seriousness of their venture might take some of the fun out of it. “I think that’s the left curve over there,” he continued. “Notice how the map trails off, as if the tunnel abruptly ends. How could that be if she’s walking home this way, unless there are residences or something around the bend and she didn’t want to draw those?”
Their pace quickened as they reached the top of the curve where the tunnel forked. To the left was a smaller tunnel that appeared to go further upward. To the right, the larger tunnel continued on a slow ramp downhill. They saw no evidence of habitation and no signage.
Daisy’s senses were maxed. “I don’t know,” she cautioned. “Feels we are getting very far out. Not sure about you, but being this remote from others and close to the hairy edge of the city gets me slightly concerned, given the dangers that may be within earshot of where we are.”
She suddenly took hold of his hand, opened it carefully, and placed it palm down between her breasts, just below the neckline.
“No kidding,” he said, nearly breathless, “I feel your heart pounding, but mine is matching it. Do you want to head to the right instead, which might be a safer course, or do you think this old tunnel to the left is the one she was guiding us to?”
Sord was tongue-tied. He’d never felt anyone’s heartbeat.
“Well, I’m going to sit down here on the floor and let this worry pass. Will you join me?”
Sord sat down slowly, his legs crossed. He wanted to feel her heartbeat again. Daisy’s strong heart.
She gazed down both tunnels. “We haven’t seen a soul in a kilometer so I doubt anyone cares if we sit here for a moment at this fork in the road.”
He stared at the satiny auburn hair falling from her shoulders and couldn’t hold back his emotions. “Daisy, I have to admit. This whole idea of an adventure is like, out the window for me right now. If you could only see yourself as I do. For a second, you seemed almost vulnerable, making me want you even more for some reason. And your perfect neckline.”
Sord closed his eyes, and hoped this was not too much for her so soon.
He continued. “Confession time. I’m holding back with all my strength, or I would lay down with you right here, right now, in the middle of this tunnel and not give a damn if anyone came upon us.”
He felt the warm caress of her lips on his, then slowly opened his eyes. She tugged at his elbow to unlock it and placed her hand on his back, gently lowering him to the floor. “My God, her leg is over mine!” he thought.
After what seemed only seconds to Sord, she pulled back and took her weight off him. “We can’t kiss all day, as much as our bodies may want to. More of this later, perhaps,” she advised. “I needed a boost to get my courage up, and that was a great boost.”
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“No kidding!” he exclaimed.
She bolted to her feet and held her hand out to help him up. As he rose, he tried to pull her down again for another kiss, but she pushed back.
“Ah, ah, ah, Dearie,” she warned, waving her finger, “we have investigative work to complete. Let’s find this place of mystery first. Think about it. If we get this far and only kiss all afternoon, then where are we? How do I go back and tell my friends, ‘Yeah, we went all the way to Bayfield on a clandestine science expedition but stopped just before we got there and messed around all day long?’”
Sord grinned and nodded. “What does ‘messed around’ mean?” he wondered. “Does that imply more than kissing? Am I out of my mind? I mean, she’s beautiful, and maybe she’s done more than I have, like a lot more. Okay. Stop. Get your head on straight. Manage those emotions despite your insatiable urge. Make it satiable. Force it to be. There’s time.”
“You’re totally right, Daisy. We must continue our quest.”
He turned to examine the small tunnel. It was unusually dark. “What do you think?” he inquired. “Did they turn the lights down to discourage people like us from going any further?”
“Possibly, but I doubt it’s the last subtle warning we’re going to find. Look at the floor.” She knelt down to inspect it. “A layer of dust, which is odd. Normally, these passageways are spotlessly cleaned. This one looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. Lots of footprints through there, but most are covered by dust.”
“Hey,” he said, full of courage. “I just faced racnines and near death. A little dust and darkness doesn’t bother me at this point. Let’s investigate what’s up ahead.”
The two slowly walked, hand-in-hand, up the gentle slope as it veered to their left.
“Almost seems like we’re heading northward,” she observed. “But with all this underground tunneling, it’s so hard to keep your directional bearings. Hey, do you sense sunlight up ahead?”
They turned a sharp corner and came upon another fork in the tunnel. One was smaller and darker, appearing to slope downward, deeper into the ground. The other was larger and lighter, even sunny.
Both paths were partially blocked by various construction materials. Shovels and picks were strewn in various places, along with robotic digger systems and small, backhoe-like tractors. They rarely got to see such equipment since most of Prosperity’s tunnel systems were constructed before they were born.
“Would you look at that!” she exclaimed, pulling Sord toward the lighter tunnel. “What does the sign say up ahead?”
“What sign?” Sord asked, searching the walls and ceiling.
“Right here.” She ran over to a chain laying on the floor. Still attached to the wall on one side, the hook had dislodged from the other side, causing it to fall to the ground. “Please Go Back?”
She lifted the sign from the ground, and Sord laughed. “Go back? Go back where?”
Daisy was frowning. “I don’t get it. Never seen a ‘Go Back’ sign before. Hey, it’s Prosperity. Virtually everything is well-explained; no secrets, nowhere. In fact, I can’t recall ever encountering a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, you know, the kind people used when there was private land. What an oddity.”
“I almost feel like taking that sign and hanging it up in my bedroom,” he added.
“Well, someone must have placed it here purposely. It appears as if the sign was yanked from the bioplas wall by force. I’ve seen those hooks before, and it’s virtually impossible to pull them out by hand. Screw them out? Yes, but pull? Wow, you’d almost have to be a mech to do that, unless it was one of these tunnel machines.”
“Maybe it was indeed a mech,” Sord suggested, feeling he should increase the fright level since she seemed so susceptible to teasing. “Maybe this place is a secret meet-up spot for a new mech revolt, like what happened a century ago. Wasn’t that 2037? GDI? We’re only a few years away from the centennial of that terrible event. Who knows what treacherous things might be happening in this distant location?”
“Silly!” she said, gently punching his shoulder again as the sign fell back to the ground. “I’m not getting scared by your outlandish stories. You are quite the tease, and I am uber gullible. That makes us a great match.” She smiled, grabbing his elbow again. “I realize we might be facing imminent danger as we proceed forward. Are you ready to meet your maker, young man? I know I am.”
Sord bent over laughing.
“I’m serious,” she continued. “They teach us to be fearless in school, to manage fear, so this is second nature to me now. I am fearless, and I hope you are, too. I may be the one laughing all the way home while you’re trying to hide the fact that you peed your pants from fright.”
“Okay, Miss Fearless,” he said facetiously, waving his hands about. “I see that formidable courage as a purple aura surrounding your entire body. I smell it oozing from your pores. Your eyes, your beautiful eyes, displaying raw passion. And like you, I don’t care about the foreboding sign or a dark tunnel with dust and footprints on the floor, or a mech revolt, or any obstruction, for I have tasted death and laughed at it.”
Despite his bombast, he felt afraid. A little bit. He was taught to infuse Prosperity’s rules and tenets in his psyche, but never did he come across one that indicated, ‘if you see a sign that says to go back, then go back.’
She pulled him forward, chuckling and thinking to herself, “He’s as nervous as I am. So cute. Such a quiet place. Calm almost. Peaceful. No noise from others, the disadvantage of so many living beings in such close quarters together. I can even hear the blood in my ears and our footsteps on the dusty floor.”
“Can you believe the junk everywhere? Looks like they discarded the equipment from all the tunnels in Prosperity right here, to sit dormant for the next big construction project. But few look recently used. I wonder if . . .”
She stopped and clasped her mouth. “Ah,” she breathed in deeply. “No, I think this is all here for a reason. I bet it was used in the post-event dig.”
Sord wasn’t pondering the dig, nor the equipment, nor his father. He was wondering how he could be so fortunate to have found a soul so full of life as Daisy. Vivacious. Super-intelligent. Witty. Captivating.
“You’re staring at the floor, Dearie.”
He snapped out of his brief reverie. “What? Sorry. Yeah, you’re right.”
“Don’t be bothered about you dad. He would be glad you came here.”
“I wasn’t actually thinking of him, but you are right. I imagine he’d be glad we came by. Me, with my girl. He’d probably get a kick out of that.”
Daisy’s eyes welled-up with tears. “That’s so sweet. Now,” she indicated, pointing to the right, “have you noticed the air is less stale here? I believe we’re closing-in on a dome. In fact, that sound we’re hearing might be ventilation fans.”
Stepping around the assortment of earth-digging implements in their path, they suddenly came upon a massive, uneven depression in the hillside. Though the dome above showed some direct sunlight, most of the sun’s glow was obscured by the shadow from the hill.
“Holy crap!” she exclaimed, taking in the expanse. “Would you look at that, Sord.”
The oblong-shaped dome before them extended a few hundred meters lengthwise. Beneath it, they viewed all that appeared within the depression.
“More equipment down there,” he observed.
“Let’s sit here and let the view sink in for a minute, then we can devise a plan about how to investigate this mysterious place.”
The two sat silent, cross-legged and side-by-side, and surveyed the massive dig. She placed her hand on his knee.
“Whatever it was, it appears much has been cleared away. Notice that partial building to our left. It’s almost as if the sides melted outward. Not inward, but outward. And I don’t see scorch or burn marks or evidence of a fire or explosions. Only oddly contorted bioplas building material, a lot of dirt and boulders, and a whole bunch of construction stuff. Looks like an obstacle course down there.”
“Ever seen those old building demolitions from long ago?” he asked. “You know, where they blow it up from the inside, and all the rubble seems to congregate together in one big pile? Kind of like that, but the pile is spread out all over the bottom of this depression. I see the superstructures of the connected buildings, but it’s as if that which connected everything together in the middle just simply disintegrated. The only analogy I can think of is what your body might look like on the inside when your heart is suddenly removed. Everything dangling and begging to be attached, yet joined to nothing.”
“Yeah,” she concurred, squinching her face in disapproval. “Kind of gross, that thought, even for a young scientist like myself. This tunnel structure ends right here,” she observed, peering at the roughly finished tunnel floor they sat upon. “So, we have a couple options from this point. I’d like to go left first and explore this site clockwise. Okay with you?”
“Sure. This is why we’re here, correct? The mystery. The intrigue. The youthful and perhaps naive investigators, facing danger and death, courageously proceeding forward.”
“Oh, my, you are quite the raconteur.”
Sord smiled weakly, wondering, “Raconteur? Same as racketeer? No. Well, there’s a word I’ll need to look up when I get home.”
They walked a rough path, downward into the depression