Looking through the Heads Up Display (HUD) on the large window of my side, I watched, only partially aware, as the trucks hovered outside of my window. My mind was racing ahead to the glowing haze of our destination. Their dark silhouettes of the looming haulers were barely discernable against the dark sky between their head and tail lights. Tags superimposed on the HUD over the ghostly freight liners listing their contents when their cargo was public information. There were a few that carried the “Undisclosed” tag. Tracking my pupils, the HUD adjusted the tags over the distant hills and up above the horizon, displaying various bits of information regarding whatever my gaze rested upon, such as the air temperature, precipitation probabilities, and highlighting constellations as my eyes came across them. Turning my head and looking forward to the hazy cave, the mouth was now looming large before the bus only a couple hundred meters away. We entered the perimeter walls, and I could see birds swarming the lights, as they dove and swooped after insects. The HUD showed a miniature graphic labeled “Larus argentatus” tagging the birds in my window. I hadn’t seen any birds in this barren wasteland since we had arrived, aside from vultures. I suppose it didn’t take long for one to turn into dinner around the tent city.
Turning toward my real interest, the Hellmouth was now becoming clear. Its large concrete reinforced arching entry looked to be CGI rendered due to its outrageous proportions. The enormity of the structure placed it out of practical reality. The steel-reinforced structure housed a large number of birds, and even some people. Perhaps homeless people making a shelter under the giant overhanging girding. They were tiny from this distance. It frightened me, for them. To be out here in this inhospitable thoroughfare of mass transit. It was like seeing an animal by the side of the road. It just wasn’t going to end well for them.
There was a huge yellow billboard with “Subterranean Human Habitat #42” in dark green lettering standing in floodlights on each side of the entrance. I could see as we approached that the bright yellow had been darkened from the droppings of flocking gulls that crowded the top. Some crafty people had graffitied ominous eyes and chomping teeth on the archway with signs reading, “Hell” with a crooked arrow pointing down the tunnel, “point of no return” and other similar warnings in languages I couldn’t read. I began to see Mom’s side of this thing now. I looked to her for comfort, but she was holding herself tight and staring down at her lap.
“This is too cool,” T-roy whispered unconsciously.
Driving in, I could hear audible breathing and sighing from the other passengers reminding me of the tense silence that had seized our bus ever since our departure from the processing station. I looked ahead at the eight-lane freeway that was ever sweeping gradually rightward and downward into the cave. Watching forward, my mother’s face caught my eye, watching something behind me. Turning to see, the huge entrance had disappeared behind the long curving wall to our left. I realized that I had missed my last glimpse of Topside, but she hadn’t.
The sand piled high on the walls in 30-foot dunes. The traffic, which hadn’t noticeably slowed as we entered the tunnel, cleared the roads and cast the piggy-backing sand to the unused spaces between the lanes and the bordering walls.
I looked over into T-roy’s eager face as he peered past me through the window. He glanced quickly at me with a pinched brow to indicate that I should look back out of the window. The passenger seat was too far away for the HUD to pick up his pupils, and so the informative tags had disappeared as I looked about the bus.
I looked back out. The sand dunes along the walls became gradually smaller and then stopped abruptly as two giant airdozers pushed it back towards the desert above. They used a series of air jets to control the dirt and move it with great precision, even against the drafts of passing traffic. Jetting streams of turbulence on swiveling arms, the sand was moved in rapid waves back up the tunnel-like Sisyphus in a never-ending battle with nature.
After a very short distance, the repeated pattern of mortar, pavement, and halogen went dark. This time the freight liners had no silhouettes. In the tunnels, the traffic had no use for lights. The automated freight liners needed them outside only to announce their approach to animals or humans that might wander into their path. In the tunnel, it was only the human transports that gave off a halo of light from the windows, for our own comfort. It had apparently failed to work on a toddler on the second deck that began to bawl in hurried bursts of terror as the lighted tunnel disappeared behind us.
Leaning over my lap, T-roy leaned in close to the base of the window and spoke low and clear. “Information. Topic Sub 42 join Hans Gherlich. Category all. Timeline none.”
I reached for the ear clips stationed below the window and thought twice about using the public utility. I pulled my clips from my visys, tapped them to the window edge to pair, and attached them to my earlobes.
“…is named for the Subterranean Human Habitat #42. The first Subterranean Human Habitat, Sub Hab #1 was located in the stable sandy earth beneath the cold Great Basin Desert in Nevada. This modest habitat was created in late 2038 by a joint venture between a federation of companies working under the pseudonym “Extra-Planetary Human Exploration Preservation Systems (EPHEPS)” charismatically headed by the soon-to-be-famous space mogul Hans Gherlich. The early projects were scientifically successful ventures, where comprehensive bio-systems were engineered for the impending manned space missions to the moon and Mars. Though providing myriad technological breakthroughs, these habitats proved thoroughly unsatisfying living environments, where scientists frequently complained of the onset of various mental and physical stress-related ailments.
Subs 1-25 were brilliant breakthrough projects, where EHEPS advanced our own understanding of recyclable resource systems years ahead of their time. There were notable disasters where crews were lost in the unfortunate but sometimes necessary learning cycle, and EHEPS took their sacrifice very seriously, using them as motivation for the continuing improvements in life support and geological event reaction systems. Sub 8 ushered in the second Space Age of man, as cold fusion made manned space pioneering plausible. Sub 26-35 had been extra-terrestrial subterranean habitats and were developed primarily off-planet at various satellite and Martian locations, focusing primarily on harsh environment longevity.
It was with Sub 36 that Hans began focusing on the long-term psychological health of the human inhabitants. Throughout the following decade, EHEPS founded independent units to develop Sub 36-41. Sub 41 never left virtual reality, as it proved too fiscally ambitious for the federation’s resources.
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A new social, economic and political environment had to be created to make a project of this magnitude a reality. After five years of thorough and experienced planning, EHEPS presented Sub 42, the first civilian subterranean habitat, on October 12th, 2058.”
Upon hearing the recording speak the 16th-anniversary date of last month, my attention turned again inward, reflecting back on our suburban home and on countless hours in school and in virtual worlds so far removed from me now. The games strove to provide tactile feedback for temperature and contact with the virtual world. Most of my experiences of climbing, running, flying and fighting had all been provided by the Neuron Episodic Systems (NES). After the last month, I had gained a full appreciation for the mere tip of the iceberg I had been living. The NES provided the sensation of acceleration, the G-Forces pushing against my turning avatar as I ran through mazes and jumped high to cliff faces and buildings throughout the city, but to really feel the ache of my bones under my shins when I jumped from just a couple yards above the ground awakened something within me. The actual strength coupled with the pain of exertion as I pulled away from a tackling opponent in the camp game fields felt much faster and more exhilarating than flying hundreds of kilometers per hour through city tunnels and neighborhoods on my visys. Through all of those experiences, Hans and the team had been working diligently down in this hole somewhere, for 16 years.
I was tired, and my body eventually became numb to the adrenaline, or more likely cortisol, that had been coursing through my veins for the last couple of hours. I had expected the air to become thicker, colder, or hotter, but it was all imperceptible within the bus. I could hear the engines echoing back from the tunnel walls, and there were no stars underground. Other than that, I was floating in a black void on a slow right-hand bend, circling downward towards my future. I fell asleep shortly after nudging T-roy’s head off my shoulder. He rolled with his slumber to the other side of his seat, and I rested my head on his shoulder and drifted off. The hum of the engine stayed with me a while, and then it was gone.
***
I awoke to a bright spring day when the air brakes of the bus purged and the doors opened. How long had I been sleeping? Looking through the clear window, I could see a huge parking lot that was completely empty, aside from another similar bus parked two spots away. It reminded me of the unwelcome feeling of abandonment the time Mom had gotten my practice date wrong for a play I was in, and we arrived at a desolate and darkened school.
The lot was hemmed in all the way around by medium pine trees growing straight and thin in adolescence from an earthen berm raising four meters tall. The berm rose sharply and exposed the searching roots of the trees down its face. Breaking only for the tunnel entrance and exit, it surrounded the whole place to create a huge saucer, floating in a clear spring day with the horizon obscured in all directions by the thin forest. I was immediately conscious of my short sleeves as people began trickling off the bus into the exposed parking lot. Looking through the opened doors, I could see a small, single-storied building with waist-high windows in the distance.
The first passengers had made a quick sprint across 35 meters of blacktop between the building and the bus, being very cautious to cover their heads and eyes from the blistering sun as they ran. An older gentleman had stepped to the side of the door and remained in the shadow of the bus. Looking about the horizon, his murmured "My God" gave pause to Dad as he deboarded and followed the old eyes back to the horizon.
"Is it not real?" My Dad asked himself aloud as he followed a moving cloud pattern that sauntered above the tunnel entrance to the tarmac. A cool breeze blew through us carrying the faint scent of pine.
Having grown up in the era of punishing solar radiation, believing it was not real, did not calm my nerves to stand boldly in a parking lot beneath the full sun on such a clear day in only a green T-shirt. It could be safe to travel outside without a sunsuit on in the early or late hours, but not when the Sun was top dead center.. Birds flew amongst the distant trees, and I sensed they were real. Even the birds didn’t tempt the skies when the sun was in full shine like this.
The serenity was dispelled when a transport emerged from the entrance and shot across the far end of the parking lot into another tunnel. “Cargo docks,” Dad muttered to himself and turned back to our own receiving station.
I stuck my arm out into the sunshine and watched with anticipation. Dad already knew, but he watched patiently. Nothing, No tingling. No biting pain that spread to uncontrolled itching. Just…light and some heat.
“It’s fine honey. It’s not real.” He encouraged. The harsh environment of the camp’s wind and shine was a fading dream. There were no sand drifts sticking to my sweating skin.
Looking closely at the walls around the tunnel entrance you could see small distortion as if the dark tunnel just portaled another dimension pressing into our parking lot. The breeze, the clouds, water, trees, and birds. It was impossible to tell what was real, and what wasn’t.
The small building seemed comical on the edge of the enormous lot that could easily park several hundred of these double-decker busses. Sitting on a small manicured plot decorated with a reflecting pool, there were no other obvious destinations for us. The building couldn't have housed more than 60 people comfortably, and our bus alone had brought over 80. The thought anxiously compelled me toward the building in order to get a good seat for whatever we were going to do. Other passengers had been heading toward the building in unhurried gaggles, but my father hadn't moved. He pulled Mom close and hugged her warmly and whispered something beyond my hearing. Giving a weak smile, she reached for T-roy’s hands, and then mine, and we headed toward the green-gray doors of the little red building.
I started following the line of pilgrims towards the building but veered off towards the pond. I paused to look at Mom and Dad. Dad just gave me a reassuring wink. No rush. I continued to the pond. A small bird flew close enough over the lake that I was sure it wasn't an illusion. It landed on the limb of one of the pine trees near the pond. “What does it eat?” I thought. I knelt by the pond and broke the still surface with my fingertips. That’s real. Walking over to the tree the bird had been on, I picked up a piece of bark from the ground. It crumpled in my grasp. That’s real. I reached down and pulled a clump of grass out of the moist soil. Small worms wriggled out of the newly exposed hole back into the ground. I observed the roots of the grass closely. That’s real, real, real.
Satisfied that I didn’t understand anything I was seeing, I rejoined my family. T-roy rolled his eyes and we continued on towards the receiving station. Inside it was clean and new. The red-orange carpet of short berber shown of little traffic, and the walls were decorated with “welcome” written in every language imaginable, apparently graffitied by visitors before us. The expected crowd before us had vanished down a pair of stainless steel escalators. I was quite relieved to find that this little building was only intended to serve as a welcoming entrance.
The escalators landed us in a large airport-style walkway, tiled underfoot, with a broad belt-driven walkway down the right-hand side. Lights danced across the semi-arched ceiling. "Where are the rocks? Being underground, I expected there would be rocks," my brother echoed my feelings.
Nobody spoke much. Everyone just looked about themselves and meandered down the hall, soaking it all in, expectations having stilled their tongues and piqued their curiosities.
"Please proceed to studio 180 for your introductory briefing," a disembodied voice echoed down the hall periodically. Mom and Dad must have been briefed before the journey. They walked along as if this all made sense.