C James - Dome Six

“Don’t leave. I’m sorry. IDA, off.”

“You know that’s not really them, right?” she said, her teeth clenched. “Can you turn it off, please?”

“Toshiko, I hope you’re well,” said the Legacy which was still on the screen. “I miss you.”

“IDA, off!” Tosh spat. Her mother’s face blinked out.

“Tosh, listen. Just listen, okay? You know how we’ve been trying to solve this puzzle, right? You and me, Mom and Dad. The puzzle. The only puzzle that matters.”

“ We haven’t been trying to solve anything,” Tosh said.

“You know what I mean. I was just trying to—”

“Dek, this isn’t healthy,” she said, trying to herd him toward his bedroom. “Have a scrub and then we can talk. I’ll clean up in here, okay?”

He clapped his hands sharply. “I know! I’ll show you!” He shrugged free of her hand and hurried toward his room. She followed cautiously just to see what he was doing.

First, he opened his small closet and rifled through a crate full of junk until he found a little bundle of tools. She recognized it from her father’s old tool kit, which Dek would’ve had hidden away somewhere. Kneeling, he carefully unrolled the bundle and found the special wrench that fit the wall panel bolts. They came off for easy maintenance, but you needed a technician’s tool set to do it. It was where they used to hide things as kids.

He padded across the room to a panel in the second row up, near the foot of his bed, and removed the bolts from the corners.

“Whatever’s in there, I don’t need to see it,” Tosh said.

“Yes, you do. You sure do,” Dek said. “Just wait. It’ll blow your mind.”

He set the composite panel on the floor and carefully reached into the space behind it. It was just an old IDA tablet.

“Wow,” she said. “Very impressive.”

He cradled it in his hands as though it was a priceless artifact. “This was Dad’s.”

When they didn’t find it among their parents’ things, Dek turned the place upside down to find it. When he visited her at her dorm, she told her father that a tablet connected to a working scanner could retrieve location data from his CHIT. He thanked her and left. She never saw him again and never knew what happened to the tablet in question.

“How did you get that?” she asked. “Tell me you didn’t use the scrambler to break into our old unit.”

“This thing hasn’t worked for years,” he said, fingering the metal ring around his neck. “I just like wearing it.”

They made the scrambler together when they were kids, hollowing out a bearing ring to pack in the electronics. It masked the CHIT signal so that his location would only register if he went through a security door. IDA would assume a glitch and report his last recorded location.

“I got it working. It was still in diagnostic mode. Dad’s location data is still there!”

That stopped her. If Dek was right, then the location data straight from her father’s CHIT could either prove or disprove the Authority’s account of what happened to them. The problem was, then she’d no longer have a choice what to believe.

“And?” Tosh asked.

“I don’t know how to bypass the security protocols,” he said. “That’s why I need you.”

Dek was whip-smart, but this wasn’t his area of expertise. Tosh could still navigate the buried admin menus where that data would theoretically still reside. But she’d worked so hard to come to terms with what happened. Was the truth worth pursuing if it threatened what little comfort she had managed to find? Dek was evidence enough of what happened if you didn’t leave well enough alone.

Every morning, Owen and Aaron ascended 29 floors of metal stairs along the outside of Tower 1 with legions of fellow greenies, many of whom had been there for decades. The longer you were there, the lower your home level. The previous shift would see them arrive, dump their bins into the conveyor, and wearily hand them to the people in the next shift before starting the long trip back down.

Each hydroponic Tower comprised 30 five-meter high levels that ran all day, every day under grow lights. Each level was a 50-meter square with narrow aisles between rows of plants. During his training, they said each level provided 2,000 square meters of cultivation area, so 60,000 square meters per tower. In all, the 10 towers provided 600,000 square meters of dense growth, roughly 150 acres.

Plants grew in a gravel substrate bathed in water, driven by pumps that continuously filtered and recirculated it. Much of the water lost through evaporation and transportation eventually condensed on the underside of the Dome and was collected.

They got a 15-minute break every two hours. Most of his Tower mates used their breaks to lean over the railing and stare down at the Agora or across the city, counting the minutes until they could leave. The only thing he got out of the experience was exercise.

And did he ever.

They worked in pairs — one harvesting, one planting. Harvested plants went into a plastic bin. When it was full, you walked it over to the bucket conveyor running down the side and dumped it in a passing bucket, mindful that another was right behind it.

It took some practice to get the timing right. If you didn’t, you’d toss the contents of your bin right over the top of the bucket, bouncing off the shield that kept it from sailing off into the Agora. But like other aspects of this work, it was best to just turn off your brain.

Aaron, to his credit, wouldn’t let Owen do that.

As they worked, Aaron would quiz him about math or physics. They’d estimate the weight and volume of conveyor buckets as they passed or simply see if they could recognize anyone below.

Aaron was able to do this because he truly believed it was temporary — that if they stayed sharp, IDA would recognize that they were more useful elsewhere. His relentless optimism and good humor kept hope alive for Owen, who realized he would’ve fallen into a deep depression if not for his friend.

“Holy shit,” Aaron said, holding up a handful of pale gray gravel.

“What?” asked Owen.

“I think this is my great uncle Kenny.”

Owen laughed. Ashes from the incinerator were collected and mixed with a solution to form a paste that was dried and crushed into substrate for the Towers. That included human remains. Almost nothing went to waste.

“Break!” hollered Freddy, and everyone stopped what they were doing.

The salty old guy had been in the Towers for 32 years. He’d lost two fingers to a mishap with the harvester buckets on his second day on the job. To hear him talk, you’d think it had been all downhill from there.

“Your work is never done,” he’d said on their first day. “This is your life now. No matter how many plants you pull out, they keep comin’. But I’ll tell you this — ain’t nothing more important.”

Some queued for water at the spigot during breaks. Others leaned on the railing and looked out at the city, and some just laid down on the filthy grating of the floor for a while. Freddy didn’t care if you took a carrot or radish to eat, but the nutrient bath tasted terrible. That meant either lining up at the tap or sacrificing some of your own rations to rinse it off. Owen decided that was too much of a hassle and took a container of multimeal instead.

Owen sat next to Aaron with his legs hanging off the edge of the floor, leaning his elbows on the railing. Spoonfuls of multimeal slipped into his mouth in a steady cadence while he stared out at the city. The only nice thing about Tower work was the view. It was killer.

“I’ve been wondering about this shit lately,” Owen announced, indicating the gray-green mush.