C James - Dome Six

“You can ask around if you’d like,” he continued. “I’m sure plenty of people saw me sitting there.”

Owen was in Tower 1, but it would’ve been crowded and he would likely have been hanging off the side watching the drama. Besides, everything made sense now. She smirked and teased, “So big bad Luther Downing is acrophobic. Good to know.”

“Now you know all my secrets,” he said. “Now what do we do about Yamamura?”

She was in an impossible position. Not talking to Tosh about past, present, or future was one thing. But going after her brother was something else. None of it felt right. Hideki was squirrelly and unpredictable, with a lifelong hatred of the Authority. He’d sent up flags in IDA for years. But sabotaging the Exchangers just to get a fix? When there was no guarantee they’d come back on? He was unhinged, not stupid.

Even so, the evidence was compelling. If she didn’t allow Luther to conduct his investigation, she’d have to defend that decision to the Council. It would seem like weakness or favor and she couldn’t afford that right now.

“Bring him in for a chat. Nothing more.”

“Very well,” said Luther, doing his level best to fake a heavy heart. She knew better. Just then, his heart was as light as a feather. But she couldn’t help but feel he’d gotten exactly what he wanted from her.

Owen planted on Wednesdays. It was less work than harvesting but it was putzy. Talking to Aaron helped the time pass, and even with Aaron working at about half speed, they were still the fastest team on 29.

Planters wore a heavy apron with pockets in the front. One pocket held seeds for whatever they were planting and the other held a fibrous, moldable paste called hempwool. He’d carefully transfer seedlings from the inside row of cups to those on the outside, which were filled with round, porous gravel called substrate. The substrate was dark and dirty save for the oddly clean pebbles made from incinerator ash. The plants finished growing inside the cups.

He tucked a seed inside a little ball of hempwool and placed it in the cups he’d just emptied. In two days, they’d be seedlings.

On and on it went. All day, every day. The weight of Art’s secret threatened to crush him, but he said nothing to Aaron.

Aaron got annoying sometimes, but Owen had come to appreciate the importance of keeping his mind sharp. The robotic nature of their work could make him enter a sort of trance where time passed quickly. That was how people got trapped in the Towers their whole life — they got to a point where time held no meaning and they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That wouldn’t be his fate.

As his mind wandered, he kept circling back to Art and the mysterious Box. Whose reconstituted ashes was he gently tucking around the microgreens?

“How do you think the Box works?” he asked.

Aaron knew all about Art and his relationship with Tosh and their family.

“Never gave it much thought,” said Aaron, intrigued. “I guess I just figured it was a gas chamber.”

“But you don’t know?” inquired Owen.

“No one does, man. It’s probably all automated. For all I know there’s some big robotic arm that comes out and just plucks your head off.”

Aaron made a popping sound with his cheek and chuckled at his own joke but immediately remembered about Art and apologized. Owen shrugged it off as he lifted a sweet potato seedling from the back row and held it over an empty cup while he grabbed a fistful of substrate in the other hand, making a little well. He then set the hempwool nugget inside, as it contained the delicate roots, and packed the gravel in around it.

They reached the end of the row. Aaron went to dump his crate into the harvester buckets while Owen finished up with seeding.

“Pick it up, dipshits!” Freddy growled. That was as encouraging as he got.

“Love you, Freddy!” Aaron hollered over his shoulder. “We care about your happiness!”

Freddy smirked and mumbled something. Owen leaned in close to Aaron and whispered, “I need to know how it works.”

“How what works?”

“The Box.”

“How you plan on doing that?” asked Aaron.

“I want to try and get a look inside.”

Aaron stopped picking to stare at him. “You want to look around the place where they kill everyone? Sorry, buddy. Hard pass.”

“How else will we know? Art’s the only Elder I know. I might not get another chance until my Mom…” he trailed off.

“Ol’ Freddy will give up the ghost long before that,” Aaron pointed out. “Hell, he’ll probably volunteer to go early.”

“Come on, man, I’m serious.”

Aaron sighed and resumed picking at a snail’s pace. “You go in the Box, you die, you get incinerated. Who cares how it works?”

Aaron’s lack of curiosity surprised Owen. Then again, he’d never attended a Quietus. Maybe seeing one would make him feel the same. He cared about Art but wasn’t as close to him as his mom. In fact, he wasn’t that close to anyone.

“I’m going to try to get a look inside during the ceremony,” Owen announced. “If I can’t, then I’ll try and figure out when they come pick up the body.”

“At night,” Aaron said matter-of-factly. “You didn’t know that?”

He hadn’t really given it much thought, but it made sense. The trucks that distributed multimeal and hauled away waste for incineration operated almost exclusively at night, after curfew. Whatever happened to Art’s body wouldn’t happen until then.

“Then I’ll go out after curfew,” Owen said. “See what I can see.”

“Are you nuts?”

“What have I got to lose?” asked Owen. “All this?”

“You want us to wind up like your uncle?” jabbed Aaron.

That was a fair point. Dek hadn’t done himself any favors by breaking the rules. But something told Owen that knowing what happened in the Box was more important than his social status. If he found himself mopping up in the FPC, so be it. At least he wouldn’t have to climb 29 flights of stairs every morning.

“Listen, I’m not getting busted down to sanitation just for being out after — Wait — did you say ‘us’?” asked Owen.

“Well if you’re sneaking around after curfew you’re gonna need a lookout,” said Aaron with a smirk. “Let’s look in the Box.”

Art Behrens was scheduled for Quietus at 8 a.m. Tosh, Owen, Byron, and Dee arrived outside at 7:30. Dome law made no special accommodations for Quietus because the Authority considered it a formality. To their way of thinking, Legacies effectively made you immortal. They weren’t executing an innocent person — they were just taking a body away that needed more energy than it could give back.

Tosh didn’t see it that way. She couldn’t walk with a Legacy or give it a hug. As far as she was concerned, Legacies were just a way for the Authority to discount life.

In the Time Before, people would’ve dressed in black and processed to the funeral in a long line. There would be hors d’oeuvres and juice and time off work. The Dome had no similar ritual. Death was prescribed. Elders died and babies took their place with cold, biological efficiency. To her surprise, Dek arrived just moments later. He strode purposefully toward her and hugged her tightly.

“You scrubbed,” she said, noting the faint perfume of the Scrubbers. He looked almost healthy.

Byron greeted him politely. There was no love lost between them. Dek and Dee didn’t know each other well but still enjoyed a certain easy familiarity.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Dek whispered. “Something big.”

“Not now, Dek,” she said softly.