C James - Dome Six

The Rad funneled the three of them into a line abreast, two uniforms and a few odds and ends in their corrugated plastic crates. Owen nodded toward his fellow apprentices.

“Where’d you guys get stuck?” he asked.

“FPC,” said the girl. He’d seen her around but didn’t know her name.

“Towers,” the boy replied.

“Same,” Owen said.

Owen felt about as much like talking as they did. Depending what shifts they wound up with, he might never cross paths again. As they approached the double doors of the dormitory, Owen pulled ahead to open them. He held the door while they entered and watched them both trudge up the stairs like it was the gallows. At least he was on the ground floor.

All the buildings in the Dome had the same aesthetic — boxy and utilitarian with thin walls and flat roofs, wrapped in dull solar sheeting that supplemented the grid. The apprentice dorm was no different. He followed a sign for rooms 120–150 and continued down to 131. A young man was stretched out on one of the two narrow platform beds with his eyes closed.

Owen rapped softly on the doorjamb. The boy’s eyes flew open.

“Oh hey,” he said. “Are you my roomie?”

“I guess so,” Owen replied. He tucked his crate under his left arm and extended his hand to the boy as he rose. “Owen Welsh.”

“Aaron Padgett,” he said.

Aaron was slightly paunchy and unusually white for the Dome. The Originals were a mix of colors that had since condensed to an olive hue. At first blush, Owen had a hard time imagining he would make it to the top of the Towers.

“Welsh,” Aaron said. “Why do I know that name?”

In a place with so little news, Owen’s father’s disappearance 12 years earlier was a well-worn story. The rumor was that he’d pissed someone off at the Authority and they made him go poof . Aaron was just being polite.

“Beats me,” Owen noted with a shrug.

Aaron said, “I wasn’t, like, claiming this side of the room. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Me neither,” said Owen, sitting down on the left bed.

They each had a tiny shelf, a folded scrub tub with a jar of scrubbers next to it, a laundry crate for their bed linens and clothes, two spigots for water rations, and one IDA terminal. The whole room was smaller than Owen’s bedroom, which was already small.

“So this is home for the next two years,” Owen said.

Aaron shrugged. “At least it’s in a different part of the city.”

He sat directly across from Owen and tucked one doughy leg under the other.

“So what’s your deal, Owen?”

Owen related the short version of his life story, including the part about being orphaned at a young age and being raised by his stepmother. If Aaron knew his story, he didn’t let on.

“I was hoping for technician,” Owen said. “Didn’t kiss enough Authority ass, I guess.”

Aaron’s eyes roamed around the room as though to remind Owen that IDA was always listening. It hardly mattered now.

“I was hoping for medic,” Aaron said. “My whole family works in the Towers, though, so I can’t say I was surprised.”

“My mom didn’t want me to get my hopes up,” said Owen. “I guess she was right.”

“I’ll tell you this much,” Aaron said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “I’m not gonna let my mind waste away up there. That’s the real reason people get stuck in the Towers. You’ve got to stay sharp.”

“We plant, we harvest,” Owen replied. “How do you plan to spice that up?”

“Whatever, man. We’ll figure out a system.”

Owen liked what he was hearing from his new roommate. He wasn’t exactly a man’s man, but not one of the knuckle-dragging pinheads he associated with the Towers, either.

“So what happens now?” Owen asked. It was only 8:25.

“IDA will come on here any second and tell you about the ceremony tomorrow. Other than that, I think we’re just kind of on our own.”

“Well that’s anticlimactic,” Owen joked.

“Want to take a stroll through the girls’ floor?” Aaron asked, raising his eyebrows mischievously.

“Are we supposed to be up there?”

Aaron shrugged. “No one’s told me the rules yet. We can hardly be blamed for saying hello, right?”

Alittle stage was set up outside the Authority complex near the base of Tower 1. Workers flitted about the enormous structure, some planting, some tending, and most harvesting. Car-sized buckets on beefy chains crawled down full one side, disappeared into the FPC, then came up empty on the other. It was elegant and impressive no matter how many times you saw it.

But after 37 years in the Dome, Tosh couldn’t have said who Placement ceremonies were for. Nobody was there because they wanted to be, that much was certain.

Owen and his 17 fellow greenies stood shoulder to shoulder in neat rows, 10 boys and 8 girls in all, all aged 16. Owen was as stone-faced as the Authority stiffs behind him. He would spend a minimum of two years as an apprentice, after which his chances of reassignment were slim. But they happened.

After her parents died, she and Hideki both slipped into dark places. Hideki poured his negative energy into illicit Macros, while she directed hers toward learning the truth. Her supervisors in central information systems, where she was first placed as a junior analyst, gave her very little to do.

When Hideki’s activities came to light, he was moved into sanitation and IDA reassigned her to education.

She easily could’ve been cast down into the bowels of the FPC, which made her wonder if she’d gotten lucky. But she’d since come to suspect that teaching the same Authority garbage to children was, in fact, punishment for being associated with Hideki.

He was supposed to be there, but Tosh didn’t see him anywhere. The Agora buzzed with commuters, a few of whom stopped to watch. The Director of Production stepped up to the podium. Downing was seated behind him next to Elle Travers, Tosh’s former best friend who was now Dome Administrator. So far, she hadn’t spotted Tosh.

“We’re gathered here today for a very important occasion: The Placements of these young citizens into our life-giving Towers.

“Our Administrator, Elle Travers, has asked to say a few words. Elle?”

Tosh shifted uncomfortably on the turf as Elle stepped up to the podium in silence. As kids they were joined at the hip, but they hadn’t exchanged a word since the day her parents died. She got placed directly into the Authority as an apprentice and had worked her way up to Administrator. It was hard to believe they were ever close.

“Thank you, Director Redmond.”

To her left, Tosh heard someone running toward them. She whirled to see Dek come across the Agora at a full sprint. Sweaty and smelly, he plunked down beside Tosh, panting. Elle’s eyes followed him the whole way, eventually settling on Tosh. They lingered on her for a moment before she continued.

Elle continued, “These Towers — our magnificent, life-giving Towers — are more than just the source of our food and clothing. They’re symbols of hope.”

Dek was a mess. His hair was now shoulder-length and unkempt, making his head appear all the larger atop his bony frame. He was in desperate need of a scrub. He drew his sleeve across the sweat beaded on his wispy mustache then turned to her.

“Did I miss anything?” he asked, a bit too loudly.

Tosh shushed him and caught Owen smirking at Dek’s antics. She gave him a thumbs-up but he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Without the food we produce, nothing else would matter. Our society would collapse, and we would starve. Those in the Towers, and these young people starting today, deserve our gratitude. I thank you, the Authority thanks you, and the citizens of Dome Six thank you.”