Michael Soll - Scorched

“Hey, Spec.” I looked up at Cotta who had apparently been standing in front of me for some time. “We’re really close to breaking through.”

“Yeah… maybe tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

“Echo’s gonna squeeze that baby out this week. Hopefully not before we get through.”

We collected our belongings and headed back while Cotta chattered away. “Her milk is the tastiest right after the baby comes out. We should bottle some up for our journey.”

I ran my fingers against the side of the tunnel as we hunched through. I watched as grains of dirt dribbled down and landed quietly on the floor beneath. I had caused those specs to tumble from their place on the wall to their place on the ground. Without my decision to run my fingers, they would not be where they are. I did that. It seems so meaningless now…

“Could there ever be a tunnel so big, we couldn’t see the top?” Cotta balanced the ax on his finger as we reached the hive. We entered the Cove and deposited our collections for the day – some rocks and clay.

We collected our daily chum and milk and headed to the Grotto which was the biggest room besides the Central Hive. There, we socialized with our peers before the Head Elder commenced the meeting. As always, Ceramy was the first to greet us. He was the youngest of the collectors, halfway through his 6 thcycle.

“Heya Spec! Get anything good today?” The boy placed his lantern on the ground and waited for me to pull something magical out of my basket.

“Just some clay,” I said in as nonchalant way as possible to deter any follow up questions.

He quickly diverted his attention to Cotta. “What bout you?”

“I found a large fungus. The size of your head!”

“No way!” he squealed. “When do we eat it?!”

I tempered his enthusiasm – “He’s joking, Ceramy. All we hauled was rocks and clay.”

The boy giggled. “That’s funny but now I’m kinda sad you didn’t find it, hey guess what I found while collecting today, I’ve never seen anything like it, you wanna see it?”

He pulled out a tiny rock and handed it to me. I looked at him, unsure of how this was in any way special. “You gotta rub it,” he said with growing excitement.

I rubbed the rock, wiping away some of the dirt and revealing a sparkling surface. I held it to the dim lantern and within the rock, I saw glowing colors I had never seen before. One was blue and one was darker and one was brighter. How do you describe a color if you’ve never seen it before?

Cotta grabbed it from my hands and scratched at the surface. He banged it against the ground. “It’s worthless. Too difficult to cut and shape.”

“But it’s so pretty!” he retorted. That’s when I noticed Kaolin’s eyes watching me. I smiled and waved politely, but she quickly turned her head as if she wasn’t even looking my way. I felt bad for the girl even though I shouldn’t. We all have jobs and just because hers leaves her restless in the hive all day isn’t my fault. And when she becomes fertile, and if her body is able to withstand the birthing process, she will have a considerably decent life by our standards. She will get the most food and doesn’t even have to work for it; she just has to usher in the next generation of workers.

The others slowly siphoned in and all seventy-three of us sat on tiny mounds of dirt, listening to the High Elder as he announced the daily haul. Echo was presented and we all stared at her bursting belly. Crumble, the father of the soon-to-be baby, stood beside her, proud but tempered.

We ended the ceremony by gathering in line and rubbing the breeders’ bellies for good luck. As my hand brushed against Echo, I felt a tiny foot kick at my fingers. I rubbed some of the stomach and instead of seeing unimaginable colors, I saw a little imprint of the future.

“What’s their name gonna be?” I asked, staring at the belly.

Echo smiled and simply said, “Hope.”

I wasn’t stealing; I was borrowing.

But even if I wasn’t returning it, it wasn’t stealing. It was technically 1/74 thmine and 1/74 thCottas so that means it was 1 somethingth Cotta and mine which we could use when we wanted.

It was just a prototype but it worked well enough. A self-sustaining lantern, like the Central Tank, but portable. It meant future collectors wouldn’t need to fill up their lanterns with methane any more, they could just deposit droppings in the bottom and the methane would always be present. And it’s not like we were taking the only one of its kind; there were three prototypes so the colony would be fine. Cotta and I also constructed a portable tank to cultivate some bacteria. It couldn’t fill large tunnels with oxygen, but in areas depleted of air, the tank might be a lifesaver.

By my count, we had all that we needed for our journey. We had light with enough deposits to last us awhile. We had also been saving some of our rations of chum every feeding period, so we had food which would allow us to continue to make deposits in the lantern. The lantern gave us light and fire which allowed us to heat our urine in the aquifyer giving us clean drinking water and the tanks would supply us with enough breathable oxygen. We had enough to sustain us for about a quarter of a cycle.

Neither of us worried too much about when our sustenance would run dry. Cotta didn’t worry because he didn’t think that far ahead. I wasn’t worried because I trusted in our ability to find our own food and water as we moved forward.

What worried me most wasn’t the rigors of the journey ahead, but was leaving my father behind. He was a good father by all accounts and cherished me more than any other father cherished their child in the colony. I had wanted to make this journey for cycles but had held back because of him. He found out my secret desire through no fault of my own. While my eyes were closed and I was off in far away lands, my secrets unwittingly flooded from my mouth and he overheard everything I had been thinking but never said.

He sat me down one day and told me how when he was younger, he adored my mother. He wished she would be his and only his, but his father told him his dreams should stay locked away in his head, for they were merely dreams. And then, one day he was lucky enough to be chosen and for one day, she was his and he was hers. The cycle in which I grew in my mother’s stomach was the best time of his life. He was allowed to provide for her daily, watching his love grow inside of her and then, I was born and I became his while she became another’s.

My father’s dream had come true, if only for a fleeting period of time, and I was the lasting memory not only of his love, but that wishes and wants were possible. I was the most important thing in the colony to him, but he would rather me dream and wish and want than just be relegated as his dream. He told me that his new dream was for me to live mine, for me to make my life rather than live his. It made departing the colony an easier task to swallow, but I still worried about leaving him alone.

I sat in the Grotto next to my father, Cotta and Dover as we watched Grub perform his magic show. He was the most experienced at sleight of hand in the colony and for better or worse, he was the best entertainment we had and a lot more exciting than watching larvae “race” down a clay track with people gambling portions of their chum rations on the winner.

Grub picked up a large chunk of clay, waved his hand over it and turned it into a sharp rock. We all clapped our hands as he continued his show. Cotta and the others were deeply immersed in his performance while my eyes predictably wandered. Instead of watching the magician, I observed the audience; I found their reactions more interesting than the show before them. Everybody was so focused on the act in front of them that they were missing out on the show all around.