The 45th Parallel, page 11
“Are you doctors too?” Gio asked.
“No,” I laughed. “I am an engineer, and Sera is a … technology specialist.”
Sera smirked but didn’t respond. That was a very kind way of saying cybercriminal, what I usually called her.
“Ah, so intelligent and beautiful.”
I flushed, and Sera laughed. “That is very kind,” she said. “But we are just normal girls.”
“Normal girls do not reactivate the portal between our worlds that we have been working on for fourteen years. Nor do they save their sister first when they have a serious head wound themselves and ask for wine when they regain consciousness.”
“You didn’t?” Sera gaped at me, open-mouthed.
“Maybe.” My redness deepened. “I was thirsty.”
“If we hadn’t heard you calling, we may not have found you. The lighting down there is for emergency purposes only and is very dim. We don’t waste power if we can help it.”
“Where did you find us?” I asked.
“Beneath our main pod, there is our water supply. Safe water we use for drinking. It was contained many years ago, as the virus spread and before my parents were sealed in here. I was born here.”
I had limited memory of where we had come through from Yellowstone. A glance at Sera showed similar puzzlement. Perhaps the designs of all the unhab communities were the same?
“How did you get us up here?” Sera asked.
Gio explained that it had been nighttime, and very few people were around. “My brother and I carried you into the lift and down the hall to the medical pod. We moved slowly and hoped no one saw us. We can’t keep you hidden, but I also didn’t want to explain how I came to find you.”
Lift? Is that what they call the moving box? I wondered. I could see one in the center of the room, encased by the enormous central pillar. This one had a grapevine growing around it and bright artworks staggered around all four sides. I watched it open and close, people coming in and out. How could we tell him that the only time we had been in one was at Yellowstone, and that was quite a terrifying experience?
Instead, I explained about Lewis, and Australia, where our parents were from originally, leaving out the part about Illy being part of the Collective, before and now.
“But Scotland is not on the forty-fifth parallel?” he asked, chewing salad. “If memory serves, it is farther north?”
“No, it isn’t. I suspect when we reactivated the portals; we reactivated all of them. Now we are being pinged from place to place.”
“Pinged?”
I tried not to laugh at Gio’s confusion at my word choice.
“Bounced around. So what were you doing down there? The water catchment.”
“There are very few private places here to talk. Apartments, of course. But there is surveillance in this pod and the access corridors. Down at the lake is off-limits to everyone except a few people. Our father worked there, so we know how to get in. We saw the water swirling but didn’t hear you until the noise stopped.”
“But you said it was the middle of the night?” Sera asked.
Gio lowered his voice. Not that anyone could hear us in this noise-filled space. “I was trying to convince my brother not to take the ultimate step. Like many here, he suffers from il buio,” he admitted.
“Il buio?” I questioned cautiously, detecting this was a sensitive subject.
Gio paused, reluctant to say more. “I don’t know the correct translation, but ‘the darkness’ is what my mother called it.”
“Darkness? Ultimate… ohhh…” I trailed off as I grasped what he meant. “Is life so difficult here?” I asked softly.
“It is all I have ever known, so for me, it is fine. We all have good days and bad days. But many people struggle with the darkness.”
“Depression?” I asked, careful not to be overheard.
“Yes, but we have always referred to it as il buio, the darkness. As the storms worsen, we need to spend more time underwater; no sunlight for days affects many people. For some, it is more painful being able to see outside, but not being able to leave the safety of the pod. We do our best. Meditation and yoga are part of our daily practice. Everyone is encouraged to exercise. But Matteo’s girlfriend took the ultimate step about eight months ago, and now he is alone. They had their own apartment, but now he lives with me again. Space is at a premium.”
Does that mean he is single? Guilt washed over me as I acknowledged that I was wondering if this gorgeous man was single instead of feeling sympathy for his brother’s mental health. The way his taut black t-shirt stretched across his broad chest left nothing to the imagination. My face heated, and I feigned interest in my remaining forkful of salad.
“That would be tough,” Sera admitted, thankfully choosing this moment to draw his attention away from me. “We live in the aboveground communities, so we get to see the sky all the time. People don’t seem to struggle there the way they do in the unhab ones.”
Before I could deflect, Gio paused mid-motion. He was sharp. He returned his fork to his now empty plate. “You have been to others?” he asked softly.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” I asked, hearing what he had said about surveillance. I genuinely believed Gio was trustworthy. There was something about him, and it wasn’t lust deciding. Sera flashed me a warning look, one I had seen many times.
“It’s okay,” I shot back silently. “I won’t tell him everything.”
Gio waited for Sera to finish her meal but nodded in agreement.
“I would like to thank your brother too,” Sera said. “For saving us.” Gio started to dismiss the suggestion. “That isn’t necessary…” Then a smile crossed his face.
“Actually, I think it would do him good to meet you. See the women he saved. Come.”
Gio returned all of our dishes to the tray and loaded them onto a conveyor belt that ran through the room, running the dirty dishes back into the kitchen.
“How old is Matteo?” I asked as he led the way across the enormous space, trying to gauge Gio’s age. I suspected he was older than us, but not much.
“Matteo is twenty-three.” He paused. “A year older than me.”
“Ahh, we are twenty-one. As I said, we are sisters but were born eight days apart. I’m older.”
“And she never lets me forget it,” Sera groaned.
Chapter 20
The enormous circular main pod had doorways scattered at evenly spaced intervals around the edge, the ring of windows running uninterrupted above. As I peered through the windows to the outside, I understood Sera was right in her previous assessment. It looked like a many-legged octopus with the large central facility and lots of smaller pods off to the side, connected by long, reticulated corridors.
“Is this so they can be raised and lowered?” I asked, running my hands along the corrugated metal walls.
“It is. We try to access as much direct sun as we can. The community learned in the early years that as much sunlight as possible was critical for all functions. Crops to grow, maximize algae growth to produce oxygen and for the health of all inhabitants.”
“I can’t imagine living in the dark is much fun,” I admitted.
“It isn’t. We have artificial light, of course, but the winters here are very long and challenging,” he admitted.
“Are all the pods color-coded?” I asked, intrigued by the different colored pods I could see through the windows. From the outside, they were all silver, but I could see through the double windows in places, and the interior walls were painted in different colors.
“They are. Green for crops. Brown for oxygen production. Grey for livestock, although, as I said at dinner, we don’t have a lot. Yellow for technology. Purple for medicine. Lots of others for factories, production, and engineering. The orange ones, like this one, are living quarters.”
I paused before we turned into the central walkway, more corridors off each side. “There are so many colors,” I enthused.
“We have an entire city here,” he explained. “It helps keep everything organized. Even with the orange pods, they are numbered.”
“How many people?”
“The community started with four thousand.”
“Wow! Really?” I didn’t think I had ever met that many people. “And now?”
“Five thousand, or thereabouts. At settlement, it was mainly young singles of reproductive age.”
“Same for us,” I admitted.
“Initially, couples were only permitted two children to keep the population stable, although it almost doubled in the early years. But the longer they spent here, the more people suffered from the darkness and took the ultimate step.”
“How many?” I breathed, not sure I should ask.
“Nearly a thousand in the first ten years, but fewer after that. Mostly the original settlers. They seemed to struggle the most. My mother was one of them.”
I stopped dead in the windowless corridor and clutched his arm. “Gio, I’m so sorry.”
“Many people who had once lived outside couldn’t cope. My mother was English. She was the teacher here, so she always spoke to Matt and me in English. My father was Italian, so we speak both languages. He passed when I was a child. Now it is just us. But you understand…”
“You don’t want to lose your brother too?” Sera asked kindly.
“I do not.”
As we walked, Gio explained each apartment had an outside-facing window. In the early years, there were three rings of apartments, outer apartments, and inside ones. But those who lived in the inner two rings of apartments had far higher rates of suicide. So, the pod layouts were changed to be long and narrow, so all apartments had outside-facing windows.
“Did you live in an inside one?” I asked gently.
“We did. My parents were classified as semi-skilled. Only the highly skilled people were allocated outside apartments then. Then there was a big movement to acknowledge all jobs. Now, we all have access to direct light.”
“They all look the same,” I admitted as we walked the spiral corridor, past hundreds of identical doors along the spiral corridor, only differentiated with a small discrete number painted on the door. “How do you find your own?”
“You don’t return home drunk,” he admitted with a laugh. “1452. This is us.”
It doesn’t look like a bachelor pad was my first thought as I entered the open, brightly lit space. It was a strange shape, long and narrow and with curved outer walls. The windows ran from waist height to ceiling along the far wall and offered the most spectacular view. We entered a combined living and dining space with a small kitchenette to one side.
“Wow!” I said, moving across the room to the windows. Sera followed me, and we took in the breathtaking view of the lake before us. At the far side, we could barely see the dead, brown landscape where the deadzone sloped down to meet the water. The light was brilliant, illuminating the room with shades of yellow and orange. Immediately, I understood why living without access to a view of the outside world would impact mental health. It would be like living in a cupboard, not being able to see the world beyond.
Facing the window, the sharp stabbing pain raged behind my right eye as I soaked in the view of the brightly lit sky. Surreptitiously, I touched it gingerly, praying the throbbing would stop.
“You can stay in my room,” Gio said, gesturing toward a door to the right of the living space. “I will stay with Matt.”
“No, we couldn’t possibly…” we both started to say, our words tumbling over each other.
Gio laughed, and Matteo came out from the room on the left.
“Matty, I am bunking in with you for a while. You better not snore.”
A dark look crossed Matteo’s face, and he fired off something angry sounding in Italian. Sera and I glanced at each other. We better find somewhere else to stay. Catching the movement, Matteo saw us standing over by the window. His face softened instantly.
“Ahh, I see my brother healed you then.”
“He did.” I smiled, trying to be charming. “And we are very grateful for all of your help.”
“All I did was carry you.” He nodded at Sera. “Gio is the medic. I am just pleased you are alright.”
“Not much to it,” Gio confessed. “A few stitches. Even you could do that.”
“Doubt it. I can only patch circuits.”
“Engineer?” I asked excitedly.
“You too?” His eyes lit. “Electrical?”
“Of course!” I laughed. “Though we all need to multi-skill, don’t we?”
“Sit, please.” He gestured to the very comfortable-looking sofas. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Not wine!” Giovanni blurted as Sera and I sank into one of the two superbly comfortable sofas. After days of sitting and sleeping on a rock-hard single bed in a cell, and weeks of sleeping on a concrete floor of a tiny office, I had forgotten how blissful it was to sit on something soft.
“They both have head wounds I need to monitor and nasty concussions. Tomorrow, maybe. Not tonight.” The three of us looked up at him, our eyebrows raised.
“No,” he repeated firmly.
“Fine.” Matteo turned back to us. “Sparkling mineral water?”
“I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted, feeling very much like the poor cousin in this amazing apartment with spectacular views. My head was killing me, but there was no way I was saying anything. The pain relief was wearing off rapidly, and my vision was blurring.
“We are fortunate. There is a mineral spring under the city that provides our drinking water. We carbonate it here in one of the factories. Not as good as the wine, but…”
“Factories?” Sera’s eyes popped.
“Don’t you have factories where you come from?” he asked, surprised.
“Ahh, no.” She laughed. “Lots of farms and vegetable gardens but no factories. Unless you count the whisky still.”
“Ahh, whisky. I miss whisky.”
“Why? Don’t you have any?”
“Until fourteen years ago, we had an active trade partnership with the five other communities. The one in Japan made a delicious honey whisky. We had a supply, but now, there is none left.”
“There are a lot more than five,” I said. “There are five underwater ones. We come from an above-ground community.”
Matteo’s eyes sprang wide. “Above ground? Where?”
“Well, there are twenty-four connected by antipodes, and then…”
“Slow down. What is an an-tip-oh-dee?”
As simply as I could, I described the portals that linked two opposite points on the earth. The one where we lived in Scotland was linked to an island off the southern coast of New Zealand. And that was where we thought we would end up when we reactivated the portals, I confessed, rubbing my temples and praying the pounding in my head would stop.
“Wait… you activated the portals?” Matt’s mouth hung open slightly, exposing his perfect teeth.
I pulled back slightly at his raised volume. “We did…”
“That is amazing! Do you know how many years our team has been trying how to reactivate them? They stopped working fourteen years ago. Since then, we have tried everything we can to be reconnected with other communities, but nothing worked.”
“Yes, ours too,” I said quickly, flashing a look at Sera, ensuring her silence.
“How did you do it?”
Sera and I gave a simple overview of the process to jolt the nexus back into alignment. We shared our theory that the full moon had impacted the charge, combined with the inopportune lightning strike. “Only, we never knew that underwater communities existed,” I explained. “We knew about all the above-ground ones, and there are quite a few isolated ones, not linked by an antipode. The antipodal points are only open four times a year, on the solstice and equinox. But we did not know about these, along the forty-fifth parallel. Before we came here, we were in Yellowstone. We accessed their files and learned that yours only opens on a full moon, so it makes sense that the moon phase affected our opening of all the portals.”
“I remember Mum talking about Yellowstone. Aren’t they the ones that cut off from the other communities early?” Matt asked Gio.
Gio shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Wow, the chances of a full moon occurring on the solstice or equinox is rare,” Matt said, returning his attention to me.
“I know. My best calculation is that an equinox and a full moon occurring on the same night would only happen once every ten years.”
“That sounds about right. So there are hundreds of thousands of survivors? That is amazing news.”
“Not that many,” Sera said. “Our communities are much smaller and far more rustic than this. We had four hundred, I think, originally on Lewis. It is many times that now, with all the children. But most people live a simple life. Nothing like this.”
“Is it safe outside?”
“No!” I blurted, not wanting to give him false hope. “We learned how to open the access hatches years ago, and we travel overland, or by sea, safely, of course, staying out of the water, including rain. But with no plants to produce oxygen, it is becoming hard to breathe. Dust storms are common and dangerous all over the world. But as long as you don’t come into contact with the water, you are fine.” Except Sera and me, I thought, feeling guilty for omitting that detail. We were immune and could travel anywhere as long as we had oxygen. But I didn’t know these people, and I had come far too close to being murdered for my immunity once before.
Gio and Matteo looked at each other incredulously.
“So you traveled from Scotland to Yellowstone to here?”
“We did.” Sera explained about our detour to Yellowstone in the US, a tightly controlled military community where we had been considered invaders and detained.
