The Great Above

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

Sophie’s grandfather’s room was closest to the surface, right next to the door to the outside. It was his job to guard the exit and to watch the outside through the window, but there wasn’t much to see. 

It was a small window frame, maybe twelve inches by twelve inches. Most of the time, it was darkness beyond, but this rare time, there was light, blinding and whiter than any flame. And through it, stalactites of purest white. Some even clear. And occasionally, what looked like a dark branching stalagmite that spread upwards from the ground. It made Sophie feel odd, like she should know what it was, but nothing came to mind. The outside seemed to be a brighter whiter version of the caverns.

“What are you doing here?” Rough hands grabbed her down from the tall chest she had perched on. “If ya break your neck, your ma will kill me.”

Reluctantly, Sophie turned away from the window and looked into her grandfather’s wrinkled face. Eyes almost milky blue with cataracts, he grinned down at her, the tips of his thick white mustache turning up at the ends. “Though, ta be honest, I ne’er could keep her from it either.”

“What is it like, out there?” She knew he had never seen more than the view from the window, but she always asked. 

It had been hundreds of years since anyone had been outside. All they knew were the caves. Tunnels carved out of solid stone that connected villages and cities. Some tunnels curved down miles and miles. If you fell down the ventilation shaft, you could fall for minutes, and when you finally landed, if you survived the fall, no one would ever find you. 

She was tired of the caves. Of the dampness that seemed to seep into your bones. So thick you could taste it with every breath. Earthy damp and hard rock. It was all she knew.

Her grandfather sighed. It was her favorite story, and he always tried his best, but she was never satisfied with the why of it all. No one knew why it had happened, just that it had. “If ya stay off the chest, I’ll tell ya. Sit.”

There wasn’t much to this cavern. A few wooden remnants, a chest and chair, and wooden safe for valuables. Relics of a world that was foreign to her. Few pieces remained, and then, only in the older families. She had asked once where wood came from and her grandpa only smiled. “Something called a ta-ree. Once they were everywhere and grew as high as the tallest cavern. You could use them for fire or to make homes or if you squished it really small, you could make pauper. And you could write on pauper with pink.”

She didn’t particularly believe that story. She couldn’t imagine anything growing higher than a few inches, let alone something that could be squished down into pink pauper.

Her grandfather eased into the chair, and it creaked beneath him with a resounding thunk. Sophie sat cross-legged at his feet, and pulled the thick blanket over them both.

“We were once called Kentuckans from a place called Stamerica.”

Sophie formed the words in her mouth, but they felt strange. “Can-tuck-ian?”

“Kentuckans,” her grandfather repeated. 

She tried a few more times and could almost say it.

“Once we lived in the Great Above, a cavern so large, you could ne’er see the top of it. And in this thing called the high, there were lanterns so bright, you couldn’t look directly at them! But they made the entire cavern warm enough that you could walk without clothes and be comfortable.”

Sophie gasped. How could anything be that warm? Most of the time, she needed many layers to keep her teeth from chattering. She pulled the blanket tighter around them.

“And they had highscrappers, buildings that were so tall, you could fit all of Indy-napolis in just one part of it.”

Sophie shook her head, disbelieving that part. Nothing could be that tall or that big.

“But one day, huge fires lit the high and the whole cavern shook. It became too hot. And then too cold.” Her grandfather shielded his eyes and then rubbed his arms for emphasis. “Our ancestor, Jeb, came down here to get away from the stow that covered the whole cavern, making it unlivable, and he—”

“But why? Why is stow unlivable? What made the fires in the high?”

He shook his head. “No ones knows. Just that the caves were the only place we could live. We took the remaining livestock and learned to farm mushrooms. Found water from underground streams, and built the cities we now live in.”

“But—” There was so much more she wanted to ask, but they both jumped.

There was a loud crashing knock at the door to the outside.

###

The door had never been opened. Not in nearly three hundred years. It took five men to pull it open a crack. Air so cold it made her lungs hurt poured in from the opening, and something else. A figure wrapped in many layers of clothing squeezed through. 

It took a minute to lose some layers, but when he did, it revealed an outsider, only a year or two older than Sophie. His skin was darker than anyone in the caves, and his hair was blacker than darkness, it almost seemed purple as it reflected the flickering lamplight. In an unknown accent, he said, “I must speak to your elders.”

Sophie couldn’t explain why she felt drawn to him, but in the chaos that ensued as they summoned the elders, she waited alone in the hallway with him. He was so different from everyone she knew and he came from the Great Above.

“Who are you? How do you know about the elders?” She leaned in. “And how did you know where to find us? And—”

“My name is Adam, and… what if I told you that everything you know was a lie?” He looked up to the corner of the hallway where a small green light shown from the bioluminescent plants that lit parts of the caves. “There’s so much more to this world, and like Plato’s allegory, you think that shadows on the cave walls are the real thing.”

“What’s leg-gory? And why do you think shadows aren’t real?” She pointed to the shadows behind and underneath them.

He shook his head. “It’s too much to explain right now. I came for help. My family… my people… we are being attacked by the same people who trapped you here—”

He shook his head again, as if realizing that she didn’t understand. 

“We came here because of the fires in the high… and the stow. My ancestor, Jeb—”

He grabbed her hands and pulled her close. He whispered, “You don’t have to stay here. There are places that are livable. This Ice Age doesn’t cover everything. And Jeb… he was trapped here during an experi—” 

“The council will see you now.”

Adam dropped her hands and stared absently towards the plants in the corner again. “I hope you believe me. Our lives may depend on it.”

### 

A lie. How could everything be a lie? The stories never made sense, but she didn’t think her grandfather could lie to her. Unless he thought it was true because he only knew the lie himself.

They were in there a while, and it left Sophie with nothing to do but think. Clearly the outside was livable, because the boy had to come from somewhere, but the rest of it… She didn’t know what to believe. But one thing was clear. If lives were at stake, then they had to help. The elders would know what to do. They would—

“Not help” an elevated voice came from within. “But you have to! My people…”

“Child,” the voice sounded like Elder Halmon, “we have lived in safety for hundreds of years. If what you tell us is true, then we cannot risk OUR people. You’re welcome to stay in safety here, but we will not go outside, no matter what the need may be.”

The stranger burst through the doors, uttering curses under his breath. He saw Sophie and paused. “If we can’t stop them… you won’t be spared.” He threw his shoe at the corner with the plants. Then, his shoulders slumped. “I— I should go.” 

He retrieved his shoe and then started layering his clothes back on. “For your sake, I hope I’m wrong.” 

###

Sophie didn’t know what to feel. The stranger was the most excitement they’d had in a long time. She still had so many questions. Questions her grandpa couldn’t answer. She dragged her feet, reluctant to go back home.  

When she reached her family’s cavern, her mother was singing softly to her baby brother in the corner. 

“You are my lamplight.  

My only lamplight.  

You make my heart sing 

When you are near.  

You’ll never know dear 

How much I love you…” 

The song made Sophie sad. Was her family in danger? Could she risk everything to help a stranger? 

She went to look out the window. The brightness had faded somewhat, and the whiteness shifted to a dull blue.

“I thought I might find ya here,” her grandfather said from behind her.  

“Can we really do nothing?” She turned to face him. “You always told me to help others in need and—” 

He held up a finger to shush her. “The stories always felt wrong. A quilt with too many holes. I don’t know what’s out there, but I think we should help.” 

He pulled out his thickest coat from the chest. “I’m too old, but if you hurry, you can catch him.” 

They bundled her up, and with the help of trusted door guards, let her out through the front door.

###

The first thing she noticed was the cold. She was used to cold. That sort of never-quite-warm-enough ache that lived inside her bones. This cold was different. Breathing felt like tiny needles stabbing her lungs. The damp seeped into her clothes and hardened so it felt like she was trying to walk with solid rock lined pants. She wrapped a scarf around her face, but her exposed eyes watered and tears froze on her eyelashes. 

At first, there was a path to follow, a line dragged through the wet white stuff that covered everything. As time went on, the trail disappeared. She blindly tried to go in the right direction, but she had no way of knowing anymore. It was just endless white in all directions. 

She turned back to look. Her own tracks disappeared behind her as the wind blew the white stuff across the path. Her stomach dropped as she realized she would never be able to find her way back. Forward was the only way.

After a bit, the whiteness changed a little. There was something in front of her. It seemed so far, and each step forward was harder. All she wanted to do was rest. To curl up and maybe take a nap, but she had to figure out what was ahead of her. She gritted her teeth and made her legs keep moving.

As she got closer, the white things grew taller, stretching upwards to impossible heights, casting huge shadows across her path.

“Highscrappers,” she breathed. She stood underneath it and looked straight up. She couldn’t see where the top was.

She couldn’t walk anymore, so she sat with her back against the highscrapper. It was becoming harder to think. Clearly the stories from her grandfather had some truth. She’d found a highscrapper, but the rest. It was too much to think about. She needed to nap.

Right before she passed out, she wondered that she no longer felt cold. Just so tired.

###

Sophie woke to a steady beeping noise unlike any she had heard before. When her eyes adjusted, she was in a white room that was perfectly rectangular. The caverns had rounded edges and uneven surfaces, so it didn’t seem like a real place with corners and straight edges. Am I dreaming? She thought. She would’ve rubbed her eyes, but her whole body felt heavy.

The light was steady and in long bars across the top of the room. She vaguely wondered how they weren’t flickering like normal light. In fact, everything she saw confused her.

Next to her, the source of the beeping sound was a cube that had lights move in patterns across. Clear tubes went from the box into her arm.

What the—

In a panic, she tried to pry the tube off. A hand grabbed her. Then two. Someone she hadn’t noticed before was holding her down. She struggled, blindly kicking and screaming.

The outlander, Adam, ran into the room.

“It’s okay. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.” 

She stilled, and the stranger let go of her arms. She turned to look at the stranger, tall with light hair and a long white coat.

“What is… Where? I—am I dead?”

Adam started pointing things out and trying to explain them. “You almost died. This,” he motioned to the tubes, “is giving you water and nutrients. And this,” he pointed to the box with the moving lights, “monitors your heartbeat and oxygen levels.”

She mouthed the strange words, “Ox-gen? Nu-riens?”

He shook his head. “I always forget how much your people forgot… This is keeping you alive. We almost didn’t find you. You could’ve died from exposure and hypo—Nevermind. You probably don’t know those words either…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “If you get too cold, you’ll die,” he said simply.

Sophie nodded. That much she knew. When the elders got too cold, they would fall asleep and never wake up. They always needed a cavern with a strong fire and a few extra blankets.

“This is called infrared.” He held up a small box with colors in odd shapes. “It detected your body heat and allowed us to find you before it was too late.”

He held her up to show how the colors changed to the figure of a man when he pointed it at the stranger who held her arms down,

She didn’t understand any of it.

“You came,” he said simply, a hint of pride in his voice. “You believed me.”

“I don’t know what I believe, but I know I don’t know…” she looked around the room and at everything that was unfamiliar, “… a lot. What did you need help with?”

He nodded to the stranger in white, who then started unhooking the tubes. “Come with me.”

He led her down hallways, each more strange than the last. Some rooms they passed had some of those cubes of moving lights, but it looked like moving pictures. Some rooms had people playing noisy games, long rectangular games with silver balls and lights that flashed if they hit the ball into the right place. One room had beds, elevated off the ground and lining each wall.

Finally, he led her to a room that looked like it was full of windows. On closer examination, the windows were more of the light boxes. And on each, she saw people moving and talking. A few people sat in front of the light boxes, rapidly hitting small buttons with letters and numbers painted on them. She couldn’t fathom a reason. 

She had learned letters from drawings made on the cave walls, but she only knew a few words. These letters were in no discernible order, but the people hit the buttons so fast without even looking at them. She listened to the clicking noise for a minute, but it made her head hurt to figure out what they were writing.

Instead, she looked at the closest light box window. “But that’s…” She reached out to touch the window, smooth and flat and a little cold, but the image was her grandfather talking to Elder Halmon outside the meeting room. “How?”

Adam shifted his weight between his feet. “It was a social experiment.”

“Ex-peer-what?”

“They wanted to know what would happen to society in an Ice Age. How humans would survive. How long culture would last. So they created one and watched how you would react.”

He pointed to a small globe on the edge of the desk. “They created a snow globe.”

She picked it up. Inside the glass was a cave entrance. She moved it, and little flecks of white floated up in the water and then slowly drifted back down.

“Why?” Sophie demanded. Her mouth went dry. They were watching her and her family. Adam had warned her that her life was a lie, but to actually see it made her sick.

“To preserve civilization.”

She didn’t even try to say that word. “And these people?” Another window showed people, not in caves but in a very green place. A place of bright colors and very little clothes. Sophie blushed when she saw one girl wearing a small strip of cloth to cover her chest, and an even smaller piece over her hips.

“A simulated volcanic island.”

“And this?”

Adam described many places to her. One place was completely full of water and had people dangling ropes into the water from a wooden floating thing called a boat. One place was sand, as far as the eye could see, and the people were completely covered except for their eyes. Ten places with people just like her—lied to and watched. Manipulated for what? What did these people gain from doing this to them?

Tears fell down Sophie’s cheeks. “Why did you bring me here? You clearly don’t need my help? All you did was confuse me more.”

“I tried to help you, to save all of you.” Adam wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I am not the bad guy here. Bandworth, the company that runs these experiments, decided it was too much money. They’re ending the project. When I couldn’t stop them, I at least tried to save who I could.”

She still didn’t understand everything but two things were clear: something was ending and everyone needed saving. She grabbed the back of the chair in front of her as waves of dizziness rolled over her. “We have to go back. They’ll listen to me. We can still save them…”

He shook his head. “It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

The ground shook, and she saw pity in his eyes. He pointed to the room across the hall. There was a massive window that covered the entire wall. Through it, she saw domes spread out across as far as she could see. And the one dome that was white, her “snow globe” as Adam had called it, the white falling flecks turned to fire as flames floated downward. 

She ran back into the other room to watch the window that showed the caves. Before the window went black, she saw falling rocks.

She fell to her knees. It was too late. Her family… everyone and everything she knew was gone. She gave a strangled scream, burried her head in her hands, and sobbed. 

She didn’t know how long she stayed there. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. She was vaguely aware that someone in a white coat led her from the room.

###

When she woke up, she couldn’t move. Her body felt heavy. It took a few tries to open her eyes. Adam stood before her, wearing a white cloak with a small design stitched on the front. He held a flat piece of wood with pauper on it.

“What’s going on?” Sophie said. Her mouth was so dry and her voice came out as a rasp.

“There’s more to the experiment. It was more than social and cultural. In the hundreds of years your people were in the caves, you evolved. Developed lighter skin, better hearing, eyes that could see better in the dark. The result was physiological.”

He paced before her, and every look of pity and sympathy, all empathy was replaced. His face was cold.

“I don’t understand,” she managed to gasp out.

“We need samples. Tissue, eyes, brain… if we are to understand and replicate without waiting 300 years for nature to take its course.”

He paused and looked out the window towards something she couldn’t see. “The earth is dying. We are running out of time. We have several places where man can relocate to, but in order to survive, we need to change our physiology. We need to evolve, and fast. If we can use the enhancements from you, and from some of the other experiments…”

“You killed everyone for that! I would’ve given it willing to save my family.”

He smiled, too wide, showing his teeth like a feral animal. “I didn’t lie about the expense. We needed to obtain samples and then terminate the rest. He held up a small sharp object. “This may hurt.”

The last thing she saw before he took her eyes was his gleaming white smile.