Motel Serendipity

Liberty - Part 1

Today is the day. The day I've been waiting for my entire life. The day the vault opens and I experience the slight burn of sunlight on my skin and the tickle of green grass under my feet for the first time.

The artificial sun is fine- enough to keep me alive at least. But, now? Now, I will understand the stories my great-grandmother told of her childhood on the surface, more than a century ago, before the war. Before we destroyed our own homes. Before we unleashed the black cloud which made the surface unlivable.

From the moment my sleep pod slides open, I know I am not the only one who can hardly stay in their own skin today. Dad already has his best jumpsuit on and his retina lenses in, their faint blue sheen covering up the brown of his irises.

"Hurry up, Cal," he says as the pod door finishes its retreat and I unlock my feet from their holsters. "If you want seasoning on your Vitabar, you'll have to get down there before the other kids. We're running low."

Rubbing my eyes, I try to clear away the sleep and heaviness from them. There's got to be more food on the surface, maybe even the strawberries my great-grandmother missed so much. I am tired of Vitabars for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It doesn't matter if you boil them, bake them, add seasoning to them, or grind them into powder, they still taste the way Dad's cleaning products smell. "What time do we need to be on the lift pad?"

I already know it is 0800 because, otherwise, my pod wouldn't be open. The lighting in our small living area is glowing a faint orange, mimicking what sunrise used to look like above. It glints off of the chrome and plastic furniture and dingy white walls.

Dad turns around and pulls my jumpsuit out of its vacuum seal on the wall. His hand stays on it long after I have already reached for it. "Don't be so excited to get up there that you forget what you've had down here. We're still alive. That's a lot more than most of humanity can say."

And that's precisely what the Controllers said. That's the reason it took over a hundred years to begin research on the surface's viability. The reason every scientist who tried met a terrible fate. Until they got fed up with being in the dark. Until my mom got fed up.

I can't help but narrow my eyes at him and yank the clothing from his hand. This man lost his wife to the revolution that gave us this possibility. Yet, here he is, spewing the same toxic rhetoric the other side used for so many years, like he's forgotten it all.

"Don't act like that. They were wrong on almost everything, except that. Everyone on the surface died, Calliope."

I turn away from him and walk around the corner of the room partition. "A lot of people died down here too."

He isn't supposed to hear me, but with the way he is looking at the framed video of my mom when I look back up, I can tell he did.

I press a button near my collar bone and my sleep suit dismantles itself from my body, folding up into a pocket-sized square for me to place back inside the vacuum seal to be disinfected. My toe nudges the square cloth my father handed me and it latches on as it's supposed to, climbing up my body like a second skin.

The blue and yellow of it nauseate me with their familiarity. Blue, yellow, white, bright green. Artificial colors on artificial media. Today, I may see the deep forest green of leaves, the blue of a daytime sky, the brownish red of fresh dirt.

Today everything my mother fought for will be realized. Today I live her dream.

"Lenses?" my father questions as I come back around the partition fully dressed.

We have this fight most mornings. Being fed information about my surroundings, everything from temperature to people's names feels wrong — unnatural. I would rather explore, learn about things on my own. People whisper that it's because I'm her daughter. Because Celia Rae was my mother. Because we're never satisfied with what we're told to believe. "Do I have to wear them today of all days? I want to see the above with my real eyes, Dad."

"Lenses." Short. To the point. No argument. That is the Commander in him. One of the founding fathers of the resistance. Great for controlling a crowd, and apparently fifteen-year-old daughters as well.

I sigh and pop the panel on my wrist to reveal the two round disks. My eyes sting momentarily as the plastic makes contact and I blink away the tears.

Dad smiles and offers his arm as he presses the button to make the air-tight door slide open. I take it, although I'm still slightly annoyed from earlier. We offer a united front outside those doors, no matter what goes on inside our domicile. Those were Mom's words. Words that were gospel to the child hanging on her legs as she and Dad fought about the risks of what they were about to do. It was the last bit of wisdom she was ever able to give me, and it repeats in my head over and over as my father and I walk down the hallway.