“She always thought of you as a son, you know.”
“She did.” It came out more like a question than a statement.
Dr. Roger Montgomery pulled his eyes away from the bookshelves. Their spines reflected Dr. Denton’s varied interests, from science texts to obscure poetry collections. He pivoted on his heel and faced Liam, Dr. Denton’s recently widowed husband. The look on his face reminded Roger of the void left by Kenzie Denton’s untimely passing.
“She insisted you have these.” Liam returned to the coffee table with a large cardboard box. He lowered the heavy container onto the polished wooden surface.
Liam Denton was a small man, clean-shaven, with a neatly trimmed head of silver hair that gleamed in the soft light. His flannel shirt was tucked into a pair of well-tailored trousers. Even in his casual attire, Liam exuded an air of wealth that made the simplest clothing look expensive. As he straightened, he placed a hand on his lower back and grimaced. An expression of discomfort crossed his face.
Roger shoved the medical text onto the shelf, carelessly stashing it atop a row of art books. “How is your back feeling these days?” He joined Liam at the coffee table.
The older gentleman reached a hand toward the arm of the sofa and lowered himself into the seat. “Oh, you know. Old injuries only complain to remind us that they’re still there. It keeps me from doing anything daring, I suppose.” He gestured towards the box, three flaps folded in on one another. “You’re more than welcome to anything in there. She labeled this box for you.”
She always thought of you as a son, you know. Liam’s previous words replayed in Roger’s head. He couldn’t believe anyone as prestigious as Dr. Denton had held him in any regard. “Are you sure? She really left this for me?”
Liam gave a single nod. “I don’t know any other Dr. Roger Montgomery. It’s for you, Son.”
For a woman who allegedly thought of him as a son, Mackenzie Denton was a mystery to Roger. As personable and relatable as she was as a psychiatrist, there always seemed to be an invisible barrier between her and everyone else. She was somehow untouchable, out of reach, yet present in so many people’s lives.
Roger lifted the flaps and glanced at the belongings inside the box, which were primarily medical texts. “Her collection of medical knowledge always amazed me. Did she hope to be a medical doctor at some point instead of a psychiatrist?”
Liam shifted in his seat, trying to find the most comfortable position for his back. “Kenzie was interested in many things. But above all, she wanted to know how to help people in any way she could. I don’t think it ever mattered how.”
“She never asked or expected anything in return either,” Roger reflected.
“No.” A sad smile crept across Liam’s face.
He looked toward his late wife’s empty writing desk in the corner of the room. A single pen rested on the surface. The ink had hardened on the tip, poised to complete an unfinished thought. Like a museum exhibit frozen in time, it seemed as if she might return, settle into the worn grooves of her chair, pick up the pen, and write something new.
Liam’s eyes watered. “That’s what made her beautiful. A goddess among us all.” An uncomfortable silence filled the room.
Roger turned away from him and pretended to be more curious about the box’s contents. “Yes, these will do. Thank you.” He folded the flaps closed. “I won’t keep you.” He lifted the container, eager to leave the heavy atmosphere of loss behind. A knot formed in his stomach as he wondered whether additional guests might come by or if the man would experience total solitude in his wife’s absence.
Liam scooched to the edge of the cushion to gain more stability. His spotted hands tightened on the armrests, and his knuckles whitened. His face contorted as he forced himself to stand.
Roger’s fingers curled and uncurled before he finally reached out toward him. He was unsure if his assistance would be welcomed or seen as an intrusion. Old people can be so stubborn. The muscles in his arm felt taut as if unused to this kind of gesture. A quiet, selfish part of him hoped his offer wouldn’t be accepted.
“Nonsense.” Liam batted the younger man’s hand away. “You’ll need both hands for that box. I know how heavy those books are, and I’ve seen your scrawny arms, Boy,” he joked.
A playful snort escaped Roger. He was relieved the tone in the room had lightened, yet he wished he could shift the energy as Liam had.
The older man patted him on the shoulder and shuffled towards the door. Roger followed, eager to get home and down another glass of mead.
“Please don’t be a stranger.”
Roger nodded. “We’ll see each other.” He forced the words out as though saying them might make them true and flashed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
He crossed the threshold and into the back streets of Cobbled Peake, the upper-class neighborhood. The pneumatic door slid shut behind him as he descended the stone path that led to the lower levels of New Appalachia. His place wasn’t far from the Dentons’, though only the wealthiest lived this far up the mountain. The stone structure allowed for higher ceilings, grander halls, and more privacy from the impoverished who lived in the tunnels farther below ground. Roger resided among the middle class. Moving higher up the mountain would only make commuting to the hospital more time-consuming, even though the colony had been built with efficient commuting in mind.
Narrow tunnels crisscrossed the underground city, designed for maglev trams whose rusted, battered, and pockmarked exteriors hovered just above the ground. For shorter distances, residents relied on gravity lifts—cylindrical platforms with a faint amber glow—where riders glided up and down vertical shafts to reach various colony levels. In the broader corridors, the wealthier colonists buzzed around on antigravity skiffs. Their flickering propulsion fields left faint trails in the air while everyone else crowded into creaking, overpacked auto walks—a series of conveyor belts that rattled and jolted forward as if on the verge of collapse.
Who the hell had dreamed up something this elaborate? A city buried under mountains, running like clockwork, keeping thousands alive. Scientists, engineers, architects—people whose intelligence probably outmatched anyone still living here.
He would have given anything to sit in a room with the minds who built it to hear their reasoning, failures, and triumphs. Instead, all that remained were their blueprints and a colony that took it all for granted.
Idiots. That’s all he was left with. He worked with idiots. He treated idiots. It was torture being the most intelligent person in the room, and he hated every second of it.
They didn’t get it—there was nothing left to challenge him. His brain stagnated, starved for something more than the same tired routines and dull conversations. No one ever said anything he didn’t already know. At 37, his life felt spent. He’d seen it all, done it all, learned everything worth learning—except, perhaps, the limits of his own body. That was the last unanswered question. How many pills? How much alcohol? What would finally shut him down? His final experiment—his mortality.
The stone walls pressed closer, and the ceiling dipped lower as he descended. This was where the colony’s wealth began to thin into the middle class. The pathways here weren’t as wide or well-kept. After five minutes, he reached his dwelling—a compact but comfortable home tucked within the secure bounds of Lafayette Square.
Lafayette Square wasn’t a square at all but an irregular hub where five narrow tunnels converged, packed with carts and market stalls selling everything from recycled textiles to nutrient blocks. A labyrinth of interlocking stone corridors and stacked dwellings carved into the rockface stretched through it, each marked by personalized steel doors and neon number plates. Pipes ran along the ceiling. Their joints hissed as steam escaped. The residents strung up mismatched bulbs where they could reach so that splashes of light and color would break up the gray steel. The sense of community was a middle ground where families striving to rise above the lower levels mingled with those fighting not to sink any further. It was noisy, crowded, and imperfect. But it was home.
Cold air hit him as soon as he stepped inside his living room, and the scent of something metallic, with a hint of earth, like a dampened stone after rain. Earthy undertones from the surrounding rock blended with the aroma of medicinal herbs from the hydroponic gardens that lined the far wall. Occasionally, traces of that morning’s breakfast pierced the stale, recycled air.
He placed the box from Dr. Denton on his entryway table and headed straight for the nearest bottle of alcohol—Bee’s Finest—a mead concoction infused with cherries to give it an even sweeter taste. The logo proudly declared in delicate script, “Ten out of ten bees would recommend. 17% vol.” He poured some into a glass mug. The sugary fragrance wafted upwards, tantalizing his taste buds. A swift dash to the microwave and ten fleeting seconds later, the liquid transformed. Warm, not hot, was the key to unlocking its full flavor.
He moseyed over to the well-worn armchair, his favorite spot in the house, and plopped down. The chair creaked under his weight. He swirled the drink once in his hand and watched the reddish-amber liquid catch the light before he took his first long, satisfying mouthful. Warmth spread through him. “Heaven,” he muttered. He took two more swigs in quick succession. Setting the glass down on the side table, he turned his attention back to the mysterious box.
He pulled out the envelope on top and turned it over in his hands. His name was scrawled across the front. Probably nothing important. Just another formality. Not worth the trouble right now. He set it aside and reached for the contents beneath it.
Each item he pulled out added to the mystery, making him question his place in Dr. Denton’s life. His fingers skimmed over stacks of papers and odd trinkets and brushed against the worn edges of book spines. They weren’t all medical texts. One, tucked between thick journals, was a book of poetry by Denis Crook.
He scrunched up his face, confused as to why Dr. Denton would leave him a book on poetry by some unknown author. For half a second, he thought Liam had been mistaken and either handed him the wrong box or had him confused with someone else—someone more deserving—someone who Dr. Denton had really thought of as a son. A pang of doubt cut through him.
A detailed drawing of the human brain, sketched from three angles, caught his attention. Each section, from the cerebral cortex to the cerebellum, was carefully labeled.
He lifted a thick textbook from the box. Flipping through the pages, he found case studies, research findings, and statistics on the toll of addiction, particularly alcohol. Some chapters included firsthand accounts. The inclusion of these personal anecdotes made him wonder if she had assigned the right box to the right person after all.
A third item appeared to be one of Dr. Denton’s journals, its cover worn and weathered with age. As he flipped through the pages, he wondered why she had included a random collection of thoughts and what was so special about this journal from her middle-aged years—years that Roger was fast approaching.
He looked over at his meager, disorganized bookshelf. It didn’t look as nice as Dr. Denton’s. He saw some of his old journals but couldn’t remember the last time he had sat down to unload his thoughts onto a page. How much had his mentality changed since he first wrote in a journal? Would he be disappointed if he hadn’t changed at all?
Three old journals cowered in the shadowy corner of his shelf. Their yellowed pages shrank into the darkness as if afraid to reveal their secrets and memories. The ink may have dried, but the emotions remained strong. These witnesses to his past huddled together and waited for the day he’d revisit the chapters of his life that he had hoped to leave behind. He picked the first one up. A thick layer of dust moved against his fingertips. He grimaced. As he opened it, the spine creaked in protest, and the pages smelled funny, like an ancient library with old ink and wood polish. He flipped past the “this book belongs to” page and looked at his first entry.
STOP!
Don’t read this!
Go no further!
Don’t turn the next page!
There. That should do it. Always a nice way to break in a new journal. Walter Samuels probably thinks I’m smart, filling my journals with important scientific discoveries and medical stuff. People always see me writing in it and making notes throughout the day. And I keep them under lock and key so that people won’t know what immaturity is inside. They’d be upset if they saw how I wrote about my patients. People often seem to be upset with me. I see it on their faces, though few of them voice it.
Ugh, like that kid this morning. What was his name? Peebles? Pebel? I think that was it. I mean, what the fuck kind of a name is that? People will make anything up nowadays; they throw some letters together that make a coherent sound and call it a name. It’s like we’re reverting to cavemen.
HA!
We are cavemen, aren’t we? Oh, humanity, what have we become?
Anyway, I make it a habit never to show patients their medical records or charts. I mean, just this morning with the Peebles kid, I wrote RETARDED? In big letters across the top of his sheet. People would be so upset. This makes me chuckle a bit. People are super sensitive. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight or the lack of drugs. They should be more attentive when it comes to taking their vitamin D pills.
Yesterday, I forgot to mention that I drew a big W on one woman’s chart. I can’t remember why. It seemed important at the time. But the W turned into a ball sac. Then a dick. Someone once said to me that she didn’t understand why men were so obsessed with their genitalia. Uh, because it’s awesome! We’re awesome.
After I drew a big dick on top of this patient’s chart, I drew another W above it. You know, so whatever the original W was supposed to mean could actually be there, but then that W turned into a butt, which then turned into another penis. Thus, the patient’s record now has two large penises drawn on it. Who knows, maybe she likes it that way? Who am I to judge?
I have to do something to keep myself from going mad. All I do is see patients, and all they do is complain! Half of them are probably dying anyway. I don’t see the point in complaining about that. We all have to do it. If they are that miserable, they should do everyone a favor and end it.
Roger slammed the first journal shut. That was it. His younger self, a medical intern at 22, wrote journal entries like a 12-year-old boy but wished he was a top doctor. At times, he thought he was. Part of him felt Dr. Denton’s presence looming over his shoulder in disapproval. No one had read his journals, and he wouldn’t pass something like that down to another generation of doctors.
He wanted to leave behind a legacy as respected as Dr. Denton’s, even though she was a psychiatrist and he a surgeon. He wanted to be held in high regard, but looking at his possessions, he wondered what people would think of him if they knew—knew about the amount of alcohol, the number of pills, the amount of porn, or the number of unconcerned thoughts he had for his patients.
It was one thing to act like he didn’t care but another not to care. But he cared too much.
He imagined the whispered voices of his patients and colleagues: “If he’s so smart, why can’t he see his flaws?” He saw the way they looked at him. They leaned close to one another, mouths to ears. Their eyes shifted in his direction.
He discarded his old journal in favor of Dr. McKenzie Denton’s. He opened to her first page, dated over thirty years ago, and read her sophisticated script.
Statistics show that more and more children are born with severe conditions. Cleft mitral valves. Diabetes. Cancer under ten. Fatally sensitive allergies. Sickle cell anemia. Shouldn’t that be a sign that something is very wrong?
Advancements in medicine save lives that the human body would have naturally eradicated in the womb. Perhaps sometimes saving a life means adding extra burdens. But if I voice this, society will label me as heartless. I have to keep these thoughts to myself.
Modern medicine has also prolonged our lives, but we are doing other things to destroy ourselves. What good is immortality if we can’t learn how to live? Who wants to live forever anyway?
The entry stopped there. Where his entries prattled on, hers were focused, succinct, and vulnerable. Though her entry was old, it was no less accurate. Things hadn’t changed so much. To this day, babies were born with life-threatening conditions that advancements in medicine only seemed to highlight instead of cure. While he was shocked to see it in her handwriting, he agreed. Perhaps they were saving lives that weren’t meant to be saved, but then, what was the point of medicine?
He flipped to the next page. The next entry was dated three days behind the first.
We get glimpses of the sky through the dome over the canyon near the city hub. I’ve seen pictures of the stars at night—how they shine and sparkle against the deep blue and black. The stretch of the Milky Way is visible as long as there aren’t any lights.
Some tunnels lead to the surface, but most people don’t know how to navigate them and can easily get lost. We occasionally get a drifter, but those have become rare. We haven’t had a drifter in over two decades—maybe three? I saw more of them when I was younger. I think I was nineteen and only a handful of years into psychological study when the last one wandered in.
The drifter was a woman, frail but with child. She appeared ragged and wild-eyed. She spoke of a world beyond the dome that seemed both wondrous and terrifying. Her swollen belly looked painful. It must’ve weighed down her skeletal frame. When she walked, she grimaced as though the bottoms of her feet were on fire. We tried to help, but so far as I know, neither one of them made it. I never saw her again, nor did I ever hear of another drifter after that. Has the savage world of the surface killed them all?
Even now, I wonder what drove her to leave the surface. Was it hope or desperation? It reminds me of the fragile line between our haven and the unknown above. What would drive someone to leave home? Was she running to or from something?
Roger poured and heated another glass of Bee’s Finest, then plopped back into his armchair. He’d heard stories, as a child, of drifters who wandered into the colony with gaunt faces and eyes haunted by some horror they’d witnessed on the surface. But he’d never seen one for himself. As he thought more about it, he realized those stories had died. No one spoke of the drifters anymore. Their stories became myths whispered to wide-eyed children to keep them from straying too far from safety.
Something shifted inside the box.
Roger’s eyes snapped open. Did the floor just move? His pulse kicked up for half a second before he realized—the tremor was in his head. He’d drifted off again.
Blinking, he straightened and shook off the fog of half-sleep. The tumbler was still balanced in one hand, Dr. Denton’s journal in the other. He set them aside and pulled the box onto his lap, determined to uncover what was left.
Two medical texts—one on emotional intelligence, another on anatomy and human psychology—lay beside a snow globe of New Appalachia, which, by some miracle, hadn’t been crushed by the weight of the books. Of the few snow globes he’d seen, they all sported green-tinted glass, which resembled the inner city’s glow.
Scientists designed it based on the premise that green eased stress, as it reminded people of nature—he wasn’t so sure it worked. Snow globes were rare these days, passed down from generation to generation since before humans moved underground. The technology to reproduce green glass didn’t exist here, at least not beyond the flexible lightbulb gels, which meant this had been well-kept.
The green tint of the colony’s lights washed things out when the gels faded, making areas—and people—look sickly and uninviting. He wondered if the designers had considered this unintended effect or were desperate to create any semblance of the outside world when they built this one.
He turned the snow globe in his hands and watched the tiny flakes swirl around the miniature Green Street Market. It was a world that never could have existed down here. Snow didn’t fall underground—it never would—yet, trapped in glass, it looked so real.
Among the box’s contents was one other trinket: an elephant figurine, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, carved from a deep blue stone. Out of all the items in the box, the elephant was the strangest, even more so than the generic snow globe or the book of poetry. Elephants meant nothing to him. Maybe it was an accident, something that fell into the box by mistake.
He rose from his chair for what he told himself would be one last refill. He fooled himself into thinking that he hadn’t had alcohol for breakfast, lunch, and dinner already. Not today. That was yesterday. Or was it the day before? His home swayed and danced as he tilted the bottle toward his glass again. Roger halted his pour and gripped the edge of the counter. But the counter swayed with him, as did the ground beneath his feet.
There’s no way I’ve had that much.
Bracing himself on the countertop, he lifted the bottle of mead with his other hand and examined the level. The bottle was still a quarter full. Usually, he’d down four or five bottles before encountering any significant problems with his perception or motor skills—or so he thought.
He returned the bottle to the counter and decided against pouring another glass. Something was wrong. Light-headed and dizzy, his balance wavered. The glasses clanked and rattled in the cupboards. An unlatched door swung open, and two glasses on the edge shuffled to their demise.
He gripped the counter tighter as the tremors grew. His old comic book stash slid from the shelves, their pages bent as they dropped into a pile on the floor. Mountain dust fell from the ceiling, and he watched the snow globe fall from the coffee table. Its glass shattered, and the dome spilled its contents onto some of his books, soiling their pages—precious memories of his youth that he had stopped entertaining but was reluctant to let go of.
He stumbled towards the comics and attempted to salvage what he could. He lost his balance and fell. As his head bumped against the coffee table, one word repeated through his mind.
Earthquake.
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