No Life Outside

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. This was the only Dungeons to include an out-world window, and of course Jean-Michael had been able to keep it as his private office all these years. The old man was the leader more by the strength of his will than by being a well-loved member of the closed society.

From this exact spot outside the door (and when he wasn’t actually in his office), she was able to see through the window in the door to the small out-world window embedded in the centre of the ceiling. Just a half-circle of grey or blue or black was visible, with white mist sometimes brightening the colour.

She couldn’t help but smile imagining what Outside might look like. When she could see blue through that distant but oh-so-close portal to a surely alien world, she imagined herself floating in a huge, featureless space of blue, feeling the blueness seep into her pores and making her warm, tasting something like the green cakes her Mater made for special occasions.

When the out-world was grey, it was easy to simply imagine herself where she was, but without any walls; not everything could be the same grey as her home, but the grey she could sometimes see through the out-world window felt warmer than the many levels of the Dungeon could ever be. Even the few non-grey area of the Dungeon always seemed cold to her.

Sometimes the out-world window was just black. Empty. It was silly, but even then she could almost imagine a velvet texture to the blackness, like a warm bedsheet. A few times she thought she could see small specks of light in the blackness, but they always seemed to disappear when she squinted and looked more carefully.

Today, the window was a pure, deep blue. A wonderful colour that she could only see standing in this specific place and then only occasionally. She loved when the window showed this particular shade - she could imagine her warm, open space without even closing her eyes. She could just stare into that blue half-circle forever.

After her rounds were done for the rote and she had checked in, Lisa walked past Jean-Michael’s office one last time to catch a glimpse of her Outside. Just a few seconds looking through that window made her feel centred and calm for the endrote activities. He was never in the office at this time, so unless something unusual had happened that she hadn’t heard about, it was safe to stop there on her way home.

To her delight, it was still a beautiful shade of blue, only slightly darker than it was earlier.

--- --- ---

Under a fading sky, Bada screamed into the desert, startling a scorpine out of its den and into its death beneath a steelwood club. With practiced motions, Bada scooped up the remains in his gloved hand and tapped the sand with the butt of his club. The scorplets left in the den would hopefully think that it was safe to come out and scavenge whatever had screamed, providing some very tender meat for the lone nomad.

Soon, he had a small fire burning from a combination of desert scrub and his dwindling supply of coal sticks. You could eat scorpine raw, but only after building up a resistance to the poison. Bada was exiled just a few weeks ago and hadn’t had time for that yet. He needed to find a home, first.

The sweet taste of the meat helped keep his mood up, but it remained difficult to accept his exile. He was still angry that even his own family had stood with the clan instead of with him. He was convinced that he saw something flying low to the horizon that wasn’t a bird or lizard. It was too stiff and too steady. When it turned away, the wings didn’t flex or change shape as he had expected.

When he pressed the matter and demanded a party be formed to go searching towards the Eastern mountains for the winged thing, the clan pushed back. When he made plans with a few friends to go in the night, they were found out and he was exiled after an insultingly short trial for treason.

He traveled North along the coast from the clan until he was sure he wouldn’t be seen with their far-glasses, then turned East. He would find the flying thing without his clan.

Once he sipped some water from the collector, he curled up next to the remains of his fire and fell asleep in the desert, the darkness covering him like a velvet cloak, hoping to find relief from his anger in dreams.

The Eastern light woke him early, and by the time the sun was entirely over the horizon, Bada was already loping into the light, goggles on and his head down. The desert was long and the mountains small, and he knew he had a long way to go.

After many hours, Bada decided to stop for the day at a rocky knoll he could see in the near distance. There should be some food hanging around those rocks and some shelter from the night winds. With the sun behind him, he could appreciate the rich, blue emptiness of the desert sky. It would be a clear night, he thought. Truly a beautiful time to be outside.

As his eyes tracked down from the heavens to the desert floor, a bright flash a little ways to the South stopped him in a swirl of dust. With his eyes glued to the desert where he thought he saw the light, he backed up until the flash appeared again, partway up a large rocky outcrop. The rocks looked too smooth to harbour any food or plants, but it was an unusual size for the area. The next largest rocks he could see were less than half as wide and high.

Curiosity piqued, Bada walked towards the flashing light, his uncovered hand on his steelwood club.

--- --- ---

After a few seconds imagining herself floating in an azure void, Lisa was about to turn away from the window and go home when the color darkened slightly. Her eyes snapped back into focus on the out-world window when she realized the movement of the change reminded her of a shadow. Something was casting a shadow on the window. The out-world window. Something outside was moving. There was nothing outside. There could be nothing outside. Her entire life in the Dungeon was based on knowing that there was nothing outside the Dungeon except other Dungeons. Life only existed in the Dungeons. The world was barren and the only oases of life were the Dungeons.

From the side of the out-world window, seeming to rise past the outer edge of what was visible to her, a face rose into view.

--- --- ---

As he got close, Bada realized that the light was the setting sun reflecting off a piece of glass barely larger than his head. It was set atop a short metal tube and leaned at a slight angle towards the North. He thought it was wide enough to fit inside if he needed shelter, though there didn’t appear to be an obvious way to open it.

His heart leapt with understanding! If this was artificial - and it was clearly beyond anything his people knew how to craft - then the flying thing must have been real as well! The people who made this could have made that, easily! He even thought he could hear a very quiet whining on the air, but he was too excited to listen closely for it.

There was no way for him to return and convince his clan to move this far out into the desert just to see a metal tube sticking out of the ground, though. He would need something more, some piece of proof to convince the Elders to send a full party out to see what could be found.

When he came to the edge of the metal tube, which was visibly scoured by untold years of desert winds, he looked down into the tunnel, and saw a room.

--- --- ---

Jean-Michael rose from the loose sand, being careful not to alert the young nomad. It had been nearly five centuries since the last person came within a hundred klicks of the Dungeon, and Jean-Michael had nearly been caught by surprise by the event. It appeared he had been premature in believing that the clans to the West had finally migrated South to more temperate lands. With more and more satellites finally succumbing to their decaying orbits, it had become difficult to keep a close eye on every approach at all times, resulting in today’s potential disaster.

Under no circumstances could anyone inside be allowed to see the nomad. There could be nothing outside. Nothing outside except other Dungeons. Life only existed in the Dungeons. The world is barren and the only oases of life are the Dungeons.

So thinking, Jean-Michael reached out and grappled the nomad around the head and neck and began to squeeze. Even in his old age, the struggles of the boy barely moved him.

--- --- ---

Her understanding of her world was no longer stable. Lisa stared at the face in the window as it seemed to scan the room, much of which she couldn’t see herself. The goggles looked like the safety glasses the engineers wore sometimes, but so darkly shaded she couldn’t see the eyes she assumed were there. The shock of seeing someone outside, someone who she thought might be as young as her, was not wearing off. Her heart was beating so hard she thought she might throw up. Her gaze was steady, watching the face, but her hands were shaking, tapping a soft but persistent rhythm against the door.

How could anyone be outside? To breathe was death, the winds would scour your bones of flesh, and the water would dissolve you from the inside out! I wouldn’t feel any less shaken if I learned God had died, she thought. Yet there, through a window she could only see a small part of, in the ceiling of a room she had never been in and never expected to be, someone outside was looking into the Dungeon. Into her home.

When metal fingers suddenly wrapped themselves around the face, Lisa screamed and collapsed to the floor, almost welcoming the blackness as it finally rushed to meet her. She completely understood the look of shock on the face in the window.

--- --- ---

Jean-Michael froze instantly as the faint scream reached his ears. He mentally checked the sensor feed from his office and found it empty. Immediately deciding on a search pattern for the cameras, beginning with the ones in the hallway outside his office, he was rewarded on the very first one - a crumpled form in a guard uniform at his doorway. Their face was turned away from the camera, and even switching between the three that had any kind of view of the body there, he was only sure that it was one of the constabulary, and probably female from the size.

Based on the schedule, there were only two guards who could have been near his office in the past several minutes - Nia and Jackson. Both would have been a close match in size for the unmoving form at his door. A moment later he had verified that both guards were visible on other cameras. So who was at his door? How could they have seen anything?

He really was getting old, he thought, letting the nomad fall lifelessly where he was standing. It wasn’t like him to make mistakes, and if he didn’t hurry back inside, this one might prove dangerous indeed.

He hoped the person currently blocking his doorway was still there when he got inside, but in case they weren’t, he went through every person of that size who would have had a guard’s uniform, and visually confirmed as many as possible through the still working cameras. He crossed a couple others off his list based on audio feeds as well, since cameras didn’t always work anymore and the ones that did often didn’t completely cover a room or residence. He knew his people’s voices just as well as he knew their faces and postures.

By the time he arrived back at the tertiary airlock, he had narrowed the list down to three people who were the right size, couldn’t be identified on or near a camera within the last few minutes, and had a guard uniform: Zia, Marcus, and Lisa.

He pulled on his costume, the skin that let him pass for human and lead his society.

There was no life outside the Dungeon aside from other Dungeons, and anyone who believed otherwise was a threat to the stability of the society.

Those were his orders, given by his makers, and were therefore reality for them all.