The Groundskeeper

Henry Harvey was a mild-mannered gentleman in his early-forties who’d just been hired for a real government job; one with good pay, not-so-bad hours, and great benefits that included a kick-ass life insurance plan which would triple in payout when he died.

Henry had no living relatives, so life insurance benefits didn’t matter to him.

Henry's first day on the job was six hours of boring when he learned the basic and most important of his duties ... how to push the big green button labeled "terraform." Tomorrow’s training was to be on when and why to push that button. This would be followed by a one-day simulation of how the big green button worked in concert with the console’s gears and sliding levers that lay beneath a TV screen the size of a football field.

Only a three-day training. So easy. Henry liked easy.

When his second day of training was half over, Henry took his lunch break with the one other guy, named John, who'd been hired for the first shift. Each shift was twelve hours long. Henry had chosen the second shift because, no matter what job you had, nothing much ever happened on the last shift. And Henry liked it when nothing much happened.

By the end of orientation, Henry and John had come to terms with their new jobs: if a change in the structural alignment of the earth was warranted, he and John were to be the superheroes who'd be making those changes. Secretly, of course.

Henry liked secrets.

John had already taken his jacket out of his assigned locker to go to the elevator leading to the surface when Henry's cellphone buzzed. Taking it from his coat pocket, he was startled when a voice out of nowhere boomed: "No cellphones allowed!"

Henry hadn't recalled reading that in the fine print of the twenty-or-so non-disclosure documents he'd signed. A slender robotic arm unfolded from the wall nearest the lockers, snatching the phone from his hand.

Henry was confused and a bit pissed off. He spied John coming back into the locker room.

"If you came back in 'cause you forgot your phone, don't bother. Mine buzzed and when I answered it some robot arm came out of the wall and grabbed it!"

"Guess that's good to know, but I came back in 'cause I couldn't get out. "

Henry was perplexed. "What do ya mean you couldn't get out?"

"I mean I took the elevator back up to ground level and the blasted door wouldn't open! Some automated voice came over the speaker and said: "Please press the lower-level button."

"But this is the lower level."

"Exactly. "

Henry scratched his chin, feeling the stubble he hadn't taken the time that morning to shave off.

"Maybe the elevator is on some kind of timer," Henry suggested. "Or maybe we can't leave until after the simulation tomorrow."

They stood in silence, each not knowing what to do.

An elusive, robotic voice announced: "Gentlemen, your dinners are served."

"That's the same voice that told me to push the lower-level button!" John whispered.

A panel in the wall slid open to reveal a table set with fine china and crystal goblets containing what appeared to be red wine. In the center of the table were bowls of steaming vegetables, a platter of fried chicken, and a container of gravy.

"I like fried chicken and gravy,” admitted John.

"Me, too. I had to list all the foods I liked on a document I signed."

"So did I. "

Henry and John looked at one another then decided not to let a good meal go to waste.

Once dinner was over a robot, looking like a hospital IV pole with a nose, appeared to clear the table.

"This is kinda cool, right?" John asked.

"I guess." Henry wasn’t certain it was ‘cool.’ "Next we'll be told we have a bedtime," he said sarcastically.

As if on cue, the IV pole rolled back into the room, requesting in its auto Tron voice for the men to follow it down the hallway to their rooms.

Henry and John looked at one another, shrugged, then walked into their separate suites. The doors shut, auto-locking with a metallic clink. Aside from a bathroom, bed, and television, Henry’s room had a bookshelf loaded with all the classics plus a huge selection of DVDs.

Again, all his favorites.

Simulation day came and went, but Henry and John stayed ... and stayed ... and stayed.

At first, both men felt like superheroes as they averted an earthquake in San Francisco, held back a tsunami on the coast of Puerto Rica, and blocked a West Virginia mine’s collapse before it had a chance to become the evening news.

But there were times they felt like villains—when the job demanded they shift the earth to collapse a bridge or cause an overpass to cave beneath the weight of its traffic. At first, they’d questioned each other, then tried to ask the illusive robotic contraption housed on the Lower Level.

After awhile, both men learned asking questions was futile; the robot always gave the same answer: “Your paygrade does not include the answer to that question.”

Every day, Henry and John modified the terraform, changed history, and took more lives than they saved. Eleven hundred deaths a day, to be precise. It was their quota.

The two men were bound—body, mind, and soul—to their cushy, top-secret, underground government job. They lived and breathed their job. Literally.

Then without warning or so much as a ‘goodbye,’ John gave up. Henry found his lifeless body slumped alongside sacks of garbage, soon to be sucked up by a huge metal duct and hauled away to who knew where.

From that time on, Henry worked around the clock, living a zombie-like existence with only the illusive, robotic IV pole as a companion. On his fiftieth birthday, he decided to train "Ivey Pole" to replace John.

That decision earned him a fat raise into his bank account--on the surface.

When Henry turned sixty, he thought about his time above-ground … and his here-and-now-job with the eleven-hundred-lives-a-day quota.

His life had been lonely…and that was before this job started. And as for having a female companion, the only women who’d ever given him the time of day had been ones wearing thick-rimmed glasses and orthopedic shoes.

So his work beneath the surface continued, day-in and day-out, with one distinct difference. Henry decided he, instead of whatever government entity ran this place, should choose whom the earth swallowed.

Blondes, brunettes, redheads - all model-thin with silicone boobs and silly-sweet smiles were his first prime targets. Sometimes Henry included the men with whom they spent their time; to his way of thinking it would be cruel to leave them behind.

Henry Harvey had become the powerful, secret superhero of 'what-goes-up-must-come-down population control.

He was, after all, called the "groundskeeper" for a reason.