The Other Side of Outside

Warm rain fell softly through the gently swaying trees, whilst outside the sun screamed and the earth raged.

Sometimes it was still out there, and you could make out whispers of a dusky, congealed wasteland, but not today. A constant force of dirt slammed against the glass adding more streaks to the clumps and cakes of angry dried mud. If Kala pressed her ear against the pane she could hear the whistle and clamour of the never-ending winds, and although she couldn’t feel it—had never felt it—she was sure the wind would cut right through her, either so cold it burned or so hot it would numb her flesh. She’d never smelt out there, but she knew it would be pungent enough to make her gag. She could imagine the acrid tang of destroyed air that leaves a metallic hollowness in the mouth, eventually corroding her guts, her sinew, her heart.

She did not know why someone would choose it, but perhaps she did.

They weren’t supposed to go to the Edges, but the Compound was not so big as some imagined, not so impenetrable. The glass and steel structures may hold tight their temperate Holocene where the rain came like clockwork and all forms of life flourished, but it was porous in other ways. Every once in a while, the real elements and true sky beckoned, seeping into sleep not as nightmares but as dreams of brief promise. The wind didn’t screech but sing, the earth didn’t shake but dance, where bodies of water had no borders, free to lap against the land of wide-open space, underneath the sun of reality.

Kala tipped her head back and inhaled the scent of eucalyptus and pine that came alive under the silver-oxide seeded rain. She was tired. Her vision blurred, the leaves above her became constellations of blinking green lights.

She let her body slip down onto the nutrient-dense hummus and her mind drift away. A tiredness born not from fatigue, but loss.

‘Kala, Kala’, the call of her own name in the distance roused her. She pushed through the thick tangle of vines, bushes, and rising trunks that lined the perimeter of the Compound, the insubstantial illusion of an unending jungle, but really just the borders of a very small earth.

‘Kaaaaaala, Kala’ it was growing louder, ‘Leela, Leela, Kala’. Kala paused at the sound of Her name, biting her rage into the bloodied insides of her cheeks.

‘Hi, mum, I’m here’, Kala called back once she could see her mother’s back in the distance. Her mother turned sharply around and waited whilst Kala walked towards her.

‘Where have you been?’

‘In the Patch, harvesting’, Kala said, holding out her hessian bag filled with three ruby red cabbages and some swatches of parsley.

‘Oh, you should have said’

‘I know’.

They walked towards the Homes together, past the salt-water lake where no one was allowed to swim so as not to disrupt the perfectly regulated home of molluscs, sprats and sardines, whose man-made habitat was monitored to stop contamination and sustain life. When Kala’s grandparents were first balloted to this Compound, they were allowed to swim in the lake, just as they were allowed to go to the Outside on occasion. But within a couple of years, all this has halted as the contamination risks had been misjudged. Humans must stay within their designated boundaries and allow the plants to grow, the fish to swim, the birds to thrive. Above all, they must not let in the singing, dancing world beyond the Compound. Or, they must not let the tightly controlled order of things within the Compound escape.

They stopped at the Mess so Kala could drop off her harvest; food was communal, nobody could grow or cook for themselves or their family because this was where greed festered. And from greed came imbalance, and from imbalance came the devastations of the Before and Outside.

They walked along the path, weaving between the uniform bamboo Home Units until they reached their own. The shutter was drawn back, so the living space with its three plus one chairs opened out onto the terrace. A large bedroom had become two smaller bedrooms when her parents were balloted to proceed with contraceptive free sex to have one child, and ended up with two.

Two cell twins with two brains that share thoughts, two hearts that beat together, who are free to venture independently but whose movements always tug at the other.

Three mornings ago, even before Kala opened her eyes she knew. Something deep inside told her that Leela was not just out, but Outside. Kala hadn’t heard her leave, but that was normal—Leela liked to roam when it was dark. Once, she had taken Kala with her to show her the day breaking twice. They had climbed the old banyan tree, whose uppermost limbs splayed against the curving glass on the east side of the Compound and watched the Outside glow murky orange and bleed into a hollow grey light, whilst they sat surrounded by darkness. The birds around them stirred and cheeped even as the light stayed low. Half an hour later, they felt the gentle crack of a perfectly orchestrated dawn, as yellow light bathed the landscape and a soft, artificially rendered heat, bore down on them evaporating the dew and depositing moisture back into the carefully controlled atmosphere.

But Kala didn’t go again. She liked sleep and the ground, she was the day twin of the earth whilst Leela stalked the night and coveted the sky.

That morning, when Kala opened the shared chest between their beds, she was relieved when she pulled back the carefully folded cotton cloth to show their forbidden inheritance. Perhaps she was wrong, Leela really was just out in the Compound. Kala picked up the heart-shaped locket. A gift bestowed in a stolen moment when Grandma Ma had squeezed it into Leela’s palm whilst looking into Kala’s eyes. Grandma Ma was sent to Sleep the next day, having tipped into the waste state where you require more than you give. Her body no longer dexterous enough to work, her mind no longer coherent enough to be useful.

But as Kala lifted the smudged, tarnished, dirty gold locket by its chain, she felt it before she could see it. A lightness. The pendant twisted in the air to show its emptiness, one half cleaved from the other. The tiny hinge gaping freely, calling for its other half that had been snapped off to be returned to the Outside. Kala pocketed the locket, which could no longer be called a locket as it was now always open and unlockable. She’d kept her hands in her pocket, running her thumb over the unsealed clasp, left suspended with nothing to snap into, now forever incomplete.

Leela had taken Kala’s half. The side with the creased picture of an unsmiling woman with fire eyes and flowing hair. The other half bore an inscription:

No holy place existed without us then,

No woodland, no dance, no sound

Kala was left with these words that unsettled her, the words that Grandma Ma would sometimes mutter that caused Grandpa Ma to walk out with a scowl and their mother’s brows to knit together. The words of Outside and relationships that could be forged from love or lust, desire and despair, not duty.

When the news rippled through the Compound that another one had gone Outside (for Leela was not the first, nor would she be the last), a Conference was called. The entire Community congregated in the Mess, and Ira, the elected Speaker that term, made the announcement that Leela was Unaccounted For and that anybody who knew anything should come forward.

A few people had unhelpful mumblings about Leela’s leanings toward daydreams, whilst others defended her work ethic and willingness to contribute to the Community. Nobody who knew anything of Leela’s truth came forward, in fear that their utterance would betray not Leela, but themselves.

The question was not how did she leave; that was known. The door was always open.

When the first Compound was built sixty-odd years ago, it was a wholly contained ecosystem. But what had started as a paradise devolved quicker than expected into pandemonium, as the feverish knowledge of being always on the Inside, trapped, separated from everything real Outside spread like wildfire. A battalion of families waged an attack against what was thought to be an unbreachable structure and raised it to the ground in a bloody mass of shattered glass and hopes. After that, all compounds were built with a hermetically sealed chamber leading Outside at the north end. Illusions of freedom were important, and for the first fifteen years, occasional Movement to the Outside was permitted. But as it brought with it the inevitable rumbles of instability, Movement was banned as the presence of the chamber was deemed enough. Imagining what lay on the other side of that door—on the other side of choice—was enough to make most stay.

So with the door always open, the question was: why would anyone choose to leave?

On the Inside there was Enough. Nourishment, shelter, breathable air, security, work, family, Community, meaning, the promise of a future. On the Outside there was Lack—sparse resources, constant threat, inevitable extermination.

Kala sat between her parents, waiting to be summoned. When her name was called, eyes bore expectantly into her. Lying was condemned as a betrayal of the Community. But as much as Kala knew herself to be part of this mass, she and Leela were conjoined and she could not betray herself.

She couldn’t say that Leela would not belong to what was expected of her. Leela would not spend her life waiting on ballots to determine where she will work, with whom she will live, if she will procreate, on what days she must cook, harvest, cultivate, only for it to end in an administered death when she had worn out her ability to provide more than she could consume. Kala found solace in this architecture of safety and order, but only because Leela craved freedom.

She couldn’t say that Leela belonged to the whims of the true, unmediated elements, even if they flayed and swallowed her up. Unbreathable air, inarable land, toxic seas, fire decimated forests, animals dying, pests flourishing, their relatives waging wars for what little resources were left—all orchestrated by the hands of their forefathers.

And so, clenching the other half of her heart in her fist, Kala said not that Leela wished to live in the truth of beyond, but that she felt Leela wished to die and had offered herself up to Outside so as not to take anymore from Inside.

She knew this lie was the only way to satisfy the Community.

After the Conference, as everyone prepared to undertake their afternoon Duties, Kala slipped away to the Edges. She has returned every day since. She lies in the undergrowth, clutching half her locket in one hand, and presses her other hand against the glass feeling the hum of life beyond, waiting to be summoned by one side or the other.

***

Acknowledgements: Inscription on the locket from Sapho ‘Six Fragments for Atthis’ (translated by Sheros Santos)