A Tour of Edius

Attention Trident Media Group: This is a chapter from an upmarket science fiction novel in progress. In the novel, a group of young adults stumbles upon a secret city hidden in the Utah desert while hiking.Thank you in advance for reading this excerpt.

Chapter 13

We exited Betina’s house and took a path out to the east.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to be able to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Show this place off to someone who hasn’t been here. First we’ll go to the Lab,” she explained.

“I’ve only heard a bit about it so far… what’s that mean,‘the Lab’? You make stuff in there? Study things?”

“All of the above,” said Betina, “But you’ll see once we get there.”

We curved and took another path, this one lined with polished black rocks, departing from the Founders’ bungalows. After a short distance there was another cluster of studios. Each of them was free-standing and painted the same color of deep brown. They were in a circle and in the middle sat a decently sized fire-pit and horseshoe pit. Surrounding the homes, there was an inordinate number of trees, planted as if to preserve the privacy of those who lived there. The trees were of varying heights but none of them were much taller than the houses themselves. That day, the trees were fully outfitted in bright green baby leaves.

“Who lives there?” I asked Betina.

“Those are the Ones’ residential structures,” she replied, tilting her face gladly towards the rising sun. “They each have a one-bed one-bath home—not bad, right?”

I shrugged.

“What’s with all the trees? Why are there so many—did they plant them like that on purpose?”

“Here,” said Betina, stepping off the path and towards the homes, “Why don't we go have a look.”

I followed until we reached the tallest tree. It’s trunk was medium-sized, but if I’d tried, I imagine I still would’ve been able to get my arms around it. None of the trees reached too great of height, and I realized that during the last part of our hike, I hadn’t seen any pines or aspens in quite a whhile.

“Trees don’t actually grow that well here,” said Betina, “The Ones made these.”

“Made them?”

Betina nodded.

“They’re mostly plastic. Go ahead, feel.”

I reached out and brushed a hand against one of the tree trunks. Visibly, they appeared lifelike, complete with imperfect striations and moss-coloring on the trunks. No two were exactly alike. Unlike a tree, however, this one was smooth and didn’t feel solid. Facing away from Betina, I frowned and pulled my hand back.

“Pretty neat, huh?”

I shrugged.

“I guess.”

“There’s a unique variety of these trees all around Edius, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. All of them were Lab-created. The most interesting part about these trees is that the leaves retract during the winter. They have different settings for how large and far the leaves spread out from the branches, just like in nature.”

We got back onto the stone-lined path and walked away from the Ones’ houses. A path led us into sparser trees, and after a few minutes we were pointed directly towards the second-highest building in Edius. As we stepped, Betina continued to explain.

“I get that this has all been disorienting,” she began, “But my hope is that you and your friends try to appreciate the opportunity you’ve been given to live here. Life in Edius isn’t all that difficult. You’ll have food on your plate and a place to sleep every night… not everyone is so lucky, you know.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Plus, you’ll get to see Benji.”

I smiled. Benji. The very thought of holding him safely in my arms, perhaps later that evening, sent my heart soaring.

We approached the Lab, but went around back before going inside. To the northeast of the Lab sat the burn pile. It was readily accessible for any experiment that had gone awry: The method was to simply remove it from the Lab and toss it on the pile.

“For refuse,” Betina said, “We never have to send our garbage anywhere else.”

We went around to the Lab’s main door, where Betina stood looking up proudly.

“If you only knew the things that have been made here,” she said, “the plants, the animals and pets, the medical treatments we’d never be able to carry out on the Outside with all the regulations… And best of all, the drugs.”

She inhaled and a spark of joy materialized in her eyes.

“Who built all of this?” I asked.

“Oh, you wanna go there already.”

“Of course I do.”

“Give it time, 4E2. Don’t get too ahead of yourself.”

The glance she gave me was sly.

“You and your friends will most likely spend quite a bit of time in the basement of the Lab.”

On the inside, the Lab looked like nothing more than your basic office building. We stepped into an elevator with five buttons: B for basement all the way up to floor 4.

“First of all, no one goes to the fourth floor except the Founders. That’s where we carry out our own research, if we feel so inclined.”

“You guys have your own experiments?”

“Oh, once in a while, but not as often lately. Work on the Outside keeps us pretty busy these days. We hope to one day soon have that a bit more worked out. Floors one through three are solely for the Ones. They have free reign to experiment with anything in any way they like. That’s how they built the trees, the flowers outside of my house and… to be honest, Benji.”

“The Ones made Benji the way he is?”

“Well, with Jasper’s help.”

I nodded and swallowed my anger.

“Anyway,” she went on, pressing the B button on the elevator, “the basement is where we keep the feed animals.”

“Feed animals?” I asked.

“Chickens and pigs.”

We stepped from the elevator into a large room well-ventilated enough that the scent of the animals—feces, primarily—didn’t offend too greatly. We passed through another automatic glass door, and there they were: About a dozen pigs rooting around on a spongy green carpet reminiscent of grass. Many were dozing and others chewed from a trough in the corner.

“The trough is where leftovers from our meals go, and that’s what they eat. We add a special nutritive formula to the feed as well—not to fatten them up, just to ensure they have their daily dose of vitamins.”

I nodded, my eyes widening over the creatures. They had enough space to roam about, and above them the lighting seemed almost cheery.

“We keep a set of efficient UV-ray lights hanging overhead to mimic the sun.”

We descended a short set of stairs and approached the animals, who, upon noticing us, rustled and scrambled into the corner.

“Why don’t you just keep them outside?” I asked.

“Good question,” said Betina, leading me down into the pigs’ area.

The closer we got, the tighter the animals huddled together, allowing us to approach an ovoid apparatus in the corner. It resembled an enormous glass egg atop a steel pedestal. Dozens and dozens of long, thin, strings of wiring were attached to the egg and ultimately split off into three braided strings of electricity. They were  plugged into a power strip that appeared to contain some kind of mineralized liquid. The operation looked precarious. I peered inside the egg and saw a piglet suspended in yellow liquid, eyes sealed shut, with something that almost looked like a little grin beneath its snout.

“These artificial wombs—and the offspring they produce—require very specific conditions. When one of these little guys is ready to join the rest,” Betina nodded over to the pen of pigs, “He’s gotta go in with them right away. Otherwise his growth retards. Believe me, we tried. Even a 30-second walk outside won’t do it.”

“What is this thing?” I asked.

“We’ve learned how to grow animals!” Betina said. She clasped her hands together in excitement, a glow upon her as she stared down at the piglet. “They’re trying out there, you know… and they’ll get it, but large-scale it won’t make any sense. It’ll be too expensive for their return, and the project will get scrapped. But we have just the right amount of people in Edius that the wait for live birth is unnecessary. From seedling to viability, it just takes one week in these wombs. Once they’re out, they join their little pig friends, and in another week they’re ready to be slaughtered for food.”

My throat tightened.

“And… who does the slaughtering?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

Betina looked over sympathetically.

“It’s only a Sevenday chore. Just once a week, and these guys are little! They’ve been bred to be hairless, and part of the nutrition we give them also dampens their fear responses. You’ll be shocked at how simple it is. Megan will show you how to do it tomorrow.”

“Wait, Megan?”

Betina nodded, realizing again how little information I had about this place.

“She’s another Founder. Remind me to give you something later, a simple piece of paper all about this place’s history. It’ll explain a lot of things.”

On the other side of the partition were the chickens, afforded similar conditions as the pigs, except with a floor of sawdust rather than grass-like rugs. They milled about, pecking down at the ground, or sunk into the sawdust sleepily blinking their tiny eyes.

“Eggs get gathered on Threedays and Sevendays. With both the eggs and the fresh pork, you’ll just put them in one of our little carts and drive them over to the Cafeteria. You could even do it at the end of the day, making it easier to just hop in the shower and call it a day.”

Again, I nodded.

“Okay, got it? Threedays and Sevendays, you gather up the eggs. Pigs get slaughtered only on Sevendays.”

I recalled the conversation from earlier, sensing there must be things she was leaving out.

“What about the Everydays?”

“Good memory,” said Betina, “That’ll take us to our next stop.”

#

We walked to a fenced-in zone along a path that was lined with some kind of convincing moss. Beyond the fence were about a dozen towers made of greenery and brambles, all of them in various seasons of growth. At least five were in full production: One was made of greens, its coloring a progression from pale cabbage to the deep viridian of lacinato kale. The towers were at least thirty feet high, beautiful and lush, like living totem poles painted with chlorophyll. The tower beside the greens held the soft globes of stone fruits: plums, peaches, cherries, and avocados.

The towers were organized in a spiral, each tower inward ever shorter than the one before, thereby creating shade for those plants that preferred less sunlight. The middle tower was made of berries, but they weren’t in production that day. The shriveled brown carcasses of blackberries and raspberries hung from the vines and their leaves were beginning to wither. Other towers were shedding with their tips brown. One tower—completely dead—was falling apart in flakes. A Four was sloughing off the dead foliage off with a metal rake from a platform which ran up and down the tower like a small, one-man elevator.

I noticed then that there were several Fours slung up and sitting in harnesses against the towers by way of a pulley system. Each tower had both a pulley and a small elevator platform, but it was clear the pulley system gave them more flexibility when it came to picking food. From them they could swing out, reaching to pull themselves along delicately by the plants’ leaves and roots.

Each pulley had a large basket attached to it. Each basket was heaping with lettuce and apples. One of the Fours looked down and saw me before purposely dropping a plump tomato from his harness. It splatted beside me.

“4G,” Betina said with a cluck of her tongue, “Be nice.”

“Sorry!” Said the Copy.

We walked around the the towers to one that was unmanned. It had big soft leaves and what appeared to be the yellow-orange trumpets of squash flowers. By then, the high sun stung my eyes.

“Don’t mind him,” said Betina, “They’ll get used to you once they realize the work you’re doing.”

I shrugged.

“These are the Garden Towers,” she said, “and harvesting is an Everyday, Threeday, and Sevenday task. You’ll do the same with the produce as you do with the animal products: Take them straight to the Cafeteria.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Can you believe it?” Betina said. “The core of each of those towers is pure water, encased in a unique material that allows for it to leech out into the vitamin-packed soil. We put a thin steel cage around the whole thing to hold it together, and voila! We have freshly harvested food that we eat every day, growing upward instead of out, so as to conserve space. We’re entirely self-sustainable.”

I noticed that a strange sense of beauty had come alive throughout Edius as we toured in spite of those aspects which sickened me. Even though I’d never agree with Betina or the ways the Copies lived, I understood the ethos, and in a way, began to begrudgingly respect it.

“So that explains chores and the days of the week, which should get you through the day tomorrow. Why don’t we go up in one of the towers so we can get a better look at the place?”

We stepped onto the platform of the squash tower and Betina began pulling us up. The ride was smooth, and when the heat began to smother me I felt the first beads of sweat sprouting on the back of my neck and nose-bridge. As we climbed higher and higher on the tower, I was able to see the Cafeteria where I lived, the cluster of homes that belonged to the Ones, and of course, the Lab. Several other less impressive single-story buildings dotted the campus, and each of the buildings had been consciously and thoughtfully spread apart. The whole thing was exquisitely designed.

“What are those small buildings?”

“Oh—one of those buildings is for the Twos to live. They live in the same building, but also each with their own rooms and a few shared bathrooms. The other two are the social clubs. One to the north, closer to the Ones and Twos, and one to the south, closer to the Threes and Fours.”

“Does everyone hang out with everyone?” I asked.

“Oh, sure,” said Betina, “the whole ‘Ones through Fours’ concept really is more about making a functioning working environment. And besides, because the Fours are more… faded… it’s just easier for them to stick with regular chores all the time.”

“What do the Twos do all day?” I asked.

“Cleaning, plus occasional assistantship to the Ones if they have a project they need a lot of help with.”

I nodded.

There was only one more building in the layout of Edius I noticed from our place up in the Tower. It was the highest structure on the compound: A tall house on stilts, the roof of which I’d noticed from the Outside when we were screaming for help. The house was encircled by a tall, deep green hedge, and I noticed there was really only one path leading from the Ones' and Founders' homes to it.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“That’s the Treehouse,” Betina said, again nearly swooning. “I hate to break it to you but the only ones allowed up there are us.”

“What about the part beneath it? That circular hedge? Is there something in there?”

“Yes,” said Betina, “and maybe you’ll see it one day. But it’s just for the Ones for now. We’re trying to work out a system to allow everyone in, but it’s really too small for everyone, and some of the information just isn’t…” her voice dropped off and she didn’t finish her sentence. “We call that Center Circle. Both Center Circle and the Treehouse are, of course, right in the dead center of the circle that is our home.”

She was grinning broadly. A gust of hot wind picked up her blonde hair.

“The only way you’ll get in there is if one the Founders lets you. We like to have our own little retreat from the retreat, if you get what I mean.”

“Sure.”

With that, Betina began lowering us by the pulley all the way to the ground. We stepped off the platform and exited, and as we left the Garden Towers, her smug satisfaction was palpable.

“Any questions?” Betina said.

“You never told me who built this place,” I reminded her.

“Oh right. Come now,” she said, quickening her pace, “back to the office. I have a document for you to look over.”

With that, we trotted back towards her place while the Copies shuffled around, working, some of them even waving as they passed. It was overwhelming and also calming to receive recognition from them. As we walked, I found myself acclimating quickly.

The comfort I slipped into was astounding, actually. That’s what frightened me the most.