The Dark. Chapter 2.

9-22-2218

7:55 p.m.

Last Watch, Energy Production Building

When Siantha was young she didn’t have to work at the bike mill two hours a day just for her daily food ration. That was a change, like many others, that came after the dark descended onto the colony.

As she left the cycling room she pulled her brown hair out of it’s ponytail and let it fall around her shoulders, glad for the slight breeze on her sweat-soaked neck.

The cycling room was hot even on the best of days, with twenty-odd standing bicycles all in one room and most of them in use at any given time. The combination of body heat, energy being collected in batteries in the back of the room, and being an entirely enclosed metal building, made the place almost unbearable even though the standard cycling uniforms were barely more than sports underwear.

Siantha turned down a small hallway, just wide enough to let two people pass. It used to be wider, but years ago one wall had floor to ceiling cubbies built into it. Half of them were for people to leave their clothes in when they changed into the cooler uniforms, the other half were stocked with towels for cyclists to take to the showers.

This time of day the only towels available were in the upper cubbies. Siantha looked up at them from her 5 foot 2 inch height and sighed. She stepped up to the wall and climbed the first three cubbies like a ladder to reach a towel stuffed in the top shelf. She jumped down and stepped into the changing room, looking forward to a cold shower.

She was alone in the changing room, a rare blessing, so she took the time to brush her hair before she stepped into an empty shower stall. As she pulled the curtain closed she heard someone come into the room. They were speaking in hurried whispers to someone she assumed he was on the phone with.

“No! We can’t push the bikes any harder! They’re held together with tape and prayer! There’s no way we can push these things any harder.”

Siantha usually wouldn’t listen in on someone’s private conversation, but if she turned the shower on now she felt like she would be interrupting something important.

“I’ve done more than I should already! Communications is tearing me apart for more power and I can’t tell them where it’s going!” He said. Siantha crossed her arms uncomfortably and waited, trying not to listen.

“I know how it is. We’re not going to get that desperate. We’ll think of something. I just need more time.” The conversation cooled, as if both parties were running out of steam.

“We can’t increase bike hours with the bikes the way they are. We have to think of something else.” The man sighed deeply,

“We won’t let anything happen to the children. We’re going to fix this, just have faith. If we need to we can shut down some of the street lights, we can do without some of them” A small pause, then,

“It’ll be okay. Bye Lisa.” The man hung up, took a few deep breaths and left the room. Siantha stood in silence, all thoughts of her shower forgotten.

9-22-2218

8:34 p.m.

Last Watch, North Street Siantha trudged home despondently. Every time she looked up she saw something else that had changed so much since her childhood.

She had been born in Last Watch. She didn’t know what it was like to see the horizon, or swim in a river, but she had grown up with the sun and the light. This used to be a place where everyone was hopeful and working toward a future where they could one day step out of this dome and onto a green new planet. Then the dark came, and all attention turned to survival. Without light new energy sources had to be created practically overnight.

The population has to be kept as low as possible. That was why her daughter Analia was the youngest member of Last Watch.

Siantha passed a park where she used to play as a child and saw only a group of adults sitting at a picnic table and talking in hushed whispers.

She passed the house where Mrs.Kilnen lived. She had been a schoolteacher until there were no more children to teach.

Last Watch had never been meant to produce its own energy. Before the dark had come Last Watch had had a field of solar panels outside to produce all the energy the town needed. It had stopped when the dark had come.

Siantha stopped to take a calming breath.

‘Looks like our time has already run out.’ She thought.

If the bikes couldn’t be pushed any harder they would run out of light for the greenhouse and that would be the end of their food supply.

Tears pricked her eyes as she thought,

‘What will happen to Analia? Isn’t there anything we can do?! I can’t just let everything fall apart.’

Siantha started walking again, faster than before. By the time she got to her front door she was running. She wouldn’t just stand here and wait for death, she would do something about it!

She unlocked the front door and put her bag down in the front hall. She heard Analia in the kitchen and wondered what she was making for dinner. “Mom? Are you home?” Analia asked from the other room. “Yeah, I’m home. How was your day?” Siantha asked walking into the kitchen to stand behind Analia.

"Umm... It was okay.” She said as she stirred a pot full of vegetable soup. Siantha heard a strange note in her daughters voice. She was worried about something. She just wasn’t sure if she should ask about it yet.

“Is something wrong?” Siantha asked.

“It’s just... I heard Mrs.Lin talking on the phone today.” She said. Siantha felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach.

“What was it about?” She asked.

“I think she was talking about... Stealing something... For the greenhouse. She was saying that she needed it to keep the plants growing.” She kept looking at the soup as she talked, not sure if she should have brought any of this up.

“I see...” Siantha said, unsure of what to think. It sounded like Mrs.Lin was talking to whoever she heard earlier that day. They were talking about giving extra power to the greenhouse to keep the plants alive. To keep the food production up.

“Mom, is Mrs.Lin doing something wrong?” Analia asked.

“I don’t think It’s really wrong.” Siantha said, “I think she’s trying to make sure there’s enough energy for the plants to grow so we can keep making as much food as we need.”

“Why isn’t there enough energy? There’s always been enough energy before.” She asked.

“Well. The bikes are getting old. Sometimes they break down, and it could take a little while to fix it. So when some of the bikes are being fixed there’s less energy to give everyone.” Siantha knew she was simplifying and downplaying everything, but she didn’t want to worry Analia. She was only a kid, she shouldn’t have to think about any of this!

“Mom, I know how energy works. I want to know why we can’t just give the greenhouse more? If we need it for the food why can’t we get it?” She asked. Siantha sighed. Her daughter saw things in such back and white. The greenhouse needs energy, just take it from somewhere else. She didn’t think about the older generation, who fought tooth and nail to keep as many lights on as possible, trying to recapture the daylight of their youth. Or the engineers who had been working on communications projects for the past decade, trying to reach the outside, to tell anyone that they were still in here.

"Analia, there’s only so much. If we give it to the greenhouse we’ll have to take it away from somewhere else.” She explained.

“I know. Why can’t we? We can put out some street lights, or the houselights! If it gets really bad we could even share houses. The houses are big and the families are small, we could share the light and the heat!” She insisted. Siantha looked down at her daughter, she was trying her hardest to come up with alternate solutions, but it wasn’t just an urge to help, Analia was seriously worried about this, she sounded scared of it.

“Look honey, it’s alright, we’ll get everything back to normal. It’ll just take some time.” She said reassuringly.

“I heard them talking about a population cut.” Analia said. Siantha froze. The tiny bubble of their world suddenly got much darker. There hadn’t been a population cut since six months after the dark came, but Siantha remembered the tearful goodbyes as the oldest in the population gave their lives so there would be enough food for the rest of them. She remembered how many funerals she attended after many of the remaining population gave up hope and killed themselves in the night. It was a horrible time. She was glad she had carried Analia through it, untouched and oblivious in the womb.

“That won’t happen.” She said resolutely.

“It’s happened before though, right?” Analia said.

“Who told you that?” Siantha asked. The people who remembered it didn’t like to talk about it for obvious reasons, it was a depressing subject. “That’s what happened to Dad right?” Analia said hollowly. “What?! No! Analia who’s been telling you this stuff?!” Siantha asked stunned.

“No one tells me. I figured it out myself. The way Mrs.Lin sounded when they talked about a population cut. It sounded like something that had happened before. And it’s not hard to see that a population cut means killing people. And Dad’s dead, so I thought...” Analia trailed off.

“Your father is not dead Analia.” Siantha said, “At least not that I know of.”

“Then why haven’t I ever seen him? You never talk about him, where is he?!” She said. Siantha was taken aback, she didn’t know Analia felt that strongly about knowing about her dad. Talking about him brought back painful memories for Siantha, so she had never brought up the subject herself, and Analia had never brought him up either.

“You really want to know, don’t you.” Siantha said, not exactly phrasing it as a question.

“Yes.” Analia said.

“Alright, make us a couple of bowls of soup. I’ll meet you at the table in a minute.”

Siantha turned and went upstairs to her bedroom. She went to her closet and dug through the top shelf for a pale orange box tied up with string. She finally found it under a stack of old clothes. She held it for a moment silently. The last time she had held this box Analia had been only eight months old. That was the day Siantha had given up hope of ever seeing him again.

Siantha carried the box downstairs and set it on the table between them. It’s presence created an atmosphere of mystery and odd hope. Siantha wondered if Analia would be disappointed.

“This is everything I have to give you about your father.” She started, not sure what else to say. Analia reached for the box and untied the string. Siantha felt a tightening in her chest, it had been so long since she had look inside. Had it been long enough to dull the sharp pain of loss?

Analia lifted the lid and looked at the stack of papers in the box. On top was a photo of a tall, well-built man with black hair and dark skin. He had a strong face that looked well used to laughter. He was standing in their living room in the same place their couch now sat. Siantha took a deep breath blinking back tears. It relieved her to realize that she could miss him without the pain stabbing at her heart. She was happy to see him again, even if it was only in a photo.

“So what was his name? What happened to him?” Analia asked as she looked through the photos one at a time. Some of him alone, some of him and Siantha. One of him standing behind Siantha with both of their hands resting on her middle, his head on her shoulder. A friend has taken it after she found out she was pregnant. They looked like such opposites. Him big and dark. Her pale and small.

“His name is Rofian. He... He was part of the relay team. He brought supplied we needed down from the space station. He was away when the dark came, so... I think he must still be out there. On the space station, or in one of the other colonies...” Siantha said. She felt a pang of sadness at the thought that he could have settled down in one of the other colonies, that he might even have a whole other family.

“So you don’t know?” She asked.

“No. Communications went down at the some time. So I could never get through to him.” Siantha said quietly.

“Do you think I’ll ever see him?” She asked. Siantha thought about lying, maybe saying that her father would somehow come back, but it had been near thirteen years, and the time for that kind of hope had long passed. She couldn’t give her false hope like that.

“I don’t think so.” She said, “I don’t think they can tell where we are anymore.”

“Why not?” Analia asked.

“Well, the dark isn’t just there. It’s dark because the colony has been buried. The dome protected the colony, but it still wiped out the solar panels and the communications tower. The amount of dirt is deep enough to block our location beacon, otherwise we would have had help by now. We’re on our own.” She said trying to be as hopeful as possible. She had to believe that they still had a future.

Analia was silent for a while. She was a mature kid. She didn’t pretend that they were going to make it through this easily. She knew life was not that easy, but she also believed in the people of this colony, maybe more than most adults did. She truly believed that they would think of a way to fix all of their problems.

Finally she looked at Siantha with determination.

“So, if we had more bikes, we could make more power?” Analia asked.

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it.” Siantha said.

“Do you think I could help repair some of the bikes?” Analia asked. Siantha thought about it. Analia wasn’t bad at repairing things around the house. She had even rewired the kitchen light last year. Siantha was proud of her for wanting to DO something about their problem when so many others were happy to ignore it or leave it to someone else.

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go down there together?” Siantha said.

“When?” Asked Analia.

“We could go after diner. I’m sure Mr.Tind would let us have a key if we’re repairing his bikes.” She said. Siantha and Analia finished their diner happily. She was glad to have something to do with her daughter, and who knew, maybe they could even help with the energy crisis. She began to believe that there might be a future for their colony after all. As long as there were kids like Analia who were willing to do whatever it took to see them make it to the next day.

The next few weeks went by quickly. Analia and Siantha went to work and did their shifts in the bike mill separately, then met up at home for dinner. By nine O’clock they were in the maintenance room of the Mill with tools in hand with Mr.Tind, who was happy for the help and agreed to stay and help them with the bikes. He taught them how the bikes worked and how each of them needed to be fixed. Slowly the bike mill gained five repaired bikes. Most days Siantha and Analia stayed up until midnight working on repairs.

End of chapter 2!