Stuck Underground

Stuck Underground

My name is Ken, I am 25 years old, and it is the year 2045.  I have finally experienced what it is to breathe fresh air, and feel the sunshine on my face.  For the past 25 years, I have been stuck underground due to the dreadful COVID-19 pandemic of the year 2020.  Let me take you back to where my story starts, so you can see my view of what it was like to be stuck underground.  

It’s a sunny morning on March 12, 2020, in Bedford, Ohio.  My mom is at the park with my sister Mia.  She is 9 months pregnant with me and ready to pop at any moment.  As she bends over to pick up my 5 year old sister’s hat that fell off her head as she was swinging on the swings, her water breaks.  She instantly calls my dad who was in the car taking a call for work. He quickly brought  the car around to take her to the hospital.  No more than one hour later, I was born.  A healthy 7 pound, 11 ounce baby boy with a full head of hair and grey eyes.  My parents were so excited to see me, as I was the completion to their idea of the perfect family.  

Mom and dad met 7 years ago  in college.  My dad was a senior studying engineering and my mom was a freshman studying elementary education.  They dated for two years and got married.  9 months later came my sister Mia.    

My dad was not only an engineer, but had the aptitude that described him as a genius.  He had a great way of seeing how things worked and how areas could be turned into livable spaces.  His biggest accomplishment was the building of his and my mom’s house.  He decided the basement would be a bunker, and had the contractors dig 20 feet in height  and 40 feet in depth in order to pour a foundation and concrete walls.  This space was to be empty so that the house that was above ground could fit into when he pushed the elevator button down.  

  My parents were excited to take me to my new home.  My room was on the second floor, and was all set up with the theme of dinosaurs.  In addition to my room, was my sister’s room which was decorated with unicorns, as that was her favorite thing in the whole wide world.  Both of our rooms also had their own bathrooms.  Next to her room was my parent’s room.  It was quite large with a walk-in closet and full bathroom.  There was also an open room that they called the game room.  It was fully equipped with a gaming system, large TV, desks and classroom supplies such as a white board, 2 small desks, and lots of arts and crafts, science, math, and English supplies.  My mom ran a preschool for my sister in that space.  

On the first floor was an open concept floor plan with a large living room with couches, a TV, and lots of pictures on the walls.  The kitchen had a refrigerator, freezer, stove, microwave, toaster oven, pantry, center island, and lots of cupboard space.  The dining room had a large dining table, and matching shelf .  There was even a water purification system for continuous clean drinking water.  There was also a laundry room, and another room my dad used as his office.  Next to the laundry room was a large garage / workout room.  This was the best house a family could ever have.

My mom and I only had to stay in the hospital for 24 hours, so at 10:00 am, we were headed home to start our new life as a family of 4.  We got settled in and then 12:00 pm, a breaking news story hit every news channel.  The COVID-19 pandemic that had previously only been in China, had made its way to the United States.  The country had exactly 2 hours to get everything they needed before having to settle inside until the pandemic was over.  The thing is you couldn’t just be inside, you had to be underground, as the pandemic was so strong that it seeped through windows and under doors.  Most of the neighbors also had their own underground bunkers, and the people that didn’t had to go to the community bunker.  

My parents were considered preppers, so they had everything they needed for a 25 year span.  Feeling confident that his family would be ok, at 12:30 pm, my dad hit the elevator down button, and our home was settling in the underground bunker space that it was created for.  In addition to the space for the house, there was a section for a basketball court, swimming pool, and track around the house for running or riding bikes once I was old enough to participate in those activities.

Since I’ve actually never been outside, besides when I came out of the hospital, into the car, and then into my home, I've never experienced the outside world fully.  Life was sort of tough in the bunker, only seeing my close family, and  never seeing distant family or anyone else in general (well not in person at least).  Anyway, since both of my parents are pretty smart academically, they both taught me and my sister.  My mother taught english, home ec, and social studies and my father taught me math, science, physical education, and construction.  I started walking when I was about 1,  I would consider myself to be a pretty smart baby.  Just a few weeks after learning to walk, I was  running like no other.  

The days were pretty rountined, once I was old enough for school, which was about age 5.   We got up at 6:00 am, and exercised in the workout room.  At 7:00 am, we got ready for the day, and at 8:00 am sharp, we ate breakfast.  As my sister and I got older, we took turns cooking breakfast, as part of mom’s home economics daily projects. From 9:00 am - 12:00 pm we participated in our morning lessons, and then ate lunch, and got a 30 minute cell phone break where we were allowed to message our friends that we met online.  From 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm, we had our afternoon lessons, and then did an afternoon workout before dinner.  At 5:00 pm, we ate dinner and during dinner had to share the best part of the day which was archived in a family journal that my mom kept.   After dinner was free time until it was time to go to bed at 9:00 pm.  It was a rule to turn in any electronics, as we needed the best sleep possible for the next day’s activities.  Because I had a great preschool teacher (my mom),  I was already  learning at a second grade level, writing book reports,  doing spelling tests,  adding and subtracting, and playing sports like a pro at age 5.  My mom was the best, she’d teach me about cooking, cleaning and surprisingly even sewing.  Yes, life in the bunker wasn’t all so bad, besides the fact that for 25 years all I saw was underground and my annoying sister and loving parents. Some highlights from my childhood were learning to ride a bike, learning to swim, and making lots of woodshop projects like making a birdhouse that I used as a prop when my sister and I would act out plays.  It was also neat to hear stories from my online friends about their experiences in their bunkers, and I longed for the day when I could actually meet them in person. 

One day we were in the family room watching some old movies and suddenly we heard a siren.  But the siren wasn’t a form of danger, no, it was the sign that everyone could come out of their bunkers, and everyone was free to roam.  But the sad thing is my parents didn’t believe in the “siren” of good and only assumed that it was a trick.  I don't know how it could possibly be a trick but my parents were kinda superstitious about these things and just wanted us to be safe.  I recall the year only being like 2035 when the siren rang, I was 15 and  devastated that my parents didn’t want to leave the bunker.  So for the next 10 years of my life I was in that bunker until one day I had a chance to leave.

It was a sunny afternoon, at least that's what I thought because you know, I'm in a bunker.  Anyway,  my family’s supply of food and other supplies were running dangerously low, so my parents asked my sister and I to go out into the real world to get the stuff we needed.  I was kind of scared to go out there, I've never seen it in my entire life.  I wondered what it was going to  be like.  The plan was for my sister and I to leave the next morning and in the hours before our departure, our parents prepared us  for anything that might happen to us. Fortunately we had the internet and news channels that kept us aware of the happenings, since the siren first rang ten years prior, and people had been roaming around outside since them.  

Our parents  taught us things like don’t eat stuff from the dirty ground and never go with a stranger at all, even if they seem trustworthy.  They taught us how to be polite and a lot of other useful things that would get us through the days in the real world above ground.  At last, the day had come for Mia and I to go out there, above ground, the place I've never seen or been to in my whole 25 years of living.  It also so happened to be my birthday on this day, as it was, March 12th, 2045, I believe it was my parents plan for us to go out there on my birthday all along.  Or maybe it was just a coincidence, but that's a pretty odd coincidence.  Mom and dad gave about $1,000 to Mia so we could get all the supplies we needed, they also gave us a list of items that we needed to survive.  

The time was now, we were a few feet to the hatch that leads to the overworld, first my sister was out and then it was my turn.  It was bright, really bright and I was out, but I wasn’t expecting to see all this.

It looked completely different than the newscast showed.  It led me to believe that my parents had shown me old newscasts as a ploy to ensure that I would not be scared upon seeing the real world.  I looked to my left and I saw my sister also in disbelief.  There were hovering vehicles everywhere.  These forms of transportation were cars, skateboards, scooters, roller skates, and buses.  Everything was hovering, well except the people when they were walking.  Everything seemed brighter and more colorful than what was shown on the news shows that I had seen.  I saw a group of teenages walk by.  Their hairstyles represented all the different trends that had happened throughout the last 50 years.  There didn’t seem to be one specific trend and everyone was tolerant of each other's style choice.  The clothes were following the same suit as the hair and included jumpsuits, baggy pants, parachute pants, spandex, baby doll dresses, mom jeans, cropped tops, and hoodies.  It was so weird to see not one specific style, but also invigorating to see that kids had the confidence to rock whatever they were wearing.  

 We saw a rental scooter that was on the side of the road.  The sign said that the only form of payment accepted was debit, so we had to figure out a way to turn our cash into an electronic way of making purchases.  Fortunately for us, we saw a bank, and heeded that direction.  We stood in line, and when it was our turn, we asked to open an account with the $1000 that our parents gave us.  Included with our account, the representative took our fingerprints and informed us that it was that process that we would need to use in order to make purchases.  

We then went back to the rent-a-scooters, and put our fingerprint on the keypad, and we were able to rent our scooter.  The cost for the rental was a whoppin’ $40, and we needed to keep in mind that we only had $1000 in our account.  The way the scooter worked, and actually all forms of transportation, were automatic, and all we had to do was say the destination, and away it took us, much like the self-driving cars of 2020.  When we arrived at the store called “Speak-In Get”, we saw a menu and a robot.  In this time, the way you purchased food and other supplies was to tell the robot what you needed and the items would come on a conveyor belt into a cart.  Like the scooter, we paid by placing our fingerprint on the keypad.  Our total came to $760, and all we really got was enough supplies for a couple months.  It was our thought that our parents may want to move to the surface at that time.  After getting the cart of groceries, we ran into a little dilemma.  There was no way that the groceries were going to fit on the scooter.  We went back to the robot to explain our dilemma, and he said “have no fear, for an extra $5 you can have this eco-friendly bottomless bag”.  We were in astonishment as he loaded the groceries into the bag, and they all fit, and the bag wasn’t heavy either.  My sister and I couldn’t believe this magical tool. 

It was getting late, and we needed somewhere to stay for the night, so we came across a sign that said “Hotel”.  It was weird though, under the sign was just a vending claw machine.  We looked at the directions, and they stated that you type in what kind of room you want, and then a ball lights up in the machine, and you use the claw to pick it up.  Once the ball comes out, you walk through a gate, and you see several open spaces with numbers on them.  We went to the space that matched the number on the ball and threw the ball on the X, and then suddenly the room appeared.  It was so cool. The cost for this room was $100.  The room included another machine that prepared any meal you wanted, not too shabby for $100.  After dinner we watched TV, and got to see the actual news. Robots were the newscasters, and all news stories were of people being kind to each other.  This was totally different than what we thought it would be.  After the news, we got a good night of sleep, as tomorrow we would have to make the trek home

We got up bright and early the next morning to go home.  When we got to the scooter, I saw my friend that I met online and played video games with many years earlier.  It was so cool to make their acquaintance, and they were surprised that we had remained underground after the 10 year mandate had been lifted.  We exchanged goodbyes, and my sister and I headed back to our house.  

Upon arriving at our house, we rang the bell and our parents pressed the button to allow us back underground.  When we showed them the bottomless bag, and told them of our interesting day and night above ground they were amazed and not scared at all about going above ground again.  Without much discussion, mom and dad decided to build a new house on top of our underground house, and live above ground.  I decided that even though it was pretty cool above ground, I would prefer to live underground and only come up when I needed supplies.  Additionally, the friend I saw above ground thought it would be cool to live underground and we got married and remained underground for the rest of our lives.