So Grey a World Without Red

Clank! Clank! Clank!

My arms grew tired with each heavy fall. The dimly lit cavern echoed the sound of my pickaxe against the grey stone. Its black handle sent heavy vibrations up and down my arms.

Clank! Clank! Clank!

Cool sweat made its way down my face into my scruffy beard. My muscles burned with each raising of the pickaxe. My life was a routine of muscle memory now, my eyes were barely registering the rock before me as I mined.

Clank! Clank! Clank!

“Ajax!” A familiar voice broke me from my daze. A small part of me was happy to have a break from the exhausting labour even if it was for the briefest moment.

“Peter?” My gruff voice responded to the call. My dim headlamp shone a bleach white light into the abyss. Peter’s head lamp shone back a distance ahead. 

“Come look at what I found!” He called back towards me in his usual annoying tone. His light disappeared towards the right. I hefted my pickaxe onto my back and moved in the direction I had last seen his light. Ahead of me I saw pebbles and chunks of broken rock strewn across the path. In the grey fine dust that covered the ground I could see the oval boot tracks of miners, dozens of them, maybe hundreds.

It must’ve been a century since we first came down to avoid the war. Our only hope of survival were different deposits of minerals we found as we mined. Especially thorium, it was the most sought after. Apparently it was what the Wardens used to power everything, from our power plants to our headlamps. Yet despite all this time, despite all the earth that's been broken, despite everything we’ve harvested, this underground has continued.

I called out for Peter as I neared, “Peter! I can’t see you. Where are you at?” 

“Look! I found a new tunnel system, you’ll never guess what's in it.” Peter said with a giddy grin. He was my wife’s brother, a funny lad who was only a bit younger and a few inches shorter than me. His hair was an uncanny shade of pale grey,  almost indistinguishable to the dust at my feet, and he always had this need for adventure. I recalled how, not too long ago, he was practically dancing when he discovered a hidden mushroom grove. The Warden’s had deemed them poisonous and he never got to claim his prize. Despite the Warden’s destruction of the mushrooms Peter’s cheery demeanor remained unchanged. 

I never understood why the Warden’s didn’t mine.

“Don’t tell me,” I started sarcastically, “You found a bat.”

“No, no, much better than that! Here come with me!” Peter started down the start of a new abyss from the side of the main tunnel. I followed him slowly, wondering how the Wardens would punish him if they found out he was exploring uncharted tunnels. Peter never followed the rules and I could never understand why.

“Have you reported this tunnel to a Warden yet?” I asked. Warden’s were our caretakers. Unlike us they were forged from metal rather than flesh and could survive in toxic fumes or resist the scorching heat in the caves near to the core. It was their duty to survey the tunnels before we were permitted to mine for resources.

“Uh no. But where’s the fun in that?” Peter responded from up ahead. He had never been one for patience. 

“It’s not for fun. It’s for your safety. What am I supposed to tell your sister if a cave collapses on your head?”

“That it was fun?” Peter really didn’t understand how to survive. He was always running around, always looking for something. We had to follow orders to survive, that's how we continued living. But maybe this once I could ignore Peter breaking protocol, after all it would be a nice break from my back breaking labour. The walls on each side seemed to grow lighter and lighter as we walked. Turning from black to grey. I could even start to make out Peter just a few feet ahead. Until finally the cave ended.

Right there before my own eyes, a hole tore open in the sky. Or the grey sediment sky of the world I’ve always known, had simply collapsed. Peter ran out of the world and off the edge. 

“Peter!” I yelled as I ran forward trying to catch him before he fell into oblivion. 

“I’m fine!” Peter had slid down the side of the mountain where the cave opened up.  A gash on his knee seeped a dark liquid.The word entered my head, a word I’ve never known. Red. Blood. The sight of it startled me - it was so vivid, so real in a way nothing else has ever been. Blood was something I’ve seen many times, but it wasn’t supposed to be red. Or at least that's what I thought. I looked up and realized the ‘hole’ in the sky wasn’t a hole at all. It was the sky, the real sky. Not the heavy grey ceiling we had always known, but something vast and endless, painted in the richest shade of blue. A lovely blue that simultaneously seemed warm and cold, and hanging in the sky, in all its morning beauty was the sun. It hurt to look at, and even after I looked away the image of it was burned into my mind.

“What is this?” I asked Peter in awe. Looking down the mountain I saw streams and trees. The trees stood tall, their trunks like stalagmites but a rich dark brown, while others were slender and bone-white. I saw short tiny bushes like my own unkempt hair but green, bursting with tiny red fruits that looked ready to split open at the slightest touch. My mouth watered at the thought of them, and yet I struggled to imagine what they would taste like. I had rarely known a taste besides that of porridge, not quite dirt but not quite water either. It was never something we craved, it was simply the taste of home. 

The stream below shimmered, its clarity mesmerizing. Strange creatures gathered at its shores. Some had long curved horns sprouting from their peculiarly small heads, while others, dark, hulking masses stood in the center of the stream snapping at flashing pink shimmers in the water. The air itself felt light, as though if I jumped I might never have to fall back down. 

These were things I had never seen yet the words for them surfaced in my mind like distant childhood memories. The Wardens from time to time would show us films on a silver screen, in these films we would see how our ancestors lived above but it was nothing like this. Everything I had known, life, history, even those odd old films, had been black and white. There was never color. That was life. Yet here, color was everywhere. Inside me something was waking up, something was growing more and more and with each moment I spent outside, while something else, something I had always carried was dying. 

“Isn't it amazing? We have to go tell the others!” Peter exclaimed,  brushing himself off. But it wasn’t the grey dust of the caves he had patted off, it was a deep wet brown from the earth beneath us mixed with a sticky crimson red. Color felt so natural here, yet the longer I stayed out here the more my mind felt ill. As though there was something perversely wrong about this world which seemed so natural. As though it was a dream and to wake up from it would be the cruelest experience. Not in the way of danger, but in the way of a dream too vivid, too real, a dream that, if I woke from it, might leave me more broken than before.  Or maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe the real fear was that this place, this vibrant and lively surface, had always been habitable. Why did that make me afraid?

Looking at Peter in the light of the sun I realized his uncanny hair color wasn’t grey at all, it was a fiery reddish orange, like a fire catching on copper and his eyes a brilliant green. Skinny and thin with bags under his eyes, I wondered how I must’ve looked in comparison.

I nodded and turned back towards the cave. The abyss yawned before me, its darkness all consuming like an open mouth waiting to swallow us whole. Yet there was something beautiful about it, the way the jagged stone jutted from the earth, how the towering peaks stabbed at the sky, defying the soft expanse of blue.

“Ajax, we have to tell them!” Peter, excited as ever, leaped back into the maw of the cavern. I hesitated for a moment looking  back to the surface before stepping back into the shadow of the cave.

The air became heavy again.The world dimmed. The only light came from the headlamps on my helmet and Peter’s, the beams slicing through the darkness. The silence here felt different now, denser, suffocating. I looked at the walls as though they may fall at any moment and the sky would be released from their cracks. With each step I traced my hand against the rigged cave side. Tracing its ups and downs, its bends and curves. I could barely see any difference between one part of the wall and another. It was all grey, nothing more. 

“Peter…” I started, he turned to look at me. “What was that?”

“Really?” Peter looked at me with a queer thing in his eyes. “It was the surface.” The way he said the words, so matter of fact, so effortlessly made the word sound absurdly ordinary. It sounded so plain and mundane as though the ‘surface’  had always been real, as if it was something we had seen a hundred times. And yet something buzzed within me at the thought. “What else could it have been?” he added.

“The surface…” I echoed.  Could it be true? The farther I moved in the cave the farther the surface became, the farther the dream laid. There was no surface. Peter’s head lamp turned as he moved faster, bobbing in an odd way.

Was there ever such thing as red? Was there ever a sky above my head? Or was it my imagination? It had to be.

In the distance I heard boots marching their way towards us. Likely another mining crew here to switch the shift. Peter’s headlamp showed he was farther ahead, much actually. He must’ve been running. Run, now that was something we rarely did. Everything was making it from one place to another, why would someone run when you could walk? Voices could be heard in the distance.

“Guys, guys! Guess what Ajax and I found, we found the surface! We found the Surface!” Peter called to the nearing group. As the mouth of the cave opened up to the original tunnel I turned to see a dozen or so other white head lamps following a tall Warden. My foot caught on something on the ground. Peter’s pickaxe.

The group ahead stopped at Peter’s words, each of the other miners turned their headlamps to get a better look at each other than looked at Peter. 

“Stop.” The Warden's robotic voice emanated from within its pillar of a head. There was no mouth, just a thin speaker that ran up from where a throat would be to its one glaring white head lamp eye on its “T” pointed head. 

“What?” Peter asked, confused.

“Repeat previous statement.” It commanded. The Warden continued forward, placing itself between Peter and the group of miners.

“Repeat what?” 

“Repeat previous statement. No games.” It repeated.

“We found the surface. It’s fantastic up there. What's the problem? Isn’t that great? It means we can leave this place.” Peter’s giddy nature started to return. “Ajax and I saw the sky, it was blue, blue! Imagine that.”

“Lies are punishable by death.” The machine stood over Peter. “There was no sky. Do not lie.”

“But there is, there is!” Peter argued. 

“If this is true then what is blue.” It’s voice remained unchanged.

“Well.” Peter struggled trying to think of something. “Its a color! That's what it is.”

“Describe this color blue.” It remained bearing down on Peter.

“It’s kinda cold,” Peter remained unphased. “But a comforting cold. It’s not really like the cold we know here in the caves. And it's bubbly…”

“How can a color feel cold?” One of the other miners interrupted Peter, evidently mad at what could only be a blatant lie. But was it? I’ve seen blue before. Haven’t I?

“Uh… well. It just does?” Peter tried.

“When are you going to grow up Peter? Your sister's husband shouldn’t have to deal with this.” Another miner complained.

“But I’m not lying! Ajax even saw it. Right Ajax?” Peter turned around to me. I had slowly been making my way, trying to figure out… something. Trying to recall some dream Peter had reminded him of. “Ajax?”

“I’m not sure.” I said quietly.

“Speak up Ajax, we can’t hear you.” One of the miners called from behind the Warden which had now fixed it’s glowing eye onto me instead of Peter.

“N…no.” I said a bit louder.

“No what, Ajax?”

“No, I don’t know what blue is.” I said to myself, not to anyone else but myself. 

“Citizen Peter, lying about a habitable surface is punishable by death. Shift 42 would you please stay here as Ajax and Peter follow me.” The Warden did not wait for a response as one of its black metallic hands grabbed Peter and walked towards me.

“Wait, wait!” Peter yelled. “I have red! I can show you what red is.” The Warden stopped, letting go of Peter. Peter placed his leg forward bringing up his pants to reveal his scraped knee. His blood was still trickling down a small bit but mostly the wound had scabbed over. The Warden placed its stronger light over the knee to see, the miners as well came forward to look at the scrape. The blood was grey, grey on pale white skin. “But it was red up there, I swear it was!”

The Warden grabbed Peter again while the miners laughed at Peter’s idiocy. “Maybe it's a good thing he’ll die.” One of them said. Peter was never well liked, especially by me. But his sister loved him, so I had always taken care of him. I paid for all of his mistakes, I gave him my rations, I was his guardian. Not that I ever wanted to be.

“Follow.” It commanded. The Warden walked past me into the darkness. I turned and did as it told me. My own pickaxe felt cold on my shoulder as we walked in silence. Eventually the tunnel opened up to the path that led to the surface. It seemed like every other cave that branched out, it was nothing extraordinary. “Is this it.” The Warden’s robotic voice buzzed. Peter nodded, he tried standing up but the Warden was still holding him. It stepped into the tunnel that led to the surface, turned and raised Peter out in front of him. “Kill him.”

A cold sweat ran down my forehead, to my cheek then into my beard. I looked around, searching for something, someone. Hoping there was some misunderstanding. Peter looked terrified, begging me in his eyes to help him in some way without making a sound. To do something to save him. Then his eyes started past me, as though he couldn’t look at me.

“Kill him.” It repeated. The pickaxe grew heavier on my shoulder. I took it into my hands staring at the Warden. Staring at my protector, as I was Peter’s protector. It stood several feet taller than me, than any of us miners. Its chest was completely exposed. The scale like metal protecting its inner mechanisms, black on grey it was a walking tower. 

“Kill him.” I raised the pick axe and brought it down. On Peter’s head. 

Thunk. His headlamp broke as his helmet cracked. 

Thunk. Warm gray liquid splattered all over me. 

Thunk.There was no scream, just the drop of a stone in my body. I almost fell, my hands were shaking.

“Good.” Another Warden’s voice came from behind me. “Grab his body. Follow me.” The second Warden started forwards up the tunnel. The first stayed behind, letting go of Peter’s body. It fell limp onto the ground. I picked him up and began to drag his body up. Slowly the world began to get lighter and lighter again. It was like entering a dream I had already dreampt.

Then the Warden stopped. There it was again, the blue sky. The clear flowing stream. The weird animals moving around. The brown and white trees reaching to the sky. The swaying green grass. The red blood on my hands, that dripped from the dent in Peter’s head. Nothing was more startling than that. Nothing was so mesmerizing. Fear had its own pull. 

“Toss him down.” The Warden spoke from behind me. This dream I had forgotten had become a nightmare. I let Peter’s body roll down the slope onto the surface. 

“Is there a surface.” It asked.

“No.” I looked at the world, the dream. The sun had barely changed its place since when I first saw it. A tear formed in my eye.

“Good.” I fell to the ground. Crimson flooded my vision. It covered the dirt. The sky. The newly formed hole in my chest leaked out across the virgin surface, staining it red.