Emergence

The hatch was locked. But after the long climb up the maintenance shaft, Hume Umbral couldn't face returning to the city below.

He studied his hands in the dim, bluish light of the LED lamps lining the shaft, bruised and cut from pointless scuffles with Enforcers and others who had simply had the bad luck to be in his way. If they had just let me have more light… But light, at least the kind he needed, was out of reach, here at the top of the ladder, and there at the bottom.

He opened his right hand, flexing it, wincing as blisters stretched and broke and clear fluid trickled down his wrist, then replaced that hand on the rung and repeated the exercise with his left hand. The pain brought a kind of feverish clarity to his thoughts, and he contemplated the chain of circumstances that had brought him to this point.

The Great Ice Age had been the ironic result of "Global Warming", as ocean currents that carried equatorial heat toward the poles faltered and died. Over time, the cities had burrowed into the earth, so when the snow and ice covered most of the northern hemisphere, they were ready. Cities like subVegas had to become self-contained and self-sufficient, small nations in their own right.

Topside was uninhabitable. Ice and snow still covered even this part of the Nevada desert to a depth of tens of meters, leaving no vegetation and only a few animals alive.

"There is no sunshine to be had on the surface — only cold, and starvation, and death," the textbooks said.

Which meant that Hume, and everyone else in subVegas, had to depend on the government-operated Sunlight Parlors to stave off the effects of LTSDS — Long Term Sunlight Deprivation Syndrome. Vitamin D supplements took care of most of the physical effects of living without the sun, but the psychological effects could only be cured by exposure to sunlight, or its artificial equivalent.

Energy was scarce in subVegas, so this sanity-saving technology was limited to government-controlled facilities. And time and space in the Parlors was limited, so…

People "whose jobs require clear thinking" got priority in the Sunlight Parlors, more time allocated, the right to "bump" people — like Hume — whose jobs were deemed to be less dependent on mood and mental state. It was "purely coincidental" that the privileged ones were precisely those with the most wealth and power in subVegas — after all, the government could be trusted to allocate resources belonging to all the people in the fairest possible way.

Not believing the government line — and saying so, loudly and publicly — had been the worst mistake of Hume's life. subVegas had no the space or resources for jails, but they did have a simple and effective means of punishment: they cut his Sunlight rations to zero.

Shortly thereafter, he had lost his job, and had to depend on rations that, like the Sunlight he had once been granted, were never quite enough. But he did have time, then, to study materials not in the textbooks. He had learned that at the latitude where subVegas festered like a blind pimple under the ice-covered desert, there should be sunlight for more than half of each day at this time of year, and even through heavy cloud, much of it would still reach the ground.

And he had learned that subVegas was not self-contained — fresh air was drawn in through shafts that penetrated all the way to the surface, kept clear of ice and snow by heating elements and automated sweepers. A maintenance shaft ran parallel to each air intake to allow for repairs to the great turbines and fans that moved and warmed the air on its long descent, so there was a clear route all the way up and out.

Finding one of the shafts, breaking in, had taken days. Climbing the seemingly-endless ladder had taken hours, and almost all of Hume's diminished strength.

I'll never make the climb back down, he thought. And if I do, what then? More weeks without Sunlight?

He shook his head. He would break through the hatch, see the real Sun, or die.

He still had the small screwdriver he had used to open the keypad at the bottom of the shaft. But this keypad was different — the screws securing its cover had star-shaped holes that made his one and only tool useless.

Useless as a screwdriver, he realized suddenly. And useless as a prybar to muscle his way through the hatch. But as a miniature prybar to break open the keypad cover —

He worked the thin, flat end of the screwdriver blade into the seam on the side of the case, pushing hard and twisting to penetrate as far as possible. His wounded hand oozed blood and clear fluids and sent dazzling spikes of pain up his arm, but he could feel the blade working its way deeper.

Finally, the screwdriver refused to move even a millimeter further. He loosened his grip on the handle, ready to close his hand if the tool started to fall, but the blood-streaked plastic stayed in place.

Please let this work…

He pushed on the screwdriver handle with all his strength, clinging tightly to the ladder with his other hand. With a loud crack, the keypad cover popped off, and tumbled down the maintenance shaft, leaving only irregularly-timed ticks and clacks in its wake as it caromed off the walls.

For more than a minute, Hume hung there, exhausted by the combination of fear and exertion. Then he looked back at the exposed circuitry of the keypad. After a moment, he placed the tip of the screwdriver so it bridged two coppery lines and —

The lock on the hatch disengaged with a creak and a snap.

Hume pushed the hatch open, coughing as frigid air slashed its way into his lungs, and climbed out into the light.

The original note that inspired this just-written story (long since lost) was just a few words about Seasonal Affective Disorder (depression more common in people living in northern latitudes, especially above the Arctic Circle, where they receive unusually low levels of sunlight.

Find more by Robert Moriyama in the Author Index.

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