Prologue
“It’s always dark down here. Always has been. I don’t know exactly how it’s supposed to be, but I’ve lived all my life immersed in this darkness and still I can tell it’s dark. I don’t know why I know this, I just know it. I feel it through this overwhelming force that grips my heart and my lungs and shouts at my ears just how dark it is. It grips me and overtakes me with such strength it sucks my breath away. I don’t know exactly how it’s supposed to be, but I know this is not it. Are you hearing this? If you are hearing this please make some kind of noise, so that I know you’re out there.”
The silence grew louder as the vent outlet remained hopelessly silent and yet the man’s wide open eyes transpired an undying hope.
“I would like it if you spoke, but OK, I will keep talking anyway, you are, after all, my only friend.
They give us these pills. They are supposed to help us overcome the dark, but I guess they are just meant to keep us alive. And there is something else. There’s a lie lurking beneath the steel and the shadows. I can hear it in the humming of the air ventilators and in the crackling of electricity through the resistors and in the beep whenever I pass my card in the elevator reader. A lie, as if we weren’t supposed to live like this, as if this is all a show. Fuck, I know I shouldn’t complain. I feel bad for complaining. I feel bad for all the others that live below me. I live in deck 242. It could be worse.
A lot worse.
(Initial Image Attribution: cpmacdonald: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/building-ruins-old-industry-1647925/)