Do you know what it’s like to see colors you’ve never known existed?
I start to shake as I watch people walk down the hall. They have on all white, too. Their clothing… it’s new. No patches or tears or rips. They have jewelry on. I’m not talking about the stupid metal rings or cheap necklaces that get found once in a while after a Scavenging. I’m low to the ground so I can’t make out any faces, but I see one guy’s wrist. Damn, who’s he trying to blind? His watch is gold. It’s pure gold, and it shines brighter than I’ve ever seen the sun shine.
They walk by, talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves. Now I get it. Now I understand why you never see Authority on the lower levels.
Why would you want to leave heaven to come down to hell?
Recording Twenty-Nine
As I fight to motivate my elbows to keep dragging me along, I smell something that I’ve never known existed. I don’t know how to describe it… it kind of stings your nostrils, but… it’s not bad. It smells sterile, I guess. At first it kind of makes my eyes water, but I get used to it. Then I start to hear this loud noise. It’s not constant, but every once in a while, a huge splash fills the tunnel I’m crawling through. Seconds later a bunch of feet run by. By the sound of it, I can tell there are a ton of kids around my age running around. They’re laughing and shouting at one another, and soon you hear a bunch of those splashes all at once.
I slide up to the edge of the vent and stare into the room beyond. There are windows above the room, but I know they can’t be real. The rooftop’s still a level above us. Well, whatever. This room has “windows,” and I’m using that term loosely, above it.
I… I’ve never seen a sky like what I’m seeing here.
Clouds—not black or gray, but white—drift along under a blue sky.
The only places I’ve seen a blue sky are in the movies we watch on our free time. It doesn’t really exist in our world.
That’s not the part that really amazes me, though. I mean, yeah, it does, but it’s not the only thing. What’s really amazing to me is what’s directly in front of me. All those boys I heard are running again, down the edge of a swimming pool. Now, I talk about swimming pools. We know what they are from movies. Until now, though, I’ve never seen one. Water’s too scarce, you know?
For the record, every drop of water we use gets recycled. Dirty bathwater? Recycled. Water in your toilet? Recycled. The Tower barely wastes anything. Can’t afford to, right? The rest of the water we get from the filters on the rooftop. Anyway, ’cause we can’t afford to waste water, we don’t have stuff like swimming pools.
At least, I didn’t think we did. Not until now.
I see a pair of doors on the opposite side of the room slide open, and a man all in white steps in. I’m not gonna lie; this man is gorgeous. He’s got a comic book chin and hair you could have ripped off the cover of a cheap romance novel. Yeah, and a chest as broad as a barrel.
That’s not a man you’d want to get into a fight with.
Anyway, he calls out to the boys, and they gather around him. For a second they talk, but from my place, I can’t really make out what they’re saying. Whatever it is, the boys run out of the room a second later. Mr. Fabulous Hair over there hesitates at the doorway before pulling some sort of small bottle out of his pocket. It’s hard to say for sure, but it looks like he pops out a few pills or something. I see him tilt his head back to swallow whatever that stuff was, and then he wipes at his mouth for a few seconds before walking out of the room.
For a moment I wait at the vent, my hand trembling by my waist. I reach for the wrench in my bag, but I know I can’t stop here. I have to keep going. I have to find… well, I don’t know what I have to find. But I have to find something before I go back. Something that tells me what’s really going on in this tower. So, as much as I want to dive into that pool and wash this sweat off of me, I continue into the darkness.
Recording Thirty
Crying fills the tunnel as I move forward. The stinging scent of the pool is gone, and I kinda miss it, but I continue. Still, I slow down a bit as I do. Don’t want to make too much noise, you know? Anyway, I keep going, moving toward the sound of this woman. She’s really cutting loose, almost screaming. It’s… it’s hard to hear that stuff. Same way with Receiver Garry; I feel this tightness in my chest as I get closer to the grate.
I find myself staring into a room. It’s an apartment, yeah, a lot like mine. Just, it definitely looks a lot bigger and a lot cleaner. I think it’s the bedroom, but a door is open and looks out onto what I think is a living room. The color in here is red. Not just red, you know, but like this deep scarlet. There’s a woman sitting below me on a bed, leaning over with her hands and cradling her head. As her crying gets softer, I start to hear the sounds of, I dunno, I think it’s a violin, playing softly in the air. There’s no way to tell where it’s coming from, but it’s got a slow pace. A few other violins join it as they swell together in one high moment.
At the same time, a man screams from outside, scaring the woman. She nearly jumps out of the bed as he suddenly stumbles into the room, his fist pounding the wall.
“Stella,” he shouts, grinning at her as he runs his meaty hand through his wave of blond hair. “Stella, stop the crying! For heaven’s sake just stop the crying!”
“Stop it, George!” she screams back, turning and walking away before he jumps over to her. He grabs her with both his hands, this mad smile across his lips.
“Just take your medicine, Stella; it’ll make you feel better,” he says.
“I don’t want to feel better,” she replies, crying again as she shakes. “What’s the point? Why am I even trying?”
“Stella, if you don’t take your medicine, I’m going to report you to Security. What do you think will happen then?”
“You wouldn’t. You can’t. You know! You know what will happen.”
He’s breathing really heavy as he leans in to her, and I can barely make it out, but I hear it clear enough. “That’s right. They’ll put a needle up your vein and make sure you’re topped out with Creep. You want that, Stella? You want them to fill you up with it?’
What… the… hell?
She pushes him off with her hands, and he slams into the wall, his eyes wide with madness. “Time to take your daily, Stella. Time to take your daily.”
She breathes really heavily for a second, staring at him. Then she nods, walking to the nightstand. From the top shelf, she pulls out a bottle, tapping out two blue pills. For a second she stares down at them in her hand, then glances back at him. “A daily will do you.”
“That’s right,” he agrees, shaking his head as he smiles. “A daily will do you.”
Stella nods, then tilts her head back and pops the pills down her throat. For a moment nothing seems to happen, but George is waiting, the two of them staring at each other. Then Stella leans forward, letting out this huge wail. It’s like she’s about to start crying again, but it turns into this long, insane laugh. The sound of it bounces off the walls and through the vents, echoing over and over again until it’s rattling inside my eardrums. I cringe as it soaks into my bones, watching as the two of them stumble into each other’s arms, laughing like maniacs as they collapse into the bed. They lie there just laughing and laughing, like they’re not going to stop.