Underground Science

Underground Science - a reading (on YouTube)

The basement was hot, damp and poorly lit. A less than ideal classroom. We hadn’t repaired the window unit. Not that we could run it anyway. Gomez said power consumption would be monitored. A continuously running AC meant someone trying to conceal a heat signature. Heat signatures attracted the Heritage Police. So we foiled and bubble-wrapped the windows, and kept the lights as low as possible. Even dim, naked bulbs generate heat.

Since the Fall, all of us had changed. Gomez had run a grow house. Marquez had been a coyote. Grings had been a black market smuggler. Guerron had been an identity thief. They were now frontline soldiers in the resistance, heroes of the revolution. And me? I was a biologist. I was barely out of grad school when the Heritage Police shuttered our department. Like the others, I was now an outlaw. Our cell lived from moment to moment, basement to basement, spreading knowledge of the resistance one lecture at a time.

Outside, Gomez stood lookout in a cool suit. That gave him a couple hours before he’d be visible to the circling IR drones. For people who had tried to criminalize the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, the Heritage Police certainly exploited heat.

Guerron was off nailing down new identities to get us to our next destination. Each year, the watch lists grew exponentially. With the increasing number of proscribed writings, it was harder and harder to find clean names. Now, even a single copy of Watts or Reynolds earned an official inquest. Schrödinger’s little book drew hard labor. As did anything that contradicted the official texts.

Grings set out just over a dozen books, one every two chairs. They’d been smuggled in from Glasgow via Halifax then down eastern seaboard. Each one carried a death sentence. And still they’d have to share. But physical books were safer than electronic copies. The Heritage Police had spiders that crawled through everything that touched the web.

Marquez led the recruits into our improvised classroom, mothers and daughters, no makeup, modestly dressed, just like that bans dictated. Many had once been professional women, the ones who’d lost nearly everything in the Fall. Their unadorned faces and long skirts served as camouflage now, just as their business suits and lipstick had before. It always surprised me how many risked their lives to ensure their daughters were exposed to more than just a single book. Though, were I a mother, I knew I’d be sitting right beside them.

Marquez and Grings settled by the door as security. Assassination attempts had become all too frequent. The others carried guns; I carried spores. Either way, if we were captured, none of us would survive. The stakes had become too high for one cell to compromise the entire organism. The Heritage Police were a cancer. We were the antibodies. It was our duty to sacrifice ourselves so the greater whole might live.

Once the audience stopped shuffling, I stood and approached the lectern. All eyes remained on me. No one dared look left or right for fear that someone might mistake their curiosity. Informants were an ever present danger. More than one cell had simply disappeared.

I smiled and made eye contact. This was so much different than when I’d been a TA in college. Then, I’d seen teaching as a burden. Lecturing to huge auditoriums filled with students nearly as disinterested as I was. Now, standing before just a couple dozen was a privilege.

Sweat trickled down my neck and ribs. Only a little of that was nerves. Thirty bodies crammed into a tiny basement heats the air up fast. I hoped our improvised insulation held. I had an hour to cover the material then half that for Q&A. This lecture and the book might be the only exposure these women got before they passed the knowledge on.

“Since our time is short,” I began, “I want to touch on a few key concepts.”  I quickly reviewed variations in domestic species, variations in nature, the struggle for existence. Instinct, hybrids and embryology. The balance between predators and prey. Fortunately, most of the women had taken at least a year of high school biology before the Fall. The girls were not so lucky. The mandatory classes had been censored. Advanced placement remained open only to the faithful.

“Now let’s turn to Chapter IV,” I said, glancing at my watch. Half my time was gone. “First, allow me to clear up a common misconception. Social Darwinism is not survival of the fittest, no matter what the Heritage Police might say.”

As if invoking their name could summon them like the magic they believed in, the lights went out and the basement door crashed open. In the pause as each of us drew a breath, we all knew we’d been betrayed. An instant later, twin staccato strobes of gunfire flashed and echoed through the confined space as Marquez and Grings opened up.

A confused scramble erupted through the basement. Folding chairs clattered to the floor. Men yelled. Women swore. Girls screamed. A window shattered. Something small and metallic bounced across the floor.

Dropping behind the lectern, I fumbled for my failsafe, a glass vial narrower than a cigarette and just about a third as long. As my hand cleared my pocket, an explosion rocked the basement in a lightening strike of blinding thunder.

I was groggy and slightly dizzy when my mind refocused. My ears rang like church bells on Easter morning. The moans and scuffling around me were distorted like noises underwater. My cheek rested on cool concrete. My field of view was limited to a few feet of floor. Beyond, thin beams of light played back and forth through the suspended motes of dust.

The vial had rolled to rest against a large, wooden splinter just where my vision turned fuzzy. I reached for it like a final ray of hope. From above, a white light pinned me to the floor.

“Brother Samuel,” a soldier yelled through the wool that clogged my ears, “I think I’ve found one of the misbelievers.”

I turned my face toward the muffled voice as my fingers continued in their quest. Just as my fingertips brushed the curved glass, a boot pressed down upon my wrist.

A bearded face peered down at me. I couldn’t help but be reminded of its kinship to a hairy ape. He scrutinized my features then nodded. “She’s the one.”

“Eva Cartesia,” he intoned, “you are under arrest as the recusant minister of an unlawful congregation conducting illegal classes. You will be put to the question for the distribution of heretical texts.”

Despite the pain shooting up my arm, my fingers scrambled to roll the vial into my grasp.

“Resistance is fruitless,” he said. “The time for fists is gone. Submit and all can be forgiven.”

I replied through clenched teeth. “I’ll never accept your irrational superstitions.”

His boot pressed down harder, grinding bone against cold, unyielding concrete. My grip loosened on my prize. Without it, I knew the resistance would wither. The Heritage Police would kill as many cells as their torture would inevitably reveal. Their techniques were meticulous and malign. No one held out for long.

“Do you know why you misbelievers will never bring back the dark, godless days that brought the Fall?” He bent closer, studying me like a collected insect, or a frog pinned for dissection. “You think knowledge alone will save you. You believe in nothing you can’t see. Yet, for all your lies about evolution, you are unwilling to do what’s necessary to survive.”

Turning my face away in feigned shame, I pretended to sob like he expected from my gender. Painstakingly, I pressed the vial between my thumb and fingers until I felt the sting of shattered glass and a trickle of warm blood. Uncurling my hand, I took a breath, closed my eyes and blew. Dust and deadly spores commingled in the air.

As Brother Samuel began to cough, I calculated vectors, virulence and incubation. I’d done my research. He had minutes to get everyone into decontamination. Without isolation, only a handful in the city would survive.

Something in Brother Samuel’s speechless wheezing must have been a signal. The soldier began to kick and beat me, cursing as he carried out his task. But his words felt rote, his blows mechanical. As if he’d realized his god could no longer save him now.


© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III