Jade and the Surface Dwellers | Flash Fiction

A teen girl in training for Earth’s surface reconstruction crew makes a daring choice.

Here is the short story/potential first chapter I wrote in response to May’s “Let’s Write Together” prompt by the Fictionistas.

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Jade and the Surface Dwellers

Genre: Sci-fi | Post-apocalyptic | Climate fiction

Word Count: 997

Soundtrack: Teneki - Pearls

The Prompt: Your enemies have backed you against the edge of a cliff. Far below you is a treacherous torrent of water. What happens next?

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I draw anxious puffs of oxygen from my helmet, staring straight down the barrels of the surface dwellers’ dart phasers. Their sharp eyes gloat over me from leathery faces, satisfied that they’ve pinned me down. One step back, and I’ll plummet to the jagged rocks of the coast far below and be dashed against them like the waves.

When I signed up for surface reconstruction crew, I never imagined day five of training going quite like this.

It took the first two days for my eyes to stop stinging every time I looked outside, but I couldn’t stop marveling at the gray sky through our aircraft’s tinted windows. Being born and raised in an underground metroplex turns the sun into something of a myth, and I can hardly convince myself that that warmer circle of light beyond that thin, particle-clouded atmosphere is the actual star anchoring our planet in space.

We fly over forests seeded by prior generations, monitoring air quality and particulate matter levels. While Commander Ream shows my squad of trainees how to read indicators on the control panel, my eyes drift out the window again.

A hand waves in my face. Dev, my training partner, stands snickering beside me.

“It’s called surface reconstruction,” he whispers. “Not intergalactic daydreaming.”

I roll my eyes. As if we would ever get back out into space in our lifetime. Two centuries since the Pinch and the human race still can’t even cooperate enough to repair our own planet.

Our flight takes us high above the surface dwellers’ territory. I look down at the post-earthquake rubble of city ruins where they make their home. Ream tells us about their war against our reconstruction work. I wonder why they consider us enemies.

“What about the peacemaking efforts?” I ask.

She studies me with no emotion but pity. “That’s a nice thought, Jade, but it’s best not to concern ourselves with politics.”

I huff. I don’t think it has anything to do with politics. Although their lungs have adapted to the atmosphere, their skin is wrinkled from ultraviolet radiation, and their life spans are shorter than ours. Wouldn’t they gladly live longer and healthier lives underground, if we welcomed them? Hasn’t anyone ever asked them what they think, what they want?

The next day we tour the air-sealed complexes that our predecessors have constructed. A few hundred people already live here—botanists, engineers, ecologists working tirelessly to rebuild the beginnings of a sustainable society.

While we walk through the facilities, I pause and gaze through the window at the ocean below the cliffs. I imagine stepping barefoot on sand, basking in the water’s spray.

“It’s gonna be a hundred years before you can do that.”

Dev’s thought jolts me with surprise. Two years with this implant and I sometimes still forget when I have the telepathic communication function turned on.

“Not if it’s up to me,” I respond, and push the button to turn it off.

On day five we put on our armored suits and helmets to venture out onto natural terrain. It takes me several steps to get used to the feeling of my boots scuffing against dry dirt, sinking into grass, squeezing through bushes.

We’re walking through a forest. I gawk up at the trees’ branches and wander off on my own path ahead of the others, wishing I could take off my helmet and breathe pure air.

I see movement behind a tree ahead of me, and freeze. I thought I was at the front of the squad. I scan the forest, but all is still. I turn around. Where is everyone?

Commander Ream transmits a shout. “Ambush! Get to base!”

I gasp and drop to the ground. But I don’t see anyone. The trees are silent around me.

“Where are you?” I ask Dev.

“Just run!”

Lifting my head, I survey my surroundings and see no heat signatures. So I leap to my feet and sprint.

I’m weaving between trees, tripping over roots and underbrush. I look over my shoulder and glimpse someone pursuing me. No helmet.

I yelp and pick up my pace. Are you kidding me? I can’t defend myself. I have no weapons, no combat training…

There’s more light up ahead. I dash for the clearing. Another surface dweller joins the first, then a third. They’re going to dart me any second.

I stop short when my feet dislodge gravel over a cliff’s edge. My orientation twists. I thought I was almost to base, but white waves crash against black rocks far below me. I feel betrayed, misguided by the sun’s warmth.

I turn. Three men and a woman aim their dart phasers at me. I put my hands up in surrender.

“Shut off your comms,” orders the most vicious looking among them, a man with braids pulled back, drooping cheeks, and tattoos up his wrinkled neck.

They want to take me hostage? At least I could talk to them, learn about them—no, that’s crazy. I can’t surrender—but what else can I do? Really should’ve stayed on the geothermal energy track…

“I heard that.”

Drat. Still notoriously bad at keeping my thoughts to myself. “Little help here?”

“What? I thought you made it back!”

“Turn it off!” the tattooed man yells, inching the phaser closer to me.

I’m the last one outside. Surrender is my only option. But I surrender willingly. I unlatch my helmet at the neck.

“What are you doing?” Dev shouts into my ears. “Are you out of your—”

I twist the seal. The comm device cable detaches from the implant’s magnetic dock behind my ear. The air valve releases.

I remove my helmet, and the warriors gasp and pull back. I don’t know whether they’re more startled by the smoothness of my fifteen-year-old baby face, or the fact that I just made the dumbest choice of my life.

My eyes smart under the sun’s blaze. I inhale air that tastes burnt, and choke out unrehearsed words. “Take me with you.”

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