Word Count: 2,304
Warnings: None
Created for the Tropetember Event - Gaia's Lament.
- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -
[Good luck in the past, girl.]
Amelia read the message one last time on her personal transmitter before reaching the stop where she was to get off the magne-bus, and then continue on her way on foot to the end of the world. Her destination, a house all the way to the end of the dome. Amelia knew she was being dramatic, but just as the message indicated, she was traveling leisurely to a house that seemed trapped in time, built of a material she couldn't even name, weak-looking, like it was going to fall at any moment. If it were up to Amelia, she would never take a step inside that house in her entire life, but legally she had to retrieve some old files from that house. Her great-grandmother's house.
She had never seen her, or met her. She didn't know if she was even alive, or if she would find herself having to call the authorities to fetch a body that, in the loneliness of her reluctance to the present, had been forgotten. Her grandmother had died a few years ago, her mom didn't even want to see that mysterious great-grandmother in painting, and the files were so old that they didn't even have a copy of them at headquarters, Amelia had no choice but to accept the odd family job.
As she walked, holding her purse tightly, Amelia looked once again at the world she had grown up in. The gray floor, the seamless white sky. The dome she had grown up in was called Dome B39, and while it was not a cosmopolitan dome, it was a dome with plenty of economic movement, and at 25 years old, Amelia was one of the few who had never traveled through the tunnels to another dome. She couldn't explain it, but there was something that tied Amelia to that dome.
After walking what Amelia had considered the longest way in the entire dome, she finally reached the end of the dome. Amelia paused a bit to admire the breathtaking view that loomed over the house, over her. She had never been so close to the dome before, close enough to see it touch the ground, to see the curve of it covering hundreds of feet over her head. She had always lived there, but in a strange way, it was the first time Amelia felt suffocated inside the dome.
Amelia checked her transmitter, the time read just after 12 p.m., and realized that the signal seemed unstable. Damn it. If she already had doubts, Amelia tried to calm her nerves of being in an unknown place, with no service robots and no signal. Without thinking too much, Amelia followed until she reached the entrance to the house.
Amelia took a deep breath, and knocked twice on the door in front of her. The house was not large, and there seemed to be a strange kind of dust under the door frame. It was a dark gray color, a model of house that was no longer manufactured these days, and as Amelia was about to check through the windows to see if she saw anything, she heard slow, heavy footsteps coming toward her. The door shook a little before opening, revealing an old woman with a face full of wrinkles, so many that it took Amelia a few seconds to find the eyes in the face among so many crevices.
Amelia swallowed hard, opened her mouth to introduce herself, but her great-grandmother already had her back to her, walking slowly but surely into the house, leaving the door open. Amelia was a bit puzzled, but passed inside anyway, closing the door behind her. Inside the house, Amelia could see that the more she saw, the less she knew what she was looking at. Far from a minimalist and holographic type of decoration, the house was filled with furniture of various sizes, styles and, each one of them, covered with a thick layer of dust.
"Don't just stand there, sit down, the tea is getting cold." A raspy voice made Amelia gasp, who saw her great-grandmother carrying a wobbling plate to a small table in front of a window.
The light from the dome illuminated the room, and Amelia felt comforted that at least her beloved dome was cheering her up in such strange surroundings for her. Once Amelia sat down in the weird looking chair of unknown material, she noticed that the cup in which she drank her tea had no temperature system included, even less, no system at all, and her great-grandmother's words before she sat down made sense. Slowly, Amelia brought her lips to the cup, and it wasn't until after the first sip that she relaxed to see that nothing was wrong and she didn't feel sick.
She looked up from her cup and saw that her great-grandmother was sitting across from her, facing the window. Her great-grandmother's gaze lost in the dome, or so Amelia assumed. Since Amelia didn't want to take any longer in there than necessary, she decided she was going to settle the matter at once.
"My name is Amelia, I'm your great-granddaughter." Amelia grimaced quickly at the awkwardness of her introduction, and she just couldn't remember the last time she'd introduced herself to someone face to face. She was glad her great-grandmother was still looking out the window. “I'm here on behalf of my mom, your daughter Rosa, for a couple of files we need for some legal matters. It won't take you long, it won't affect you in any way either, just…”
Her great-grandmother continued to stare out the window, ignoring Amelia's words as if they were spam, and while that kind of attitude would have annoyed her in any other circumstance, Amelia did not know if it was because of the tea, or because she realized she was just an old lady, she decided to look at the window as well, remaining silent. And boy was it quiet, the usual murmur of the machines that had always accompanied her were gone, intercom voices, personal transmitters, service robots, there was nothing. Just the two of them.
A silence clearly interesting, but Amelia did not take long to continue. Once comfortable with her new environment, the questions bubbling inside her. Unbeknownst to her, the hand holding her bag had turned white from the force with which she held it over her legs.
"What are you seeing?"
Amelia thought he wouldn't answer her either, she'd been ignoring her for almost half an hour now, her tea now more lukewarm than hot, and she didn't hold out much hope, but to her surprise, her great-grandmother answered, a smile in her worn voice.
"The clouds, I see the clouds."
Amelia knew it was the clouds, of course, she had also studied the history before the domes in elementary school, but she didn't think her pretty dome bore any similarity whatsoever to the black, menacing blobs she saw in a hologram so many years ago. But Amelia didn't have time to voice her opinion, when her grandmother continued.
"The clouds were drawing overhead, silent stories that could only be seen by one who sought the truth with the naked eye." With a look in her eyes that Amelia could recognize, her great-grandmother turned to her. "What have you come for, Amelia?"
Amelia didn't know her, yet Amelia recognized in her gaze that her great-grandmother was not referring to legal or family problems, but to the object that had turned her life upside down, that something that kept Amelia as the only one in her family, other than her great-grandmother, still living in Dome B39. The real reason she had denied that a service robot went for the papers instead, the reason Amelia had wanted to visit her great-grandmother, once and for all.
Shyly, Amelia pulled from the purse on her lap, a book. Amelia thought so, but in the examples of what were once books, none resembled what Amelia held in her hands. It was delicate, and had a thin transparent cover wrapped around it to keep it as well as possible. The first time she found it, in a dusty box in her mother's house just before she moved to another dome, she knew that what she saw was a secret. Perhaps a secret even to her mother, who seemed to have forgotten the contents of that peculiar box. Or maybe she wanted to forget. No books were allowed, if you ever came across one you had to report it to the nearest authorities so they could 'preserve history'. What was it about that book that his mother had hidden it?
Her great-grandmother took the book out of the clear cover, and very carefully, but in movements that were clearly familiar, opened the book. She ran her hand across the first page, caressing the name that Amelia herself had whispered countless times in her mind, afraid that some machine would hear it, even in the privacy of her home.
Property of Avery Nunez.
Her grandmother kept turning the pages filled with pictures of a world Avery had never known, the photos, while old, did not diminish the blue of the sky, full of white specks, drifting, drifting, waving from the heights. The beauty of trees so tall they caressed the stars, surrounded by brightly colored flowers swaying in the wind. Another time, another place.
“It's not a book as such.” Her great-grandmother Avery spoke, her voice strained, in lump in her throat, Amelia shared. “This particular thing is called a photo album. It was a fun way to keep mementos, memories of an untouchable time, in a physical, tangible way.” The elder Avery laughed softly, her body shuddering with every movement. Like the house, it seemed on the verge of falling. Disappearing.
"We have no wind in this bubble of plastic and metal," she continued, "Can you imagine how majestic it was? No, you sure couldn't. I wonder if would it be better this way."
Her words reminded Amelia how painful it was to understand a little of the background to the photographs she had found months before. The world outside had turned its back on them, destroying homes, drying up fields, taking lives in droves. Nature was killing them indiscriminately, no matter what they did, so they were done with it first. It was self-defense, survival.
All life inside that metal dome was based on that story, on the truth. The truth that had never been questioned, why would it? Amelia didn't have to worry about whether there would be sun or rain as in the past, hot or cold, it didn't matter. She didn't even have to think about what to eat, the food was always the same, as well as the houses, the robot models, and the white sky. Activities had been perfectly automated, jobs assigned and lives properly planned and in order.
Amelia lowered her gaze to the cup of tea on the table. There was still some tea left, now cold. “What's here, why are you still in a house about to fall down?” why couldn't Amelia leave that dome?
“My home.” Replied her great-grandmother in a solemn voice, more alive than ever. “Your home. The house in the pictures is this, it was so many years ago. Life is still here, though covered by a white cloak, beneath us lies the earth where it all came from.”
Amelia spent the whole afternoon listening to the stories behind each of the photos, of the house, of the world that existed just a few feet away, outside the dome. When Amelia returned home, she carried with her not only the documents and the album, but the feeling of being awake for the first time, of seeing everything for the first time. Why did she live the way she did? Why didn't they go back to trying to live with the outside world after so many years?
Now that Amelia knew her great-grandmother, she no longer felt alone in that dome, in that life, yet the house that at some point had to fall, fell. Her grandmother disappeared. Amelia went soon to request a missing person's investigation, fearful of the circumstances of an old woman like her great-grandmother, full of life on the inside, covered with the past on the outside. But there was no response, no change.
It didn't take long for the government to decide it was better to forget the sorrows. The cause. To forget her grandmother. Amelia went so far as to want to deny it altogether, believing that her great-grandmother now lived between the pages of the album she carried with her every day. No one listened to her delusions, no one listened to the world outside, which called out to Amelia again and again. Reclaiming the lost life of her great-grandmother, the last person of a generation of earth and wind.
Amelia could not fill that void. How could she be part of a world that her generation had hurt so much? Did she have the right to love it? To cry for it? To fight for it? She had to face reality, they told her. And so it was, as Amelia again took the same magne-bus that had taken her to the end of time, walking until she reached the place where the house had been. Her home.
The house had been removed for safety reasons, and only remnants of rubble remained on the floor. Dressed exactly the same as her first meeting, Amelia stood where she must have arrived for tea, in front of a window. Listening to the silence, feeling the earth beneath her feet, lowered wires and metal, Amelia opened her eyes, and for the first time, saw the clouds across the dome.