Season 04 - Episode 20

‘up she says’

Ak can't get used to this backwards world.

He is picking his way along a dark, narrow corridor. The floor on either side is thick with bodies, people huddling together. Until a few days ago he'd never seen a naked flame before. The technology of The Levels meant that there was no need for fire at home and from being a child he was taught that starting any kind of fire was insanely dangerous.

Here however, the savages do it all the time. He walks past some of them now, a small group sitting in a tight circle around a small fire on the floor. Each holds some kind of stick or pipe, suspending a lump of something or other within the flames.

The smoke fills the tight space, making the place even darker, choking him and stinging his eyes. He hurries past, desperate to get away from these slums and find a way further down.

During his flight from the storeroom, Ak found a corpse which, while trying and failing not to vomit, he stripped. With his new clothes as a disguise and a few meagre items to trade, he resumed his search for a way back home.

Along the way, he has come to understand that these people have a vague set of myths and legends that lionise corporate greed as a virtue. The whole society is based on the acquisition of material wealth as a means to social climbing so that everything has a price.

Somewhere here are a small number of people who own most of that wealth and live in unimaginable opulence, but he hasn't seen them yet. He discovered very quickly that the tolls for walking the broader, cleaner, better lit corridors were way beyond his means. Now he sticks to the narrow, filthy, winding routes for which no tolls are charged.

The woman in the storeroom had seemed to say that this place was once part of The Levels, GovCo territory, but he can't see it himself. What killed all those people up above? And how could these people have slipped so far backwards? It doesn't make any sense.

Another thing that makes no sense is that in order to go up he must go down.

By paying for information or eavesdropping for free, Ak has learned that his Government Corporation cell sits at the very top of this awful new world. He knows there's no way up going back the way he came. The long range elevators the woman mentioned seem like his only way home and they're rumoured to sit at the very bottom of the world, so now he is searching for any way to get down there.

Ak reaches the end of the corridor and enters an large open space. Once it might have been a park but now it's a seething shanty town. Perhaps a dozen corridors lead out of the space and he has no idea which way to go.

In his pocket he carries one last trinket, a small pendant from around the corpse's neck. It's his last thing to trade but he has no idea where to go next and so eyes the crowds as he wanders, looking for a likely guide.

Eventually he spots a young woman, leaning against the side of shack, smoking one of the filthy white tubes everyone here seems to love so much. He approaches her carefully, glancing around.

“Hey,” he hisses. “I need directions. I can pay.”

The woman glances at him with disdain but then, looking at him, narrows her eyes and pushes away from the wall. She flicks her smoking tube away and moves to stand toe to toe with him. She leans in so he can smell her foul, smoky breath and then grabs his hands and inspects them, turning them back and forth.

“I don't believe it,” she says, laughing her surprise. “It's you.”

“I... er...” Ak tries, caught off guard.

“I thought the UPF made you up,” she says, still searching his face. “But you're definitely not one of us with your soft hands and you're definitely not one of them with your dirty face, so it must be true.”

“I don't know what you mean,” Ak whispers, looking around. “I just need to go down.”

“Yeah you do!” says the woman, grinning. “You're the explorer from The Higher Place the little machines have been showing us. You're the man who's going to find the long range elevators! Up we go!”

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