Season 05 - Episode 16

‘now meanwhile between’

He's done it.

Ak has reached the long range elevators and all that remains is for him to switch them on and fulfil the prophecy. Except it isn't that simple.

It's never that simple.

He's hiding in the shadows behind an electrical cabinet at the top of a set of metal steps. Just a few feet away from him is the door to a small room which contains banks of buttons, screens and levers, the controls to the elevators.

The elevators are just below him, hundreds of them standing in ranks, marching off across a great open expanse into the distance. Dead and cold, the metal doors might as well be walls for now, standing without power as they have for generations.

Milling around in front of the elevators is an enormous crowd of people, thousands upon thousands of them. They're singing and laughing and building fires and generally enjoying themselves, for now.

Meanwhile, between him and them, just at the bottom of the stairs, stands a human wall. Row upon row of grim faced Enforcement Officers with their black bowl helmets and their chinstraps and their heavy, brutal nightsticks. They don't know Ak's up here, nobody does, so for now it's just an almighty stand off.

The time since Ya died in his arms has been a blur, days or weeks he's unsure. Eventually he managed to lay her down and leave her behind, then stumbled on the way she'd told him to go.

He's still not entirely sure whether he led the crowds here or they led him. Occasionally he would slip ahead of them, looking for some landmark or feature from Ya's instructions. Then the ever growing crowds would catch him up and overtake him, all swarming in the right, general direction. More and more people recognised him, some for good, some not.

Eventually though, just a few hours ago, after a lot of running and hiding, he found the door Ya had described to him and opened it the way she had showed him. It had opened into this, the greatest, most cavernous space he's ever seen. He'd seen the elevators and known it was done. Then, he'd made his way up the stairs and seen the door.

That was when it all went wrong.

His presence down here, along with the pesky little metal things skittering about, has turned this society on its head. Ostensibly driven by a universal lust for social mobility via the accumulation of material wealth, these people had long since settled into an entirely static system with just four families at the top.

Trapped in the belief that it was impossible for them to leave, the people accepted the chains of starvation wages so that the poor got ever poorer, the rich ever richer. Then, suddenly, there was another option. Him. Just the idea of following Ak to the elevators, to another world above, has changed everything.

Suddenly people are refusing to work for the standard pittance and strikes have broken out everywhere and on such a scale that another great myth has been busted. There simply aren't enough Enforcement Officers to arrest everyone. Now the whole place has slid into chaos with most people abandoning their old world on just the promise of a better one above.

Ya told him it was win win, that he would get to go home while everyone else escaped behind him. The problem is the door. He's seen this kind of door before on his travels with Ya and he knows exactly how it works.

It's one way.

He can get into the control room whenever he likes, walk in, flick all the switches, set everyone free. But he won't be able to get out again. Someone else will have to let him out and as soon as he goes in there, the Enforcement Officers will see him. They'll come to the door to arrest him and while he can lock himself inside, that will only delay the inevitable.

If he goes through the door and switches on the elevators he will never get home.

If he doesn't, this society is going to tear itself apart.

He takes Ya's lighter out of his pocket and looks at it, feels its texture under his thumb.

He doesn't know what to do.

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