Passages
No
way! There’s just no way! Cilla checked the numbers for the sixth
time. This time she decided to test
random cells on the spreadsheet, to make sure the calculations were not
misaligned. Everything seemed to be
straightforward – everything except the only possible conclusion these numbers
led to.
“Here we go,” she breathed, to no one in
particular. No one could have heard
her, anyway, even if she had shouted.
She was alone in the deepest room in the city, the “hideout” as it was
affectionately referred to by those who frequented the space. Cilla spent a lot of time in the hideout
lately. Somehow she knew their work
was leading somewhere this time, but she would never have guessed it would lead
where it seemed to be leading…not in a million years.
***
Cilla was nicknamed as an infant by her grandfather,
who wanted no one to mistake his youngest granddaughter as Prissy, though even
with a name like Priscilla, no one could have thought her prissy at four years
old when she solved complex algorithms or at eight years old when she argued
with her father about quantum physics – and proved his understanding limited by
the standards of that time!
Grandfather was gone now – father, too, most likely. Both left on the island and surely long
perished with the direction the attacks had taken. It had been years since any real news had
traveled to the Great Unknown City.
The land dwellers may have rebuilt by now – or the attacks could have
completely obliterated everything living.
At some point, they expected news – or at least understanding – to travel
by way of life…or death. Not that much
moved this deep under water, but there was always the tunnel. A great deal of storytelling happens by way
of the tunnel.
Some days, the tunnel brought forth the last drops
of rainwater that rolled down from the cave, telling the tale of heavy rains
and the atmosphere in which it fell.
These drops were analyzed for air quality and life forms. Other days, only the slightest hint of light
could be seen if one looked closely enough.
On really interesting days, an insect or rodent would find its way down
the long climb to the door of the Great Unknown City. These creatures let Cilla and her
colleagues know that life continued on in the world above the ocean floor.
When Cilla first arrived at the Great Unknown City,
she arrived – as everyone did – through the tunnel. The tunnel could be found only through the
cave of light on the island where she last hugged her father and grandfather. It was at the mouth of the tunnel where her
father passed to her Paul Cezanne’s portrait of The Card Players. Tradition told her it was the most
expensive piece of art in history, but she knew it only as a perfect likeness
of what it might look like for her father to be playing cards with his father
had they both been the same age.
As she descended the five-mile-long tunnel into the
darkness that led to what would be her new home, she clung to that painting as
if she had both men in her arms. They
were her connection from what was to what is…and in some ways, to what would
be.
For twelve years, Cilla had been part of the Great
Unknown City. In twelve years, she
had grown to enjoy the insulated, dimly-lit passageways that had become her home. She still missed the land, but she could
no longer remember the scent of grass or the sense of how it felt between her
toes. She knew every nook and cranny
of The City. She had once helped to explore
and map it, now she helped to discover the secret of how it first came to
be. For two years, she had been
tracing the rhythm and flow of the tide and temperature outside of the air-tight,
fortified walls. She calculated the
measurements and overlaid them with measurements from inside the core of the
City – air flow, expansion, contraction, and temperature. She hoped to get some idea of the ancient
people who created this city, seemingly, just for her and the three hundred
people who escaped the attacks alongside of her. The city was abandoned when they arrived,
but clearly not long abandoned.
Nothing was decayed. Nothing
seemed out of place. It seemed no one
left in a hurry, but neither as though a return trip was planned.
The theory was that the chamber, now known as The
Great Unknown City, had preservation qualities like those of cavern systems or
tombs discovered a few hundred years ago in the twenty-first century. That theory never settled well in Cilla’s
mind. She knew that as soon as the
chamber was opened via the tunnel passage, the decay effect would be
immediate. Some offered that, because of the length of
the tunnel and the depth of the city, the air temp and quality was perfect for
preservation even if a little outside air entered in. But then what about the acids from their
fingerprints? No, this city was not a
city in ruins, preserved over centuries.
Something far more fantastical was necessary to explain this place.
And only now was there some indication of something
beyond fantastical. Now, Cilla needed
to find something to prove what she suspected. She needed to find something she expected
to be the equivalent of the passageway she had found fourteen years prior – two
years before it was used to bring them to this underwater world. She was the one who found the cave of
light. She was the one who found the
tunnel entrance. And now, according
to her ambitious and tedious calculations, she knew there was another such tunnel,
leading deeper – farther – beyond where they were now…...as they followed the
people who had set their world up before they arrived. How many worlds had she – and generations
before her – been led to inhabit?
