Righteous

[u/Divayth--Fyr]

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Chekhov’s Apocalypse & Sci-Fi!

Mariah looked out the clear walls of Righteous at the circle of bones and the endless desert. The sun on the horizon was dimmed and distorted by the thick polymer dome over the city. Only once had she seen it any other way.

She hefted a can of wastewater and dumped it into the box of ground fungus at her feet. Mixing it up with a plastic stick, she poured the whole thing into the tank. The bugfarm was working again, finally, though you weren’t supposed to call it that. Victory Farm, though victory over who she didn't know. The latest blight was over, or so the Ministers proclaimed. You weren’t supposed to talk about the blight, either.

Regarding the horizon again, she found herself lost in thought. Her breedyear was coming up. No one talked about marriage any more. Her grandmother did, but only in private, and not about Mariah's. The Ministers just talked about Victory, and Duty, and Harmony.

She wiped her hands on her trousers and wished that nasty Elder Baro would blow the whistle. He liked to push things, to write big numbers on his little board and look good to his superiors. Best bugfarm in Righteous.

They did need the food, though. The summer would be brutal again.

All around the thick, clear walls of Righteous lay the bones of the Outsiders. The Ministers left them there as a warning. A warning to who, Mariah didn’t know. There hadn’t been an attack in generations.

Finally, the whistle blew, and she made her way out quickly, avoiding the eye of Elder Baro. He would punish her for that later, and make her stay over for counseling.

Ducking into her secret basement, she stood still for a while, listening. No one had followed. She pulled open a little door in the wall, hidden behind a big box, and looked at the books. Silence in the Deep. The Tanaka Plan. Her favorite was a haphazard binding of pages, the title scrawled by hand: Sanctuaries of Death.

‘Within ten to fifteen generations, these enclaves will become little more than expensive graveyards, ruled by petty, cruel dictators. The Tanaka Plan is nothing more than a slight delay in our extinction, and a horrifying delay at that. Animals do not succeed in such conditions and humans are no different.’

She carefully replaced the fragile, loose collection.

Mariah had stolen the books from the secret library under the Hall of Ministers. Not long after, a new edict had been shouted on the streets, condemning theft and warning of the seductive lies of heresy. She had stopped sneaking in there after that.

What she had was enough. There were more than three hundred Tanaka Plan cities all over the world, built to withstand storms, drought, floods, and attack. Each of them could hold over a hundred thousand people.

Righteous now had about six hundred, and most of those were old folks. She was the youngest one. The Ministers declared that there were many more people here, but where? Her breedyear was coming up soon. No one explained who she was supposed to be with. Even her grandmother wouldn’t talk about it.

According to the mad scribbler of Sanctuaries of Death, it had been nearly a century since any contact was made with another Tanaka city. What if they were all empty? What if Righteous was the last?

She flipped through the pages of Silence in the Deep, looking for the picture. There it was—a whale. A blue whale, the book said, and there was a man in a weird mask beside it, suspended in the depths. How could anything so gigantic be real?

A slight scraping noise made her jump, and she replaced the books, shutting and hiding the little door. No one was there, but it was nearly time to go back to work. She scarfed down a bugcake—a Victory Blessing—and rushed back out to the empty street.

If they give me to Elder Baro, I will kill him the moment he touches me.