Out of the Ground

CHAPTER ONE

Brad Larsen turned off his lap top, carefully stowed it in his safe and closed the door. He was running late for his conditioning class and knew it would set a bad precedent. He opted for the stairway reasoning it would count for the warm up. Entering as quietly as possible he took his usual place. The instructor flashed a grin in his direction and intentionally kicked up the pace.

Meeting after class had become a welcome routine for Brad and Tamera, the slave driver the company had hired as a conditioning instructor. Over a green drink they lost themselves in an energetic debate over the harvesting of human organs from Sector Three.

Both Tamera and Brad had been born and raised in Sector One education programs. The indoctrination he received should have insulated him from the harsh reality that some individuals born in the wrong spot on the planet were destined to be human inventory. Tamera thought Brad’s hesitation to embrace this ideology was endearing but short sighted. They finished their drinks and headed their separate ways in more ways than one.

These debates always put Brad in a bad humor. Had he never spent time in Sector Three to observe the condemned inventory, perhaps, he would feel like Tamera. Having looked the inferiors in the eye, he knew that his education had been corrupted.

Brad stepped off the elevator, walked silently to his office and closed the door.

The end of Brads work day often contained a double digit. He found himself this evening again looking out the window at a black sky washed with a million points of light. Brad turned to his desk, cleared the clutter and walked out of his office. He nodded at the secretaries that were climbing the corporate ladder by saying yes to any request made by higher ups. The monorail was due in about three minutes. Brad was excited to get home and have a weekend to work on his research project.

Being raised in Sector One was a privilege the inhabitants were made aware of daily. They were the best of the best, the beautiful people. Genetic engineering was their father and the laboratory their mother. Everything was taken care of cradle to grave.

Brad should feel privileged, but he did not. There was an emptiness inside him that haunted and eluded him. The thing that plagued him the most was the irrelevance placed on history. The fact of the matter was that there was no history recorded. In fact, it was in a manner outlawed. To be found researching the past was an offense landing an individual in a Re-vision class. Ones vision was corrected to embrace what was to come; futurology. The future is what you can effect; the past is dead and unbending. Brads delve into history was a forbidden fruit that was answering his emptiness. He quickly entered his domain and pulled the curtains shut.

Showered and then revived by a green drink, Brad went to his safe and retrieved his lap top. He booted up and opened a file named Ancient History. As he read he could not help the questions that raced through his mind. The utopian world he lived in stirred something in his gut that he was having a hard time putting a name to. The words on the screen before Brad transfixed his mind and took him back three hundred years.

The earth was plagued by wars on every continent. Europe, the Middle East and India were annihilated by nuclear wars. Africa became embroiled in internal tribal wars, famine and disease. Governmental corruption in the South American countries eventually led to uprising and anarchy. China fared the best until multiple natural disasters crumbled its foundations. The collapse of the U.S. economy leading to the elimination government entitlements resulted in massive riots in North America. The effort to save some bastion of civilized humanity resulted in the formation of The World United Coalition. The W.U.C. Leaders rose up from every nation and used military intervention to divide their populace.

The globe was in effect divided into three sectors. Sector One included all the beautiful areas, places those ancient people considered resorts. Sector Two was the agricultural areas. Finally, Sector Three was the dry arid undesirable places on our planet. In the same fashion that the land masses were divided, so were the people. Sector One was reserved for the beautiful people of the world. Those of solid mind and body, but most importantly supported the vision of the WUC. Their genes were considered superior to the rest of the masses. The people chosen for Sector Two were considered of less intellect and beauty than their Sector One counter parts. They would be given the privilege of raising food for the world. These farmers were required to, of course, support the Coalition. The dregs of society were relegated to Sector Three. These unfortunates were considered either mentally or physically inferior. A large percentage of those cursed in sector three opposed the W.U.C. These wasteland people were given the honor of providing immortality to the blessed people in Sector One.

Brad rubbed his eyes, he needed to take a break, his muscles were not used to sitting in one position for any amount of time. He was the head designer for a top secret project named SIPP, which kept him in constant motion between his programmers. The letters stood for Saran Induction Pilot Plant.

This project would revolutionize the populace control issues between the sectors. Every few years there would be an uprising and people from the lower sectors would attempt to cross into Sector One. The usual skirmish would ensue and the rebellion would be squashed. The administration decided to develop a consequence so deadly to the lower sectors that insurrection would become too costly. That’s where Brad’s project came into play. It’s also where his interest in history was sparked.

Late in the twentieth century missile silos and bunkers were established throughout the North American continent. These were built originally to keep a perceived enemy out. SIPP would now use them to keep a real enemy in their boundaries.

Vast pipelines had been installed throughout the bunker system. Should an uprising occur, The SIPP would give the command which would deliver saran gas to the border areas via the bunkers. The administration counted on a small demonstration to deter the lower sectors from ever crossing the boundaries set for them again.

To obtain the historical information on the bunkers, Brad was given clearance to search the government history banks. The files were incredible! Brad would often find himself lost in the past for hours. The thirst he found for history became an addiction to him. The SIPP project was fast drawing to a close and the history banks would once more become inaccessible. Brad knew that creating a secret path to the archives was risky, but, it was a risk he was willing to take.

Brad had a green drink and went back to the files. The sectors could be summarized in this way; Sector One was the brain, Sector Two was the muscle and Sector Three was the fuel that kept Brad’s world moving. The vision of Sector Two did not haunt Brad. Those people were able to live lives with adequate supplies. They were denied education, but what does a person need to grow food? It was the waifs in sector three that had caused some sleepless nights. Sector three existed for one purpose to serve as parts warehouse for Sector One.

Medical advances had brought civilization to a place where any organ could be transplanted. So, with the honed skills of plastic surgeons and the expertise of the transplant teams, human kind came close to near immortal life. It was those last two words that had transported Brad into his search of the greatest world philosophies.

CHAPTER TWO

Sunset demanded a pause in shutting the door to the Quonset hut that housed the machinery. That same sun had set on this planet for time without end. It could be setting on a new world scenario before long. Todd shut the big metal doors and walked to his pick up.

He was on his way to a forbidden meeting with Xu and Tam, messengers for the rebellion. The fact that they had enough body parts left to see past their twenty fifth birthdays was a miracle. It wasn’t uncommon for persons in Sector Three to be used up and rested by the time they were twenty.

Rested! Another way of saying murdered in Todd’s eyes. Big housing buildings were constructed in all areas designated Sector Three. These were for people, who because of a blood or tissue type, had been captured and brought to the killing house .Sooner or later, unless one could elude capture, most residents of Sector Three would see the inside of one of these buildings.

Todd stepped out of his truck toward the barbed wire fence. His mind focused on the job before him. The breach in this section of the fence had been missed by the security inspectors. Todd had been testing a new tractor and saw a coyote dash under the fence without as much as a spark or siren. That was a year ago and in typical bureaucratic fashion it had not been repaired. He forced his 6’2’’ body under what he considered the only difference between Sector Two and Sector Three. Todd pulled with arms strong from years of hard labor on the farms. Inch by inch he pulled his body under a tangle of wire.

The road was dark and Todd’s eyes strained to see the evidence of his friends arrival. It was not uncommon for them to be an hour or more late. Traveling in this Sector was not safe until after dark and there were few vehicles to go around.

A light wind tossed Todd’s thick brown hair. His shoulder felt cold from the breeze. Looking down, Todd saw a faint red stain and a tear in his brown shirt. He reached up with his other hand to assess the damage done to the shirt and was met with a sticky warmth and a shot of pain down his right arm. He must have cut himself on the barbed wire as he pulled under the fence. Todd looked in his backpack for anything that could work for a make shift bandage. The best he could find was an old tee shirt in there from who knows when. Todd tore a strip and wrapped his arm best he could with one hand. He had just finished tying off the bandage when he saw a flicker of light. Tam and Xu had made it for one more rendezvous.

The rebellion, or the cause, as those in the lower Sectors called it, was quite elaborate. After the initial separation, people in Sector Three wandered in small groups. There was very little trust for any outside your own band. Eventually, necessity kept the groups pulling closer and becoming more interactive.

Tam sauntered up with a grin on his bronze face. He was of African descent with some Asian features. He stood well over a foot taller than his counterpart in crime. Xu was one hundred percent Campeche Indian. He had a stocky build but looked like he would be a force to be reckoned with when crossed.

Sorry we’re late, the seers were scanning a new pattern.Tam offered.

The seers were the answer to keeping track of the precious human merchandise held captive in Sector Three. At birth, the infants in Sector Three were tagged with a internal tracking device. They were also blood and tissue typed for further reference. When they had come of age at eighteen, they were free game for transfusions or organ donation. Sector One didn’t waste very much of their human produce.

Tam and Xu’s families had escaped the infant tagging by living in the upper caves in the remote western part of sector three. Even though they hadn’t been tagged, the seers GPS system also was set up for infrared tracking. yeh, its good we’re so old and experienced Xu said flashing a brilliant white smile. Tam produced a pouch containing an update on the underlanders progress with their part in the rebellion. The time was drawing near. The three friends spent an hour swapping stories before exchanging their Sector reports. This communication concerning the rebellion was a monthly practice, hazardous, but necessary.