A Beginning at the End
by Laramie Wyatt Sanchez Graber
part 1
Lila’s world was, technically, a trash dump, a massive repository of holes and cavities that spanned miles upon miles. However, the word barely retained its original meaning, because only the older generations grumbled at being called trash.
Lila was indeed trash, discarded by those above, but the mushrooms that she ate lived off waste, the insects that they farmed ate fungi inedible to her, and even the few greens they grew were lit by artificial sunlight made from materials thrown down from above. As her mother said, being trash wasn’t bad; it just meant you were free to define yourself since no one was trying to claim that right any longer.
Lila had a simpler philosophy. She loved trash. She loved working with it, sorting through the Great Trash Heap and the other, smaller heaps. Her old job had been to fill out people’s orders. She would scale the trash mounds, careful to note how everything fit together to avoid avalanches, before delicately digging to find treasure.
Lila loved the surprise of discovery, assigning entire stories to items, guessing all the ways they could be used, and seeing if she was right once she gave the trash to its new home. Often, she would hug the trash and whisper, “Don’t worry, you’re found again.” Her friend Ben liked to mock this, but always with a smile. He liked to guess who had owned discarded items as much as Lila liked to decide what they could become.
Now, Lila helped with the insect farms. She was older, and trash had largely stopped coming down from above after a series of earthquakes. Still, in her free time she would search the Great Trash Heap. Occasionally, she would find something that somebody else wanted, but mostly it was just for herself. Lila was trying to find enough brightly colored plastic bricks to build a car, a vehicle she had read about in a book.
Also, she had a new activity in addition to searching: looking. There had always been a sliver of light shooting down from above with motes of dust moving in and out of it, only disappearing when water fell from above. After the earthquakes, the sliver had become a large beam, big enough that Lila could lie down in it and be almost completely illuminated.
Lila’s daydreams of the world above grew with the light. Fragmentary imaginings became entire stories played out over hours. She watched soccer in a stadium filled with thousands cheering. She went on a tour of a factory, marveling at all the interconnected gears. She swam at the beach, dancing in the surf under a full moon. Yet, these daydreams were frustratingly incorporeal, cobbled together from books Lila read. The images constantly shifted because she did not really know what they looked like.
Once, she had seen a blueprint for a building. The daydreams were, at best, only blueprints for the world above. Books described the sound of the sea as the sound of waves, of surf, but Lila didn’t know what that sounded like. Birds flew because of wings, but what did they look like? Desperately, Lila wanted to know.
But no one went to the surface. When Lila asked her mother, she simply stared and said, “Remember why we’re down here.” Everyone knew the story taught in communal learning. Distilled down to its essence in myth: above, people had long festered with the green plague that made minds feverish, eyes blind.
As zombies, the people craved control and material wealth, exploiting and killing in their desire for it. Yet they could not see their own evil. No, in the blindness of the plague, they took their unacknowledged guilt and directed it into hatred of the downtrodden. For they saw the downtrodden as lazy and selfish, unwilling to achieve success for themselves.
When the downtrodden did not properly succeed with the meagre support given them, the hate grew and finally civilization threw them away. The downtrodden tried to escape their new home, desperate for what those above had. They built a ladder to the top of the Great Trash Heap. They dug extra tunnels. Always they were returned or killed.
Eventually, the plague below faded and the downtrodden realized there was nothing for them above. There never had been. They would always be defined as trash. Below, in their new home, there wasn’t much but, together, they began anew. They tapped into pipes and cables for water and electricity, they grew vegetables with artificial light, they farmed insects for protein, and they educated the children with their collective knowledge. It wasn’t much, but they could all choose it together.
What Lila and her people could never choose was to return to the surface. They could be infected with the plague. Worse, the zombies could see that they had been wrong, that the people they’d discarded could create value that could be consumed.
“Are you not happy here?” her mother asked. “Don’t embrace egoism.”
It was the philosophy of the people aboveground. The idea that focusing on oneself led to the greatest good, that nothing was more important than the absolute freedom to pursue this choice. Ignored was that to help oneself, people often chose to hurt others.
“It isn’t that.”
“Everybody has decided it isn’t safe to go above. It would be selfish to go. Our world is here.”
But it didn’t have to be... Lila could have explained that she was happy. She didn’t need more. But why not be even happier? Why accept the confinement imposed by the people above? Exploring and discovering were in her nature and caused no harm. They were helpful. However, her mother wouldn’t understand. Her father would be the same.
Only Ben would listen. He had been able to articulate what Lila felt, “Doing what’s best for you and everyone else doesn’t have to be what everyone thinks it is. We seem to have forgotten that.”
“So, do you want to go above?” Lila asked.
“Yes, but only with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a coward.” Ben smiled. It was hard to feel bad when basically everyone else felt the same way.
“Of course.”
“And, of course, you’re not?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe you should be. The bigger hole wasn’t the only thing that changed after the quakes. It’s mostly quiet above. Something big happened.”
“So we won’t be noticed.” But Lila didn’t make eye contact. Because she had been raised to fear above since the moment she could understand words. Because she would be risking her best friend getting hurt. Which was why Lila simply waited, lying in the beam of light on the Great Trash Heap, her desire for above steadily growing.
Then Lila found the painting. It was in one of the smaller heaps, buried back in the corner of a tunnel. The painting was water-damaged, ripped, and beautiful! Lila raced it to the artificial sunlight bathing rows of broccoli.
Two smiling people stood at the center of a large communal space, moving platforms connecting levels open to the sides and behind. It was covered with lush plant life and ponds connected by streams within the walls, the sky a deep blue through the glass above. The tall brown plants that grew straight and then branched into many brown limbs with green on them had to be trees. The round green plants in the ponds were... were lily-pads. Yes, lily-pads! And somehow, despite being in a building, creatures were flying. Birds!
Lila dashed the short distance to the library, which was right next to the crops, to take advantage of the light. She compared the painting to a description in one of her favorite science fiction books. It could be straight out of the book’s utopia. She bit back a shout to avoid disturbing the other readers. Finally, she had something to fill out her daydreams.
The next cycle, Lila showed Ben the painting in her room.
“Does this mean we’re going above?”
“Yep.”
Going above would be easy. No one liked to think they were trapped so, except for minimal precautions, all security had been removed to preserve the façade. Lila had arranged it in a single conversation with Mr. Brown, guardian to above. She and Ben merely had to decide to leave.
They walked between insect cages, the rustlings of wings and legs a constant backdrop to their conversation.
“What if there really is a zombie plague up above?” Ben asked.
“The story is clearly allegorical.”
“Even the maiming and killing part?”
“We’ve had murders here.”
“But not as a common pastime.” Ben attempted to roll his eyes. “You do know the painting isn’t true, right?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Mr. Brown wouldn’t let us up there if it was dangerous.”
“And Mr. Brown has been up there?” Ben attempted to raise an eyebrow skeptically, knowing that the answer was no.
Lila frowned. “You’re supposed to be my moral support.”
“You have our roles reversed.”
The tunnel opened up to the Great Trash Heap, extending almost a full mile upwards, piles of trash sprawled across it.
“Race you!” Ben cried, already in his gloves, scrambling across the rusted metal, plastic, and shards of glass.
Lila cursed and laughed and started across the route she had scouted earlier. Ben got stuck at a mound of wires and plastic containers that tumbled when he tried to climb, and he had to double back. Lila was waiting when he got to the other side. Ben grinned triumphantly, like he had planned it all along. “Now I know what your route is.”
Lila wasn’t paying attention. She stared at the ladder to the above with its series of platforms. Once, it was said, the ladder had been guarded by ten people armed with metal pipes. Now it was simply Mr. Brown: a big man, even though stooped with age, rendered oh so small by the ladder’s height.
A giggle worked its way up Lila’s throat. The ten people had always seemed ridiculous when the ladder was nothing more than bits of metal precariously stuck together. Now, when the ladder was truly a gateway to a new world, ten people didn’t seem nearly enough. Perhaps she would make it 20 for her children.
“Is today the day?” Mr. Brown asked.
“It is,” Lila said.
Mr. Brown gave a smile and stood aside.
Lila didn’t move. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“My grandfather always said people hardly noticed us up there. We’re down here to be forgotten after all. You may be invisible.” He winked. “You didn’t think everything we have down here was thrown out, did you?”
Lila had known this on some level. After all, they’d built a giant ladder, but it still sent shivers through her to hear it so openly acknowledged.
“All right.” Lila still didn’t move. She was getting very frustrated with herself.
Ben took her hand and pulled forward. “Looks like it’s my turn to be brave.”
Lila offered a smile. “Would you believe that I’ve been scared this whole time?”
“Oh, I’ve known.”
“Then you have been my moral support all along?”
Ben attempted to roll his eyes. “Yeah.”
They both looked up into the ray of light.
Lila squeezed Ben’s hand. “Okay.”
Ben squeezed back. “Okay.”
They began to climb.
Copyright © 2021 by Laramie Wyatt Sanchez Graber
