Prefab

A Suffmas Story

Oleg Kuznetsov, Snowball Earth

Alexander of New Russia Pod jingled the handful of lithium button batteries in his pocket. They should be enough to get him what he needed, if the rumors were true. He stepped off the tram at New Japan Pod and took a moment to get his bearings. He didn’t come this far south that often. The tram tunnels here were painted to look like mustached dragons and the station workers wore colorful silk jackets, but that was where the novelty stopped. Out in the city, New Japan was exactly like New Russia, or New India, or New Chile, or anywhere else on New Earth, the same boring gray portable prefab stacked into living and working cubes. The same means equal, equal means the same. The slogan had been drilled into Alexander since he was born. We all live in boxes, we all act like boxes, we are all boxes. That was his own slogan, his current Parental Supervisor scolded him every time he used it, but he did it anyway. Not like it would be his first reassignment if they complained. He was almost free of the Family Unit anyway.

Alexander made his way through the methodically laid out streets. Every city was built on a grid, with streets running north and south, east and west from Main Street at the city center. It meant you could navigate easily no matter what Pod you were in. It also meant no surprises, no hidden secrets, or it should have. But not all people liked being boxes, empty and square, there were secrets out there, if one were brave enough to look. It was late in the afternoon, the Pod’s sun lights would be dimming soon. In the early days the Engineers had simulated weather in the Pods, but that quickly led to issues with the prefab. Now they only simulated the rhythm of the seasons by shortening and lengthening the days. These days were short, but the temperature was always carefully regulated. Always the same.

Music drifted to Alexander’s ears. There were musicians in New Russia, but he was usually on Privilege Deprivation, so he rarely heard them. His feet pulled him toward the sound. He could tell it wasn’t live, it crackled over speakers. It was a funny, happy sounding song, but the lyrics were dark, something about the world getting blown up on Christmas. Around a corner Alexander came upon a group of people watching an LCD screen and dancing to the music. The song was called “Christmas at Ground Zero,” by a guy named Weird Al. Alexander laughed to himself, that guy must have been an Old Earth prophet, he’d known exactly what would happen to the place. Alexander watched the lyrics roll by on the screen.

We can dodge debris while trim the tree

Underneath the mushroom cloud

Passersby stopped to watch a video of the Old Earth people that went along with the song. These old uploads were illegal, but there were satellites all over space loaded with the stuff. The videos were easy picking. When the screens popped up in Pod cities, everyone stopped to watch, at least for a second. Mostly no one alive remembered Old Earth.

Alexander had heard about Christmas, but there were no holidays on New Earth, no religions either. The same means equal, equal means the same. It didn’t though. Alexander could see that humans were too messy to live up to an ideal. People tried, but they made mistakes. Equal was always out of balance.

A woman laughed and Alexander looked up. She danced in the street to the jingling tune, the prefab road making weird clicking sounds under her shoes. A section clip had probably broken. If too many broke the two pieces of road would start bouncing against each other as the ATVs road over it. They jokingly called it a Pod quake. But Alexander had seen an earthquake on Old Earth on an illegal download once. That was power, that was a quake. Old Earth had been mighty. She still was, down there, all on her own. They said she was healing. Alexander had to know. Was she? Would he and the others get to see her again? If they went back to Old Earth, would there still be Christmas? And all the other things they had to leave behind, would those things still be there too? A land with no prefab cubes?

His hands felt for the batteries in his pocket and he moved on from the jolly scene, didn’t need another contraband charge on his record, anyway. He’d just gotten out of Privilege Deprivation. He was heading somewhere that would carry even worse charges, if he got caught. They’d probably send him to Community Rehabilitation. If the rumors were true, anyway.

He made his way through the tidy streets to the south end of the Pod. There was a decommissioned dehydration factory there that hadn’t been disassembled yet. Nothing was fresh on New Earth. Everything came from the Green Pods straight to the dehydration factories. Alexander picked up an old can of spicy dehydrated crickets and wondered if they were still good. Then he saw what he’d been looking for. Between two prefab cubes that had been knocked apart was a hole in the substrate. He didn’t want to look too obvious, so he toyed with the can while he walked over to it, pretending he couldn’t get it open. Next to the hole, he banged the can on the cube wall as if that would help. Then he dropped it, “accidentally.” When he bent down to look for it, he slipped between the cubes and through the substrate.

He’d never been below ground before. The gray fiber substrate gave way to hard, red soil and a hatch door, hastily made out of an ATV tire. Alexander squatted and lifted the door. Soft light and smoke wafted up from below. And something else, a feeling. Sadness, regret, this was definitely the place. A kid he’d met in Priv Dep had told him about some real prophets who lived below the surface. Prophets who could tell your future by sensing the nature of your suffering. That kid hadn’t ever seen them, but an older boy in one of his Family Units had told him exactly where to find it. Alexander had been skeptical, the Peace Unit was pretty quick to shut down nonconformities. And this would have been a major nonconformity, if it existed.

But as he lowered himself through the hatch and his foot touched the steel ladder below, he knew it was true. The tunnel at the bottom of the ladder was lit by fire. Actual fire. Torches held in metal strips nailed into the rock flickered and danced, Alexander coughed in the smoke and ran his hand along the red rock wall. It was beautiful, striped and swirled with different shades of red, orange, light green, and yellow. And it felt so real. Hard and imperfect, rough and accidental. It was incredible. He leaned into the rock and smelled it. He’d never smelled real rock before, it was tangy and dry. He knew this was what the world looked and smelled like outside the Pods, but they couldn’t go out there. It was too dangerous. A window wouldn’t hurt though, would it? And definitely more caves.

Alexander moved on, following the rough-hewn tunnel for what seemed like an hour. He was just wondering if he should have grabbed those crickets after all when the tunnel opened up into a bigger room. It was empty, except for tall burning cylinders on the rocky ground. Alexander had seen them on Old Earth downloads, but couldn’t think of the name. They filled the room with smoke and he coughed again, peering through the haze. At the other end of the room was an alcove covered by a long black curtain. Alexander moved forward through the stifling air, the atmosphere beginning to weigh on him. As he parted the curtains he cleared his throat.

“Hello?” He was met by shuffling silence. As the curtain parted Alexander’s breath caught. There were people here. People from above. At least twenty were wearing their New Earth jumpsuits. But the others, Alexander wasn’t sure what to think of them. The regular people were all sitting on the rock hard ground, gathered around these others, and congregated together in small groups. The others, Alexander didn’t know what else to call them, wore baggy black robes that had sleeves so long their hands disappeared in the dark folds of fabric. They all had long, curled mustaches and had shaved their heads. They knelt on the hard rock, whispering to the people gathered around them. He couldn’t quite make it out, it was so soft. Alexander, still half hidden by the curtain, watched as one of the robed men lifted up his arm, still shrouded in black. The man next to him, a man from the surface, pulled at the long sleeve until it revealed a hand. It didn’t look any different than any other hand as far as Alexander could see in the flickering fire light. The robed man stuck up his thumb and slowly, methodically pressed it to a woman’s forehead. She almost collapsed and two men held her up so the robed man could keep his thumb pressed to her skin. He hummed a sad tune and swayed with his eyes closed. Then he stopped, and pulled his thumb back.

“You will suffer greatly!” He declared. And the woman went into hysterics. Alexander noticed there was one man at the end of the room, sitting alone on a chair, rather than the floor. He looked just like the others except that, from the bottoms of the impossibly long arms of his robe, poked the man’s hands. Some kind of mutant, maybe. Alexander thought they always culled mutants, but he also didn’t really follow the politics around the New Earth. The man caught his eyes and pulled Alexander forward with his piercing gaze. The closer he got the tighter his chest became, he felt the world closing in on him, and tears ran down his cheeks.

As he stood before this man, short, stocky, yet imposing, Alexander could barely speak.

“Who are you?” He asked, through a choked sob.

“I am The Suff.” His voice was soft and melodious, and brought to mind the scenes Alexander had seen earlier, of Old Earth being destroyed by nukes. Of bombs rumbling gently in the distance.

“I want to know if I’ll ever see Old Earth. I want to know if we’ll get Christmas back.” Alexander had to fight to stay upright, the grief in the room threatened to crush him to the stone. The Suff’s face was impassive as he slowly raised a long arm. He extended his thumb and pressed it to Alexander’s head. A sickening wave flowed through him, all the sad, lonely nights he’d spent in Priv Dep. All the times he’d been told he wasn’t fit for any position in New Earth because he couldn’t conform. He couldn’t be prefab.

And then, he saw himself, waving, climbing into a rocket. A huge banner beneath the launch platform said “Old Earth Bound” and there were people everywhere. He wasn’t alone, he had a crew. Most were older versions of kids he saw all the time in Priv Dep.

A SUICIDE MISSION!

The words sprang into his mind as he now rocketed through space toward Old Earth. The crew were on edge, excited, not knowing what they’d find ahead of them. Then Alexander saw it, Old Earth. It wasn’t like he’d imagined. It was white, pure white.

“It’s covered in ice,” a voice from somewhere said.

“Ice.” Alexander repeated as The Suff pulled his moist thumb from Alexander’s brow.

“You’re mission will be lost. Frozen to death on the wintery planet.” The Suff’s soft, whispering voice came to Alexander like breath of suffering. Alexander, waved it away and dug the batteries out of his pocket.

“Doesn’t matter if we freeze to death. Doesn’t matter if Old Earth isn’t livable yet. I’m not going to die in a Pod forsaken cube!” He hugged the old man and dropped the batteries in the hand at the end of his long arm. He turned and sprinted from the dim, stuffy room and out through the tunnel into the light of, well the Pod. The air was recirculated, but it was fresher than the tunnel. Alexander of New Russia Pod smiled, it may as well be Christmas, he’d just gotten one Hell of a present.