When he returned to his own section, A-Ka finally let loose a breath. He was absolutely exhausted, and this had only been his first day on the job.
He looked at his watch—he had just ten hours to rest. As he entered the living quarters, someone nodded at him. A-Ka returned the courtesy with a stiff smile.
“A-Ka-gege’s1 back from work!” a child called. “What was the surface like?”
A teenager also walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “How do you feel about your first day of work?”
“It…was all right,” A-Ka said with a nod.
Among those who lived here, a large portion were younger than A-Ka. The Ant Nest was divided into fourteen thousand sections, and the workers from each section were their area’s human representatives. The behavior of these human representatives on the surface directly affected the quality of life for the entire section, while the rest of the humans were left to undergo training from the robots, to reproduce in relative privacy, or to learn skills.
People who went through many rounds of tests but never mastered any kind of skill were also deemed to be noncontributors, and the only thing that awaited them was disposal.
The “D” A-Ka had gotten today weighed heavily on his mind, as well as the fact that he was going to be sued soon. The legal system would analyze the video recordings of his work. If he was lucky, maybe he would only be given a “B,” which wouldn’t add or dock points. But if he was scored another “D,” the pressure on him would become enormous.
The young ones were sitting in the lounge, reading. A-Ka sat to the side and was quietly eating his allotted meal when he noticed a very small child slumped by the table, watching him.
“Can I eat your fruit?” the child asked.
“Of course.”
A-Ka handed the fruit to him, and as soon as the child got it, he ran off to share the special gift he’d been given with the rest of his playmates.
In no time, the electronic voice broadcast a notice: It was the hour for sleep, and humans who needed rest were to return to their sleeping chambers. Subsequently, A-Ka tossed the plates that he had polished off into the trash bin, and with an anxiety-ridden heart, did as he was told.
Every human had their own sleeping chamber that served as their only personal space within the Ant Nest. A-Ka set the noise for his chamber to the slumbering frequency before climbing in. The space was wide, enough to fit two humans side by side, and there was even a small green potted plant in the chamber. Soon after he entered it, the hallway outside darkened, and the hatch to the sleeping chamber closed.
A-Ka turned on the reading lamp and pulled out the aged navigation chip that he had stolen. This chip would be very useful to him. Still, he should rest a little bit before using it. He didn’t want to go outside, at least not today. Besides, only the void of sleep would let him temporarily forget about the troubles of getting that “D.”
After the slumbering frequency began to play, he lay there for a while, his frustration mounting as he tossed and turned. He forced himself to close his eyes, but he just couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, his mind returned again and again to the machine that he had hidden away down below, as well as the navigation chip that he had stolen.
Sleep remained elusive.
After half an hour, A-Ka got up, opened his chamber, and slipped out.
Within the sleeping hall, row upon row of other chambers glowed with blue light. A-Ka left the hall rapidly, pressing down on the sensor to verify his fingerprint as he returned to the living quarters. Many humans were still in this area, which was fairly normal. A-Ka, however, ducked into a safety tunnel and descended the stairs to the bottom, hiding in a corner just before a bend.
Abruptly, he heard a quiet noise from behind him, as if the door had been opened by someone else. The blood froze in A-Ka’s veins. Who was there? Aching to turn his head, he nevertheless forced himself to suppress the desire.
You can’t look, he admonished himself. There were no robotic noises, so it wasn’t a guard. It was probably a human coming this way for who knew what purpose. Unless…
Had someone else discovered this tunnel?
He heard the sound of the door closing and let out a relieved breath. Only then did he dare to turn his head back and look. No one was there. Regardless, he still felt uneasy, and when the surveillance cameras turned away, he stayed still for three seconds before darting out like an arrow and rapidly clambering into the garbage chute.
Sliding down the long chute, A-Ka traveled all the way to the waste container far outside the living quarters. The trash inside the container was incinerated once every six hours, and the area was filled with a pungent scent of smoke that had not yet dissipated.
He climbed out from a hole in the garbage chute and made his way down a rusty ladder. Now that he was outside, the sea breeze blew into his face, and the roar of the tides weighted the air around him, as if the sea itself was drowning him.
The garbage chute led directly to the harbor, where the sky, the land, and everything in between were dark. Lightning cracked, connecting the sky and the sea in brief flashes, and the crashing waves and roiling thunderclouds seemed to warn him to turn back as soon as he could.
With this kind of absurd weather, A-Ka began to regret coming here today. He was still drowning in the anxiety of recent events. Had someone discovered this tunnel? But how could that happen? The waste container had been unmonitored for a long time now, and there hadn’t been any new footprints recently. Either way, this was not a good day to set out.
Compared with the vastness of the sky and the ocean, A-Ka was no more than a little black speck carefully crawling across an exposed reef as he picked his way toward a hidden cave by the shore. Inside the cave, he had stashed a machine of his own making. While he made his way over, he prayed for it to still be there—that it hadn’t been taken.
If the legal system became aware of what he had done, A-Ka knew that the only thing that awaited him was disposal. But since he’d been ten, when he had unwittingly discovered the passageway in the garbage chute that led to the outside world, he couldn’t help wishing to breathe the air outside. Though that air was filled with the constant, pungent scent of sulfur and the surface of the ocean was stained with black crude oil, none of it could stop A-Ka’s heart from yearning for freedom.