Welders arrived and convinced Beau to wait to cross the rift until they finished their project. So he gave them a couple of hours. In that time, the rift bore a new skeleton. It had angled braces, scabbed welding lines, and a framework of repurposed steel bolted into place. They fused slabs of scavenged sheet metal and layered it in plastic wrap. They formed a sort of crude but effective gate to the outside world complete with a ramp good enough to drive on.
Beau eased his truck over the ramp and out through the other side of the rift, onto the great concrete expanse. It made him feel like a speck of dust in a world not his own. Tessa sat beside him. She said the outside world made her feel insignificant. But it also filled them both with a desire for adventure which was something they’d never truly known being stuck inside the Paradise Dome the last couple of years.
Like most people in the dome, everyone had memories living before they entered it. But the memories were always fuzzy. Everyone just called it ‘dome fever,’ a naturally occurring phenomenon that nobody lended too much thought to because for the longest time their needs were met.
They drove past the great knights in armor which lined the wall miles away. They stood as witness to Beau and Tessa’s great journey into the unknown.
Beau eased the truck forward. The engine hummed. In his rearview mirror, Beau spotted squads of militia cresting the ramp through the rift gate. Per Mayor Carnie’s orders, they patrolled on foot. Their flashlight beams cut across the polished concrete floor. They were all dwarfed by the scale of space around them.
The truck glided deeper into the unknown. The headlights reached out for details in the endless dark. The deeper they went, the more absurd it all became.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The giant concrete chamber, which they figured was mostly underground, had four corridors—North, South, East, and West—marked by giant archways which bored through the outer walls into concrete tunnels lined with fine paintings and covered in ornate Persian-style rugs. Each corridor was a thousand feet wide by Tessa’s estimation.
After getting a general layout of their surroundings, Beau turned the wheel and returned to inspect the outside of their dome more closely. Within minutes, he rounded the eastern quadrant of the dome. Something immediately caught his attention. It was a streak of color, dull yellow, just above the ridge on the surface of the dome. He slowed. Then he reversed. He aimed his headlights toward the markings.
“101,” he said.
It was painted in blocky government font from a stencil.
“101?” Tessa asked. “Some kind of serial number?”
“I don’t know.”
It wasn’t graffiti. It wasn’t an accident. It was an official designation. His breath stuttered. Dr. Gerben, who placed them inside the Paradise Dome, which he built for them to protect them from the horrors of the apocalypse outside, insisted they were alone. They were the only dome in the entire world. They were the last functioning refuge. Once they reached a population of one-hundred thousand people, it would be safe to repopulate the Earth and the dome would pop open. It was the program he always spoke about on the video tapes. He said no other domes were built. It appeared that may have been another lie.
How many more lies were there?
Beau leaned back and stared at the digits until his eyes ached. The number, 101, didn’t exactly confirm there were other domes or survivors but the thought came to both of them as they discussed it. The foundation of the truth on which they all lived started to crack and threatened their existence. What did it all mean?
Beau turned the truck. Tessa picked the South Corridor, so that’s where they went. They felt the need to explore, to know more. They had to learn the truth behind it all. And the first step was searching the South Corridor.
