UNLEASHED

We can’t leave the caves with our fragile eyes and skin. A thousand years underground has mutated humans into mole-like creatures, pale of skin and nearly blind in bright light, tunnels our pathways to underground rooms. Some mutants could go to ground but only in small fractions of what the old world knew as an hour. One thousand years, yet no life came forth on the super heated cinder-scape above.

We subsist on earthworms, lichen and what grows in the earth-cap garden. Juice is extracted from underground tuberose plants for liquid needs. Wall gardens of adaptive plants were created by the Master Gardeners, who open solar tubes at the earth-cap during specific hours. The airlock door, separating living quarters from the garden, slams shut via geothermal power, protecting our fragile bodies during grow hours.

Children are examined at birth for long throats and torsos, a sign of greater lung capacity, a feature of great import to Explorers. Tamron, the youngest Explorer, has a phenomenal eight liters of lung capacity, more than any of us.

Tamron’s voice is husky from the sulfurous air, her eyes a dark mahogany, visibly clouded with cataract-like coverings. Her body grew eye coverings as protection, beginning when she was seven, starting her explorations. The gigantic globe that once was the Earth's sun, is a glowing gourd, hanging low in a sky that never darkens. No unprotected eyes can withstand the intense glare above ground.

She goes above to conduct weather and air quality checks. My friend relishes plotting and mapping the land, and remains above the longest. Our scientists did in-depth calculations based on available information and determined the longest any Explorer could be above ground was sixty minutes. One hour, as Earthmen would say. Her explorations lengthen each day.

Tamron's hero is the volcanologist David Johnston, killed in the Mount Saint Helens eruption, in 1980, Washington State, United States of America. His heroism saved his team members, and The Johnston Ridge Observatory was named after him.

Our legends tell us we live below the Mt. St. Helens National Monument. The government created it after Johnston died in that massive eruption. A beautiful glacier topped mountain appearing like an ice cream cone, Mt. St. Helens became a legend when it erupted, creating lahars of mud and debris that spread miles of destruction to the highway.

The Observatory is now no longer in existence, blown off the face of the Earth, as were all the Earth’s mountain ranges. All were leveled, and the lustrous deep seas are now one large mass of molten lava.

Tamron plots and maps land spotted with thick, roiling, rust and butterscotch-hued lava lakes. Jagged stones burn the thick soles of her sandals. Her large feet, broad and flat, are layered in calluses. From her descriptions of the enormous Douglas Fir trees covered in gray ash, I visualize petrified branches stretched skyward in supplication to a god that couldn’t possibly exist now. No birds. No fish. No night or stars. How could there be a god?

Today she brought back an obsidian cube as long as her forearm. Gone forty-nine minutes on this excursion, there's no other Explorer who stays above as long. Skin blackened from the heat, her cheekbones are smudges of soot and bloody, oozing, scald wounds. She quickly drained two liters of the plant juice. I rubbed a soothing gel from the aloe plant on her cheeks and knuckles, as she slyly placed the obsidian at my feet.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Her grin gives her a macabre look, pale pink teeth set amidst the charred cheekbones and cataract obscured eyes. I didn’t say anything. What the hell? It was just a damned rock. She was always bringing back rocks. Never a living creature or plant, just rocks. When would she find something something alive? I know lamenting this life is wrong. What did anything matter, with no god any longer? No higher power to talk to with dreams and hopes, wishes and gratitude. This was not an existence of thankfulness. It was bereft, dank and hopeless.

“How can you be so excited about a stupid rock?” I hissed at her.

She shrugged, unconcerned. “It wasn’t hot like the other things I touch up there. It’s cool to the touch. I thought you liked the rocks I bring you.”

Unable to leave the subterranean world, I saw Earth through her descriptions. We had a topography map of the former world to locate her wanderings and pin them on the map. The planet is smoking, and always hot. Even the roof and walls of our underground lair are hot to the touch. The subterranean floor was the only cool we experienced in our world. Above is black smut and burnt orange, gases and smoke so thick she has to take oxygen. It's a planet of darkness mixed with blazing color; of destruction and beauty.

Even with her obscured retinas and lashless eyes, she requires a fireproof hood to go outdoors, and still becomes scalded. “I went further this time, and saw enormous lava palisades. It was amazing. The gorge below was a bubbling red river of lava, part of it damming up from the molten flow and building a rusty orange new wall. The other side of the gorge has brilliant vertical chartreuse streaks with sapphire blue horizontal ledges. I think the earth is going into a new stage. Soon there will be life we can see without microscopes. I found the obsidian at the gorge and brought it for you.” She bumped her shoulder into mine playfully.

I kicked at the rectangle rock. It was both shiny black and rough dark gray, shaped like a tool box. It must have been quite heavy for her to lug all the way back, given the horrid atmosphere. “Thank you,” I told her.

Fatigued from the exertion, Tamron changed to night clothes and immediately fell into a deep sleep. I knew she would sleep until tomorrow. Feeling ignored and lonely, I began to ruminate on my existence. I couldn’t go out from the underground lair, which made me angry, at her! She had something to live for: adventures, danger, exploration. I have the same monotony each day.

Well.

I do have her companionship, stories, and the treasures she brings me.

Glancing at her, I sigh. I'm such a rotten ass, fuming with anger and hopelessness. Ashamed.

Confirming she is sound asleep, I select a pointed geological tool, then strain to get the black rock into a vise. Raising my hand, I sharply strike the stone until a crack emerges. I strike it more, and the obsidian cracks all the way through. I rotate my head toward Tamron, and note the noise hasn’t disturbed her. What I’d done might anger her, but she would go up to Hell on Earth again tomorrow. Knowing her so well, surely she would want to try and beat her time record of today. Always pressing her luck. Proving something, but what, and to whom, I had no idea. No one cared but her. Trying to be an Olympian athlete, competing against only herself.

I loosened the vise carefully and set the tool beside it. Gently, I picked up the obsidian that now was two pieces. It had broken unevenly in the manner of an iceberg calving off a glacier. There was a jagged crack with a sheen of blue within the larger piece. A glimmer of milky white and gold was visible in the smaller piece. I grabbed my magnifying glass and examined the glimmer more closely. Hooking the piece into a smaller vise with a magnifier on it, I began to gently chip away at it. I chipped and a small piece, known as an Apache Tear appeared. Continuing, I freed six of them from the obsidian chunk. One had a faint heart visible; I set them all in a straight line on my shelf of stone treasures. Six. The number representing a balance between earthly and spiritual realms. Yes, I honestly did like the rocks she brought me. Shame washed over me again. The obsidian my friend gifted me had provided hope.

Tamron awakened finally in the morning. She stretched her long body, then unfolded into a standing position, her nightclothes molded to her lean well-muscled body. I had placed aloe gel on a small granite slab nearby for her to rub into her scorched skin.

“Ms. Johnston,” I said, motioning to the rectangle rock that was no longer a rectangle, “I cracked it. On purpose. We now have good-luck Apache Tears.” Pointing to my shelf, I watched her warily.

“Stop calling me Ms. Johnston, Yolanda. I don’t think he would like it.”

“Damn, Tamron, your volcanologist is long dead, so what difference?”

"Please just stop. I don't like it. It might be bad luck. Did that ever occur to you?" I just stared at her. It had not occurred to me. "Why did you crack the stone? It was beautiful as it was and heavy to carry here. My back feels the strain today.”

The set of my shoulders showed I didn’t care. “You go exploring up top and I explore in here. I wanted to see what was inside it. Are you angry?” She shook her head no and drank more juice, pulling smaller stones from her work pants pocket. Some were obsidian and some were rhyolite stones. Glancing at my shelf, she made a circle on the floor with six stones from her collection, squatting on the cool floor in bare feet.

I watched her gearing up for another trek. My stomach growled. I peered into the worm bowl, selecting a juicy three inch earthworm. I tilted my head back, forming my lips into a closed circle and sucked the creature into my mouth, swallowing quickly. I had crushed lichen and mushrooms together with some labyrinth onion and began eating the mash.

I picked up my locket and opened it to photos of grandparents smiling from forty one generations ago. Closing the locket, I placed it in the moist cool sand of the floor, in the center of the stone circle Tamron had created. Pressing it down with my index and middle fingers, unconsciously I hummed my favorite song, “Lovely Day.”

Impression done, I dusted off the damp sand and hung the heart locket around my neck. Tamron squatted down beside me, ready to leave, only needing to put on her fireproof hood. She was holding out her hand, palm up. I smiled, nodding. My humming became a full blown song of “Lovely Day,” the lyrics lilting around us, echoing upward as my companion joined me in song. As we finished our boisterous singing, she gently placed small sparkles of quartz around the heart shaped impression. A circle of stones surrounded a sparkling heart underneath my treasure shelf.

Tamron was now ready to go above. I walked her to the airlock doorway.

“Be careful. Don’t stay too long. Come back safe.” I held up my palm toward her.

“I’ll be back in fifty-one minutes. I need to break my record, and then need one extra minute to find you something special to add to the circle.”

Her large hand engulfed mine and I helped her seal her hood. I gently touched her heart through her suit. We touched foreheads in our gesture of goodbye. As the airlock clanked shut, I twisted the timer on, knowing she would not return until the fifty-one minute mark.

The power of gratitude and hope hung lightly around my neck, stretching from the past to the present. I put the open heart shaped locket, with the smiling faces of old relatives inside, onto my shelf with the six Apache Tears I had unleashed from the obsidian.