Dome Chapter 11
The Awakening
The wind roars as the thick clouds tumble on top of each other. All around N-85, long yellow blades of grass waft with the howling air.
Long black hair streaks across her face, waving in a calm, hypnotic pattern, unfazed by the sky’s tantrum.
Across her body, she can feel the whips and curses of the wind. Fierce and unyielding and yet neither hot nor cold, as though they were invisible fingers grazing over her.
Looking down, she saw she was wearing nothing but a single white sheet, covering her whole body except for her small, bare, brown feet.
Just beyond her feet, she looked at this new material she was standing on.
Not smooth and hard like the ground of the Dome.
This ground was soft, though small, sharp grains can be felt. Something both gentle and warm, but a warning to watch where she steps.
“Nadia.”
The voice whispers from the wind. A male voice like Winsor’s, however, it was not his voice. This one sounded older, sterner.
She turned in the direction of the source only to find more of the empty gray meadow.
Standing bare and exposed for the world to see, she strained to hear the voice again.
Her mind reeled to remember what she heard.
Na-dee-a.
Nadia.
What does it mean?
The first she had ever heard that word and yet—
Another mystery rides on the back of the wind.
A scream.
A woman’s scream.
Agony. Loss. Despair.
It ached at N-85’s heart. She knew she had caused it. What she had done and who she caused to scream, she did not know.
Her head chasing the vista for the source of the sound, and this time rewarded by a figure in the distance.
A brown figure, on her knees, weeping.
Every ounce of N-85’s heart screamed to run towards the woman, but her legs forced themselves to walk.
Her body knew something her mind did not. As though there was something more here than her eyes could see.
With every step, the figure seemed to grow in size, as did the grass.
Looking at her hand, N-85 could see her fingers becoming smaller, rounder, softer.
The world was not growing around.
She was growing smaller.
Tinier.
By the time she reached the figure, she was now a toddler. Long black hair reaching the back of her knees. Large green eyes on a plump brown face that was nearly half the size of her own body.
She looked up at the woman, her body collapsed on her knees, strange but beautiful red markings drawn on her hands that cover face.
As she came closer, she realized her brown robe was actually a dark, soft, velvet crimson. It too was covered in similar strange markings, but they glittered with gold.
The robe seemed to cover even her head, where a tiara seemed to stand, though she could not get a clear look as the sobbing woman refused to be seen.
Something, however, grew in the now very small heart of N-85. A sadness, a sadness for this woman.
There was nothing about her that she understood, but in her childish, small heart, in her childish, small mind, she could recognize that she was in pain.
What’s the matter? She thought. Why are you crying?
She reached out her small, round hand and touched the woman’s; she could feel the warmth of her skin; she could feel the metacarpals hiding in her hand. Giving the gentlest push so she could see the hidden face.
It fell away to reveal her own face, or that’s what it seemed at first. Like hers but older. Her jaw was longer, her nose a little thicker than hers, but her eyes were what gave it away.
Black. Black and empty.
She could feel them pull her in, and it was then she realized the wind was not a wind but a vacuum pulling. Sucking whatever it could into those two empty orbitals and yet, somehow out of those gaping portals came tears.
Red tears.
Red, thick tears stream down her face, leaving a blood-stained trail across her beautiful, dark face. Her mouth contorted in agony, foaming as something dark and stringy dangled from her maw.
The vision filled N-85 with disgust, horror, but most of all pity.
Whatever it was that gave her this pain, she felt responsible for and in her the desire to make it right, a desire to say something that would make it go away.
A sentence entered her heart and formed like a bubble in her mouth. Two words that seemed to have the power to sweep all this away.
If she could only say these two words, then, perhaps, she could wake up and return to her apartment in the Dome. Winsor, the sculpture, the lights, the colors, the dump could all be gone if only she would say these two words.
I’m sorry.
But as much as her past called to her, as much as she pitied the woman, as much as she even loved this woman, she could not bring herself to say it.
Instead, she reached her small hand and caressed the woman’s slender jaw, and for the first time, the woman blinked.
The howling stopped, the wind stopped, and out from her pressed lids a single blood-red tear squeezed out, and with the tiniest drip it splashed on N-85’s cheek.
Her eyes opened.
As N-85’s bald head rolled, she could feel the soft crinkling of small, paper-like debris underneath her. A cold, wet drop of something on her cheek. Wiping it with her thumb, she could sense it was a water-like substance.
Darkness all around. She might as well still have her eyes closed.
Stumbling, she got up to her feet and, holding out her palms, she groped at the darkness, trying to find anything to touch when suddenly she could feel, like a breath, a small breeze.
Fresh air was coming from somewhere.
She went in the direction of the breeze until she stumbled onto a hill of dirt and grass.
The smell of earth, grass, and dew flows into her nostrils. It was sharp, fresh, and it seemed to enter her brain. Her eyes seemed to see more clearly than before.
Getting on her hands and knees, she crawled up the hill, groping in the darkness, not knowing what she would find next until she seemed to have reached the peak.
Standing up, she looked out to see black.
An empty void of nothing stared back.
Was this the world outside the Dome? The empty void? Mother was right, there is nothing. She was nothing. There is just Mother and the Dome.
She had truly failed. Greater than she could have possibly imagined.
Winsor, creativity, sculptures.
What was it all for when staring into the void itself, and annihilation staring back?
It all meant nothing.
Not even Winsor could be with her in the oblivion.
She took a deep breath, resigning herself to enter the void of nothingness, and taking a step forward, she tumbled down the grassy hill. Her knee folded into he stomach, knocking the wind out of her, as she tumbled through the earth and, with an icy splash that jolted her nervous system, landed in a small puddle.
She sat in misery, contemplating what had just happened.
Is this what oblivion is? Tumbling around in darkness, surrounded by smells, dirt, water, and sensations that crawled up and down N-85’s skin?
It serves her right.
Mother told her there was nothing, and when it mattered most, she failed. She insisted on what she wanted, not on Mother's will.
She dropped her head in her hands and began weeping in defeat.
Just then, a warmth touched the top of her head and began to spread down to her hands.
Looking up, she could see a light, but it was not like the light of the Dome, cold and white. It was warm and golden.
Standing up out of the puddle, she looked out at the light to see it increase in size. The sky itself no longer black but revealing a pink, then lavender, and lastly giving into the most gentle of blue.
Keeping the light from fully revealing itself, she could make out the silhouette of an immense pile of rocks. Greater than any of the Golems she had seen, in fact, it would seem to take several hundred of them to reach the height of the pile.
As the light grew larger and hung higher, she could see that those massive rocks were white at the top, but as her eyes moved further down, she found large green and brown growths covering the rocks. It was too far for her to make out what these growths were.
Rising up into the sky, the light began to reveal itself as a giant white orb, and she had to shield her eyes from its intensity.
Diverting her eyes down, she could see that she was standing at the very edge of a cliff, half a step away from plummeting down a red-brown cliff, and her body would be left in a bright green meadow that expanded beyond her vision. Looking down the edge dizzied her enough to refrain from looking down again, so she scurried up the hill.
Reaching the top, she looked over to see the Dome.
A vast ocean of silver that reflected the white orb off its shiny metallic shell. It blinded her for a moment, but after shielding her eyes, she realized her own green orb was missing.
Searching down at the bottom of the hill where she climbed out of the Dome, she found the opening she must have emerged from, and running down the hill, she found herself under a type of antechamber of the Dome.
Massive tubes and machinery hummed and undulated around her until she found the pile of leaves she landed on, and lying next to it was her sculpture.
As she approached it, she could hear another humming sound. Not like the large transformer boxes around her. This humming seemed to move around her.
Follow her.
Everything was so new she had not yet considered if she was alone or not.
Reaching down she picked up her sculpture to find sitting on it something, large, with long dark furry legs, large white wings with colorful patterns printed on it and a round purple face with big black eyes staring right into N-85’s.
Throwing the sculpture on the ground, she gave a yelp out of shock.
The creature jumped up into the air, its wings humming, allowing it to float in place.
Its silhouette and movement felt familiar to N-85.
“A sanitation sprite,” she sighed. Relief washed over her at the first semblance of normalcy.
The creature’s head tilted at the comment, and before she knew it, N-85 had snatched her by the waist and brought her up to be face-to-face with her.
“You’re a strange-looking sprite,” N-85 commented as she twisted the little thing in her hands, observing the creature as if she were a mere piece of machinery.
Again, it did not occur to N-85 that she was not alone, as she did not consider any of the droids in the Dome as being alive, as Winsor insisted. If she had, she would have noticed that this little creature was losing her patience with this rude and stupid human who again dragged her up to her massive, stupid face.
“Regardless,” N-85 continued, “report back to your hive and inform your highest managerial—”
PHEW!
From out of the small creature’s mouth, she spewed her defensive green dust into the brutish human’s face.
Green glittery dust shimmered on N-85’s face as she coughed and wretched, the dust seeming to enter her lungs with every breath.
It had been a very long time since this creature saw a human, but never had she been treated so rudely by one as old as her. A human child is always dangerous because of their ignorance, so she knew to keep a distance, but the adults ought to know better.
She watched with satisfaction as the human coughed and hacked. It wouldn’t hurt her, but at least it would teach her to treat sprites with some respect.
With a dignified huff, the creature fluttered off, wishing she had a chance to get a better look at the green orb. It did an excellent job of accentuating the parts of her that she was most proud of, so she made up her mind at that moment to steal it, but it would have to mean getting rid of the other weight she was carrying.
As N-85 coughed the last bit of emerald dust from her lungs, she grabbed her sculpture and climbed back out of the antechamber.
The sky seemed more awake than before, the blue more pure than in the morning, and the light seemed to cover everything around her. Standing on top of the hill, she tried to survey the land, but all she could see, besides the Dome itself, was thick patches of tree tops all around.
What was she to do?
Winsor may still be trapped inside. He may have found a way out. He may be dead.
So, many if’s, no clear answer.
The only thing that seemed to make any sense was to try to understand the Dome a little more, so climbing down the hill and entering the forest, she began to walk alongside the Dome, trying to find an entrance. All the while, not aware that she was being followed by a very envious little sprite.