Chapter 1
The dome was breaking.Not that anyone called them biodomes anymore- probably because people had grown as lazy as the technology used to build them, especially now that the thick and stifling heat from the Outside was beginning to seep in through the fractures.
Ceraphina stalked down the gravel-covered path, peeling away her shirt from her sweaty collarbone and shaking stray stones out of her trainers. She needed new ones- had needed new ones for the last three months- but one of the textile production domes had collapsed four months ago, causing cotton and material production to go stagnant.
Cee fanned herself with the collar of her grimy shirt as she stared up at the dome. The first crack had appeared a week ago, spider-webbing across the clear, bio-electric forcefield that seemed to shift when the light hit it. If Cee counted correctly, they had roughly three weeks until Biotech decreed it a threat and they would move everyone out.
But for now, Cee was focusing on securing food for the week before the Helpers ran out of it.
They came every week with as many crates as the food production domes could make with the resources they had. At first, there was some sense of order when it came to how much you could take, but after multiple successful attempts to swarm the Helpers so they could take as much as they pleased, it had now turned into a fight for survival for food, and the stragglers at the end without it were left to steal from the others.
Cee had been one of them months ago- she had broken one of her shoes that way whilst trying to fight someone for the last crate of food. She lost and her mother didn’t speak to her for that week. Cee had resorted to other measures to get food then, involving stealing from many pantries. Her mother had only begun talking to her the week after, when she had secured one crate of food.
More people were beginning to file down the path, heading to the dome’s Central Square. Every dome had a Central Square where the Helpers would situate themselves and deal out the food crates for the week.
Cee needed to hurry so she could secure a spot at the front of the crowd. Over the past few years, as she had grown older and replaced her mother as being the member of the family to collect the food crate, she had learnt the hard way that the best spot for food collection was right at the front of the crowd, being one of the first to collect their crate. No one cared when you were stuck at the back and the middle was overlooked. As long as you were at the front, you were in their eye line. As long as you were at the front, you were the first to get food.
Cee rounded the corner and the Central Square unfolded before her. Ramshackle market stalls were set up around the perimeter, their shutters pulled down for the fifteen-minute interval that everyone had in dome C32E had to collect their food.
People were already taking up spots at the front of the square that was beginning to slowly fill up with people. Alarm bells pealed in Cee’s head, and she rushed into the growing mass.
Chapter 2
The heat of a crowd was vastly different to the heat of summer radiation seeping through the fractures above.The summer radiation was direct, sharp and focused. The heat of a crowd was stifling, suffocating, drowning. It was all you could focus on, because it surrounded you from all angles.
Cee braced her hands on the metal railing before her as the crowd surged forward, trying to break the barrier between them and the food crates stacked up on the wooden stage before them.
A sudden groan echoed above them, and Cee looked up to see another crack spreading across the clear dome. People paused for a minute and looked up.
That was quick. Another fracture wouldn’t usually appear for a couple of days.
Even the Helpers had paused their stacking to look up at the fresh crack. Heat immediately poured in, and Cee felt sticky beads of sweat form on her brow.
She was going to pass out if they didn’t let everyone gather their provisions soon.
Then another crack formed, branching off from the one that had appeared a moment ago, people gasped and a few even screamed as the echo of this one was louder than the first.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The dome would undergo a gradual breakage which gave Biotech time to issue Bionauts that would move everyone out. This felt too quick. Sudden. The echoes of the cracks made it seem like the dome was laughing at their incompetence- their foolishness for thinking they had time.
Once the echoes lessened, the Helpers moved the barrier and everyone’s attention immediately switched.
People charged forward from behind and Cee used her hands to push off from the barrier, giving her momentum to surge forward and snatch a food crate. The Helpers ran to the side as chaos unfolded.
Cee snatched a crate and slung the straps over her shoulders so the crate fitted on her like a backpack. Cee took off, rushing down the steps and out of the fray as quick as possible, feeling the worn soles of her shoes slap against the dusty ground.
People were shouting behind her and Helpers were barking orders behind her. Cee gripped the straps for dear life until someone yanked the crate from behind and Cee went down.
Cee rolled over in time to see someone take off with her provisions for the week. She scrambled to her feet and sprinted forward before practically leaping onto the man who had taken her crate. The guy stumbled and fell and Cee used all her strength to get the crate back, the guy’s hands scraping into her own to loosen her grip.
“Let go!” Cee yelled and scratched her nails down the side of his face. The guy cried out and Cee took the crate out of his loosened grip before she ran and ran, skidding around turns and bends until she declared that she had lost the crowd in Central Square.
Cee pressed herself against a warm stone wall and panted, evening out her breaths before she carried on, her legs aching, her heart beating.
She had done it. She had secured food for the week.
Chapter 3
Back in the Old Era- around the 1800’s- people had pantries to act as an addition to the home that would store food. No one ever regarded a pantry as a serious room in the house. Now, fast-forward to the New Era, pantries were a source of survival.Pantries were now issued by Biotech to every charted house in every charted dome, a large metal block with built-in air conditioning and heating with shelves and cupboards to store weekly provisions.
Cee shut and locked the door behind her. There were three locks on the door, all built in by her mother before she died of Sun Sickness a month ago.
The whole house felt...empty without her mother. Hollow. Like a shell without life inside.
The windows were covered in dust and dirt and while most people cleaned theirs, Cee left them grimy. Half to stop people from peering in and half because she was leaving soon.
She made quick work of stocking up her pantry again for the week before she flopped down on her bed. Her room wasn’t much to behold. It was small, with enough space for a bed (with thin sheets because it was always warm and there was never a need for a thick duvet) by a window with a thick curtain drawn over it to again, hide from spying eyes. A small cupboard stacked with a few of Cee’s shirts and trousers stood adjacent to her bed.
Cee rolled over and shoved a hand under her pillow, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper with grubby fingerprints all over it. She rolled back onto her back and unfolded it, revealing an old advertising poster to join the Bionauts.
Bionauts were Biotech’s exploration team, researching the Outside and the environment beyond the domes for any signs of life so that the population could live in safety without the need for domes. But with multiple failed excursions and many deaths from the violent weather patterns outside the domes, people had begun to lose hope of a world without domes. Without danger.
But even though Bionauts had the threat of death looming over them, they were housed in the Central Dome, where Biotech HQ also was. Which meant better food, better housing, better clothing, better everything.
And Cee wanted that.
She could run. She could fight. She had notes scrawled all over the back of the poster on how to defend, attack, the types of things she could say that would grant her a place among the Bionauts.
She had to get in. She had to get a place because she wasn’t staying here.
She had heard that Biotech had a harsh testing scheme to select Bionauts. Thousands of people from different domes were tried and tested to get into the program, if only to escape the looming threat of their dome collapsing because everyone knew it, the technology to build the Central dome was better than the type used to build all the other domes.
But Cee would take any test they gave her. She had to.
A rumble suddenly shook the tiny house and Cee sat up in bed, suddenly alert. The small light fixture on the ceiling swayed and creaked above her, and Cee heard people coming out of their homes, their shadows passing by her dirty windows.
Cee slipped off her bed and slid on her broken shoes before hurrying out the house as another rumble made the house shake again. Cee gripped the door for balance before pulling it open and stepping outside-
People screamed as the first piece of the dome fell.
Amaani Meharban