Chapter 30: Revelation

Jason and Moira didn’t know what to make of what they just heard. Disbelief burned between them as they looked at each other, then back to the scene before their eyes.

Chairman Jefferson was Doctor Sylvia’s father? It couldn’t be…

But then, it wasn’t impossible. Chairman Jefferson was 60. Because of the birth control in the Bunker, all Partners had their first child at 30. 30 was younger than Jason had guessed when he estimated her age, but not by much. And now that he thought about it, they did have the same blonde hair, the same eyes…

“Are you really Doctor Sylvia’s father?!” Moira blurted out.

The chairman glanced back at them. There was something off about him. All the times Jason had seen him on the telescreens, his face was stern and his eyes were filled with drive and passion. But right now, he looked almost sad. It was like he’d been carrying something very heavy for a long time, and it was weighing him down.

“He is.” The matter-of-fact way Doctor Sylvia said that left no room for doubts. Chairman Jefferson really was her father… which meant the daughter of the chairman had broken the rules! It was scandalous. Unthinkable. But so many things had happened over the last months that Jason would have thought similarly unthinkable.

“You two are Jason and Moira, correct?” The chairman murmured, running his aged eyes across them. “The two rulebreakers who claim to be ‘in love’ with one another.”

“Th-That’s right,” Moira swallowed, standing up a little taller. “A-And we’re not going to take Ai’s deal, you got that?” She reached over and took Jason’s hand in hers.

“We love each other,” he said with a nod. “And we’re going to stay together. Even if we have to spend the rest of our lives here.”

He was scared of the words even as he spoke them. But the warmth of Moira’s hand gave him all the courage he needed.

“…What a mess,” the chairman sighed, rubbing his forehead. He turned to his daughter. “I suppose this is all your doing?”

Doctor Sylvia smirked. “I may have given them a nudge here or there,” she admitted. “But their feelings are the real thing. Seems like no matter how hard you try, not even you or Ai can stop people from being themselves.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?!” Chairman Jefferson demanded, shaking the bars of her cage. “Do you think this is some game? Ai’s system works, and all you’re doing is causing problems! Why can’t you just stop being a disruptive element and follow the rules?!”

Doctor Sylvia got out of bed and approached her father. Her eyes were cold.

“You really think that blindly following Ai’s orders and going along with her rules are for the best?” She asked. “You?”

The chairman grit his teeth and spat out “Ai… is working to ensure the future of the human race.”

“Maybe so… but at least this way, those two can be happy.”

“What happiness? Happiness in a cell?” The chairman turned to the two of them again. “Tell me, is this really what you want for your future? To spend the rest of your lives locked up in here because you refuse to follow the rules?”

Jason and Moira looked at each other. Hesitation was starting to worm its way between them.

“What happens when, in three… no, two Generations, you decide you don’t want to be together?” He pressed. “It will be too late then. Are you really willing to throw it all away? Everything you’ve worked for? Everything we, as a society, have worked for? And for what? Your feelings?”

“Their ‘feelings’ are everything!” Doctor Sylvia snapped, startling everyone. This was the first time Jason had ever heard her lose her temper.

Even the chairman was taken aback.

“Sylvia…”

“So what if they want to be together? Isn’t that enough? Why do we have to continue following Ai’s rules? ‘Genetically perfect Partners to ensure a pass on essential qualities to the next Generation’ what sort of garbage is that!?” She demanded. “You know as well as I do that-“

“Be silent!” The chairman’s roar nearly rattled the cages itself. He glared a warning at his daughter. “You know as well as I do, that-“

“I don’t care.” The doctor wore a wild grin on her face. It was look Jason knew well, the sort of expression Moira had whenever she was about to do something reckless.

“I’m locked in here, don’t you see? And I doubt I’ll be let out this time. So why not tell them? Why not tell everyone? What’s the worst Ai could do?”

The chairman looked broken. His face was pale and filled with shame. “Sylvia, please, don’t…”

“You tell them,” she whispered. “Or I. Will. If those two are going to spend the rest of their lives locked up in here, they should at least know about the lie they’re being punished to protect.”

In those tense few minutes she glared daggers at her father, the chairman’s face went through a remarkable number of expressions. First there was anger, then fear, then doubt, then anger again, followed by frustration, concern, contemplation, and, finally, resignation.

He sighed and slumped against the cage, hanging his head.

“…Very well. General Order 28, Chairman Privacy Override, Code# 8675309. Request telescreen blackout.”

The telescreen, which had been showing nothing but static, switched off.

“It’s… a very long story,” the chairman muttered, dragging a chair over from one of the empty cells. “And I want you to understand, this is the end. Ai will never allow you out of the Punishment Box once you’ve heard what I have to say. So if either of you want to go back to your lives, if you’re harboring any doubts or regrets at all, now’s the time.”

His eyes seemed to pierce Jason’s soul. It was like he could see the hesitation and doubt scrawled across his face. Did… did he want this? He loved Moira, he knew he did. But deep down inside, there was some part of him that still held out hope that he would be able to go back to his family. A twisted fantasy he still clung to, the idea that he could “have it all” and somehow get back to his normal life, and also be with Moira.

Jason glanced at the woman he loved. Was she feeling the same way? Did she have any doubts about this?

But Moira’s face was tight with resolution.

“Tell us,” she said firmly, and when the chairman turned to him, Jason could only nod.

The chairman let out a long sigh and began to explain.

“The first thing you need to know… is that the Bunker is dying.”

What?

No, that couldn’t be right.

Dying? The Bunker was dying?

Sylvia sighed and rested her head against her cell door. “I knew it…”

“Wait, what?! What do you mean, ‘dying’?!” Moira demanded.

“Several crucial systems have reached unsustainable levels,” the chairman explained. “The generators aren’t producing enough energy, because the fuel that powers them isn’t of a high enough quality due to problems with the fuel repurposers. This is having an adverse effect on all of the Bunker’s crucial systems. If nothing isn’t done to fix the problem, then within 10 Generations the Bunker will no longer be capable of sustaining human life.”

Jason was stunned. That… no, that couldn’t be, that was impossible!

“No way!” Moira exclaimed. “I-I’ve studied the engines myself! My dad showed me all the designs and everything! They can’t be faulty, they can’t!”

“Your father delivered the report to me personally,” the chairman coldly replied.

Moira was stunned. “My… my dad did?”

“Duncan’s reports were always clear,” he nodded. “Repairs to the fuel repurposers are impossible. No matter what we try, there’s just no way to improve the quality of our fuel output.”

“N-No… that’s…” Shaking her head in disbelief, Moira sunk to her knees. Jason knew how she felt. It was like his entire world was being turned on its head.

“So you see?” Doctor Sylvia’s quiet voice broke through the silent tension. “All this is meaningless. Ai’s keeping the two of you apart, and for what? In order to pass on the proper qualities to the next Generation? Why? What’s the point? In 60 years the human race will be dead anyway.”

“Even so, that’s still no excuse!” Chairman Jefferson snapped, glaring at his daughter. “These rules exist for a reason! We can’t just disobey them because we don’t like them, we need to maintain order! Why do you think only the council is aware of this information? Do you have any idea what would happen if someone were to broadcast that the human race was doomed over the telescreen? There would be chaos! Maintaining order keeps everyone safe.”

“Maybe there would be,” she shrugged. Then she looked at Jason and Moira. “But still… is it really worth forcing them apart, just because it’s what Ai thinks ‘should’ be done? If we’re all going to die in 10 Generations anyway… well, at least if they can be together then they’d die happy.”

The chairman fell silent, turning his eyes to the ground. Jason felt a knot well up in his stomach. 10 Generations… they were all going to die in 60 years. When he thought about it like that, then he could understand her point… if it didn’t matter anyway, then being with Moira would-

“Wait, I’m confused,” Moira said. She glanced over to Doctor Sylvia. “Chairman, you said that only the council knows about this, right? And I guess some of the engineers, too, must have some guesses… but why does the doctor know? She’s not on the council, right?”

A look of shame crossed over the chairman’s face.

“You aren’t the only ones in this Bunker who’ve made mistakes,” he said cryptically, shooting a look at his daughter.

Moira’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t be talking about… could he?

“Tell me something you two… if you had to guess, how many people do you think are in this Bunker? What is the population of the human race?”

Jason squinted in thought. The Bunker was built to hold 500,000. Due to Ai’s breeding program, enforcing birth control on the population and artificially implanting children into women at age 30 and 36, the population was strictly maintained.

“About 500,000 people, right?”

The chairman shook his head. “96,854.”

They gasped. It couldn’t be.

“But… that’s so low, no way!” Moira sputtered. It sounded like a big number, sure, but for a bunker that once held 500,000, it was less than a fifth of the expected population.

“I don’t understand, how could it be that low?” Jason demanded. “That doesn’t make any sense! I thought Ai’s breeding program was meant to keep the population size in control!”

“Yes, it was,” Chairman Jefferson nodded. “And for a long time, it worked. For over 200 years it worked, in fact. But then… problems started to arise. Machinery that had been working just fine for Generations suddenly started to break down. The engineers did all they could, but in the end, there just wasn’t enough.”

He turned to Moira. “You’re on the path to becoming an engineer yourself, right? So tell me, what happens when a machine breaks down, and you can’t repair it?”

She considered the problem. “…You find the broken parts, and you replace them. And if you can’t do that, then you throw out the whole thing and get a new one.”

“Exactly,” he agreed with a nod. “Now, I’m sure you’ve both learned a lot about the size of the Bunker, correct? How the population is apportioned?”

“Yeah, there are five levels, right? And each level has around 100,000 people on it,” Jason answered. At least, that’s what he’d thought, anyway.

“Correct again. Now you see… it was about 35 years ago when these problems arose. My first year in office. The previous chairman, he was doing his best to keep a handle on it, to try and make repairs, but by the time it was my turn to inherit the office of Chairman, the problem had reached a tipping point. Imagine that. Me, 25 years old, trying to keep 500,000 people from dying due to their generators and fuel repurposers breaking down constantly.”

Jason thought about his sister, and imagined her in that position. Or himself, for that matter. He couldn’t see it.

“Like you said, miss, we needed spare parts. Replacements. Only, we couldn’t get any. Not through… conventional means, anyway. The council could see that if we continued to do nothing, all our generators would break down, and the human race would go extinct.”

“…So what did you do?” Moira asked. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the answer.

“We listened to Ai’s proposal. Like we always do.” The bitterness in the chairman’s voice as he said her name was chilling. “She said that if we needed to replace parts on the generators to repair them… then we would need to get spare parts to do so. It was imperative we do so. That’s how she’s programmed, after all, to keep the human race alive. Until the Generation we rise out into the sun.”

“Until the Generation we rise out into the sun,” Doctor Sylvia echoed sarcastically.

“Because the generators had broken down in different ways, the answer was simple. We cannibalized parts from each of them to repair the ones on this level, in order to continue powering the system.”

“But then what about the other generators, then?” Moira asked. “There’s no way that the generators on this level have enough power for the whole Bunker, you’d need five times as many to-!”

She gasped in horror as she realized what Jason had already figured out. She looked like she was going to be sick.

“That’s right,” the chairman nodded. “In order to ensure that the generators for this level could function, we shut down all the power on the other four levels. Completely. Lighting. Temperature regulation. Food production. Waste. Oxygen. With a flick of a switch, the other four levels were isolated, their generators used to keep this level powered.”

“400,000 people…” Moira shook her head. “You… you killed them! All of them! 400,000! People! How could you?! How could you?!”

She shook her cage, screaming at the top of her lungs. “How could you?! How could you?!”

“It was necessary!” He roared. “Without the culling, the entire human race would have gone extinct! It wasn’t an easy choice… but it was the right one!”

Jason shook his head in disgust. He couldn’t see how something so horrid could be considered “right”.

“…Tell something, old man,” Doctor Sylvia murmured. “If your choice was so righteous, if you defend it even now, then why did you tell me? Hmm?”

The chairman’s cheeks flushed and he turned away. “Like I said… we all make mistakes.”

“You knew about this?!” Jason exclaimed.

“When I was about your age, my dad came home one night, so drunk he could barely stand,” she muttered. “He broke down in tears and confessed everything. The culling, the fact that the generators were in such a bad state, the risky condition of the fuel repurposers… he didn’t tell me that we were all doomed, but… I could figure out that much for myself.”

“It was a mistake,” the chairman snapped.

“A mistake you locked me up for,” she coldly replied. “Locking up your own daughter because you’re afraid that she’ll tell everyone your dirty little secret. Something that you’re so ashamed of you can’t even look at your face in the mirror. What sort of father does something like that?”

“It was-!”

“Necessary, yes, I know,” she sneered, her mocking tone a dagger twisted in her father’s chest. “You and Ai sure love that word. It’s ‘necessary’ to do this. Or, ‘I had’ to do that. You can justify quite a lot when you rationalize it being for the survival of the human race, can’t you?”

“It was the wrong decision to let you out,” the chairman muttered, shaking his head. “I really thought you could understand the need of the greater good. How important it was to keep things in order. I defended you to Ai, for the Creators’ sake!”

“I played a good girl, didn’t I?” Doctor Sylvia smiled. “Saying all the pretty little things you two wanted to hear. But you know it as well as I do, don’t you old man? This is wrong. Lying to everyone like this, locking these two up because you’re afraid of what could happen, it’s wrong.”

“It isn’t wrong! It’s necessary! As long as we follow Ai’s rules, then we’ll find a way to survive! We always have! We just have to trust her!”

“…And when she advocates for another culling? When she decides that, to extend the survival of the human race a little longer, more people need to be exterminated? Are you going to make that choice again?”

Her words were quiet, but in the silence of the Punishment Box they were deafening.