Up There Not Down Here

Dorian Pepper could finally unwind.

Sort of…

As he rested lazily on the roof of the Greenhaven Village Geothermal Station with a pencil balanced precariously on the bridge of his nose, he surveyed his surroundings. Tomato and green bean stalks stretching even higher than the roof, a backdrop of golden wheat fields lounging on the horizon. If he squinted hard enough and removed the pencil, he could just about make out the slow, meandering exit of the village senior Green Tea Society.

He would often wonder in these moments of solitude, if you searched the entire universe, could you find a more relaxing, peaceful and harmonious world than this? Not that he had much life experience. Yet Dorian would always decide that yes, in all of Earth Union space, there could not be a more tranquil home than the planet Lugus.

And he hated it.

He didn’t understand how anyone else thought otherwise. People his age couldn’t walk past someone over the age of fifty without them mentioning the glory days of the Union. Chief engineer Graham would always dazzle the apprentices at the plant with tales of how he worked on one of the Grand Stations. Though, he would always accidentally alternate between Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, so who knows if the stories were true. He just knew that, more than anything, he wanted to be up there, not down here.

If he had to hear another old timer talk about how they “heroically stood against the Union for taking advantage of our resources,” he was going to throw up.

They had a meeting; they asked to leave, and they were granted permission. Not really much of a heroic story if proof of the withdrawal is in the Greenhaven Museum, ridiculous.

For all of their loose lips, those same bags of bones got really tight lipped if you asked them why? Not just quiet, angry too. When he was younger, Dorian loved to ask questions about the treaty just to see the vein pop out of one of their heads.

Simple things, really. It’s their fault. Former bastions of galactic civilisation being rendered emotionally unstable due to the actions of an adorable baby boy? That’s just too funny.

“Pepper! Dorian Pepper! Where are you, you dippy fool?” Dorian winced as he was kicked out of his contemplations by a voice that sounded like a rabbit being brutally hacked to death by a saw. “Yeah?” Dorian called back nonchalantly. “I’m up here. I’ve finished my work for today.”

Chief engineer Graham Brooke slowly marched his way up the steps to the roof. Upon reaching the top, he let out a series of loud, raspy breaths. He was a chubby man with a thinning gray patch of hair on top of his head. His nose was flat. It gave him the unfortunate trait of sounding like a work whistle when he spoke. A rather nice little tune was coming out of him as he approached Dorian. “Boy, do you think the welfare of this village is a game?”

“No?” Dorian was genuinely confused. Sure, he didn’t like being in the village, but that didn’t mean he disliked the people in it. Some of them were a little too big for their shoes and some of them were away with the clouds, but he didn’t want any harm to come to them.

"You fibbing little layabout!” Everyone else is working their asses off to fix the mess that you made and you’re up here—What is this, anyway?”

He bent down and picked up a little black notebook resting on the young apprentice’s chest. Dorian tried to reach out, but the big, muscular hand of his boss pushed him aside.

“Oh Gods, what fools we mortals be. For permanent we rest in greenery? Ha! What airy fairy nonsense is this?” Graham half chuckled and threw the book to the floor. Luckily, it found itself back in Dorian’s hand before being dissolved in a collection of last night’s rain water. “You’re sweet on a girl and you’re wasting your time writing love letters up here!?”

“What!? Calm yourself old man, I’m not sweet on a girl.”

“What? Oh, sorry…You’re sweet on a boy and you’re wasting your time writing love letters up here!?”

Dorian let out an involuntary snort. He could appreciate that because of their time in the Union, being around species of many kinds, The elderly of Lugus were more progressive than they sometimes gave themselves credit for. “It’s not a boy either. It’s just art. You know, that thing you do recreationally as a form of self expression. It’s not as if I’m committing a crime or anything. Get off my case.”

“What good are pictures and words when we have work? We don’t have the luxury of Union tech anymore. We have to make do with our own ingenuity.”

“And the stuff they left behind. Can’t forget that.”

“No back talk!”

“Right. Yes, sir.”

“We are a small community. There is no time for such individualistic self indulgence when we have power to generate and crops to grow. If you’re not working, you should be thinking about ways to improve our living conditions, not ways to describe the ground.”

“Our lives would be improved if we rejoined the Union.” Dorian said under his breath. He hoped he would not be heard. He was wrong.

“Come with me, now.” He followed Graham down the steps and round the long path. It was the end of the work day, so naturally, people would be finishing their assigned work tasks. Dorian lived in one of the row of bamboo houses opposite the power plant. Looking toward his house, he saw a figure hanging out some clothes to dry. His mother. She was probably going to ask lots of questions later, again.

***

The main pump room was eerily quiet. What usually was a hub of chatter to overtake the monotony of the job had been rendered silent by the apparent seriousness of Dorian’s infraction. The only sound that could be heard was the dull, droning hum of the main reactor’s mechanical funeral dirge.

As Graham led Dorian into the room, he examined the faces of his colleagues. Most of them looked somber. He caught the wavy purple mop of hair that belonged to his best friend, Avery Grove. His head was down and he was shaking. Dorian wasn’t sure what he had done, but whatever it was, supposedly, was big. He felt Avery’s hand try to grab his as they passed. He did not take it. Two faces were grinning as wide as cheshire cats. Dorian knew instantly where the trouble came from.

He found himself face to face with an auxiliary pump. Green biofuel would circulate around the system with the help of steam powered mini turbines. The heat generated from the circulation of the fuel would produce the steam that powered the village. Or at least it would, were it not for a small wad of an elastic something blocking the main fan. Graham was exaggerating. There wouldn’t have been a major accident from an auxiliary pump, but he was right to be prepared.

Dorian pressed his face up against the glass. “You called me down here because of a piece of eucalyptus gum?”

“I can call you down here for whatever reason I like Pepper! You bloody work for me!” The Chief was enraged, slamming his hand down onto his desk with near enough piston level force each word. Avery was struggling with the noise. Dorian could hear each whimper he made as clear as a pin drop. His blood boiled, but he had to stay calm. It was difficult enough for Avery to cope with the sounds and smells of the factory without him making it worse. He couldn’t lose his only friend to his own foolishness.

“I don’t chew gum. I’ve never chewed gum, you’ve never seen me with gum in my mouth. Why, by Lugus green and verdant trees, do you think I would go from never chewing gum to causing a gum related industrial accident?”

“Because you’ve always got your head in the clouds! It’s always lapping waves this or lost loves that. Who knows, you might have been reciting one of your poems and accidentally dropped it in there. You may not chew, but you could’ve had it in your pocket.”

Dorian was struggling to contain the contempt that he had for the factory and its workers. Rarely one to cry victim, the constant stream of negativity just for wanting to explore and express was the reason for this continuous back-and-forth between himself and others. He knew this, but like hell was he going to compromise on his feelings. He would not become Greenhaven resident three hundred and two.

He was Dorian Pepper, a person.

He went for the red button again.

“Oh, for Stars sake.”

“We DO NOT invoke the Union in this factory!" Graham forced his hand down one last time. A few wood chippings detached from the table and sailed onto the floor with a satisfying crunch sound. Dorian heard Avery sobbing.

“I’m telling you, I didn’t do it.”

“Yes he did, yes he did!" Two squawking birds rang out in unison. Out from the crowd stepped the twins, Ben and Bella Neeves. Dorian detested them. Brown nosers of the worst kind and children of the Mayor. They had the worst combination of bratty child and indoctrinated collectivist that made them the worst kind of person to match Dorian with. It’s really easy to praise the values you live in when those values give you perks others have to beg to receive.

Bella spoke first. “He was chewing, Boss. Over by the auxiliary pump, saying something about how life in the village is to restricting, and he needed eucalyptus gum to calm his rambunctious nerves. His words, not mine.”

“Yeah yeah!” Ben followed. "He said collectivism brainwashes and restricts our freedom, urging us to break free from oppression and rejoin the Union. Or something.”

“Oh, come on! Okay, those sound like things I would say, and maybe I can be a little melodramatic. Do you honestly think I would do a full soliloquy in front of an expensive piece of equipment we can’t replace?”

Graham interjected. He didn’t like the Neeves twins much. Too rich to be useful, but too crafty to be ignored. Thanks to their incessant squawking, he had Dorian by the hair. Figuratively, not literally. Fair employment laws were too strict these days. “Why not? You’ve already said collectivism is a tool for manipulation.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But you think it.”

“Well…”

“All right, I’ve decided. The only fair way to settle this is to ask everybody here a simple question. Ben and Bella have said that Dorian conducted himself improperly in front of machinery. Can anyone counter this accusation and say he did not?”

There was silence. Dorian knew he would not win this. He knew that the twins would have probably bribed everyone at the station with sweets or promises to go to their house so they could play Union virtual reality games or whatever. He looked over at Avery, hoping that he could offer some assistance, but he was too emotionally distracted to do so. The twins knew this too, the scheming little bastards.

“Very Well. Dorian Pepper, as a result of the judgment of your peers at the Greenhaven Geothermal Station, you are hereby ordered to leave work for the day. Do not return until instructed by either me or one of the Village Council. Is that under-”

Dorian didn’t even wait to hear the verdict being read before walking out of the station. As he passed Avery, the last person before the door, he watched as his lips mouthed the word “sorry”. He knew it wasn’t his fault, and they would definitely make up later. Right now, his main concern was the fact that he had placed another bout of scrutiny upon his family. Something that would result in him getting a huge talking to when he arrived home. He hoped the news didn’t reach his mum before he did, as unlikely as that was.

Hell hath no Fury like a mother’s wrath.