The GR looked like a flat gray rock sitting in the middle of gray waste land.As far as we could see to the east the gray useless, toxic land stretched to the foothills and on until it was turned white by snow capped mountains.Fifty feet behind us the city of Bakersfield, California, Earth started on the other side of a ten foot tall block and brick wall.From our perch atop the tower we could see most of Bakersfield.I pointed out the complex where I had lived.The downtown mall’s dome looked like it always had but people walked outside on sidewalks without masks.That was something I had never seen.
“The honor is yours, Mr. Jennings,” Ted pulled me out of my daydream by handing me the small pad sized control that would operate the GR.A holo camera recorded my movements as I pushed the icon labeled start and began the rest of the start up program I had rehearsed many times back on Jasper’s.The GR crawled into the ground until only its dome was visible and then it began to crawl looking like a turtle with no legs creeping slowly eating the dirt in front of it and spitting it out behind.I kept her in her slowest mode until the system checked itself for any anomalies and then I bumped it up a bit.A strip of perfect farmland one hundred feet wide showed clearly behind the GR, a strip of clean, brown, plowed dirt contrasted the gray moon like surface in front and beside the GR.I bumped up the speed once more as I watched several technicians, one of which was Matthew my friend from school, spread out into the newly cleaned soil taking all sorts of tests at several different depths.The technicians were in full spacesuits even though the air scrubbers inside Bakersfield cleaned this area, we needed to take every precaution until we knew for sure the GR was doing it’s job.The GR plowed along at half speed until we got the signal from technicians that the soil met standards.I got the okay and bumped the GR up to full speed.The giant turtle monster started eating the gray dirt like it had a hunger that would never be filled.I waited for the machine to settle in at the new speed and checked our progress.
“We’re cleaning just under twenty acres per hour,” I told the group around me.
Ted pulled out his calculator and started tapping the screen, “Figuring for overlap, turns and maintenance down time, this time next year Earth will have increased her productive farm land by one hundred twenty-eight thousand acres.”Everyone in the room clapped and then got to work gathering and analyzing data.The GR moved forward on auto pilot eating sick soil and pooping out clean. In ten days, after the second pass a team of farmers, eight from Jasper’s and eight from Earth would begin tilling the new soil.By the time the GR finished cleaning this ten mile by twenty mile field a crop would be ready for harvest in this strip nearest Bakersfield.The people of Bakersfield would be the first on Earth to be able to see plant life, on a large scale, growing next to their homes.More GR’s were set to be manufactured as soon as this one proved itself.Earth had a very good chance of not only being restored but a good chance of being restored to a level of health it had not had for a hundred years.It would take time but we had just helped prove it could be done.
Dirt.It had all started as a way to build the town.Nearby towns needed dirt.Dirt needed to be moved in order to build the town.It was, as they say, a no brainer.Paddle wheel scrappers, loaders, dozers and blades loaded dirt into bottom dumps, exchange boxes and ten wheelers until the site for the new town was level and ready for buildings.But something was discovered.The dirt from the town site was special.If spread on a field that field would produce twice that of neighboring fields.If used as compacted fill it remained stable and firm but a shovel could easily slide through it, if needed.Walking on a pathway made on top of dirt from the new town just gave a person a feeling of wellness and peace.And so, with its shops and houses built the town reached outside the city’s limits and made its number one industry dirt.They sold dirt to sites all over the state and then all over the United States.International sales to Canada and Mexico caused the price to increase.Fleets of trucks grew in the area of the new town.Digging machines of all types were purchased.Small companies grew large.At first it was assumed the dirt on the top would be the best.The ground for miles around the small town became bare and flat.But then it was discovered that the dirt forty feet down was even better.Mining equipment moved in.Dirt now had a range of prices depending on the depth from which it had come. Giant bucket rotary drills sold dirt from eighty and even a hundred feet deep for top prices.As the dirt industry grew laws were passed to protect the town.Laws that kept in mind that all the riches of the town came from the sale of dirt.Water, gas, and electric lines were constantly lowered and maintained as per agreements with dirt contractors.As the level all around the town fell wide roads to the town were required.At first a ramping road from the town to the main freeway was enough but it wasn’t many years before the road started to spiral around and around the small town.The whole town would have a grand celebration each time the road completed a loop around the town.At first the celebrations came once every ten years.Then once every five years a loop would complete and even though the loop grew longer in miles the time between celebrations became shorter.When a trip from the lowest point to the level site on which the town was built took residences a full hour to complete it also took a full hour to climb back to the height of the freeway.A trip that had taken one hour at first became a three hour journey with a steep climb and a steep decline whether a person were coming or going.The town considered surrendering to the need for dirt.The people of the town considered taking apart their houses and shops and selling the mountain of dirt they sat upon.They had built solid homes.Made sure local schools taught their children well.The air was clean, the water good.The people of the town decided not to move.A team of engineers worked at the problem of getting to the highway.The road going up to the town and the road going up to the freeway met in the middle on the day the engineers found an answer.To solve the problem of driving to and from the town a tube shaped bridge would be built.The bridge would become the longest unsupported span ever conceived by mankind.The cost would be enormous.Trucks and trains hauling dirt had always used temporary routes depending on where they dug and would continue to do so. The spiral road to the town and the switch back road to the freeway would no longer be needed.It was determined that the money made off the easy access to dirt the mounds under the roads provided would cover much more than the cost of the tube.Construction began.Three years later a ribbon was cut and cars from the town moved onto a level road from the town to the freeway.The trip once again took only one hour.Great grandfathers told great grandchildren that that is how it had been when the town was first built.The children listened with big eyes but their eyes got even bigger on their first trip out of town on the new bridge.Fifty years later the town sat on a pillar of dirt supported with concrete and steel.The freeway became a bridge almost as long as the tube bridge to the town but the freeway has long concrete supports every mile.The special dirt was found to extend only another sixty and one half miles beyond the freeway, at that point it just became regular dirt.About the same time the deeper excavations down into the earth around the town reached a solid granite cap that seemed to mark the end of the special dirt.The end was near.There would no longer be dirt to mine.Over time a huge concave dish of granite formed around the pillar supported town.One hundred and sixty miles from the town in every direction a dish formed with the town standing on a pillar sixty miles high in the exact center.It was then that the message from far out in space came.
“Just a couple more buckets and then we’ll rest,” the tunnel creeps away from our entry shaft just an inch at at time.Each bucket of soil removed moves us just less than an inch toward our goal.Under the cover of the forest we dropped ten feet straight down.Thick roots had been our complaint for the first several feet but now we chip away at hard clay that fills our bucket with thousands of identical one inch cubes.We lose ourselves in the repetition of beating into the wall before us and scooping up our bits of success into the plastic bucket.Shovels had proved worthless against the hard clay and our two short handle shovels wait for a change in substance.A tunnel with a clay roof and a nice sandy bottom would not be frowned upon.Three of us work.Randy beside me chipping away at the wall of clay, Alan up top, in the forest, pulling up buckets and spreading the contents, and myself.They call me Trenton, sometime they call me Trent but that’s not my name.
“Ten feet down, four foot forward, fourteen feet by three foot around, how many cubit feet Trenton?”
“I think you need pie for that,” it was the answer he was looking for and it cost me nothing to give it to him.
“I’d like some pie,” Randy said without missing a beat with his chipping hammer.
I pile chips into the bucket, drag the bucket to the entrance and give the rope a tug.I move into the tunnel enough to escape a bucket tied to a broken rope.The rope does not break and the bucket comes back to me empty.I set the empty bucket next to Randy and start chipping, “Sally makes a great fresh strawberry pie.The secret is she makes her own goo with the juice of fresh strawberries.”
“Goo?”
“I don’t know what it’s called.The stuff that gets poured over the berries.It holds them all together so it’s not just a pile of strawberries on a pie crust.”
“Okay, I’d like a piece of Sally’s strawberry pie.”
“Whipped cream on top?”There is no answer.Randy is lost in a rhythm of chipping, a good place to be.I follow his lead and just start hitting the wall before me with a goal of one cube of clay, not thinking of how far we need to dig or of the hours and days it will take us.Each swing of the hammer is where I am, nothing else matters.
My walk continues.I zig-zag farther into town and back to the edge of the dome.Every time I stop to rest I get a light blue upholstered spring filled mat. I’m within eyesight of one as I lay on one now.I am, I’m guessing, over half way around the dome and haven’t really seen anything new until this morning’s walk.As I walked this morning the buildings seemed to become thicker and taller.The air above was almost completely filled with shapes filled with lights and shapes and then all at once there was nothing.Not even floor.The colored markings I call the floor became the black squares with red lines every ten feet, that I’ve been calling the ground. Up until now the ground has only been outside the dome. The black squares filled an area at least a mile square and not only were there no structures on it there were no structures above it all the way to the top of the dome.On the inside square of ground were thousands of transport bubbles of all colors and all sizes.For the first time I saw the smaller, personal sized transport bubbles outside their smaller structures and there were larger bubbles, bubbles larger than the car sized bubbles, like small truck bubbles.The transportation bubbles were stacked in piles fifty to a hundred bubbles high.Their sides shining every color like old style glass Christmas tree ornaments.I walked close and even touched a few but I was completely ignored.Walking past the ground area the buildings on the other side were large, close together and filled the sky all the way to the top of the dome.I continued walking until I came to where I am now.The structures here are properly spaced and the air above is populated in the fashion I have become acquainted with.I think the odd meeting place over the ground area inside this dome must show some type of community, a sharing of some sort that I have never seen anywhere else in the dome.Transportation bubbles have alway darted to and fro, always busy.The ground area may be a park or recreation area or a mating ground for all I know.But it was interesting.
I walked a few more days without much to comment on.There are always things of interest:lights that blink a certain way, a color I have never seen before, a spire cut into a million tiny shapes that each reflect in a different way but the city becomes like a forest – every tree is different but they are all alike.I started to see patterns and shapes I had seen before and knew I was not very far from my purple ball home.And then I saw something that surprised me even more than seeing the ground area inside the dome.My nineteen sixty-two gray Studebaker Lark sat outside the dome with it’s front bumper just inches from the barrier.I could see no one inside the car so I hurried to the purple dome.The first thing I noticed inside the dome was my sister Kathy sitting on top of the red lit box waiting.As soon as she saw me she jumped down from the box and ran toward me.I moved toward her at an equal speed and we hugged.We have never been a hugging family but it seemed to be appropriate.
“You’re here!” I hadn’t spoken in weeks to anyone other than myself and it was all I could think of to say.
“Yes, dear David, I’ve come back.Someone should kill a calf.”
“Seems a little harsh.Tell me.”
“Your sentences have suffered without me.But sit on this mat, no longer the only one of it’s kind, and I will tell you my story.”I did as I was told and Kathleen reclaimed her spot on the blinking red box.While swinging her legs and bumping her heels on the side of the box she started to tell me the story of what had happened since I had last seen her.
“I had a plan.I did not just drive off into the sunset.I might have if there were a sunset here but instead I chose a red line to straddle with the Lark and went in a straight line.The original plan was to drive until half a tank of gas remained and then to think about what I was doing.I drove for hours working hard to keep your car under sixty miles an hours because that’s your rule.” I nodded and smiled, it’s nice when rules are obeyed.“I found I could listen to the sound of the motor and keep the speed reasonable.I may have gone kind of half to sleep but I glanced at the dash after a long time of steady eventless driving and the gas gage showed only a quarter of a tank!So my decision was made for me.I would drive as far as the car would take me and then maybe walk for a while.Your Studebaker was almost to empty when I noticed a patch of lighter orange on the horizon, like when we first found this place.The patch of light was off to the right so I left the red line I had straddled and headed directly for the light patch on the horizon.I needed to put the extra can of gas into the tank but I made it to another dome just like this one.In fact after looking around inside a bit I thought I had somehow come a full circle and come all the way back to this place.I found this purple ball, or at least I thought it was the same one.There was no mat and no you.I searched the area several sleep cycles and found no sign of this,” she pointed to the mess of saved clothes and a few skittles that littered the area near the mat. Oh, I almost forgot, the first time I needed to rest one of the transport bubbles made me a mat just like this one.It provided a food brick and a canister of water.Anyway after I searched and slept a few times I gave up.I sat on a red box just like this one and cried.”I had never seen my sister cry and it made my eyes water just thinking about it.“I got down from the box, curled up into a ball on the mat and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up the top of the red box was covered with stuff.On top of the box there were three canisters of water, a pile of red and green Skittles, a pile of Cheerios and a copy of one of your shirts.I don’t understand the shirt thing but I think whoever runs this place felt sorry for me and was trying to make me feel better.And, I did feel better, much better.For the first time in a long time I felt I mattered.I decided at that point to try to make it back here but I spent some time looking over the second dome.I wanted to find something different that would prove I had not just gone in a huge circle and came back here.After weeks of study I decided there are at least two domes and both domes are exactly the same.”
“And then you missed me?” after all, I missed her.
“I missed you the whole time brother.But I did start planning to come back.I started filling the tank in the car with gas one can at a time.I filled it completely, filled the can one last time so I would have an extra can in the trunk.The intelligence here must have understood what I was planning because they provide another spare can of gas to insure I could make it all the way back here.I don’t think they can leave the domes and couldn’t help if I were to run out of gas outside a dome.”
“I agree,” I told her about my test sleeping outside the dome.And how no mat or food brick had been provided outside.
“At first I wasn’t sure how far to the right, off the grid line I had come and wasn’t sure I could find my way back but I reasoned that if I went in the right direction I would see the different light on the horizon the dome creates and I was right, so I’m here!”
“Well, I glad you’re here.Two people are better than one.I was getting tired of talking to myself.”Kathy was tired from her long drive so I let her sleep and left the purple ball.Seeing the Lark again had given me an idea.
I walked out to the Studebaker and opened everything up, the trunk lid, the engine hood and all four doors.I took out the rear seat cushion and the floor mats.I moved the front seat all the way up and then all the way back.All this time I was searching for anything that might be of use.Any thing the intelligence here could copy and we could use.I found gold.A yellow Skittle!I continued my search.I pulled out the mat in the trunk and the spare tire.Under the tire I found an old dried apple core.I put it along with the yellow Skittle in my pocket.I found some loose change and the broken, eraser end of half a pencil.The loose change I could see no use for but the pencil would prove as much of a find as the yellow Skittle.
Back in the purple ball Kathy finished her nap and I showed her my find.She looked everything over and then said, “lets go back to the car,”without further explanation I followed her half run back to the car.She looked the car over, even underneath, “we need something about this big that will hold some dirt.”She showed me a six inch by six inch square with her fingers.We both searched until we settled on the car’s air cleaner.I unscrewed the wing nut from where the air cleaner was attached to the carburetor.It was not the best planter but it was the best we could find.We gathered every bit of dirt we could find.Lines of clay that had fallen from my waffle stomper boots in the trunk, dirt packed into corners of each of the four wheel-wells and a nice neat pile of dirt where the hill of a shoe sits when the foot pushes on the accelerator.Our pile of dirt was small.I wished I hadn’t insisted on the car being so clean all the time.With, maybe, a cup and a half of dirt we returned to the purple ball and Kathy placed the air cleaner with the dirt in it on the red box.We waited.A transportation bubble came, hovered and produced a second air cleaner base with a cup and a half of dirt in it.Kathy piled the three cups of dirt on the red box and we waited.The transportation bubble stayed.We had it’s interest.We had six cups of dirt and then twelve and then twenty-four.When there was enough dirt to fill both air cleaner bases Kathy very carefully went to work on the apple core.Six seeds were placed on the box.Another group of six seeds was left by the transportation bubble.We planted one group of seeds into one air cleaner base and the other six seeds into the other air cleaner base.Very carefully we watered both of our future orchards.
James watched feet kick at the small pile of dirt. He was sitting now on the very peak of the pile. A pile four foot high of soft dirt carved from the side of the hill. Ricky and I sat beside him, carving out ledges in the center of the side of the pile giving our backs something to lean against. No one said anything for a while. We waited for Ricky to catch his breath. He had been doing the hardest job. When Ricky’s breathing evened out James slid down the pile of tailings and started walking up the hard packed trail to the top of the hill. Ricky and I followed.
“You see the problem?” James said looking over his shoulder. He pulled his long sleeved shirt on over his whiter than white skin. It was mid summer but we had learned early in the dig that we needed long pants and long sleeved shirts to protect us when we crawled inside the tunnel.
“We see it,” I said.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Ricky added.
“I kind of panicked at first. I’d been pushing dirt out the entrance, and where I was there was always plenty of light, you know how it is in the third spot?” Ricky and I nodded even though James couldn’t see us, walking ahead like he was; we had both worked the third spot. The third man pushed out dirt and then piled it into the pile. The center man had the easiest job. “Well the light went out. I knew why. The dirt I had pushed had reached the top of the tunnel right?” Rick and I nodded again. “Well you guys had just pushed a fresh pile onto my head so I went ahead and pulled it underneath me and packed it back with my feet. And then I tried to push the plug out. I stomped at it just making it a better plug. I was about to scream but I thought of pushing the top of the plug with my feet and that worked. I soon as I saw some daylight I was okay but I still needed to get out of there as fast as I could.” We understood. We walked to the very top of the hill and sat down on the flat hard ground there, the three of us facing each other.
The Hill had not grown naturally, as hills and mountains do. At the edge of the post war housing development there were fields of potatoes. One day as James, Ricky and I watched trucks filled with dirt came. They were not like the dump trucks we had seen before. The trucks had thick deep tread on tires that were as tall as my father’s head. The beds held as much dirt as six normal dump trucks and the glassed in cabs were just big enough for the driver. We watched truck after truck dump dirt until acres of potato patch were covered one dump high. And then dozers, paddle wheel scrapers and blades moved in and flattened the piles, and packed the piles and made a ramp. Trucks whined in low gear up the ramp dumping piles as close together as the trucks could dump and adding another six to eight feet of height. The mound grew higher and higher until we could watch the trucks dumping their loads from our homes. Giant earthmovers whining up the ramp with sixty tons of payload, finding a perch in the clouds and leaving empty in search of another sixty tons. No one ever told us where the dirt came from but one day the trucks stopped coming and a hill remained where potatoes had grown. No one ever told us the hill wasn’t made for our enjoyment. Trails appeared where we walked the most. A main trail skirted the base of The Hill. A trail zig zagged up one side and down the other and one trail went straight up to the summit and straight down the other side.
The three of us sat in a triangle, our knees bent and legs crossed, at the very top where all four climbing trails met. The original goal had been to establish a tunnel completely through The Hill. With twelve feet of tunnel complete and seven hundred feet left to dig we were rethinking our goal.
James stood tall and shirtless on top of the light brown dirt mound. Mud crusted both cheeks and across the tip of his nose where he had wiped away sweat with dirty hands. Straight blond hair, so blond it was almost colorless, wet and plastered to his head. He was nothing but white skin and bones. His shoulders could have been a foot across, gleaming bright white in the summer sun. He would need to put his shirt back on soon or he would turn a bright pink. Blue eyes darted back and forth looking for anything that moved, nothing did. When he spoke it was with the voice of a nine year old child. The words sounded out of place, a boy trying to sound like a soldier.
“We’re okay men, keep digging,” we had no intention of stopping the digging. James was just resting and posturing. I could see the soles of Ricky’s shoes as he dug with the short handled shovel pushing the dirt first with his hands and then with his feet until I could reach with my hands, pull dirt under my body and then push the dirt into a mound behind me. We had to depend upon each other, each boy in the chain, or all we could accomplish would be a narrow grave long enough for a boy. They would dig away a two or three foot plug of dirt, whatever amount I could not move with my feet plus the amount of dirt we moved before we realized James had gone home and forgotten about us. I pushed the dirt past my body and as far as my feet could reach. The light could no longer reach past the plug into the tunnel but James had not returned. I considered how much work it would be to dig a space to turn around in and what we could do with the dirt.
“Ricky!” I waited for the scrapping of the shovel to stop. Once Ricky was on task he didn’t like to be disturbed, the reason he was lead man on this job.
“Ricky!”
“What?” he didn’t sound happy at being pulled away from his attack on the clay.
“We need to push our way out. See what James is up to.” Ricky, disgusted at having to stop work immediately started scooting backward and pushing on my head with his feet.
“Hey! Ricky just giggled. I pushed the pile behind me a foot and then scooted back a foot and pushed some more. The small pile needed to go a full four feet before daylight came back into the tunnel. Our technique would require another boy to continue. Perhaps James had discovered the flaw in our plans.
Wiggling worms fight to reach the cover of the moist dirt. One unlucky tube shaped soil maker finds himself on each side of the shovels blade, both sides squirm but for how long? Another scoop of earth turned and a new fight for life begins. In line push the shovel, tilt it back, lift and turn. Next. Finishing day one the most fun of all begins with thumb over the end of the water hose wetting the twelve by twelve square. Wait a few days and turn it all again and then a few more days and the last time the future garden is turned. Rake it smooth and arrange the mounds and furrows. Long rows of this and round islands of that. Tiny seeds in shallow holes as deep as the metal band on a pencil. Dry kernels of corn along one side to slow the wind, weaken the sun and make corncobs. Wait in a chair reading a book, looking for green cotyledons to push the brown crust away. Squash on a platter. I did that.
Wake-up in the dark. Try to be quiet. Pants and tee-shirts in their respective piles, all the pants are blue jeans, all the tee-shirts are white, there is no need to turn on the light. Lacing up heavy leather boots identifies this as a workday. Back the drill into sleeping people’s back yard; they had already removed a section of wooden fencing. The first bucket fills with dew-covered grass. The last bucket fills with coarse sand, almost gravel, lower the mast and drive to the next site. Four more days of waking in a dark room, Saturday morning waking at four, remembering it’s Saturday, rolling over with a smile and sleeping till nine. Sometimes three holes a day, sometimes two, sometimes trouble and one hole takes two days. Save the money from the good days, prepare for the bad.
“There’s a rock down there, it’s rolling on a rock.”
“It’ll pick it up, keep drilling,” but it just bounces over, again and again.
“Pull up the bucket, I’ll go down,” the earth is cool on a hot day as I drop to thirty-two feet with my foot hooked into the end of our sand line, holding a shovel with a one-foot stub of a handle. The rock is eight inches across; the opening in the bottom of the bucket is only six. If the ground wasn’t so hard it would have pushed the rock to the side and let it fall into the top of the bucket. I hold the rock like a baby and enjoy the ride back to the top.
The hot summer turns to foggy winter, less daylight, less three hole days. Rain and mud, this drill rig is small, easy to pull out, one of those fancy big rigs couldn’t even get in here. Another summer, another winter, set up the mast, I know where I’ll be for two and a half hours. All the levers are automatic, the sound of the six-cylinder engine reveals how much pressure is on the bucket blades, the smell of fresh dirt as it comes out of its deep hiding. Legs and arms are strong.
“Do you work out?”
Brown face, callused hands, holes in my jeans, “just work.”
“Just fishing,” the boy said, he never looked away from the string running into the water in front of him.
“Catch anything?” I asked, I knew he had not, as far as I knew there wasn’t a living fish within a hundred miles – in fact even a real dead fish was, most likely, at least a hundred miles away, most of the “fish” in these parts would be cells grown in a vat in Vacaville.
“Got a few nibbles,” he lied, but still never looked away from his line. He was thin, maybe ten years old, his denim overalls and the bare skin underneath looked like he hadn’t washed ever. My prefect, slightly shinny, dark blue suit, carefully knotted tie, highly shined brown real leather shoes and my having washed from head to toe every day of my life made it appear we were different species.
“Take care,” I said as casually as I could and continued up the stream. I looked back once; he still watched the water directly in front of him, hoping for lunch.
As the man in the blue suit disappeared around a bend on the waters edge path the boy reached inside the bib of his overalls and pulled out the paper thin, newest model, communication pad and touched the screen, “he just passed” he stated quickly in a clear, distinct, speech and slid the device back into the pocket inside his bib overalls. His eyes went back to the task in front of him as though nothing had happened.
I stopped for a breath, near a tall evergreen, moisture was forming on my upper lip and I could feel an uncomfortable slipperiness under both arms. I looked down at my shoes and noticed a film of dust. Impulsively I wiped the tops of both shoes on my calves leaving two brown patches on my no longer perfect suit. I bent down and without success tried to brush away the dust from my slacks. Accepting this decay I leaned against the tree watching the path behind me until I was sure I had not been followed. I pushed away from the tree. The sleeve of my coat stuck to pitch seeping out of the bark. I wiped at the sticky mess spreading the amber gum to my fingers. I wiped my hand on the trunk of the tree, another mistake, the amber turned to black. Five steps up the path I felt the cold steel barrel of a gun in my back. I stood still and moved both hands into position behind my waist, wrists crossed, waiting for the cuffs. I was thankful for my capture. Life on the run is a dirty thing.
david blankenship 