Into Gray

Jason Snell

Copyright (c) 1987

Patricia Olsen was born into gray eight months after the end. She spurted from her mother's body into a sea of gray, lit from above by the twin moons of Daddy's eyes as the crashing surf of the shortwave radio echoed throughout the enclosure. Six months later baby Patty had spit out her first solid food, a dark gray wafer that had been pushed into her mouth by her mother's pinkish-gray hands. The brick of protein landed softly on the cold concrete floor Patty called ``ground.'' Four years had passed since Patty asked her mother what dying meant. Three had passed since Patty asked Daddy what ``cancer'' meant.

Patty was six when Daddy explained to her that the red-eyed cyclops she had feared since she could remember was really a radiation meter. She had learned to read it by the time she was seven.

Daddy had a little surprise in store for Patty on her eighth birthday. He went to the back of the shelter and brought out his dull silver box that had never made anything but hissing noises. On this special day, the silver box spoke. It said, ``Hello, Patty, how are you on this fine day?'' Daddy nodded and smiled at Patty. ``I'm fine,'' she said with a shaky voice. ``Who are you?''

``I'm a friend of your father,'' the box voice said. ``Why haven't you said anything to us before?'' Patty asked with a scolding tone. ``We've been here together and you've never done anything but..'' she paused to think, and then made a hissing noise.

The box's voice seemed apologetic. ``Maybe your father should explain to you. I'm sure I'll see you later. Goodbye, Patty.'' The box hissed for a moment and then fell silent. Patty hissed back at it.

Daddy explained that the outside world had allowed them to talk to other people in other places through the box. He also told her that soon, they would be able to leave their home and venture above.

``Of course, it will be hard work at first,'' he said with a smile, ``but in return for that work, we'll be able to run free, look up at the sun during the day and the stars at night, and eat real food.''

That night, before she fell asleep, Patty stared up at her flat sky, the dark ceiling, and wondered what Daddy meant by ``outside.''

Five months before her ninth birthday, Daddy opened the doors that led outside. At the end of the long, sloping hallway would be a hatch to the surface.

``Do you have everything, Patty?'' Her father wore a heavy jacket and backpack. ``Once we start going, we can't come back for more.''

Patty pulled on the parka that her mother once wore and zipped it. It was far too large for her, but it would have to do. She nodded and picked up a bag filled with her things. Daddy started up the passage. Patty followed, leaving behind the only place she had ever known. When they reached the end of the passage, Daddy turned a crank a few times and then pushed up on a small hatch above them. It popped open, and Patty saw the sky for the first time.

Patty climbed out of the passage and into the world above as Daddy stood and stared at the horizon. As far as he could see, the ground was dark gray, covered with a mixture of snow, ash, and dirt.

He turned to look at the sky, yearning to find a blue ocean with small puffy clouds, and instead found a dark overcast covering the world. There were no cars, no houses, no roads, no plants. There was nothing but a gray sky looking down on a gray world.

The world above seemed like a larger version of Patty's world below. She couldn't understand why Daddy had collapsed in tears in the soft ashen snow.

The vintage Jeep that was once the pride and joy of a young Douglas Earnshaw was now the property of the Eastern Valley Commune. When the commune set out the share of gasoline to be give to transportation, it was immediately poured in a container and given to Transportation Director Earnshaw, who would unceremoniously drop it in the Jeep's tank. In the commune, possessions dictated social status. Earnshaw was moderately respected, mostly because he owned the Jeep and the shortwave radio. So when he had come into contact with a man who had been hidden away in a shelter for almost nine years, he took it upon himself to bring the man and his daughter into the commune.

Doug Earnshaw saw the commune as a large rabbit hole in the center of a network of tunnels. It was, after all, planned by a group of survivalists to be the last refuge when the end of the world came. Occasionally, at the outskirts of the tunnel system, would come individuals who had hidden out by themselves. The commune knew they were there, but none had enough foresight to survive the cold or radiation of above and maintain a radio to open contact when the radiation level went down. None except for Mark Olsen and his daughter Patty. How a man could survive and keep a child alive for nine years under such circumstances was incomprehensible. The man's initiative would be a valuable addition to the commune, and if either he or his daughter were fertile, their genes would be just as vital. So Transportation Director Earnshaw found himself behind the wheel of his friend the Jeep, sliding over the snow, ash, and wet dirt, moving toward a hole where two people had spent nine years. Earnshaw didn't see the two until he was almost upon them. A large figure kneeled in the muck, while a smaller one stood beside it. The larger one glanced up, and the tear-filled eyes of Mark Olsen stared in at Earnshaw. He was almost invisible, his pasty skin blending in with the pale world around them. Doug Earnshaw got out of the Jeep and prepared to help Olsen up and into the back. As he turned toward him, though, he stopped at the small figure of Olsen's daughter. Earnshaw gasped in horror as he stared into the eyes of Patty Olsen. She stared through Doug Earnshaw with a distance that chilled his soul, her gray eyes telegraphing a loneliness that he could not begin to comprehend.

``I don't understand it, Doug,'' a seventeen year old Patricia Olsen said with tears in her eyes, ``he just doesn't seem to care anymore. He lies in bed and cries about the colors, the sky, flowers, things like that. It's like he doesn't want to go on.'' Doug Earnshaw tried to comfort Patty the best he could, but feared it was not good enough. Consoling her was difficult, though, because he avoided looking directly at her. She wasn't ugly, only plain, but he avoided the eyes of anyone under twenty years old. The children's eyes never locked in one place. They always seemed to look through him, gray pools staring out to the horizon. He had known Patty over eight years, but still couldn't bear it.

``Patty, you can't understand what your father feels. We all feel it, those of us who knew life before... this.'' He gestured around at the dull metal and plastic that surrounded him. ``Your father is worse than most, but he was in that shelter of yours for all that time. I guess he expected the world to be normal when he got out. I don't know if it will ever be.''

Patty nodded, tried to stifle a sob, and hugged the man who was like a second father to her. When she tried to look him straight in the eye, though, he turned away from her. Mark Olsen's death was not an easy one. He clutched at his faded floral print bedsheets, a pink froth around his lips giving a faint reminder of how the flowers on the deathbed had once looked. Patty was at his side in the last moment, when the darkness of the world that he had known in passing for eighteen years fully revealed itself.

The first full-scale outdoor harvest took place as Commune Director Doug Earnshaw stretched out in his bed and prepared to die. He had lived a long life, and under his direction the commune began to return to the agricultural ways of the past. On the day he woke up and knew he would never wake up again, he called for Patty Olsen.

She came with her two children. They waited by the door as she entered the room and stood at the foot of Earnshaw's bed. ``I'm glad you came, Patty.'' He took one glance at her and closed his eyes. ``I have one thing to say to you before I die. It's about what your father died looking for.'' ``Looking for?''

``Colors, Patty. The colors of the world around us. Something you've never experienced as we old-timers once did. But we've begun to plant, Patty. The first harvest is going on as we speak. The skies have finally cleared. Life is resuming, Patty. The world is showing itself in a way you've never seen before. The world has ceased to be gray-on-gray. Appreciate what your father could not, Patty. Do you understand?'' She swallowed. ``Yes.''

``Good.'' He nodded and turned away. Patty took her two children and left Doug Earnshaw's house and began to walk toward the main street in the town that was what the commune had become. Outside of town, the crops were being harvested. Flowers bloomed on either side of the walkway from Earnshaw's house.

``Mommy, what did Mister Earnshaw mean about `colors'?'' asked the oldest of her two boys.

She stared into his gray eyes for a moment, and then shook her head.

``I don't know,'' she said.

Jason Snell is a sophomore at U.C. San Diego, majoring in In addition to writing, his interests include television production and comedy. Snell is currently working on a new story set in what he describes as an ``important twist on the `cyberpunk' genre.'' Also, his screenplay adaptation of ``Into Gray'' is currently being shot as a student film with a budget of three thousand dollars.

He can be reached at the address jsnell@ucsd.edu