“A world that is struggling to survive…a solution that only Artificial Intelligence can envisage.”
A near-future dystopian society where a draconian Earth is on the brink of collapse. Three science students become “dispossessed” by the Authority and find themselves stranded in the Dark Place, a forbidding penal colony hidden from the rest of the world. As they learn how to survive, they discover that their survival will have profound consequences for the world.
“A world that is struggling to survive…a solution that only Artificial Intelligence can envisage.”
A near-future dystopian society where a draconian Earth is on the brink of collapse. Three science students become “dispossessed” by the Authority and find themselves stranded in the Dark Place, a forbidding penal colony hidden from the rest of the world. As they learn how to survive, they discover that their survival will have profound consequences for the world.
They came for Ros in the night. Bold, resolute Ros. No commotion. No one heard a thing, but the next morning her room door was swinging open like a gaping mouth and her flatmates knew she had been taken.
Femke and Domhnal stared wide-eyed, hands clasped over their mouths to stifle any incautious comment that might escape and be picked up by the listening bugs planted all around.
They knew that Ros had been ultra-careful with her Citizen Score, yet somehow it must have plummeted and now, like so many, she had become dispossessed. No one knew where, but she had gone to the place where the dispossessed were taken.
“Femke… Femke!” Domhnal must have called her name a few more times before she heard. Staring at her intently, he knew they had to say something to condemn Ros. “She must have done something bad, really bad,” he muttered, just loud enough for the hidden listeners to hear.
“My God! What did she do?” Femke replied automatically.
In their heads, they knew what Ros had done because they had broken the same rules, and now it terrified them. What they had talked about for so long and planned had become real.
Neither Femke nor Domhnal had seen the faceless android enforcers come or go. A swift operation that left an ominous warning: beyond doubt, they had to prepare to follow Ros. It was the plan to which they had agreed. They didn’t know how it had been triggered too soon, but there was no turning back.
Domhnal picked up a lump of chalk and started to write on the chalkboard propped against the wall. Femke rushed to stop him, knocking the chalk from his hand. She covered his mouth with her hand, shaking her head frantically, exhorting him not to react or say anything.
She carefully, soundlessly, rubbed out the words he had started to write. If a listener heard the clack of chalk, it would flag up an alert: why was someone working on solving mathematical equations just after finding a flatmate had been taken? Artificial intelligence routines were constantly sniffing out odd behaviour.
The old chalkboard was one of those eccentric things students do. Ostensibly, they were maths and science students using the board to problem-solve. Scribbling complex equations and arguing what was right or wrong, rubbing out and re-working a different way. The old chalkboard was surprisingly tolerated in academic circles; here it gave them a valuable tool for their covert discussions.
They had realised it was a safe way to communicate secretly. They couldn’t speak their thoughts; the listening bugs were well known to be in places like the smoke detectors.
Strict laws mandated that all communication remained visible in some way. All electronic devices had snooper chips. Speech was run through AI algorithms that detected the words and sniffed out the meaning and emotions behind the words.
The chalkboard was transient and undetectable. They began to use it to ask each other dangerous questions, to tell the others what each had discovered, and to plan what to do next. All out of sight of watchful eyes and listening ears. Just young, enquiring minds exploring science. There was a lot in the world that they didn’t understand. They searched for answers, but it had become dangerous and they now faced the consequences.
That morning they had to act as normal as possible, so they went to the main campus. Domhnal disappeared into his research area and Femke, unable to focus at all, hid in the library, pretending to study. A ping on her phone alerted her to her tutor demanding an urgent meeting. She ignored it.
She ventured to a secluded part of the refectory for a coffee substitute but it was awful and couldn’t drink it, yearning for real coffee.
Bren found her and seated herself across the table. Bren fixed her with the intense stare of moon-sized eyes.
“You OK?”
Femke pulled a face evasively.
“Word has it Ros has been dispoed.”
Femke’s back stiffened. All morning others in her cohort had glanced at her with searching questions in their eyes. Bren was the first to approach her.
“You don’t look OK,” Bren persisted.
“Bad night, that’s all”
“You guys still hooked to that crazy game?” Bren could see Femke’s struggle to contain herself. “Ros said you’re in it all hours…”
Femke was frantically working out how to disengage and escape.
“You got to wake up to reality, Femke.” Bren leaned forward conspiratorially, eyes swivelling left and right as her words poured out. “We're reaching a tipping point - food production plummeting - crops failing all over. Wars breaking out - I got it from the underground. Rumours there’s going to be riots, armed insurrection.” She stopped for a breath. “You guys know anything about the Resistance?”
“Christ, Bren…!” Femke slammed the table. Coffee splashed from the cups as she grabbed her bag, now convinced that Bren was setting a trap.
Bren stood as Femke stormed off and heads turned in awkward silence.
“You’re gonna get torched!” Bren called out to Femke’s retreating back.
The ‘game’ Bren referred to was a multi-user game played in an alternate reality. Domhnal had suggested they play it as a smokescreen to cover the excessive time they spent on the systems. He developed code that enabled them to wire their minds through mesh membranes, like large sticking plasters they stuck to their temples, wirelessly connecting into massive online computing power.
He had shown Femke and Ros secret backdoors in the software routines, buried under layers of encryption to avoid detection. Through these portals was access to prohibited computing areas: an unregulated internet, once called the Dark Web. Here they did their illicit research, the online equivalent of the words they wrote on the chalkboard. In a parallel way that any chalkboard evidence was rubbed out, their tracks online were erased.
Femke knew how dangerous this had become and now she was terrified. She escaped back to the library with her head in a whirl with Bren’s words ringing more like a threat than a warning. Her mind replayed the same clip in a loop: the gaping door, swinging open and the words Domhnal had started to write on the board…
Ros crashed her CS?
Everyone had a CS. Their CS, or citizen score, reflected how close they were to model citizens. Study well, the score goes up; do volunteer work, support the Authority, and express positive views on social media, the score goes up. But transgressions lose points: crime, naturally, but also drunken, anti-social behaviour, questioning or criticising the Authority.
It was also long suspected that age and infirmity resulted in a plummeting score. As a child, Femke remembered her grandma became ill and one morning she’d gone from the family home. Femke’s father said not to worry, she was being looked after, but he turned away with tears rolling down his cheeks.
When Femke had teamed up with Ros and Domhnal, they were discreetly sharing the same doubts about what they were taught or researched.
Femke recalled the heady nights as questions and hypotheses poured from their searching minds. Domhnal would ask Ros and Femke to help with a thorny mathematical equation - an excuse for them to clatter away at the chalkboard while they actually worked through scientific proofs that confirmed their doubts, coming to profound conclusions deemed illegal by the Authority.
As each fragment was communicated and carefully erased from the board, they were able to piece together a disconcerting picture. Ros had used the computing back doors to research fundamental laws of astrophysics where some of the data did not make sense. There had always been cases in scientific history, such as equations for the universe, where they only made sense if prodigious quantities of dark matter, hidden and undetected, were hypothesised.
Through the prohibited back door portals, Ros had found old storage from another time, where Earth’s coordinates didn’t match what they were now taught. The physical coordinates and time zones of the world didn’t make sense unless parts of the Earth’s surface were hidden. Ros suspected time and space were somehow being distorted. Images from space, along with the rotation and orbit of the Earth, were manipulated using AI to support this anomaly. She presumed the Authority was distorting data and hiding this area, but why?
She named the hidden area ‘Dark Place’.
It was Femke who had made the final leap of logic: “Dark Place? — that’s got to be where the dispossessed are sent!”
It was Ros who had finally pointed out the obvious as she chalked on the board:
There’s only one way to go there - we trash our CS!
And before they fully realised the consequences, they had bonded with a shared commitment to a plan. Domhnal was the tech expert. He would work out how to secretly communicate evidence from the Dark Place. Ros confided in two trusted friends, Harry and Jessica, who agreed to be the contacts back in the Light Place. They would anonymously break the proof to the world.
The die was cast but with one proviso. In no way would they trigger the plan until the final phase was worked out: how to get back or be rescued.
The vague idea was to carefully explore a collaboration with the underground resistance, who they were sure would delight in denouncing the Authority and have resources to rescue them from the Dark Place once its location had been revealed. But first, everything else had to be watertight before the resistance was approached. Until then the plan was all conjecture.
And now, the evening of the day Ros had been taken, Femke and Domhnal returned to their shared accommodation that seemed still and empty, full of an air of uncertainty and impending peril.
Domhnal picked up a piece of chalk, as they had done so many times. But now, no time for lines of complex mathematical symbols, just raw words: How did Ros trigger the plan without us ready?
Femke’s heart pounded as she picked up the chalk:
I’m sure it was Bren, she’s a plant …We’re next!
Domhnal wrote: This is it, really it!
Femke replied: How do we get back? I’m scared!
Domhnal heard activity outside the door. He stopped writing and spoke out loud. “We’ll work it out together.” He grasped her hand.
The door exploded and swung wide like a gaping mouth.
At less than 100 pages, Dark Place is a very short, but engaging read.
In a near-future dystopian world, extreme changes in the climate and food availability cause increasing unrest and violence. The Authority controls the population by implementing a Citizen Score, and anyone with a score lower than the threshold is dispossessed and sent to the Dark Place, never to be seen or heard from again.
Three students start suspecting that there is something the government wants to hide from the general population and find evidence of inconsistencies in the official narrative. In order to confirm their suspicions about the nature and purpose of the Dark Place, they hatch a plan to get intentionally dispossessed.
Given the limited scope of the novelette, there is a lot done towards character development and worldbuilding. Ros, Femke and Domhnal are distinguishable in their dispositions, interests and talents, the friendship they share is strong and touching, and their idealism is inspiring. There are also clear efforts to present the details of the world the characters live in organically through dialogues and just the right amount of exposition. The descriptions of the spaces the characters inhabit conjure up feelings of dreariness and claustrophobia and inspire serious thought about the world we live in today and how far it is really removed from the reality of the premise. There is interesting commentary on our ever-increasing dependence on technology and the human urge to improve society and make our lives easier.
The story has excellent potential to be turned into a full-length novel where more intricate aspects of the worldbuilding could be addressed, such as the gradual transition of the state of the world and the contrast between the Light and the Dark place. Additionally, it would be amazing to see the dynamics between the characters leading up to their planning to get dispossessed, including Harry and Jess, who are crucial to the plot but aren't shown that much. There are also one or two inconsistencies and unanswered questions in the plot that could also be polished and expanded on in a longer version of the story.
Overall, with a strong premise and a satisfying twist that inspires thought and discussion, Dark Place is a worthwhile read with a lot of potential, including the potential for growth and polish.