That Which Doomed July

That Which Doomed July

July 25, 2226

"Why must the sky be a sickly smog-soaked grey?"

"Why must the water in our clouds melt our tongues and salt our land?"

"Why must we accept the times our forefathers forsook us with?"

A low hum shook the breakroom.

The tremor shook me out of my daze as I sat straighter on the breakroom synthfur sofa, the plastic frills squeaking with my movement. The man on the screen, Senator Vael, broad-shouldered and teeth-bright, stood in front of a holographic blue sky as artificial as his veneers. I’d always hated watching the news; it was one thing to see the polluted misery of Earth in 2226 with my own eyes, but it was intolerable to have it spoon-fed by fake smiles and pressed suits.

Killing the feed, I turned to find Doctor Simons in the doorway.

“Politicians,” Doctor Simons scoffed. “They think they can suck out the poison with speeches and pretty words.”

As I turned around, my ash-blackened hair lashed across my face in inky tendrils.

“At least they're talking about it now.”

“Bah,” the old man chortled. “Talking is for therapists and pleasure bots; what we’re doing is the cure.”

Truthfully, I didn't know much about what they did. The internship involved more carting coffee and printing paperwork than meaningful research. It was at a college job fair that the name first struck me: Pandoriam Meteorological Solutions. Pandoriam. It echoed like a far-off planet beyond the orbital strip mines. At the time, it surprised me that no one else signed up; a company working to restore the planet was a dream I’d only glimpsed in an old magazine laced with dust and forgotten smells. Instead, I’d been confined to the breakroom floor of the hundred-floor bunker, brewing and printing, and brewing and printing.

“Tell me, Eli, what is it you believe we work on down in the depths of this bunker?”

A tremor shook the breakroom.

I stumbled.

"Atmospheric remediation," I hesitated as the old scientist's knowing hazel eyes bore into me. "That's what the pamphlet—"

“Yes, remediation, fixing, always fixing. The sky leaks pollution like pus from an infected wound, and still the world believes our weather towers and algae farms will relieve its affliction.”

Doctor Simons had worked at this company for twenty years; how could he say this?

“Then why are we here?”

The scientist’s voice shifted to a conspiratorial caw.

“Eli, you're under an NDA, are you not? You're a smart boy; you’d never leak any of the things you saw here.” The question had teeth to it.

Was this the day I’d been waiting for? Was this the day I’d venture into the concrete labyrinth and emerge with what I came here for?

“You come work here someday, and I'll give you a private tour.”

He looked at me with that expectant glare people give when they know they can squeeze out praise.

Plastering over my hesitation was a grimacing smile.

“I’ll hold you to it.”

A tremor shook the breakroom.

“Ah, that reminds me–”

A tremor shook the breakroom.

Simons stumbled, the coffee I’d handed him last shift making a lukewarm collage out of his lab coat. He produced a purple handkerchief emblazoned with the squid-headed mascot of Pandoriam, whipping in intentional sweeps.

“Dammit, what do we pay maintenance for?”

“What’s wrong with it? Is everything okay?”

It was embarrassing, sounding like a child asking his father to check for monsters under the bed.

“Nothing, it’s just the idiots in the temporal sector–”

“Temporal? Like time travel?”

My mind raced to the old sci-fi holotapes mom used to collect and force the whole family to watch until the rain melted a hole from the TV to the attic.

Dr. Simons looked at me like a bad smell. He was rigid and rooted in place as if he’d been caught in a hunting snare.

“You know what, I’m old enough. If they sue, they’ll have to exhume my corpse. I like you. You’re a clever boy, too clever to cart around cheap synthetic coffees all day.”

I glowed at the compliment even as he checked his shoulder and quickened his breath.

“Tell you what, I’ll pull some strings and get you a job, a real job, as my research assistant. For the time being, I’ll let you in on what we really do here.”

It was the day. I knew it, this wasn’t a waste of a summer, I’d get that job.

The disappointment of before melted from my chest as the doctor cupped his hands around my ears. His breath was hot and humid.

The words began to march out of their whispering cave.

“Time is our one true enemy.”

What did that even mean?

“Sir, what are you saying?”

“Time was the greatest accomplice to our ancestors. Oh, how they relished their time.”

Bitterness flooded the old scientist's voice.

“More time to mine, more time to make meaning out of the meaningless. They built and built and burnt and burned till they reached the sky, and the sky boiled them back to the ground. The acid rain, the poisoned water, the deaths of every species, and man, who couldn’t hide behind concrete roofs.”

“I was alive for it. I lived as a child in the penthouses. We were the first to boil. Mother shielded me from the first storm as her skin blistered and melted on the patio floor.”

“Here we fight time, and we’ve been fighting in this same bunker and this same damn month for fifty accursed years.”

The words collected in my chest like swallowed glass.

"The same month?" I repeated.

"July 2226." Simons folded the handkerchief back into his breast pocket as if he’d done it ten-thousand times. I began to think maybe he had. Fifty years of the same July. Give or take a Tuesday.”

Questions. So many questions, the thoughts engaging in a melee to escape my mouth.

“Why July?” The unworthy victor limped from my throat.

“The Collapse. July 26th. The day the great storm shears humanity from earth like a cruel tumor. No one outside the bunkers survives. We can’t stop the storm; hell, even if we stopped every drill and factory, it’d only delay the reckoning by a week. That’s why this bunker was built to find a way to turn back time to the year 2026 and divert this world from its destruction.”

“Every month we try to find the signal, the way to turn back before the tipping point, and every month we fail.”

He smoothed the front of his stained lab coat.

"Then we'll go try again next month."

“Wait, does that mean I’ve been here as well for fifty years?”

“Yes, Eli, I’ve known you longer than my son. I know everything about you, about your mother, about Abby. I know you must have infinite questions, but luckily, we have infinite time.”

“Why don’t I remember if you do?”

The doctor’s manic eyes turned solemn.

“I’m the caretaker of this facility; it is not yours or any others' burden to bear. It is the way the machine was designed.”

Before I could respond, the intercom blared, the metal box above the breakroom box shaking as a tremor rattled the room.

“WE DID IT, WE FINALLY, WE ACTUALLY DID IT! THE FREQUENCY WE’RE GETTING OUT OF HERE! IN 10!”

A tremor roared through the room that shook me to my molars

“WE FINALLY FOUND IT,” Simons abandoned our conversation as he turned to kiss the black box.

A tremor shook.

“9..8”

“I”– A rattling.

“7…6”

“Dr. Simons”–A shake.

“5..4”

“Instability reading”–the air grew hot.

“3..2”

“Reality Anchor Critical Overload”–The room stopped shaking.

“1..2..3..4.5..666..ERROR.”

A whine echoed through the lab like a wounded songbird.

Had my eyes always been closed? I thought as the blackness in front of me peeled open.

My head ached.

,25 2226 July

I was on the ground, that much was certain.

The intercom had stopped its counting. Simons had stopped his cheering. The tremors and their shaking resonance had ceased.

It felt different.

The breakroom lights flickered as an uninterrupted shine bathed my prone form. The smell of new cars and battery acid bathed my nostrils.

I stood, my knees creaking in a fluid hinge. Patting gaseous dust off my blazer sleeve as I scanned the room.

There it was, Simons' lab jacket nestled in a pale shadow. I tugged, it came loose, and floated down into my grasp.

My thoughts felt heavy. What was going on?

Perhaps I should check the sleeve pocket for the doctor. Some part of me thought it ludicrous. Yet still I shoved a slender finger into the expanse of the jacket, as my thigh brushed against the coffee spill, covering my limb in purple bruise-like splotches.

“Was coffee always purple?” I muttered to myself. Surely it was, I remembered it no other way. Who am I to deny reality? The lukewarm coffee boiled on my skin, yet it didn’t hurt.

I needed to find the doctor; certainty entered my brain and flowed out like ebbing waters.

The breakroom was the breakroom. I was certain of this. The synthfur sofa sat where it had always sat, its lovely polyester tufts wiggling and beckoning me to take a seat.

Where could he be?

Glancing at the breakroom fridge, a thought came to me, forcing itself into my cognition.

“That’s it, the vegetable crisper.” I sat on the couch and stretched my arm to the freezer door, pushing it open to reveal the doctor sprawled in the small compartment.

“CAN’T YOU SEE I’M WORKING?” He was indeed working. His back contracted, and his limbs were wrapped on top of each other like the twisted tails of a thousand rats. I knew it was wrong to distract someone in their studies, but I needed to ask him why things felt different.

I looked at the doctor, his face nestled in a sea of carrots. Or were they peppers, maybe plums, maybe bones?

“Do things seem odd to you?”

His breath steamed.

“NO! The reality anchor ensures that. Take my keycard; the elevator will take you down to the labs. Go and see for yourself."

The elevator came shooting up from the depths of the labyrinth and opened its great metal maw to receive me.

Simons pressed the keycard into my palm. I turned it over. My intern badge had never included elevator access, but I had been promoted. I was fairly certain of that.

Had the elevator always made that sound?

I looked inside.

It was a winding conic staircase of concrete blocks with stretching plastic railings. It widened and contracted, like the diaphragm of some great beast of the night. From holes in the blocks belched black smoke.

Elevators, I thought, have always been staircases. If something were wrong, I’d know it.

I began to descend.

Floor 99

The steps squelched as I descended the passage. One, two, three. I counted my steps. A good research assistant always keeps tally. That’s who I am and always was. The intern chapter of my life was nothing but a regrettable stepping stone.

A humiliating, degrading, insulting, resentful, insanity-inducing s–

“Hey, intern, join the party!”

A flash of anger boiled in my marrow. I was no intern. I whipped my shoulder to face the voice. Tom Peyton, the sales rep, laughed at the indignant look as the ice of his margarita spilled on the gold-plated floor below.

The room was garish in its excess. Gold lined every alcove as a throng of suited men imbibed on drinks that cost more than my apartment.

Music leaked from the pores of the walls as dancing sent groveling groans from the gilded floorboards.

Tom tightened his arm around my shoulder.

“Come on, we’re celebrating!”

This was a place of business I didn’t understand.

“Why are we doing that? What is this place?”

Tom laughed in a breathy moan.

“The frequency they found it! We’re gonna be rich!”

He handed me a purple chalice. I wanted to drink, truly I did.

The chalice smelled of pastel color, streaks of violet and scarlet that eased the senses like Seraphim’s censor.

The glass in my chest tore internally.

“No, thank you.”

Tom looked offended, his eyes narrowed, and his voice grew thick.

“You do know with the spindle frequency we’re gods. Time is our slave now, just like our ancestors. Once maintenance fixes the anchor, we’ll own the world.”

I remembered something jumbled in the shaken recesses of my brain, Doctor Simons’ explanation.

“Wasn’t this facility built to go back in time, so we could prevent the ecological collapse?"

Tom swatted the question like a gnat.

“Do you know how much money we could make with a protodrill in 2026? The deposits are practically free for the taking!”

“You’d go 200 years into the past to drill?”

The salesman looked at me as if I were a slow child struggling with a simple equation.

“Why else would you build this place? Untouched lithium deposits, pre-exhausted oil fields, two centuries of compounding interest, think of the capital.”

I suddenly didn’t enjoy the celebration anymore. As I left, purple blood leaked from the musical pores of the walls as the party goers distended their jaws to catch the droplets in their mouths like kids with snowflakes before they first scalded your tongue in acid burns.

I descended deeper.

Floor 90

Steam bellowed from the open door. I peeked my head inside.

The room was a massive cavern of sheer rock, exposed mineral veins, and white oil paint. Pipes wrapped around every bit of open ground as I shuffled to avoid falling into the great mounds of coal dust that lined the floor. The pale-faced and soot-covered staff ignored these hazards, banging into the webs of obstacles in rhythmic collisions. They drilled at the rock with their handheld protodrills, their faces blank and eyes glazed.

“You’re researchers, are you not? Why are you doing this?”

No one responded until one did. A murmur sounded from a scientist in a Harvard sweatshirt as he picked up a dropped chunk.

“They don’t need researchers now that the spindle is found. The pay’s good.”

My voice grew shrill.

“What about your mission? What about the planet?”

“The pay's good,” he repeated.

He coughed up black phlegm. I could feel a cough coming as well.

I continued my descent.

It continued for what felt like years, time blurring as each whisper of excess and suffering leaked from the metal-bolted doors.

Bottom Floor-Reality Anchor

The sturdy latch groaned open as I braced myself for the imposing machine controlling this nightmare.

Except there was no machine, or at least nothing I’d ever expect. It was a metal gurney like what they used to cart off protesters, but instead of some righteous agitator, it was a little girl. Her cheeks were gaunt, and her breathing slow. Her complexion was grey with the slightest pink in her cheeks. Her body was the size of my little sister's, but her skin was wrinkled and worn as if it had been stripped from an old nursemaid and crudely stapled onto her little frame.

My mind cleared. I could see the horror in her eyes.

“What is going on?” I demanded more of the world than the child before me.

“I am July,” a faint voice whispered.

The words were wrong; they had none of the softness of youth, an old record recording scratched from years of decay. What could I say? Her skin was translucent. My eyes traced the geography of her bones and her purple veins.

“What are they keeping you here for?”

“I am the anchor, these are my years.”

I felt like I was hallucinating; my head felt like it would rupture.

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“To stabilize the procedure to give time, to give riches, years must be exchanged in return. I am these years, and this is the siphon to my youth. I’ve given them every month for fifty years, give or take a Tuesday.”

Simons' words.

He knew.

“Let me get you out of here,” I pleaded.

“No,” July responded. “You can make more children, you can’t make more time.”

Her voice was mature and confident, like a soldier marching to their final battle.

“The 200 years taken from me would reduce me to dust, but it’s worth it if we can save the world from a fate where we need something like this,” July motioned at the apparatus she was strapped to. “Spread the word, make them see.”

“Are you sure? I can take care of you. I used to have a little sister before the storm. I can take care of you.”

In my mind, I begged she’d say no; instead, a spindly finger pointed at a gauge calibrated to the year 2026 in bold letters and a purple button beside it.”

“Press it,” she motioned a smile, glancing across her face. “Destroy this place and save our planet. And Eli, please walk in the rain. For me, I always wanted to do that.”

The glass in my chest was confused, its edges stabbing yet dulled.

The button was pressed, and the girl was ash in an instant.

Tears leaked onto the purple-gooed ground.

I followed the railing of the stairs to the fuel room.

The kerosene bucket was heavy in my hand as I clambered the steps outside the soot-covered room.

It was time to ascend.

Ground Floor

July 26th, 2026

The sky was blue, the bunker burnt behind me.

Rain washed the purple stain off my leg as white dandelions brushed against my toes.

I cowered, yet the rain didn’t scald.

The city loomed past the rolling hills of real green grass I’d only seen in textbooks.

I felt the calm of the earth.

I started to walk.