Tower 58 by John Bullock

Mary woke suddenly, grasping for an alarm clock that wasn't there. The noise that had woken her was something like a thud with metal in it. There was a brief moment of confusion which, Mary later thought, was probably a kind of self defence on the part of the brain; a few blissful seconds where reality was forgotten.

She opened her eyes at the sound of the second thud, and reality rushed in like an army of unwanted party guests.

*

There was a saying on the lower floors, “Don't look up”. Its meaning had been interpreted every which way over the last hundred years or so, but some remember its original meaning, which was rather more literal than common knowledge would have you believe. It came from the days before the Segregation, when every floor of Tower 58 centred on balustrades, and a person on the top floor could see all the way to ground level.

“Don't look up,” was the advice. “Don't look up, because you don't want to know what the rich folk are sending your way. If you're lucky, it might be just spit.”

The saying had taken on a rather more metaphorical edge in the years since the lower floors had been sealed away from the upper. People generally took it to mean that it was unwise to wonder about the upper floors and, consequently, aspire to be there, because it would never happen.

Nobody moved above the Ceiling which, depending on the perspective, might have been called the Floor. Occasionally, people would be sent down for breaking the law or going bankrupt, and those people tended not to last very long in the pit of bitterness and vitriol that they had once lived above.

 *

Mary dressed in what passed for clothing. She washed with what passed for soap, and ate what passed for food, though, to judge by the taste, they could well have been the same thing.

The engines started around six every morning, and the slow, rhythmic thudding of the pistons was loud enough that few could sleep past that time. Sometimes, on a quiet day, it they could be heard through the Floor, or, now, the Ceiling. Life was going to be full of corrections for Mary, now. Big and small.

She stood at the thick, rusting door for a long moment, trying to work up the courage to open it. When she did, the blast of furnace-scorched air that assaulted her senses was almost overpowering. She had been allocated an apartment – “small metal box” would have been more accurate – that was just above the factory level. It meant that she could look forward to breathing air that was, for want of a more attractive word, thick. What it was thick with Mary didn't like to think about.

The one small piece of mercy that she had been afforded after sentencing was that she had been deemed too frail for physical labour. The judge had decided that putting Mary in a factory or sending her outside would be tantamount to a death sentence, and so she had been assigned to the administration department of the Lower Police Department. That, at least, meant that she would be heading upward from her apartment.

The streets on her floor – twenty three – were lousy with litter and filth. Mary had had a week to get used to the new surroundings, but it still shocked her to see the occasional body. They may have been sleeping – inebriated from the night before – but she had no desire to check.

The LPD offices were three floors up and against an outside wall, affording many of the employees a view of the lush green landscape that humanity had made way for when it had moved into the towers. Mary wasn't sat near a window, of course, but she could see sky, and just a hint of horizon. It was enough to stir up memories of the beautiful vista her own apartment windows looked out on, above the Ceiling.

'Coffee?' said a voice that cut through Mary's reverie like a serrated knife through flesh.

'Hmm?' Mary said, looking up from her seat at the angular face of Tom, a patrol man.

'Coffee. Do you want some?'

'Oh, uhm, yes. Thank you.'

He placed a cup of steaming coffee that he'd evidently been carrying regardless down on her desk, and walked away without another word. The coffee was black. She liked cream. She also liked a little sugar in her coffee, but it was rather a moot point because she knew it would taste like mud compared to what she was used to. Still, she clutched the mug like it was an elixir of life, because, despite his seeming lack of conversational skills, he was the only person who had shown anything more than cursory kindness to her. Albeit by bringing her coffee that would have made her old friends question if he was trying to be nice to her, or kill her. Still, it made a little less sad.

She sipped her horrible coffee and got on with her tedious work while, around her, Tower 58 continued to function as it had for decades. Not knowing, not caring, that Mary's life had been turned upside down.

And as she reached into her bag for a mint, and her hand brushed against the cold metal of the discreet firearm she had liberated from the munition stores, she thought once more about getting revenge on the people who did this to her.

And smiled.