Enjoy this short story, “The Dome” by Ava Thyen, 12th grader at Edgewood High School and winner of the 2019 MidPointe Library Trenton Teen Writing Contest.
“The Dome” by Ava Thyen
Gilda pulled the soft, synthetic material of fabric over her nose.
The straps of the pack slung across her back were cutting into her shoulders, weighing her down into the snow. She felt the soft, steady tap of the vial, half-filled with frothy red liquid, against her left hip. Gilda tried to ignore it.
She remembered the moment her fingers closed around the smooth, cool glass of it, how innocent it had looked, peeking out from the plastic mold of a box filled with dozens of other identical glass vials, halfway concealed as tonot show their contents. She remembered how her heart had gone still when she saw what lay inside: barely an ounce of dark liquid, red, the color of anger, death, blood, sacrifice. She remembered the hush of the room as she pulled it from the mold, rolled it into her palm; the faces of thefifteen other selected, white with shock-or relief? Gilda now pondered-and one dark-haired boy, co her right, who couldn't hide his smile.
The rich folks of The Dome couldn't part with their money, but they could pare with their children. The people who owned the factories that produced the electricity, that provided the technology which kept The Dome heated to a toasty 75 degrees (a furnace compared to the -95 wind chills of the landscape surrounding it) had to make sacrifices coo, didn't they? The poor folks of the lower class had already lose limbs, spouses, homes, to the dangerous conditions of the mines below, rich in minerals and daily death tolls of seven people a day.
The poor people rioted against the rich ones, as it goes. Demanded something from chem. This conveniently cook place at the same time as the announcement that The Dome was beginning to shut down; too many people, not enough electricity to keep them warm, they said. The few hundred people who originally inhabited The Dome,the last of the human race to survive the Final Ice Age, had swelled to over ten thousand people, all of whom need heat, food, and shelter to stay alive. The Dome could be sustained, the scientists reassured, with an abundant, blessedly renewable synthetic mineral that they had created, potent enough that only an ounce can power the generators for a whole year. The catch, you ask?
The only place outside The Dome not completely buried in snow, where the mineral could be deposited: the topmost tower of the ancient Burj Khalifa, once the tallest building in the world; scientists reckoned it was far enough outside The Dome that the potent mineral's toxicity could be weakened bythe cold, therefore avoiding damage tothe internal components of the generators and collapsing the entire structure. The mineral was deposited into a pipe running from the Burj Khalifa to The Dome (these pipes built by a few dozen unlucky souls who froze to death) long enough for the freezing temperatures to weaken the potent mineral and save the generators from corroding as the mineral powered them.
None of us will make the journey, shouted the poor ones, you must do it.
We cannot, returned the rich ones, we are too busy, running the generators that keep you warm.
If not you, cackled the poor ones, your children aren't running anything, are they? The rich folks couldn't part with their money, but they could part with theirchildren.
Once a year since then, a selection was made. Sixteen children, ranging in age from 12 to 17, were chosen. They were kissed goodbye, just in case, and forced into a large, plain building on the edge of The Dome. Some tried co-run, of course, and more than a few cried throwing themselves off the bridge into the mines below. It didn't matter; the officers let them do it. Only one child was needed to make the journey, after all.
Down a few hallways, with multiple twists and turns to confuse them, and the children were crowded into a large, plain room containing a single table laden with plastic molds, each holding dozens of half-hidden glass vials. To make the choice fair, the officers said. Pick one, they instructed, only one vial held an ounce of the red, liquified mineral, and you'll keep pulling vials until one of you chooses it. Gilda, the daughter of prominent electricity suppliers, was the seventh to choose from the table.
You know what happened next.
"Better you than me!" the dark-haired boy had laughed close to her ear. He was Faron, the son of the President of The Dome. The other selected had been itching to wrap their hands around his throat and throw him into the snow since they had arrived in the room. They all hoped it would behim.
But Gilda had selected the damned vial, holding it strangely carefully in her palm, white blonde hair spilling around her face as she peered down at the mineral. The officers corralled the other children from the room. One person (Gilda never fully saw who it was) touched her shoulder gently as they were filtering out of the room.
Gilda had tilted her head slightly tothe left, only seeing a hand perched on her shoulder like a small white bird, before the person attached to it was shoved forward by an officer, out of sight. The hand was slight, with long, capered fingers that dug into Gilda's shoulder like talons before releasing her. The nails were clean and pink, tiny white half moons capping each one. Pale skin and clean fingernails were signs of thewealthy.
Gilda didn't try to run when the officers surrounded her.
It had been hours since Gilda was sent into the outside world. She had never felt cold or wind before in her entire life. Even wrapped in the latest technology: two layers of clothing that repelled cold air and trapped heat, bulky goggles, padded gloves thicker
than she could deal with, a scarf that bunched beneath her chin, Gilda was still shivering. This clothing was designed by scientists from The Dome to repel the deathly cold of the outside, and it worked incredibly well. Only the exposed skin of her upper cheeks was going purple with frostbite.
Gilda squinted against the fierce, snowy wind that howled and rattled her bones. Something tall, thin, and glassy formed in the distance. She was almost there. Gilda patted a hand against her hip, where the vial sat snug in a sealed synthetic bag. The pack she carried was full of supplies (food ,water, a sleeping bag, etc),so if the cold didn't kill her first, her death wouldn't be so lonely and painful. How gracious the scientists of The Dome were, she thought. How silly and stupid theywere.
The pack was only weighing her down, Gilda realized within the first hour. She thought about ditching it in a snowdrift, but then some stubbornness in her, some primal anger at the scientists, The Dome, the poor ones, her parents, had kept her soldiering on through the snow, her fingers squeezing the straps so tightly the pads of her fingers were cracked and bleeding.
The spire of the Burj Khalifa was visible clearly now. Filled with a sense of excitement (ridiculous, given the circumstances), Gilda quickened her pace. She had been keeping a hand on the long, thin rube beside her-extending further behind than she could see, and reaching into the tower of the Burj Khalifa ahead of her-but now she abandoned it, the glass spire of the building reflecting prettily against the white expanse of snow.
Gilda saw the tall outline of a crude door in front of her. She curled her fingers around theedgeoftheframetopryitopen,herpaddedglovesslidingclumsilyofftheglass,but finallyherfingerscaughtanedgeandthedoorslidopen.Gildastumbledinsideasmall, dark room, empty except for the open mouth of the receiving rube, marked by a little white flag. There was enough space that Gilda could sit down and stretch out herlegs.
She slid the door closed with some difficulty, startled for a moment by the sudden silence of the sound-proof tower. Her ears felt empty without the roaring of icy wind inside them. Gilda realized that the room was heated, and she was sweating in her many layers of clothing.
She peeled off her snow-protective gear, then sat down on the floor dressed only in leggings and a shirt. Her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Gilda pushed it back with her palm, digging her nails into her frostbitten cheeks to try to get feeling back into her skin. She left the snow gear piled in one corner, extracting the synthetic bag containing the vile carefully and resting it beside her. Gilda peered up at the open mouth of the receiving rube, made of twinkling glass, ready for her to pour in the tiny vial of potent mineral. That stupid little white flag.
Before Gilda knew what she was doing, her hands were reaching for the bag beside her, extracting the vial, holding it in front of her face. The liquified mineral, frothy and bubbling from the bitter cold, reseed innocently. It had only been a few years since the selection of wealthy children began, since The Dome had been in danger of shutting down. The four children chosen before her, by precious chance, were the offspring of parents loyal to the protection of The Dome until death. Those children would have considered it an honor to die for this cause. Did Gilda consider it one?
But they had died when she was thirteen-the year the selection process began - killed by a mob of the poor ones. Who did Gilda have, besides herself, really?
The Dome was a hideous paradise. A circular oasis of warmth and luxury for those who could afford it, the descendants of the few wealthy individuals who had survived the Final Ice Age. The poor ones made up a majority of the original population, but they had been pushed to the bottom. Why? They had less money, of course.
The wealthy ,the business tycoons, the scientists, the geniuses, had launched themselves into developing new technology to keep out the cold, to keep everyone in The Dome alive. Your duty, they told the poor folk, is to mine the materials we need for our technology, hidden deep under theice.
Bue after a few hundred years, that system is flawed, Gilda thought to herself. She had been raised in a sanctuary, for children of the wealthy whose parents had been killed during the rebellion, watched hungrily by the poor ones until the day of the selection each year, like a cow fattened for slaughter. But Gilda had been lucky enough to not be chosen as one of the fifteen, until this year.
That's what I am, Gilda thought to herself, now, as she sat in the tower with the vial held in front of her, a cow fattened for slaughter. Raising her fist high, she slammed it against the side of the glass receiving rube. The thin, delicate tube shattered, shards of glass spiraling across the floor, an ocean of scars against the dingy tile. The little white flag fluttered down among them, as if waving in surrender. Gilda smiled, pulled back her fist and opened it. The vial had shattered from the force of the blow as well, and the liquified mineral was seeping through her fingers. Her pale, clean hands, each pink nail capped with a half-moon of white, were stained red.
