Remainers

To Those in the Future, Part 2

One month passed since the Ackerton family and their unwilling populace began living inside the shelter. Despite the unease at first, routine started to set in, and since there was no real reason to attempt to leave the shelter, especially with the surface covered in radiation, the public soon began to settle down. Though he was loath to admit it, John Malcolm felt the same way.

He had been assigned the rather unexciting job of washing the windows of the main dome, hooked to a harness that allowed him to slide across the entire dome both quickly and securely. He took to the job surprisingly quickly, and the menial nature of the task soon disappeared. The constant repetitive motion of sweeping the windows up and down put him surprisingly at peace, and while staring at the murky green water of the deep ocean was no replacement for the blue sky, it did allow him to clear his mind while he was working.

His mornings were early, as washing the windows was work that could easily take the whole day. He was not the only one washing of course, but even with a full team it still took six to eight hours to clean all the windows. Thankfully, he only had to work every other day, so admittedly it was better than most of the other physical jobs he'd had before.

He usually finished around mid-afternoon. Initially, he used this time to explore the shelter to see all the facilities available. The dome served largely like a town square, with hallways splitting off to the dorms, the cafeteria, the exercise gym, and the entertainment plaza. The entertainment plaza was easily the most popular area of the shelter, and guards frequently had to stand in front of the gates and rebuff new visitors if the place filled up to the point of danger.

Once he'd understood the lay of the land, John often spent his time after work eating at the cafeteria, then heading out to the entertainment plaza. There were a variety of different recreational facilities there, including even some for children, but John's favorite place was the dryly-named Ackerton Bar, which was home to all kinds of nightlife events and entertainment. There, he had become the friend of Julio Agassi, the star bartender, as well as the Ackerton Bar's biggest draw, the singer Martina Baldwin, who serenaded the worries of the adult public with cozy ballads and love songs.

Like John, Julio and Martina had long come to accept their lives in the shelter. Though the way they arrived was certainly anxiety-inducing, once they had come to terms with their new reality, they found that they didn't really have a better choice. They had heard rumors of the plan to search for a new planet, but believed there was no way it could work out. Compared to dying of radiation poisoning on the surface, they were happy to live even a semi-normal life underwater.

John would stay at the bar until about 8:00 pm, which he could only tell by the clock hanging above Julio's bar, as the "sky" above them changed little regardless of the time. He'd head back to his room, take a shower, then write about the day's events in a diary. To be honest, he had never been the type to keep something like a diary, but his surroundings lately were so bizarre that he couldn't help but feel the need to write it down.

Not that much of note happened on a day-to-day basis. Most of John's diary entries were often idle observations that came to him while window-cleaning or summaries of conversations he had with Julio and Martina. Even after a month, the diary spoke of nothing particularly interesting, but since it had become a habit, John did not feel compelled to stop.

Besides, despite the routine lulling him into complacency, John still never forgot how strange this whole situation was. This shelter was under the control of the Ackerton family after all, and they acted as much. If there was a delicacy put together by the chefs, the Ackertons got it first. If the Ackertons wanted to reserve a bar space for a celebration, it didn't matter if someone else had it reserved. The family acted like royals, and the rest peasants meant to serve their every whim.