Trapped | The Trapped Trilogy Book 1

One (Part 1)

One (Part 1)

Zzzzzzzzzz...

The Dome is buzzing with electricity. It glows bright with the simulation of the colors of a sunrise, and trees as far as your eyes think they can see.

We (the Mech's) are suspended from the sky-lid by two wires holding a metal plank for us to sit on with a joystick attached to it so we can move. It's almost like a swing.

How ironic.

Mechaneers inspect and fix the Dome when needed. That includes everything from the pipes underground, to the lights in the Government building, to the Dome we live inside of. Right now, we are looking for panels that aren't lit or pieces flickering. If one of the panels doesn't work, it could blow the rest out in the matter of seconds. The Government doesn't want that happening, obviously, so we Mech's try and maintain it every now and then. Nobody really understands why the Dome is so important, but I know it has to be there for a reason.

I tap on a panel, the purple rubber gloves loosely moving around my fingers, and I watch and wait for it to change. Nothing happens, so I move onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and so on...

Every now and then, I glance at the ball of light hanging from the top of the sky-lid. It's slowly changing colors, shifting from a white moon to a deep orange color. I remember when I used to believe that was the real sun. I used to think that the Dome walls weren't walls, but a sky miles away where birds fly and little insects buzz. And then I turned three. We start to learn about the old world, the one that fell to plague and that we destroyed. The one that created the Dome. It was very vague and so brief, but we were told to learn it and live it. The serum that we are given that year, the year we turn three, gives us a huge advantage at learning, and we memorize things better than anyone did in the past, we were told. They told us that we would learn all we could about each job and what we liked to do and liked to learn. They said we'd get to choose one of them when we learned about the choosing process at five years old.

But I never got to.

A few hundred panels later, I see one flickering wildly, farther down the wall behind some trees.

I push the joystick down with my right hand, and my swing obeys, going as low as it can reach. I groan as I realize that the only way I can reach it is by unbuckling and walking. No one really works on the lower panels because trees hide them. But this one looks like it needs to be reported. It'll send an automated message to the Government that I am off the swing, and I don't know where that could lead from there.

But if I miss this panel, all of them could go out.

I look around at the other workers above me, tapping away at their section of panels. They are black against the sunrise simulation, and, most importantly, not paying attention to me.

"Seat belt removed," The feminine voice says, warning both me, and the Government.

I jump to the grass, and walk to the small panel. It sits about eye-level to me. It flickers madly, and bright light blinds me every off-second.

Why would it be so bright? The day is just beginning.

I tap it twice quickly, squinting my eyes, and the flickering stops.

But the blinding light doesn't.

I slowly open my eyes, and I see something behind the panel. I lean forward, and squint one eye, making sure not to touch the wall.

I see the outside world.

I tap the small panel once more, and all of a sudden, one by one, exponentially increasing speed, each panel becomes transparent, and I see the green grass, the blue sky, the animals roaming in the trees in the distance...