On the way to the train station, Dylan said, “So I figured today I’d introduce you to my friend, Dr. Wilcox. He’s an engineer and all around inventor. He’d kill to meet a survivor from land.”
I gave Dylan a look when he used the word “survivor,” and he grimaced, muttering a short sorry.
The train arrived as we made our way to the station. Running, we caught it just before the doors closed. Finding seats among the crowded benches, I was surprised when it jerked backward and traveled in the direction opposite of the one we took yesterday. This gray-striped train traveled clockwise around the city at a much slower pace than the ones I’d been on yesterday.
Over twenty minutes must have passed before the train finally slid to a stop in an achromatic wonderland. Stepping off the train, I looked around and didn’t see another soul in sight besides Dylan. Everything in this area appeared to be white, black, or gray. One lonely towering structure rose up among a myriad of apparently empty buildings.
“Where are we?” I wondered.
“In a section of the city that hasn’t been opened for residential living as of yet. Because the city was planned to house up to ten million people, pockets of places all around the city are essentially void of people.”
“And Dr. Wilcox lives here?”
“Yeah, he likes his solitude, so he was granted permission to live in one of the apartments on the first floor, but he hardly spends any of his time there.” Winding around the building past the front entrance, Dylan led me to a staircase leading down. “Instead, he spends his time in his workshop beneath the building.”
“In the basement?” I leaned out to peer around Dylan’s left shoulder to see the staircase disappearing into a black void.
“Yeah, come on.” Dylan began descending and I found myself reluctantly following.
Stepping down further into the dim stairwell, my eyes began to adjust, allowing me to make out a door at the bottom. It appeared propped open slightly, although I couldn’t see any light coming from it.
“Dr. Wilcox?” wondered Dylan as he stepped off the last stair.
“Yes, yes, I’m over here,” came a voice.
I was starting to wonder if this Dr. Wilcox was some weird, old, eccentric guy that befriended teens because people his own age couldn’t stand to be around him.
Dylan tried to push open the door more, but it wouldn’t budge, forcing us to slither through the small opening. Once inside, I discovered an enormous pile of junk rising to nearly the height of the doorway obstructing our opening of the door. Sweeping my gaze around the room, I noticed all sorts of gadgets heaped on every surface available in the workshop. Every step I took, my shoes brushed up against metal and wood shavings littering the floor.
Both Dylan and I carefully ambled towards the solitary light hanging from the ceiling above a workstation drowning in scattered parts. Crouched in front of the workstation, sitting on a stool surrounded by a pile of scraps was a man in a lab coat.
“Ah, Dylan, it’s nice to see you.” Dr. Wilcox gazed up from his stool with a white, toothy smile. His hair was sparse on his head, with thin wisps of gray attempting to cover the balding spot on the pinnacle of his skull. Gray deep-set eyes framed in gray-rimmed glasses gave him a somewhat haunting appearance. A loose white lab coat smeared with grease covered his clothes and ended a foot above his black shoes.
“Nice to see you as well, Dr. Wilcox.” Dylan strode up to him and shook his hand.
Dr. Wilcox seemed to notice me for the first time. “And who might this be?”
“This is my friend, Allie.” Dylan gestured toward me with a smile. “She’s lives on land.”
“Hi, Allie. My name is Dr. Samuel Wilcox, but you can—” Dr. Wilcox’s bushy eyebrows rose to the top of his hairline as he spun around with bulging eyes toward Dylan. “What did you just say?”
“Allie is a Land Dweller…she lives on land.”
Dr. Wilcox swept his gaze over to me, looking me up and down as if I was an alien from outer space. “You’re a survivor?”
I laughed curtly. “Yeah, me and about fourteen billion other people.”
Dr. Wilcox’s head jerked forward in astonishment. “Fourteen billion people?”
“Yes, that’s about the current world population.”
Dr. Wilcox began rubbing circles into his temples. “Wait…wait…wait, you’re telling me that not only did the human race survive on land, but it is also thriving?”
I nodded.
Leaping up into the air so high his head bumped on the ceiling lamp, Dr. Wilcox yelled in happiness. “I can’t believe it! This is such great news!” He ran over and grasped both my hands in his. “I have to know everything! All the technological advances. All the cultural advances. What is the world like now?”
“Uh?” I simply stood there frozen in place, not sure what I should say.
Dylan rescued me when he asked, “Allie, you have a communication device, right? Does it link to the World Wide Web?”
“Huh? We just call it the Network now. It’s much more than the World Wide Web ever was.”
“Okay, but can you search things on it?”
I laughed. “Of course you can.”
“Good, give it to me.” Dylan held his hand out.
I pulled my hands away from Dr. Wilcox’s grasp, dug into the pockets of my pants and pulled my omniphone out, handing it over to Dylan.
“Perhaps there’s
