1 The Plan Chapter One

How does it feel to be an orphan in a society of orphans?

It sucks.

I wake up before "she" wakes me, put on my glasses and look out the glassless window to the dome at large. One of my closest friends, Wuji made for me they are super high tech. He's in my foundling group there are four of us who were presented to this orphanage on the same day. As you would expect, no one has a birthday in a society of orphans. It leads to a society wide depression that you might consider high functioning, but not at all optimal.

I hear the cries of a child and turn my attention towards it. It is a Protector. You could call them the police in this society. He arrives at the front gate that is never really closed. It is an unspoken rule to "wait" till day time. Those who hide their children usually find themselves the target of a raid, and the child is taken. This one gets off his bicycle and takes the crying child from the basket meant for this purpose. You can't have a car in a dome, and electric was too hard on the electrical grid. They decided to go old fashioned emission free bicycles. I've heard some of the jobs that require lots of moving from point A to point B use roller skates. I laugh picturing someone trying to pick vegetables while rolling. My attention is back on the man. He begins climbing the stairs towards the registration office. It looks like we have a new arrival. I whisper "Happy foundling day to you whoever you turn out to be." I keep watching until the doors are shut behind them blocking them from view.

Inwardly I sigh. Why do we force everyone to be an orphan? It's part of "The Plan". Right, you don't know about the Plan. Who would if they weren't here in this dome? We are stuck in this place to wait out the calamity that humanity had caused on the surface of the planet? I feel like even the name is an oversimplification of a complicated problem. So, it all started when society finally broke the planet, not into pieces or anything. It still had an orbit and a day and night cycle, but everything else had been brought to the tipping point and there was no way to turn back.

For humanities continued survival we live in a kind of smart bubble built into a cave. We call it the Dome. I guess all the clever people had gone to bed when they named it. In their defense it is a marvel of engineering. Our sky is digital. It dims and lightens just like day and night looked before the calamity. The main difference being that there is no weather in the Dome. It never rains. It's always just the right amount of cloudy to blue sky. Our air is constantly recirculating. Even waste is filtered so that we can use it again, although I try not to think about that process. It's a complete ecosystem not reliant on what is going on above us on the surface of the planet.

We've got trees and all kinds of plants in here, but no animals. Though our science had pushed the Planet to this tipping point, they also had made great breakthroughs. Scientists had pushed 3-D printing and the ability to cultivate cells to "grow" our meat from the cultures of the animals we had before hiding here. They cataloged every animal that they could find on the surface into the ARK database. Unlike the ancient story where the hero collected one male and one female of each species, we have a biodiverse sampling. It was imperative that when humanity left the Dome, we could repopulate species and the environment became more and more hospitable. We do grow the vegetables and fruit. They help clean the air and leave the labs to make the protein so as to lower the biological load on the Dome thus prolonging its ability to maintain the population within it. It was open to any who did not want to die as the planet fully tipped into catastrophe, which everyone understood was a death sentence, or at least that is how its recorded in the archives.

All people from all races, ethnicities, and languages could enter before the doors shut. Humanity at large moved in to its new home with the idea that in a couple hundred years the atmosphere would stabilize and the planet could heal if we left it alone. Wait, I guess that still doesn't tell you why we are all orphans. Let fast forward a little bit, once the remains of society closed the doors which can only be opened by the Queen and her Key, they found that not all who were saved believed in the plan to hide out until the planet reached a habitable balance once again. Fighting began and chaos ensued. Once the dome was shut, no one could exit without the key. This was a fail-safe to ensure that one person or group could not break the seal and expose the whole group to whatever atmosphere the surface had at that time.

The scientists of the pre-Dome period had predicted wildly different scenarios, but they all agreed the surface would not be safe. Maybe the planet would be going through nuclear winters as the remains of an outdated power grid finally collapsed. The release of chemicals was likely to cause loss of atmosphere, and leave the surface barely breathable if it was breathable at all. The oceans had been slowly dying and that was expected to continue to the point that the oceans were completely dead. Coasts and land masses were constantly changing. Cities were being submerged while others which had been lost for thousands of years reemerged as some oceans became deserts and some deserts became oceans.

The original group chosen to be Protectors rebelled and attempted a coup to forcefully leave the Dome. It failed since only the Queen had the Key and she would not be swayed even by violence. They began calling themselves Hunters instead of Protectors because they were hunting for the way out and they no longer cared about protecting the innocent. They demanded that it was their human right to be allowed on the surface. Who was strong enough to keep them in this dome? It was called the freedom to die movement in the records though not a lot of the news from back then survived. Those who would have catalogued it being dragged into fights they did not wish to have. By letting them out the rest of the remains of humanity would be exposed to the happenings on the surface. So, the so-called Protectors at the time began hunting down the Queen because even though they could easily snatch the Key without the Queen the doors remained shut. They tried killing the Queen, but once dead the locking mechanism did not recognize her as the Queen. They killed a few generations of Queens and her children before realizing the ability to open the door was something only a live female descendant of the original Queen could use the key. A civil war broke out one whole area of the Dome had to be abandoned because the Hunters began entrenching themselves at the door. Destroying anything built within miles of the door on both sides.

It rocked everyone, from the farmer to the priest. In desperation, a joint committee came up with the Plan. In order to save the whole society from being openly hunted, they decided to hide the heirs of the Queen by declaring all children orphans who were to be surrendered to one of two orphanages, those run by the government and those run by the Church. There every child would be taken care of and protected. It came at the cost of all children knowing their lineage. If you could find your ancestors so could the Hunters. So, we replaced birthdays with foundling days. Families were replaced with orphanages. No one has a known parentage. All of this to hide a Princess in a hay stack, if you will.

Just after the registration doors shut, movement catches my eyes from the fields where our crops our grown along with the seasons. Although they found a way to skip the harshness of a pre-Dome winter, and it couldn't snow in here anyways. We basically had Spring, Summer, Fall, and enough "cold" days to insure that the plants would bloom again for the Spring. Usually those were days spent huddled in groups with thick blankets covering the windows. You always knew when it would end so we treated it more like a holiday.

"Eyes, Zoom"

Wuji is a mechanical wonder. My glasses auto zoom on the disturbance. I see a woman in the field fighting with someone. I can't hear from here but the way she's gesticulating I assume our new baby was taken from her arms. This doesn't shock me.

Since the Plan was put into motion birth rates fell drastically. Having a child meant more if you could raise it yourself than shipping it off to an orphanage where you would never see them or know who they became. My mother did not get to name me, once delivered to the orphanage the Nurse who accepts the child names them.

Then in shock I see the man hit the woman and a little trace of blood trail down her cheek. I shout, "No!" without even thinking, but I'm too far for anyone to see what I see and hear me

For women we cannot bleed in public. Especially not so close to the Hunter's lands. Fear grips me as I watch the horror in front of me. The Hunter's, or the descendants of the rebel Protector group, can smell blood. I don't know how but if you bleed especially in the open air, they....

I see the man who hit her say something and then turn to leave on his bicycle.

Then the ground opens up.

The woman seems to be sucked into the ground.

I know she's gone. Everyone taken by the Hunter's is never seen again. It's too cruel. Why would they intentionally give her to the Hunter's just because she didn't want to give up her baby?

It's over in the blink of an eye. Now there is no proof that she was ever there. I stare in shock.

....

"Begin wake up cycle, Lulu." a familiar mechanical voice says gently, and the lights in my room begin to slowly turn on to wake me up.