The City

a short story

“The City” is a continuation of an earlier short story, “Just Like Meat,” published here on March 1, 2025.

Lakshmi screamed, then covered her mouth with her hand. She tried to speak, but no words came. She backed away from Spencer and almost tripped over her bags. Spencer was stunned. This was not the reaction he had expected. Lakshmi picked up her bags and hurried out of the hab. She didn’t even close the door behind her.
	Spencer was alone again. Of course she left, Spencer thought. She hates spiders. He knew that. But she also hated living in a subtare dark with an e-window. He thought the new hab on the 88th floor with a real window that looked down on The City would have made her happy, and getting the prosthetics was her idea. He almost had her back. 
	Spencer climbed back out the window and perched on the wall looking down. He watched people exit the building, but from this high up, he couldn’t tell which one was Lakshmi.
	He climbed back inside, went to the bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror, as he had often been doing lately, and he couldn’t blame Lakshmi. He looked like a monster. Man was certainly not meant to have eight mechanical spider-like legs. But then again, Spencer had always liked spiders, and he liked the raise the prosthetics came with, which allowed him to move up from the subtare hab to this “bright” on the 88th floor.
	His employer, Progress One, had pushed the spider-leg prosthetics with claims of superior climbing ability. It was the first of its kind, and he was offered the same raise as a full-job would get, 40%, and he got to keep his meat arms. Spencer loved to climb, and he was easily convinced. And on top of the raise and the superior climbing ability, he was sure to get Lakshmi back with the new hab with a real window and a view of The City.
	It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like many of his ideas, this one had the opposite effect of its intention, at least regarding Lakshmi. But at least he could climb now, like a spider. He crawled back out the window and up the wall, nearly a thousand feet from the street below. The building had a rough concrete texture and vertical square ribs that were easy for his eight prosthetic legs to grip. He climbed to the roof and perched on the edge, looking out at The City, the only place he had ever known. Buildings he had helped build faded in to the haze in the distance and smoke bellowed from factories, one of which he had worked in as a child. This was the city of Spencer and his ancestors, the last bastion of civilization, and the only world he had ever known. The only world he would ever know. He turned and looked in the opposite direction, at the Big Bridge.
	The Big Bridge was The City’s only connection to The Outside. Self-driving trucks (all motor vehicles that came from The Outside were all driverless) crossed the bridge, bringing in raw materials and supplies, and taking out goods made in the factories, all of which were parts for military use, to be assembled in The Outside and used in the war. The Big Bridge had a massive gate making it impossible for a person to get through or over. This was to protect The City from the chaos outside, from the Farsiders, so named because they lived in the Far Outside. They were the enemy of civilization, and The City was civilization’s last stand.
	He imagined what was going on across the water, what chaos the security forces were right now fighting against. And beyond that, the Farsiders, cannibals, Satanists, forces of darkness that The City stood against. He was lucky to have been born here, and not out there where he might have been eaten by his own family immediately after birth.
	He was also lucky not to have been drafted into the security forces, as many adolescents were. Once a month, a bus showed up to collect the draftees, boys and girls, all between the ages of ten and seventeen. Everyone’s tenth birthday brought dread to the family, and the eighteenth was a joyous occasion. Once drafted, no one ever came back.
	The next morning, he woke up alone and went to work, as he did every day, building a scraper. Spencer was proud of his job. Construction was a highly regarded profession, and much better than working in a factory. He worked the high steel, and since accepting the prosthetics, he was a top-setter, always at the highest point on the scraper. This was the most highly-regarded position on the job, besides management. Management, however, was looked down upon by the real workers. He told himself these things to ease the pain of Lakshmi’s dramatic exit. 
	She left him the first time in protest of their dark subtare hab. He got the prosthetics so he could get a raise and move up to the light on the 88th floor, convinced this would bring her back, but he had forgotten about her arachnophobia, and even so, he wouldn’t have thought it would apply to him. She had been pushing for him to get prosthetics so they could move up. It was just more damn bad luck. 
	He found solace in work. He loved climbing and perching at the top of a steel column at the top of a scraper, sometimes the highest point in the known world. He loved catching the beams from the lifters and riveting them in place, always having both hands free and feeling safe. Up there, and high as the clouds, he was no longer a common man, no longer confined to the dirty, polluted, and partially flooded city that nobody but draftees could leave. Except for Belmont and his son Andy, who had apparently gone to a Space Brother facility, strangely on The Outside. But everyone knew The Outside was a warzone, so maybe that was a mistake on their part. 
	The scraper they were building was on the north side of the city. Though the air was usually too thick and grey with smog, today he could see the Big Bridge, and through the haze he could just see the outline of land on the other side. The Outside.
	He was perched atop a steel column. His eight mechanical legs held him firmly in place. Just below him was his coworker Bing. Hundreds of feet below them, a lifter was rising and carrying a steel beam.
	“You ever wonder what’s on The Outside?” Spencer said.
	Bing looked up at him. Spencer was staring off at the Big Bridge. “War. Security shooting up the Farsiders. Tanks. Gunships.”
	“You think there’s trees?” Spencer said
	“Where there’s trees, there’s Farsiders.”
	“You scared of Farsiders?”
	The lifter hovered above them now, its four propellers whirring. Spencer caught the beam and Bing rivetted it in place. 
	Bing had a “full job.” All four of his meat limbs had been replaced with prosthetics designed for high-steel work. He had a rivet-gun attachment on his right arm and on his left a spud wrench protruded where a hand might have been. The office had a selection of tools he could to choose from to attach to his right arm, but his left had a variety of smaller tools built in. His two legs were equipped with claw-like feet designed to grip steel I-beams, or just about anything else, and the claws could rotate and lay flat for normal walking.
	“Now what in the hell makes you think I’m scared of Farsiders? I ain’t scared of nothing.” 
	He and Spencer climbed out to the opposite end of the beam, caught a floor panel from another lifter, and Bing welded it in place. 
	“Let’s go this weekend,” Spencer said.
	“Go where?” Bing said. 
	“To The Outside.”
	“What? The Outside? You want do go there? Why?”
	“Friday night, we climb across the Big Bridge.”
	“Climb across? Well dang, I guess we could. Progress One didn’t think about that when they pushed these prosthetics on us, did they? But why?”
	“To see what’s there. Hell, maybe we can find Belmont and roust him a bit.”
	They both looked at the Big Bridge.
	“It’s a dumb idea. But I always kinda wondered what was over there. And you know I like dumb ideas. But how do we do it without being seen?”
	“Underneath might work,” Spencer said while looking out at the Big Bridge and the land in the distance.
	
Friday night, just after dark, they met at the water’s edge not far from the Big Bridge. They climbed over the rail and halfway down the seawall then laterally along the wall to the bridge. Above them, the entrance to the bridge was blocked by a wall topped with razor wire. Guard towers watched the street. The wall and the razor wire extended down to the water, but the bottom was poorly lit by the lights above. Beneath them, an alligator floated motionless in the shadow of the seawall as if hiding from the street lights.
	Bing saw it and flinched. “Damn alligator. I hate those things,” he said.
	“He’s waiting for a meat limb,” Spencer said. “He won’t bother you.”
	Bing climbed out to the razor wire just above the water and easily cut it with a tool built into his arm. He kept a close eye on the alligator and climbed around and back to the seawall. Spencer followed.
	They reached the bridge and faded into the darkness underneath it. The first piling was ten feet from the wall. Spencer climbed down to the water’s surface and stuck a leg in to test the depth. Bing watched him and the alligator from the seawall.
	Spencer looked up at Bing, nodded, and stepped into the shallow water. It was only up to his waist when he reached the piling and climbed out onto its foot. Bing looked for the alligator, but it had disappeared. Spencer urged him to come. Bing cautiously stepped down into the water, but once in, he rushed toward the piling. Something splashed to his right. He tried to move faster. Bing yelled and was shoved to his left, though he managed to stay upright. The thick tail of the alligator slashed at the water. Bing’s claw feet dug into the sand beneath the water. He froze for a moment. The water calmed. The alligator disappeared. Bing sprinted again and leaped out of the water onto the foot of the piling and continued straight up. 
	The square concrete piling would have been impossible for a normal human to climb, but for Spencer with his eight mechanical legs and Bing with his four robotic limbs with claw hands and feet, the climb was simple. Climbing was what they did for a living, and Progress One had designed their prosthetics for this purpose. 
	At the top of the piling, Spencer looked at Bing’s prosthetic leg. It was scratched but unharmed. “They don’t like steel,” he said.
	“That thing still could have eaten my body,” Bing said. 
	“And your head,” Spencer said. “You have to move quietly, like you own the place. You rushed and it sensed your fear.”
	“I hate those things.”
	“Let’s get going.”
	From the top of the piling, they were able to climb by hanging underneath and gripping a concrete rib of the bridge. Every one hundred meters was a reinforced joint in the bridge where they could stand on a small steel platform and rest. As they climbed, the bridge rose higher off the dark water below and lights of The City receded behind them, eventually disappearing in the haze of factory smoke.
	They moved slowly and carefully, knowing that neither of them could swim, and even if the water was still shallow, the alligators would get them. Neither knew just how long the bridge was and they climbed for what seemed like hours. Finally, lights became visible from The Outside. 
	They climbed quietly and Spencer listened carefully for sounds of fighting or any other sort of threat. The Outside, he knew, was a dangerous place where security forces were constantly in battle with barbarians trying to sack The City. He expected a wall and gate, like on their side, to keep the Farsiders out, but as they got closer to the end of the bridge, there was nothing to prevent them from simply climbing to the end and dropping down to a boardwalk that went under the bridge. 
	On the street, a simple lifting bar blocked the way. 
	“Why isn’t there a gate?” Bing said.
	“I don’t know,” Spencer said.
	Unsure what to do or where to go next, they stayed hidden under the bridge, listening for anything threatening and expecting to hear gunfire and explosions. They stayed in the shadows as a vehicle passed outside. They both watched as it passed and the headlights lit up buildings that looked calm and residential, clearly undamaged by gunfire. 
	“Weird. It looked to me like there was a person in the front of that vehicle controlling it, Bing said.”
	“That’s what I thought too,” Spencer said
	“Don’t look like a warzone here,” Bing said.
	“Let’s climb one of these buildings and get a better look,” Spencer said.
	They snuck out from under the bridge and sprinted across the street to an alley between two buildings. Without pause, they started climbing. The building was shorter than what they were used to climbing in The City, but from the top, they had a good vantage point to take in their surroundings. 
	Buildings in The City were all simple and rectangular, without any decoration or design elements beyond the functional. Here, the architecture was different. They stood staring at buildings that terminated in points or domes. Some had smaller structures on the tops that defied explanation. Many had balconies. One was twisted. Some were connected at the top or part-way up. 
	The building they stood on had decorative columns at the top. It was connected to the building beside it by a covered walkway, and the other building was much taller.
	“Let’s keep going,” Spencer said, motioning to the walkway. Bing nodded. They down-climbed three floors to the covered walkway, crept across the top of it, then scaled the side of the next building. This one was much taller and gave a bigger view of the outside. But from the top, they saw no signs of war. I just looked like a place where people lived, but cleaner and more decorated than The City.
	“The buildings are all so different from each other. I don’t get it. Why not make them all the same? What do you think it means?” Bing said. 
	“I’m beginning to think there’s more to The Outside than we thought.”
	“Yeah. And where’s all the security?”
	“I don’t know.”
	“I saw people inside, on the way up.”
	“Me too.”
	“They didn’t look like soldiers.”
	“You wanna keep going?”
	“We’ve come this far. Might as well. I still want to see some fighting. There must be a front line somewhere.”
	They climbed down a corner of the building, Spencer with his eight legs doing all the work, four on one side of the corner, and four on the other, and Bing gripping the corner with his claw-like pincers. They dropped to the ground just as a group of people came out a door under an awning. Two men and two women turned to look just as Spencer and Bing hit the ground steps away from them. Spencer landed on his eight mechanical spider legs and Bing’s pincers on his feet rotated to lay flat for walking.
	They all made eye contact. Spencer thought they looked like pale cartoon characters. The body proportions were all off. After a brief moment of silence, one of the women screamed. One of the men grabbed her and pulled her away from them and all four scrambled into a vehicle and sped off.
	“What do you think that was all about?” Bing said.
	“She probably hates spiders,” Spencer said.
	“They sure didn’t look like soldiers.”
	“No. I don’t know what they were, but right. Not soldiers. Not security.”
	“Were their faces painted?”
	“That’s what it looked like. I don’t know.”
	“We should stay out of sight.”
	“Yeah.”
	They climbed the building across the street, which had raised concrete ribs between the windows, and the two made short work of it. They peeked in the windows on the way up. 
	“I saw something familiar in one of the habs,” Bing said.
	“What?”
	“A lightweight armored hatch lid. I made hundreds of those when I worked in the factory. I know that’s what it was. But why would anyone need one of those indoors?”
	“I saw that room. There were a few of those in there.”
	“Right. There were two more smaller ones.”
	They kept climbing, connecting buildings by covered walkways. 
	“Look,” Bing pointed. “What’s that?”
	A spotlight shown down from a moving point in the sky, illuminating the rooftop they had just left.
	“Security drone, probably.”
	“You think there’s Farsiders here?”
	“They might be looking for us.”
	“Shit.”
	“We better hide.”
	They scrambled to find shelter, but the roof was completely exposed. 
	“Climb down?” Bing said.
	“Let’s go inside,” Spencer said, pointing to a door in a small square extension. The drone was crossing the space to their building. Spencer tried the handle, but it was locked. The light hit the roof and moved along the edge, then swept closer. 
	“Got a saw, or a torch?” Spencer said.
	“I have a torch, but won’t they see it?”
	“Probably, but it’s our only way out.”
	Bing flicked a torch out of his arm and began to cut the hinges off the door. The drone’s light immediately swung and lit them up. Bing ripped the door off its frame and they ducked inside. They went down a stairway and through another door and found themselves in a hallway with soft floors and widely spaced doors. Strange music was coming from down the hall. Everything was unfamiliar. There was only one way to go, and they went down the hall. 
	“What do you think this place is?” Bing said.
	“I don’t know. Barracks maybe. But I’ve never seen a floor like this.
	A door ahead of them opened. The strange music got louder. Spencer and Bing had nowhere to hide. A young man came out the door and looked at them. 
	“Holy shit! What the? Who the hell are you guys?” He looked back inside and yelled, “Hey, come check this out. There’s two androids or something out in the hall.”
	A few heads popped out the door, then suddenly a loudspeaker startled them all. “Attention residents, two fugitives have been spotted on the roof. Shelter in place. Repeat shelter in place.”
	Spencer held out his hands and shrugged his shoulders. 
	“Is that you two? Fugitives from what?”	
	“We’re not fugitives. We’re from The City,” Spencer said. The young man stepped closer.
	“What city?” 
	“The City,” Spencer hooked his thumb in the direction he thought was the Big Bridge.
	“Oh, no way! My name’s Thomas. You guys better come in.” He led them in and shut the door. Spencer had never seen a hab like this. There were a dozen people inside, some with painted faces, all with sculpted hair, and most with strange body proportions. Everyone was either sitting in soft chairs or couches. The place was ten times the size of Spencer’s hab, and clean, and there were those same lightweight steel hatch lids in an enormous kitchen. And something smelled like food, better than he ever imagined food could be, like an instinctive smell had found a keyhole in his head and unlocked a wonderful instinctive memory.
	Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at them.
	“Hey everyone, I think these guys are from NO,” he said.
	“NO, the detcamp? Is that where you guys are from?” one of the ladies said.
	Spencer was confused. “We’re from The City. We came across the Big Bridge to see The Outside, and we were hoping to see some action.”
	“What kind of action are you looking for?” said a man smoking a glass pipe. He held the pipe toward them, but they ignored it.
	“Fighting, we wanted to see security fighting the Farsiders.”
	“The what? The who?”
	“The war.”
	“What war?”
	“Is there a truce, or a ceasefire?”
	“There’s no war in Red Stick.”
	“Red Stick?”
	“Yeah. And you guys must have escaped from NO, the detcamp on the other side of the bridge, am I right?”
	“We crossed the bridge. Yeah. We climbed underneath it.”
	“I bet you did! Is everyone over there part robot?”
	“Class 7 laborers get a raise if you get the prosthetics.”
	“Class 7 laborers? What’s that?”
	“We work for Progress One. Construction.”
	“Where are you guys from?”
	“You mean what district?”
	“No, I mean what country?”
	“We’re from The City.”
	“You were born there?”
	“Yeah.”
	“Where is everyone else in there from?”
	“Everyone in The City is from The City, I guess. I’m not sure what you mean. And what the hell is Red Stick?”
	“Red Stick is this city.”
	“We’re from The City. This is The Outside.”
	“I’ve heard it called a few things, but never that.”
	“What about the Far Outside, and the Farsiders.”
	“Where’s that?”
	“It’s just outside The Outside.”
	Everyone looked confused. “I never heard of that.”
	There was a knock at the door. Everyone stopped talking and looked. Thomas motioned for Spencer and Bing to follow and he led them into a room, then went back out.
	“What the hell do you think is going on?” Bing said.
	“Either these people don’t watch El Verdad on TV, or El Verdad isn’t what we think it is.”
	“Do you think maybe there is no Outside or Far Outside, that we’ve been lied to?”
	“Maybe. They think we live in, what did he say, a detcamp. What’s that?”
	“No idea.”
	“This doesn’t make any sense.”
	“Look at this giant bed,” Bing said. “I wonder how many people sleep in it. Hey, check this out.” He pointed at the mattress, which was visible because the bed was unmade. “What does this remind you of?”
	Spencer looked at it, then felt along the edge until he found the tag. He read it. “Son of a bitch. This is Battlefield Ops insulation.”
	“I think it’s a bed.”
	“Son of a bitch. I wonder how much stuff we make in The City is just stuff for these habs.”
	“Probably all of it,” Bing said. “Ain’t no war out here.”
	Thomas came back in. “It was the cops. They’re definitely looking for you two. But I sent them away.”
	“Thanks,” Spencer said. “Hey, is this what everyone sleeps on?”
	“A bed?”
	“Battlefield Ops insulation.”
	“What?”
	“Look at the tag.”
	Thomas looked at the tag. “Battlefield Ops makes all kinds of stuff. It’s an insulated mattress, I guess.”
	“We make Battlefield Ops products in The City. This is supposed to be insulation for a mobile military facility. We make the hatch lids in the other room too. What is that, the kitchen?”
	“Hatch lids?”
	They walked out into the kitchen. Spencer pointed at the doors to the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher. “You guys make appliances?”
	“These are lightweight armored hatch lids. I’ve never seen them in a kitchen. They’re for military vehicles. Where did you get these from?”
	“They came with the apartment. Hey, screw all this. You guys want to sit down and chill out, have a drink? Something to eat?”
	“Yeah, sure. What is that you’re eating?” They sat down on the couch and looked at it as they did so. 
	“Chicken wings. Help yourself.”
	“Chicken?” Spencer picked one up and recoiled at the slimy texture. He smelled it, then took a bite. Bing took one too.
	“Oh my god,” Spencer said. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. How did you make it? Is it five-yum? What flavor?”
	“Uh, it’s a chicken wing. I fried it. Buffalo sauce is the flavor.”
	“What’s chicken?”
	“Chicken, man, you know. The bird?”
	“Yardbird? Tastes kinda like yardbird,” Bing said.
	“Yeah, I think they call it that in Jamaica or something.”
	“Spencer, I think this is the real thing,” Bing said.
	“It’s real chicken, yeah, of course. Is there a fake chicken?” Thomas said.
	Spencer ate another, though he was still confused about what it was.
	“How’d you end up with those spider legs?” one of the ladies asked.
	“My wife left me because we lived in a dark, and I needed more money to move up.”
	“A dark?”
	“A dark. You don’t have those here?”
	“Never heard of it.”
	“It’s a hab with no windows. Ours was subtare.”
	“What’s that?”
	“Subtare?”
	“Yeah, and hab.”
	“That means we lived underground. A dark can be above ground, in the center of a building. But all subtares are darks.”
	“Oh. That sucks.”
	“We had an e-window. But anyway, I got the prosthetics to get a raise.”	
	“So you let them cut your legs off?”
	“Yeah. Progress One gives a 10% raise for every limb, but I got the full 40% for the spider rig, since I was the first to try it out.”
	“That’s sick. Why?”
	“Because of this.” Spencer climbed the wall, then across a beam on the roof, and back down another wall, all without using his hands. The people of Red Stick gasped.
	“We can get more work done with prosthetics,” Spencer said.
	“What kind of work?”
	“High steel. Bing, show them your tools.”
	Bing flicked a welding torch, then a spud wrench, then a metal saw, from his left hand. Everyone stared wide-eyed at his display.
	“But wait, who pays for this? Progress One? Who’s that?”
	“Who’s that? Progress One. They run the place. Everything is Progress One. They don’t own this building and everything out here?”
	“Never heard of them.”
	“And you said we lived in a detcamp earlier. What did you mean by that?” Spencer said.
	“NO used to be a city, but after the flood, it became a detention camp, for illegals. But you said you were born there?”
	“Yeah. Everyone in The City was born in The City, at least everyone I know was.”
	“Even the old people?”
	“Yeah. Everyone. And what’s an illegal?”
	“Someone from another country that isn’t supposed to be here.”
	“What’s another country?”
	“There’s hundreds of other countries. But the border’s been closed for years. I always wondered how they got so many people in the detention camp. How many people are in there anyway?”
	“I don’t know. Over a million. The City is big.”
	“It’s slave labor, is what it is,” another man said. “Do they even pay you?”
	“We get paid. Like I said, we got raises for the prosthetics.”
	“How much do they pay you?”
	“I get 10,000 a week.”
	“Damn, ten thousand dollars a week? That’s not slave labor. That’s good pay.”
	“Dollars? What’s that?”
	“Dollars is money. What do they pay you in, pesos?”
	“Credits. Ten thousand credits.”
	“Credits to what?”
	“Credits. That’s what they pay us in.”	
	“Oh man, they’re paying them in script, to the company store. It’s just like the Appalachian coal fields from way back in the nineteenth century. That’s slavery. And they don’t even know what’s outside. Man this is fucked up.”
	“It’s where Battlefield Ops products are made,” Thomas said.
	“I guess that’s why things aren’t more expensive,” one of the ladies said.
	“Good point,” someone else said.
	“I bet lots of other products come from there,” another man said.
	“Everything comes from NO,” one of the women said. “Even if it says it was made somewhere else.”
	“So it’s true then. Everything we make is for you people, not the military,” Spencer said.
	“That’s fucked up,” Bing said.
	“What is Progress One?” one of the men said to a device on his wrist.
	The device responded, “Progress One is the unofficial nickname of P1 Industries, a subsidiary of Space Brother, owned by Max Priestly.”
	“Space Brother. Holy Shit. Space Brother is after you guys?”
	“I’ve never heard of Space Brother,” Spencer said. 
	“You don’t fuck with Space Brother,” Thomas said. “Guys, put that shit away,” he said to his friends. They put the glass pipe they had been passing around in a drawer. Thomas got up and went to the bathroom. 
	On the table was a snow globe with a city inside. On the outside, it said “Red Stick” with hearts on either side. 
	“What’s this?” Spencer said, picking it up.
	“Shake it,” one of the ladies said. Spencer shook it and the snow fell all around the pretty buildings.
	“I don’t get it,” Spencer said. “I still don’t see what it is.”
	“It’s just a snow globe. It’s our city. It’s just something fun to play with.”
	“Play with a city,” Bing said. “Reminds me of our city, but not so pretty. Just that it’s in a cage.”
	Thomas came out of the bathroom and there was another knock at the door. Spencer and Bing looked at him. “It’s just a friend, he said, and went to the door. He opened it and stepped out of the way as four police officers came in. They stopped and stared at Bing and Spencer with wide eyes and open mouths, then handcuffed them and led them out. 
	“Sorry guys, it’s just the way it is,” Thomas said.
	“What? You called them back? You little shit,” Spencer said. 
	In the hallway, as soon as the door behind them closed, Bing simply overpowered the handcuffs with his robotic arms. He used his two claw hands to pin two officers to the wall by their necks and kicked another with his leg. Spencer, still handcuffed, leaped on the fourth officer and incapacitated him with six of his legs, then used the two others to cuff him with the officer’s own handcuffs. Bing threw all three of his officers down the hall and cut Spencer’s handcuffs with his metal saw. They ran back to Thomas’ door. 
Bing kicked the door in and it flew right off the hinges. They rushed in, knocked over tables and couches while Thomas and his friends either screamed, got out of the way, or both. Spencer scurried into the bedroom, leaped on the bed, and put all eight of his legs through the mattress. He then spread his legs out and destroyed the mattress completely. Bing ripped all the doors of the appliances in the kitchen and slung them across the apartment. 
One of the officers came back in and pointed his handgun at Spencer, who had just come out of the bedroom. Bits of mattress material clung to the joints of his legs. Bing threw the dishwasher door at the officer and it hit his arms. His gun fell to the floor. 
	“Let’s get out of here!” Bing shouted and ran to the window. He picked up a chair as he ran and threw it through the window. He and Spencer climbed out and started down the side of the building. 
A spotlight from a drone lit them up. Gunshots rang out from the broken window above. Bing swung his claw hand through the window in front of him and he and Spencer slipped back into the building. They were in a dark apartment. A woman screamed. They ran to the door and Bing kicked it open without even trying the handle first. In the hallway, they ran to the left. 
“Stop!” Spencer yelled. “I got an idea.” They stood in front of the elevator. Spencer pressed the down button. The doors opened and a man stood in there staring at them. 
“Out!” Spencer yelled and the man ran out. The doors closed.”
“Lift me up,” Spencer said. Bing lifted him and Spencer opened a hatch in the ceiling. He climbed through, helped Bing up, then carefully closed the hatch. 
On the roof of the elevator, going down fast, they waited for it to stop, then started climbing up the walls of the shaft as the elevator went down. They climbed all the way to the top, where they could step onto a floor, and there they sat down.
“Why did he turn on us?” Bing said.
“I think the woman said it. They want cheap stuff for their giant habs, and we make it for them.”
	“And they think The City is a detention camp.”
	“Maybe that’s how it started and none of us is old enough to remember that part.”
	“Everyone out here looks different from us. So maybe we are all from somewhere else.”
	“Maybe. But we’re all people.”
	“And they’re all weak.”
	“Yeah. Easy lives, probably.”
	“Even the security, with guns, couldn’t put up a good fight.”
	“Yeah, we were handcuffed, unarmed, and outnumbered, and they couldn’t take us.”
	“I bet they couldn’t do a damn thing if everyone in The City busted out.”
	“You think they’ll believe us if we make it back?”
	“I don’t know. But I think that’s got to be our goal, if we get out of this. We have to convince everyone that everything is a lie. Every damn thing.”
	“What would they do if we all came across the bridge at once?”
	“I don’t know. If the security is as bad as those four guys who tried to arrest us, then they got no chance of stopping us.”
	They sat in the dark cubicle of the elevator housing on the roof while outside the spotlights of police drones searched fort them, and inside, four wounded officers sought medical attention.
	“What have we been living for, Spencer? All our lives, what’s it all been for?”
	Spencer just shook his head, unable to answer, unable to speak. Inside him, a rage was building. They hadn’t been living in the last bastion of civilization, or working all their lives to support a war effort. They had been living, for generations, in a prison manufacturing luxury items for people they didn’t know existed, weak people who lived easy lives. 
	“We have to get back. We have to let everyone know.”
	“You think anyone’s going to believe us?” Bing said.
	Spencer reached into his pocket. “Yeah, they will. I got this,” he said, and handed Bing the snow globe.