Horizon Beta by D. W. Vogel

Author:D. W. Vogel [Vogel, D. W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Future House Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Chen

I had been down in the Waiting Hall for two days.

That’s what we called it. Not the Mothers’ Chambers, although it was full of mothers. All the female Lowforms lived here, raising babies to do the work of the Hive.

That work would one day save us all.

I missed the daylight, the feeling of warm sun on my shoulders. I missed my friends, but they would all be split up by now, gone to their jobs all over the Hive. I missed Noah, but consoled myself thinking he had surely made Diver and was out in the sea somewhere providing for us, or deep in the tunnels of water he loved so much.

My sisters were overjoyed to have me in their lives. It felt a bit strange to suddenly have family. Even the concept of “family” was unfamiliar to me. Lowforms were never really part of the Hive, and we boys had no idea about any shared bloodlines we might have. But my sisters knew. The women in the Waiting Hall remembered every boy that had ever been taken into the Hive. The more I learned, the happier I was to be back with them in the deep tunnels.

The first night I got here, they sat me down and told me the truth. My sisters Glenna and Shari sat on either side of me, with everyone else clustered around. Their eyes all glazed over as Shari told the story, reveling in the history of our people.

“We came from the stars,” Shari said.

I glanced up to where the sunlight came through a tiny hole in the ceiling. Could they even see stars down here?

She continued. “Our people were angels once. We flew through the night sky on long, starlit wings. The sun was our food and the moons were our playthings. We were nothing like these dirty shells that trap us now.” She rubbed her own skin and the people around shook their heads.

I said nothing, and Shari went on.

“But we became callous. Unkind to each other. Instead of sharing the gifts of the universe, we became jealous and vengeful. We ruined a planet full of life and hope, and flew away into the sky, laughing about our broken toy.”

The looks on people’s faces made me squirm on the ground. None of this made a bit of sense to me, but they felt it so strongly, heads bowed in shame for some crime I couldn’t even imagine.

Shari looked around at the group. “And so we were punished.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I was punished, for sure. I listened more closely to her story.

“We were cast down from the sky, our wings broken on the ground. We were crushed into these soft bodies, and left to die in our shame. The Masters found us there, weeping for our lost glory. They brought us here, to the deep underground, far from the stars that once fed us, and locked us away in darkness.”

Tears filled the eyes of some of the people listening.

“At first we raged against the Masters.

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