A Far Sun: Synopsis/Treatment, part 7

Click for part 6

Soon Jane reaches the platform, and follows Adam's light down a tunnel and into the dark of a stairway landing. Yes, there is a stairwell here, and when she comes alongside Adam, who is pointing the flashlight up the stairwell, she sees the stairs do go up a rather long way.

"How far did you say we were below the surface?" she asks, looking up along the seemingly endless ranks of stairs.

"Not that far," Adam says, also looking up. "Ten stories, or so."

"Why can't I see the top?"

He smirks, "It's dark."

Click for more"No, dummy. It looks farther."

"I dunno. Let's climb up there and see." He already has his pack on his back, and the rifle is still slung securely (he checks both). "Don't you have a flashlight?" he asks, noting that Jane carries nothing but herself.

"You got an extra in your pack, maybe?"

"So I do." He turns his back to her. "Get it out."

So, in a few moments they start up the stairs. Their flashlight beams crisscross in the dark, throwing flickering shadows off the stair railings and against the walls. They don't talk, much, but after about ten landings they stop to rest.

"I think we're about halfway to the top," Adam says, looking both upward and downward. The downward stairwell is impossibly deep. A fall from here wouldn't hit bottom for a long, long time.

"Shall we continue, then?" Jane asks.

"You put on this pack, and see how well you do."

"All right, then. I can wait." She stops as she was about to begin yet another climb up yet another flight of stairs.

"That's OK," he grunts, "let's go."

**

Eventually they come to the top of the stairs, ending in a ten by ten meter square concrete room with a six meter high ceiling. It's very dark in the room, but it's fairly apparent there has been some damage to the ceiling and to the solid concrete walls. Neither one is sure where the door should be, so they begin to walk the room's perimeter looking for signs of a doorway. It doesn't take long to see where the door was. Parts of the ceiling have fallen in and all but completely block the room's one exit.

Adam, reaching a dire conclusion, announces, "I think we're screwed."

Jane looks around, flashing her light into the corners, up and down the walls. "Are you sure? There has to be another way out."

"I don't know." Adam looks around. "Where would it be?"

"This can't be the only stairwell, can it?"

Adam stops. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, why would you build such a large, important facility, and only provide one way out?"

"OK," Adam seems to agree. "If there's another way out of here, then where is it?"

Jane sits on the pile of concrete rubble and leans back, stretching her tired, rubbery legs. "I remember my father saying they had a dug pretty large hole down to the facility so they could get the reactor and all the other really large, heavy equipment down. That was ten years ago before they built the physics building, of course, but if his description was correct, we might be standing at the edge of a 50 meter diameter hole in the ground."

"And?"

"And, I'd think there'd be at least two or three stairwells. Put the elevator shaft down the middle and build a building overtop the whole thing. It'd make the perfect disguise."

"I get it," Adam nods in the darkness, "the chance that the other stairwells are blocked is pretty small."

Jane smiles, "I wouldn't say small, exactly, but maybe there's another way out, somewhere around here." She claps her hand on her knees, stands up. "Wanna give it a try?"

Adam looks around in the darkness. "Sure." Then he thinks, "Doesn't this blocked doorway bother you, at all?"

"How do you mean?"

"The implications of this much destruction? That it might explain why we've been all alone down in the facility?"

In the darkness, with her flashlight beam aimed at his chest, she asks, "How do you feel about apparently finding yourself three hundred years in the future?"

But Adam has an answer, "Under the circumstances, not so good."

"Why 'not so good'? You don't like being stuck here, with me?"

Adam doesn't know why Jane would ask such a thing. They have always been friends. Good friends. "No, Janie, you're fine. It's all those other people that we're not running into that have me worried."

"Do you really think we're alone, here?"

But instead of answering, he asks: "Didn't you once tell me that your first name was really Eva? Eva Jane Marsden?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well Eva, my name is Adam, and this is our Eden."

Continued in part 8