Ground Pt.1

I’ve never touched the ground.

I’ve been alive for 23 years and 11 months, come next week – give or take the time it takes me to write this – and I have never once stood directly on the ground.
Oh sure, you can twist and mangle the truth in ways to make it seem like I had. The buildings are connected to the ground, thus so am I. The floors and general construction materials – those that weren’t wrenched from their chemical skin and disfigured into something amorphous and shiny for our slight subconscious comfort, that is – were mined from the earth’s surface, and so I touch the ground that way. That’s true, in the same way that walking on the field you scattered your grandfather’s ashes on makes me your cousin.

No, I’m sorry, the fact is I haven’t touched the ground, and it’s purely down to convenience. It’s a long way to the surface of Earth, and living as I do at BESL, I’ve never really had the time to get there.

Perhaps I might explain. Knowing in advance of an exponential surge in population, we – I say ‘we’ entirely wrongly, in that this happened generations ago. As a consequence I have/had no say/said in the matter, purely because talking/talked into the past is/was not only impossible, it is/was (as is/was probably evident by now/then) staggeringly awkward. Regardless, we decided that we should build ‘level’. More accurately, and I hope more clearly, we dug down, and built up. Lowering the surface of the Earth through a mass excavation and using the immense amount of raw materials acquired to build our way back up. And it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sure, the planet’s wildlife was effected, and it’s surface area is but a fraction of what it used to be, and we encountered the problem that the higher we built (building on a sphere (as indeed we were)) the longer the inter-connecting platforms had to be between ‘Scrapers, but it all worked out in the end.

I stress ‘in the end’, because somewhere around the middle a few minor disasters were encountered. For example, we didn’t think of digging out the oceans first, and consequently lost a lot of west Africa to floods; many buildings couldn’t handle the stresses along the equator, contributed to by the added acceleration and had to be very swiftly repaired, before we could define the equator by a long strip of buildings all facing west at 10° to the horizontal; there have arisen a few gravitational shift problems, ranging from the fact that we are now a significant deal lighter when standing on the surface, to the fact that the Moon has crashed into Venus. Trivial things, now dulled down to such an extent they can be used in History schoolbooks. But no matter, the world is our oyster. If you don’t treat it properly, it’ll make you feel very bad in the morning.

My personal plight is only indirectly related to this, besides the fact that touching the surface has become somewhat of a day trip. We’re in the sad position that almost all of the inhabitants of our planet have never actually seen it, purely because they don’t like waiting in queues.

As it happens, neither do I, and so I cannily saved up and booked a day off work to go when the cues would be near enough nil. This may not seem much of an interesting point for you, but the very premise of saving money up for something is so outlandish where I come from, that I had to create my own forms to fill in on the subject. But more on them later, back to the trip. I thought Wednesday seemed nicely improbable. As indeed it was, the lift occupied only by me and a sliver of a man operating the controls. Plenty of room to stretch and pace about in anticipation of my big moment.

Of course this isn’t a popular view to hold in this sky-bound hierarchical society. To us the only vector of any use is up, and the entire concept of ‘down’ seems a little bit counter-productive. This is held to such an extent that ‘not up’, ‘anti-up’ or ‘the other way’ are adequate and oft-quoted substitutions for down, if a bit ironically counter-productive themselves. Many people disagree with this fascination I have with touching what is essentially rubble, but I feel I have some connection with it. I remember my father saying to me;

‘Bertie,’ for my name is Bertrum Argand, but due to its irrelevance, I thought I’d leave it out until needed, ‘what do you want to go and touch a mine for? That sort of activity is fit only for the lower classes.’ He opined. This is a literal observation, as the status you have in our society is largely decided on how close you live to the sky (or surface, depending on your outlook).

He continues, ‘They’re horrible places, my boy, full of gas, dust, intolerably hot, you might as well go and stick your head in an oven.’ And despite the rather lengthy hospital bill, this didn’t put me off.

And so there I was, in a thin steel elevator making my way down to the surface accompanied by a great deal of noise, turbulence and the lift-operator’s whistling nose. I had, by this point, become somewhat tired of walking in circles and occasionally head butting a ceiling-laden fire extinguisher, and so I reclined and attempted (and failed) to strike up conversation with the lift attendant. In hindsight, I didn’t think he was particularly enjoying himself. He looks like the sort of person whose ears would pop from standing on tiptoes too quickly. As we hurtled our way down through BESL (which, I might also add is ‘Before Excavation Sea Level’) at a suitably uncomfortable speed, I once more attempted to strike up conversation, in a similar way to which someone tries to strike a wet match.

‘Football?’ I enquired, not particularly in the mood to add any garnish to a suitably descript noun.

‘Nah,’ he replied, almost entirely through his nose, ‘Don’t have the time, y’see. I’ve asked them t...’ he paused. He did this often. I assumed at first that it was a side-effect of the altitude, but my latter cynicism led me to believe he was just doing it to annoy me. The lowers do that. By this time I had ascertained that the young man’s name was Ralph, but I would forget that before I arrived, and would have to be reminded later.

A period of time precisely defined as ‘a bit too long’ after he stopped, he continued slightly before where he left off (I hope you’re following this), ‘to install a television in here, but y’jes’ wouldn’t believe the ruddy paperwork involved.’ As is happens I would, because I am an employee of the governmental department responsible for issuing documentation such as that. I work in supply order forms mostly, but have occasionally dabbled in waste and repair access. I thought it wise not to mention these facts to him, as I was always rather fond of my face. As a consequence I finalised the otherwise riveting conversation with a non-descript grunt. One which merely implied I acknowledged the situation, but made no promises.

I continued in this vein, enquiring mono-linguistically, grappling, flailing after his non-existent hobbies, my chances of success seemingly proportional with the altitude of the lift. I sighed a heavy sigh, and muttered to myself.

‘This had better be good.’

‘Y’what?’ he whined.

I ignored him.