Down felt good to me. It felt natural. It comforted me.

       Down was where I craved to be. Heights were never

comfortable, so it seemed logical that I suddenly

found complete ease when I descended below the city.

       Few have access to the lower areas under the structure

of Mr. God’s world. These places were secretive and their

openings few and tucked away cleverly inside other structures.

       It hadn’t taken me long to exercise my new freedoms

and informations. The city was where I walked every spare

moment. I saw it all, it seemed. Sure, the dwellings were all

the same, so I didn’t actually go everywhere. The function and

scope of the Earth was of complete interest, though.

       No one ever knew how it all worked. Mr. God did,

but he was the exception. No one ever talked about it. No one

cared about the actual nuts and bolts of the world. I did. The

more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn

everything.

        Above ground was extremely mundane. I’d grab

my lighting supplies and research all nooks. No one would

question a lighting repairman. The only place I never went

was God’s spire, as I promised to never be in proximity to him

unless he called.

       Along the way I found well-stashed entries to the lower

levels. With enough time I discovered how they were logically

and repetitively placed at intervals inside of rooms inside of

buildings. They weren’t guarded, but entry was electronically

limited to those needing access.

        There was initially a strange feeling. Earth crowded

around. There were no windows. Sound seemed different. I

tried not to think about ground above and below crushing in on

me. Claustrophobia took over some people, so they worked

above. Others found trouble being in the open, so they were

chosen to go below. Below was snug. It was also dark.

        All light was artificial down here. It made my repair

facade completely acceptable. Stewards never stopped me or

asked questions.

        As days went onward, I had discovered the birthing

areas, the clothing manufacturing space, water treatment

facilities with their massive turbines and sewage reclamation

machines, toilet paper recycling, medicine makers, and a

variety of automated areas to provide almost everything we

used in the city. There were several levels the city below.

None were for living, though. Everything below was working

and storage and utility.

        On the surface I tried to get beyond that perimeter of

buildings which seamlessly corralled humanity. At the end of

the Earth where sky met ground were those annoyingly bland

and lifeless structures. There were no entries. There was

no way to access the roofs. Walls were slick and featureless

with dark windows high up where lights came on at night and

went off with daylight. Nothing on the slate provided any

information on anything in those buildings or beyond.

       Part of my answer came under ground. When I

pushed the perimeter of Mr. God’s domain under the Earth

I discovered passage upward to space beyond the ring of

guarding structures. It was apparent that the buildings were

nothing more than thin walls protecting the sky as it touched

the ground.

       Along the sky was a wealth of green muck. Metal

blades several times taller than a man slowly scraped off the

stuff on the sky, fresh sky appearing beneath. All that green

fuzz was shoveled away by other mechanisms and processed

into our food wafers.

       A kind of tiny organism flew about in myriad. It was

limited by a mesh ceiling far above and disinfecting in the

airlocked doorways. These tiny things unlike anything else I

had ever seen were somehow living within the green stuff on

the sky. It was all very strange. I never even thought about

the food and how we make it. No one ever talked about it. It

seemed so bizarre. I got used to it.

       My most vexing discovery was under the third level.

       From the third level at one, specific point in a fairly obscure

hallway leading between water, electric, and sewage areas was

an opening with a cramped stairway going down hundreds

of feet into darkness. It appeared as if the steps went down

forever.

       I did go down until the blackness ensconced me and

my mind panicked. My legs ran me back into the light of the

corridor on the third level. Lungs were breathing heavily, my

thoughts gone, and only self preservation controlled me. That

lone, mysterious descent niggled me for weeks.

       When I finally made a plan to solve the unknown

destination, I took my lighting supplies and went down with

some hand-held lighting to help me see. Spare bulbs came

to be useful as I exchanged burned out fixtures at the bottom

where a single doorway stopped trespass. Ultimately, the

curiously long stairs led to the only door through which I had

no allowed access.

       That door was like the egress to it: black. On the metal

door were several indented lines crisscrossing. Joined into

those lines were very colorful plastic shapes which pivoted and

moved along the recessed lines. It made no sense at first. It

seemed broken.

        Whenever I have the chance, I visited the door.

        Whenever I had the chance, I thought about the mystery of the

broken shapes cluttering the door’s surface. The conundrum

occupied me beyond anything else in life. As I saw life drain

from people in my lethal purview, image of the door obscured

my consciousness.

       The door became more of an obsession than anything

else in life.

       One visit to the door had me caught and questioned by

a water worker. Nothing came of it, but the hallway down was

oddly off-limits to normal people. I said I had to repair the

lights, and the interrogation ended.

       From then on, I knew I had to avoid that bizarre door.

To carry out obsessions, I used toilet paper and wire cutters to

make reproductions of the shapes on the door. In my apartment

I would endlessly stare at and manipulate the shapes.

       And then my answer was delivered through endless

fidgeting with the ersatz paper shapes. They came together to

form a strange graphic shape. I went to discover if the shape

was broken and perhaps correcting it would provide a clue to

what the door was for.

       When I went back and slid the pieces into place to

match the symbol, the door unlocked. The clunk of the lock

unlatching was clear, obvious. I proceeded. The door’s symbol

was the handle and lock, so to speak: once you let go of the

symbol, it fell back apart, the door locked again.

       What was through the door made clear why that nonelectronic

locking mechanism was employed.  Down on the

fourth level of the city existed another city, of sorts, but far less

populated. More curious was the population itself.

       I don’t know how many people were there, but it

wasn’t the millions above. There might have been a thousand

or more. Maybe less. They had no specific leader or Mr. God.

They were a mess of people living in filth and muck within

cubicles and sparse communal areas. Everyone had water and

food, same as above, but they lacked almost everything else.

Even the clothes were bizarrely colored and patched. No one

looked alike, while above were very few differences between

all the citizens.

       Worse was the frightening image of these creatures.

Human, but bloated, rutted, worn, beaten, and clinging to drugs

for life and enjoyment as well as motivation. Their faces were

ancient. Bodies were sagging. It was like monsters from the

most horrific dreams of a child. Beady eyes peered from within

folds and flab on large heads. Hair: there was hair everywhere

on these beasts. Women and men looked quite alike, aside

from lack of hair on the female faces.

        They shambled about. Some strange sedative or

medicine was dispensed to control their behavior. None

of them cared about me, their eyes glossy and wandering

constantly. These people carried unusual and unknown

implements tucked into their individual garb. Speech was

minimal and slurred.

       Disguised in the endless wrinkles on their skin were

two scars above the eyes on their scalps.

       After a hour of wandering through them, I decided

to leave. On the way to the exit, I witnessed a couple of

these foul beings fighting. What the dispute was about didn’t

seem clear. Others of their sort watched with some joy.

Entertainment came from the event. When it was over, one lay

dead. The other was silently triumphant. No one cared about

murder or wrong down here. This event--the death of one--

brought laughter and smiles for a small time.

       They had their own law. Perhaps they were lawless. I

didn’t want to be obvious or get too entrenched. It was a horror

to merely be among them, their eye-watering stench, and the

unsightly dirt and dark of their environs.

       As I constructed the symbol on the exit door, some

passing bag of flesh motioned to me with upturned hand and

two fingers spread skyward.

       “Peace,” it clearly declared, “Peace!”

       I stared at the person, then went through the door and

locked it again.

       The curiosity of the second city would stay with me. I

pondered it as I continued murdering throughout the surface

world.