Jennifer Geist is a creative writing major at Southeast Missouri State University and has been published in Down in the Dirt Magazine. Though her second love is photography, her passion for writing is as fiery red as her hair. 

Under The Mask (January 20, 2011. Issue 24.)

“It’s 6:45, Sola, time to wake up,” said a cool robotic voice from the ceiling. Sola, a petite woman, sat straight up, her short blonde hair ruffled slightly more than usual from a night of tossing and turning.

“You should have some breakfast today,” said the voice, who liked to be called Valerie. Sola knew Valerie had eyes throughout the room, so she shook her head, but still Valerie had a plate of eggs and some fruit delivered through the airlock doors. Sola sighed, resolving to eat though her night of fitful sleep had claimed her appetite. The eggs were bland—what else could an egg substitute be but bland?—and the fruit, because it had been grown indoors and genetically enhanced, left a strange taste in Sola’s mouth. However, with nothing to compare it to, Sola couldn’t say it tasted “bad,” exactly. She’d never known fresh fruit and real eggs; she only knew they existed because Valerie had told her.

“It’s 7 o’clock, Sola, time to get dressed,” cooed Valerie from the ceiling. Sola dressed with less energy than usual, pulling on her bleached white uniform and donning her surgical mask and sterile gloves, barely managing to get out the door just in time to join the line marching toward their daily duties. The group’s steps echoed in unison on the stainless steel floor; their matching white shoes blended upwards into their white slacks and white slacks disappeared into white shirts. With their surgical masks on, the only distinguishing characteristics between people were their hair and eyes. The walls were just as stark white as their uniforms, and besides the rebellious section of face that was visible, everyone blended into their surroundings.

Sola was very careful to stay at least three feet behind the brawny brunette man in front of her. The biological warfare, though it had ended nearly a hundred years ago, still complicated everyday life. The bacteria, resistant to most antibiotics, still survived, and so gloves and masks were a necessary precaution. Sola reached the room in which she prepared vaccinations. It was a dull sort of life, and Valerie told her it seemed a very lonely way to spend the day. Sola’s job was to stand in a small room, no larger than a walk-in closet, and watch the machine that mixed the appropriate amounts of weakened viruses into small containers, which were then delivered via conveyor belt to the next stage in packaging vaccines.

New vaccines were being churned out almost daily, and about once a week everyone who lived and worked in the factory were rounded up like cattle (though not packed quite as close, of course) and vaccinated against the millions of little pathogens crawling around just outside the walls of the factory. Sola thought to herself each time she got a vaccine that it was pointless, for no one had been outside—there were no doors leading out of the factory, as far as she could tell.

It seemed to Sola that no one else had even considered the notion of going outside. She often wanted to ask someone else’s opinion about it, but there was never a chance to. Maybe she’d ask Valerie later on, she thought. Before she could peruse the thought further, another voice issued from the ceiling; this one was distinctly male, much gruffer than Valerie could ever manage to be. “Time for lunch,” the voice barked. “Return to your rooms.” Sola flipped the large lever which stopped the machine from bottling any more vaccinations, and though her work room was separate, she could hear many other machines being powered down for lunch time as well. Sola walked back out of her work room and stepped into line once again. Lunch only lasted 20 minutes; what was the point of a long lunch? It wasn’t as if they could mingle and talk with the other workers. Sola returned to her room and to Valerie.

“What would you like for lunch today, Sola?” asked Valerie.

Still in an odd mood, Sola didn’t have much of an appetite. Bits of her dream had begun to come back to her, and she was struggling to make sense of the short snippets she could remember. She seemed to remember that someone else had been in her dream, but that couldn’t be right. “Surprise me,” she said, sounding surprisingly like an angst-ridden teen who knew she wouldn’t be able to get her way.

Valerie, managing to sound almost concerned even with that cold voice of hers, asked, “Is everything alright, Sola?”

Shaking her head like she had just woken up, she waved off Valerie’s question. “Where’s that food?” she asked, feigning both an appetite and a sense of humor.

She heard the airlock doors hiss as the outer door opened and closed quickly. Sola had never managed to see who—or what—delivered her food, as the doors were configured to only allow one open at a time. She went to retrieve whatever concoction Valerie had ordered for her this time, and was surprised to find grilled cheese and tomato soup. Valerie had told her that very few animals had survived the war, so cheese, not to mention butter, was nearly impossible to get.

Valerie, obviously pleased with herself for her acquisition, inquired as to whether Sola liked her lunch. On any other day, she would have been ecstatic to eat such a wonderful meal, but today all she could focus on was that dream of hers. She only ate about half of the grilled cheese before Valerie interrupted. “It’s time to go back to being alone, Sola.”

Sola hurriedly washed her hands and face and got a new mask and pair of gloves before hopping quickly out the door. She was in such a rush that she nearly ran into a worker going in the other direction. She gasped, surprised to be caught so near someone else. She was only a foot away from this man who was staring at her with his blue iceberg eyes, and he seemed equally surprised and taken aback. Despite this, neither of them moved back to resume the mandatory three feet distance.

Other workers moved around the pair, looking with questioning eyes but not stopping. Sola felt trapped here, staring at this man’s eyes, studying how his brown hair just barely brushed the tops of his eyelashes. She could suddenly remember her dream: she had been standing close to someone else. And though she could not remember who he was or exactly what shade his eyes were, she distinctly recalled reaching up, ever so slowly, and removing his mask. This was taboo; she’d never even seen a picture of someone without their mask and gloves on. For all she knew, she was the only one in the whole factory who had a nose and a mouth under the surgical mask.

Sola remembered this dream, remembered how soft the person’s lips had felt under her naked hands, and how comforting—what a strange feeling!—touching someone else had been. She carefully removed her gloves, slowly, so as not to startle the man in front of her. Sola knew that if she moved too fast, he would disappear back into the forest of white flowing around them. With naked hands, still powdery from the gloves, she reached up, ever so slowly, and carefully removed one loop of the mask from his ear, fingers brushing his hair, and then removed the other loop.

Sola studied the man’s now naked face—she thought him even more beautiful with his perfectly sized nose and his large, full lips, not to mention how his well-shaped chin completed the picture. By this time, though, the eyes of the factory had alerted those in charge that something was amiss in Hallway Three. A swarm of people in thick white suits descended upon Sola and the man, pinning their arms behind them and dragging them down the hallway in opposite directions.

They shoved her roughly into a room she hadn’t known existed, her footsteps echoing off the high ceiling. They led her to a chair whiter than the walls and forced her to sit. The men left, and two more came and took their place.

“Why did you touch the man’s face?” asked the first man.

Without thinking about it, she replied, “Love.”

The man who had asked her this, tall and skinny and spider-like, turned to a much larger man, shook his head, and said, “Looks like the thought reformation didn’t work on this one.”

“What do you want to do with her?” asked the larger man, who seemed to struggle to get enough breath to say that much, as if his tiny lungs couldn’t work properly surrounded by so much fat. Sola’s eyes widened; Valerie had told her of death before.

“She’s a hindrance to the experiment. Send her back home. The man too. Wouldn’t want them giving the others ideas. Nobody else saw them, right?”

The larger man nodded gravely. “We’ll just have to hope,” he said, pausing for breath, “that their conditioning worked a little better. I’m surprised she can remember feelings from the outside world—that she still can remember what love is.” He injected a tranquilizer into her neck.

Sola’s thoughts jumped frantically; bits of the dream were interwoven with what she was slowly trying to figure out. She wondered where home might be, and if someone like the man with iceberg eyes was waiting for her there. She saw his face again, and felt his skin beneath her naked fingers. Her head began to slump towards her shoulder, and she wondered if she would remember to tell someone about this, far from this place full of white echoes.