Strawberry Moonfield: Chapter 1

I ran through the moonfield, refusing to look behind me. I could hear him close, closer, gaining on me. Of course he was, he was bigger, stronger, and older than me. My bare feet pounded on the rocky ground at the same pace as my beating heart. “I’m coming!” I heard him yell from behind me. Quickly, I hit the edge of the tall harvesting machines and veered right, headed for the main house. I risked a look behind me only to see no one, not a body in sight. I paused, catching my breath and realized my mistake. I heard the crunch of rocks from inside the moonfield and a body, just the size of my older brother, Peirce. “Gotcha!” He shouted, pinning me to the dusty ground. 

“Aw c’mon, let me up,” I complained, squinting at the bright light shaft shining past his mess of unruly red and blue hair coming from the simulated daylight created by the bubble around our farm, protecting us from the harsh environment of space and struggling against his grip. 

“I win Walter. That means I get the last container of strawberries tonight. Have fun with the freeze-dried ones,” He laughed, standing up.

“No fair! You’re faster than me!”

“Aw, you gonna cry little baby,” Peirce teased.

“Quit making fun of them,” I heard the voice of our sister, Rose, coming from behind Peirce, “Just ‘cause they’re younger doesn’t mean you have some sort of authority over them.”

“Very poetic of you,” Peirce growled. Rose walked calmly over to my other side, helping me up and helping me brush the moon dust off my uniform.

“Now, if you two are done goofing around, it’s time to go to school,” Rose replied, ignoring Peirce’s comment. She grabbed Peirce’s arm and began dragging him towards the schoolhouse as he groaned.

“Walt! Help me!” 

“Nope, this is what you get,” I joked, sprinting ahead, “Race ya!” 

“No, get back here you little-” I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. I was already ahead, my purple hair blowing in my face. The protective bubble around us simulated the atmosphere of the earth which included the seasons. According to my school studies, the current season was called fall. Something called leaves would change color and die. It seems pretty harsh but another season, winter, seems worse. I actually like the weather set at this time. It’s cooler, nicer, more fun to go outside. A yell from my brother behind me snapped me back to reality. He was several yards behind me and I was almost at the schoolhouse. The schoolhouse is one of the largest buildings in our family’s bubble. Like most buildings, it’s made out of a cold, silver metal with blue LEDs around every doorway and window. I ran up the retina scanner at the big front double doors. I stared into the little camera and waited. 

“Please state your profile,” The feminine robotic voice commanded.

“Walter Richardson, age 13,” I stated, out of breath. With the usual squeaks, the doors slid open allowing me to run in, and watch the doors slide closed behind me, finalizing my win to this race. Content with my success, I walked over to the gray metal ladder that led up to the nursery level and scrambled up, still breathing fast. I reached the top level, reserved for 14 and younger kids and headed down the blue-lit hall to my room. I pulled open the door and a gust of warm air blew out. As a smile spread across my face, I stepped into the room and set my hand on the sensor on the desk. I slid into the simple chair as I was logged into my computer. I slid the headset and headphones off the hook on the side of the desktop and onto my head, flipping the switch on the side of the goggles. The screen lit up and I entered the 3D classroom. Surrounding me are maps of galaxies and planets, bookshelves full of books I’ve never touched. At the front is the teacher, only a hologram of a robot; she only looks human. She has been programmed with almost every answer to every question that could possibly be asked. 

After my lesson, I headed back to the main house. The main house was different from the rest of the buildings in our bubble. It was metal but my parents had painted it a light purple, almost the same color as my hair. The inside walls were painted different colors as well while in other buildings, they were usually only grayscale. I ran inside and scrambled up another ladder, this one leading to the kid’s hall. Once on my level, I pulled open my door and ran inside, careful to avoid the traps I had set up in case Peirce tried to come in my room again. I finally made it past the maze of traps at my entrance and flopped onto my bed. Leaning my head to the side, I noticed something out of place in my room. Nearly everything in my room is blue or purple, they’re my favorite colors, but this was something brown, rusty, a key. I stood up, looking at it closer. Alas, the key was perched just above the door frame. On a string attached to a screw in the wall, it swayed. I couldn’t reach it. I swore my height, looking around my LED-lit room for something I could stand on to reach it. Finally, my eyes landed on my anti-gravity boots sitting by the corner of my bed. I slipped them on, flipping the switch on the side of the boots and immediately floating off the royal blue shag carpet. I swam through the air, using the walls to propel myself. Finally, I had positioned myself an arms-length away from the key. I reached my arm out and snatched the key, ripping the string. I bent over, flipping the switch on the boots back to the off position and slowly floated down to the floor to get a closer look at the key. It was old. Like really old. The teeth almost looked like a dragon head and the handle looked like a hollowed-out infinity symbol. The shaft was flat and bent slightly. It was a rusty reddish-brown color. There was no way it was even from when our parents were born. But what was it doing in my room? No one could have put it in there. Unless… “Peirce! I’ve told you! Don’t go in my room without asking me!” I held down the intercom button and shouted, hearing my voice echo throughout the house. 

There was a short pause and then, “I didn’t do it!” His voice vibrating through the house. 

“Sure you didn’t!” I shouted back sarcastically. 

“Seriously, check the cameras, I haven’t been in your room all day!” Peirce replied with a very serious tone of voice. I took his advice and pulled out my tablet, flopping onto my bed, logged on and pulled up the security camera feed of my room. I skipped to this morning, around the time our lessons at the schoolhouse would have begun. I pressed play and saw no one. Not my brother, sister, parents, not even an AI. The key itself wasn’t even showing up on the screen, even once I’d found it. I clicked a few buttons on my screen, opening the coding of the cameras. In my room, there was no blind spot to the cameras so the only option left was editing, unless of course, the key was magic but I decided to rule out that choice. I scrolled through the logins on the cameras to see who had viewed or edited what rooms. In the past week, there had been no editing, only my parents viewing the fields every morning in their usual rounds. Not even my siblings had been on, nor any outside source. I even checked all the backways I know of that people could use to hide their tracks, nothing. I clicked my tablet off, setting it on my bedside table and laying back onto my bed. I held the key up, watching the way the light barely reflected off the key’s rusty surface, the way the clean pieces reflected the light in a fractured way, almost as if the light were shining through glass. What should I do with it? I didn’t know where it was from, how it had gotten into my room, and it didn’t even seem as though it were real. I decided to go show it to Rose to see if she knew anything about it. Maybe she had put it in my room and knew a back route to the computer that I didn’t. I shoved the key in my pocket, jumped up off my bed and ran out of my room, down the hall, and into her room. Her room had a black fuzzy carpet, rare where we live but when she turned 14 it had been her birthday present. 

Her large, purple and black bed took up most of the room with a small desk in the far corner from the door where she was sitting with, “Peirce?” I asked, as my brother rarely went in Rose’s room, “What are you doing in here?” 

“Nothing,” Peirce said abruptly, standing up, walked quickly for the door. 

“Peirce, we can trust them. Both of you, come over here,” Rose replied scoldingly.

“What is it?” I asked walking back to her desk, sitting down on the carpet. She looked at Peirce with a stink eye and he walked back as well, sitting down on the carpet next to me.

“I found something, at the edge of the bubble,” He said, with a stare at me hat felt as though he was staring into my soul, “A door or something.”

“What’s behind it? Can you show me it? What does it look like?” I blurted, standing up, “C’mon, let’s go see it.”

“Hang on a minute there buddy,” Peirce chuckled, pulling me back down by the sleeve on my black school jacket, “There’s just one problem. The door is locked, and the lock looks old, really, really old.” 

“Really?” I asked, pulling the key out of the pockets of my school uniform, “Like, this old?” My siblings’ eyes widened. 

“Walt, where did you get that?” Rose asked me, taking it from my hand. 

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “It was in my room, on top of my door frame when we got back from lessons. I don’t know where it’s from. It doesn’t even show up on the cameras.”

Quickly, Peirce grabbed my sleeve again, pulling me up and out the door, Rose close at our heels. 

We arrived at the edge of the bubble and I finally saw the door. It was the same metal as most of the buildings but the lock was the same rusty-looking metal as the key. Peirce grabbed the key from Rose’s hand as ran up to the door, squinting at the lock, prepared to unlock the door before Rose ran up, snatching the key from his hand, “No way Peirce, that door opens straight into space!” She shouted, backing up and handing the key back to me, “You’ll kill us all!”

“Give me the key back!” Peirce shouted, stepping closer, his eyes red with anger, “We need to know why this door is here!”

“Where is this coming from? Peirce, why are you acting like this?” Rose screamed, stepping in front of me as he snatched at the key. He paused for a second, an odd look in his eyes. 

“You know something we don’t, don’t you?” I said, the look in his eyes answering my question. 

“What do you know Peirce?” Rose asked. His eyes flicked to the main house, the key, and back to the door. 

“It’s about mom and dad. They know too.” His eyes again, answering my question without words. With a sudden rush of knowledge, I stepped forward, past my siblings, inserting the key into the lock. 

“Walt, no!” Rose screamed behind me but before she could get to me, I had turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. 

I closed my eyes as a rush of cool wind blew through the door but instead of the freezing air of harsh space, the air was softer and slightly musty as if no one had been there in a while. I stepped through the door just as Rose reached me, her hand catching the sleeve of my uniform. We froze, staring into the dark abyss beyond the doorway. Stepping out of the bubble, we looked around, exploring the space beyond. Surrounding the humongous bubble we had been living in was a dark hangar, filled with dashboards, screens, and computers, all covered in a thick layer of dust. I stepped over the threshold, my heavy boots breaking the silence as they thudded down on the metal floor. Rose’s grip on my sleeve loosened and I moved forward, letting myself be engulfed by the warm, dim light. We walked in further, exploring the many desks and tables. Some of the equipment looked older than time while the rest looked modern, normal. We split up, intrigued by different aspects of the machines. “Over here!” Peirce shouted from behind me, breaking the silence. Rose and I rushed over to see him holding a folder, a folder with pictures of each of us clipped to it. 

“What is that?” Rose asked, squinting to read the small print in the dim lighting. 

“It says...Simulation Experiment: Subjects 43, 86, and 92,” Peirce replied. Suddenly, something small and red glinted from the corner by a far table. I wandered over to the object while my siblings discussed the folder. I already knew what it meant, what all this meant. We were subjects in a world we didn’t know existed and somehow, we had been let out, set free. Our entire home, the moon-bubble, it was all fake, a simulation of a real moon environment. As I reached the table, I inspected the item closer to see something etched into the small metal item. In the dim light, I made out a shape, a strawberry, as well as one word, “Run”. The second the word sank into my mind, lights all around the hanger illuminated, blinding us. I heard adults yelling. I spun around to see my siblings run to me, blocking me from the noises. Peering between them, I saw men and women in all black, masks over most of their faces and helmets with a white key logo on the side. They had shields and guns trained on us as they spread out all around us. I realized we were cornered.