Posted by Red to Grey
I’ve never been out of the Grounds. The early morning chill sends tingles down my neck, small hairs stand up along my spine. Miles of concrete towers hang above me as I walk through the sewer scented streets. Janitorial companies don’t come down here, there’s no point. Why work for people with no antigens, no way to pay. So we live in filth. Filth and grey stone, broken up by one window allotted to each apartment or street level store. Occasionally one gets broken, boards block those now. Not that there’s much to steal. I remember being a kid, kicking a deflated ball that must’ve washed down from above with my friends, sometimes on a good day we could see the sky. Now we see nothing but smog, and the occasional fluttering of garbage making its way from the mid and high levels. I smile, thinking of the days where my surroundings were simply my home, or school, or the gyro shop on the corner. Now all that I see is grey. Concrete, sky, the very life that we of the Grounds lead. I look down at the letter in my hand. Dark red paper, my name stamped on it in white ink.
Arrn, it reads, in a blocky font. My mother taught me to read, most of the Grounders can hardly read their own name on a good day, if they’re not too foggy from the smog that we wallow in. She thought it was important, that way if I was ever summoned I’d know why. As if there’s more than one reason that they’d ever summon one of us.
Greetings Citizen. You’ve been selected for donation due to your lack of antigens. Because of the events of the current conflict we are in need of antigen free blood. Report to a lift operator this upcoming Monday by 08:00 or you will be retrieved by force.
I don’t bother to read the message again, even the illiterate know why they summon us. Like it says, they need our blood. We don’t matter, a lower caste, born to be used by those living above us in their high grey towers, on their self proclaimed higher plane of understanding. I walk, passing through the throngs. Drunks sit down side alleys, occasionally reaching out a hand, in hopes of someone dropping a coin or bill into an outstretched palm. As if anyone down here has change to spare. The streets are packed with people walking to their day jobs or back from night shifts. Shoulders bump into me, too much humanity stuffed into the bottom of a shoebox. I wear a mask over my nose and mouth, don’t want to get sick on the day that could finally lift me out of this hell. Don’t want to risk passing anything on to my betters either.It keeps my face warm on an otherwise chilly morning, at the cost of my breath fogging up my glasses. They have the technology to avoid or treat Grounder illness but they don’t react well to perceived attempts at biological warfare. Thinking we have the capacity for such acts shows how little attention they pay to the creatures beneath their feet. Just like the rats I sometimes hear crawling in the walls of my tiny apartment, all we care about is surviving, and the best way to survive in this world is to obey, and give them our blood when it is asked for.
I make it to a lift station with half an hour to spare, yawning in the early morning. It’s marked with a glowing red ‘100’. The lift is operated by a tall man with dark skin. He wears a red vest over his otherwise grey uniform. A drop of color in an otherwise colorless world. I walk up to him, waving my letter in one hand.
“Good morning, I’m reporting for donation.” No reason to smile beneath my mask, but I do my best not to let my nerves show. I don’t think I do a very good job of it.
“Name and ID number?” The man asks in a neutral tone. His brown eyes stare down at me, bored, probably waiting to end his shift and go back up to a higher level to enjoy whatever it is that they celebrate the end of a work day with up there. They probably have real alcohol, no home brewed hooches and meads.
“Arrn Holmes, 307432923.” I reply mechanically.
He pauses, searching for me on a datapad that he pulled out of a vest pocket. After a moment he nods before putting away his datapad, “Hold out your arm and roll up your sleeve.” From another pocket he takes a palm sized metal oval with a small needle coming off the end, he points it at my arm in emphasis.
I do as instructed, then with a quick jab and momentary sharp pain, he hands me an alcohol wipe to clean the blood from my forearm. It has a sharp scent that I don’t recognize. It burns my nostrils. I hand it back to him, but he simply tosses it into the street with all the other collected garbage.
“Are you ill, why are you wearing a mask?” He asks as he looks at my blood reading, making sure it’s accurate to the data that they keep stored high above.
“No sir, I’m just being careful. Don’t want to risk this chance is all.”
He nods at that, “Good man, into the lift then. You’re going all the way up today.”
I stare at the man, unblinking. Going to the top is unthinkable, impossible. It had to be a trick. “They’ve never had me go up more than a level or two before. Are you sure?”
“Datapad says all the way, so hurry up and get in the lift. I’m off in half an hour.” He pushes a button and the lift door opens. The thing is made entirely of glass, with supports of steel. Just another shade of grey. You’re supposed to push a brake handle when your level is approaching. The giant red lever in the corner is hard to miss. It’s designed in a manner that you can see numbered signs as it rises and falls, but for us it’s a chance to see outside, maybe catch a glimpse of the sky or a better life before we’re rushed back down to the depths. I step in, and the door whisks closed behind me. It’s warmer inside, the touch of fall air blocked out just like us, kept apart until we’re needed. The lift rises up its tube, slowly at first, but eventually picking up speed. The neon red signs of different housing levels race past, counting down from 100. Every so often it stops, someone gets on, and hops back off a few levels later. Nobody rides with me for more than a couple stops. I hum a poem that my mother would sing to me when I was a child as a couple in long grey coats get off on floor 49.
As an O we sit so low, without a ladder to climb.
In quiet we sit, with nary a fit, for whining noise is a crime.
And up above are As and Bs, standing on ladders of stone,
they laugh and flit without a care, heads stuck in the sky.
Gliding through life, no fear nor frights, as they lounge upon their thrones.
For if they trip, and make blood drip, we’re here to be sucked dry.
It was years later until I realized it’s a song not to be sung in the presence of the men and women in power. Fortunately they don’t come down to the Grounds. As don’t mingle with Os, unless they need our blood. To call for a Grounder means they must truly be desperate, otherwise they’d find a donor among their own caste. We all have the same plasma, the same platelets, but sometimes in times of conflict they just need more than what they themselves are willing to provide. So they go to less willing sources. Floors crawl by. 20, 19, 18, on and on. People no longer are getting onto my lift. At these heights they have private travel. Cars, chauffeurs, I’ve even heard some lift operators claim that the upper tenth percentiles have their own personal lifts. The perks of having your blood type start with a different letter. The second floor passes, and I pull hard on the lever. Stop Requested flashes in red on a screen above the door. In theory it will stop at the end of the lift chute, but like everything that reaches down to the Grounds, maintenance is not always the number one priority. I make sure to pull the lever. The lift stops inside of a building, a 1 marks the white hallway outside. It’s brighter than anywhere I’ve ever been. My eyes water before I even open the door.
Two pale skinned guards await me outside the glass door, each one has a baton at his hip. The door opens, and a floral scent greets me. I shield my eyes with a hand so my eyes can adjust to the unfamiliar light. One’s holding some sort of hand held metal detector. Dark red suits, black glasses, and close cropped hair makes them cut intimidating figures. They’re both a head taller than me. They have me step out of the lift so that the one with the device can swipe the wand around my body, trying to figure out if I’m smuggling anything to the upper floors. As if there’s anything I could smuggle up that they couldn’t get themselves in half an hour with the right bribe.
“Follow me.” The first guard has a higher voice than I would have expected, not matching his large frame. I step in line behind him, as the second guard follows quietly at my heels, one hand on the baton on his hip.
We make our way down the hall, passing the occasional grey door in an otherwise entirely white world. A left turn, then a few rights, and eventually I find myself left alone in a room with a white robe hung over a divider and instructions to shower in the lone stall in the room. I change out of my clothes, grey and filthy when compared to the spotless white all around me. The floor is cold beneath my bare feet, my heart races. Never before when I’ve donated blood has it been like this. A quick check into a building with a blood red sign that marked it as a donation center. Stepping in, stabbed with a needle, sent on my way. This is all new. I turn on the shower, filling the room with steam. I hurry, lathering myself with the soap bar that they’ve provided, fingers cleaning the grime from my hair and body. I expect the hot water to shut off after sixty seconds, but it continues to flow. Five minutes, ten; I soak myself. The water runs down my face in molten rivers. I have never known this bliss. I must lose track of time because a knock sounds at the door. I turn off the water and put on the robe. It sits on my shoulders, leaving my arms bare. I slide into soft white slippers. I wonder if I get to keep the clothes, I muse.
“Ready!” I call to the people in the hall. They wheel in a gurney. It’s a man and a woman this time, wearing white surgical masks and matching gowns. An insignia of a red blood drop sits in the center of their chests. They have me lay down on the gurney, then wheel me out the way I came. Down more halls, around more corners, until one of the nurses presses his fingerprints against a scanner. The door slides open and we enter into what I assume is the donation room. The rooms may be domed, it’s hard to tell as it’s entirely made out of a giant mirror. It feels like being beneath a giant silver bowl. I get dizzy, closing my eyes to block it out.
The female nurse speaks, “Don’t worry, it’s designed to be a little disorienting for Grounders.” The other laughs, mumbling under his breath to his coworker. She snorts before replying with something unintelligible. “We’re going to give you a sedative, to ease the procedure.”
I hear another cart roll in, but I keep my eyes closed. A prick at the ditch of my elbow causes me to open them, and I see a cart with a silver barrel on it sitting next to me. “That’s a pretty big barrel,” I say before the sedative works its way through the plastic tube and into the vein of my arm.” The world goes black.
***
“Karl, What is the value of a soul?” Veydin asks as he stands in front of a blindingly bright surgery lamp. I shade my eyes with a hand in an attempt to maintain eye contact while he speaks over the sound of the draining table dominating the center of the laboratory. The nurses brought it in once Arrn had passed out, tubes ran through it and into the collecting vat. It was painless in his drugged state.
I know not answering is wise, he won’t beat me for silence; only ignorance. Besides, my master wants to keep talking. I say nothing.
“A soul is only as valuable as the lifeblood that flows through the physical body. For something that cannot be bought or sold holds no value in this world.” The silky voice of the man does not match the exterior. Ropes of white hair hang over his prominent brow, a large burn scar runs from forehead to nose across the right half of his face, the raw flesh a sharp contrast from his dark skin. The burn has left one of his eyes a gray ruin, constantly weeping clear fluid down his cheek. The other stares deep into my eyes till I start to squirm and a cruel smile forms, showing off meticulously maintained teeth. Nobody would have ever called my master a beauty, but years of Veydin’s time spent in laboratories has done his body no favors, his large belly constantly fighting to break free of the tight white lab coat. I turn from him, taking in the scene before us. On the table a deathly pale boy lies, leaking blood into the tubes protruding from his wrists. Straps cross bind wrists and ankles, keeping him tied firmly in place. Some of the Grounders clung to life, others such as the small pale boy on the table had no such will.
My master’s words interrupt my thoughts; “He is a universal donor, coming from nothing, and will be missed by nobody. When people like him get the summons, they think they’ve finally been granted the chance at a better life. In some ways it’s true, for anything is better than living on the hundredth level. Have you been down there, boy?”
I shake my head, my parents hardly let me go into the double digits.
“I thought not. People like us, we’ve no reason to. Why muck around with the vermin? No, we need not go below when we can simply call them to us. Five liters of O– will bring in more money than many make in a lifetime, if sold to the right people.” He nudges the now cold body on the table, before turning off the draining table. Silence fills the mirror room. Designed to disorient those who have never left the lower levels, like an electric eel stunning its prey. It works almost every time, but they’re so malnourished that even if they can fight it, the nurses get them sedated in short order.
“Dispose of the body,” Veydin says, “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, we have a B+ who’s interested in placing an order first thing in the morning.” With that he walks away, leaving me with the body. I zip him in the white bag that he unknowingly laid down on when he got up onto the gurney, and haul him away to the furnace room. When I get there it’s already on, it’s been a busy start to our week. Lots of orders to fill with the recent war, and more are surely coming as the lines press forward. I slide the boy into an open door, it’s no real trouble; he was small before and now he’s got five liters less liquid in him. I close the door behind him, and press the button labeled ‘Burn’. It does its job. His ashes will go up into the sky before falling down upon us, coating the lower levels in an endless grey. The ash gets washed off the higher levels, B– workers with power washers will send it down the towers, reuniting the Grounders with their friends and family members, at least those that have them. I look out the window, the seamless white towers shine beneath me. With a puff of smoke Arrn finally gets to experience the sky for the first time.
-Josef Maier
Sources
Varlekar, Mina D., et al. “A Study of Relationship between Blood Type and Fingerprint Designs.” European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, vol. 14, no. 4, Oct. 2024, pp. 206–11. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=13206359-200a-3560-b4f2-3d1640c8de65.
Romiani, Hadis, et al. “The Relationship between Blood Types and Anxiety, Stress, and Depression in University Students.” Journal of Fundamentals of Mental Health, Jan. 2022, pp. 55–59. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=66c460a2-72bd-37fc-b62b-1f9eded0800d.
Rogers, M., & Glendon, A. I. (2003). Blood type and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(7), 1099-1112.