Claire Larsen had spent the better part of ten years trying to leave the farm she’d grown up on. The first time, after her father died, she had simply walked toward the road. For two days. It never got any closer. When she’d given up, hungry, disoriented and still crying, the walk back to her front door had taken ten minutes. Then, after she’d buried him on the edge of the cornfield, she’d tried lighting up his old truck and gunning it for the pavement. Every time she got close, the engine sputtered or the car spun. Mud she could swear hadn’t been there before bogged her down, tires ruptured, the gas gauge hit zero.

Then, she’d driven her mother’s old station wagon, the tractor, and the lawn mower, all of which stalled out in the exact same place. She’d tried pole vaulting over where she figured the invisible line must be, walking backwards, closing her eyes, tunneling from the basement, yelling at any car that drove past. The pole snapped, the tunnel caved in, the cars ignored her. Inside the house phone lines were dead. At the end of the driveway, the mailbox grew cobwebs, and even if the flag was up, the mail truck never stopped.

For ten years, there was no hint that the outside world had any clue that the Larsen farm existed.

Claire supposed she’d gotten strange, the last decade with no visitors. Her hair grew long. She plaited it down her back and wore the clothes her mother had left behind. She’d wondered about the bills, but something either saw to it they were forgotten or paid, and the lights stayed on. She recorded every escape idea and subsequent attempt on the legal pads her parents had stockpiled, making up her own filing system and sticking to it.

Today was plan Z-56. It wasn’t one of her better ones, but it was on the list.

Ten o’clock, everything was ready, even though blue-black clouds marched in off the horizon, and the air smelled like tornado. It didn’t matter. She’d rehearsed enough times that she could do the whole thing in fifteen seconds. She only hoped the place hadn’t been watching her while she practiced. Sometimes she felt as if it could.

The tractor was old, but Claire kept it maintained, as she used it to till the acre of cornfield every spring. It started up no problem. She positioned it in front of the house, dropped a brick on the gas, and bolted for the car.

The tractor barreled toward the red line Claire had spray painted from five feet back, the closest she could get to the property limits. Ignoring the John Deere, she threw herself into the station wagon, twisted the key, put the car in reverse, and gunned the engine. Using her mirrors, she aimed for the west edge of the property, trying to hit the line right before the cornfield began.

The tractor made a roaring sound, but Claire ignored it, focusing on the rapidly approaching cornfields behind her. Time to see if the property could guard all of its sides at the same time.

The steering wheel, without a whisper of command, took a hard left, wrenching her wrist so hard she yelped, and the back end of the car crashed into the corn. Claire growled under her breath and floored it again, thinking she might still be able to hit the west edge before the tractor hit the southern one. The car stalled out.

Claire slammed her hands against the wheel. The engine revved, but the car wouldn’t move. The tractor had simply ground to a halt ten feet away from the line. The brick thudded to the ground beside it as she watched.

She got out of the station wagon and, shrieking up at the sky out of sheer frustration, took off running through the stalks of corn, headed at an angle for the end of the rows. An hour later, with the field’s edge still a hundred yards off, she gave up. The outside world, as ever, eluded her.

A drop of water hit her forehead. She stopped, craned her neck up, and was greeted with the downpour.

Claire sighed. Panting, she looked around and got her bearings; she had made it more than halfway through the field, and it would make more sense to go east and hole up in the barn for a bit. She swore and took off through the stalks.

As she walked, Claire wondered again whether she’d ever left the farm. As always, she sifted through her memories that seemed confused, jumbled like a deck of cards, and vague, washed out and pastel, mostly composed of smells and sounds and maybe a fleeting image. There had been a time when she’d had a mother, but no one had ever explained why she’d left. She thought the weather had been worse when she was young. She was almost sure she’d been off the property because she had hazy memories of computers that were not the old desktop that didn’t connect to the internet and of people who were not her mother and father. If she got a whiff of recollection she would stop in her tracks, screw her eyes shut, and try to follow the flash of memory down the rabbit hole. If she ever came close to catching up, it disappeared, like a mirage. All she was sure of was the farm, her father, and the vague recollection of a mother. And herself, she supposed. She could be reasonably sure that she existed.

The barn loomed ahead, gray and weathered, the last of the peeling paint stripped away years ago. The weathervane on the roof spun manically. Claire opened the large doors and slipped inside. Her teeth knocked together.

It was blessedly warm in the barn. Claire sloughed off her wet sweatshirt and hung it on a beam, hoping it would dry. The stalls might make a decent place to sleep if she could get warm enough. Maybe there were moving blankets somewhere that she could curl under into a ball. She wrapped her arms around herself. Outside, thunder crashed. Lightning followed before she could even begin counting seconds.

whumwhumwhumwhumwhumwhum

Cocking her head to one side, Claire frowned. Through the storm, she could hear a continuous hum. She shook her head, as if to get water out of her ears, and wondered if they were ringing from the crack of the lightning, but the buzz didn’t fade.

THUMPwhumwhumwhumwhumwhumTHUUUUUUMP

Claire jumped. Her hand rustled around her bag, looking for her flashlight. Once its feeble beam illuminated the barn, she made her way toward the old stalls. Maybe they had once held horses. She thought she remembered a few, along with a dog. But there had been no other life on the farm since her father died, though sometimes she heard the scurries of rats.

whumwhumwhumwhumwhumwhumwhum

But rats weren’t making this noise. Rats didn’t whir or hum or whatever it was. And the thumps were too big. Almost like a washing machine with a load that’s gone off balance. Claire shivered and tried to convince herself it was from the cold. Making her way across the room, she stumbled, fell on her hands and knees and groaned. As she picked herself up, she looked back at what she’d tripped on.

The floor was just slightly uneven, the grain of the wood not quite lining up. There was a square-shaped depression, less than half an inch lower than the rest of the floor. The humming, interrupted by another thump, was coming from below it.

At once, Claire both felt like a fool for not noticing it before and had a great desire never to think of it again.

She’d figured out a while back that if the land didn’t want her to make a discovery, she got a feeling of unease, a craving to stuff her curiosity away. Sometimes it happened if she wandered too close to the edge of the farm. It had been so bad during her attempt to tunnel a way out from the basement that she had nearly abandoned the project — and that was before the collapse. Now, the feeling was creeping up on her in the dead center of the estate. Claire forced herself to crawl toward the depression, which, she realized as she squinted at it, was a trap door with rusty hinges.

Outside, the wind picked up. Shingles ripped off the barn roof. Claire’s limbs felt heavy.

Grasping the edges, she pulled the trap door open by degrees, breathing heavily. Metal rungs led into the darkness, and cold air emanated from below. The sound immediately intensified, causing her to shy away before slowly creeping back to the open door.

whumTHUMMMMMMPwhumwhumwhuTHUUUUUmpwhum

Something was down there, something big. It was moving around beneath her, ungainly and off kilter. She peered down, thinking about how alone she was. The farm had never frightened her like this before. Infuriated her, puzzled her, made her uneasy, absolutely. But never before had she felt this ice-cold fear. There was no one to help her, she thought, and now it wasn’t an inconvenience so much as a terrifying realization. She was alone. Unless she descended into darkness and found out she wasn’t.

Claire leaned cautiously over the square-shaped hole, but all she could see were some metal rungs which lead down, down, down. The wrong feeling still crept at the edges of her brain, but she ignored it.

The wind sounded like someone screaming. Claire threw her legs over the edge and clung to the metal rungs. The climb down took longer than she’d expected, and the humming was so loud she felt it in her bones.

The moment her head dipped below the barn floor, her mind cleared so suddenly that she paused and shook herself before she continued her way down. The nagging worry she’d become familiar with was replaced by a calmness, a feeling of reaching an inevitable conclusion. The feeling of looking up from a book you’d been immersed in, only to find the sun has set and you haven’t noticed.

When her feet touched concrete, she could no longer hear the wind howling outside or the rain on the barn roof but the whumwhumwhum continued. She’d left the flashlight on the floor, where she’d dropped it, but there was a lighter in her pocket. She flicked it on and looked at the place she’d lived above for twenty-odd years.

The room was the size of an airplane hangar, bigger than the building above it. Claire could not see all of it, but there were banks of machines. That was where the sound was coming from. As she watched, one of the machines shook, and she heard another thump, as if something had come loose inside it.

Across the room was some sort of control panel. Claire moved toward it, found the trackball mouse, and shook the screens awake.

There were two screens of video surveillance footage, one a satellite view of the farm and the surrounding lands, but where the house and fields and barn should be, there was a metal dome. The ground was dry and cracked, pavement heaving here and there, making the road obviously undrivable. There were no trees in any direction, but dust was blowing in vicious little cyclones. The clouds looked wrong, the sky too dark. There was something lying on the road that she couldn’t quite make out, a car, maybe.

Claire eased herself into the office chair in front of the screens. The other one showed static. Lines of code ran down a third monitor too fast for her to read.

On the desk was a battered notebook. It had her mother’s name scrawled on the front.

The first page seemed to be a map of the property, the dome she’d seen in the security footage sketched in. The next page listed “protocols.”

1. Temperature will vary between 0 degrees Fahrenheit and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, in imitation of midwestern seasons circa 2005.

2. Filtration of used water and PH balancing of rain that falls on the dome will maintain hydration of subject and the vegetation.

Claire skipped the rest of the list and began flipping through the rest of the journal. The next page read: “failsafes”

1. The perimeter will scramble any telephone or radio signal.

2. The perimeter will shut down or disable any engine that comes within five feet of it.

3. The perimeter will trigger feelings of unease when approached by the subject, regulated through the memory chip.

Claire’s hands shook.

The Subject:

Claire Larsen, hereafter referred to as “The Subject” is the center and purpose of the simulation. All protocols will aim to ensure that the subject does not become aware of the outside world inadvertently. The subject will undergo memory repression at age twelve. Frequent doses of Rexam, a generic sedative, will be administered by Dr. Larsen in order prevent the subject from feeling dissatisfied with the simulation and discovering its weak points. This will preserve the subject’s quality of life.

The subject’s nutrition will be integrated via a small garden located behind the main house. Nutrition rich items will be simulated to look like fruits and vegetables common before the collapse. Canned goods will also be stockpiled in the basement pantry.

Claire paused for a moment, her hands gripping the notebook so tightly that the pages began to come away from the spine, and looked up. Tacked to the wall was a newspaper, yellow and faded. She took out the thumbtack, carefully, afraid she was shaking so hard she would rip the thin newsprint. It was dated January twentieth, 2173. The headline read Climate Protestors Clash With Nat’l Guard. Under a photo of a woman she recognized instantly, shouting at a police officer’s riot shield, was the caption “Dr. Anne Larsen, climatologist, among other protestors.” The woman’s sign read “We Are Out of Time.”

Claire spotted another notebook, this one shoved behind the monitor. She reached for it, opened it. A diary. She flipped through, the words blurring. The last entry was dated “July 7, 2184.”

Did a test run today. Loaded the simulation up in Earnest’s chip, let him roam around. He says it’s idyllic. Asked if I wanted a turn, but I said I missed how things were too much, wouldn’t want to come back. He was completely unable to escape, and he hasn’t even had the memory wipe. It’ll work.

We’ll have one more night with her, then I’ll start the program and head out. I doubt I’ll get very far. I’d never tell Earnest, but I think it’s a fool’s errand. I’ll die of radiation poisoning (because of course they tried replacing the oil with nukes when they realized accepted how bad things were, and of course it went horribly wrong) before I find anyone else alive, if anyone else is. The Midwest was lonely before the collapse; now it’s desolate. I’d rather just huddle here, with my family, as long as we can, but we said we wanted to find what’s left of the world for our little girl. The simulation is only temporary. That’s what we told ourselves.

I’ll gear up and leave tomorrow, and Earnest and Claire will live peaceful lives ‘til I get back. They’ll be safe inside the dome. Claire will never know she’s living on an earth razed by humankind. Not that there’s much humankind left. She’ll be safe.

And if, the if Earnest won’t let me talk about, if I die, if he dies, it’s not such a bad place to live out her days.

The rest of the pages were blank.

Claire dropped the notebooks onto the desk. Leaning backward in the creaky office chair, she listened to the whirring of all the computer fans and gazed at the shadowy banks of machines that composed her entire world.

In the corner of the monitor where code ran endlessly, the time and date read “2:04 a.m., 2204.”

Her fumbling fingers brushed the dusty keyboard. The escape key brought her to another screen that read “Control Panel.”

Adjust Settings

Recalibrate

Emergency Mode

Shut Down

Shaking, she double-clicked the last button.

Are you sure you wish to exit?

She stabbed the enter key.

Please enter your password:

Pawing through the notebooks, her hands ripping the fragile pages, Claire found Username: Dr_Larsen76 and Password: Helmhotlz!

She paused for a moment, thinking of every clear, blue sky, of the billowy clouds, of every perfect snowflake she’d ever melted on her tongue. She remembered gingerbread, the smell of fresh-cut grass, every first warm, spring day. Rain. Crickets at night. Candle flames. Everything and anything that made up a life, lines and lines of code.

Helmholtz!

Around her, the whirring of the computers slowed to a stop. The room seemed to breathe a last exhale and then still. This time, her ears really did ring in the silence. Claire stood up, shoved her mother’s diary into her back pocket, and climbed up the iron ladder.

She was standing in a dirt field, covered by a gray dome. There was no trace of the house or the barn. Where she’d tended the cornfields, there was only empty space.

And then, up ahead, a door.

Claire walked slowly, her feet dragging through dry soil. The door was gray, utilitarian. She put a hand on the knob, twisted. As she opened it, a gust of wind hit her, nearly making her stumble back.

Outside, the world was dark. Dust blew into her face. Thunder and lightning crackled.

Not two hundred yards down the road she could make out a car, identical to the station wagon she’d driven, or imagined she’d driven, so many times, toppled on its side, partially covered with sand. Why or how it had crashed was unclear, but it had not moved for a long time. Above, the sky was dark.

Claire stood, silhouetted in the doorway. Lightning cracked, and for a moment, she saw bare ground stretching out before her, empty up to the horizon. In the split second of light, Claire made out a withered hand reaching out the car’s driver-side window, grasping at nothingness.

Then, everything was black again.

Rain began, coming down so hard it obscured the road, the car, and the reaching hand. Claire stepped back, closed the door, turned the lock. She stood, with her hand on the knob for a few moments.

She realized that since seeing the paper, she could remember her mother’s face, her voice, her hands. Slowly, pieces were falling into place, out of order but connected. The newspaper woman reading to her in a rocking chair, pacing the room and pushing her hair out of her face, putting Claire on her shoulders at, yes, a demonstration like the one in the photo. Her father at the kitchen table, talking softly to her mother. Her mother getting into the station wagon and leaving, saying she didn’t know when she’d be back. The memories fell softly like raindrops, arranging themselves into place like a jigsaw puzzle.

Claire ran her fingers across her skull, wondering where the chip was. She supposed her mother and father must have known it couldn’t last a lifetime without glitching. Maybe they’d really thought they’d be around to remove it.

She climbed back down the metal ladder and returned to the computer desk. Claire jiggled the mouse and the control panel reappeared.

Restart.

Reopen saved session?

Please enter your password:

Helmholtz!

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