Free State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield Page B

prepared me for what it actually looks like. The platform is elevated enough to provide me with a sweeping view of the enormous cavern, although not quite as large as Level 3, illuminated by countless LED light strips hanging from the high, curved ceiling. There are so many lights that even though they’re turned down for rest hours, it’s almost as bright as being in the daylight, above. Every inch of polished floor is organized into manufacturing assembly lines, and enormous 3-D printers are unattended and working on their own. I see the nose cone for a flying drone taking shape in one, giant fan blades for our cooling systems being printed in another, and other various indistinguishable parts and pieces being honed and polished and packaged. But what strikes me as the most strange about the setup are the living quarters. They are all windowless and entered by porthole doors off of catwalks that circle the entire perimeter and rise to the ceiling. They are built into the walls, I’m assuming, in order to maximize available workspace below.
    I lag behind Jimmy and Bill and take all of this in as we descend an open flight of stairs to the production floor. It’s an eerie feeling, being surrounded by autonomous machines as we hurry across the facility in the strange, shadowless light that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
    At the far side of the cavern, Bill leads us up steel stairs to a wall of duct vents where giant turbine fans blast cool air into the level. Bill stops in front of one of the fans. The circular opening is twice as tall as he is, and the spinning fan is protected by a cage. I momentarily forget that I’m not supposed to talk, but it doesn’t matter because the blast of cool wind is so strong here that when I open my mouth, it fills with air and my cheeks flutter and flap. I feel like some kind of flatulent idiot.
    Bill presses his palm to a glass plate in the wall next to the fan, and a door in the steel grate slides open. The fan blades whirl just on the other side, spinning so fast that I can clearly glimpse the dim tunnel beyond. Bill turns and gathers Jimmy and me into his arms in a kind of huddle.
    “Listen up,” he says, his voice just barely audible above the wind. “When the fan stops, you’ve got to pass through quickly. No hesitating, understand?”
    We nod that we do.
    With no further instruction, he steps inside the steel cage and we follow. The door closes behind us, and we stand in a narrow breezeway, being blasted with cold air. The fan blades are spinning so close that if I reached out my hand, it would surely be hacked off instantly and blown back into my face.
    The fan comes to an immediate halt. Bill ducks between the blades without a word and disappears on the other side. Jimmy follows. I don’t know why, but I’m gripped with fear. I inch toward the crack between the two blades where the others passed, leaning down to look, but hesitating. Strong hands reach up, wrap around my throat, and jerk me through. The blades take off again full speed, catching my foot and sending my amputated shoe hurling back the way we came. I hear it thud against the steel cage. Jimmy releases his hands from my neck, and we both look back with horror to see if my foot is gone with my shoe. But it’s still there, thankfully. Bill just shakes his head. I kick off my other shoe and carry it in my hand as I follow them barefoot down the windy tunnel.
    The tunnel terminates at a large, vertical shaft into which Bill seems to disappear without a trace. Jimmy and I lean out over the edge and see him clinging to a ladder. There is no light in the shaft itself, but other intersecting ducts cut descending beams of light across its never-ending void. It seems to plunge to the center of the Earth itself.
    “No way am I getting on that ladder,” I shout.
    “You had better,” Bill shouts back, “because there isn’t any going back, unless you want to join what’s left of your shoe by being