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The Arithmetic of Survival

The hum stopped.

Cristian lay in darkness, eyes open, listening to silence that shouldn’t exist. The 60Hz frequency that lived in walls and floor and teeth — gone. Just gone. Like the city’s heart had stopped.

His chest tightened. Wrong. This was wrong.

He counted heartbeats. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty.

Somewhere down the hall, a door opened. Footsteps. Multiple pairs — measured, official.

A knock. Muffled voices. Another door.

Gabriel shifted in the other bed, springs creaking. “Cris?”

“It’s nothing.” The words came automatic. “Mm. Go back to sleep, Gabe.”

“The sound stopped.”

“I know.”

“Feels wrong.”

It felt like drowning. Cristian stared at the ceiling he couldn’t see, tracking footsteps through thin walls. Third door down. Fourth. They were working toward this end of the hall.

Fifth door. His door was sixth.

The footsteps passed. Kept going. Faded.

Springs creaked. A rustle of fabric. Then silence again, punctuated only by Gabriel’s breathing, already slowing back toward sleep.

Cristian remained awake, staring at nothing, waiting. Gabriel had never liked loud noises. Even now, silence frightened him more.

At some point — minutes or hours, impossible to tell — the hum returned. It started deep, subsonic, a tremor through the floor that reached his bones before his ears registered sound. Then it built, climbing toward that familiar 60Hz frequency: the city’s electrical grid, the Dome’s power distribution, the network of transformers and substations that kept this place breathing. It vibrated through his teeth like a drill bit working enamel. Pressure built behind his eyes, in his sinuses, as if his skull were a resonance chamber designed specifically for this frequency. The building hummed with it — pipes in walls, rebar in concrete, metal window frames all conducting the same electrical heartbeat. The lights didn’t come back on, but the sound was there, invasive and constant, burrowing into the spaces between thought. And with it, a strange sense of relief. The world hadn’t ended. The machinery was still running. They were still trapped, but at least the trap was familiar.

Sleep never came back though. He watched the ceiling fade from black to gray as dawn seeped through the single window.

* * *

Morning meant arithmetic.

Bread, two credits. Beans, three if the corner vendor still had yesterday’s batch. Permit renewal next week, eighteen credits non-negotiable. Electricity this month had jumped to forty-two.

Cristian sat at the small table, writing numbers on the back of an old form. The pencil stub was worn to nothing. He pressed hard to make marks show.

He did the math by habit. The numbers never changed — too many digits for survival, not enough for living.

The pencil point broke.

Gabriel emerged from the bathroom, hair sticking up at odd angles, eyes half-closed. He’d shower exactly seven minutes — Cristian had timed it once. Then the bathroom ritual: toothbrush positioned parallel to the sink edge, towel folded in thirds, comb returned to its exact spot on the shelf. Order imposed on the small space he could control. After breakfast, Gabriel would spend an hour organizing his collection on the windowsill — buttons by color, broken watch parts by size, the cracked compass always centered. Then he’d read the same three books they owned, lips moving silently, fingers tracing words he’d memorized years ago. By afternoon he’d be at the window, watching the street, humming fragments of songs their mother used to sing. The same patterns, every day, predictable as the hum.

“Morning,” Gabriel mumbled.

“Morning.”

Cristian pulled two heels of bread from the cabinet — yesterday’s, hard as wood now — and set them on the counter. He poured water into the pot, struck a match, and set it to boil. The gas flame was pale blue, barely hot enough. Another thing that needed fixing, another expense he couldn’t afford.

Gabriel sat at the small table they’d salvaged from the street three years ago. One of the legs was shorter than the others, so it wobbled whenever you touched it. He propped his elbows on the surface carefully, watching Cristian with that quiet attentiveness he’d had since childhood.

“Did you sleep?” Gabriel asked.

“Enough.”

“The people in the hallway — ”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The water took forever to boil.

Gabriel ate steady, humming between bites. Cristian chewed the crust slow, making it last, and drank metallic water from a chipped cup. Not coffee. Coffee was twelve credits for the smallest bag and lasted three days if he stretched it.

“You’re not eating much,” Gabriel said.

“I ate already.”

“No, you didn’t. I would’ve heard.”

“Earlier. Before you woke up.”

Gabriel’s chewing slowed. “You always say that.”

Gabriel frowned but didn’t push. He never pushed. That was the problem — he believed everything, trusted completely. Cristian collected the plates, rinsed them in cold water, set them in the rack.

“I’ll be back by twenty hundred,” he said. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“I know.”

“Even if they say they’re from — ”

“The pattern is always the same. Don’t answer unless it’s you.” Gabriel’s hands tapped the table edge. Three taps, pause, three taps. The pattern was precise, mathematical. It had been the same sequence since childhood — when he felt cornered, when words weren’t enough.

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You think it though.”

Cristian pulled on his uniform jacket — gray, threadbare at elbows. “I don’t think that.”

“Then why do you always — ”

“Gabriel.” He forced his voice soft. “I just want you safe. That’s all.”

The tapping stopped. Gabriel looked down. “Okay.”

Cristian picked up his permit card, checked the corner. He slipped it into his breast pocket, felt its weight there like accusation.

“Be good,” he said.

Gabriel didn’t answer. Just went back to his humming, fingers starting the tapping rhythm again.

Cristian paused at the narrow shelf by the door — barely wide enough for keys and permits. Gabriel’s documents sat in a plastic sleeve; edges worn from handling. He pulled them out by reflex, checked the stamps even though nothing had changed since yesterday. Medical exemption, valid through next month. Housing permit, renewable in six weeks. The numbers were already in his head, part of the arithmetic that governed their lives.

He slid the papers back. Gabriel didn’t need to know how often he checked them, how many scenarios he ran through in the dark hours before dawn. What would happen if the medical exemption expires. What would happen if they raise the renewal fee. What would happen if someone looks too closely at Gabriel’s condition and decides he needs “evaluation.”

The hum had been back for hours now. He’d stopped noticing it again. Easier that way.

Cristian closed the door behind him. The hallway smelled of rust and sleep. Forty doors on this level. Gray paint. Number plates. All the same. He passed the door where the checks had stopped last night. The frame looked the same as always. No signs of struggle. No blood on the floor. Whatever compliance meant, it had been quiet.

He took stairs.

* * *

Outside, the city waited in its perpetual twilight.

The streets were half-buried in industrial smog, a thick gray haze that clung to everything and made breathing feel like work. Overhead, the Dome. He’d stopped looking at it years ago — just another ceiling, armadillo plates blotting out whatever sky used to mean. Each segment the size of a city block. Someone had calculated that once. Someone had cared about measurements. The SYSTEM called it protection. A shield against external threats.

The depot squatted like something trying not to be noticed. Fog filled the space between platforms, thick enough to wade through. Cristian showed his permit at the gate — the guard scanned it, waved him through without eye contact. Inside, the mechanical smell hit: diesel, metal shavings, electrical burn. His uniform absorbed it until he couldn’t tell where the depot ended and he began.

Three other drivers clustered near the scheduler’s window, smoking. Martinez, Chen, somebody new. Cristian kept his eyes on the gate, nodded without looking, kept walking. Martinez called something about the hydraulics, or last night, or nothing — Cristian didn’t slow down to parse it.

The train waited on Track 4. Industrial series, sixteen cars, passenger and freight mixed. He’d driven this route too often to remember, the repetition worn smooth like the throttle grip.

He climbed into the cab, pulled the door shut. The space was narrow, just wide enough for the driver’s seat and control panel. Everything worn smooth from hands and bodies: throttle grip polished, seat cushion compressed to nothing, floor scuffed to raw metal. The familiarity should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like slowly disappearing — each day wearing away another piece of himself until only the routine remained. He sat. Checked the panel — fuel gauge, brake pressure, electrical systems all green. Started the pre-departure sequence automatic, hands moving through switches and levers like prayer.

The radio crackled. “Track Four, you’re clear for 0700 departure. Route Sigma-9, standard loop.”

Cristian keyed the mic. “Acknowledged.”

He pulled the throttle. The train shuddered, coupled cars clanging down the line, and slid forward into the tunnel mouth.

* * *

Sigma-9: the same four stops, the same ninety-four minutes, three times per shift with automated announcements echoing through cars.

“Next stop: Millstone Station. Exit right. Mind the gap.”

The tunnel walls slid past — concrete streaked with water stains, occasional maintenance lights throwing yellow pools into darkness. Pipes ran overhead, wrapped in corroded insulation, intersected with trailing wires sprouted like tumors.

The propaganda screens were new. They’d started appearing six months ago, bolted to tunnel walls at regular intervals. He’d stopped reading them after the first week. Now they were just light, cycling colors, something to mark distance by.

Cristian watched the screens blur past and thought about nothing.

The train emerged into Millstone Station — platform lit by buzzing fluorescents that turned skin gray. Passengers boarded. He didn’t look at them. Just waited for the chime, checked the board, pulled the throttle again.

Crossbridge. Industrial Annex. Back to Central.

Repeat.

The days bled into each other. Nothing grew here. Nothing changed.

On the second circuit, Chen’s voice came over the radio. “Track Four, you seeing the inspection reports? Three drivers transferred this month. Makes you wonder.”

Cristian glanced at the radio. Didn’t answer.

“You still alive up there, Four?”

He keyed the mic. “Busy.”

“Yeah. Busy driving in a straight line.” Chen laughed, but it sounded wrong. Tired. “See you at Central.”

The radio went quiet.

* * *

On the third circuit, at Millstone, the train developed a hydraulic issue. Brake pressure dropping slow. Not dangerous yet, but procedure said stop and log it. Cristian radioed the depot, got clearance for a fifteen-minute hold.

He stepped onto the platform.

Millstone was the oldest station, carved back when they’d thought the Dome was temporary. The walls still showed tool marks — pick and drill scars from manual labour. Most stations had been smoothed, refinished, covered with propaganda posters. Millstone just had rock and rust and the steady drip of condensation from somewhere high up.

Cristian lit a cigarette. Cheap brand, harsh. Five credits for a pack of twenty. He’d been rationing them — one per day, sometimes two if the shift ran bad.

At the platform’s far end, maintenance equipment sat abandoned. Old track sections, a broken crane arm, piles of cable spools rotting in the damp. Cristian walked toward it without deciding to. His boots echoed on concrete.

Something moved in the crane arm.

He stopped. Looked up.

A bird. Small, brown, ordinary. It hopped along the crane’s horizontal beam, had something in its beak. Cloth. Stained, frayed — from someone’s discarded shirt probably. It reached a junction where the crane arm met the support pillar, ducked into a gap between metal plates, emerged without the cloth.

Cristian took another drag, watching.

The bird hopped back along the beam, launched itself into the dark, disappeared. It came back again, another scrap of fabric in its beak — steady, tireless, as if repetition itself were defiance.

Building a nest. Here. In this rusted piece of machinery.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes left.

The bird returned with more cloth. It didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t care about the trains or the passengers or the weight of the Dome pressing down. Just worked, piece by piece, building something small and fragile in the gap between metal and stone.

The train horn blared behind him — automated warning, five minutes to departure. Passengers shuffled toward cars.

He stayed another thirty seconds, watching. The bird made two more trips. Each time it disappeared into the gap between metal plates, emerged empty-beaked, launched itself back into darkness without hesitation.

At the cab door he paused. Looked back.

The nest was barely visible in the gap. Just a shadow, really. A small dark shape that could’ve been anything.

Small and dark and still there.

He climbed into the cab. Pulled the door shut. The throttle was cold under his palm, metal leeching warmth from skin. He checked the board — hydraulic pressure holding steady enough for now. Good enough.

He pulled.

Ghosts Of The Past

The train moved. Millstone station shrank behind, the nest disappearing into machinery darkness. The image stayed. Twig by twig. Scrap by scrap.

The train swallowed distance. Tunnel walls blurred past in their endless repetition — same graffiti, same rust stains, same flickering lights at intervals measured in his bones now.

The nest wouldn’t leave him. Something about the methodical work. The repetition that looked like purpose, building something small against machinery that didn’t want it there. He’d seen that before. Felt it in his own body — hands moving through crop rows, day after day, muscles learning the rhythm until thinking became optional. Survival as ritual.

A ventilation grate passed overhead. Dust spiralled in the beam. Golden for a moment. Then gone.

Dust catches light. Dust—

* * *

Heat. Dust hanging golden in late afternoon air, each particle visible against the sun. His shirt stuck to his back, fabric dark with sweat, shoulders burning where the straps bit in. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. The crops stretched forever — row after row disappearing into heat shimmer, and his thighs screamed from squatting all day, fingers cramping around stems he’d cut until they bled through the cheap gloves.

The diesel engine coughed in the distance, some foreman shouting in Spanish that blurred into cicada scream. Everyone was standing now, work day done, bodies unfolding slowly, joints cracking, spines announcing themselves.

Kamilio stood two rows over, massive even then, shoulders blocking out the sun, casting shadow across the furrows. His shirt was the same sun-bleached blue they all wore, but on him it pulled tight across shoulders that could’ve held up a roof. He was watching the younger ones, making sure everyone made it up. Big Brother Bear. Someone had called him that months ago and it stuck — that patient protective bulk, positioning himself between smaller things and whatever came next.

“Christ,” Rafael said, appearing at Cristian’s elbow, wiry and grinning despite the exhaustion pulling at all their faces. “I’m so tired I could marry this dirt. Have little dirt babies with it.”

Someone laughed. Esteban laughed, pulling his flask from somewhere, metal catching light. His eyes already had that edge. Restless. Waiting for something to push against.

Adrian didn’t laugh. Never did. He stood apart, scanning the camp perimeter. Watching. Always watching.

“How many more days?” someone asked. Cristian didn’t remember who. One of the others who didn’t make it, whose names dissolved into the static of survival.

“Same as yesterday,” Kamilio said, his voice low