Liberation Day: Stories

This story takes place in a dystopian society in which a significant portion of the population are forced to live underground in a community that is constantly performing a type of amusement park, role-playing show. The members of this underground society are forced to participate in this fake performance within the pretext that, one day, visitors from above will come to the amusement park. For as long as the narrator, Brian, has known, however, no visitor has ever come underground from the world above.

Brian plays a Squatting Ghoul in this dystopian amusement park. He describes a typical day in his life, which includes going to a communal break room where his colleagues “mate” with one another in public. In the break room, Brian joins his friend Tom (Mr. Frame), who complains that his wife (whose role is in the “Victorian Weekend” segment of the park) is constantly staying in character and performing her accent, even when on break. Tom wonders what the point of this devotion to her work is, when there have never even been any visitors to perform for, and Brian worries that Tom has put him in a “bad spot” for speaking this aloud to him (143).

Later that day, another of Brian’s friends named Rolph speaks out against the rituals and performances that members of this society are forced to partake in. Under the direction of a Monitor—a society member who helps to control and oppress the workers—a group of Brian’s colleagues kicks Rolph to death. Then, Brian goes to Monitoring and Reporting Services, with the intention to tell the leaders about Tom’s verbal transgressions earlier that day. He is stopped, however, by a different colleague who delivers a note from Tom, in which Tom expresses his regret over his words and begs Brian not to report him. Brian decides to let his reporting window expire without reporting Tom’s crime, but he keeps the note from Tom despite Tom’s instructions to destroy it.

The next day, another Monitor named Amy finds Tom’s letter and confronts Tom with it; Tom then “rats out” Brian for colluding with him after Tom’s statement of a “Regrettable Falsehood” (147). As a result, Tom has impunity for being the first person within the conflict to report. Despite this rule, Amy shows favoritism to Brian, and she has Tom kicked to death by a group of workers. After Tom’s death, Amy and Brian kiss, and that night she stays over at Brian’s sleeping quarters. The next morning, a series of floods and power failures occur, and Amy is unsettled after ordering Tom’s death the day before. As Brian and Amy go to work through the flooding, they whisper about the decaying conditions of their underground world and speak sarcastically about the pretense of visitors one day arriving. They realize that a colleague, Gwen, has overheard their conversation, which would constitute criminal behavior in this society. Before Gwen can report them, Amy orders a group of colleagues to kick her to death. A funeral is held for the recently deceased, and their bodies are sent up the “Egress Spout” toward the world above (156). Brian muses about Law 6, which was formed to force people into their amusement park-style roles after the underground society fell to chaos and disorder.

Edgar—Rolph’s son—approaches Brian with a letter from his father. In the letter, Rolph details the reality of the underground world, which he discovered when he went up the Egress Spout as a teenager. Rolph reveals that the Egress Spout is not actually a tunnel to the world above, which the society has been told will one day transport visitors down to their amusement park. Instead, it is just a closed-off tunnel with no connection to the above, atop which is a room full of dead bodies from the world below. In revealing that there will never be visitors, Rolph details how deeply these people are being controlled and manipulated based on deceit. Realizing the magnitude of this oppression, Brian goes to the dining hall to find Amy and discuss it with her.

There, he is approached by two other Monitors named Kiko and Shirley. They express their suspicion over Amy’s command to have Gwen killed earlier. These Monitors tell Brian that they hope to punish Amy for her behavior, to which Brian raises the point of his new knowledge about the Egress Spout. The Monitors reveal that they knew this all along and that Brian is now a member of a small group of citizens who are aware of the reality of this underground society. Amy appears, and the Monitors order their colleagues to attack her; they stun Brian to stop him from helping her escape.

Brian wakes up in a medical setting to the news that Amy illegally went up the Egress Spout to avoid capture. He wonders whether she will die at the top of the Spout among the dead, and he considers joining her. That night, however, Amy falls back down the Spout to her death; a doctor finds a note to Brian in her hand, which he secretly delivers to Brian in the hospital. In the note, Amy writes that she can see light from above through the cracks in the concrete. She sees that the underground and the aboveground society are permanently segregated and that those underground will never see the light of the above world.

Brian reveals his new plan. He will make copies of the letters from Amy and Rolph and distribute them among his colleagues underground to spread the truth of their oppression. He knows that he will be kicked to death for this crime, but he will move forward with his plan anyway.