A Message from the Underground

Underground is your word for it, you say underground with the same distaste in your mouth as we say daylighters.  For us, underground is here, it is home, friends, family, culture, love, life.  Sometimes life can be a bit tough underground. There have been hard times recently, floods.  We know they are not caused by you but there are things you could do. We do not blame you, I do not blame you. I wanted to say right at the beginning that this is not an angry assault.  I know you have worse words than underground for us, we have worse words for you than daylighters. One of the words I have heard you use is dirtdickers, clever, really, a play on the word diggers which we certainly are, and, the clever bit, we are indeed all well hung though not quite hanging all the way to the ground.  Maybe you should call us nearly-dirtdickers.  So, why are we like this?  Maybe it was in the genes of the first descenders, all that time ago, before the climate catastrophe, maybe it is the diet, or the lifestyle.   

Maybe is a sign that Darwin was right.  

Let me tell you a little about our lifestyle then you can make up your own mind.

My day begins when I wake.  I wake when I wake; of course, as we never see the sun our days have evolved into more individual time.  We used to keep your twenty four hour seven time but we voted for change in time. UT. We backdated UT so zero was our official going underground, now our time has a hundred seconds in a minute, a hundred minutes in an hour, a hundred hours in a day, a hundred days in a year.  Every ten years we attempt to communicate with the overground. Each generation gets to choose the purpose and form of the message. The first time was an exploration. The elders were all still alive then, I have done the calculations and ten years our time is about thirty one years your time.  The elders unsealed the doors they had sealed ten years before to find the predictions had been right. They found nothing but dust, and windswept ruins. The haunting photos from their expedition are in the permanent display. The three expeditions since then have found similar bleakness. This time we are sending out a drone, it will be in communication with us, and should you receive this message, should you reply, we will entertain meeting with you.

But back to life underground.

As you would imagine, life without daylight is a bit like living at night.  We have the thermal generators at the depths of the deep mines our community was built on, but don’t try to find us from the old mineheads, those entrances are long since sealed.  We have a more limited selection of food than the records show from before the climate crisis. There are fewer things that can be cultivated under artificial lighting. And, of course, we have time under the lamps too.  Life is very settled here underground. We are gradually expanding our colony, but mostly we are a stable society.

As you would imagine, living at night we have a sensuous society committed to partying.  We dress only for pleasure as we never have to think about the weather. Today it will be the same temperature as yesterday, as tomorrow, a most comfortable twenty two.  Togas tend to be the go-to fashion, easy, practical with the potential for beautiful even in our poorly lit society. We are tactile and permissive, it is out way. We don’t look down on those who choose to couple up, indeed we respect them, but our norm is promiscuity and seduction.  Pregnancy is uncommon underground and we are untroubled in our small society by STDs.  

So if you are interested in more, respond to this and we can open up a channel of communication.