Life was clear for Ashken Liebowitz only in the early hours before the sun’s light filtered through the ceiling. He stayed in bed and stared at the absolute darkness the house provided. He listened to the whirls and groans originating from inside the walls. The noises sounded labored as the machines that kept the house alive winded down. Occasionally he would hear a rumbling groan followed by a loud pop. He had come to know this sequence as an indication that yet another of the house’s systems had died.

He had never seen any of the house’s internal machines. Even when a wall crumbled, he found nothing after digging through the rubble. He knew the Moderns who created the machines were powerful. Ashken just wished that they had left some indication of how their powers worked; some ritual he could perform to keep their machines working.

Ashken reached over to the night table and fumbled with its contents until he found the lamp and flash stick. He lifted the glass from the lamp and sniffed the oil. It had a brackish smell that burned his nostrils and worked its way up through his nasal canal and into his head. He felt the smell trying to escape through his eyelids and had to steady himself by grabbing the edge of the bed. He sparked the flash stick and used its brief light to find the lamp’s wick. On the next flash, the wick caught fire and black acrid smoke gathered above the flame. He covered the flame with the glass. The light brightened even as the black smoke collected inside the lamp. He watched a small tendril of black smoke rise from the lamp and bend slightly toward the corner of the ceiling before the smoke accelerated and vanished into what looked like solid material.

The lamp illuminated Ashken’s room, one of the few places left in the house that had its original walls, and the only remaining room in the house—and his father had claimed with disgust, probably in the entire enclave—where the door automatically opened when approached. The ceiling was still dark and the lamp cast Ashken’s shadow across the wall.

Ashken clapped his hands together silently three times and waved each hand away from his face. He knew it was not wise to tempt the Moderns. He had learned the waving in town. His father would have laughed if he had seen him perform the ritual. His laughter would have quickly turned to anger if he had realized that Ashken was not aping the townspeople. While his father did not generally approve of ridicule, when it came to what he called superstitious rituals, he made an exception. Ashken knew that there was much even his father did not understand about the Moderns and their world. To make light of the rituals that kept the people safe seemed foolhardy, regardless of what his father claimed to know.

Ashken thought about returning to bed to escape the day. Even from the lamp’s low light, he could see the day’s problems. Piled throughout the rooms were the working Moderns’ machines his father had collected from around the house. His father had begun stockpiling them in Ashken’s room because of the working door. For reasons neither of them understood or could control, the door would only open for Ashken and his father. Things had grown tense in town over the past few months. His father was rarely at home, as he attended meetings and gave talks to any of the people still willing to listen. His father patiently explained to people who had heard him explain this hundreds of times before that Washen’s Enclave was one of the few remaining civilized enclaves. The Moderns had built its walls and defenses, and his father would extol the virtues of these machines in protecting the enclave and its people from the chaos that had spread outside its boundaries.

Washen had always seemed a safe place when Ashken was young. It was only when the Moderns’ machines and defenses started to break down, that things began to change. There was a renewed grumbling about leadership, direction, and reliance on the Moderns’ machines. At first it was a low din, a minor complaint at a town meeting, or a parent expressing concerns for their child’s future. But as the walls that surrounded the enclave and worked within the enclave weakened, that din grew louder until it dominated most discussions. No longer did the people debate their farming plans or discuss marriages or emigrations into and from the enclave. Instead, the people and his father spent most of their time arguing about whether to rely on the Moderns’ machines or sell them for tradable goods. More recently, another voice had joined the debate, the voice of Deidre Diamond. She did not discuss relying on or trading the Moderns’ machines. She only talked of destroying them, and with them, she claimed, their spirits, which held sway over the enclave and its people.

The appearance of the morning sun removed Ashken’s hopes of hiding from his problems in bed. The room’s ceiling glowed for a moment and then lightened until it was transparent. Ashken felt the dark blue sky hanging down heavily on him. Bright pinks and streaks of red appeared lower on the sky, visible because the ceiling, which moments before had been flat and at a right angle to the wall, now looked rounded, and provided Ashken with a hemispherical view to the lower edges of the sky. He shook his head not for the first time at the sight of the sky replacing the ceiling. As a child, he had believed himself the luckiest boy in Washen’s Enclave. Ashken could not say when he stopped thinking of the house and the Moderns’ machines as something other than gifts. Ashken clapped and waved his hands to scare away the spirits of the Moderns’ machines.

The smooth floor was cold when Ashken stepped from the bed. He reached under the mattress and removed the three warming stones. They were still warm to the touch. He left them on top of his bed. He would have to heat them before returning to bed tonight. It had been many years since the house could effectively regulate the interior temperatures.

Ashken started to the door and abruptly stopped. The door did not hiss and slide open as it had done countless times before. Ashken ran his hands along the edges of the cold door. He tried to force the door up, but it did not budge. He walked to the other side of his room and approached the door again, this time slowly. The door did not open as he approached. Ashken repeated this from different angles, but each time the door remained closed.

Ashken did not enjoy tight spaces, and while his room was large, the thought of not being able to leave it worried him. The Moderns had built the walls and the door. Besides creating machines that did seemingly impossible things, the Moderns also used almost magical materials. Not one of the tools in Washen’s Enclave could even put a dent in the Moderns’ construction. Usually, with age, the Moderns’ walls crumbled or broke away. As far as he could remember, the crumbling happened unexpectedly and completely. A wall or the machines inside the wall would fail, and the wall would crumble and fall down.

As the feelings toward the Moderns changed over the last few years, fewer and fewer people still lived or worked in Moderns’ buildings. For the most part, the people of Washen’s Enclave abandoned the Moderns’ buildings, and built wooden and stone huts between the architectural remnants of the Moderns’ work. It was only when an entire Moderns’ building fell away that the people were able to build over the land. The remnants usually left a chalky residue, which made for a fine base to any new construction.

The sight of the open sky over the ceiling calmed Ashken. He knew from experience that if he reached up he would find the ceiling, but even so, he felt less trapped with the open sky overhead. Ashken took a deep breath and positioned his shoulder to push against the door. When it did not move, he tried again, this time lowering his shoulder to better leverage the door. He flung his chair against the door and cracked the warming stones against the door. The door did not budge.

He banged on the door with his fists. He imagined himself stuck in his room, unable to escape, starving until he died. “Help,” he screamed. “Is anyone there? There’s something wrong with my door.” Ashken put his ear to the wall to listen for a response. The Moderns’ designed their walls well. Except for the noises of the house—which he heard everywhere in the house, but could not pinpoint a specific location—very little noise escaped or entered his room with the doors closed. Ashken knew this well. He had grown accustomed to sleeping almost in complete silence with only the noises of the house to keep him company.

Ashken grew more concerned as the minutes passed. He did not hear any activity on the other side of the door. He forced himself to calm down. There should be a way out. He then remembered the machines scattered throughout his room. He began checking on each of the Moderns’ machines his father had stored in his room. He resisted the urge to throw them against the door. Instead, he tried to remember what each machine did. Neither Ashken nor his father knew what most of the machines did. They knew they worked only by the noises they made. The Liebowitz family had passed the machines down through the family. His great grandfather had known what most of the machines did. His grandfather, however, was not much interested in the Moderns’ machines, and he passed down the little knowledge he had learned to his son, Ashken’s father.

While his father would not speak poorly of his parents, Ashken knew that he never forgave him for not teaching him more about the Moderns’ machines. His father was a firm believer that if it was not for the Moderns’ help, the Washen’s Enclave would not have survived. As Ashken surveyed the room, he recognized a small green box with tiny holes drilled in a circular pattern. He held it in front of his mouth and said “hello?”

Ashken heard his voice echoed throughout the room. From experience with the small green box, he knew his voice would be echoing throughout the house. His father called it a speaker box. His father enjoyed taking it out during dinner parties. He called it a party trick. Ashken’s friend, Jessica Garms, had spent many hours prodding and examining this box in hopes of figuring out its secrets. She enjoyed focusing on the machines that she knew what they did. She said it helped to understand the purpose when trying to determine how it worked.

“The door in my room is stuck,” Ashken said into the small green box. “It won’t open.” Ashken heard his voice echo off the walls of his room. “Please help me,” he said, his voice softening and growing quiet. On the ceiling, he watched the sun lift over the horizon. One of the advantages of watching the sunrise in his room was that he could stare at the sun as it made its way across the sky. The sun was still bright on his ceiling, but the image was not dangerously bright. When he looked away from the ceiling, he did not even see spots.

Ashken blew out the lamp and waved the black smoke away from his face. He sat on the bed. It was early and his father should have heard him. Ashken pulled his knees close in to his chest. Even if he heard him, Ashken was not sure his father could figure a way to open the door. Ashken tried not to think of it and focused on the sky, watching the winter clouds work their way across his beautiful azure ceiling.

Word count: 2,030

Remaining words: 47,970

Feeling: I wrote too much exposition and not enough of the story. The ideas were there and I wanted to get them out. I was also guilty of editing quite a bit. First day jitters, I hope. Once I get into a better flow, I will stop worrying about style and grammar and substance, and start barfing on the page. Trust me, I’m a big fan of barfing. It’s just that it takes a while to find the sweet spot when I stick my finger down my throat. I was stuck at about 1,000 words. I forced too much. I was afraid to make things happen. Luckily, tomorrow is a brand new day, with another 2,000-word goal. Oh joy.