character :: Jeffery Peterson
Jeffery is the model Below citizen, shaped in his father’s footprint. As a child, he’s bright, sociable, but most importantly: eager to please. And, with a father who works hard at his role of Governor – he had to be. By the time Jeffery is ten and his little brother is born, it looks like the little family of four is going places! After all the experimentation in the Above is going swell, new tunnels to connect Below populations are dug further every day, and it looks like during his very own generation that things will be looking up for the human race.
will take what's
rightfully ours!
Just like all Below children, Jeffery is taught all about the world he lives in. The people in the Above are radicals who participate in cannibalism and other unthinkable acts, and the people in the Below are intelligent and rational. It’s up to the people Below to comb through the heathens Above, to cherry-pick those who deserve to live and repopulate the Earth so many years after the bombs were dropped. And for those who live Below, the pressure to unite societies is growing: people are getting sick, going blind...others are dying as old-war technology runs out in their vast stores. If it weren’t for the savages who lived Above, the world would be a better place: this is the platform for which his father runs his region, and this is the belief system that cultivates Jeffery’s household.
It’s not all that bad living underground, really. Especially if what lies above is a mystery: but the curiosity is deafening to Jeffery as he grows older. He tries to walk the straight and narrow, and his father knows just the distraction for a boy of Jeffery’s caliber: a business partner from a neighboring region just so happens to have a sweet young daughter about Jeffery’s age. They are introduced, and just as could be expected, the two take instantly to each other. The guise of mystery and danger associated with pre-marital dating in this proper society is just enough activity to keep Jeffery placated: and being one of the only teens in his school with a real girlfriend gives the young man just as much street cred as he needs to boost his popularity. So, when his girl announces shortly after graduation that she has big plans to major in the detested Humanitarian studies, and is gunning for a position in the Junior Panel – Jeffery is furious. He places all of his rightful ownership over her as his betrothed to change her mind: but, she’s stubborn. Jeffery’s father suggests that maybe her feminine impulsivity will be spent soon enough, and with the hopes that Bridget will come to her senses, he allows her to continue on her way. Besides, he’s got his own difficulties to face.
After all, Bridget isn’t the only teen who’s expected to pick a life-path just after schooling. Jeffery takes the expected path, placing his intent to follow in his father’s footsteps as a politician. He’s well-liked and immediately swept into a secretive way of life that Jeffery had never even dreamt about: apparently, the society he’s always known and loved isn’t all that it seemed. Jeffery now has the power to travel freely from the Above and the Below, and all of the caverns and networks in between: and the freedom he has to do as he wishes is intoxicating. Suddenly, Bridget’s actions seem juvenile and his entire world seems so much larger. The people who live in the Above are his playthings, and Jeffery finds himself judge, jury, and executioner under the watchful eye of his father and a group of other politicians who live double lives.
Jeffery becomes obsessed with watching over what is rightfully his, and what he sees fills him with rage. Bridget starts gallivanting around the Above, intermingling with Abovegrounders as if their filthy kind deserved it! His only interactions with those savages is rightful and pure, cleansing the earth of an inferior race: but for every step forward his inner circle would take, Bridget would take two steps back into bleeding-heart wrongfulness. She had her own political pull, and in her ignorance, she began to persuade the Junior Panel to cease their experimentation and unite the Above and Below sooner than projected.
given a raw deal, you see.
Jeffery could wait no longer. He would expedite the hard lesson she must learn – if things got too hectic for Bridget, he would step in. With the help of his fellow society members, they provided a band of ruffians with a weakness in the Industry walls: just outside the Junior Panel dormitories. As expected, the group of Neanderthals tore through the metal and wood, burning down homes and looting businesses. Several people were kidnapped, and, to Jeffery’s delight: one of those women happened to be his girlfriend. She’d surely be terrified by the time he stepped in the next morning in a dashing rescue, her knight in shining armor! Jeffery is preparing for his valiant rescue, his father and his friends orchestrating the killing of the bandits who had played their part so well, when all hell breaks loose.
Loud explosions chase Jeffery and his terrified guild of men down a secret path, away from the whatever-it-was that disrupts their carefully orchestrated project. The Above is carefully played, you see, in a system to ensure that only the Good Ones make it to adulthood: but when the system is disrupted, there’s no telling what could happen. Jeffery has lost sight of his beloved woman, the one he is to protect: and there’s no telling what kind of danger she’s getting into up there. She’s small and vulnerable, at the mercy of some killer or cannibal or thief. And when she’s finally located, it’s worse than he imagined: the “group of men” turns out to be one extremely prolific jack-of-all-trades. He’s hell on wheels and slippery to catch: and to make matters worse, his lineage spells absolute chaos.
But, this isn’t even the worst of it all. Jeffery is watching Bridget from afar once again, and the absolutely inappropriate behavior she’s exhibiting is maddening. She’s mingling with that mongrel’s family, learning from his mother and bonding with the bitch’s whelp. It’s all tolerable, to an extent, until the mongrel begins to get closer to his woman. To protect his society, he cannot interfere even as that filthy vermin puts his dirty hands all over what belongs to him: but the system is at work. Any day now, his society will move in and he can claim what rightfully belongs to him once more. The only thing that keeps Jeffery in line is the sweet, sweet plan he’s created – and the fantasies of exterminating the son of a bitch that soiled all of his plans.
Jeffery will have his woman back, dirtied or not. And this world will have order. He is forever marked, just like all of those men, with the fires of hell they must control.