TRANSMISSION 1
ÉLÉNA
Radio Freedom?
…
Bobby?
This is Éléna Morel, from the Centre de Recherche pour l’Autonomie des Outre-mer — the Research Centre for Overseas Autonomy. The CRAOM.
I repeat: this is the CRAOM. Do you read me?
The ventilation hums. In the corridor: footsteps, doors, voices.
The transmission indicator is blinking. The signal is going out, but we're not receiving anything.
All right. It's been eight hours since the isolation protocol kicked in. No phones, no Internet. The emergency frequencies are silent. Even the upper levels have stopped responding.
The airlocks are sealed. There are one hundred and twenty-seven of us isolated on levels –7 to –12.
No one's hurt. The ventilation is working. So is the water.
That's something.
The people in charge think it's a general outage. They say everything will be back to normal by tomorrow morning.
The voices in the corridor fade away.
I hope they're right.
If anyone's out there, answer.
Even a breath. Even static. Anything.
Just so we know we're not alone.
The seismographs recorded several very brief events. Extremely powerful. Almost simultaneous.
It doesn't look like an eruption. There were no warning signs. It was too sudden.
I could be wrong.
A silence.
I hope I'm wrong.
A door opens.
JULIEN
Éléna! We've been looking everywhere for you. Are you calling Radio Freedom?
Éléna moves away from the microphone.
ÉLÉNA
I'm trying.
JULIEN
At this hour, Bobby's going to think you're calling in a dedication on Chaleur tropicale.
ÉLÉNA
, give it a rest! Give me a minute. Oh! And save me a slice of pizza.
JULIEN
You were supposed to save one for me.
ÉLÉNA
Then we're screwed.
Julien takes a bite of his slice and closes the door. Éléna returns to the microphone. The chair creaks.
That was Julien Caradec. Systems engineer.
, but adopted.
A small laugh.
Nathan, if you get this, go to my place and feed Bonsaï. Don't give him two meals just because he looks at you with those big eyes. He does that to everyone.
And if this drags on… try to convince Mum to take him.
She hesitates.
She'll say no.
Then she'll take him anyway.
Her finger moves towards the button. She hesitates, then stops.
Radio Freedom?
Bobby?
…
Is anyone there?
End of transmission.
TRANSMISSION 2
Julien is slumped in a chair, a mug between his hands.
JULIEN
Allô, Radio Freedom.
This is Julien Caradec, systems engineer at the CRAOM.
A steady drip. Farther away, crates are being moved.
I never thought I'd end up talking to you. But it's the only frequency our messages still seem to go out on.
We've been locked in here for four weeks.
We're holding up.
The electricity is stable. So is the water. The air is filtered. We salvage every litre, every piece of packaging, every screw.
Before, nobody would've bothered looking for a screw that fell on the floor. Now we spend ten minutes searching for it.
GAËL, (from a distance)
And whose fault is that? You're the one who managed to lose the only key to—
JULIEN
Shh… Gaël, I'm on the radio.
GAËL
Oops. Sorry. Say hi to Bobby for me.
JULIEN
Where was I… Right.
We've settled into routines. Briefings, inventories, sleep shifts.
The dripping continues. Julien fidgets with his mug.
The hydraulics team even built a water clock. I made fun of them until the day I realised I had no idea whether it was Tuesday or Friday.
We're already growing whatever we can. The botanists are even making soap from some plant full of saponins.
GAËL
You can tell them it stinks.
JULIEN
It stinks.
But we end up almost clean.
Laughter from somewhere down the corridor.
And then there's Marie.
Her son is four. He's outside.
She doesn't say we should open the airlock. She just asks:
“What if…”
Carl refuses. The protocol is clear: nobody goes out.
I'm working through the plans. There has to be some procedure for disabling the lock.
GAËL
Or the rescue teams will figure out how to get us open.
JULIEN
Yes.
The rescue teams.
His mug stops a few centimetres from his lips.
If Marie's little boy can hear us: your mum thinks about you every day. She keeps your pirate drawing in her lab coat.
GAËL
The door opens.
ÉLÉNA
GAËL
JULIEN
That means we're coming. I'm learning.
He gets up too quickly. His mug hits the table, falls and cracks on the floor.
Shit.
My coffee.
He picks up the mug, then laughs.
Soon there won't be any left.
Mum, if you can hear this, I'm all right.
The rescue teams will restore communications eventually.
It's just…
taking longer than expected.
Well…
I hope.
End of transmission.
TRANSMISSION 3
GAËL
Radio Freedom.
Bobby…
This is Gaël Virin, mechanical engineer at the CRAOM.
In the distance, a winch creaks, stops, then starts again. Gaël rolls a piece of ceramic between his fingers.
Julien…
Pff.
He'd sit there, press the button and talk as if someone was going to answer him.
I don't know how to talk into the void.
A silence. The winch stops.
His last message was almost two years ago.
Julien won't be coming back to this microphone.
His voice trembles.
He's dead.
There.
I said it.
Silence.
It happened the day we opened the airlock.
At first, we thought it was the rescue teams.
Banging against the outer access door. Voices. Movement on the sensors.
After months with no answer, we thought: finally.
Silence.
We were wrong.
They were trying to get in.
They were starving, burned, covered in dust. They talked about explosions offshore, the sea swallowing the coastline and a deadly exodus towards the highlands.
We understood very little.
Only that there was no one left behind them.
No authorities.
No rescue teams.
In the end, we were the rescue team.
The piece of broken mug stops turning in his hand.
When they realised we couldn't let everyone in, they forced their way through.
Not because they were bad people.
Because they knew what was waiting for them outside: death.
The decontamination zone was overwhelmed.
Julien was in the airlock. He was trying to bring the injured through one at a time, as if order were still possible.
Carl was shouting for us to close it.
If the second door gave way, we'd lose the centre.
So I triggered the emergency closure.
Gaël grips the piece of ceramic.
Julien was still outside.
Nearly seven hundred people had made it in. The others stayed out there with him.
The report says closing the airlock saved the CRAOM.
It's true.
But I'm the one who pressed the button.
And I left my outside.
He places the piece of mug in front of the microphone.
I kept his mug.
Well… what's left of it.
It was already broken before he died.
I don't even know why I kept it.
Long silence.
The newcomers stayed isolated for months. A lot of them didn't make it.
Today, there are almost six hundred of us.
They talked about a war, ships that never came, cities gone silent.
We couldn't verify any of it.
But they all said the same thing: nothing could last outside.
So we stopped waiting.
We started digging.
Then we found an enormous cavern farther down.
With a waterfall.
We're already calling it the . Sounds better than “cavity B-17”, doesn't it?
Hydraulics and geothermal energy are giving us a chance.
Not just to hold on.
To build.
The winch starts again, more slowly.
Above us, a natural shaft leads towards the Surface. The rock is crumbling. We built a platform around an Archimedes' screw.
Tomorrow, it'll take me up.
I have to install mirrors to bring light to the crops and stretch a wire through the rock. We'll pull on it to talk to each other. A primitive system.
Not bad, eh?
I won't come back down once I've been exposed to the Surface.
I'll stay up there to maintain the mirrors and tell them what I see.
Down here, they say I'll be their first Zoreil.
He bursts out laughing.
Me. Gaël Virin. Creole to my fingertips.
Before, a was someone who'd just arrived from mainland France. , it's the one who stays outside, beside the Fil-Kozman.
Make sense of that.
If we really are the last ones, humanity picked a funny place to hang on.
Not Paris.
Not America.
Not some huge military base.
A hole beneath a volcano, on a speck of rock lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
He picks up the piece of mug again.
Julien…
End of transmission.
TRANSMISSION 4
NOLAN
Radio Freedom.
This is Nolan Rivière.
Sitting backwards on a chair, Nolan picks at the skin around his thumb. Hammer blows echo in the distance.
I know. Nobody answers.
Pff…
Julien used to talk here. Gaël too. Éléna still does.
She says talking helps, even when nobody answers.
So we keep going.
Radio Freedom…
Té. It used to be the name of a radio station. , it's a whole programme.
If someone ever comes across this frequency, they'll know we were here.
And if nobody's listening… it still feels good to anyway.
I used to be an electromechanical technician.
Astèr, I fix whatever breaks.
It's been seven years since Gaël went up.
For five years, the Fil-Kozman answered almost every day.
Weather. Condition of the mirrors. Parts to send up.
Then Gaël started coughing. His messages got shorter.
The last time: three pulls.
Received.
After that, nothing.
It's been almost two years.
We assume he's dead.
His thumb is bleeding. He notices and hides his hand beneath his arm.
But we still pull the wire every morning. choice.
The mirrors move. The light fades. We've already lost one row of crops.
Someone has to go up.
We'll draw lots among the people we've trained, in the Gran-Lèspas.
That's also where we gathered when everything nearly fell apart.
The scientists were deciding on their own who got more food, who kept their office, who slept twelve to a storeroom.
We forced open the laboratories, tore off their lab coats, banned titles.
Some were beaten. A few died.
I was there.
Once the first blows landed, I couldn't stop the crowd anymore.
I wanted their power to end.
Not their lives.
Three days later, a pump broke down.
Nobody knew how to prime it.
We'd got rid of the engineers.
Not the laws of mechanics.
So we went back for the ones we'd left alive.
This time, we listened to them.
In the corridor, a young voice recites a procedure. Another corrects a word.
We got the leaders wrong too.
We'd banned them.
Three months later, we'd elected people to take charge.
A small laugh.
We'd just changed the word.
So now we talk things through. We vote. We correct.
We still screw things up.
But we try not to screw up the same way twice.
The hammering stops. Nolan examines his thumb, then smiles.
Ulrich…
Dada, my brother.
If you can hear me from wherever you are, don't laugh.
Since I'm talking about things we learn too late…
It took the end of the world for me to fall in love.
With a scientist, of all people.
A small laugh.
After all the shit I gave them…
Té, Ulrich. You would've laughed your head off.
Children pass through the corridor. Nolan waits until they have gone.
Maybe we're not just learning how to survive down here.
Right.
I'll stop before I get sentimental.
End of transmission.
TRANSMISSION 5
ÉLÉNA
Radio Freedom.
Bobby.
Mum.
It's Éléna.
I'm not even sure who I'm talking to anymore.
Someone listening, maybe.
The people who might find us one day.
Or just all of you… who aren't here anymore.
The ventilation still hums. Water, tools, voices in the galleries. A brief chirp, almost drowned out.
Mum, I'm pregnant.
There.
I imagined telling you differently.
You'd cry. You'd ask a hundred questions. You'd buy baby clothes too early. I'd tell you to stop.
You'd tell me you can do whatever you want.
She laughs. Her hand rises to her mouth.
Té…
You still get on my nerves even when you're not here.
Silence.
When I told Nolan, he smiled.
He's already built three cradles.
The first one creaked. The second one leaned. The third is, according to him, perfect.
Yesterday, he put his ear against my belly. He said he could hear the baby.
It was my stomach.
This time, she laughs openly.
The doctor says everything looks good.
For now.
She lets out a long breath.
Mum… were you scared too?
Not just of giving birth.
Of everything that comes after.
I wonder what I'll tell this child.
The sea. The heat on your skin. Bonsaï pretending he was starving after every meal.
Nathan.
I'll say their uncle probably gave Bonsaï two portions whenever my back was turned.
A small laugh.
Deep down… I hope he did.
I'll tell them about you.
About Julien, and that broken mug Gaël refused to throw away.
About Gaël, up there, who watched for us until he couldn't anymore.
The same chirping, a little closer.
The botanists had a strange surprise this week.
A family of moved into the vertical gardens, near the light shaft.
They hop between the sweet potatoes and the , heads tilted, as if they're wondering what we're doing in their home.
Nobody saw them arrive.
One morning, they were simply there.
They peck at a few seeds.
The botanists complain.
Nobody chases them away.
Several chirps. Éléna falls silent to listen.
It's been almost two years since Gaël died up there.
But every morning, his mirrors still bring us light.
Now a family of téc-téc is nesting beneath them.
The Surface is still dangerous.
No one is coming to find us.
Maybe somewhere else, others are still holding on.
I hope so.
There are six hundred of us beneath a volcano, on a speck of rock in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The CRAOM…
Silence.
No.
That name belongs to the world before.
We live here now.
A beat.
Mahavel.
Softer.
Mahavel.
Our home.
Maybe not forever.
But for as long as it takes.
The baby moves. Éléna lowers her eyes.
My child,
you may never know the sea,
nor burning sand beneath your feet.
Of the sky, you may know only mirrored light,
but we'll draw your mornings there, and your nights.
You will live.
Grow beneath my heart, sheltered by stone:
the world came undone; we'll build one of our own.
A téc-téc sings three clear notes.
Allô, Radio Freedom?
Bobby?
…
She waits. No signal. In the gallery, Nolan calls her name. A child laughs. Water flows. The tools start up again.
This is Mahavel.
The téc-téc found their way here.
We'll find ours.
The chair moves back. Her footsteps join the voices.
End of transmission.