Part One.

Pine-Sol dominated Levi's earliest memories of Vault 104, the Aerial Industry Reserve (A.I.R.) The boy woke up to the smell of Pine-Sol every day because his alarm was set at the exact time that the robot cleaning crew swept through the hall outside his room. He breathed in the smell, imagined it coating his uniform, seeping into his body and turning his blood to bleach.

A sign in the hall read: A.I.R. KEEPS YOU CLEAN SO YOU CAN BREATHE CLEAN AIR!

Early mornings, Levi's mom spent forty-five minutes washing his pale skin until it was red, combing his black hair (trimming it added another ten minutes) and dressing him. Once, Levi asked her if he could pick his clothes. She ignored him. He looked in their closet later; every uniform looked the same - a peach red jumpsuit with A.I.R. 104 printed on the back and front. They all smelled like detergent.

Everything Levi smelled in A.I.R. had that scrubbed, clean smell - in the community dining hall, the library, the learning center, the sports center, the shopping center, and especially in the doctor's office and dentist office.

Levi complained about the dentist one month. Mom frowned and brought up his reading lessons in school. He said he was better at it than all the other kids. She pointed to a sign on the office wall and told him to read it. He tried, silently, with difficulty, because she wouldn't help him. A few appointments later, he was still trying. Six months after being told to read the sign, he got it. "Monthly appointments with your doctor and dentist are mandated by Vault Protocol 7 Section B under the Health and Safety Agreement."

"What's that mean?" he asked Mom, while she was working in the community kitchen.

"It means you have to go with Mommy to the doctor and dentist every month and that's final."

"Why?"

She slapped a hand on the counter. "Because we need to be clean and this god-forsaken planet is a radiated piece of filth, god! Stop asking questions, you know I hate that."


Levi was six years old and furious because one of the kids had torn up his crayon drawing during recess. He'd drawn a picture of the outdoors, with lush earth and sky, and he'd been very particular with the grass blades and the bugs. Now it was just shredded paper that the teacher had told him to clean up.

He marched up the neon yellow-striped steps and made for the giant, circular door with the word EXIT printed on it. Suddenly a big, Velcro-gloved hand pushed him and he stared up at a guard's mirror sunglasses.

"Whoa there, little tyke, where do you think you're going?"

"I'm leaving this stupid place," Levi growled.

"No you're not, little guy. Nobody leaves A.I.R."

"I'm leaving!" He resisted the large hand pushing on his chest and shoulder.

"You turn right around and get back to your living cell, kid." The guard turned to his partner and muttered something. Levi caught the words, "...need to question his parents."

"Why can't I leave?" the six-year-old demanded, pouting.

"Because then the mutant monsters will gobble you up. Now move along, and don't come back here, understand?"

He looked at them, fully equipped in vests and helmets, guns and wands strapped to their waists. They were so big and unmoving.

His mom yelled at him that night. He never tried to leave by that door again.


In fourth grade, Levi's classes became one viewing after another of instructional movies. He sat in the back, so the teacher wouldn't catch him nodding off in the darkness. The tinny music and corny narration about the Resource Wars grew easier and easier to ignore. Even the loud parts stopped jolting him awake, when footage of nuclear fallout blew up on the projector.

He never remembered anything from the movies, but instead learned and memorized things he read in books from the A.I.R. library. He stayed up all night nose-deep in a book about vacuum tube technology or the development of the first nuclear-run car. Then he fell asleep during class, because why to pay attention to some dumbass factoid he already knew about three class days ago?

"What is this?" Mom asked him sternly one evening, when she held up a report card marked in ominous red. "I'm going to talk to your teacher."

She did. Nothing happened. Teachers said things. He didn't remember. He liked the books better. They made sense. They were interesting. And they didn't talk down to him or give him looks.


One day when Levi was ten, his life coach told the class in her perkiest, most encouraging tone, "I want everyone to tell me what they'd like to be when they grow up."

Almost all the kids said, "I want to be a doctor."

"Lab scientist!"

"Dentist!"

"Nurse!"

"And you, Levi?" the coach pressed, when it was his turn and he didn't speak up. "What do you want to be? Share with the class."

"I want to be an airplane pilot," he said, grey eyes fixed sullenly on the floor. "And I'd fly one of the planes we keep here."

"Why?" demanded one of the other boys. "That's dumb. You can't fly a plane in the vault."

"Then I'd fly it outside, dumbass," Levi said, glaring up at him.

"You can't go outside! That's wrong and you'll get in trouble! Teacher he said-!"

"All right, all right class, I think that's enough sharing for now," the teacher said, her voice cautious. She gave Levi a strange look.

Then he saw another girl in class looking at him, a girl with a messy brown pony tail and huge glasses. He'd never seen someone look at him like that before, like they understood him...like he had something they desperately wanted.