Behind the Green Door

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I was going to give the story the tag line, ‘a game show with a difference’.

But…

Then I remembered “The Running Man”, Arnold Swartzenegger running to save his life.  Not like that at all.

Yet…

I have been watching a number of TV shows of late that have a number of particularly interesting elements.

Silo – these people are living in an underground bunker, while the earth outside is unliveable.  Not sure why, but it doesn’t look good.

Fallout – same deal, underground bunkers are the in thing, but outside is recovering from a nuclear war, and lots of strange people.

Logan’s Run – this has the notion you can only live till 35.  I thought that was a little restrictive and made it 65

Oops…

Sorry, Soylent Green, it’s about the same age, or perhaps later but voluntary … but no, I’m not turning them into food.

I Robot – I liked the idea of a self-aware robot, but I decided to make it more life like than real life.  In other words, unless you knew it was a robot, you wouldn’t know

So…

Yes, I’m using the underground city trope but in my case it’s built inside a mountain and is only fifteen levels deep.

Outside, well, they had time to build underground city’s before all the volcanoes blew up, spewed ash and sulphur fumes, and a lot more, turning the earth into ice and an unbreathable and scorched barren environment that nearly killed everyone who couldn’t get to their bunkers.

Almost 200 years later, outside is almost liveable, but no one knows except those who run the cities, and after all this time, the original owner who saved a select population to repopulate the earth had morphed into the dictator, his power over everything in what might be called his kingdom, and causing growing discontent and the creation of a ‘resistance’ called the Brainstrust.

Now, that’s a lot of threads to tie together into a cohesive story.

So…

The protagonist is Michael.  He is an investigator, one of several.  Crime is minimal, but it occurs in his city of 25,000 people.

He is 65, and it’s time to retire.  He knows he gets a week with a guidance councellor to wrap up his life, leave a legacy, and go to the adjudication ceremony which will, after a jury determines what his outcome will be, hence the green door, the best possible.

What’s behind that door no one knows because no one comes back.

However, over the course of the week, a number of his old cases are reviewed, and with them, it is revealed that he knows far more about the city, its leaders, what is outside…

And a lot, lot more…