"It's almost time!" yelled a little girl on the other side of the cube.

John started to blink his eyes open. He did not want to get up. This was the most comfortable he had been in years. He lay cuddling with his wife Sunita in their corner of the cube on the sleeping mat that they had received from SINDI three days ago. He groaned at the thought of getting up from the soft pad that seemed to hold him down to the ground. After years of sleeping on the flat floor the soft mat made him feel like a BLUE.

"Who is yelling? Is that really necessary?" he grumbled to his wife.

"Its little Lisa, she is exited to see SINDI. Come on now we have to get up, maybe SINDI will have something good."

He rolled over and looked at the large monitor on the wall of the far side of the cube and saw the slow pulsing light coming from it that indicated the it was time for them to gather around it and hear what the computer had decided to give them. Usually it was some game or program to to keep them all from going crazy from boredom, or some cloths or supplies brought down from the upper floors where they were discarded and dyed gray for use by the people of the low levels.

"O.k. but lets try and go last. I don't want anybody to get any ideas about our sleeping mat. Other than you, it's my new favorite thing." John said.

"It's making you lazy mister, you have been lying on it all day. It’s time to go. Where do you think our neighbors going to hide it? It will be fine." said Sunita. She had a point. They could see everyone in the cube unless they were in the waist disposal closet. The thief would easily be identified and John was the most physically fit resident of cube 37-12 so he felt he would be able to get it back if it came to blows.

He grunted and watched Sunita get up and making her way toward the viewing area. He smiled at she walked. He thought that she always looked so graceful because she had a habit of walking on her toes. He reluctantly stood up and fallowed her toward a spot in the back of the semi circle marked off on the floor with a gray line.

"It's so hot when we have to crowed near each other. I wish we had more screens to see SINDI on." said Sunita.

"And it stinks. My wish is that we had one of those showers that they have on the BLUE levels. I bet a shower feels great. Buzz it would be nice to be BLUE. I bet that it doesn't stink up there, and it can't be this hot!" said John.

"Watch your language sir! You don't want the children to hear you taking that name in vain, they will start imitating you like they always do. Don't give up, we haven't gotten our results yet, we could still prove clean and be given a child license, we may even get moved up a few floors if we do well on the test. Neither of us know our parents, maybe we have great genetics."

“Yeah, maybe” sighed John. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice a little. ”I just want you to be happy and safe. We have spent our whole lives on 37 and if we get to have a kid I don’t want it to have to grow up at the bottom of Necho right over those caves in fear of getting raided by the muties all the time.”

"We can handle what ever comes our way babe. We will be fine. Besides, I think SINDI likes you. Maybe she will be good to us."

The screen begins to brighten and the crowed around it pushes forward a little in anticipation, then brake out in a cheer as SINDI's smiling face comes onto the screen. She is beautiful. She glows a little and looks to be back lit. Her hair moves as if in a light cool breeze. You can only see her from the shoulders down but she looks to be waring a white gown and she wares several gold necklaces around her neck. On the very top of her head is a thin gold circle that looks a bit like a tiara or a halo that has rested on her head.

"How can I help you?" she said.

“I want to watch a cartoon!” shouted a little boy named Charley.

“I want to play a game” argued his older teenage brother who always seemed to want something different from Charley.

“Can we have a larger food ration for the children SINDI?” there mother asked more pragmatically.

“How about some entertainment.” SINDI said.

The cube cheered. “Ooo I hope it is an episode of Cube 22-37. I just love how the father teaches the children moral lessons that make them proud to be GRAY, and how that mother always know just what to say to the neighbors when they get nosy and mean.” Sanita said. The cubes were a small place and and many of the neighbors in the cubes teased them and called them GREEN wannabes because of there ambitions to move up to a higher floor. “I wish I had the wit to tell them off like Roslyn does on 22-37.”

John barely noticed the neighbors remarks. He has wanted to move up to the upper levels since he was a child and started watching programming on SINDI. He had always dreamed of living in the luxury and safety of the middle floors. He didn’t bother with the noise of the neighbors that did not believe that he would do it.

“Tonight we will be watching Troubleshooters.” SINDI said. The crowed applauded. The troubleshooters were the elite security squad in Necho Base. They come from the middle levels. They are known for there stealth and for there combat prowess. “On tonight's program a team of shooters will face off against a team of mutations armed with BLACK tech inside of the battle arena!” More applause.

The BLACK level was anything illegal on the base and policed by the shooters including gangs, mutations, and the caves under the base that they hide in.

“This is going to be great.” John said. Troubleshooters was his favorite program. He had watched it all of his life on SINDI. When he was a child he knew all of them by name and pretended to battle mutants with his friends in the orphanage.

SINDI began to introduce the mutants in the match. The mutants did not look pretty. Most mutations had major deformities on there face and major skin conditions. The mutie introduced as Guff had some of his organs hanging out of the lower left side of his abdomen and the one called Moog had a face that drooped to his shoulder on the left side and a stubby arm protruding from under his other right arm.

She then introduced the tech that the mutants would be using. The weapons are examples of the ones that the gangs use in there raids into the low levels of the base to steal GRAY supplies and food rations, and to fight off any troubleshooters they may come across. The tech always looks so powerful compared to a Shooters baton. John always thinks that this time the muties might have a fighting chance to kill the shooters. Guff would be armed with a throwing disk that had a cutting edge and returned to him after he threw it, while Moog had a whip made of fire and light that retracted into the hilt.

“I want that disk!” yelled Charlie.

“I want that awesome whip!” shouted his older brother.

“Where does BLACK tech come from? Do they make it down in the caves?” Sanita asked John.

“Babe, I’m trying to watch the show.” His heart began to race as he imagined himself in that arena getting the chance to take some revenge on the muties for the deaths they have caused while raiding on the GRAY floors. The alarm sounded and the gates on either side of the arena are released.

The mutants leave there cube choosing the left hand hallway to advance. As the approached a blind corner Guff launched his disc around it without even looking just encase there was an ambush waiting. Meanwhile Moog used his whip to destroy any cameras that he noticed, hoping to hide there movement threw the arena from the shooters.

John was loving it. He hoped this would be a long episode. Guff's technique might be affective and that could slow the shooters down. He knew that Sunita did not enjoy violent programing and reached over and put his hand on her leg to comfort her as she suffered threw it. He glanced back at there corner of the cube and noticed that there sleeping pad was missing.

He bolted up and scanned the cube in a panic, taking inventory of everyone's things.

“What’s the matter?”Sunita asked.

“Someone stole our new mat!”

Sunita was the first to find the mat. It was under a sleeping little girl on the other side of the circle. “I think Lisa has it.” She said.

John could not believe it. After months of petitioning SINDI for the mat they finally get one and someone tries to take it in the first 100 hours. He wanted to confront Lisa’s father Gus, it was probably him that stole it, but John knew that Sunita would want Lisa to have it. “I guess she needs it more than we do.” He said.

Sunita smiled. “I think so too.”

They sat back down and held each others hand while they finished the program. The mutations were dead in six minutes. They were ambushed from above. Guff’s neck was snapped by a shooter who had dropped down on him out of the ceiling and Moog was hung by his whip. After he hung for about ten seconds the whip burned through his neck and his body and head fell and hit the ground with a squishy thud. The whole cube cheered. Even Sunita.

“I hope that you enjoyed the entertainment. Good night 37-12.” SINDI said.

“Goodnight SINDI” they all said back. Then returned to there corners of the cube and prepared for bed secure in there faith that the shooters had there backs, and that nobody can kill a shooter.

Little Lisa slept best of all.