The Tunnels of Plenty

In a land so vast and wild that humans were but whispers among the endless chatter of nature, I found myself alone in a place that defied imagination. My name is Elias Carver, a retired engineer with a penchant for tinkering and a dream of self-sufficiency. I’d spent my life building systems—first for others, then, finally, for myself. When I stumbled into this strange chapter of my life, I thought I’d already seen the peak of my ambitions. I was wrong.


It began modestly enough. After decades of city noise and corporate deadlines, I’d retired to a sprawling, abandoned office complex in the middle of nowhere—a concrete relic surrounded by scrubland and silence. The building came cheap, bundled with a massive parking lot I didn’t need. I saw potential where others saw decay. Over two months, I transformed it into a marvel of aquaculture and hydroponics—a closed-loop system that hatched fish, grew vegetables, and recycled waste with ruthless efficiency. Solar panels gleamed atop the roof and shaded the lot, powering my creation. Sensors tracked everything: oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, humidity—metrics pulsing like the heartbeat of a living machine.


By the third month, my operation was a quiet empire. Lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs flowed out to local restaurants and grocers, while tilapia and shrimp—live or filleted—kept my accounts flush. I’d doubled my initial investment monthly, a feat that felt like a personal victory against a world that doubted a lone man could thrive this way. I was content, sipping coffee in my repurposed office, watching the numbers climb.


Then the DEA came knocking.


It was a crisp morning in the fourth month when two agents in stiff suits strode through my doors, badges gleaming. They’d caught wind of my sudden wealth—hundreds of thousands pouring in from a nowhere address—and assumed I was laundering cash for some cartel. I invited them in with a grin, handed over my surveillance footage, and walked them through my day. From dawn to dusk, I showed them the tanks, the grow beds, the processing line—all of it humming with purpose. They left with furrowed brows and empty hands, muttering about “one-man factories” as they drove off.


I thought that was the end of it. A week later, I found a stranger in my office.


He was lean, sharp-eyed, and dressed in a nondescript gray suit that screamed government without saying it. He sat at my desk, scrolling through my logs—oxygen levels, harvest yields, nutrient cycles—like he owned the place. I stood in the doorway, arms crossed, waiting for him to notice me. He didn’t.


“We need you to do this again,” he said, eyes still on the screen. “But bigger. What would it take to match the agricultural output of an entire state?”


I leaned against the frame, sizing him up. “Depends on the state.”


“Assume it’s the largest one,” he shot back, fingers pausing over my expansion plans—notes I’d scribbled late at night, dreaming of scale.


“Depends on how many people I’ve got helping me,” I said. “With automation and remote systems, it’s about money upfront. More cash, faster start. I’ve got ideas in that folder—”


He was already reading it, cutting me off with a wave. “I’d like to hire you to do this”—he gestured at the screen—“to your heart’s content. But you’ll do it alone, and you can’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”


I frowned. “I’d need a massive budget to set it up solo.”


“Consider it unlimited,” he said, leaning back. “Including buying this place as-is. Name your price for it. That’ll be your monthly salary.”


I blinked, testing the waters. “A billion dollars.”


“Done,” he replied, so fast I cursed myself for not asking for more.


He slid a contract across the desk, thick with legalese and an NDA so ironclad it might as well have been carved in stone. I signed, and within days, my little empire vanished—bought, packed, and shipped to a destination I wasn’t told until I arrived.


The tunnels were a world unto themselves. Hundreds of square miles of hollowed earth stretched beneath a nameless wilderness, carved by hands unknown for reasons lost to time. Whoever had mined this place left behind a labyrinth stocked with miracles: warehouses brimming with steel, concrete, lumber, wiring, and tools—electric forklifts, welders, 3D printers, you name it. Food, clothing, fabric, and electronics gleamed in sealed crates, pristine and state-of-the-art, as if time had never touched them. The walls were coated in a smooth, odorless sealant, erasing any trace of what this place once was. The scale dwarfed sound itself; my footsteps echoed faintly, swallowed by the vastness.


I was alone. The man in gray—Agent Kessler, he’d called himself—had dropped me here with a satellite uplink, a billion-dollar monthly stipend, and a single directive: outproduce a state. No oversight, no crew, just me and my mind against the endless dark.


I started small, mapping the tunnels with drones I found in a crate—sleek, military-grade things that hummed like wasps. The main chamber alone could’ve housed a city, its ceiling lost in shadows. I set up my first system near a natural aquifer, rigging pumps and tanks from the stockpiles. Solar arrays were pointless underground, but geothermal vents dotted the depths, and I tapped them with turbines scavenged from a warehouse labeled “Power Systems.” Within weeks, I had electricity—clean, endless, mine.


The aquaculture came next. I built vats the size of swimming pools, seeding them with fish eggs from cryopacks I found stacked in a cooler. Tilapia, salmon, shrimp—species I knew, and some I didn’t, their labels cryptic but promising. Hydroponics followed, rows of LED-lit trays stretching into the gloom, sprouting greens faster than I’d ever seen. The tunnels’ stillness held moisture like a sponge, and my sensors—hundreds of them, wired into a central hub—kept the balance perfect.


Months blurred into a rhythm of creation. I welded, programmed, planted, harvested. Automation took root—robots I’d assembled from parts roamed the tunnels, tending crops and netting fish. I slept in a prefab bunk I’d dragged from storage, ate from vacuum-sealed rations, and drank water purer than anything topside. The silence was my companion, broken only by the hum of machinery and the occasional ping of a sensor alert.


By year’s end, I’d filled a tenth of the tunnels. My output rivaled California’s breadbasket—millions of pounds of food, all from one man and a buried kingdom. Shipments left via an automated rail system I’d discovered, snaking to the surface through a hidden shaft. I never saw who took them, but Kessler’s monthly calls confirmed they arrived. His voice crackled through the uplink, clipped and approving: “Keep going.”


I did. The tunnels became my canvas. I built aquaponic towers that scraped the ceilings, engineered algae bioreactors for oxygen and fuel, and bred hybrid crops in sealed labs. The stockpiles never dwindled—every crate I emptied revealed another behind it, as if the place replenished itself. I stopped questioning it. This was my purpose now, my legacy.


But solitude gnaws. I named the robots—Clara, Rex, Milo—gave them voices through hacked speech modules. I talked to them, to the tunnels, to myself. The vastness pressed in, a weight I couldn’t name. One night, staring at a harvest tally—enough to feed millions—I wondered who ate it. Kessler never said. The NDA held my tongue, even in my dreams.


Years later, I found a sealed door. It wasn’t on my maps, tucked behind a warehouse I’d never explored. The lock was biometric, but it opened to my touch—my touch—like it knew me. Beyond it, a chamber glowed with screens, each showing a tunnel network like mine, scattered across the globe. Empty, waiting. A single message blinked on the central console: “WELL DONE, ELIAS. PREPARE THE NEXT.”


I sat there, heart pounding, as the tunnels whispered their secrets. I was no accident. I was the first.